Chapter Text
The hotel, he was pretty sure, had been his father’s idea. He was the one who really knew the Penhallows, who kept talking about how it would be so nice to see Jia and Patrick and, especially, Aline, who Alec and Izzy hadn’t seen since they were small. All the rest of it, the vacation itself, the idea of spending one last summer together all as a family before Alec went off to school, the idea of reconnecting as a family after Max’s funeral the previous winter — that was all his mom.
Well, whatever, he thought as he somewhat dubiously heaved his suitcase out of the car and towards the little bungalow where they’d be staying. Here they were. No use dwelling on how they got here, when he’d be stuck here no matter what.
So maybe he was a little bitter. Maybe he’d rolled his eyes every single time his father mentioned ‘family togetherness,’ as though Alec and Izzy didn’t know about his affair. Maybe he’d found his — and, for that matter, their mother’s, too — proclamations about ‘spending a whole summer together’ incredibly empty, given that they’d both brought plenty of work with them. Maybe he’d been looking forward, so desperately, to finally, finally, finally getting out of their stifling Manhattan brownstone in the fall, finally having a chance to be just a little bit apart from everything they were expecting him to be, everything he knew he couldn’t be, and now he was terrified that he’d stumble at the final hurdle, that this summer locked in close proximity to his parents at this stupidly quaint resort would finally do him in.
Or maybe he was just tired from the car ride. It wasn’t that far from the city to the Catskills, but still.
—
The stupid dance class was Izzy’s doing.
Nothing else about the vacation had been, at least not yet, but as soon as Alec had put his bags down, she was pulling him out the door.
“Hurry,” she muttered. “If we get out before Mom and Dad get done unpacking, we won’t be subjected to small talk with their friends.”
She presented a very valid argument, but did it really have to end up with the two of them in some sort of group dance class? Alec wasn’t uncomfortable in or with his body; he took good care of himself, he was in great shape, and he’d always been somewhat naturally athletic. But he was good at other things — archery, his hobby since he was small, and running, and sometimes boxing with Jace, which apparently was a bi-weekly requirement according to some kind of best friend code that Jace had made up when they were sixteen. Not dancing.
They were, allegedly, learning the merengue; it wasn’t exactly challenging. Really, they were just switching their weight from foot to foot, over and over again, and Alec had managed not to step on Izzy’s toes so far, so it wasn’t as though he felt like he was really bad at it, it was just — this was something that was so far outside his comfort zone. His hips didn’t want to move like this, everything felt stiff and a little disjointed, and he was incredibly aware that he probably looked like he wanted to be anywhere but here.
“Feel the music and follow the beat!” the instructor, a young woman with dark hair and olive skin, was calling. That sounded like a bunch of bullshit if you asked Alec, but no one did ask Alec. Izzy was too busy being actually graceful and good at dancing, and everyone else in the room, besides the instructor and the two of them, was at least fifty. One of the older ladies gave him a lascivious wink when he accidentally caught her eye, and he felt himself flush as he looked desperately down at the ground, which didn’t exactly help his dancing.
“You’re doing good, Alec,” Izzy said, grinning and flipping her hair over her shoulder as the song they’d been dancing to came to an end. “You just need to loosen up a little, that’s all.”
Alec rolled his eyes. Right. Like he’d never heard that one from her before.
“Isabelle! Alec!”
They both turned at once as an unfamiliar voice called out from across the room. Some of the other guests turned, too, but most were too busy starting up the next dance.
Jia Penhallow was crossing the room towards them. She was a vaguely recognizable figure, mostly because he’d seen her many times in photographs taken back when he and Izzy were children and would play with her daughter, Aline. She had black hair, streaked through with silver, and warm, dark eyes; she looked friendly enough, but she was bringing Robert Lightwood with her, so Alec wasn’t necessarily inclined to feel fuzzy feelings.
“It’s so good to see you both!” she said when she reached them, opening her arms in an offer of a hug that only Izzy took her up on. “It’s been far too long, look at you, all grown up. And I see you’ve already been busy exploring.”
“There’s so much to do!” Izzy agreed, smiling demurely in a way that told Alec that, though she was much better at hiding it, she didn’t actually want to be having this conversation all that much more than he did.
“So much that you couldn’t have come with your mother and I to greet our hosts?” Robert broke in, and Alec tensed. He tried to keep his expression neutral as his father’s gaze focused in on him. “I was especially hoping you’d have gone to say hello to Aline. I know how much you’ve been looking forward to seeing her.”
He was addressing both of his children in theory, but even without the weight of Robert’s gaze bearing down on him, Alec would have known what his father was doing. He wondered, briefly and bitterly, if he had thought it was subtle, the way he’d worked Aline into every conversation about this place, the way he’d emphasized that she and Alec could catch up and get to know each other better. He wondered if Jia, still smiling at him and Izzy, was in on it too, if she knew why Robert had wanted to reconnect with her and her family.
“I’m sure we’ll see her later,” Alec said, and resigned himself to counting down the days until he could leave, until this summer was fucking over.
Jia and Robert didn’t stay long after that, thankfully. “I wouldn’t want to keep you from the rest of your class!” Jia said, already stepping away. “Dot is an excellent teacher, I’m sure you’ll both learn a lot from her.” Alec didn’t bother to watch them leave, just turned back to Izzy and offered her his hand, because at least dancing was better than that.
Izzy took his hand and they started to move, but that didn’t quite hide the concerned look on her face. “Are you gonna be OK?” she asked softly, the words hidden under the pulse of the bright Latin music so that no one but Alec would hear them.
He shrugged. “Yeah. Fine. I mean, I’m not gonna let him, you know…” He waved a hand dismissively, which didn’t really fit the merengue. “I’m done hiding. I came out because I was done, and he can try to set me up with Aline all he wants, it’s not going to change that.”
“Good.” She sounded fiercely proud, and Alec was almost shocked by the sheer amount of love and affection that shone back at him when he looked at her. “That doesn’t mean it won’t be annoying as hell, though.”
“Yeah, well, what else is new,” he muttered, snorting, and tried to focus on anything but the way his father had looked at him when he said Aline’s name.
—
God, did the people at this resort do anything but dance?
“So,” Aline Penhallow was saying as he lead her reluctantly away from the dinner table, where their two families sat together, and toward the dance floor, feeling his father’s eyes uncomfortably heavy on his shoulders all the while. Why don’t you show Aline those moves you were practicing earlier? Robert had said, and it hadn’t sounded much like a suggestion. God, Alec wondered for far from the the second time that day, did he think he was being subtle? “Do you still do archery?”
He nodded, a bit shocked despite himself that Aline remembered something like that. He’d barely been eight the last time he saw her — her parents had moved away for a while, to Beijing, he thought, and then somewhere in Europe — and was somewhat ashamed to realize he remembered almost nothing about her. She’d been more interested in playing with Izzy, when they were kids, and he’d been more interested in reading, or else sneaking away to practice his shooting with the tiny child-sized bow he’d cherished until he’d gotten big enough for a real one.
“I do,” he said, offering her his hand in, he hoped, as non-romantic a way as possible. “I compete sometimes, even.”
“That’s cool!” Aline enthused, and the two of them started to move to the music. There was no way Alec was actually going to try and do the merengue with her, for so many reasons, not the least of which was that, while he might have been more or less forced to be out here on the dance floor, that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to take every little opportunity to rebel from what his dad had “suggested.”
“Thanks.” They were doing a sort of awkward shuffle, not anything resembling a real dance; Aline didn’t seem to mind much, though he thought she looked vaguely amused, maybe.
