"I didn't call you because I'm tired of you only wanting me around when you need something. I'm tired of watching you be in love with someone else - someone, incidentally, who will never love you back. Not the way I do." Magnus Bane, City of Glass

.***.

vi.

Jace jolted awake to see Alec's bright blue eyes staring at him. His parabatai was insecure about his appearance, anyone could see that, but while the rest of Alec seemed to quietly blend into the background, his eyes—large, sapphire, intelligent, and, when looking at Jace, full of unapologetic love—were anything but ordinary.

Those eyes were not looking at him with kindness now. Jace shuddered, leaned back on the chair where he'd fallen asleep after Magnus had called him in a panic, saying Alec was hurt and he didn't have the herbs to care for him and Jace needed to be there now. "Alec? How are you feeling?"

His brother's voice was a croak, hoarse, but the words were very clear, "I don't love you."

Jace flashed a grin even as his heart sped up at those words. He'd had nightmares of Clary telling him the same thing, of Izzy and Maryse denouncing him, but never Alec. He depended on Alec. "That's okay. You're not my favorite person right now, either. You scared the shit out of me, man. Scared Magnus, too. We should call him."

"Magnus died," Alec said sharply, "And he hated me. Because he saw you kissing me."

Jace felt disoriented. He didn't even know where to start. "Magnus is fine. He just left for a quick minute—needs more newt eyes or something. But he'd dine. And I didn't kiss you, Alec. But if I ever stop being straight you'll be the first to know, I promise."

For the first time Alec looked confused. His hands fisted the bed spread. "No. You kissed me. You hurt me. And then Magnus said he hated me."

"It was a bad dream," Jace said, wishing with all his heart that he'd extracted more details from Magnus before the warlock ran out the door. "I'd never hurt you, Alec, you know that. Parabatai, remember? I have your back and you have mine."

Alec touched his chest, and it was only then that Jace realized his brother was bleeding through his bandages. The only thing that Magnus had said before he left was to draw and iratze, but that obviously wasn't holding up. "By the Angel!" Jace swore, lunching for Alec's chest to try to put pressure on the bleeding.

When he touched Alec, the older boy recoiled, "No!" With uncommon strength, Alec struck his fist towards Jace's chest, driving the breath from his lungs. "Get away from me!"

Jace coughed, pushing himself to his knees. "You're hurt. Let me-"

"Let me," Magnus pushed by him and put a hand behind Alec's head, using his body to force Alec back on the bed. "Oh love, please stay still. You're so hurt."

"Magnus?" Alec's voice was tiny and lost and hopeful and that one word broke Jace's heart, "Magnus, don't leave me."

"I'm sorry, I needed kingsfoil."

"I'm sorry," Alec croaked, barely glancing at the plant in Magnus's hand. "I don't love him. I love you."

"I know. Darling, please, you're bleeding."

"Jace—I didn't want to. He made me."

Jace felt sick and turned away from his parabatai and the warlock. What nightmare was Alec having? How, even his dreams, could Alec ever think that Jace wouldn't die before hurting him?

Magnus glanced at the blond Shadowhunter shaking in the corner. "It was a shape-shifter. You did so well. You killed him before I got home. You are so brave."

"I killed you," Alec said, shaking his head, "Didn't I?"

"Oh. Baby." Jace looked away. He wanted to leave the room. Magnus looked so young when he cried, like he was actually a teenager. "Let me make you something. You'll feel better."

"Don't leave me."

"Never." Magnus kissed Alec's forehead, his cheek, his lips, quickly, gently, "Let Jace give you another iratze, okay? And then you'll feel so much better."

"I don't want Jace."

Jace felt all the loneliness and pain from his first decade of life bubble up at those words. "Alec—please. It wasn't me it was a shape-shifter that took you out, even though you'd already nailed him. Why are you always so badass when I'm not around?"

Alec finally looked at him, and while it wasn't his old, loving look, at least this one didn't contain fear or loathing. There was just acceptance. "Your iratzes suck."

"Magnus will fix you up good."

Alec focused on the warlock, and Jace traced the iratze very carefully so he wouldn't have to look at the love that poured from that familiar blue gaze. It was the same look Alec would bestow on Jace every day for the first five years he lived at the Institute.

He couldn't bear to look up in those eyes and confirm he'd been replaced.

vii.

