Disclaimer: I ownz noting :D

A/N.: This was originally a piece of my story "Kaleidoscope", where I try to write Malec one-shots for 500 prompts. However, this is shaping up to be a multi-chaptered story, and I decided to "outsource" it because some of the readers seemed to be puzzled by the fact that there would a series of connected one-shots within that collection of usually random one-shots and drabbles.

(The single chapters will still be based on the prompts, so every prompt that is used in this story will be considered completed and won't appear in "Kaleidoscope" anymore)

Warnings: AU. Jace's foul mouth. You be warned.

#390 Letters from nowhere

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It was on a perfectly normal seeming day that Alec Lightwood's life changed forever.

As so often, he was woken up by the faint first rays of sunlight peeking through the dark curtains, dimly illuminating the room. Knowing it was still far too early to actually stand up, he groaned and turned around to bury his head in the pillows, thinking, as he did nearly every day, that it might be wise to ask his parents for some actual blinds. It wasn't like they couldn't afford it or anything, he just mostly forgot about it altogether once he descended the stairs, which was entirely Jace and Isabelle's fault.

His siblings had the tendency to get themselves (and Alec along with it, usually) into trouble, so he mostly had more important matters on his mind. Like making sure Izzy didn't burn down the kitchen trying to make a toast (which happened every morning – not to mention that she also did that with every meal they had, which meant Alec had to play fire-fighter at least three times a day). Or like saving Jace's ass whenever he insulted someone with his foul mouth (which happened on a five-minute basis) and try to make sure he did not get into fights. Or like yanking Max away from his books so that he wouldn't forget to eat.

He had actually managed to remember asking his parents once, but they seemed to have forgotten about it. That didn't come as a surprise. Maryse and Robert Lightwood were hardly ever at home, but instead flying all over the world for business, and if they happened to be in New York for a week, they locked themselves in their offices before sunrise and only came out shortly before midnight. This left Alec, being the oldest of their children, to take care of his siblings. Which was fine, mostly, but sometimes Alec felt rather like a kindergarten worker than like an eighteen year old teenager going to high school.

He knew it was time to actually get out of bed when he heard something clatter in the kitchen. It was better to not even let Izzy begin with what she wanted to do. He jumped out of bed, skidded down the stairs and reached the kitchen just in time to preclude his sister from putting a metal can into the microwave.

"Not that one, Iz," he said as he pulled the can from her grasp.

Isabelle blinked at him, confused. "I thought it was 'no plastic in the microwave'?" she asked.

"Nope." Alec precautionary put the can out of her reach. "It's 'Don't put metal into the microwave, ever'. Unless, of course, you want to blow it up."

"Oops," she said, completely unapologetic. "I'll remember that in the future."

"Of course you will," Alec smiled and made a mental note to either remove everything metallic from the house or fiddle with the microwave, even if it was something as small as pulling the plug – knowing his sister, he reckoned that she wouldn't check that and just assume that it was broken.

Jace strolled into the room, still looking somewhat dishevelled. "Morning," he mumbled, and made a beeline to the coffee machine.

"Good morning," Isabelle chirped. "So, I was thinking about making omelettes..."

"Dear God save me now!" Jace groaned.

"What? Don't you like my omelettes?"

"I'm not partial to food poisoning, thank you very much," Jace replied nonchalantly, ducked to avoid the spatula Izzy had thrown at him and grabbed a yoghurt from the fridge. "But I'm sure Alec would love to have an omelette," he added, a wicked grin on his face.

"I – uh, I'm not really hungry," Alec stammered.

His sister threw him a dirty look. "Liar," she said, but she didn't seem to be angry.

The good thing about Izzy was that she knew she was a horrendous cook, and that she wasn't resentful when someone refused to eat whatever ingredients she had mixed together to create a usually unidentifiable goop. The bad thing was that she tried anyway. Alec suspected that she, being the only girl in the family, thought it was her duty to be some kind of surrogate mother to them, at which she usually failed miserably, unless one of her siblings got threatened or hurt; in that case, she developed a remarkable resemblance to lionesses protecting her offspring."Well then, I guess I'll just order something from the café down the road."

"Great," Jace, who was halfway through his second yoghurt, piped up. "I'll have two cheese sandwiches and a blueberry muffin."

"You're a chowhound," Isabelle said, crunching her nose in disgust.

"I'm still growing. I need to eat."

"If you go on like that, you'll be a fatso in no time," she snorted.

"Nah," Jace grinned, patting his stomach. "I'm not a girl. I've got a great metabolism."

Isabelle huffed and shuffled out of the room to get the phone. "The usual, Alec?" she called from the hall while already typing in the number.

