So lately I've been thinking a lot about Blackstairs – and in all honestly who in the fandom hasn't. This is the cultivation my brain being exhausted after one of my board exams and a few hours on a bus.
Also want to also say a huge thanks to ByTheAngelIsThatWillHerondale for beta-ing and lovesyoufromtheground on tumblr for helping me find songs to fit.
The rules say our emotions don't comply
But we'll defy the rules until we die
So lets be sinners to be saints
And lets be winners by mistake
The world may disapprove
But my world is only you
And if we're sinners then it feels like heaven to me
She lay on her back, feet pulled up to her chest, head turned towards the movie, but she wasn't paying attention. Her mind was stuck doing what it was usually doing – thinking about him, about them.
"You're awfully quiet tonight." He said, poking her in the leg.
"Just have a lot on my mind, you know?" She replied emotionlessly.
"What's going on Em?" She could feel his green eyes on her, trying to see through her disguise, but she didn't dare look back, lest he would succeed.
What could she say? "Oh, I don't know, I lost my parents, I don't have a real family and I'm hopelessly in love with you. I want to touch you and be free to show how I feel but I can't."
She couldn't pinpoint when she first realized she was in love with him, but she figured it was always there, kind of like the instinct to breathe. Emma knew that she should be repressing these feelings, letting them go, but it was a moot point; trying to forget was as pointless as stating she didn't love penguins.
She just shook her head. "It's nothing."
She'd often wondered what it would have been like if Sebastian never attacked the Institute and if their parents hadn't been killed. Would they still have become parabatai or would they have become something more? The nostalgia for what could have been ate her up inside, but she knew not to focus on it, or at least tried not to.
"Oh by the Angel, are you in one of your moods?" Julian asked sarcastically. She could hear the teasing behind his words.
She just threw him a look, which in any other circumstance would have caused him to drop the subject, but not tonight. Tonight he moved towards her, resting his chin on her bare knees. Looking up at him, she saw his eyes full of concern.
She knew it was supposed to be a comforting gesture, but to her it was anything but.
"Seriously, Emma," he started, more seriously. His breath on her knees sent an involuntary shiver through her body. "What's going on?"
How she longed to tell him; how she wanted him to share in her anger of the Clave laws - not just for Helen, but for the both of them. How she longed to hear him say that he was suffering just as much as she was, that he too enjoyed their hugs more than was appropriate. But she couldn't. Though they were, joined to fight till the bitter end together, there was no need for him to suffer along with her. This was one battle she would have to face alone.
And how could she tell him that?
Trying to illicit a response, he placed a feather soft kiss on her right knee, but it didn't cause her to answer. Instead, the sudden action caused her knees to slip open, catching him off guard and causing him to fall through her legs and onto her belly.
A series of feelings she had never thought were possible flooded her due to the sight of him lying practically between her legs. Just a little bit higher and his soft lips would have been right next to hers, right where she had always wanted them to be. He made no sign of moving, just laid there as if he wasn't sure what to do with himself.
His head scorched into her, forcing a kind of heat that she had never experienced to spread from where his head made contact to the rest of her body; a heat that was more intense (and considerably more pleasurable) than the one she felt when under the Mortal Sword.
That however wasn't the only thing that was burning into her. His green eyes, which had never been darker, bore into her in a slightly familiar way. She was having a hard time maintaining eye contact; the longer she stared, the harder it was to not pull him to her – to pull him those few inches and capture his lips with hers, curl her hands in his brown hair and encircle his body with her legs…
And then it hit her. Hit her harder than being hit after not blocking a kick.
This is how he looked at her when he was painting her.
She had always thought that it was simply his 'concentration' face, but she had seen his face when he was playing chess with Ty. That was the look of concentration. This, this was a look she was all too familiar with and it had taken her being this close to him to realize it. This was the look you gave something unattainable, something you could only dream of having.
Had he...could he have felt the same about her?
Carefully and very slowly, she could feel the palms of his calloused hands, those hands that had held and comforted her for so long, trace up her ankles and shins, flow carefully over her knees until finally reaching their destination – the middle of her upper thighs.