They lapsed into silence after that. Alec didn’t know if he was supposed to be responsible for continuing the conversation, but he was a little afraid to, out of fear that Aline knew just as well as he did what his father was playing at, making the two of them get up and dance like this, and she was more receptive to the idea. He didn’t want to risk looking too interested; it wasn’t that she seemed like a bad person at all, she seemed fine, she’d asked about the one thing she remembered him being passionate about, but he didn’t want to give her the wrong idea. He didn’t want to give her any ideas, really. So he kept silent as they shuffled awkwardly across the dancefloor, trying to pay attention to anything else instead: the music, the room, the other dancers, the — whoa.
Whoa.
There was a couple in the middle of the dancefloor. They stood out, because everyone else had backed away from them a little bit, and because they were clearly about ten times as talented as anyone else there. Alec didn’t have any idea what to call the kind of dancing they were doing, other than beautiful; it was quick and fluid and captivating.
He recognized the woman, vaguely, from that afternoon: Dot, he thought Jia had called her. The dance instructor. But her partner…
He was wearing a tightly-fitted suit all in black, and he had dark hair and warm brown skin and eyes that glittered even from all the way across the crowded room. He was a bit taller than Dot, though she was in heels, and his shoulders were broad in a way that made Alec’s gut tighten, just a little. As Alec watched, the man all but threw Dot away from him, and then pulled her back in a tight spin, bending her back over his arm to follow the momentum of her motion, grinning all the while.
“Who are they?” he asked, without even realizing he was saying anything. He didn’t really realize when Aline huffed a laugh, either.
“That’s Dot and Magnus,” she explained, and Alec tore his gaze away for just a second to glance at her. “They’re our two dance instructors. I thought your dad said you went for a lesson this afternoon?”
“Uh, yeah,” Alec said, looking away again. Magnus. What an unusual name. “With, with Dot. Merengue.”
“Gotcha.” If he weren’t so distracted, he might have noticed how amused Aline sounded, and maybe even been a little alarmed by it. “They’re really something, huh?”
“Yeah,” Alec said, as he watched the way the shifting dance floor lights glinted off of Magnus’ hair, the way his arms moved under his jacket as he dipped Dot so low to the floor it almost seemed like he would drop her. “Yeah.”
The song ended; he jolted to a stop without even really realizing it, and finally blinked back to himself, becoming very aware very quickly that he’d been essentially ignoring Aline for the past few minutes. “Uh,” he said, even as he watched from his peripheral vision as Magnus and Dot swept into a bow and then disappeared. “Uh — sorry. What were you saying before?”
“I wasn’t saying anything,” Aline said, but she sounded good-natured about it, and she started up a conversation about what high school had been like for him and Isabelle until such time as they could return to their table without parental protest.
The rest of the night was a blur. Alec couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but he couldn’t focus, couldn’t bring himself to care about following the plot of his parents’ conversation with the Penhallows. Isabelle and Aline weren’t paying attention either, but they were at least talking to each other; Alec was off in his own little world, eating somewhat mechanically and telling himself it was pretty pathetic to get this much in his own head about a guy he’d seen literally once, ever, no matter how good-looking he was or how good a dancer.
When it seemed like his parents were going to linger over coffee, still swapping stories with Jia and her husband Patrick while Izzy and Aline were deeply engrossed in a conversation Alec was pretty sure was about martial arts, though he hadn’t been paying enough attention to to say for certain, he stood up, mumbling something about taking a walk. When no one stopped him, he slipped away.
God, less than a day and already he felt like he was going out of his mind. Maybe that was part of why watching Magnus dance had affected him so badly; the guy was gorgeous, sure, but he was also an acute reminder of what Alec couldn’t have yet, what he couldn’t have until he was finally off on his own, away from his father’s prying eyes and ham-handed attempts to arrange relationships with eligible bachelorettes.
Aline seemed nice enough, he thought as he wound his way slowly away from the resort’s main building, where most of the dining and dancing and indoor activities took place, heading out almost aimlessly onto the grounds. The moon was just starting to rise, and Alec’s feet carried him onto a little path leading away from the lights of the resort proper and out into the woods a bit, past a pond and over a charming footbridge that crossed a small stream, until all he could hear were the soft sounds of night-time in the woods, and his mind finally started to quieten down a little bit.
Yeah, Aline seemed nice enough. He could easily see him being friends with her; she and Izzy certainly seemed to have hit it off. But there was that lingering uncertainty about what she expected from him, whether she’d interpret attempts at getting to know her as flirtation, when he couldn’t be less interested in her romantically. Better not to risk it, probably, which was unfortunate; it would have been nice to have at least one more person here that he felt like he could actually enjoy talking to, besides Izzy.
He was so caught up in his own thoughts, his mind having finally calmed down, that he didn’t notice the faint thumping of music through the trees until he was already on his way towards it.
Who the hell was out here playing music that loudly with that much bass, he wondered? Who the hell was out here at all? And then he saw the sign that said “STAFF QUARTERS,” which answered one of those questions, at least.
He didn’t have more than a second to wonder why the staff quarters were so far off in the woods, away from the guests, before he heard a disconcertingly loud sound up ahead, like a heavy object being dropped onto the path.
“Shit!” he heard someone yell, leading him to believe his conclusion about something being dropped may well have been correct. Brow furrowed, he hurried up ahead to see if he could help.
He rounded a bend in the path to find a girl about his age, maybe a little older, carrying — or trying to carry — a truly inordinate amount of alcohol. She was scowling, and still swearing, too; she’d dropped a small keg, it seemed. Alec was frankly just impressed she’d managed to avoid breaking anything, with as many bottles as she was carrying.
“Uh,” he called out, a little uncertain. “Need a hand?”
She startled and looked up at him as he continued to walk closer. Her thought process was clear as it ran across her face: she didn’t recognize him, ergo he must be a guest, ergo he was out of place here.
“You’re not supposed to be back here,” she said. “The Penhallows don’t like it.”
Alec just shrugged. He wasn’t feeling especially charitable to what the Penhallows wanted or didn’t want, or liked or didn’t like, at the moment. Which wasn’t really their fault and had a lot more to do with their connection to his parents than anything else, but still.
The girl quirked an eyebrow at him, then rolled her eyes. “All right, whatever. Your funeral. Grab that and follow me.”
And she promptly walked away, leaving Alec to scoop the keg up off the ground and hurry after her.
“I’m Maia, by the way,” she said a little grudgingly, as they got closer and closer to wherever the music was coming from. Alec thought he could make out a building through the trees; there was definitely a lot of light spilling out from somewhere.
“Alec.”
“Right.” Maia was nice enough, but she didn’t seem like one of those especially chatty people who needed to fill up any and all silences, and anyway, they seemed to be getting close to their destination; it wasn’t any great hardship to let the conversation drop.
The building, as they got closer, seemed to be an old barn. There were other buildings scattered all around — bungalows, like the guest houses, but older and a bit more run-down, though certainly not horrible. Alec’s focus was on the barn, though; the doors were cracked open, and through the little sliver of light there, the closer they got, the more he caught glimpses of movement amid the pulsing lights. He didn’t recognize the music playing, but it was totally different than the relatively stodgy stuff they’d played back on the dance floor at the main house; this was loud, and fast, the kind of music he thought they probably played in nightclubs. Not that he’d ever been to a nightclub.
And then Maia shouldered the door open, and Alec felt like his whole brain shut down and then slowly rebooted.