He was so shy over his own body. Covering up after sex and showers, wearing long-sleeved sweaters and long pants. "You'd wear a ski mask if it wouldn't make you look like you were up to no good," Magnus accused him one day when he was getting dressed.

Alec looked down at his clothes. "I thought you liked the blue sweater."

"It's nearly seventy degrees out!" Magnus said indignantly, "There will be time for layers later." He himself was wearing outrageously tight pants and a bright orange tank top. He'd spent the last night on his back while Alec inked his back with henna to make it look like Shadowhunter marks.

Looking at him now, Alec had to admit that Magnus was the sexiest thing he'd ever seen. "You do know that mundane will be able to see those marks?"

"That's the whole point," Magnus said, holding out his arm, "And now we match."

Alec stuck out his arm, covered as it was with the blue sleeve of the sweater, and Magnus sighed dramatically. "You would have done very well in the Victorian era."

"You would know."

"Vests were very in," Magnus said, getting that far-away look in his cats eyes that made Alec know he probably had time to put on a pot of coffee before anything actually got done. "I was in London, you know."

"With Will," Alec said, "yeah, you might have mentioned."

Magnus's smile flickered sadly. "He did look an awful lot like you. He died far too young."

"How old is too young?"

"A hundred would be too young for me," Magnus reached out to grab Alec's shoulders, "Promise me you'll live forever."

"I'm doing my absolute best."

"You are not!" Magnus ran his hand over Alec's forehead. There was a rather large iratze on his cheek, courtesy of Izzy, who'd inked one there last night after a lesser demon threw a chair at his face. Magnus sighed and reached down to try to tug the sweater off.

Alec kept his arms pinned at his side, and even warlock strength was no match for Nephilim. "No. Magnus, we don't have time. I thought you wanted to have a picnic with the ducks."

"The ducks will wait. They're terribly rude creatures, anyway." Magnus tugged again at the sweater, determined to find what lay beneath. "Come on, love, it's so warm in here. Just between the two of us."

"Chairman Meow is sitting on the bed," Alec pointed out stubbornly. "And I see you're not joining me in this nudity."

He should have known. Magnus immediately ripped off his shirt. The henna marks slithered across his chest, and Alec wondered if Magnus knew how to read them, if his boyfriend knew that Alec had carved love over every inch of his skin. "You're so beautiful," Magnus wheedled, going for the neck of the sweater again. "You shouldn't hide it away."

"I am not."

"You are not what?" Magnus said, distracted. He'd just revealed a shoulder.

"Beautiful. In any way. Magnus, can we just go? I like ducks. I do not find them rude."

Magnus paused, and Alec took the moment to straighten his clothes. "Why don't you ever believe you're beautiful?" Magnus asked, "And this is a very serious matter, my young Shadowhunter. Because either someone has been lying to you or you're lying to yourself."

Alec shrugged, "I don't know. Everyone knows it. I'm…plain, and mousy, and boring. My hair is a boring color, and my taste is clothes is horrible. I'm not gorgeous, like Jace, or confident like Izzy. I'm homely." Alec looked down at his body, and added, "I'm too thin, too. I never could bulk up right. Not like-"

"Jace," Magnus searched Alec's face for something, "Did he tell you these things about yourself?"

"No!" Alec said.

"A second ago you couldn't remember who said what. Now you know Jace didn't ever comment on your appearance."

"Jace doesn't care," Alec said firmly. "We're parabatai. He's the only one I know doesn't care. Everyone else though…all the other boys."

"What other boys?" Magnus touched Alec's neck, his wrist, the tips of his hair.

"Shadowhunters. People who look at Jace or you when we enter a room and never remember I was there. The men and women and creatures who flirt with you at parties while I stand by the side." At Magnus's horrified look Alec started for the door. "I've never been the most beautiful person in the room, Magnus. You should be grateful to Jace. He prepared me for being with you."

"I never wanted you to feel inferior," Magnus said. "You're not! Your skin is wonderfully smooth."

"It has marks all over it. And scars, where the iratzes didn't take."

"It has character," Magnus said firmly. "And your hair is thick and smooth and curls when it gets wet. You're dark and light put together. You're exquisite."

"You're overdoing it," Alec said, smiling a little. And Magnus realized that Alec thought this was a joke. Alec really, truly did not think of himself as someone anyone would desire. "We're going to disappoint the ducks. Don't forget the bread we had leftover form last night."