Before she could even process the new explosion of emotion within her, he finally spoke. "You know," he started, licking his lips, his voice deeper than usual, "I quite like the view from down here."
She wasn't sure if she would have been able to tell you her birth date or her name or that she was Nephilim, but she was sure that he had meant what he said.
Suddenly, a loud knock came from the door, causing him to quickly untangle himself from her and sit at the other end of the couch. She felt a hollowness she hadn't thought was possible.
"Julian, are you in there?" A girl's voice, Dru's she figured, asked from outside the door.
"Yeah, Emma and I are in here, come in. " His voice was back to its normal tone, as if this newest addition to their long list of stolen moments that they would never discus again had no effect on him.
"What are you guys doing…OH! SPIDERMAN. I love that movie." Drusilla all but practically jumped onto the couch between them, making herself comfortable.
"Yeah, we were just getting to the good part." Jules started, shooting Emma a glance. "Where's the rest of our small Blackthorn army?" He asked.
She was still having a hard enough time catching her breath and he was already having a casual conversation with his sister. She just didn't get it. Maybe he was just teasing her before.
Dru threw Emma a concerned look but didn't say anything . Emma was glad; she didn't need to be explaining to her that she was at a loss for words and breath (and probably her sanity) because of what her brother had just said.
"They are in the training room. Uncle Arthur thought it would be a nice idea to have us have a sleepover, so everyone is down there. I thought I would see if you wanted to join."
Emma knew she had to at least try to get something out, a way to show him that she wasn't as flustered as she probably seemed. It was a struggle to get the words out but she finally managed. "That…that sounds like…a good fun…thing."
"Uh, are you alright, Emma?" Dru asked carefully, as if she was in front of a wild animal and was afraid of scaring it away. "You don't sound so good."
Julian stood up and answered. "She's fine; Emma is just having one of her...," he waved his hands around in a dramatic fashion, " moments. We'll be down in a few minutes."
"Awesome! Uncle Arthur has extra sleeping bags downstairs."
And with that they were alone again.
She was still having a hard time breathing and needed to clear her head. She started walking towards the door, waving at him from behind her head, "I'll see you there, Jules, I just need…"
"Emma..." he had managed to catch up with her, standing mere feet away from her but she didn't turn around. She couldn't be that close to him and look him straight in the eye, not without composing herself first. "About before, I...you know, I really regret it sometimes..." His voice was strained.
Just as she was about to ask what he meant, he continued, "Becoming your parabatai, I mean." And with that he walked out of his room, saying something about needing to get air and smoke.
For the second time that night he'd left her speechless. She didn't know whether she should have been hurt by his statement or feel relieved because she'd often had the same thought.
So here she was now, lying in his sleeping bag, feeling his body heat enveloping her. Though she was used to sleeping in the same bed as him, she couldn't fall asleep, not after what had happened today.
"Can't sleep?" His voice surprised her; she thought that he was sleeping.
"Yeah. Sorry if I woke you."
"You didn't wake me; I was having a hard time falling asleep myself." She felt him move slightly, turning to face her. "Listen, about before, what I said. I hope that you don't think that I don't like it. I mean I would never want to be anyone else's but yours, but sometimes... "
She'd never seen him have that much of a hard time getting his words out. It was cute. "
No, Jules. I get it. I regret it too sometimes. Well a lot of the time."
It seemed like he was about to say something but he let it go.
"Do you know why I paint you all the time?" He asked randomly, after some time.
"Because you can't find anyone else willing to sit still for an innumerable amount of time without moving?" She teased.
"Very funny," he responded with a slight chuckle. She watched as he carefully lifted his hand and moved to tuck the loose strand of hair that had fallen out of place and let his hand on her cheek. His movement was so deliberate she thought he had planned it out. "I do it because I want to show how beautiful my para...my," He took a breath. "No...How beautiful you are."
Her breath caught. There was that feeling again, the one that she felt when he had trailed his hands along her legs.
He continued, his voice filled with pride. "I want to show how courageous you are, how strong and wild and even reckless you are. I want to show how much love you have in you, how much I lo...I keep painting you because I have a hard time being able to put all of those emotions into one painting. "
"Well," she began in a shaky voice, "I am a pretty complicated person." Did he just call her beautiful? Did he just almost say he loved her? Did he…
"Emma," he sounded like a wounded animal. "Emma, I'm not sure I can pretend anymore."