It seemed he’d been right about the nightclub comparison; there were people packed tight in the barn, all of them young and all of them dancing. The crowd throbbed more or less in time with the music; the lights were low, and when his eyes could focus on anyone for long enough amidst the tidal wave of sensory information streaming at him all at once, Alec realized, not that it came as much of a surprise, that the dancing they were doing was very different than the dancing he and Aline had been doing, or even the dancing he’d seen Magnus and Dot doing, back before.
The people here were pressed back-to-front and front-to-front and sometimes back-to-front-to-back or front-to-front-to-back, the dancing in most cases more of a filthy grind than anything else. This, Alec figured, was the reason he didn’t go to many parties: because everyone at parties, at least according to teen movies and Izzy and Jace’s stories, did things like this, danced like this. And it wasn’t that Alec thought it was gross, or weird — far from it.
He was hypnotized.
“Come on!” a voice shouted in his ear, having to work to be heard over the music. Maia. Right.
He followed after her, setting the keg down on a table when she pointed and indicated for him to do so. His eyes were flickering all around the space, and he was sure he was blushing, could feel the heat in his cheeks and his ears. Suddenly he felt overdressed, too, in his dark collared shirt from dinner. Most everyone here was dressed for clubbing, or for a rave, or something: tight shorts, crop tops, girls in dresses that only barely protected them from public indecency. A fair number of the guys, he noted, were shirtless, chests gleaming with effort where they danced. He swallowed hard.
“Thanks for your help,” Maia yelled at him, and he blinked to break his concentration on the crowd and turned to look down at her instead. He nodded, and she smirked at him. “Go have fun! You’re here now anyway, might as well.”
And then she disappeared; he thought he saw her sidle up to a girl with a sheet of long dark hair, but he lost sight of them almost instantly in the crowd.
He had no idea what to do. He just stood there awkwardly by the table where he and Maia had left the drinks; people would come up periodically and grab a bottle or pour a shot, and all Alec could manage was to stare out at the crowd, the music thumping under his skin, a sheet of sweat breaking out under his shirt. Without even realizing what he was doing, really, he fumbled with the buttons, until it was hanging open over the tank top he wore underneath.
It was complete 180 from the atmosphere at dinner, the stilted formal conversation with his parents, a place where he didn’t have the freedom to do anything, to here, where he knew that if he could just convince himself to move, to do something, then he could have everything. He could be out there in the crowd, too, could lose himself in it, could give up all the pressure and the weight on his shoulders and just let go.
He didn’t, but he could. And that, at least, counted for something. And maybe if he stood here long enough, he’d be able to work up the courage, be able to —
For the second time last night, he caught sight of a particular man in the middle of the crowd, dancing, with a little bubble of space around him like he was too good to be touched. His breath froze in his chest.
It was Magnus, all right, but he looked almost completely different. Gone was the sharply fitting all-black suit; instead, he wore pants so tight they looked like they’d been painted on, dark and shiny and glittery, and a very thin top in a deep golden color that was completely open across his chest. He was wearing a lot more makeup now, too, Alec could tell even from here, eyeliner and something on his lips that made his mouth look red and shiny and plump.
He was dancing alone, no partner this time, just the smooth undulating motion of his hips and, fuck, those abs. Obviously he was fit, he was a dancer, Alec was well aware that was a full-body workout, but goddamn. His eyes were half-closed as he moved, occasionally mouthing along to the music — Alec hadn’t recognized a single song so far, but evidently Magnus didn’t have that problem. He was a vision, beautiful and achingly sexy and so clearly in his element, so visibly powerful.
The music swelled to a sort of crescendo, a voice that crossed a strange middle ground between human and robotic hitting a note that seemed impossibly high. Alec swallowed hard, his focus fixed absolutely on one person, one body amongst everyone else in the crowd. And from across the room, through all the people and the noise and the distraction, without warning, Magnus suddenly looked back.
They locked eyes, and everything else seemed to fade away. Alec watched as Magnus started to move, not just dancing now but weaving his way through the crowd, his shoulders swaying with the beat and his every motion sinuous, catlike. He didn’t walk, he prowled. But Alec didn’t fully come to terms with the fact that he was coming closer until Magnus was right in front of him.
He felt his lips part, felt his tongue dart out to wet them, felt his pulse pounding in his ears, but he didn’t say anything. He couldn’t. All he could do was stare, his gaze slowly trailing from Magnus’ face to his neck to the curve of his collarbone.
Suddenly he was close, so close, close enough to speak without yelling.
“I saw you earlier,” he said, in a tone that somehow implied that if not for the cacophony of the room around them, he’d be murmuring. “Why are you here?”
“I — I was helping, um, Maia,” Alec said, desperately wishing he knew her last name, or anything else he could use to identify her. “I — carried a keg?”
Magnus quirked a brow at him, a smirk twisting his lips. Alec could have died. ‘I carried a keg?’ he thought severely. Seriously? God, he’s going to think I’m an idiot.
But if Magnus did think he was an idiot, he at least didn’t say anything about it, and he didn’t leave. “I’m Magnus,” he said instead, in that same smooth voice that somehow managed to be intimate even when he was half-shouting to be heard.
“Uh — Alec.”
“Short for Alexander?”
“Yes.” Not that anyone called him that — even his parents had given up on it. It was kind of funny, actually; these days, even when his mom wanted to bust out the middle-name treatment if he’d done something to piss her off, he was ‘Alec Gideon Lightwood,’ not ‘Alexander.’ But somehow his full name on Magnus’ lips was the best thing he’d heard in a long, long time.
“Well, Alexander,” Magnus all but drawled, and Alec realized with startled clarity that his eyes were fixed on Alec’s throat, at the hollow there where he knew sweat had to be gleaming. Then his gaze trailed up to Alec’s lips, and that wasn’t much better. “Would you like to dance?”
Alec didn’t know how. He had never in his life moved like the people in this room were moving, like Magnus had been moving before he inexplicably came over to talk to him. He would look, he knew, like something terribly young and awkward and naive — a baby dear, maybe, struggling to get its legs under it, or a turtle trying to roll off of its back. But he didn’t tell Magnus any of those things.
“I’d love to,” he said instead, and when Magnus reached out for him, he took his hand.
They went right back to where Magnus had been before, right in the center of the floor, and there was still an odd little bubble of space there, as though everyone had known that Magnus would be right back and they shouldn’t fill his spot. Magnus drew him to a stop slowly, and Alec froze, suddenly surrounded on all sides by sound and heat and motion, and unsure what to do about it, unsure what to do at all.
“Relax,” Magnus told him. He was speaking at what was probably a normal volume, but with everything else, all the other noise, it sounded like a whisper. “Just focus on the music, and on me. Can you feel it?”
It was like what Dot had said this afternoon, about feeling the beat and the music and whatever, except when it had seemed kind of silly to Alec then, now it made perfect sense. He nodded, feeling a strand of hair flop and catch across his forehead, and without even realizing what he was doing, began to sway his hips to the beat, feeling the music swell through the air all around him and seeing Magnus’ body start to move, too, just inches away.
Magnus danced like he was born to do it, like the motion was more natural to him than breathing. Alec’s gaze stayed locked on him, intense and focused, and mostly he looked at Magnus’ eyes, searching for something there — encouragement, maybe, or approval, something — but every once in a while his attention would slip down and down and down, to the twist of Magnus’ hips or the way his stomach rolled, and he felt himself responding in kind, adding a little bit of rotation into his motions, leaning forward into Magnus’ space, feeling something he couldn’t describe, some sort of freedom he’d never known before but couldn’t let go of now if he tried.
