I wanted to try a work without any quotation marks and see if I could still get dialogue to stand out well enough. Once again the title is derived from a line of the Dylan Thomas poem "A Process in the Weather of the heart" it's more or less a sequel to "And the Heart Gives Up Its Dead." The last line is from a Latin Poem known as "Catullus 101" by, you guessed it, Catullus. It loosely translates to 'And forever, brother, hello and farewell.'

like two ghosts before the eye

He wakes up face-first in a tangle of tiedyed sheets, head pounding. The minute he opens his eyes he regrets it and closes them again. Sunlight streaming in through the windows of Magnus's bedroom makes the back of his eyelids flash bright orange with oblong spots of white near the edges. His side aches, and he groans in disdain. There is a part of him( a big part, a huge part) that seems to be growing larger and larger everyday (and swallowing him up one cell at a time) which wishes he hadn't woken up this morning. That he could just stop waking up all together and be over with it all.

It just seems so much simpler that way: no more demons, no more fighting.

He'll sit up in a moment, when he can get himself motivated enough, and open his eyes. He'll find his clothing scattered about the room and go home. Back at the Institute someone, probably his mother, will clean the blood out of the cloth. His mom does a lot of cleaning now, when she isn't busy trying to be strong and keep a stiff upper lip.

A lot of mothers lost sons that day. She says they are no different. This is the life of a Nephilim.

So it goes.

His phone has been buzzing on and off all night and it goes off again. The mattress moves and he feels the warmth of Magnus' body near his, seated by the headboard.

You're up early, Alec comments.

It's four in the afternoon.

Oh. The phone buzzes again.

Are you going to answer that?

Maybe, he mumbles into the sheets and it's absolutely clear he has no intention of answering the phone, so Magnus slips his hand in to the back pocket of Alec's jeans and pulls it out himself.

It's just a text message, Alec groans, I'll answer it later.

It's six text messages, Magnus corrects, four from Isabelle, two from Jace.

He rolls on to his back, rests his head on Magnus's thigh, and stares up at Magnus's ceiling which is dotted with glow-in-the-dark stars . He can barely make out the outlines when the lights turned on.

Are you working today?

A hand in his hair, a press of skin against the back of his neck, and he melts in to the touch like he's just discovered what other humans feel like. But Magnus isn't human- not entirely; and sometimes Alec feels like neither is he.

No, I already finished today. Are you feeling alright?

Alec doesn't respond for a long time, a very long time, instead he just stares up at Magnus's ceiling.

Alec?

What?

What's wrong?

Silence again followed by a sigh, soft and low,( like he's afraid if he breaths too hard his bones will crack and whither to dust until all that will be left inside of him will be ash and empty space.) There were a lot of things Hodge and his parents taught him; science, runes, sword fighting, Latin, battle tactics and more, but not of it has prepared him for this. For this awful sort of exhausting persistence of grief.

It's this thing somewhere in his chest (not quite where his heart is, but closer to the hollow of his throat in between his clavicles) that is gnawing away at the bone and ripping through the flesh so he is bleeding all over the place and everyone around him is grinning like chimpanzees- lips pulled back to show teeth like a white flag. It's easier to pretend there's nothing wrong with him, even when his lungs are so heavy it feels like he any minute he could drown.

Three weeks ago he set down an extra place at the table for dinner. His mother started crying and his father got quiet. Isabelle stared at him like he'd just kicked her in the solar plexus.

It sometimes helps to talk about it, you know.

Taceo; first person singular, present tense, active, indicative. I am silent. Four principal parts: Taceo, tacere, tacui, tacitus.

Magnus lets his hand slide from Alec's neck down and rubs his shoulders

I've lived long enough to know what it feels like to lose someone.

Magnus, -a, -um, he recites in his head. Masculine noun, first declension. Literally, "great" or "big." He declines it then, for a masculine singular noun, moving down from the nominative all the way to the ablative. Magnus, Magnis, Magno, Magnum, Magno.

What made you pick Magnus as a name? he asks so unprompted that Magnus raises an eyebrow in response. Why not something a little less- I don't know- pretentious? Why not something more flamboyant? Like, Gaius Marcus Fabulus Lesbianis Quintus Caeserina?

I wasn't born in the Roman Republic, he laughs softly, and I didn't pick my name. Alec rolls on to his stomach and arches his back up against Magnus's hand. The warlock's long fingers tickle down his spine.

Is that why it's Latin? He asks, because of the Spanish priests? You were born before Martin Luther so the ceremonies would have been performed in Latin.

I suppose so, Magnus replies, it's been my name for so many centuries I've never really considered it.

His phone buzzes and Magnus hands it to him. It's from Isabelle. They take turns worrying about each other. She'll go out too late with guys she barely knows and Alec will disappear for days on end without telling anyone where he is, but they are careful to only do it when the other one is behaving well. They're very good at taking turns; they learned to share at an early age.

I should go back I didn't tell anyone where I am.

Alright, Magnus nods and takes his hand off of Alec's back.

His cut from last night has scabbed over and it hurts for him to move too quickly, but he does anyway as he stands up and rifles through the piles of clothing scattered all across the floor.

You're bleeding.

He presses his hand to his side and pulls it away. Sure enough blood, sticky and hot, coats his palm.

You only have rainbow Disney Princess bandages don't you?

Those won't be big enough, just come over here and let me heal it for you. Alec does what he's told, sort of. He does move towards Magnus, but he takes his hands and presses him into the tiedyed sheets. He bites at Magnus's lip when they kiss hard enough that he draws blood. Magnus flips him over and pins him down on the bed.

There is a fierceness in Magnus's cat-like eyes that makes his heart and lungs shiver inside his ribcage.

When they make love Alec digs his nails into Magnus's back leaving behind trails of red. Sometimes he can't even stop himself from gasping out Harder, harder. Make it hurt.

There's some teaching- though he isn't sure how accurate it is- that states that every seven years all the cells in your body (every single one) has died and been replaced; essentially you are a new person.

If he could he would shed this life like it was a second skin- leave behind the pain and scars and start anew with skin as pink and raw as a newborn's.

There won't be these new divisions anymore between With Max and After Max. There will just be being free and simple like all those oblivious Mundies moving through life blind. There is something to be said of ignorance being bliss.

He lays panting next to Magnus's warm body after they have finished, his cut still bleeding and leaving stains on the sheets. He is curled up in the warlock's limbs like a swaddled infant, Catullus 101 ringing softly in his ears along with the erratic bang of his heart.

Atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale.