Alec doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows that Magnus knows he doesn’t know, which kind of makes it better — there’s no expectations, just the smile on Magnus’s lips when Alec surges forwards to kiss him — but somehow it makes it worse as well, because he’s following his instincts and his instincts, apparently, involve letting Magnus do anything to him. And, okay, that idea is unfairly hot (there is nothing Alec wouldn’t give to have Magnus pin him down and just take, but his boyfriend is far too nice and too conscious of Alec’s apparently soon-to-be-gone virgin status to even try to) and unfairly unattainable, but Alec’s first response to being pushed onto Magnus’s bed is still to get his wrists up.

Wei Wuxian doesn’t let the Wen Remnants hand themselves over after Jin Zixuan’s death. Instead he makes one last sacrifice to ensure they survive. Months later, a Lan cultivator kneels at the edge of the Burial Mounds, ready to offer himself to the feared Yiling Patriarch. Or: Sacrifice is an old magic, but love is even older.