“That’s it,” Magnus said, and now they were close enough that he really might have been whispering. Alec could feel his breath — what an odd thought, and what an odd sensation, amid the clash and clamor of everything else, but there it was. He could feel Magnus’ breath puffing across his face, their heads leaned so close together that their foreheads were almost touching; Magnus was shorter, but not by much, and Alec curved his body into and around him, bracketing him in as the space between them got smaller and smaller.
They weren’t touching, and then they were. It happened so fast; one moment Alec was leaning forward just that little bit more, yearning for something but not quite sure what, and then suddenly Magnus’ hands were burning hot on his waist, under his button-up where it was still fluttering sweat-soaked and forgotten around him, but over the thin cotton of his tank top. And as soon as he felt that touch, it was like Alec was electrified, like whatever last vestige of control he’d been holding back had been let go. He saw his hands go to settle on Magnus hips almost as though they were someone else’s, as though he wasn’t really the one being that daring, even though he wanted to, wanted to, wanted to.
“Very good,” Magnus purred, directly into his ear, and then with the next roll of his hips he pressed them together, and Alec gasped soundlessly.
Maybe it shouldn’t have been shocking that Magnus was hard. It certainly wasn’t shocking that he was hard, though up until now he’d been too distracted to even really focus on it. But there was nothing that hot, hard line pressing up against his hip could be but Magnus’ cock, was there?
Magnus linked his arms around the back of Alec’s neck and shot him an almost predatory smirk, and that was all it took for Alec to roll his hips right back, grinding up against Magnus as though he actually knew what the fuck he was doing. But Magnus moaned, and that was what counted: that no matter what Alec was going to be thinking once he got out of here and the adrenaline and arousal and whatever else stopped pounding in his veins and his head cleared a bit, no matter what he’d feel in the morning, how embarrassed he’d be, or how shocked at himself, right now, in this moment, he was doing something that got to Magnus as much as Magnus was getting to him.
And that was how he ended up throwing his leg up and around, one thigh hitched up over Magnus’ hip, changing the angle and making their sinuous, sliding motions that much more real.
Magnus let out a noise that sounded genuinely shocked, but the way he groaned Alec’s name, low and rumbling — “Alexander” — made Alec feel quite confident that it was a good surprise, not a bad one. Their eyes locked again, Magnus’ so deep and dark in the low light that Alec almost felt like he could fall into them; up this close, he could tell they were flecked with gold, something precious that most people probably didn’t get to see. He wasn’t sure why, but that thought was the one that had him stumbling, made him falter just enough that whatever spell he’d been under almost started to break.
But then Magnus’ hand slipped up under his tank top, five fingers like a brand skating up his sides and nails scraping bluntly over his ribs, and he shivered and fell right back into the moment.
Alec had never been drunk, had never been high, but he’d heard people talk about it, and he figured that this had to be what it felt like. He could feel every place where Magnus was touching him like there was fire burning under his skin there; he knew, somehow, how Magnus was going to move before he did it, and he moved with him, they moved together. He wondered if what they were doing really even counted as dancing anymore.
The music changed around them, and people shifted past and moved to and fro, and Alec didn’t look away from Magnus’ eyes. There was something charged in the air between them — what little air there was — and he felt like looking away would have ripped that breath from his lungs. He felt like it was impossible. He felt like if he did it he would lose something precious and impossible to name.
And then he rolled his hips forward again, in time with the bump and beat of a bass drum, and all at once every sensation became too much. He realized, with a dizzy sort of feeling, that he was no longer just hard — he was aching, and there was a damp spot at the front of his pants, and his breath was ragged.
Magnus seemed to have hit some sort of limit, too, becuase it wasn’t just Alec who pulled away; they moved apart together, as though they’d made some kind of mutual decision. Their eyes were still locked, and Alec had been watching Magnus, watching his eyes, for long enough that night to think he understood the play of emotions that splashed through them: wariness and longing and a little bit of regret. But he was smiling, even as he leaned away, and when he pulled his hand out from under Alec’s shirt he used it to grab his hand instead.
“Alexander,” he said, as though it were all he could say, and even though they were no longer touching anywhere except for their hands, even though they were both standing still in the middle of the floor, Alec shivered.
Magnus hesitated for just a moment, and then something in his eyes settled, and he smiled again, wide and bright and, Alec dared to let himself hope, real.
“See you around, pretty boy,” he said, and then he was gone.
—
Alec was a wreck the next day.
Not for the reasons that, even in the moment, he’d been half-afraid he might be — not because he felt some sort of shame or regret. On the contrary, every part of him ached to find a way to go back in time to the previous night and just live it over and over again, stay permanently in the little bubble of seemingly unreal reality where he was dancing with a beautiful man, with Magnus, who moved like water or smoke or starlight or something equally impossible to hold but had looked at him, in fleeting moments, with a genuine sort of curiosity and warmth.
He couldn’t focus on anything for more than a few minutes before his thoughts drifted, inevitably, back to the barn in the woods, the music and the low light and the dancing. Alec had never wanted to dance before. He wanted to try every dance lesson the resort offered, except he knew he wouldn’t — couldn’t — because he wanted to see Magnus again and was terrified of seeing Magnus again in equal measure.
Instead he followed Izzy around, becuase it was better than being alone, partially because he loved his baby sister and enjoyed her company and partially because if he was alone, Robert would have the opportunity to pounce and ‘suggest’ Alec spend some time with Aline, and if he was with Izzy, Alec had the built-in excuse of family bonding, which was, after all, the alleged point of this whole trip.
Izzy wanted to go down to the lake, to play volleyball on the beach — there was some sort of tournament being arranged that day, apparently — so that’s what they did. Alec was tall enough that his lack of specific skill when it came to volleyball was mostly irrelevant by virtue of his sheer physical advantage, so his and Izzy’s team managed to do pretty well for themselves, even though Alec kept losing focus at inopportune times and having near misses with the ball.
If Izzy noticed he was off, she didn’t say anything; they got lunch together — there was a little snack shack on the shore, so they didn’t have to worry about going all the way back up to the main body of the resort, or getting dressed nicely enough to have lunch there, or seeing their parents.
They splashed around a bit after lunch; Izzy had worn a bikini under her clothes, so she actually swam properly, at least a little bit, even though the water was freezing. Alec just waded in up to mid-calf and occasionally splashed at her good-naturedly, not willing to get his shorts wet. As he stood there in the afternoon sun, watching the way the light glinted off the surface of the lake, with the chilly water lapping at his skin, he couldn’t help but think of the night before, when everything had been so impossibly hot, when the only wetness on his skin had been sweat and the ambient humidity of that room, so many people pressed so closely together.
Eventually they had to go back to the bungalow to change, because after Izzy put her clothes back on over her wet bikini, she started to get uncomfortable very, very quickly. Their mother caught them just as they were coming in the door, and after that there was really nothing for it. It wasn’t that Alec even really minded having dinner with the Penhallows again (though just Patrick and Aline this time, their mother was saying Alec as Izzy ran to her room to change out of her wet clothes, as Jia would be busy). It was just — dinner meant the main house, which meant that dance floor off from where the dining area was, which meant his father would probably try to convince him to dance with Aline again, which meant seeing Magnus. Maybe seeing Magnus. And even the mere possibility of it was enough to make his heart thump traitorously behind his ribs.
—
“Alec, why don’t you and Aline —” Robert started to say, and Alec tensed, but before his father could even get the sentence out, he was being interrupted.
“Actually, yeah, Alec, I was just about to ask, do you want to go get some air?”
Alec blinked at Aline. Actually, everyone blinked at Aline, though the pure shock and slight suspicion with which Alec did it was quite different from the seeping smugness with which Robert did it.
