note: title and various references to richard siken's "snow and dirty rain". all of the books mentioned in this fic are ones i have personally read and would recommend. the time traveler's wife is by audrey niffenegger, extremely loud and incredibly close is by jonathan safran foer, the book thief is by markus zusak, pet semetary was written by stephen king, wuthering heights by one of the bronte sisters (only book mentioned that i personally did not like), edith pattou wrote east, the devil's star by jo nesbo (harry hole is like an alcoholic jace, it's great) and the girl with the dragon tattoo is by stieg larsson. whoo. that was a lot. oh, almost forgot, a storm of swords is by g.r.r. martin. jace, alec, and clary belong to cassandra clare, of course.
Clary had always loved bookstores. Especially the one two blocks away from her apartment building, all snug couches and loveseats tucked in little nooks between shelves that were overflowing with volumes of all sizes, every available surface gleaming with the gloss of carefully arrayed covers.
That particular day, however, she'd been forced to go on account of an acquaintance's first poetry reading as "moral support". And mostly because her best friend Simon had already said she would go.
She hadn't, however, been expecting to sit down on the smooth cherry wood seats of the café and have what sounded like Eric had shredded a dictionary and taped the remnants together in what she thought was maybe the structure of a Petrarchian sonnet.
After enough verbal abuse, she padded up to the counter under the pretense of refilling her coffee mug and… slipped into the bookstore. She could still hear Eric wailing like a banshee in the background, so technically she wasn't missing out on anything, but really, nobody could blame her, right?
She'd been looking for a certain copy for ages, so she quit dawdling around the Bestsellers shelf and made a beeline for the appropriate section, hoping that maybe they'd finally ordered it. Striding through the Mystery and Science Fiction section, she scanned titles eagerly, looking for the author.
She bobbed up on her toes to check the upper shelves and nearly growled in frustration. Of course it would be on the highest one. Of course.
Well, it couldn't really be helped. Bending her knees, she bounced up, fingertips barely skimming the spine. Letting out a hissed exhale of disappointment, she grabbed ahold of the shelf with one hand for support and braced her toes against the solid wood bottom before jumping.
The hardcover of the volume was solid in her hands, until her hand slipped on the shelf. Startled, she let out a yelp as she fell backwards –
- and crashed into a pair of strong arms.
"You okay?" Golden eyes narrowed concernedly at her as she was set down on the ground gently.
"Um, yeah, thanks," she straightened her sweater self-consciously. She'd seen him around the university before – tall, blond, always in a leather jacket, right arm covered in swirling black tattoos, ready with a condescending smirk if he ever saw you checking them out. The type of guy she'd put down as frequenting bars more than bookstores.
He shrugged. "No problem." Behind them, Eric had finally finished his poem to polite applause, and was starting up another untitled ode. They glanced back at the café. "No offense, but your friend's poetry sucks."
Irritation surged up in Clary like a wave. "Like you'd know anything about poetry."
He arched an eyebrow and tapped her book. "Shakespeare's sonnets. You can never go wrong with the classics. They get predictable, though, love and loss of beauty and time as the great enemy of us all. I occasionally like more modern writers. Like Richard Siken."
She lifted up her chin defiantly, her gaze testing. "My dragonfly, my black-eyed fire, the knives in the kitchen are singing for blood –"
" - but we are the crossroads, my little outlaw…" he looked irrationally pleased. "I like the next couple of lines best, though. We have not touched the stars, nor are we forgiven, which brings us back to the hero's shoulders and the gentleness that comes, not from the absence of violence, but despite the abundance of it."
He stopped there, but she had the feeling that if he had chosen to, he could have recited the entirety of the poem in the same startling word-for-word accuracy.
The poetry reading in the café had finally ended, the room coming alive with humming conversations and the sounds of people coming and leaving. A black-haired boy with the same leanness to him as the blond popped his head in the bookstore, narrowing blue eyes when he caught sight of them. "Jace, come on. We have to go."
Jace smirked down at her. "Enjoy your sonnets, dragonfly."
She couldn't help but smile as she watched him weave gracefully through the haphazard arrangement of bookshelves and out the door. "See you, outlaw."
It irritated Clary to no end that when she walked around the university campus, she found herself scanning the multitudes of chatting, laughing students for a familiar catlike figure with eyes like chips of amber and a sardonically curled mouth. But all she saw was the occasional passerby in black leather and blond hair. After the second week of nothing, she stopped looking.
