Hi guys! I had a little plot bunny jumping around and couldn't resist chasing it. So I did, and this is the result. Thank you to my beta, IWriteNaked. She totally saved my ass when it came to proofreading this. She's got a handful of incredible and incredibly unique Mortal Instruments stories. If you haven't already I would seriously recommend checking her stuff out. Without further ado, happy reading!
My parents got divorced when I was eight. I don't remember too much from the time before that, but the parts that I do typically involved yelling.
It wasn't the kind of yelling that is heard through the vents of movies; it was the kind of yelling that was accompanied by tears, and things being thrown and dented walls.
It was the kind of yelling that could break through all the layers of your skin—even the tough calluses of guitarist's fingers and runner's feet—and hum through your buzzing bones.
It was the kind of yelling that would put out a wildfire with one breath of air.
The kind of yelling to silence entire oceans of galaxies.
The kind of yelling that was being done directly into my face by this raven-haired stranger who had just walked into my apartment.
Her yelling was so strange, so foreign. This apartment was so custom a place of whispers, that it was almost exhilarating to hear so many decibels resonating through the stale place. Her exclamations bounced off the walls and landed in every crevice they could.
There are many things in this world that I know, and infinitely many more that I don't, and this girl definitely falls in the latter. I guess girl isn't the right word.
I mean, she looks to be in her early twenties, just like I am. But that's about where the similarities stop between us. I mean, there's the obvious fact that we both have boobs but that one doesn't really count. Her hair is stick straight and black.
Not black as in darkish brown. Her hair is as black as the starless night-sky over my old home in Brooklyn. Her hair is as black as the bags under an over-caffeinated, under-stimulated college-student's eyes. Her hair is as black as the ink on a poem that you didn't mean to write.
And her eyes are this haunting blue. They don't remind me of water, as most blue eyes do, but instead of a dark-wash denim jacket that has been washed too many times, but still continues only to get better each time you wear it.
Her skin is very nice, especially in such close proximity as to feel the breeze of her angry exhalations on my open eyes. I don't think I've shut them since she walked in. Her words are shrill, but her voice has a rich timbre. She easily stands six inches taller than me, not even counting the heels she's wearing. She could join the NBA wearing shoes like those.
I imagine this stranger in front of me playing professional basketball in seven inch heels.
It's a welcoming thought.
It finally dawns on me that whatever this intimidating woman is trying to say to me must be important, for she has screeched it into the air at least thrice now. I focus on the present and try to discern what she's saying.
"I can't believe you'd do that to him! He obviously cared about you, and you just shove some other guy's salty dick in your mouth. Really classy! Really classy, Kaelie. And then you have the audacity to come back to his apartment. What were you expecting to find here? Your relationship back? Sorry, but you have fucking ruined it. You're a piece of shit. He fucking cared about you. He fucking cared. I'm glad this is the first time we've met, so I don't have a bitch friend to be disappointed in now, too. You're a sorry waste of space."
I process the words she continues to yell. None of them make sense.
Who is Kaelie? What did I ruin? Whose dick did I have in my mouth?
Why was it so salty that she felt the need to include that detail?
I am about to finally open my mouth to point out that, at the very least, my name is not Kaelie, when my door is swung open by a complete stranger for the second time on this fine early morning. Only now, the person opening the door is so beautiful, it feels almost too intimate to even look directly at him.
The white light of a rainy day streaming through my kitchen window lights him up like the sun in the sky. He glows so many shades of gold that I can hardly process it. He is radiant.
That's the only word I can think of that will encompass how he looks. His golden hair falls in fringing locks right over his forehead. His eyes are a beautiful light brown, and even from here I can see the gold flecks like autumn leaves on a dirt path. His teeth are pearly and his forehead crinkles up in the most enticing way.
He's tall and lean and muscular and I already can tell that no one could contain this much beauty and not be a major asshole.
Never in my life, however, have I wanted to sit down and draw another human being as badly as I do now. His beauty could illuminate a room, and there would still be excess.
