I was just about to knock on the door, my fist poised to break the silence and announce my presence, when I thought better of it. It was after midnight, and I'd been trying to rationalize why my feet had taken me here, in front of her door. For such a small barrier, an inch of wood, it seemed a threshold harder to cross than stepping into a den of night children.
We just…work together, I thought, though demon hunting was a very loose definition of "work," and I hated to consider Clary one at all. Why am I here? No one knocked on the door for me. And that's how I learned.
My fist was still in the air. I touched the door lightly, skin on oak, the strange life of the Institute under my hand.
Fuck. This is stupid.
I lowered my arm and began to walk back down the dark corridor, torchlight casting a menacing shadow on the stone wall, when her door opened with a loud jerkiness. I winced, stopping in my tracks, knowing I was still in sight and had no explanation for my late night excursion to her room.
"Jace," Clary called. Her voice was quiet but demanding. I shook my head, cursing.
"Mmmm?" I let out, turning with eyebrows raised. My casual expression faltered when I saw her face.
It wasn't guarded, like it had when I'd first tried to get to know her, to charm her. It wasn't quizzical, as it usually looked when she was sketching or reading a book. It didn't hold the compassion present when those she loved surrounded her. There was no hint of sarcasm, no ounce of kitten contempt.
I thought of our unexpected, unspoken kiss. There was vulnerability here, but not the kind that she'd shown me that night in the greenhouse.
This was devastation.
"Jace," she called again into the hall, and I was quick to close the distance between us.
"Clary, you need to sleep," I said, reaching to cup her face, faltering with hesitance, placing my hands firmly in my pockets. Tears stained her skin like blood often stained my clothes. Her eyes were swollen and expectant as she looked into mine, trying to read me. Did she know that holding her was all I wanted? There had been other girls—girls in bars, girls I'd slept with for pleasure, girls I'd dumped. They didn't make my heart ache like Clary did.
Somehow, this girl managed to put her entire being into everything. So much emotion that it overwhelmed me. Where I held feelings and attachments back, she overflowed with them, touching people in one way or another, bringing something into their life they hadn't had before. Passion. Determination. Friendship.
"Jace, why are you here?" She took on an accusatory tone and thumped roughly against the doorframe. I detected a familiar smell on her breath. A bottle clicked against the wood.
"Clary, what is that?" I asked firmly, but before she could answer, I had the bottle in my hand, reading the label on the flask.
"Shit, Clary! Whisky?" I swore. She nodded vaguely, rusty curls falling into her face. I swirled the bottle around with my wrist. It was empty.
"Where did you get this?" I asked quietly, stepping closer to her, examining the glass in the yellow light cast from a lamp glowing in the depths of her room.
"M—" she hiccupped, and I knew she was bad. "Magnus said whiskey healed wounds of th' heart."
"Of course he did, the bastard," I muttered. "Warlocks don't get hangovers."
I put my palm on the doorframe and lowered my head with closed eyes, my forehead inches from hers. Just get her in the room, make sure she sleeps, I thought. That was it. Help her calm down, help her to bed.
I looked up and my resolved melted under her anguished expression.
"Jace, it's all my fault," she whimpered. "Simon is a vampire because of me. He deserves a human life, but he will never get it back."
Her voice sounded like someone ripping pages from the binding of a book. I cupped her face, throwing aside any pretense of restraint, searching for the right words. My throat was numb.
"Simon chose to follow you here because he loves you," I said carefully. "He's your closest friend. He will not regret the decision he made to help you fight evil."
Well, technically he's of evil undead origin now, but that's beside the point. Somewhere in his stone heart, he still cared for her.
"I miss my mom," she sighed, and I felt her guilt, the worry that these disasters were her fault, because of Valentine's pull to her unique powers. It weighed on me, like her emotions were spilling into the air and saturating it.
My arms went around her before I even knew what my brain was thinking.
It was an awkward hug, as I still held Magnus's empty bottle in my hand, but her arms went around my neck in a vice grip that told me she'd wanted to hold someone, anyone, since Simon's transformation. I took a step into her room, crossing a dangerous threshold filled with her smell and her touch, and placed the bottle on a dresser that sat against the wall.
My hands pressed tighter to her back, and she started crying again. In her drunken state, she head no presence of mind to muffle the sobs, so I gently pushed her backwards, keeping our embrace, to give room for me to close the door.
"Shh, Clary, it's… it's going to be alright."
The words felt bitter as they scraped past my teeth and tumbled into the air. I couldn't say them with any reassurance, even for her. Old habits died hard.
Clary drew her arms from me clumsily and backed away.
"You don't have to be here Jace. You should leave."
"Not until I know you're going to bed."
She shook her head, her wild curls flopping in her face. She angrily pushed them away.
"I'm fine!" she yelled with the voice of a child. I restrained my dry chuckle.
"Are you, Clary? Can you walk a straight line for me? Can you draw a picture of your room?"
She grew frustrated with my teasing and beat her fists against my chest.
"Stop teasing me, you bully."
I wrapped my own hands around her closed fists and sighed, pushing her towards the bed and forcing her to sit, not much patience left to deal with her open state of mind, her words flowing without thought.
"Are you being nice? Or are you being mean? I can never tell," she mumbled wildly, clutching my shirt tightly, keeping me close.
She's going to feel this in the morning, I thought begrudgingly. She wouldn't look at me.
Clary swayed and another tear escaped her eye. "Jace, don't leave me alone. I'm gonna be selfish. Don't leave me alone."
I was about to criticize her indecisiveness but she looked up at me with a disarming expression that kept my sarcasm behind my lips. Instead, I smirked, sitting next to her.
"How may I entertain you the rest of the night? Nude modeling? Shall I recite some poetry?"
She tried to hit me, but almost fell over in the process. "Take that dumb mask off. You always pretend when you don't wanna be serious."
My smile faltered. In all honesty, my defenses were weak here. I was tired, and never thought she'd be drunk out of her mind, begging me to stay. Her bed smelled of her, and bits and pieces of her presence were strewn everywhere—crumpled balls of forgotten drawings, Shadowhunter clothes heaped in a corner, and the Codex on her nightstand. It pulled me towards her, towards wanting her more and more. She managed to make my chest ache without trying, without knowing it.
"Sleep with me," she said suddenly.
I paled. "You're drunk. I'm not—"
"Not sex, you idjiot," she slurred. "I won't sleep unless you're here." She patted the bed, as if motioning to a puppy.
I was at my limit. As if knowing this, she flopped down, her nightshirt rucking up about her frame with the rough, drunken movement. Heat crept into my face as she motioned for me to lie down as well.
You're the idiot, I thought, slowly slipping onto the bed and laying across from her, a couple of polite inches left between us.
Apparently, distance was not what Clary wanted, and in this intoxicated state, she was in no state to read a mood. She scooted towards me, grabbing my shirt and putting her forehead to my chest. Her hair tickled the underneath of my chin, and her legs, bare in shorts, slid among mine, tangling with my limbs.
"I give up," I sighed, and my arms went around her, pulling her close and turning so that she could lie on my chest, a hand finding her hair and another finding her waist. The bare skin left exposed by her tank top surprised me—It didn't help that every adjustment of her body brought her closer to me. She was soon asleep, and I felt wide awake.
Fuck. I never want to let her go.