However, when the manager of the bookstore finally noticed how much time she spent in there and offered her a job at the cash register, she accepted it.
It was an ideal job. Peaceful, and simple. Not to mention she could read as much as she wanted all day long as customers flowed in and out, their numbers fluctuating and ebbing like the tide.
She was halfway through The Time Traveler's Wife on a still afternoon when someone slid a collection of Oscar Wilde's short stories over towards her.
"Isn't that a bit depressing, dragonfly?" A familiar voice inquired.
Clary glanced up. "Wow, you must be more secure in your manliness than I thought. Chick lit, really? I thought it would have ruined the whole bad-boy reputation you've got going on there, outlaw."
"Oh, so I have a reputation, do I?" He leaned over the counter. "Have you been snooping around, dragonfly? For your information, my sister made me watch the movie with her."
She smirked as she rang up his purchase on the cash register. "Sure thing. But hey, what you do in your free time is none of my business, so long as you don't spoil the end for me."
"I wasn't going to," he sounded almost offended. A gaggle of girls entered the café on the other side of the large room, peering over.
"I could feel you opening your mouth to," she said, watching as he gave the staring girls a saucy wink as they giggled. "God, you think you're so cool, don't you?"
Jace turned an amused and measuring gaze on her, mouth turning up the way she was beginning to understand it always did before he smirked. "I don't think, I know I am."
"The first half of your sentence was fairly accurate, then it just went wrong," Clary commented, and was rewarded by a surprised smile.
He leaned over to accept the plastic bag she handed over with the Oscar Wilde volume in it, fingertips barely brushing hers. "You know, dragonfly, if you want to cry that bad, and you're looking for something with more depth that isn't chick lit, you should try Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Or, you know, The Book Thief. Honestly, that thing shouldn't even be labeled a children's book."
He came often after that, stopping by almost every week to dispense book reviews and recommendations, and, she suspected, to keep her company in the quiet shop. She did have to admit he had good taste, though, in a wide variety of genres.
"Damn you, I can't believe you talked me into reading Pet Semetary, I couldn't sleep afterwards," she complained, aggrieved.
Jace roared with laughter at that. "What can I say, I'm very persuasive. Next time that happens, call me and I'll come hold your hand," he smiled crookedly at her. "And, now you know what to say when people come in and ask you what it's about. Besides, admit it, you didn't just take this job to pine after me. It's something to do with the employee discount, right? Right?"
"Wow, that was surprisingly not-narcissistic of you. I never thought I'd hear you say that," Clary commented, raising her eyebrows.
He tilted his head. "You make me sound like a stuck-up pig."
She smiled teasingly. "Only because you are, outlaw."
"And here I thought we had a connection," he widened his eyes in mock-hurt, leaning melodramatically against the counter as if her very words had physically wounded him. "That was just hurtful, dragonfly. I'm astounded at you."
"You're right. It must be your awful influence on me. I can't believe myself, I used to be so nice." She ignored his dubious snort at that, resting her hand in her palm lazily. "Hey, why 'dragonfly', out of the dozen nicknames you could have chosen out of that poem?"
Jace smiled. "Because even I couldn't have managed to make 'applejack' sound attractive."
"Ridiculous," she rolled her eyes.
"On the contrary, it was a perfectly logical reason," he protested, stepping aside when an elderly woman came up with a hardcover copy of Wuthering Heights.
Once she had rung up the purchase and the customer had disappeared out into the afternoon sunshine, he leaned over and tugged pensively at the red curls escaping her braid. "Your eyes."
"What?" She turned her attention back to him, confused.
He shrugged. "They're that same jewel green of dragonfly wings. That's why."
"I, um –" she wished fervently she could at least look down to hide her blush, but he'd definitely notice. She cleared her throat. "That was… really, really, cheesy."
His chuckles echoed in her ribcage. "You asked for it, dragonfly. 'Outlaw', on the other hand, that's self-explanatory, right? But is it my rakish good looks, or my – what was it - 'bad-boy reputation' that made you pick that?" He made quotes in the air mockingly.
She shoved at his shoulder. "Shut the hell up, Jace."