"Yes, please," he called back. "And don't forget to get something for Max, too."

"Of course not. What kind of sister do you think I – oh, hello, this is Isabelle Lightwood..."

Alec tuned her out and turned his attention towards his brother. "You look tired," he observed. "Didn't get a lot of sleep?"

"Nu-uh." Jace was grinning again, but this time there was slightly dreamy glint in his eyes. "I was over at Clary's."

Figures, Alec thought. His brother (adopted brother, to be precise, but neither of them gave any thought to that anymore – Jace had been living with them for six years now, and Alec had long since come to think of him as a brother) was always at his girlfriend's house lately. It was a miracle: Jace had never been one for serious relationships. He had preferred casual flings and hopping from one girlfriend to the next. When he'd met Clary, a small red-headed girl who didn't fit into his predatory pattern at all, this had changed. From what Alec could tell Jace was completely head-over-heels in love, and although he didn't like the girl all that much, he had to admit that she had a nice, calming influence on his brother. He was also considerably nicer and far less sarcastic since they'd hooked up, which saved Alec a lot of work trying to prevent Iz and other people from strangling him, so Alec gave her some reluctant sympathy points for that.

"I think I'm going to puke," Izzy, who had re-entered the kitchen and had heard the last sentence, announced. "Seriously, I'm already expecting you to start drooling every second. It's disgusting."

"That's just sour grapes," Jace countered. "It's not my fault you haven't been getting any for a while."

"Just for your information, I had a date with a nice snogging session yesterday, but I still don't run around like a brainless idiot with a dorky smile plastered on my face."

Jace gasped. "Wait, you had a date? With whom?"

"None of your business," she snapped.

"Why so bitchy?" Jace asked, smirking. "Was the snogging so bad?"

Isabelle looked as if she wanted to throw something at him again. "Jace," Alec cut in, "shut up." The last thing he wanted was for them to start wrestling on the floor and making a mess out of the kitchen because he knew he'd be the one to clean up afterwards.

"Why? I tell you guys about my relationship, too!"

"Yeah, but the difference is that you do so unsolicited. It's not like we actually want to know all these details," Alec rolled his eyes.

"Touché," Jace huffed, "but you'll tell us if it gets serious, right? Just so that Alec and I can threaten the guy."

Izzy rolled her eyes, too, exasperated. "You're so original."

"I'm pretty sure that if any guy dared to hurt Isabelle, she'd be perfectly able to break his neck herself," Alec pointed out. The doorbell rang, and he pushed himself from the counter. "I'll answer that. Try not to kill each other while I'm gone."

He trudged to the front door, not caring that he was still in his pyjamas. The delivery staff had seen him like that plenty of times, and he just couldn't be bothered to get dressed first anymore. Opening the door, he greeted Jim with a tight smile, handed him the cash and received the package of food. He was just about to kick the door shut when something caught his eye.

There, on the first step, lay a white envelope.

Strange, Alec mused, the mail never comes before eleven. And why did someone put it on the doorstep? Frowning, he bent down to pick the letter up and examined it. No return address. As he turned the envelope around to look who it was for, he found that there was no addressee noted either, nor was there a stamp or a postmark. Nothing. It was heavy, though, and carefully closed, so he figured the envelope actually contained something.

As the sound of his siblings' voices resounded through the hall, constantly growing louder, Alec shrugged and stuffed the letter into his pocket. He could check who it was destined for later, but first, he had to separate Izzy and Jace.

Luckily, they weren't at each other's throats, just arguing about something Alec didn't even want to know. "Guys, tone it down. Max is still sleeping. Plus, it's not like the entire neighbourhood is interested in your catfights."

His words didn't really have the desired effect, but the bag in his hand did. Immediately, Jace ripped it out of his hands and searched for his breakfast as if he hadn't gotten anything to eat in weeks. "So," Jace began as he happily munched his first sandwich, "Alec. Since we've all had our little confessions now, it's your turn. Spill. How's your love life?"

Alec almost choked on his sandwich.

"Still nonexistent, huh?" Jace frowned. "Seriously, man, you need to find yourself a girl."

"I have a full-time job babying the two of you. How the hell am I supposed to find the time for a girlfriend?" Alec retorted once he had recovered from his coughing attack.

"You could use the time you spend locked into your room, sticking your nose into books," his brother suggested, smirking. "Come on, it can't be that hard. The girls are swooning over you, too. I just don't understand why you don't ask any of them out. You haven't had a girlfriend in ages. Wait, have you ever had a girlfriend at all?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Alec said, hoping that the burn in the tip of his ears didn't mean they were turning read (which they probably were). "Of course I've had a girlfriend."