Magnus's hands sparked with red and blue light, the colors he always produced when he was too frustrated for words. "I really love you," Magnus said, desperate now.

Alec's eyes softened, and he looked like he almost believed it. "Sometimes you make me feel like I could almost be beautiful," Alec said, "and I love you for that."

But Magnus was an exotic beauty, and Jace was an extraordinary beauty, and Alec would always be second best.

viii.

The art store was the place Alec had felt most at home in the city. He loved feeling the thick paper, looking at the bright palates, imagining something beautiful blossoming across a blank canvass.

It was one of the last things he shared with Magnus, and he was hesitant about it. This, more than anything, would mean that they were inexorably linked. It was giving up his one last secret place. His last alone space, and Alec decided to handle the situation by pretending it wasn't a momentous occasion at all.

"Are you kidding?" Magnus was literally skipping next to Alec as they walked down the street. "Do you know how many art places I've been, trying to find your little haunt?"

"You must not be a very good detective."

Magnus huffed, "You like dingy little alleyways, and I get impatient. Be grateful I didn't stoop to putting a tracking spell on you."

A smile threatened to tug up the corners of Alec's lips, and he suppressed it. "That must have taken great restraint."

"Since you seem to be perfectly capable of getting yourself killed in our own home-" Magnus broke off when he realized they were dangerously close to the shape-shifter incident. It had been three weeks, and as far as Magnus knew, Alec hadn't spoken to Jace again. They even hunted separately.

Alec froze at Magnus's words, too, but his mind was stuck on the word "our."

Very obviously changing the subject, Magnus said, "And this is the store owned by that woman you'll leave me for."

" is my mentor and my friend," Alex said, rolling his eyes, "And she's older than my mother."

"Let's not start being particular about age."

"You just don't like being reminded that you're absolutely ancient," Alec shouldered open the door to Oz and Ends, the eclectic art store that indeed was in a bleak alley. "Be nice."

"I'm a constant delight," Magnus protested, straightening his shirt, which was an alarming shade of green, and raising an eyebrow. The eyebrow had a hoop in it, and was speckled with glitter.

"You know that glitter is the STD of the art world," Alec muttered, grinning at Mrs. Ginny. "It makes an indiscriminate mess."

Magnus ignored this. He was already striding towards the warm, motherly woman at the front of the store. "Mrs. Ginny! Alec has told me so much about you." He thrust out his hand, and Alex rolled his eyes again when he saw blue sparks fly out of it. Magnus couldn't help but show off, even for mundanes who couldn't see his show.

Mrs. Ginny looked alarmed, though, Alec supposed, that was probably the green. The store owner had very concrete ideas about color. "Don't mind him," Alec called, seeing Mrs. Ginny's hesitation in grabbing his boyfriend's hand, "He's just a homeless guy who followed me in off the street."

Magnus sent sparks flying in Alec's direction and he laughed, picking up a notebook of wonderfully heavy drawing paper, exactly what he needed. He walked to the front with it as Magnus turned back to Mrs. Ginny. "Alec is attempting to be funny. I apologize. I'm his boyfriend. It's enchanting to finally make your acquaintance."

The woman ignored Magnus's proffered hand and cleared her throat, glancing at Alec. "There's a new art store on Broadway. That has to be easier than getting all the way over here."

"Tourist trap, Mrs. G," Alec said, smiling at her. He didn't have Jace's charm or Magnus's magnetism, but he was told that when he smiled he looked haplessly adorable. "I prefer visiting you."

Mrs. Ginny looked between Alec, in his usual black ensemble, and Magnus, glowing with color, and blanched, "It really is more convenient. Broadway. No need for you to come down here."

Alec's grin slipped. "Mrs. G, is there a problem?" He'd been coming to his store since he was very little, since before Jace came, since before Max was born. Mrs. Ginny would offer his weak tea and warm cookies, and on rainy slow days she'd take out a sketch book and show him how art had to be more than a bunch of lines and angles.

That same woman was looking at him as if he were a stranger. Worse—usually you afford strangers dull, polite curiosity. She looked revolted at the sight of him. "Please don't make me ask you to leave Alec. I don't want any trouble. I just don't need your business anymore."

Alec's face burned with shame, though he still didn't know what he had to be embarrassed about. It was Magnus who spoke next, his voice uncharacteristically cool. "That's a nice sign, ma'am."