After a month or so, the manager had finally trusted her enough to give her a set of keys to the store, leaving her to open the store in the morning and lock up at night. As a result, she started staying later and later, caught up in a book. It wasn't like she intended to – the first time it had happened, she'd been right in the thick of the Red Wedding in A Storm of Swords, and suddenly it was already eight. Besides, there really wasn't a problem with it, since she had the keys anyway, and the store was relatively safe.
Or at least, that's what she thought, until she saw something moving in the corner of her eye on the walk back to her apartment building.
When Jace asked her why she was so jumpy the next day, she couldn't help but tell him.
"I wouldn't worry about it if I were you," he reassured. She had thought he would laugh at her, but his eyes were unexpectedly serious as he leaned across the counter. "Probably a cat, or some teenagers. It's summer, you know. You'll be fine, I promise."
She put it out of her mind after that.
And it was true. Nothing bothered her, not once, in all of her walks back home at night.
It was eight-thirty and she had just finished East (fairy tale retellings were a guilty pleasure of hers she just couldn't hold back from, no matter how many times Jace came in and sniffed before recommending something like The Devil's Star or The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. He seemed to like darker mysteries with morally ambiguous heroes as of late, even if he did predictably always turn to his huge classics).
Something thudded against the wall.
She could hear, muffled through the brick, a low, human moan of pain.
After a moment's hesitation, she grabbed her keys and her cellphone and went running out of the store.
Two shadowy figures stood in the alley, one pinning the other against the wall and brutally swinging at the other's face.
There was something about the man's stance, the taut line of his shoulders, that made her stop. The glow of the streetlights caught on tangled flaxen curls.
"Jace?" She called out incredulously.
The figure whirled, and in that moment, the other man ran away down the other end of the alley, disappearing in the refuse.
"What the hell?" She peered into the darkness. "Who was that?"
Jace was walking towards her slowly. His lip, she saw, was cut open and dripping down his chin, his shirt already spotted with rust. "You should ask your father," he drawled, stepping out into the street next to her.
She stared up at him. "What are you talking about?"
"Your father? Valentine Morgenstern? The infamous corrupt lawyer? Come on now, dragonfly, don't play dumb, it doesn't look good on you," he said, surveying knuckles that were rapidly swelling and turning violet. At her silence, he sighed. "Your father's involved in some…unsavory deals. Needless to say, he's made a lot of enemies."
She gave him a sidelong glance. "And how would you know this?"
He shrugged. "My father used to be good friends with yours, back when he was just out of law school and still - "
"- a good person? Don't sugarcoat, outlaw, it doesn't look good on you," she retorted.
"Everything looks good on me, dragonfly," he gave her a smirk.
She bounced up on her toes. "Not that blood all over your face, no. Come inside, we'll get you cleaned up while you explain everything."
He sat down obediently on one of the couches while she ran to get some paper towels and alcohol.
"So what's going on with my father?" she asked once she returned, sitting next to him and turning his face towards her gently. "Hold still now."
"Hell, that stings," he hissed, before continuing. "As far as I know, some people are trying to hunt up some information about your father to use as blackmail material against him in his latest case."
Clary shook her head. "I haven't talked to my father in years. They'll get nothing from me."
He winced as she swiped at a cut on his cheek. "They don't necessarily know that. They're still sending people after you."
Her hand froze over his cheek. "Wait, so the thing that I saw, that night, that I told you about, that was one of them? And you didn't tell me?"
Jace shrugged. "I didn't want to worry you if I was wrong. Besides, you would never have listened to me if I just told you to stop staying afterhours without a reasonable excuse, dragonfly."
She scowled at him briefly. "So…wait, have you been waiting outside the bookstore all this time, watching out for me?"
He was silent, not meeting her eyes.
"Jace." She threw the bloodied paper towel away. "Jace, why would you do that?"
He exhaled a quiet chuckle. "Isn't it obvious, dragonfly?"
"No…" she regarded him confusedly.
He smiled. "Let me show you." Callused fingers cupped her chin before his mouth slanted over hers.
She must have made some sort of noise of surprise, because he pulled back just as suddenly, but she followed, capturing his lips with hers. His hands settled on her hips, letting her fall into his lap, but she didn't mind, not with his tongue tracing her lower lip and her arms looped around his neck.
"I think," he nuzzled into the crook of her neck as she tipped her head back, allowing his lips more freedom to roam, "you're getting the point, dragonfly."
She tugged hard on his curls, pulling him back to her. "You should tell me again, just in case, outlaw."
He tasted like blood and honey.