( alec expected rafa would understand. he's a leader too, someone with people to look after as both alec and magnus do. focusing on that is better for the greater good, and once they'll have taken a few steps, maybe some of those reasons keeping children a difficult matter might start to disappear, one by one. )

I want to do everything I can for that alliance. ( he trails off, because it ties into rafa's question. he didn't particularly want to talk about this today. it's a party, so he put it all out of mind so he could celebrate with his friends. and he chose to focus on the choices he'd made with magnus since their return, how they'd talked about how to move forward from all of it.

but it's rafa. it's almost harder not to tell him. )

Honestly, it was... bad. ( he looks down at his drink. ) A lot of things went wrong. Someone was hiding among us right beneath our noses. I nearly lost my little brother. Magnus — has been through a lot and I made it worse. I did something I thought was the right call, but it was the wrong one for Magnus.

( that much he can say without too much emotion overwhelming him, but it's clear this is stuff he's been thinking about. he lets out a slow sigh, looking up from his drink to his friend again. what he'd said a moment ago will become even more understandable. )

What I was saying, about our people finding reason to undermine us by way of any potential kids — The Seelie Queen did it already. She used our relationship against Magnus. ( he doesn't want to say magnus left him, because not only does it hurt, not only does he have better context for it now that he knows about the queen, not only did he lie and therefore believe he'd brought it on himself for a while — it's in the past, and they talked about it, and alec is doing a good job at shoving all that back and focusing on the now. ) We're okay. But it's been hard. It's better now, but still... you know. It'll take time.