Forever Flows From Friendship

Boyfriend Factor

To Alec's great surprise, Jace's getting a girlfriend in no way left him alone at lunch. Instead, Clary ditched her other friends and joined Jace and Alec for lunch. Alec thought this was quite strange, but he didn't dare bring it up right away. After over a month of Clary eating with them instead of the friends he'd seen her with every day for years Alec just couldn't hold in his question anymore, even if it meant he'd be alone for lunch again.

"Why on earth would I want to hang out with those gossips when I can spend my lunch with the two of you?" Clary replied easily.

"But then why were you hanging out with them in the first place, if they weren't your friends?" Alec asked curiously.

Clary looked at Jace then back to Alec in such a way as to make Alec very sure he was missing something obvious.

"I didn't want to be an outcast," Clary said with a shrug. "I've never really had female friends, but hanging out with groups of guys in high school makes everyone call you a slut, so I picked a gaggle of girls and that was that."

"Okay, but now you've ditched the girls to hang out with a couple guys," Alec observed. "So wouldn't that cause the same problem you were trying to avoid before?"

"Nope," Cary grinned at him but Alec didn't get it.

"You forgot about the boyfriend factor," Jace told Alec.

"Exactly," Clary grinned at him. They were looking at each other now with those intense eyes that Alec found often led to them spending the rest of the lunch break with their faces glued together.

"The boyfriend factor?" Alec asked feeling like he'd forgotten to read the vocab homework.

"Only way to hang out with guys without every girl in the school freaking out is if you are dating one of them," Clary explained.

"How do you know all the rules?" Alec asked. "Is there a list somewhere I could read?"

"If only it were that simple," Clary smiled at him. Once again Alec felt like he hadn't quite understood her answer, but at least he'd managed to figure out that Jace and Clary weren't about to ditch him. He was grateful for that.

Alec thought back to elementary school. To his life before Magnus became his friend. He could perfectly recall thinking being alone was better, but he could no longer agree with his past self. Alec would miss his friends terribly if they disappeared from his life. He missed Magnus enough already, only seeing him when Kitty wasn't around.

Alec tried to remember that high school had to end eventually, even if every month felt like an eternity.

"Did Mr. P give your class the semester long assignment as well?" Clary's question cut into Alec's thoughts as he turned to reply to her.

"Yeah," Alec shrugged. "Seems simple enough."

"I've never had a teacher assign homework over such a long time before," Clary explained. "Usually it's 'here's your homework, it's due tomorrow,' maybe the end of the week, but never over five months."

Alec just shrugged. "I had similar kinds of assignments in primary school."

"Well mine never did such a thing," Clary replied. "Were you in advanced classes?"

"No," Alec said. "Normal classes. It was just structured differently because it's Montessori school."

"I thought that was a school for slow kids," Clary answered. "Not to imply that you're slow I just-"

"It's okay," Alec interrupted her. "Isn't the first time I've heard that and it won't be the last."

"How is it different though?" Clary asked.