“Uh,” Alec said, but couldn’t really find a good way to say no, so he stood up instead. He didn’t offer Aline his hand or his arm or anything, and she didn’t seem to want it, setting off purposefully for a set of French doors that Alec knew lead out into a garden area at the back of the building.
Aline didn’t say anything until they were out of the building, and neither did he. They were both silent, in fact, for several long minutes, until they reached what Aline had evidently deemed the right destination — a bench, small enough that it was clearly meant for two people but large enough that it wasn’t necessarily intimate, set off from the garden path amidst gorgeous hydrangeas.
She sat on one end of the bench, and gestured for Alec to sit, too. Given that she was sitting so close to the edge that she almost looked in risk of falling off, he didn’t feel too weird about doing the same. She looked at him steadily, her expression unreadable.
“Sorry for doing that out of the blue, I just had to get out of there,” she said. “No offense, but I wasn’t too into the idea of dancing with you again.”
Maybe Alec should have been insulted by that, but he definitely, absolutely wasn’t. He was, in fact, very relieved.
“Me, too,” he admitted. “On, uh, both counts.”
She laughed, a bit dry, but amused and friendly. “Look, you seem like a great guy and all, just — I’m seeing someone. A girl, to be clear.” She paused. “I’m not into men. At all.”
Alec blinked hard, trying very hard to school his face into an expression that made it clear that the reason a choked-off, wheezing laugh came bubbling up out of him as she said that wasn’t some sort of latent bigotry. It was just that, holy shit, not only was his dad being completely transparent about his attempts to set them up, but he’d managed to pick a potential suitor for Alec, his gay son, who would never want him just the same as he would never want her, because she was a lesbian.
“That’s good, ‘cause I’m not into women at all,” he told her, and they stared at each other wordlessly for a moment before breaking down into mutual peals of laughter.
“Oh, god,” Aline managed after a moment, wiping tears from her eyes. “If only our parents knew. I mean, I don’t think mine are really as in on the whole matchmaker thing your dad’s doing as it might look to you — they can be kind of clueless, so they honestly might not have noticed, and they know about Helen anyway — but still.”
“My dad does know, though,” Alec groaned in return. “That’s the whole point. I think he thinks if I hit it off with you, maybe he can forget that I came out.”
Aline winced. “Shit, I’m sorry. My parents might not have had the perfect response when I introduced them to Helen, but at least they’ve never tried to pull shit like that.”
“It’s all right,” he said, shaking his head. “I mean, it’s not, not really, but I keep telling myself that I just have to get through this summer, and then —” He waved one hand aimlessly, gesturing towards college and freedom and every other existential hope he’d been pinning on the coming fall.
“I get that. Me and Helen — my girlfriend — are both starting at NYU in the fall. We’re gonna live together.”
“That’s awesome,” Alec said softly, and meant it, even though he also felt a little pang of jealousy. He desperately tried to squash that down, though; Aline, now that he no longer had to worry about the concept of romance as it pertained to her, was easy to talk to, and he was automatically in support of as many fellow queer children of his parents’ social circle as he could find, anyway. In some strange way, he’d expected to be alone — not overall, not in general, but in the boundaries of his family and everyone his parents knew. He’d expected that he was an anomaly amongst his father’s friends and their families; Robert had certainly implied as much. Now he knew better. And if Aline was sitting here beside him, talking about moving in with her girlfriend, who her parents knew, going to college and starting their lives together…
Well, then maybe he could have that, too.
The pair of them slipped into silence for a moment, both clearly feeling a lot better with the air clear between them. Alec relaxed just a little, leaning back into the bench and staring up at the night sky; it was so much clearer here then back home in Manhattan, though he imagined it was probably clearer most places than it was in Manhattan. He couldn’t see every single star, not with the light pollution coming from the resort itself, if nothing else, but he could see far more of them than he was used to, and if he squinted he could make out the cloudy outline of the Milky Way.
He sighed, looking back down to Earth, glancing across at Aline. “We should probably get back,” he said with no small amount of regret. “Our parents are probably wondering where we are, what we’re doing.”
Aline nodded, but also smirked. “If they think you’re doing me, no doubt your dad will be pleased, at least.”
He laughed as he stood up. This time, knowing there was no way she’d read into it, he offered his hand to help her up, and she took it, dropping it as soon as she was on her feet. They walked back into the dining room together, and when he met his father’s eyes, Alec smiled a vacant, beatific smile.
—
It felt like he had a weight off his shoulders. Only two days in, and already the massive worry that he’d had about this whole summer, the idea that his father would be pressuring him constantly and that he might be fending off advances from a girl he barely knew, had been turned on its head, become almost a joke. Aline had flirted with him outrageously over dessert, trying to make him laugh, and he returned in kind in an attempt to get her to crack, and Robert’s smile had gotten more and more and more smug, while Jia and Patrick just looked vaguely amused. He had to explain the whole thing to Isabelle, who apparently knew about Helen, given that she felt the need to try and lay into Alec about the fact that Aline was taken even though she knew Alec couldn’t possibly have been interested, but that was well worth it.
But that didn’t solve the Magnus problem.
Not that there was really a ‘Magnus problem’; that was probably giving far too much credit where credit wasn’t due. It wasn’t as though anything had really happened, he tried to convince himself. People — strangers — danced like that with each other all the time, probably, under the right circumstances. Certainly most of the other people in the barn had been dancing that way, too; he and Magnus hadn’t exactly been a special case. It probably meant nothing — less than nothing. Magnus’ parting shot, calling him pretty boy, that didn’t mean anything, either. He’d probably just been joking around.
And yet.
He made it a week. A whole week of being half-focused, of his thoughts slipping away whenever he wasn’t paying attention and landing on Magnus. He didn’t actually see the man except in glimpses; he caught just the flash of him leaving a room a couple of times, and saw a figure that he thought was Magnus all the way across the lake, once. But those little moments helped keep him top-of-mind, and there was more then one occasion on which he had to resort to hiding an unfortunately timed erection just from remembering what had happened, what it had been like to dance like that with Magnus.
It wasn’t as though Magnus was the only person he knew who’d be in the staff quarters, he reasoned with himself as he made his way up the path that lead, eventually, to the big barn, after a whole week of what he personally considered impressive restraint. He could just as easily be going to see Maia, who he’d spotted around the resort much more frequently than Magnus — she was a waitress, and she’d grinned and waved at him a couple of nights ago at dinner, and he’d smiled back.
He wasn’t going to see Maia, obviously, but at least he had the excuse if he needed it.
No one seemed to really notice him as he slipped in the barn doors; he was just another body, and it was dark in here, darker even than last time, at least at the back where the doors were. Up at the front it was actually surprisingly well-lit, and it only took him a moment to notice that that was because this was an entirely different kind of dance party than the last one had been.
There was just one couple dancing, everyone else gathered around them to watch. Alec slipped in at the back of the crowd and settled in to watch, too, his eyes roving over them for a moment before he squinted and realized it was Maia, dancing with a thin, pale girl with long black hair — the girl he’d seen her wander off to on the first night he came here, he realized.
They were doing a kind of dance that Alec didn’t recognize, but the music was fun, jazzy and infectious, with just enough of a dubsteppy, electronic feel to it to make it abundantly clear that it was modern. Maia was wearing her work uniform still, which was close enough to a tux without the jacket, and the other girl was wearing a blue dress with a skirt that flared out when she moved.
