Chapter Text
From the outside, the Lightwood family could not have looked more perfect. Robert and Maryse Lightwood had been married for nearly thirty years. Robert was a state senator. Maryse was a partner at a corporate law firm. They lived on an estate large enough to have a guest house, and they had three beautiful children.
From the outside, the cracks couldn’t be seen.
Alec could remember when he was a child, and his mother had scheduled him so strictly that everything down to a two-minute bathroom break had been written into law. Now he’s an adult, and things haven’t really changed. It’s just that the increments of time have gotten larger. Instead of being planned in hours and minutes, he’s being ordered around in weeks and months and even years. He has his law degree. He works at his mother’s firm. She decides which cases he’ll take, and he spends most of his time doing research and writing briefs for the partners, because he’s not “mature enough” to take his own case.
Beyond that, she’s already decided that he’s going to run for office for the first time when he’s thirty-four and that it will be for the state legislature. After six years of that, he’ll be ready for a national run. He’ll be a senator by the time he’s in his forties.
Alec had noticed at one point, with grim amusement, that she had not slotted in any time for theoretical lost elections. Of course, Maryse didn’t plan to lose. She never did.
That was a problem for Alec, because he wasn't sure he was going to win.
Whether or not he wanted to win was a different question, and one that he had never dwelled on very much. He had even less interest in being a politician than he had in being a corporate lawyer, but Maryse had never been interested in what he wanted. This was her plan for him, and his input was neither required nor requested.
Maryse had done everything to make sure that her oldest son would bring greatness to their family name. He had the best education money could buy. He had done a semester abroad during college to ‘broaden his horizons’. He was physically fit and healthy and had played soccer and basketball in school. He could speak four languages, play the piano at a moderate proficiency, and had the demeanor and presence of a leader.
The one thing Maryse couldn’t account for was biology, and it was Alec’s biology that was going to screw him.
Or, in his case, get him screwed.
Nobody was really sure of how genetics played in to the alpha-beta-omega determination. All Alec knew was that almost everyone in his family was an alpha, but somehow he had been born an omega. His mother was an alpha, and his father was a beta, and he had numerous alphas on both sides of his family tree without an omega to be seen. There was no earthly reason that he would have been born an omega, the lowest social caste, known to be weak-willed and less intelligent, interested only in the pleasures of the flesh rather than any higher intellect or goal.
Alec still vividly remembered the moment he had realized what he was. Betas were by far the most common class, almost ninety percent of the population. He supposed he had probably met some other alphas when he was a child, but didn’t realize at the time. The first alpha he met after puberty, when the hormonal impulses started to kick in, was the friend of one of his father’s business associates. Michael Wayland was a beta, but his son Jace was an alpha, and the moment Alec stepped into a room with him, he knew. Everything in his body suddenly focused on Jace in a way that was almost impossible to ignore. His skin felt hot, his breath came too fast. He couldn’t tear his eyes away.
It had taken effort, but he had managed to excuse himself and escape the room before anyone noticed. Jace was young enough that he hadn’t recognized what Alec’s response had meant, wasn’t fully mature enough for his own hormones to respond in kind. Alec had feigned illness and managed to avoid Jace the rest of the evening.
He had spent the next three months desperately trying to figure out how he could tell his parents. The idea was horrific, but he didn’t have a choice. He knew his mother would immediately write him off as a loss. His life was over, his future gone in the blank of an eye. He had read stories about prestigious families who ‘took care of’ their omega children by sending them to institutions or declaring them mentally unfit. He knew Maryse wouldn’t hesitate to do something like that, if she thought Alec might do something to harm the family’s reputation. And for an omega, ‘existing’ was enough to do that damage.
He had still been working himself up to it when he had read an article about a new drug coming out that suppressed the omega hormones. It wasn’t legal, couldn’t be gotten with a prescription. But it would keep him from acting on his impulses – and more importantly, it would suppress his hormone levels so that they wouldn’t be detectable by an alpha.
It took another month and a lot of money that he had to get from his father in bits and pieces – ten dollars for a movie ticket, twenty for a tank of gas – to get his hands on the drug.
The drugs had gotten better since then, more easily accessible if not less expensive. There were cheaper, knockoff versions on the market now, but he still paid for the top quality version. He had heard rumors that when it came to hormone suppressants, you got what you paid for. And he couldn’t take any risks.