Following his boyfriend's gaze, Alex saw the picket sign leaning against the wall. KEEP MARRIAGE SACRED.

"It's not personal," Mrs. Ginny said, turning away. "You can have that book, Alec."

"It's not personal," Magnus repeated, his voice dangerously quiet, "You just think we're abominations."

Mrs. Ginny didn't respond. Alec, who'd been on his feet for two weeks and had thought the shape-shifter was behind him, felt suddenly sick. The beautiful book slipped from his fingers and splayed open on the floor like a dead thing.

Magnus was still speaking. "I might be an abomination, ma'am. I've made my peace with that. But you are surely committing a sin if you kick this angel out of your store."

"Magnus," Alec pleased. He didn't want to stay any longer, not with Mrs. Ginny suddenly looking at him as if a decade of cozy companionship no longer mattered because he was hopelessly devoted to a boy.

And, because Magnus loved him back, they left.

Out on the street, Alec slipped his hand into Magnus's dark one. "You're shaking."

"That's you, darling," Magnus corrected, glancing over his shoulder. "I actually lived through persecution, you know. There were sodomy laws. There were lynching's. There was systematic slaughter if you were loving the wrong person at the wrong time. I thought people were finally changing."

"People never change," Alec said, tripping down the street, still stinging from the betrayal, "Not in any way that matters."

"You changed me," Magnus said, sounding somehow young and anxious. "I like to think that matters."

xi.

They were telling stories to pass the night away. This was before Jace and Alec were to go out on patrol. After Izzy and Simon got back. There was a group of them sitting, nearly sleeping, in the living room of the High Warlock of Brooklyn, which was smaller than the smallest room in the Institute but somehow much preferable. Izzy was falling asleep in Simon's lap after teasing Simon about his worst date ever story.

"You were just disappointed you weren't a difficult date," Jace said, unlocking his lips from Clary's long enough to speak.

"Damn straight," Izzy said, dropping her head back on Simon's shoulder, her eyes already at half-mast. "But let's keep going. This is going to be the best night's sleep I've had in a while. Especially if Alec goes next."

"She's implying you're boring," Jace said, mouth curving into a smile.

Magnus wound his hand in Alec's hair, and the sensation was so nice, and it was so good to see Jace in a good mood, that Alec obliged to keep the quiet conversation going. "Stephanie Starshaker, last year. We went to Rockefeller Center to see the Christmas lights."

"That's adorable," Simon said, "Did you go skating too?" At Alec's silence Simon whooped, "You did not! How cliché is that?"

"I was fifteen! All I knew about girls is what I got from Izzy's horrible rom-coms and this guy," he gestured at Jace, who was trying to eat Clary's face again. "Obviously it was not Jace I was listening to. Anyway, it wasn't until we got on the ice that I realized she couldn't skate very well."

"I thought all Shadowhunters have amazing balance?" Clary said, coming up for air. When Jace tried to attack her lips again she put her hand up, "I'm actually listening to this."

Alec nodded at Clary, "We do have good natural abilities, but Stephanie had this phobia of ice. So we got out there, and she immediately falls over."

"You got to play knight in shining armor?" Simon said skeptically, "you know this is supposed to be about bad dates, right?"

"Oh, it gets better," Jace assured him.

Alec groaned and leaned back into Magnus's touch. "I didn't see her fall, so I just…kept skating. It wasn't until I heard the crunch that I realized I severed her finger."

"You what?" This from Clary, Simon, and Magnus. The children of the Institute cackled.

Blushing furiously, Alec turned into Magnus's shoulder, "to be fair, I gave her really, really pretty iratzes to make up for it."

"And mom still doesn't know why the Starshakers don't come over for Sunday dinner," Izzy said, dropping back against Simon's arm. "I guess that just leaves Magnus. Eight centuries worth of bad dates. You can probably tell stories for hours."

"Longer than that," Magnus purred, "there was the incident with the Persian boy who turned out to be having an affair with Alexander the Great—who is not Great at all things, incidentally. And then there was Fredrick William in Prussia. I was going through a soldier boy phase, you see. This was before the Accords, so Shadowhunters were not on the table. And then Catherine the Great, in Russia…"

Alec sighed loudly, "Will you stop name dropping? Do you even have a serious story?"

