Chapter Text
The next time Magnus goes missing—Jace is keeping score and it seems like Magnus and Alec are never more than one tally mark away from each other—they don’t even bother asking Alec if he has anything that belongs to Magnus.
Jace stalks right up to his Parabatai, grabs one hand in each of his, then presses Alec’s face between both of them. “Right, think about Magnus, and then we can be off,” he tells him.
Alec looks utterly bewildered. “What?”
“We’re Parabatai-tracking using you,” Jace says.
“Can you even do that?” Alec asks.
“Magnus used himself to track you,” Jace says as if it explains everything. Izzy, who is currently fixing Clary’s hair, rather thinks that it does.
Alec’s face goes a brilliant shade of red because, clearly, he inherited all the modesty and left Izzy with all the confidence. “Yeah but Magnus is a Warlock—”
“Just shut up and concentrate.”
In less than half a minute, they’re setting off in Magnus’ direction and Izzy is shooting Alec very smug smirks and Alec is trying his very best to pull his hair over his face to avoid looking at Izzy and Clary just laughs loudly and brightly.
“So you’re all his, huh?” Jace says over Clary’s laughter.
Alec actually notches his bow and aims it at Jace before huffing and deciding that Jace’s death is not worth having to stop to retrieve his arrow.
Jace grins and decides that they’ve worked out a very efficient system.
---
Magnus is around for regular ward maintenance—and, Izzy suspects, possibly a tryst with the head of the Institute once that’s over—when Robert asks him for a favour. It’s not much, just a request to cast a protection charm on a piece of jewellery for Maryse’s birthday, but he does offer payment and Magnus isn’t going to turn that down.
“There’s not much that you have that I want,” Magnus says. “However, there is something in this building that I’m particularly keen on keeping for myself.”
Robert eyes Magnus warily. “Should I regret letting you choose your fee?”
“Maybe.” Magnus smirks. “Ah, there my payment comes.”
Turning around, Robert sees his children—all three of the ones old enough to be sent out on missions only to track ichor across the floors when they get back like children who had rolled around in mud—and Clarissa Fairchild tossing witty retorts back and forth in some sort of grown-up version of roughhousing.
“No,” Robert says quickly. He doesn’t know what Magnus wants, but he already knows that he wouldn’t like it one bit if it has anything to do with any of his children.
“No?” Magnus asks, his eyes glittering dangerously. “Then maybe you should have made your offer before I took the job so I could have decided whether I wanted to make this exchange. My magic for something of yours, isn’t that the deal?”
“I’ll offer you something else of equal value.”
“But you see, there’s nothing that even approaches the value of what I want. All the gold in your vaults cannot compare. Oh, hello, Alexander.”
Alec comes to stand next to Magnus. Izzy, and Jace greet him enthusiastically and reluctantly respectively, and Clary waves at him with a bright smile.
“What did you ask him to do this time?” Alec asks Robert, eyebrows raised. “What’s so different that you can’t just pay him normally?”
“It’s nothing that you need to worry about, Alexander.” Magnus slips his hand into Alec’s and marvels at how Alec is no longer flustered by anything he does anymore. Surreptitiously, he warms Alec’s ring with a bit of magic and smiles when Alec stares at their joint hands like a demon had just sprouted from them. “I just thought it was time to finally get your parents’ blessings.”
“What?”
“You know, so you can have your whole family there when I finally get round to marrying you.”
Alec stares at Magnus like a demon had just sprouted from his face instead.
“So what do you say, Robert? Will you give me your son?”
Before Robert can even open his mouth to gape at Magnus’s audacity, Jace bursts out laughing in a way that Magnus has never seen before. He is doubled over, hand slapping his thigh as he clutches his stomach, and his face actually starts to turn a somewhat alarming shade of red that’s rare even for Alec.
“I’m afraid that’s not possible, Magnus,” Jace manages to say between loud, wheezing laughter.
Magnus looks at him, unimpressed. “As somebody who has given us your blessings, you have no right to say that.”
“That’s not what he means,” Izzy says, giggling. “Alec is no one but Alec’s to give.”
“It’s the principle of the thing,” Magnus says, mostly to Robert.
“No, you don’t get it. The thing is, normally Alec giving himself to you wouldn’t be a problem because let’s face it he would if you asked. Except, Alec already belongs to you.”
Magnus frowns. “Sure, that’s my ring on his finger after all. I’d be very upset if that doesn’t mean that he’s chosen to be mine.”
“That’s not it either,” Clary adds, laughing a bit too. “See, about a week ago we needed to find you, so we did some impromptu tracking. Guess what we used.”
Magnus narrows his eyes at Clary, then looks to Izzy and Jace for answers when Clary doesn’t appear to be very forthcoming. They too are pretty much useless since they’re still trying to unsuccessfully stifle their laughter. Finally, he looks at Alec, who has turned a shade of red even deeper than Jace.
“I don’t—”
“Think, what did you use to track Alec the last time?” Izzy says.
Magnus whips his head around to stare, wide-eyed, at Alec, who looks about ready to fling himself into the sun. “No…”
Jace grins at him. “Yes.”
There aren’t many things in the world that Magnus wants. He is old enough to have already satisfied most of his desires. What he does want, however, tends to be rare, expensive, impossible without defying the laws of physics, or all of the above. In that moment, he feels like none of them matter anymore.
Without taking his eyes off Alec, Magnus says, “In that case, Robert, let me rephrase. Will you and Maryse make Alec the happiest man alive by attending the wedding that I will be organising as soon as I leave this thrice-damned building? There’s no sense in waiting to officialise the fact that even magic recognises that we fully belong to each other, after all.”