He had successfully hidden his omega identity all the way through college, through a semester abroad, through law school, and now through two years of working for his mother. If he had his way, he would hide it forever.
Someday he would probably get married – his mother had already picked out several good candidates for him but allowed him to ‘stay focused on work for now’ – but odds were good that he would marry a beta. Alphas rarely married each other, because the strong personalities they had led to conflict. He could fake it with a beta, who wouldn’t be able to tell what he was either way. In the meantime, he pretended to be an alpha, acted like an alpha, and certainly nobody had ever questioned it. But the older he got, the more his skin tingled and his hands shook whenever an alpha came near him. He didn’t know if the drugs wore off as he got older, or if it was just because he was a twenty-six year old virgin omega, something that didn’t exist outside himself as far as he knew.
There had been a time, just after he started working at his mother’s firm, that he had considered telling her. He was an adult. She couldn’t say he was unintelligent or weak-willed because he had proven those things incorrect. He had graduated from law school with excellent grades and passed the bar exam with top marks. He still devoted almost all his time to either studying or staying fit. If he could build up a good case history, nobody would be able to say that an omega couldn’t be a successful lawyer.
He had thought about it, but then Izzy had met Meliorn.
Izzy was an alpha, like their mother, and Meliorn was an omega. He was an artist, and they had met at a charity event. They had gone on a few dates and hit it off. Maryse merely rolled her eyes in disapproval at first, but when Izzy announced her intention to move in with Meliorn, Maryse had hit the roof. Meliorn was not a suitable partner for her daughter. Alphas fucked omegas. They didn’t marry them.
The argument had progressed from daily shouting matches to a cold war to a lot of deceit and sneaking around. When Maryse realized that Izzy hadn’t broken up with Meliorn like she had said, she had thrown Izzy out of the house and told her not to come back until she could start acting respectable. She had clearly thought Izzy would be back within a week, that she would realize she wasn’t meant to live in a two-bedroom apartment or work at an actual job. But Izzy didn’t, and as the days went by, it became clear that she wouldn’t.
She still texted Alec sometimes, but he didn’t text back. There was a part of him that hated her for leaving him with their mother, but it was a small part. Izzy had done what she needed to do, for herself. It wasn’t her fault that Alec wasn’t brave enough to do the same thing.
There were days when he wondered if that, in and of itself, was because he was an omega. Would an alpha look Maryse in the eye and tell her to take a long walk off a short pier when she dumped yet another of the partners’ files on his desk? Would an alpha stand up to Maryse when she told him how to dress, what to eat, where to be? Would an alpha still live with his parents at twenty-six, because he just didn’t know what he would do if he didn’t?
He didn’t know, and presumed that he probably never would.
Which meant his only option was making sure nobody ever found out. It was a miserable option, but all his options were miserable. At least living this way made Maryse happy. He supposed that somebody ought to be.
~ ~ ~ ~
“Alec, I need you in my office,” Maryse snapped as she breezed by Alec’s door.
Alec sighed and looked around at the stacks of paper everywhere. He was in the middle of writing two separate briefs for cases the partners were working on, plus research for another four cases. None of it was urgent, or particularly important – if it was, it wouldn’t be on his desk – but it annoyed him that she was dragging him away from it. But he followed her into her office. The door to the conference room was open, and several of the other lawyers and a couple paralegals were there, as well as a man that he didn’t know.
“Valentine, this is my son, Alec,” Maryse said, now smiling broadly. “Alec, Mr. Morgenstern.”
“It’s very nice to meet you, sir,” Alec said, shaking Valentine’s hand. He knew who he was – in addition to the fact that Valentine was well-known in his own right, Alec had done most of the work on his case. From the details of the case, he was pretty sure that Valentine was a dick, but he couldn’t mention that here.
“Maryse has told me all about you,” Valentine said, returning the handshake like they were old frat buddies.
“Alec has done a marvelous job on the prep for your case, although of course I’ll be taking over now that we’re in settlement negotiations,” Maryse said. She gestured for Valentine to proceed into the conference room, then turned back to Alec. The smile was gone from her face. “Charlotte chose today of all days to go home sick with a stomach bug. I need you here to wait for Bane and his lawyers. I want them to see us as a united front.”
