Work Text:
„Alec. ALEC! Concentrate! How many fingers am I holding up?”
Jace’s hand was blurring before his eyes and Alec blinked rapidly to stop his world from spinning. In vain. He felt like someone had put him on a carousel that didn’t know which direction it was supposed to rotate in, and therefore had to rotate in every direction at the same time until someone would stop it and make a decision. Schroedinger’s carousel. Or something like that. Okay, wait, what did Jace want? Right. Focus. Fingers.
“Uhhhh – six?” The words fell from his lips like gooey syrup.
A hand struck his face, probably Jace’s hand, probably because he hadn’t given the right answer, but the slap didn’t really register as pain, and Alec felt the sudden need to laugh.
Jace’s face disappeared from his narrowed, sluiced-out, revolving field of vision, being immediately replaced by another familiar face with long black hair surrounding it and deep red on its disapprovingly curled lips. Izzy. Fingers were pulling up his eyelids and a flash of bright light blinded him for half a second.
“Will he be okay?” That was Jace’s voice, unusually panicked. Alec felt a pang of guilt and did his best to apologise and reassure his parabatai that yes, everything was going to be okay, but the only thing coming out of his mouth was a dry coughing sound.
“He will,” Izzy said in his stead.
Her face and fingers disappeared, and Alec’s lids dropped, surrounding him in darkness, which actually did something against the chronic carouseling.
“I’ve seen this before,” he heard Izzy explain somewhere diffusely to his right. “Oneirium. One of the rogues must have injected him with it while you were busy fighting them off. It’ll incapacitate him and give him crazy dreams for the next few hours, but he should be okay. It’s not an overdose, that much I can tell. His pupils are responding to light and his breathing rate is normal. He might be a bit confused and say a few stupid things; but then – doesn’t he do that anyway?”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, Jace, I am sure. Get him to his room and let him sleep it off. That’s the only thing we can really do.”
“Alriiiiiiiiiiiiiii”
Jace’s voice seemed to get stuck on the I all of a sudden, like a broken record, and Alec stared in confusion at the colours that were starting to bloom in the dark beneath his closed eyelids. Yellow, pink, red, green, light blue, dark blue, purple, accompanied by a soft humming sound that grew stronger until it resembled the slamming noise of an electric guitar, and – was that someone beatboxing into his ear? What by the Angel’s holy-
He tried to open his eyes and/or put his hands to his ears, but he wasn’t sure any more whether he actually had eyes and/or hands in the first place. So he stopped trying.
“Hey Alec. Alec. AlecAlecAlecAlec. Ya wanna hear a song? A sooooooooooooooooooong?” a weird little voice whisper-sang into his ear.
“Actually, I don’t,” Alec replied, reasonably, but the strange voice wouldn’t have any of it.
“Well I guess it would be nice, if I could touch your booooooodyyyyyyyyy. I know not everyboooooodyyyyyy has got a body like youuuuuuuuuu.”
Alec sighed deeply.
The voice completely failed to take note of his disapproval; and after the thirtieth, frustratingly catchy repeat Alec remembered some stupid saying he’d read once:
If you can’t beat them, join them.
Well, then, in this case, singing it was.
***
When Alec awoke his throat felt somewhat rough and his body somewhat overheated. But the weird voice in his ears was gone, and his eyes seemed to be functioning without limitation as he blinked them open. The structure of the ceiling and the lamp he spotted straight ahead told him that he was lying in his room, in bed. Carefully he sat up, moving his toes and fingers. Nothing broken, as far as he could tell. He was aching in a few joints, but that was probably residual damage from the fight an undetermined amount of time earlier. His clothes had mostly disappeared – apart from a pair of boxer briefs and a black t-shirt he was naked.
“Alec.” A rough voice called his name from the chair in the corner, and he turned his head to see Jace getting up from it, his hair dishevelled and his gaze worried, walking over to him with hasty steps. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m fine.”
Jace ignored his statement, grabbed him by the shoulders and looked him sternly in the eye. “Do I look strange to you? Are you hearing voices? Any other sounds? Do you feel watched or followed?”
Alec sighed. “No, I’m not hearing voices. Don’t you always look like that? And, yes, I am feeling followed, since you seem to have set up camp in my room.”
Jace rolled his eyes but he looked rather relieved, and his hands dropped down from Alec’s shoulders. “You’re obnoxious. That means you’re better.”
