AN: All characters belong to Cassandra Clare. I just like Jace a whole lot. Yeah, I see you other girls and boys. You get me.

Utterly Normal

Clary didn't know how things had escalated so quickly but she couldn't say she was surprised. Whenever Jace was involved nothing ever happened in an orderly fashion.

In this case, kissing Jace became somehow more than that. Like way more than that. Like she couldn't get him close enough to her and she felt like the only way she might feel more comfortable in her own body was to get out of it and into his.

Which was weird.

But she felt sweaty, like the room was too humid, the air about to break into rain.

Maybe because he was felt hot, pressing his body against her, and the white sheets that had been pulled tight over his bed, tucked in with hospital corners (he tried to teach her once to no avail; she liked her method: just bunch everything under, why worry about it?), were pulled askew. The pillow behind her head had been cool under her cheek when they first lay down, ostensibly to nap.

Napping was something that Jace didn't understand. For all his cat-like grace and other attributes he wasn't one to stretch out and curl his feet in bed after a long day of training. But he got on board once he saw her do it.

And it was calm, for a while, just lying next to him, on her side, facing away from him but knowing he was there. All she had to do was put one of her hands behind her back and he would take it. That's how they walked through the city together—one in front of the other, exploring—depending on whether they were seeking a demon in the Cloisters or trying a new bubble tea place in Chinatown. One in front of the other, but on equal footing.

But then there was this, too: not a problem, exactly, but how else do you explain a need? He said something inconsequential about how the damn park was so crowded because of joggers and what were they running from, anyway? and she had rolled over into him and clunked her head against his collar bone and said: running towards. What they're running towards, I think.

"Ah," Jace sighed lightly, his arm skating down her side, his hand brushing up her arm.

"The lover writes, the believer hears,

The poet mumbles and the painter sees,

Each one, his fated eccentricity."

Clary was quiet, observing how the silence grew to fill the space left by Jace's voice.

"Wallace Stevens wrote that," Jace added, almost as an afterthought.

"But you don't mumble," she said, wondering.

"I am a damned good writer though," he said, and then he grabbed her waist and she pressed a kiss into his neck and he pulled her on top of him.

And Clary knew what she had known since the first time she saw him.

She couldn't get enough.

His tongue swept into her mouth and it wasn't enough. His jean-clag leg between her thighs wasn't enough. She ground against him and his eyelashes fluttering against the sensitive skin on her face wasn't enough. His low throated groan made her want to lose her damn mind.

His belt buckle was the only cold thing in a world of heat. It pressed against her tummy and she needed to do something. She wanted to try.

"Jace."

He hummed in her mouth.

Hummed?!

"Mhmmf-Jace—"

She wanted to giggle, wanted to hit him, wanted to shove him away—so she did just that. Pushed him back, which was hard, considering Jace's shoulders while not bulky were angular and broad and strong and hard and why was she doing this again?

She had to tell him. To add direction to this. They had gotten so familiar with each other that they sometimes stopped talking for the longest while when they were alone.

He let her push him back, watched bemused as she flopped around like a disoriented seal trying to sit up—he wouldn't remove himself completely off her, of course, just to make things difficult. After an embarrassing effort to regain a respectable position (her hair was inexplicable, she didn't even try to smooth it down), she looked at him and he must have known, must have, because he took both her hands in one of his and said her name. Said her name, his eyes a soft, pliable gold.

She felt hot and anxious.

"Let go for a sec-" she dragged her hands out of his.

He didn't ask why, because she was about to Make a Declaration.

Jace. She thought it a beat before she spoke it.

"Jace." It fell from her like a weight, his name. Like she had to say it. Like he was born so she could conjure him. Shadowhunters don't use magic; he was so angry with her when they first met and she kept bringing it up. No magic. No magic, Clary.

But this, him, this was a kind of magic. She knew that. His name, a spell.

She began, in a rush.

"I'm not going to tell you that we only have this one moment. That we have to love each other in the now." She glared at him. "Because that's not true, Jace Wayland. I plan to spend every other now with you."

He stared, his eyes wide.

Jeez, you sound like a romantic comedy script. She shook her head. Get past this! Keep going. She felt her face blotch up and didn't know what to do with her hands, so they went to Jace on their own.

She pushed her fingers through his hair to circle around his ear, tugging slightly when she got caught in a tangled curl, made the skin pull at the corner of his eye. He flinched.

"The truth of the matter is that I want you."

His breath hitched, but now it felt easy. Like this was inevitable. Which it was.

"I want you, and I want to show you how you make me feel." His fingers clenched on the bed beneath them.

She leaned in, her cheek to his, her mouth against his ear.

"And you make me feel good, Jace."

With that, he pinned her. She wanted to laugh but couldn't find the air to manage it. Good thing that with Jace, air was optional. She breathed him.

Sometimes the extraordinary fit itself into real life, and it was still real life.

Afterwards, when Izzy sidled up to her and asked where she was all of last night, she could be honest and just say, "With Jace," and leave it at that. Ignore Izzy smilingly knowingly because it didn't matter who knew: this was her life now. She was with him.

And no one else would know that she could make him whine.

Or what he looked like when he was about to lose it—that he was inarticulate, that he was all broken breath and wild, pitching chest.

That Jace was clumsy, when it came down to it, and she had been the one to start moving first.

How he looked at her like he couldn't look away, even to close his eyes when the pleasure took the light from the room and all she could feel orient herself around was Jace.

Clary would keep these things in her body, wouldn't try to draw them. After all, some moments should only exist when you're in them.

Clary grinned.

But she couldn't wait to try all sorts of variations. After all, being an artist requires perspective.