“Sure, okay,” Alec said, although he burned at the injustice of being used as a secretary. Not that he didn’t respect secretaries – he thought a lot of them were smarter than the lawyers – but he had better things to do with his time. Maryse didn’t notice his annoyance, hurrying into the conference room after Valentine. Alec sighed and slumped into a chair to await Magnus Bane and his lawyers.
The case was idiotic enough to begin with. Magnus Bane was a former model who had opened his own fashion company. When he was first getting started, he had purchased equipment from Morgenstern’s company. Unfortunately, just after that happened, Morgenstern had gone through a messy divorce and sold off that particular subsidiary for some quick cash. The fact that they had been unable to provide the product wasn’t entirely his fault, but the fact that he had refused to refund Bane his money had been. When negotiations fell through, Bane had sued him, and Morgenstern had hired the Lightwood firm to represent him.
Alec had taken one look at the case, concluded that Magnus Bane was actually being pretty generous in only suing for the money he had paid rather than for millions in lost time and wages, and that Morgenstern should settle immediately. Give Bane back his money, problem solved. Of course, his recommendation had been soundly rejected. Bane was just a little upstart from the slums. There was no way he had the cash or the backbone to seriously pursue a lawsuit against someone like Valentine Morgenstern. Maryse was convinced that if she offered a meager settlement, Bane would pounce on it and go away happy.
Alec wasn’t as convinced. From what he had seen in his research, Magnus Bane was short on neither cash nor backbone. His fashion business was doing well, praised everywhere in the media not only for the clothes and the styles themselves, but for the diversity in body types he catered to. He had used the capital from his first show to open up more businesses, and most recently had purchased a night club right here in New York City. It was making money hand over fist because everyone wanted to go where the models went. Magnus Bane might have started in the gutter, but he sure as hell wasn’t there anymore. And when it came to backbone, well, Alec was pretty sure that people without one of those didn’t flourish in an industry as cutthroat as fashion.
He hadn’t bothered to say any of that, however, because Maryse was generally a ‘when I want your opinion, I’ll give it to you’ sort of person. As much as that annoyed Alec, he did take a perverse pleasure in occasionally watching her shoot herself in the foot because of it.
He was so preoccupied thinking about that he only glanced up when the door swung open, then did a double take and looked up again. He had seen pictures of Magnus Bane in preparation for the case, but he was something else in real life. For one thing, he was taller than Alec had somehow expected. Instead of the extravagant clothes he made and modeled, he was wearing a neat pinstripe business suit, dark blue with a light blue shirt and a magenta tie for a splash of color. His only makeup was some eyeliner, and his only visible jewelry was several rings.
None of which was what really grabbed Alec’s attention. Magnus Bane was an alpha. The scent of him rolled over Alec, drawing him in like the tide, setting every nerve in his body on fire. The urge to just go to his knees and offer himself up was almost impossible to resist. He’d had practice, of course, but something about Magnus tugged at him more strongly than any other alpha he had met.
Magnus had to be used to people staring at him with their jaws ajar, because he didn’t seem bothered. “Good afternoon. Magnus Bane, here for a two o’clock appointment.”
Even his voice was amazing, light and musical. It settled in Alec’s bones and refused to leave, which was probably why his response was just a stammered, “Uh, I, Alec.” He realized a moment later that Magnus hadn’t actually been introducing himself, he had been checking in for his appointment. Magnus didn’t seem to have a problem with his response, though, because he was smiling at Alec and just waiting to see what else he might manage to say. “You, uh, they’re ready for you, I can show you in if you’d like or you can wait out here until your lawyer arrives.”
“Oh, that won’t be necessary. I’m representing myself.” Magnus took a step back and looked up and down Alec in a way that was extremely disconcerting. “It’s a shame to see such a handsome man in such a drab suit. Well-fitted, of course, but so bland. You really should invest in some pocket squares if you’re going to wear gray.”
“I . . . what?” Alec asked, dazed.
“Here, take mine.” Magnus withdrew the square of magenta from his breast pocket and tucked it into Alec’s. He was so close in that moment that Alec could feel his breath, and he couldn’t tear his eyes away from Magnus’ mouth. “And one of these.” Magnus took out a business card and slid it into the pocket behind the piece of fabric, then winked. “Call me.”