“Of course I am. My throat feels a little rough, though,” Alec added, since he assumed that he should be complaining about something at least so Jace wouldn’t have to think the bedside nursing he’d apparently been doing for the last few hours had been for nothing.
His parabatai laughed.
“Yeah, I wouldn’t be too surprised about that. Izzy said you’d be experiencing weird dreams – but why of all things did you have to hallucinate George Michael? Your rendition of Faith was staggeringly off key and on repeat for 58 minutes. I was suffering over there.”
Alec furled his brows. “Why didn’t you leave? Izzy said I’d be fine, didn’t she? You should have gotten some sleep instead.”
Jace’s expression shifted into something strangely annoyed.
“And leave you to yourself? Are you insane? I mean – Faith was torturous, don’t get me wrong…but you could have hallucinated anything! Your window being your door for example. Or something even worse. I was worried. You were-”
Alec interrupted him with a gentle touch of his hand to Jace’s shoulder. “I would have done the same. Don’t think I don’t understand.”
The anger disappeared from Jace’s eyes and he sank down on the edge of Alec’s bed, resting his hand on his parabatai’s thigh. Alec could feel his heat through the thin blanket.
“Sometimes I wonder, if it’s such a rational decision,” Jace gave back, quietly.
“What do you mean?”
“Creating parabatai bonds. Being Shadowhunters, we always put our minds first, don’t we? But at the same time, we still use rites that bind two soldiers together in the deepest way possible. Rites that allow them to feel each other’s joy and pain, anger and sadness. That set them up to save each other above everyone else. That’s not very rational.”
Alec bit his lip. “No, it isn’t. But parabatai, when they work together – when we work together, we’re stronger. If we set our minds to something, we’re far more efficient than alone. Our society knows this. They hazard the emotions that come with the bond, but the pros vastly outnumber the cons. Unless, of course…”
He looked down at Jace’s hand on his thigh, and then up again into his eyes that were staring at him, intent blue.
“I’m scared,” he said. The word felt foreign in his mouth. “We don’t have it under control. We both know it’s going to happen again. We want it. But I’m still scared.”
Jace’s face came closer, and his free hand touched Alec’s shoulder, another source of heat that slowly started to mess with Alec’s thoughts.
“I’m scared, too, Alec.” Jace looked away for a second and cleared his throat, before his eyes met Alec’s gaze again. “I keep asking myself Is it worth it? over and over and over – and then I see you and yes, it’s worth it. It’s worth being scared about. You’re worth being scared about.”
Alec couldn’t help it, even if he had wanted to; his lips found Jace’s on their own accord. It was a desperate kiss – but then, maybe their kisses would never be anything but; driven, chased, stolen from a place that didn’t belong to them, yet was completely and utterly theirs. Jace returned the kiss right away, like he had known it was coming, both of his hands grabbing onto Alec’s face, and after a while Alec’s fingers started fumbling with the hem of his parabatai’s shirt, searching for skin. Jace’s hands mirrored them only shortly after, pulling the blanket from Alec’s scantily clad form; and then Jace was sliding on top of him, still way, way too clothed – but at least there was friction now. Alec groaned, deep in his throat, his mind set back to the day at the training centre, Jace’s growling words in his ear, when all of a sudden Jace shifted away, despite Alec’s silent protest, a laugh on his lips. “Let’s do this properly this time.”
Alec felt crimson spread on his face when the implications of that statement finally hit. “I’ve never actually – done. That,” he blurted out, before Jace could read the truth right off his face and call him out on it. Great. The literal blushing virgin, Alec Lightwood.
Jace chuckled. “It’s not so different from doing it with a gir- oh.”
Alec had developed a deep interest in the collar of Jace’s shirt as soon as he had started talking, unable to meet his gaze. But a finger lifted his chin only shortly after, and he was forced to look into his parabatai’s eyes again. Contrary to his imagination Jace didn’t seem too disappointed. Quite the opposite, actually. “I’ll be your first, then. If that’s alright with you,” he said, softly.
Alec nodded, relief flooding his veins. “I wouldn’t want anyone else, to be honest.”
Jace’s thumb caressed his cheek. “If you get – worried, or it doesn’t feel right, tell me. I’ll keep you in check through the bond as much as I can, but I’m not a thought-reader.”
Alec put his hand on Jace’s and stilled his movement. “I won’t. It won’t. But thank you.”
