Clary awoke suddenly to the sound of thunder cracking across the sky. She was on the floor in Isabelle's room at the Institute, having needed to stay there under the new regime. Jocelyn had refused at first, but the new rune teacher — Deltori Masonberry had convinced her to let Clary stay as long as she was nowhere near Jace in the hours of the night. The fact that Jocelyn still wasn't happy about it lead to a fight, which ended in Clary storming out of the brownstone in the early hours of the morning and demanding refuge from the Institute. That was two days ago.
"Clary?" Came a sleepy but alert voice. Isabelle. Clary knew that if anything was wrong, she would be up and dressed in an instant.
"Go back to sleep," Clary said, pushing the sleeping bag off of her and tip-toeing over to the door. "I'm just a little hungry."
"Mm alright," Isabelle mumbled, and Clary heard her roll over as she slipped out the door. She had just wanted to escape the stuffiness of the room, but she realised that she really was hungry, and crept down to the kitchens to find something to eat.
Pulling open the fridge, Clary found the problem wasn't finding something to eat; it was finding something that was edible and unlikely to cause her grievous harm. Inside was a stew much like the one Isabelle had made the first time Clary had seen her cook, something on a plate that looked very much like a brain, and something that was oozed over a plate, pulsing.
Swallowing bile, Clary quickly snapped the fridge closed. Then she heard a rustling behind her and spun around.
Jace was standing behind her, doing that annoying smirk of his. "Hungry?" He asked.
"Starving." Clary replied, looking him over. No shirt, holey pyjama pants. The black permanent and fainter-white used runes shone on his torso, making him look hot.
"There's a solution to that," he grinned, reaching behind the fridge and running his hand along the wall. At his touch a small square panel slid back, revealing a stock of... mu shu pork.
"Are you serious?"
"Completely." Jace grinned again before handing her a container. Due to some kind of weird Shadowhunter magic, it was still fresh and hot. Clary pulled back the container and took a long whiff. It smelt so good.
"Thanks," Clary said, accepting the fork Jace was offering her.
"No worries. Just don't tell anyone it's there. Especially Isabelle, she'll get offended. She still thinks we're eating her stew, though I tipped it down the toilet. Oh, and don't go into Alec's bathroom," he added as an afterthought. "Toilet's clogged."
Clary stifled a laugh by stuffing more food into her mouth. She turned away from Jace as she knew she probably looked as intelligent as a pig.
"Oh, and nice pyjamas." Jace commented through a mouthful of pork. Clary choked and felt the blush creep up her neck. As she had stormed out of her house with none of her own clothes, she had been borrowing Isabelle's for the past couple of days. She wore a silk nightdress like the one Isabelle was wearing, but it was tied up under her breasts with some rope to keep it from falling completely. Clary was proud of how much her breasts had grown, but this seriously didn't make it look like they had. In Jace's eyes, she probably still looked like the small-breasted, weak mundane she had once been. "Come on," he said, taking her hand and pulling her to his room, "we'll get you some real ones."
Clary felt a spark of excitement go through at the idea of being alone with Jace in his room, although a part of her felt guilty about disobeying her mother.
A tiny part.
"Check this out," Jace said, shuffling through a small box he had pulled from under the bed. "Clothes I took from that demented floating house for you."
Clary backed away, staring at the box. It brought back memories of Jace being under Sebastian's spell but... It also brought back the memory of the night when he was himself, when they had come so close...
"Here." Jace took something out of the box and threw it to her. She caught it swiftly with one hand — earning a grin from Jace — and looked at it. It looked the exact same as the one she was wearing from Isabelle, except smaller — her size. She cast a sly look at Jace before heading into the bathroom to get changed. The nightie fit like a glove, which was weird, but then Clary looked in the mirror and realised it wasn't something you wore to bed. It was something you wore out to a nightclub to get laid. What was Jace planning?
She run a wet comb through her hair to try and calm some of the wild curls, to little effect. When she went back out to the bedroom, she found Jace sitting on the bed in an open-collared white shirt and black pants. "Ready for some fun?" He asked with a grin. "If you could do the honours..."
Clary hesitantly stepped forward and drew a portal into the wall of Jace's bedroom.
The club wasn't like any other that Clary had ever seen before, especially not like Pandemonium. Everybody here were in skimpy outfits that were easy to pull off if they wanted to do anything, and various doors on the sides lead to something that Clary guessed were bedrooms. She had no idea how Jace even knew about this place, let alone brought her here.
"I found the name in a book that has apparently been in the Herondale family for a long time." Jace explained, pulling her through the crowd, from whom she got hungry stares. "Apparently someone in the family liked to hide from their feelings through drinking and drugs."
"So why are we here?" Clary asked with uncertainty.
"I wanted to show you something. Something I couldn't show you in the Institute."
"Can you give me a clue?"
"Nine inches."