“Uh - ” Alec snapped his mouth shut before ‘take me to church’ started coming out of it.
“The meeting?” Magnus prompted.
“Right,” Alec strangled out. He turned and nearly tripped over himself in his haste to show Magnus to the conference room. He suspected (dare he say hoped?) that Magnus was checking out his ass, but didn’t dare turn around to find out.
Once he was in the conference room, he managed to calm down, if only out of fear of what his mother would say. Magnus took a seat with aplomb, and Alec thought about how ridiculous it looked, Magnus all by himself on one side of the table versus Maryse and Valentine and their minions on the other. The intimidation tactic was so obvious that it was insulting. He sat down next to his mother, where he would be able to get her any files she needed.
“Where is your lawyer, Mr. Bane?” Maryse asked, once Magnus had introduced himself.
“I am my lawyer,” Magnus told her.
One of the minions snickered. Maryse gave Magnus a look of polite disbelief. “You’re representing yourself?”
“Technically, I’m representing my company,” Magnus replied. He saw the look on her face and added, “Columbia Law, class of 2009. Top five percent, as it happens. Took the bar the same year, passed it on the first try. I can show you my license, if you’d like?”
“Take me to church,” Alec mumbled, and considered fleeing the room.
Maryse cleared her throat and said, “I don’t think that will be necessary.”
“Excellent.” Magnus leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table and folding his hands in front of himself. “Normally I do use an attorney for complicated legal matters, but this being so cut and dry, I figured I would handle it myself.”
“Cut and dry?” Valentine’s voice dripped condescension. “Mr. Bane, I don’t think - ”
“This is a simple breach of contract lawsuit,” Magnus said. “Your company, Mr. Morgenstern, was paid to furnish my company with equipment. Said equipment never arrived. I contacted you to inquire for my money back and was told you had a ‘no refunds’ policy. I explained that the term ‘refund’ only applied when someone was returning a product, which I of course could not do since your company had never given me what I paid for. At which point you stopped taking my calls, thus forcing me to file this lawsuit.”
Maryse, clearly annoyed with the way that Magnus had immediately taken control of the narrative, intervened. “Mr. Bane. My client is prepared to settle this matter for fifty thousand dollars. We can have a check ready for you by the end of the day.”
At this, Magnus leaned back in his chair. “I’ll presume you aren’t actually trying to insult me, but surely you’re aware that’s one tenth of what I’m owed.”
“What you claim you are owed,” Maryse replied.
Alec had to resist the urge to roll his eyes. He had seen all the documents, and he knew Magnus was in the right, and Maryse knew it, too. He had paid money and never received product. It didn’t get much simpler than that. Valentine was an idiot to push the matter, and his mother wasn’t any better, enabling him.
Magnus had clearly come to the same conclusions as Alec. “Mrs. Lightwood, I don’t want to waste any of our time. If Mr. Morgenstern refunds the money I paid - the entire five hundred dollar grand sum - plus court fees, I’ll drop the case. Any offer which is a penny less than that amount will be rejected with extreme prejudice. Are you prepared to take this to court and see what a jury will award me? Because I am.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Maryse said. “I’ll discuss this with my client and contact you once we’ve made a decision.”
“As you like.” Magnus stood up and shook her hand, then headed for the door. He glanced over his shoulder, caught Alec staring at his ass, and gave him another wink before ducking out. Alec had to swallow hard while Maryse was talking with Valentine and then shooing everybody out. By the time that had happened, Alec had regained control of himself.
“We should settle,” he said.
“I beg your pardon,” Maryse said, her mouth tightening. “I will not be forced to back down by some queer from the gutter.”
Alec looked away, not wanting to get into an argument he didn’t dare have. He had never worried about Maryse’s opinion on homosexuality, because it took a far second place to her opinion on omegas. He would never be able to have the sort of partner he was interested in. He had come to terms with that, but it still stung to hear her using a slur like that. “You’re not. It’s the facts that aren’t on our side, and you know it.” Seeing that Maryse was still pissed, he said, “Our client is in the wrong. You don’t want to risk punitive damages.”
“Our client’s reasons for not delivering the product are more than adequate to get a jury on our side.”
“Okay, maybe, but our client’s reason for not returning Bane’s money is indefensible, even for you.”
“It’s not up to me to make that decision.”
