Chapter Text
It’s a rainy day in New York when Alec and his best friend Orion decide to play toy soldiers in Alec’s room. Shadowhunter formal training begins at seven and Alec is so excited he can hardly wait. He doesn’t know how he’ll last another two years until he can go to the Academy in Idris.
But, that doesn’t mean they can’t still learn. Toy soldiers is a game that most young boys play but, of course, there’s a shadowhunter twist. The soldiers are intricately detailed to show off runes and the commanding general is usually the Angel Raziel against an army of downworlders. It’s Alec’s favorite game to play. He likes it even more when Orion is with him.
Alexander is a quiet child. He’s shy and small for his age. He’s friendly enough if someone talks to him first but otherwise he’s content in the silence. The fact that he even has a best friend is entirely because he didn’t have to do any of the work. In Alicante there’d been a function for all of the Heads of the Institute and Alec had been relegated to the nursery with the other children. While the nannies had run around harassed and exhausted, Alec had sat on the sidelines filling in a coloring book of runes.
His tongue had been sticking out in concentration when another boy had plopped down in the seat next to him.
“Hi,” the little boy said with a grin as he sat down next to Alec.
Alec looked up from his coloring book, bewildered. His parents had dragged him to Alicante-- which wasn’t usually a bad thing-- but they had left Izzy behind with the nanny in New York and Alec didn’t have anyone to talk to here. He didn’t mind because it gave him time to work on his rune drawings but at the same time he was feeling a little lonely. Especially since all the other kids looked like they had friends and were running around like banshees.
As his politeness had been ingrained since infancy, Alec couldn’t just ignore the intruder. “Hello,” he said softly.
He thought that the kid would grow bored after a second and jump up to go play with the others. He didn’t. He watched Alec for a minute or two before talking again. “My name is Orion and my favorite rune is strength. What’s yours?”
With that, Alec perked up. He had been studying his runes for months now and he could almost name all of them.
“I like the deflect rune. It looks so cool and it’s pretty easy to draw.”
Orion had just opened his mouth to speak when Alec realized he’d forgot.
“Oh! And my name is Alexander but my little sister calls me Alec.”
Grinning, Orion and Alec shook hands like how they’d seen the adults do after saying introductions. For the rest of the night they had sat at the little table in the corner coloring, then talking. Orion did most of the talking and Alec was content to listen. Orion was so cool-- his family was from Australia-- and he even had a dog. In the institute! Alec had asked for one for his fifth birthday but his mom had explained that it was against the rules.
By the end of the night Alec and Orion were fast friends, falling asleep under a blanket a nanny had handed out when the kids started passing out.
While Hodge checked in on Alec from time to time, he was busy with training duties and Alec was mostly left by himself. Even the nanny didn’t pay too much attention to him. He was a quiet child and Isabelle was already a handful at three years old.
Orion paid attention to him, though. Once or twice a week the two of them would hang out for the day, using the standing portals available for inter-institute travel. While still quiet, Alec came out of his shell for Orion who knew his favorite color (blue), favorite movie (The Lion King), and his worst fear (spiders). They were thick as thieves and Alec usually counted down the days until he could see his best friend again.
Alec couldn’t help noticing that Orion was pretty. He didn’t usually hear the word to describe boys but it was the only word that fit. Izzy was pretty with her big brown eyes and chubby cheeks. Orion was pretty with his green eyes and shaggy brown hair. He always let Alec have the last piece of cake and never hesitated to give Alec a hug when he was feeling sad.
He liked hugging Orion. It felt comfortable because Orion was his best friend, but it also felt right. Alec felt safe with him in a way that he didn’t with anyone else, with the possible exception of Izzy. But she was small. And a girl. Alec hadn’t done it, but lately he really wanted to hold Orion’s hand. If a hug felt good then holding hands should too, right? It would be like a hug but could last a lot longer.
He didn’t know what would happen if he asked his mom about it.
Maryse was hanging her clothes up in the closet from the dry cleaners when Alec pokes his head in. Hearing a noise, she looks up and immediately smiles when she sees her baby boy shyly hovering in the doorway. He’s so young, only five years old, and her heart already aches for the man he’ll become one day. Her boy isn’t outgoing but he’s strong. He’ll have to be to polish the Lightwood-- and Trueblood-- name back to its original shine. Between atoning for her sins and navigating the cutthroat politics of the Clave, Alec will lose his childhood in just a few short years and there’s nothing she can do about it.
It’s a shame, Maryse thinks with a little pang in her heart. Alec loves stuffed animals, strawberry cupcakes, and the color blue. One of her favorite things in the world is to read him to sleep. He’s so bright, will ask a dozen questions about the book if something doesn’t quite make sense to him, and he has a curiosity that she’s loathe to stamp out. She knows that if she waits long enough, she won’t have to.
“What’s going on little man?” she asks. She takes a seat on the bed and pats it to invite Alec to do the same.
Alec clambers up into the bed and look at the floor for a few seconds. She’s getting worried about what he could have possibly done-- ate all the cookies in the kitchen?-- when Alec looks up at her with impossibly guileless eyes.
“Can boys have boyfriends?”
Everything in Maryse freezes. Oh, baby, no.
Everything she thought about Alec and the future goes up in smoke. She still loves her darling boy with everything she has but she can’t deny the feeling in her chest. She’s numb, mind racing already trying to fix things that haven’t even happened yet.
Swallowing hard, Maryse looks at Alec, her first born, her pride and joy, and simply asks, “why?”
Alec kicks with legs back and forth as he thinks. “Because, I really like Orion and I want to hold his hand. But you have to be in love to do that. I’ve never seen two boys holding hands so I was just wondering.”
Suddenly, everything clicks and Maryse wonders how she didn’t see it sooner. All those sleepovers where Orion and Alec marathoned Disney movies and Alec looked happier than she’d ever seen him. How the two of them were constantly whispering, confiding their childish secrets. The constant and firm hugs. She had thought that Orion might make Alec a wonderful parabatai one day. Another plan crumbled to dust.
Maryse has this one chance and she’ll regret what she says for decades to come.
“Well, honey, while boys can hold hands with other boys and girls can hold hands with girls, they shouldn’t.”
Alec frowns, gaze turning disappointed and she wants to bite the words back, wants to take back what she’s just said but she can’t. All she can focus on is the fact that the life she already knew would be hard for her little boy has just become infinitely more difficult.
“Boys only hold hands with girls. Anything else would be embarrassing for the family. You don’t want to do anything that would hurt our family, right, Alec?”
Alec chews on his bottom lip as he thinks about what he just heard.
“But, Orion is really pretty and I think that if we were boyfriends we’d be really happy.”
Shit.
“You two might be happy but I’m sure Orion’s family wouldn’t be happy. I know your father and I wouldn’t be happy. Sometimes, you have to put your family first, Alec. You might want to do something but you can’t, not if it makes things worse for the people you love. Do you understand?”
Alec is the picture of devastation. He really had thought his mom would tell him to go ahead as long as Orion was okay with it. Thinking about what she’s just said, Alec understands. Nothing is more important to him than his family. He would do anything for Izzy and he loves his parents to infinity and back.
“Yes,” he says, quietly.
Orion never comes back to the institute and Alec doesn’t play toy soldiers anymore.