I lied again, these are going up now that I've actually finished the challenge (24 Fics in 24 Days for those of you who are not aware of my usually disastrous endeavors). Anyway, I edited this on my phone because I was too lazy to go upstairs to my laptop and my cat was laying on me so I didn't add the usual extra two thousand words while editing and instead only corrected the spelling and grammatical errors. I also almost laughed myself to tears (both because this is hilariously weird of me to write as I am queen of angst galore and also because I crack myself up too often). Anyway, here's the third fic for the challenge, which I didn't actually write third but whatever. Here you go, enjoy!

"Shit."

Beep.

"Damn it, not again."

Beep.

"—says this is the number. Oh crap, sorry."

Beep.

"I'm going to kill you, Jace."

Beep.

"Sorry, I know this is like the billionth time I've dialled your number by accident. And left messages by accident. This must be really annoying, sorry."

Beep.

"God fucking damn it— Jace! Why the hell did you have to break my phone? Fix the seven key!"

Beep.

"—dead, you hear me? Shit."

Beep.

To say Magnus was thoroughly amused by the numerous messages he found himself waking up to on a weekly basis would be an underexaggeration. He laughed for a solid five minutes at the fourth before promptly replaying each and every one ever received to both of his best friends— who were, to put it lightly, not quite as amused as he was. The caller was clearly around Magnus's age, though he sounded at least a few years youngers, and definitely of the male species. His voice, as luck would have it, also happened to be fairly attractive to Magnus's well trained ears. He sincerely hoped the rest of the boy was just as appealing.

It wasn't until the ninth or tenth message that he decided to call him back, about two weeks after he received the first. It was mostly curiosity that prompted him to hit the blinking redial button, an intrigue into the mystery that was the short scraps of a story he'd gotten from the copious amounts of accidental messages left on his answering machine. In the end, all that mattered was that the boy on the other end of the line picked up.

"Hello?" Magnus noted with great pleasure that he sounded even better when speaking directly to him, rather than simply to his voicemail.

"Hey there," was the greeting Magnus decided to go with upon realizing he was most likely expected to say something in return.

"Can I ask who this is?"

Magnus voted to go the infuriating and therefore sexy route for now. "You can."

There was a groan on the other end of the line, sounding equal parts exasperated and annoyed, before a rustling sound floated through to Magnus, signaling that the man had most likely switched hands with the phone. "Tell Jace to stop giving my number out to his so-called friends. I really do not appreciate him trying to set me up."

"Jace? Is he the one who broke your phone?" Magnus realized after he'd already said the words out loud that it might be mildly creepy for the boy to have some stranger calling him and knowing about such strange details of his life. The pause that followed did wonders to confirm this.

"...yes?" came the hesitant reply, sounding much more suspicious and confused than before.

"Sorry, that was probably creepy," Magnus amended, repeating his earlier thoughts down the line with a wince. "Anyway, I'm the number you keep accidentally dialing and leaving wonderfully entertaining messages for."

"Oh," said the boy on the other end of the line with a sound of dawning clarity. "Oh my God, I'm so sorry. Um, yeah, my idiot brother broke the keypad on my phone for, uh, reasons, so the seven sometimes comes up as a four instead and I'm usually not really paying attention when I'm calling people so I don't—"

About halfway through what was looking to become the longest sentence he'd ever heard, Magnus decided to be a merciful man for what might have been the first time in his life and cut the poor boy off. "Relax, darling. It's fine." Another pause, an exhale of breath, and the start of a word before a loud rush of rustling noise and a new voice sounded across the line.

"—you talking to, Alec?" It was a decidedly female person speaking this time and one who sounded younger than the man by at least a few years, though the fact that Magnus couldn't be sure was infuriating indeed. He'd always prided himself on being able to discern a person's age from just the smallest of ticks. Still, Magnus found he cared much less for who was speaking now and more for the fact that the previous speaker's name was almost undoubtedly Alec. Most likely short for Alexander, he mused as he ran the two syllables over in his mind. They sounded nice, right even, especially when paired with his own name.

Magnus quickly derailed that train of thought, considering he knew absolutely nothing about this boy but the fact that he owned a broken phone and had a brother named Jace. Which was, admittedly, more than he knew about over half the people he'd been with.