He seemed to have come in at the tail end of their performance; they ended on a dramatic note, with Maia dipping her partner and bringing her back up into a sweet, brief kiss, just a smack of lips, really, that drew laughter and hoots from the crowd. Everyone was clapping and cheering for them as Maia sketched a bow, her nose scrunching up as she smiled, and they melted into the crowd holding hands. Almost immediately, another couple stepped in to take their place — a guy with short, dark hair and a curvy blonde woman — and, after the guy had shouted something over his shoulder, another song started up. Country, of all things, which drew a chorus of good-natured boos and groans from part of the crowd, but as the couple started up a lively two-step, people settled into watching again.
“Does everyone at this fucking resort dance?” Alec muttered under his breath, even as he watched with something approaching awe. Country music wasn’t exactly his cup of tea, and he still didn’t know the first thing about dancing, but this couple could really move. Maia and her partner had clearly been having a good time, but these two were good, the guy especially.
“Well, not everyone, but I’m trying,” a low voice said just to his right, and Alec jumped, his heart thumping traitorously.
Magnus was watching the couple dance, and tapping his foot to the beat, but as Alec stared at him, wide-eyed, he shot a glance over at him and smirked at what he saw. Alec was sure he probably deserved that, could feel himself blushing all the way to the tips of his ears, but Magnus looked — if he had been collected and powerful the first time Alec saw him, in that slim black suit, and positively sinful and tempting the second time in his tight tight tight pants and open shirt, now he just looked gorgeous, plain and simple. His makeup was something of a middle ground between the two previous examples Alec had to reference, dramatic and alluring but not overpowering, and the purple crop-top he was wearing showed just enough skin to be tantalizing, without baring it all. He was wearing shorts, this time, and short and loose and almost, almost sheer, more than enough to send Alec’s pulse into overdrive.
“You teach the staff, too?” he managed to say, and was almost proud of how steady his voice was, though from the way Magnus was looking at him, he wasn’t fooled.
“Sometimes. Mostly I just encourage little get-togethers like this, encourage everyone to show off a little.” He shrugged elegantly and turned to look at Alec properly, not a sideways glance but a steady examination. “I almost thought I scared you off, last time. Especially after I saw you with the illustrious Miss Penhallow, walking out to the gardens the other night.”
His heart raced. Magnus had seen him with Aline? Magnus had noticed, had been wondering about it? Even under that shock and the bloom of warmth the idea brought to his gut, though, he couldn’t help but snort at the concept. “Trust me, neither me nor Aline is interested in anything the other has to offer.”
Magnus broke into a grin that was just open and goofy enough to be completely charming. “Good. I already knew she was gay, I just wanted to know if you knew. And get a read on you, of course.”
Alec choked on his own breath for a moment. “After the way I — after the way we danced, before,” he managed, his brain-to-mouth filter temporarily broken down by shock, “you needed to get a read on whether or not I’m gay?”
There was a long moment where Magnus just stared at him in apparent amazement, with the couple still dancing in front of them and the country music still playing all around, some twangy song about love and back roads and who the hell knew what, and then all at once Magnus was tipping his head back and laughing so loudly and so joyfully that people were turning to stare.
“Oh, Alexander, you are a treat,” he said through his laughter, while Alec grinned a little uncertainly back at him and tried to determine whether or not he was being made fun of. “You never know, darling! You’d be surprised how many straight men find themselves lost in the moment from time to time.”
Alec didn’t doubt he was right, though he quirked an eyebrow. But, still. Hearing Magnus laugh like that was positive reinforcement for being a little bit bold, saying things he might not normally say, which was probably the only thing that actually encouraged what came out of his mouth next.
“I really would have thought,” he said, a little quieter, so that Magnus leaned in a little bit to hear him better and he leaned in, too, a reciprocal instinct, “that you’d had all the evidence you would need.” He paused, bit his lip, and continued after only a moment of consideration. “I would have thought you felt it.”
From the way Magnus froze next to him, the way his eyes darted up to meet Alec’s and then down to trace over his lips, his implication was taken in and fully understood.
“What did you come here for?” he asked, and this time it was Alec’s turn to lean in in order to hear him properly. He couldn’t quite get close enough, though, because the country couple’s song was ending and they were getting their own round of cheers and applause, causing a sudden jump in the noise level, so he had to resort to lip reading, watching as Magnus’ mouth moved over the shapes of the words.
It was, as a matter of fact, a good question. It was a question Alec had been asking himself over and over again on the walk here, and throughout the whole week prior: what did he want from Magnus? Why was there this burning need under his skin, to see him again, to come back and be here with him, standing close like this in the semidark?
He took a deep breath in and slowly let it out. Up this close, he could even tell how Magnus smelled, something warm and smooth with just the slightest bite of night air and clean sweat.
“I want,” he said slowly, “for you to teach me to dance. Not as a part of a group, not for the resort. Just you and me.”
Magnus studied him carefully; his eyes were unreadable, and Alec wasn’t sure if that was because it had been too long since he’d seen them, or if this was something new he just didn’t know how to recognize yet. “And is that all you want?” he asked very softly.
“No,” Alec said, automatic and completely certain, open and unabashed. “No, not at all. But I do want it.”
Magnus watched him a little longer, just staring, long enough that he almost started to get nervous. But then he smiled, lightning-quick and clearly more than pleased.
“That, Alexander,” he said, his voice just a little rough, “will be magnificent.”
He paused, as though expecting a response; Alec didn’t give him one, couldn’t give him one, his mouth hanging open uselessly and his lashes fluttering as he tried to take in every aspect of Magnus’ expression, from the odd light in his eyes to the twist of his lips. Apparently giving up, Magnus shook his head after a moment, leaning in impossibly closer than he’d been before, speaking right into Alec’s ear.
“Meet me back here at two tomorrow. I think I can make time.”
And then, before Alec had the chance to say anything, he was gone again, disappearing like smoke in the way that seemed to be practically his calling-card. It would be frustrating, if Alec weren’t so suffuse with a bubbling sense of triumph and anticipation and want.
—
He made some excuse as he slipped away around 1:30 the next day, not wanting to be late, but he was so busy thrumming with anticipation that he didn’t even remember what it was as soon as he’d said it. Izzy, he figured, probably knew something was up, but his parents didn’t seem to care; maybe they thought he was sneaking out to see Aline. Maybe they were glad.
Instead, he was off to possibly seduce or be seduced by an incredibly sexy man who moved like no one Alec had ever seen and who had, in recent memory, ground up against him until he was so hard he was leaking in his pants.
Even if he and Aline hadn’t both been gay, this would not have boded well for their potential summer romance.
Magnus was waiting for him outside the barn when he arrived; he checked his phone surreptitiously, but no, it was still only 1:54. Apparently they were just both worried about being on time.
“Alexander!” he called as soon as Alec came into view, stepping away from the barn door to greet him, smiling wide and bright. “You came.”
“Of course I came,” Alec answered automatically, then felt his face heat a bit at how defensive that sounded. Magnus seemed a little amused, but didn’t comment, just set one hand at the small of his back and led him away.
Alec had assumed they were going to be practicing in the barn, but clearly that was not the case. When he said as much, Magnus explained that the barn was really just the communal living space for the staff; during the day, there were chairs and things inside, which got shoved into the corners most nights so that the floor was clear.
“But we don’t want to inconvenience anyone, and you might not want an audience for your first lesson,” Magnus said, drawing to a stop as they reached a small, sturdy-looking building with small front windows and a flat roof. “Besides, I have a better space anyway, because I’ve been working here for years and the Penhallows love me.”