"Pre...pretend what?"
"That I don't love you."
And then her lips were on his.
There had been many times when she had thought about what it would feel like to kiss him: how soft and gentle his lips would be against hers, the way her hands wrap around his neck, the way he would wrap her up in his arms and hold her.
There was nothing in her short life that could have prepared her for actually feeling his lips pressing into hers; soft and yet full of such emotion she felt even Heaven itself could not have a word for it. She didn't think that puzzle pieces fit together as perfectly as their lips had.
She pulled away a few seconds after, feeling as if she had been underwater for the past 17 years and had just now resurfaced for air.
"Jules..."
"Emma..."
They both started at the same time, voices husky and eyes glossy.
She couldn't remember the last time she had smiled out of pure, unadulterated happiness. After all this time, he had said he loved her and had understood all the pain she had gone through. Emma assumed he knew she felt the same, but she needed to tell him, needed to hear herself say the words she had longed to say.
"Then don't pretend Julian, there is no need to. I love you too."
This time, their kiss was more urgent, desire mingling with emotion. His lips were heavy against hers and every so often she felt his tongue dart against her bottom lip as if teasing her (and enjoying it), but never once asking for permission to enter.
Eventually though they had to pull apart, not because they wanted to, but because they needed to, stupid lungs. She had never been so out of breath and yet so full of energy in her entire life.
"Can I do something?" His voice was so quiet and so shaky she could barely hear him.
"Of course, I'm yours." And she was. There wasn't a part of her that didn't belong to him. That wasn't there because of him.
He moved his hand down her face and neck, tracing down her arm and onto her thigh. His movements were slow, as if scared that she would move away. As his hand had reached her thigh, he slid slightly towards her backside and hitched her thigh on top of his, causing his thigh to rest between hers. Every part of her body was on fire as every inch of their bodies was touching, albeit their clothes.
In an effort to suppress a whimper from escaping her lips due to their proximity, she attacked his lips. He was no longer teasing her lips with his tongue; instead he kept it on her bottom lip, waiting for her to allow him to enter. She could not deny either of them the pleasure. The feel of his tongue gently massaging hers was explosive; she wasn't sure if the feeling was simply due to their actions or because of their bond. Maybe this was why they were forbidden from doing this, it was just too much pleasure.
The longer they kissed the more anxious she became, needing to find a way to expel the emotion. Seeing as he was the only thought on her mind, she did what came naturally and thrust her hips against his. Apparently he had the same thought because as she thrust forward, so did he. The contact caused a moan to escape his lips, one louder than it should have been.
Had someone not spoken she probably would have released an inhuman noise herself over the sound that had escaped his lips.
"What was that," someone asked softly.
They quickly untangled themselves from one another for fear of getting caught. "It was just me," Emma replied, breathless. "It was my usual nightmare, go back to bed."
"Oh, okay." Whoever it was, she was glad they had accepted that as an answer and didn't press onto the subject of why she was in Jules' sleeping bag.
Both of them remained silent for several minutes, trying to regain composure. As much as she wanted to attack his lips again, she knew it was risky, especially with what just happened. He understood and traced "C-L-O-S-E" onto her arm. She knew what he meant. That could have been very bad and she didn't even want to think about what would've happened had they been caught.
But why was this wrong? How could it have been wrong when there was nothing else that had ever felt more right?
"I wish things were different." He whispered, pulling her into a hug and nuzzling into her neck.
She nodded in agreement.
"What are we going to do, Emma?" His voice filled with pain.
"I don't know, but we'll figure something out, we always do." She replied, causing him to pull her even closer, as if he was trying to mend their two bodies together.
She really had no idea what they would do or how they would work around it. But one thing was for certain: she wouldn't be able to survive one day without feeling his lips on hers.
Song is by Lauren Aquilina entitled Sinners.
I'm considering making this a multi-chapter story, depending on if I get any ideas to figure out what to do, but at this point, I am leaning towards continuing this. Hope you enjoy.