"Hello? Who is this?" the girl asked, sounding overly smug and curious at the same time. Sighing while secretly wishing the boy would come back on, Magnus decided he'd just have to put up with her until then.

"This would be Magnus Bane," he offered casually, fully aware he hadn't even given his name to this 'Alec'.

"Magnus Bane? I've never even heard of you. How do you know Alec?"

She asked too many questions to be placed on Magnus's admittedly short list of those on his good side, and Magnus nearly ground his teeth at the grating sound of her voice. The male's had been much more beautiful, flowing down the line like music to his ears. "Oh, you know. We met around town." Probably not the best he'd ever come up with, but he was working with next to nothing here.

Apparently this girl caught on fast, though, because her next question trailed off rather purposefully. "And town would be…?"

Magnus winced before deciding to go with the honesty route and replying with his own residence, already ninety percent sure he'd just gotten the poor boy on the other end of the line in trouble for something. "New York."

As luck would have it, the girl's voice immediately lost all traces of suspicion and mounted at least two happy notches higher in pitch. "Oh! That's great! Are you dating?"

Magnus never got a chance to answer before an inhuman noise sounded in the distance and the sounds of a struggle floated through the phone. The boy's voice, Alec, was back in a matter of seconds, sounding near panicked and about a thousand times more flustered than Magnus had ever been in his life. "I'm so sor— Isabelle! I swear to God, I will burn your closet if you don't take four steps away from me right now."

"Oh my," said Magnus. "You rather do like the threats, don't you?"

Alec made an indignant noise. "They're my siblings, it doesn't count."

"Jesus, how many of them are there?"

"Three," was the immediate response, probably the first he hadn't had to think about at all since picking up the phone.

"Younger or older?" Magnus asked, genuinely curious and also perhaps enjoying the sound of Alec's voice just a little too much.

"Younger. Max is only twelve and Izzy and Jace are both nineteen."

"So many names and still I have yet to catch yours." A lie, true, but Magnus was nothing if not calculating and sly. Names, he thought, were a good place to start when meeting someone new.

"Oh, right! I'm Alec. Lightwood. Alec Lightwood." Magnus would be dishonest if he said his bumbling wasn't the most adorable thing he'd heard all day.

"Magnus. Bane. Magnus Bane," he teased back easily, sinking onto his couch with a practiced grace. A flurry of white and grey fur exploded into his vision promptly thereafter before Chairman Meow all but burrowed into his chest. It was nearly as adorable as Alec Lightwood, Magnus mused while reaching a tanned hand to stroke absently at the cat's soft fluff of fur.

"Sorry about the messages again," Alec offered. He sounded like he was scrambling for threads of conversation that were slipping out of his grasp, which Magnus didn't doubt was actually the case.

"Like I said, sweetheart, it's all good. Although, to make it up to me, you could definitely meet me for a coffee sometime." Ah yes, good work, Magnus. That was smooth as fuck, if I do say so myself.

"I— Um— What— OhmyGod— Uh, right, yeah— Wait, how do you know we even live in the same state?" Alec started to sound dubiously suspicious about halfway through his flustered stuttering, zeroing in on the least perfect piece of the puzzle. Magnus wondered what kind of parentage it took to raise such a pessimistic child, or if it was just that he placed such little worth in himself that he was always looking for the punch line of the joke he assumed had to be being played on him should anything good ever lean his way. Which, yeah okay. That was a little dark there, Magnus.

"Your sister sounded overly excited when I said I lived in New York, so I assumed that's where you are too," Magnus supplied easily, inspecting the fraying glittery purple nailpolish of the hand that had once been placating a now mewling like the world was ending Chairman Meow.

"I, uh, right. Um, I guess, coffee sounds good?" If an overload of adorableness could kill, Chairman would have found himself suddenly ownerless.

"Coffee sounds great, darling. Give me a call when you're free, won't you?" Really, Magnus would have won the award for smoothness a thousand times over, if it had existed.

He hung up on a stuttering mess of a boy with a wide grin in place, curling his arms around his cat in a tight hug as he resisted the urge to giggle and kick his legs out like a teenage girl. He was twenty five, for God's sake. He did not get this happy over something as simple as a date. It just didn't happen.

Although, for this Alec guy, Magnus would have to admit he'd make an exception.

I don't know, man. That first part before the break with the messages just cracks me up every time I reread it. Anyway, let me know what you thought?