Jace grinned at him. “Alright. When I said, it’s not so different from doing it with a girl – well, it is, of course, in that it needs a little more outside preparation. Luckily, if I’m not mistaken, and you haven’t changed your habits…” Jace stretched out his arm to Alec’s nightstand, opened the third drawer and fished out the herbal oil Alec regularly used to apply on tense muscles after training. “There we go,” he said triumphantly, throwing the vial on the bed next to them. Alec swallowed hard and felt his boxer briefs grow tighter as he thought about where that was going to go very, very soon. He would never be able to look at the vial in quite the same way ever again.
Jace had stripped off his shirt meanwhile, smiling at the expression on Alec’s face – but then, he was a sight to behold, all muscles and runes stretching and contracting sleek and black across them like living things, and Alec had to put his fingers to one or two and trace them across Jace’s skin. He was so caught up in it, he didn’t even realise how Jace had taken hold of his own shirt, until it was being pulled over his head, and then Jace’s hands were all over his body, too, leaving hot trails in their wake.
“Do you know how infuriating it is to not be able to do this when I see you in training every day?”
“You think you’re the only one? You have no idea, Jace. None. And how about you finally get rid of those pants?”
“For a first, you’re kind of pushy.”
“I’m assertive.”
“Sure.” Jace raised his eyebrows, but started unbuttoning and unzipping the very tight, very dark jeans he was still wearing without further ado, not moving an inch away from where he was sitting astride Alec in the process. With two fast, elegant swings of his legs he pulled them off and threw them in the next corner – and only then did Alec notice that Jace was not, in fact, wearing any underwear.
“Fuck.” The word slipped breathlessly from his lips, and Jace grinned again, more than a little smugly, this time.
“You wanted it this way, now don’t complain.”
Alec violently shook his head. “I’m actually not complaining. Like. At all. What do I have to do?”
Jace grabbed the vial next to them. “Kiss me. I’ll do the work.”
Alec nodded, feeling very lightheaded all of a sudden (possibly because most of his blood had preferred to take the route south), buried his fingers in Jace’s hair and kissed him for all he was worth. One of Jace’s hands disappeared from his back after a minute, and a little later soft moans started falling from Jace’s mouth against his lips. He didn’t dare look what his parabatai was doing with his hand – he was already too close to the edge – and opted for spreading kisses and licks down Jace’s neck instead, until he felt a hand against his chest, stopping him.
Alec lifted his head. His parabatai was looking at him in the most beautifully frantic way he’d ever seen. His hair was a mess, his pupils huge, his mouth kissed raw and his breath was coming in small, desperate bursts against Alec’s lips.
“Now, Alec.”
Two pairs of hands made short work of the boxer briefs Alec had almost forgotten he was still wearing, Jace slicked him with spilled oil and two, three erratic movements of his hand; and then Alec was sinking into him, where Jace’s heat enveloped his whole body, his whole being.
“Oh, Angel, you feel good,” he said quietly into the small space between their lips, before Jace began to move and Alec lost the capability to form sentences altogether.
Gladly, raising his arms still worked, so he grabbed his parabatai’s face, pushed his hair back and kissed him again, connected their mouths to each other and searched for their bond inside himself. He didn’t have to look for too long, before he found it, a strong thread brimming with Jace’s lust, his joy, his love, his ecstasy just as much as Alec’s, like a mirror looking both ways; and Alec knew that his parabatai could feel it, too, right then, his hands clutching Alec’s face, his forehead touching Alec’s, his heart beating at the same, racing rate as his. There were no words Alec could think of to describe what he was feeling and maybe that was why parabatai should never have this, never become this to each other – it was too powerful, too much for a mortal to bear; and for a few moments Alec wasn’t sure whether their bodies would really survive this.
Then his long-delayed orgasm finally caught up with him, and he could feel Jace constricting around him at the same time, barely biting back another moan.
When it was over they collapsed against each other, sweaty, sated and completely removed from reality, catching their breath and failing.
“I’ll never want anyone else. Ever.” It was merely a whisper leaving Alec’s lips, but he felt Jace’s reaction, the tightening of his hands against his shoulder blades, the small shift of his head against his neck. “You ruined me for the rest of the world, Jace.”
Finally his parabatai lifted his head and pressed his lips to Alec’s jaw in a soft kiss. “Is that a bad thing?” he murmured. “Being ruined?”
“Honestly, Jace? I don’t really care any more.”
A smile formed on Jace’s lips. “Well, me neither. We’ll just be ruined by each other for our whole lives.”
“I’d like that. Very much.”
The smile deepened. “Yeah. Me, too.”