"Yeah, Aline Penhallow in fifth grade, for, like, two days," Jace scoffed. "That doesn't count. Now, you're eighteen and you haven't kissed a girl in...what, eight years? How do you even do that? Aren't you horny sometimes?"

"Leave him alone, Jace," Isabelle cut in, "not everyone can be a manwhore like you." She sent Alec a worried glace, which he chose to ignore, although he was grateful for her intervention. It probably wouldn't deter Jace for long (he was constantly bugging Alec about his love life), but at least it gave him some time to breathe.

Alec knew that his brother only wanted the best for him, but quite frankly, he just wished he'd let it go already. He really didn't want a girlfriend. Not because he didn't have hormones, or because he didn't want to be with anyone, just because he didn't want a girlfriend. He knew he should just tell Jace that he wasn't interested in girls at all, but he didn't think he'd ever gather up the courage to do that. Izzy was the only one he had told that he was gay, mostly because it seemed that she'd known that already, and because he had known she would be okay with it. Jace, on the other hand, he wasn't so sure about. Also, it would be extra awkward, because Alec had had a crush on him for years that he'd only recently overcome, and now that was something he never ever wanted his brother to find out.

"Hey, earth to Alec!"

"Huh?" Alec was ripped from his train of thought. "Sorry, I zoned out."

"See?" Jace said. "I told you no guy could stand sexual deprivation for that long."

"Shut up, Jace. Not everyone's mind is constantly in the gutter," Alec remarked. "I wasn't thinking about that."

"Oh, good," Jace quipped, "because it would be kind of awkward to see my brother developing a boner on the breakfast table."

"You're insufferable," Alec determined.

Jace grinned. "I know. I'm doing my best."

"Asshat."

"Love you too, bro."

"Boys!" Isabelle shook her head in disbelief and then turned towards her older brother. "I was asking whether you were coming tonight. There's a party at Sebastian's and-"

"And you could finally hook up with some cute girl," Jace interrupted, but was tragically ignored.

"-and everyone's coming," she finished her sentence, throwing Jace a death-glare that would have intimidated everyone else. Alas, since Jace was Jace, it had no effect on him in the slightest. "Please?"

Alec grimaced. "I hate parties."

"Pretty please?"

"Someone has to look after Max."

"Max will be sleeping by the time we leave, and he can very well do that alone," Jace countered.

Alec groaned. "I'll think about it." He pushed his chair back and stood. "I'll have a shower now, before you guys can use up all the hot water. And clean up after yourselves for once, will you? I'm not your charwoman."

"Yes, dad," Jace joked.

Rolling his eyes, Alec turned and ascended the stairs. He was glad it was Saturday, which meant he had a day of doing nothing in particular ahead of him. No stress, no rush, no nothing. It seemed it would turn out to be a nice day, too, so maybe he could lay outside and read a little in order to lift his mood and thus make this party more appealing to him. The thing was, he knew he'd have to go, even if he didn't want to, just to make sure his siblings didn't get completely wasted. Sighing, he entered his room, pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it on the bed. He was about to accord his pants the same treatment when he heard the sound of paper crinkling.

Oh.

Thanks to Jace's taunts, he'd forgotten about the strange letter completely. Alec pulled it out of his pocket and, since he still couldn't find any indicator as to who this was meant for, carefully opened it. Inside were some sheets of thick paper that rather reminded Alec of parchment. Tentatively, he unfolded the letter. The handwriting was neat and elegant – and not familiar at all.

Hello there,

I am aware that this letter might come as a surprise to you, and I can only hope that I did not scare you off in any way. I can imagine it must seem strange to receive a letter from someone you do not even know (and I also know that right now, you are wondering whether this letter is for you at all – do not worry, it is – and no, I am not the delivery man, just in case you were wondering) Please continue reading anyway. I promise you won't regret it.

You must understand, though, that I cannot reveal myself just yet. I will, one day, I can promise you that, but only if you want me to, of course. If you want to know who I am, you will have to earn it. So if you are up to it, I suggest we play a little game that will tell you something about me and at the same time help me getting to know you a little bit better.

There is another letter waiting for you at a place that is special to you – I am sure you will know where to search for it. I give you three days to find the letter and follow the instructions set down in it. However, if you don't want to take the challenge and haven't picked up the letter after the designated time, I will assume that you would prefer it if I didn't bother you anymore, and you won't hear from me again.

Let the game begin.

Yours truly.

A/N.: The second chapter is already written out, so expect it by tomorrow. Also, it would make me really really happy to see my mailboy overflowing with review notifications when I get up tomorrow morning *hint, hint*

Dftba,

Dustland-Fairytales