The building, it turned out, was all one room: a dance studio, a proper one, with mirrors along one wall and one of those weird horizontal poles that people used for ballet. Alec looked around, interested and somehow just a little bit more intimidated than he had been before.
“We’re going to start off simple,” Magnus said, already moving to the back of the room, where a stereo sat. He fiddled with it for a moment while Alec stared into the wall of mirrors, and then a song started up, vaguely familiar but hard to place. Magnus moved back to the center of the room and held out a hand, and Alec went to him, helpless to do anything else.
A woman’s voice started singing — I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream… — just as Magnus said, “I’m going to teach you to waltz, Alexander.”
Alec frowned a little bit, more out of confusion than disapproval. “That doesn’t really seem like your style, no offense.”
“Oh, I think you’ll find that everything is my style, darling,” Magnus informed him, clearly amused. “I’ve been dancing since before I could walk. Now. You’re going to follow, for now, until you get a feel for it, and then I can teach you to lead if you’d like. It’s useful to know both, especially if you don’t intend to be doing most of your dancing with women.” He winked.
“No,” Alec agreed, maybe a little too quickly. “Both is probably good, then.”
Magnus grinned. “I thought so. But you’ll follow first.”
And then they were off. The waltz wasn’t so bad; it was pretty simple, or at least the basic step was, and he wasn’t having much trouble keeping up even when Magnus started to slowly steer them around the room.
You’ll love me at once, the way you did once upon a dream, the song trilled, and Magnus said, “Loosen up, Alexander. You’re doing fine, but you’re so stiff. Relax.”
Alec tried, but in this context — this dance that felt so formal, so different from the way he’d danced with Magnus previously — he found relaxing to be deceptively hard.
And then Magnus, as though sensing that he needed some motivation, raised one hand high above his head and twirled Alec around like it was nothing, without any warning or preparation. Alec nearly stumbled, but managed to keep his feet and eventually turn back to face Magnus and slot their hands together again, eyes wide.
“Warn me next time,” he said, but Magnus just laughed in his face.
“Not a chance, darling, where’s the fun in that? Besides,” he added, with a pointed look down — at Alec’s spine, he supposed. “Look how much more relaxed you are now. Just let go and let me lead, you’re fine.”
And, strangely, it was easier after that. Magnus, Alec slowly realized, wasn’t just a good dancer; he was a good teacher, too. He made it seem so easy, what he was doing and what he was teaching Alec to do, and in making it seem that easy somehow he made it become that easy. At least this — at least the waltz. Alec might not be some sort of dance savant, but at least he could do this.
The waltz ended up being all they did that afternoon. There was some flirting, some teasing — Magnus’ hands holding his, or touching his waist or occasionally his hip — but they stuck to the waltz, at what would have been a perfectly acceptable distance even if they were in public, not alone in Magnus’ studio together.
And when Magnus pulled away, with some obvious regret, saying, “Sorry, Alexander, but I’d better get going — I’ve got a class in twenty minutes,” Alec couldn’t even bring himself to be upset or to resent it. Sure, they hadn’t done anything nearly as sensual or as close as before, but just spending time with Magnus, hearing him laugh, feeling him close by, had been good. More than good — amazing.
“Can we do this again?” he blurted, and Magnus grinned wide and proud.
“Same time tomorrow?”
—
Things were fine when they stuck to the somewhat easier dances. Alec could waltz, could merengue, could two-step, even though Magnus refused to listen to country when they practiced that one — he wasn’t uncoordinated, and Magnus knew what he was doing. Alec slipped away again and again and again, more and more often as one and then two and then three weeks flew by, often to see Magnus but also, sometimes, to practice on his own. He felt a little silly, dancing with his arms held out in front of him like he was embracing an invisible person, with only his headphones in for music; he only did it when he was sure there was no one else around, in the most remote corners he could find.
He and Magnus were having a wonderful time; they hadn’t yet recaptured that electric closeness from the very first night they met, but somehow, Alec wasn’t worried. They laughed, and grew closer, and Alec found it easier and easier to relax around him, to lose himself in the music and the dancing and the warm familiarity of Magnus across from him.
And then Magnus decided he needed to learn the tango.
“It’s a challenge,” he’d said, to be fair, at the beginning of the afternoon. “But I have no doubt you’re up to it.”
Alec wasn’t up to it.
“Careful with your —” Magnus hissed as Alec stepped on his foot for what felt like the dozenth time, and Alec grit his teeth. He never did that. Even when he flubbed a step on occasion, he didn’t actually step on Magnus’ toes. He had at least enough control over his body to avoid that, except now apparently he didn’t.
“It’s okay,” Magnus soothed, “try again. Two, three —”
But within seconds, he was wincing in pain again as Alec accidentally kicked him in the shin, and Alec ripped his hands out of Magnus’ and stalked to the other side of the room, fuming.
“Alexander,” Magnus called after him, and something about the note of reproach in his voice just made it worse.
“Stop,” Alec bit back harshly, shoulders hunched, unable to face him. “Just — stop. For a minute. Just stop.”
Magnus was quiet for a moment. Then, with gentle, padding footsteps, he crossed the room and turned off the stereo; in the sudden silence of the lack of music, Alec could hear his breathing.
“Sorry,” he said after a moment, much more quietly. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you.”
Magnus hummed, an acknowledgement and acceptance of his apology and a slight denial all in one.
“I wasn’t giving you a break when I should have been able to tell you needed one,” he said evenly. “I’m sorry, too. You’ve been doing so well, I guess I tried to push too hard.”
Alec made a short noise in his throat and turned back around; when he did, he saw Magnus’ face light up with a small smile.
“You know,” he said, in a slow, thoughtful voice that made Alec sort of giddily nervous to hear what he’d come up with, “I think we both might do well with a change of scenery.”
Alec raised an eyebrow. “What did you have in mind?”
—
“No,” Alec said flatly. “No way.”
“What’s the matter, Alexander?” Magnus smirked, eyes alight with challenge. He was balanced on a narrow log in the middle of the woods, and he was making it look easy, in a way that Alec normally found impressive and even attractive, but currently found kind of infuriating. “Not up for it?”
“Not up for breaking my neck, no,” Alec deadpanned, but couldn’t deny the way the challenge lit up in his blood.
Magnus’ “change of scenery,” it turned out, had been a drive out into the woods, away from the resort, away from anyone and everyone, to a place where it at the very least seemed like they were the only people around for miles and miles. There was a lake, off in the distance, and there was also this smooth, narrow tree, which, Magnus had explained as they hiked the short distance out to it from where he left his car parked on the side of the road, he had found a while back, and used to hone his balance.
“Oh, come on, darling,” Magnus wheedled. “Don’t you want to dance with me?”
Alec narrowed his eyes. That was just playing dirty.
But, well.
It worked.
He got up on the log.
And when Magnus started to lead him into a careful merengue, he only stumbled once.
—
“God, that’s so much harder than it is on level ground,” Alec panted, some time later. His thin t-shirt was completely soaked through with sweat, sticking to his skin a bit uncomfortably, and he was so tired he was starting to shake a little bit. Magnus was out of breath, too, and clearly exhausted, which was something he supposed he could feel good about; at least he wasn’t the only one feeling the effects of balancing precariously on the log for so long. And his balance had improved the longer they’d gone on, at least until he started to get tired.
Magnus grinned at him, reaching out to squeeze his shoulder. “You did great, though.” He paused a moment; something speculative passed over his face, and then it went completely smooth. “You want to cool off for a bit? We could go to the lake. It’s cold, but the water’s pretty clean.”
