Chapter Text
Alexander was tired, because that night Max had woken up at two ini the morning, and had started crying.
He was working with barely four hours of sleep, it was ten in the evening and he was just shattered.
Rafael had been scared to wake up so suddenly, and Alec had made him sleep with them, and his back still hurt from the night before.
He had helped Jace with all of his now customary paperwork, had fought some rather annoying demons (cause no, after all those years he could confirm that Dragon Demons weren't extinct, thank you not-so-helpful-parabatai), and had a meeting with Lily and Maia, only to return to the field again because there had been a fight between two werewolves, and the situation had escalated when a demon had come out of nowhere and almost killed one of them, and Alec and Maia had killed it, and Alec was back home to his kids and his fiancé, too tired to do anything.
It was a good feeling, to be able to admit so openly that he was tired, but now it was so natural to him that it frightened him.
Like when he'd interrupted Izzy out of nowhere as she discussed some plan she had for the next day, telling her he was too tired to think, and she'd looked at him like two heads had popped out of his ears. And ok, maybe it was weird for him to say things like that, but was it that bad?
(Yes, considering that the big brother that Izzy loved so much used to go without sleep for days to run an Institute, and in any case avoid any mention of the subject)
Then he'd apologized to her, but she'd laughed and walked away, and he'd come back to his man frowning and ready to ask what exactly had happened.
And here is the first episode of "How to navigate your emotions after spending years unconsciously repressing them".
In the second one, the protagonists were definitely Max and Rafael.
Having children, complicated isn't it?
But he was ready to be a father, and he was ready to take on all the responsibilities that came with it.
And children required a more than explicit affection: he could not have taken refuge behind the favors, the "I've got your back" and the silent support he usually used with his brothers and friends, but he would have to do what he was perfecting with Magnus.
Express yourself clearly.
And by now, he could say he succeeded.
He wasn't the perfect father, and never would be (his brothers and sons would argue with that—actually, anyone who knew Alec well would argue that he had more than just potential) but his children were loved.
Max loved being in his arms, and just falling asleep on him. He gripped a small hand around his thumb, and with a second he closed his eyes, and started drooling on his shirt. He loved being on his shoulders, his fists clenched between the dark locks and the pain present but too unimportant, and he loved when Alec ran around the room with him on his shoulders, because he said it felt like flying.
Alec loved every feature of his son, from the first to the last blue hair.
(Magnus had said that for a child, standing on a parent's shoulders was like standing on the end of the world. Alec didn't want his child to become a megalomaniac tho, even though he would have loved him anyway).
Rafael had a constant need for reassurance, and Alec was more than ready to give it to him with his heart in his hand, because he loved that child.
It happened sometimes in the early days, that Alec had to leave for too long a mission, and once he returned Rafael would burst into tears stammering in Spanish as he was afraid that he was gone - that he had abandoned them, and left them behind.
How bravely could he have taken offense at such thoughts, when Rafael looked at him heartbroken?
And then he would pick him up, and sit on the couch making him sit on his tense thigh, the muscle trembling from fatigue but ignored.
And he reassured him, and told him what had happened, told him about all the things that made his thoughts come back to them—how hard it was not to think about them, even while he worked.
Even now, that Rafael was a constant in their family, Alec continually reassured him (many times of his own accord, on occasions a stranger would consider casual. But Alec knew that insecurity that shone even on good days in the boy's eyes , and by now he had understood that acting was the best thing).
And he couldn't say that sometimes being so open didn't leave him alert, when the children were asleep and they weren't there to see him sit down with trembling hands and shortness of breath.
But for those moments, there was always Magnus, ready to encourage him and take his hands in his, even though he didn't have that much more parenting experience either. Though Magnus had an outgoing personality and many years of loving and learning to love, and maybe less emotional repression (so they weren't even).
And all of these…emotional things tired him out, more than anything else did.
But in the end that tiredness was almost comfortable.
Alec found himself loving it, knowing what was behind it and what was causing it.
It wasn't that tiredness that destroyed him after hours and hours of plays and false personalities and ideologies, that made him end up under the jet of boiling water, his head bowed and his mind full of disgust (for himself, for others, that didn't chang anything).
If he was tired because he hadn't slept much because of Max, he'd wake up with Magnus' amused smile ready to welcome him, and he'd smile himself when he saw that little blue face again (and now that he was working with Downworlders full-time, not in hiding, and had the reputation of the "shadowhunter who played around with downworlders" his job didn't tire him, being who he was didn't tire him. Sure, anyone who complained about it was far behind, since 15-year-old Alec already tried to do- and did- all that).
Now, he knew how to talk to his mother, and there wasn't that tension that either of them could have explained at the time (or maybe yes, but without the necessary courage to do so).
He knew how to be more honest with someone other than Jace (with whom honesty was always assured - or at least they both made sure that the other was honest, because otherwise it would have been all a bundle of secrets and lies).
He knew how to behave without shame, perfecting that characteristic that in the past he had rarely managed to show off (perhaps when relaxing in the back of Ed's car, a smile on his lips ready to listen to yet another demonstration of the boy's astronomical knowledge), carelessness.
So yes, he could say that nothing was as terrible as it used to be.