Distractions

Twenty-Nine: Cry Baby

This chapter is a whole roller coaster of emotions, scenes, frustration, and chaos.

Trigger warnings: Mentions of death, mentions of hate, descriptions of guilt, descriptions of suffocation, fighting, mentions of past homophobia and lack of acceptance, funeral scenes

Trigger Warning: Mentions of death, grief and guilt for entire chapter

"So, question," Everest said as she and Alec left Magnus's apartment. "Do you want coffee? Or food? Or both?"

Alec gave her a look, lips turned down and head tilted. "Why?"

"Cause I know a great coffee shop that has really good breakfast sandwiches."

Alec shrugged and Everest took that as confirmation to take a detour and bring Alec to one of her favorite coffee shops of all time. And face Mark and Sara, but that was a problem for five minutes from then.

"EVEREST!" screeched an all too familiar voice, filled with far too much anger for Everest to be overtly glad to see Sara in that exact moment.

"Hey Sara..." Everest smiled sheepishly.

She stepped forward to prevent Sara from tackling her into Alec and it turned out to be a good thing because the woman did not tackle her in a hug, rather tackled her to the ground in a headlock.

"I could kill you for your goddamn stunt you pulled, disappearing like that and not telling anyone you were okay. You didn't even tell the Karters!" Sara hissed, and Everest really hoped that Alec wasn't too concerned about the fact that a woman he didn't know was yelling at his girlfriend while holding her in a headlock. She liked Sara and really didn't want her shot or hit by a Shadowhunter that wanted to protect his girlfriend, as sweet of a gesture as it had the potential to be. "You're lucky Brad and Jay would bury me in a pit of poorly dressed chihuahuas if I killed you."

"Missed you too, Sara," Everest grunted, starting to lose the ability to breathe.

"Okay, up and off the kid now."

The weight on Everest's entire body disappeared and then she was being hauled upright.

"Thanks—"

"No. Don't thank me. Just be glad it was her that saw you first and not me." Mark glared at her, brown eyes full of anger. "You were gone for over a month, Everest. Not a day or even a week. Over a month. You have no idea how worried we have been. And then we hear from that creepy ass brother of yours, the one that left and you thought was dead, that you're alive? Hell no. You don't get to just up and leave with no word to anyone of any kind, and then just show up randomly holding hands with some hot ass stranger covered in tattoos and get away without giving us an actual explanation. No way. No way in whatever straight hell my pastor thought I was going to when I was seven."

Everest sighed, glancing between the two baristas that had filled the roles of the cool aunt and uncle in the past few years. Then she looked at Alec, who looked completely lost and on edge. She nodded. "Okay. I can give you an explanation but it'll have to be short. My brother texted me and said my sister was going to do something incredibly stupid and Alec and I need to stop her before she catches the world on fire."

"Start talking. I'll fix your double red eye."

"And a normal coffee with cream and sugar, a breakfast sandwich, and a blueberry muffin," Everest added.

Mark leaned against the counter, Sara started fixing the coffee, Everest shifted on her feet, and Alec placed a grounding hand on her back.

"Okay, so basically my dad's alive and an absolute asshole, worse than Steve Evans, I had to go meet with him and then he didn't let me leave. My phone died and since he's an asshole, there was nowhere to charge my phone. I met Roslyn's asshole brother, almost shoved him off the side of a boat, escaped with my brother, my actual blood brother that I have now, saw a few corpses because New York is not the best place at night, and I have two boyfriends."