"Isabelle! I thought it was your voice screeching through the walls," The hunk of gorgeousness exclaims. "Jesus Christ, look around you for a second. Does this look like my apartment?" I watch her jump as he shouts, and then slowly turn to absorb the room around her.
I'm suddenly aware that I have not cleaned up my paints in at least a few weeks. Old tea mugs are littered around the surfaces of the room, and my bagel I was about to eat is still untouched on a plate atop the couch. Whoever this golden hero is, he is seeing my apartment in all its glory apparently.
This apartment was like a savior to me. I don't know where I would have ended up without it.
After art school, I was still only 19. My mom had moved out of the Brooklyn apartment I used to call my home and was now living in some kind of a pre-retirement villa in France. She hadn't been particularly young when she had me, the accident child. She was just over forty when she and Valentine divorced.
I remember her crying and saying that she didn't think she would find anyone else. I thought that absurd because my mother was one of the most beautiful people I had ever seen. So, naturally she gets an email from her childhood friend, Luke Garroway soon after the divorce is finalized.
All he wanted was to catch up after years of rarely communicating. Little did either of them know, they'd be married only a year later. But I have to hand it to them, they've been together ever since.
Upon finding out I had nowhere to go, I ended up living in my brother Jonathan's apartment for 8 months before his girlfriend, Seelie, finally told me to hit the road. She said it didn't have to be permanent, but that we all needed a bit of a break. She said something about pent-up sexual frustration due to paper thin walls.
It was all I needed to hear before I threw my stuff in a suitcase and went on a little roadtrip.
I packed a tent and as many cheap snacks as I could get my hands on, and of course, dozens of sketchbooks and 2B's. I took my time travelling West. I slept in a tent most nights due to lack of money (being an art student.) I pulled off the highway every time something caught my eye and I would draw it. It just so happened that one of the things that caught my eye was a small one-bedroom apartment in Portland: the city of hipsters. The rent was absurdly cheap for the quality of the apartment. The walls were once again fairly thin, and sometimes the faucet leaked, and in the dead of Winter when the heater was overworked, it would occasionally whistle. But these things were like water under the bridge once I also found a job right down the street.
I settled down and informed my brother. He acted upset over the phone, but I could hear the relief in his tone that he wouldn't have to have me as a house guest any longer.
I raved so much about my place for the first few months that I actually drew out my childhood best friend, Simon. He moved out West and into an apartment in SE Portland with me. I had found my niche once again. And now, two and a half years later, I was still in the same spot and loving it just as much.
The golden hero just looked at the girl I now knew as Isabelle while she took in her surroundings. She looks so appalled at her actions. I choose this as the opportune time to speak up. "By the way, my name's not Kaelie. It happens to be Clary."
Isabelle turns back to me, her mouth hanging open like an oven door. She takes a step away from me and smooths down her skin tight jeans. "I don't even know what to say. I'm so sorry," she begins.
"Don't worry about it. Just go kick Kaelie's ass," I cut her off. No use making Isabelle feel bad for her mistake. She nods, still dumbfounded and slides past Mr. Goldilocks over there and out the door, mortified.
My hero looks at me from the doorway. He flashes a brilliantly apologetic smile. "Well, I guess I'd better buy you a coffee or something, then." His eyes search mine from the distance.
I don't normally go on coffee dates with strangers, but strangers rarely burst into my apartment unannounced to save me from their revenge-driven sister and interrupt my breakfast.
I decide this is a special circumstance.
So, even though I'm still in pajamas, I reply, "I guess you should."
Hope you guys liked it! I know it was short, but it was a pretty quick one. I hope to have another chapter up in about a week. Also thought you should know that this story will likely be switching perspectives between characters a lot, so just a heads up. There will be smut, but not until much later. Clary and her golden hero have to start somewhere. Please please review and let me know what you liked/didn't like and what you would like to see in the future.
-katethewriter