He could feel Magnus tense, and then the hand dropped from his hair. With a snap of Magnus's fingers the lights in the apartment went out, and when he lifted his hand, the palm glowed with white sparkling light. "Fine. A serious story, then. It didn't even happen long ago. Not nearly long enough ago. Seventy-two years ago, I lived in a small house in Poland."

"1941," Clary supplied helpfully. Everyone else shushed her.

"There was a boy who lived with me. A young man, actually. He had dark hair, and played piano beautifully, and was scared to death of our relationship. Everyone we knew who'd leaned towards an…alternative lifestyle…had disappeared from Poland. I told him no one would ever find us. He knew only a very little about magic, and didn't quite trust me. He played piano in the lobby of a fine hotel on the border of Germany, and they came for him one night after he played for a group of SS officers. They came for me, too."

He fell quiet and stared at the fire, while the Shadowhunters tried to remember everything they could from their spotty lessons in mundane history. Clary drew in a breath and glanced at Simon, who was staring out the window, thinking of the yellow stars his great-grandmother still had embroidered on some of her clothes.

"I could have gotten away. It would have been more than simple. I even could have taken this wonderfully talented piano player with me. But I didn't. I was seven hundred and sixteen years old and felt like I was finally going to get what I deserved for centuries of pursuing love indiscriminately. And it would have been cowardly to leave, when so many others had to stay."

"Which camp were you in?" Simon asked, his voice very loud in the dark room.

Magnus was staring at the bright light in his hand. "Dachau."

Simon leaned forward, nearly toppling Izzy off his lap. "My family…they were there, too."

"They burned," Magnus said, snapping his fingers shut and extinguishing the only light in the room. For a moment, before their eyes could adjust to the city-lights coming in through the window, it seemed like darkness was the only thing that existed, that ever had been. "Everyone did."

"You didn't," Alec fumbled in the darkness and pressed his lips against Magnus's ear, eye, lips. "You're still here."

Magnus didn't give the light back, and he drew away from the kiss. "Maybe I shouldn't be."

x.

It was raining for the ninth straight day, and Alec was still grinning over the fact that Magnus had a cold.

"Id nod funny," Magnus proclaimed from under a pile of blankets. Chairman Meow purred on the summit, his rising and the falling the only inclination that the warlock still thought breathing was worth his time. "I habn't been sick since—ahCHOO!—Florence."

"When was that?" Alec asked, stirring the pot of chicken soup, "the stone age?"

"Renaissance," Magnus corrected irritably. His head, topped with purple hair that stuck out at strange angles, rose over the top of the blankets. "If you go to the Palazzo Vecchio there are seberal statues thad look like me."

"Really?" Alec asked, "You'll have to show me next time we go to Europe."

"I'm nod going back to Europe," Magnus said, retreating again, "I'm dying."

"You could have said something before I went down to the bakery and got a whole loaf of good rye bread. I'll have to eat it myself."

Magnus made a noise and Alec, who'd just picked up his phone, grinned fondly at the pile of blankets. "What was that?"

"Don't make fun ob me. I'm sick."

Alec laughed, sliding his finger along the phone that had just buzzed Jace's face. As always, he smiled at the picture of Jace. It was two years old now, taken when they were sitting on a stakeout and Alec, looking at his companion, started making up a story of brooking Batman looking over Gotham. He'd taken the picture just as Jace stuck his tongue out, and had gone to great lengths to keep it from getting deleted.

For five minutes the only sounds were the rain beating against the windowpane, Chairman Meow's steady purring, and Alec's soft tapping of his phone."Who you tebsting?" Magnus murmured sleepily, head once again coming up from below the blankets.

"Jace. Go to sleep, you're exhausted."

"Am not," Magnus said petulantly, raising his head up further, "why are you talking to Jace?"

Alec tried to be amused rather than irritated. "Do you realize how jealous you get when you're not feeling well?"

"I'm nob jealous," Magnus muttered.

"I should be the one who's jealous," Alec pointed out, texting with one hand and stirring soup with the other, "Did you really have an affair with Michelangelo?"

"We're not gebbing off tobic to talk about Medici scandals," Magnus said firmly, "I jusb wanna know why you hab to talk to him!"

"I'm going to put the two of you in a room," Alec said, going by amused and getting, finally, at irritated, "and you guys can just punch each other and then buy beers. Isn't that how men are supposed to resolve issues?"

Magnus rolled over and Chairman Meow bounced off his perch with a hiss. "I wouldn't know! I'm nob a man!"

