Chapter Text
Growing up, Alec had heard that his wings—that all Shadowhunters’ wings, for all that they weren’t capable of real flight—were holy. He supposed this was meant like how Brother Abel had called the Beast holy, or Alec’s blade holy , or the halls of the Institute holy. As deliverers of punishment. Tools of violent justice. Instruments of the divine will.
Alec wasn’t sure the divine will meant what the Clave thought it meant. He was starting to think that divinity, such that it might exist, was more like a gemstone with a thousand faces, and the sliver they’d all buried in their hearts, curved their ribcages around, was merely the facet fixated upon by the angels. The angels, who weren’t gods, after all, and were still hurting, still angry, after being turned upon by their own brothers. They had sharpened that resentment into law, and perhaps that gave them purpose after everything in their kingdom had fallen apart.
Alec, too, had held onto that law once, held it until the sharp edges cut bloody gouges in his palms and then after, too. It had hurt to let it go, the separation almost more painful than the original wound, but that was the only way it could start to heal.
Alec was now trying to let go again. He was letting go of the vision he’d been given of the world, and of what constituted holiness. It was a tangled separation, but in the process, he was learning about so many other things that were holy.
Isabelle’s smile when she forged a new, more complicated weapon—not even to fight with, just to know if she could.
The joyful squeals of Magnus’s silly cats when he brought them their cream out on the balcony.
Jace’s peace and quiet when he played piano.
Madzie offering him some dandelions when she’d just learned how to summon them.
Magnus wielding magic—not demonic magic, not fallen angel magic—just his magic,
and Magnus’s face in the morning, when the sun lit his skin in gold,
and Magnus kissing against his pulse and making that pleased hum against Alec’s skin,
and Magnus, just— Magnus.
And this.
Flying.
He did another big, sweeping loop over the roof of their building, seeing how far he could get on just one flap of his wings. It was pretty far. The wings were powerful. Alec didn’t know how the Nephilim had been managing without them all these years. His former abilities felt like a half life in comparison to this.
Magnus was down on the balcony, watching. Probably drinking a cocktail and treating it as a whole show. Alec didn’t mind. He liked being able to show off for Magnus. Magnus’s magic was so powerful and versatile, so impressive, that it was a novelty to have something wholly his own that was notable enough to impress Magnus with.
He dove again, caught a wind current, and rocketed back up at incredible speed. The flight rune was hot against his chest, singing through him; the morning sun was so bright. Yeah, Alec was never giving this up. Not for the angels, not for the Clave, not for anyone.
He wondered if Magnus wanted to try. He dove down to the balcony to meet him.
Magnus loved watching Alec fly.
It was so hard won, that flight. Not only because of the arrest, the almost-deruning, and having to break with Clave doctrine and law just to keep his new rune. But also because of the newness, the risk involved.
The Alec Magnus had first met wouldn’t have jumped headfirst off the balcony into this newness. Hell, Alec had been skeptical of his wings’ new powers the moment they’d manifested.
So to see him now, doing flips high up above the apartment—Magnus couldn’t help but beam up at him.
He watched Alec twist and turn in the air, pushing his wings’ capabilities to their maximum, seeing what he could do. He was beautiful. The whole shirtless flying display was really doing it for Magnus, too. There were plans percolating in his head for after this.
Alec dove down and skidded to a stop before him in a bluster of wind and feathers. He’d begun to get really good control over it, didn’t stumble this time at all. He grinned, and everything in Magnus soared to see him so jubilant.
“Come fly with me,” he said.
Magnus didn’t understand. “What?” Obviously, he didn’t have wings.
Alec took the pendant from Magnus’s chest and kissed it. “This is your handiwork, isn’t it? Come and fly.”
“Alec, I don’t—”
But Alec didn’t wait. He wrapped his arms around Magnus, lifted him up, and took off.
Magnus let out an embarrassingly high-pitched screech and locked his arms around Alec’s neck. “Alexander!”
They rocketed up at incredible speed, and Magnus feared for his life. Warlocks were not meant to fly. Nope, definitely not.
“Magnus look!” Alec said into his ear. “Look around!”
Wind threw Magnus’s hair into tangles. The sun was blinding out from under the balcony overhang. He pried his eyes open anyway and squinted over Alec’s shoulder.
They were dizzyingly high up, the city shrunk to a model landscape below them. Magnus couldn’t help the instinctive lurch of terror, but gradually curiosity overcame it, and once he was reasonably certain that Alec was strong enough to carry both of them and they wouldn’t plummet to their sudden and untimely deaths, he leaned back and looked around.
It was— it was incredible. From this vantage point he could see the entire island of Manhattan, not to mention the other boroughs, Jersey, and Long Island stretching off into the distance, and beyond, the sea, glittering in the sun like so many crystal fragments dancing off to the horizon.
“Alec,” he croaked, “don’t fucking drop me.”
His bastard fiancé laughed and said, “Don’t worry, I got you. Just hang on.”
Then, as if he hadn’t already done it enough times, Alec turned Magnus’s world upside down again. Except this time, it was literal.
They flipped and dove, and Magnus’s stomach lurched into his throat, but he didn’t scream this time. He knew now that Alec wouldn’t drop him.
They leveled out until they were soaring over the river, and Magnus managed to find the space to glare half-heartedly at Alec. “You need to stop giving this old man heart attacks.”
Alec flipped over onto his back so Magnus could balance on his chest, and kept gliding that way. “Didn’t you say one of the joys of dating someone young was getting to experience new things through new eyes?”
Magnus did say that. Curse him. “I meant, like, you know, the joys of having sex on a balcony in Paris for the first time,” he explained. “Eating proper carbonara in Rome. And so on. Not physics-defying stunts with untested magic.”
Alec looked unimpressed. “Physics-defying stunts with untested magic is eighty percent of your research.”
“NOT ONE THOUSAND FEET IN THE AIR!”
Alec pouted. “But I thought you said I swept you off your feet? ”
Alec’s eidetic memory for things Magnus had done or said was usually a charming thing about him, Magnus thought grumpily. He sighed. “I love you,” he admitted helplessly. “Even one thousand feet in the air.”
“I love you anywhere,” Alec said, with a sappy smile.
Magnus loved him anywhere, too. He loved him whether their marriage was ‘legitimate’ or not, whether the Clave hated them or not. He loved Alec as a devout Shadowhunter or as a rebel—but especially as a rebel. He loved him in hell or in heaven or on the run from the law. He loved him for turning their lives upside down, for turning his own life upside down over and over in pursuit of what was truly right. He loved him.
Magnus kissed him, a soft press of lips that he staunchly refused to deepen under these circumstances.
“Now, take me back home, Alexander!” he declared. “I may be willing to do a lot of risky things, but even I draw the line at making out while hurtling at two hundred miles per hour over the East River. The second I distract you with my tongue you’re going to crash us headfirst into a bridge pylon.”
Alec’s laughter carried him forward into the morning.