Alec sighed. “No, but you can advise our client to settle, and you should.”
“Well, I’m sure he’ll be very interested to hear your opinion.” Maryse waved a hand, dismissing him without another word.
~ ~ ~ ~
Alec had to attend a work dinner at the end of the day, so he didn’t get home until past nine, by which point he was more than ready to get off his feet. He eased out of his jacket and then remembered the pocket square Magnus had given him. He drew it out, along with the business card. ‘Pandemonium’ it said in glittering text, and underneath that there was an address. The phone number was on the back, handwritten. Alec couldn’t help but wonder if Magnus carried cards with his number around to hand out to any cute boy he saw. This thought was met with a surge of jealousy that bordered on rage. He fought it down.
Out of curiosity – and definitely not out of desperation – he pulled out his laptop and looked up the address. Pandemonium was the name of a club, and he recalled now from some of his reading that it was the one Magnus had recently opened. In addition to the usual things that might be found on any club website, there was a section labeled ‘ABO policies’. Alec looked around as if his mother might appear behind him, then clicked on it. The result was nothing scandalous, but a matter-of-fact list of rules that alphas and omegas were expected to follow while on the premises. Alec got the impression that the club was a popular destination for them, and the third rule – ‘all sexual contact must be confined to one of the back rooms we offer’ – certainly gave the impression that it catered to them.
Knowing that Magnus was an alpha, Alec supposed that made sense. He couldn’t help but wonder when Magnus had had time to get a law degree in amongst everything else he did. The file he had put together had been mostly about the Bane corporation, and had very little about Magnus himself.
Now that he had met him, Alec couldn’t contain his curiosity. A quick Google search pulled up a number of relevant articles that he began to peruse.
Magnus Bane was the type of real rags-to-riches story that Charles Dickens would have envied. Maryse hadn’t been precisely wrong when she had said that he was ‘from the gutter’. His father left his mother before he was born, and she fought depression and drug addiction until she killed herself when Magnus was eight. The stepfather who had adopted him several years previous was abusive, and was killed in a traffic accident when Magnus was ten. He went into the system and bounced around for a while. When he was eighteen, he started working as a dancer. There was a picture that had been taken of him during those years, and it was so hot that Alec hoped his computer didn’t catch fire.
When Magnus was in his early twenties, a customer at the club he worked at offered him a modeling contract. He quickly climbed the ranks, learning the tools of the trade, becoming an expert at makeup, lighting, and photography. At twenty-five, he started designing his own clothes, while still working as a model and taking night classes. It all paid off at his first show, where he was praised a visionary in the field of fashion.
As impressive as all of this was – and Alec truly was impressed – he kept scrolling back up to look at the photo. He felt like a pervert, but he couldn’t help it. He wondered if there were more. There were probably more. Modeling photos, if nothing else. Alec hesitated, then went back to Google and did an image search.
He realized immediately that he had made a huge mistake. Neatly tiled images of the most gorgeous man on earth immediately filled his monitor. He forgot to breathe for a minute. Most of them were modeling photographs, in clothes that ranged from staid to scandalous. Some of them were candids, though, and those were usually the ones where Magnus was smiling. He had such a beautiful smile. It made Alec’s heart beat hard in his chest.
A few minutes later, scrolling through the photos like he was in a fog, Alec realized that he was grinding his palm down into his groin, where his erection was pressing against the fabric. He groaned a little. This was bad. He needed to get in control of himself.
‘Call me,’ Magnus had said, and Alec seriously considered it. He had no idea how that conversation would go. He had zero experience with men, with alphas, with anybody. He presumed that it was probably impolite to open the conversation with ‘I want to have sex with you, a lot, immediately,’ but he honestly couldn’t think of anything else to say. He didn’t even know Magnus.
He tossed the card across the room and clutched at the pocket square. It smelled like Magnus, had that faint scent of alpha in it. Alec draped it over his face and unzipped his pants. “I’m so fucked up,” he said to the fabric as he jerked himself off.
When he was done, he cleaned up and tucked the pocket square into his sock drawer before falling onto the bed. At least the case was clear cut. It would take Maryse a few days to figure out that she didn’t have any choice, and they would settle. So at least he wouldn’t have to see Magnus again. He threw the card into the trash can and turned out the lights.
~ ~ ~ ~