"Well neither am I!" Alec shouted. He never shouted, and the action and sound of it was so freeing he continued. "I'm Nephilim! You're a warlock! And I'm just eighteen! You tell me what we're supposed to be acting like!"

"You're acting the child," Magnus said scathingly, and this would have come out better if he didn't hack a cough in the middle. When he did, his hair smoldered and sparks shot from his hands. Magnus clenched them into fists. "I'm going to bed. I hate the rain."

But Alec knew Magnus didn't mean that. He'd said, so many times, that rain was his favorite thing ever, after furry animals, Middle Eastern drinks, and Alec's blue sweater. Alec put down the phone even as it vibrated again. Jace was asking him to go on patrol tonight, telling him about Clary, about Church, about Simon, even. Since the shape-shifter, he'd rarely seen his parabatai, but Jace seemed eager to be in contact with him, even clingy.

Knowing that it was a childish thing to do and not caring because in this room even Chairman Meow was probably older than him, Alec talked to the soup, "I hate it when you leave angry."

"I'm nob angry. As you pointed oub, I'm tired." But Magnus couldn't resist a parting shot. He'd outgrown his temper around the Industrial Revolution, adopting a smooth granite exterior that nothing could penetrate, but something about being with Alec brought out the child in him. "Michelangelo was quite curious, you know. Innovative."

Alec swore and tossed phone and ladle to the side. "Fine! I haven't had a million exploits with the who's who of history! And I don't have anything going on with Jace!"

"I know thad," Magnus said, waving a long-fingered hand as if the very idea of Alec sleeping with anyone else was laughable. That, more than anything, made Alec slip out from behind the counter and touch his stele. He never would draw it, not in a petty fight brought on by fevers, cabin and otherwise, but it was nice to know it was there. "But you want to."

Alec was holding the stele before he even registered it as a conscious thought. It was just so much what the shape-shifter had said before it pressed itself against him, those dead dry lips against his. And so the descendant of an Angel pointed a thin knife at a half-demon creature, breathing heavily with memory of a different demon in this very room, of the lies and whispers and blood that had spilled that night.

It was just bad timing. Just stupid, bad timing, that when Magnus's hands flew up automatically to appease Alec, he sneezed. He'd been doing it all week, convulsing and letting off a mini fireworks display with his magic, and it had always been laughable. With that jerk, that momentary loss of control, brilliant bright light shot out of his hands and pieced Alec's chest.

Stumbling backwards, Alec put a hand to his chest. There was no hole there, as the pain led him to believe. He looked down at the now-muddled and charred marks that scrawled their way down his neck, shoulders, chest, and saw a long burn mark that went through his shirt to his breastbone.

"Alec."

He looked up at Magnus's stunned, horrified expression, and automatically fell into that roll he'd adopted years ago, the peacemaker. "It's okay, Magnus," he said quietly, "I know you didn't mean to."

And he did know that, so why did his the back of his eyes sting? He looked away and choked. There were tears stuck in his throat, too.

"Oh darling," Magus's hand ghosted feather-light over the burn for a second, and then he pressed a little harder, drew the pain away from Alec, into himself. "I didn't…I would never hurt you on purpose."

That's what Jace said. That's what that thing wearing both of their faces had claimed, before the fight, before anything happened. And Alec nodded, swallowing the sentiment again. "I shouldn't have drawn my stele. I don't know…I wouldn't have done anything."

"I know," Magnus pressed the stele into his hand. "Can you redraw your marks? They're a little mushed now."

Normally he could with ease. Drawing marks came naturally to every Shadowhunter, the language of shapes as easy to understand as their native tongues. But now he felt tired, so tired of being scrutinized by Magnus's peculiarly sad gaze. "It's all right," Alec reiterated, not quite meeting those eyes, "Jace will do it later."

Magnus looked at Alec, and then leaned against him, hugging him in a way that was both gentle and fierce. "I love that you have a parabatai to die for you," Magnus said, his lips in Alec's ear, "I just hate thinking about the fact that the deal goes the other way, too."

.***.

thanks to those who reviewed the first chapter. these things just trickle in one at a time, and when we have enough to bundle into a chapter we'll post them. if you guys have any ideas send them along. until then, everyone go make fun of the movie and we'll meet back here. ready, set, break.

peace and prosperity, all.