Alec considered this for only a second before the mental image of Magnus wading bare-chested into the water was shoving an “Okay” out of his mouth.
And while Magnus smirked like he could see right into his mind and knew exactly what he was thinking, he didn’t say anything, just turned and led the way towards the lake where it was peeking through the trees, back further away from the road.
The lake was smaller than the one that the Penhallow’s resort backed up to — almost more of a pond, really — but the water did look clean, and there was a nice little strip of pebbled beach on the shore. Alec stripped his shirt off gratefully, enjoying the cool breeze on his bare skin, and went for the waistband of his pants before he even realized what he was doing. Then he froze, tensing up, and looked over at Magnus as though seeking permission — Magnus who, while Alec hadn’t been looking, had apparently been on much the same train of thought.
Fuck.
Alec had seen his chest before, in flashes and glimpses, under shirts that hung open and through a litany of nearly-transparent workout gear, but there was something about seeing it like this, completely bare and so far out here in the woods that it was like they were in their own little world, that made his heart stutter. There was also the fact that Magnus was just plain gorgeous, but he knew that already; unable to quite stop himself, he let his gaze trail down from collarbone to sternum to the utter temptation of Magnus’ abs, to where he was — Alec’s breath caught — halfway through shimmying his pants off, tight black boxer briefs appearing where he was pulling his sweatpants down.
At least they were about to get into cold water, Alec thought half-hysterically, and set back to work on his own pants.
He made right for the water without waiting for Magnus, leaving his clothes in a heap on the shoreline; it was cool enough to make him hiss just a little, but not cold enough to scare him off, and after only a few moments he started to splash deeper and deeper into the water, feeling it lick its way from his calves to his thighs to his hips. That was when he finally turned around to look for Magnus, and found him wading slowly closer. Their eyes locked, and it wasn’t the chill of the water that made Alec shiver.
“What do you think?” Magnus asked, voice seeming to carry more than normal across the water. “Do you feel refreshed?”
Alec laughed softly and tried not to notice how breathless he sounded. “Definitely. Definitely refreshed.”
“You know,” Magus said, coming closer and closer, deep bronze skin shining in the light reflected off the surface of the water, “water is actually also a great place to practice your balance. Gives you something soft to fall into.” Something seemed to occur to him as he came to a stop just inside Alec’s personal space, and a delighted, playful smirk lit up his face. “Oooh! I could try lifting you.”
“How would that even work?” Alec asked dubiously, though his eyes flickered down to Magnus’ hands hiding under the water, picturing those strong arms holding him up while Magnus’ hands sat like brands over his waist. “I’m taller than you.”
“Sure, but you’re kinda lean. I wouldn’t necessarily try to work it into a routine, but out here, for fun? Why not, right?” He pouted just a little, sticking his lower lip out comically, and Alec wasn’t sure if making him think about biting it was the intended effect but that sure was what was happening. “C’mon, we’ll just try it once, Alexander.”
As if Alec could deny him anything when he looked like that, eyes shining with mirth. “Fine. Once.”
The sudden touch of hands to his waist under the water made him jump; above the surface he could see the shift and flex of Magnus’ shoulders, the promise of power and strength there enough to make him shiver.
“Okay, chest out, arms back,” Magnus said. “Remember that. It might feel a little silly at first, but it helps with balance.”
Alec nodded, a little helplessly. “Got it.”
“Good. One, two, three —”
And that was all the warning he got to bounce up onto his toes, throwing himself forward as best he could as Magnus hoisted him up and up and up. Chest out, arms back, he thought a little hysterically, unable to help the breathless giggle that burst out as he tried to hold the pose.
“Do not laugh, Alexander, you’re going to make me — no, hold it — shit!”
It only lasted a few seconds before Alec was overbalancing, toppling over Magnus’ shoulders in a parody of a swan dive, both of them laughing and shrieking as Alec crashed into the water. He stayed down under the surface for a moment, eyes squeezed shut tight, letting the chill and the whooshing, churning sound of the water clear his head as best they could.
Then he was surfacing, gasping for air and shaking the water out of his eyes, and Magnus was laughing harder than he’d ever heard, heaving and doubling over, and Alec moved without thinking, leaping at him and tackling him down into the water, grinning and shouting and splashing, legs twining around him in an attempt to gain the upper hand as they wrestled, ankles locking behind his back —
Between one heartbeat and the next, they both realized what was happening and froze, chests heaving and eyes wide. Alec had both legs up around Magnus’ waist, arms around his neck, one hand tangled in his hair in what had been an attempt to shove his head under the water but now seemed so much more intimate. Magnus’ hands were firm on Alec’s hips, and as their eyes met, Alec felt his stomach flip over.
“I think we can call that one a draw, wouldn’t you say?” Magnus breathed, and Alec barely heard him.
Slowly, so slowly, he started to disentangle himself, unsure how he found the strength when his heart was threatening to pound its way right out from under his breastbone. Magnus let him go, but didn’t drop his gaze.
Not here, was all Alec could think. Soon. But not here. Not yet.
They walked out of the lake and back to the car in silence.
—
“We’re doing another showcase in the barn on Thursday,” Magnus said abruptly, just as Alec, his hair still wet from the lake, was about to turn and make his way back to the bungalow, maybe clean up a little and go to dinner.
The ride back had been quiet and strangely tense. Not, Alec thought, in a bad way, not necessarily. But tense.
“Okay?” he said, uncertain. The sun was starting to go down, casting Magnus in a golden glow, catching on his eyelashes and his cheekbones as he licked his lips, looking uncharacteristically nervous.
“I want you to go with me.” His voice made it clear that it was a request, not a demand, that he wasn’t sure what answer he’d get. “Not to watch. I want us to dance.”
Alec didn’t even have to think about it. He watched the way Magnus’ eyes glimmered in the fading light and the words fell out of his mouth automatically.
“What do you have in mind?”
—
“Of course he would want to fucking tango,” Alec grumbled to himself under his breath as he padded down the path toward the Lightwoods’ bungalow. Still, he couldn’t deny the way his heart was pounding in his chest. He was excited — beyond excited — and not, he realized, just to spend yet more time with Magnus, to be close to him in a dance that was universally acknowledged as romantic and sensual. He was excited by the concept of dancing, of performing together like that, everyone watching them as they moved together.
He snuck off over and over and over again. His parents hardly seemed to notice, and when they did Robert was still smug about it, clearly sure that if there was anyone Alec was sneaking around with, it must be Aline, because who else would it be?
It was a little more surprising that Isabelle never asked, just smirked at him from time to time. But — well — Alec had heard her lectures about letting go and loosening up enough times, after all. Maybe she was just glad he was clearly doing something that made him happy, even if she didn’t know what it was.
And then he saw her slipping off behind the boathouse one evening with one of the waiters, a boy he vaguely recognized as someone he’d seen out at the barn a couple of times, and figured maybe she also had her own summer flirtation to worry about, and didn’t have time for his.
But Alec had better things to think about than worrying what his family thought about where he was going and how he was spending his time. He was seeing Magnus, every single day, for horus at a time — more than seeing, he was holding him, fingers skating over the bare skin of his arms where Magnus gripped him.
He learned to tango almost on accident, without even noticing that it was happening, too caught up and enraptured by Magnus, Magnus, Magnus. His movements slowly became more graceful, he stopped stepping on Magnus’ feet or kicking him in the shins, and with each passing moment of every passing day he slipped more fully into the moment, the music, the dance.
“I knew you’d be magnificent,” Magnus whispered to him on the last night before their performance, as the afternoon light faded into evening, and Alec shivered and let himself believe it.