Another fic for the 24 Fics in 24 Days Challenge I did, which I may not get a chance to post all stories for before I leave tomorrow night to Mexico for the holidays. It's unclear whether I'll have access to what I need to post things while I'm down there.
"Oh, she doth teach the torches to burn bright! Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night—"
"Simon, I swear to the Gods that if you don't stop going on about my sister I'll have you hanged in the gallows at the first light of day," Jace snapped at his manservant from his position seated behind a teeming pile of papers on his desk. In the four hours he'd already spent working away at it he'd barely gotten through an eighth of the pile, thanks to Simon's incessant quoting of the great playwright William Shakespeare in an effort to efficiently describe the princess's beauty. Jace was very much not amused by this, nor the fact that his friend seemed to believe she would one day be his despite the fact that she was set to be married off overseas in two month's time. Even Simon had to know it was hopeless.
"But how is she to know of my affections if I cannot freely express them?" his manservant replied bravely, clenching his fist over his heart with a determined look prior to launching right back into his previous musings. Jace groaned, slammed his head down on the desk, and resigned himself to a lifetime a torture.
"Look, there she is!" Simon sighed dreamily at Jace's side. "Isn't she beautiful?"
"She's my sister," Jace repeated for the thousandth time that day in response to Simon's fixation on the raven-haired princess who had never so much as glanced his way. He tried not to glare too sharply at her, as it was hardly her fault Simon had become so obsessed. Still, couldn't she have been born just a little uglier? Or perhaps crueler? Maybe if she had just been so much as a few inches shorter, it would've done the trick. "Besides, she isn't even aware of your existence."
"That's not true!" Simon defended petulantly. "She told me to seek you out and demand you see her once when we were ten."
Rolling his eyes with a tired press of his hand to the throbbing headache now pounding at his temples, Jace counted backwards from fifty in his mind before releasing a slow breath and dragging his manservant away. "That was once seven years ago, idiot. And she wasn't even asking about you."
As though coming to a sudden realization, Simon's eyes narrowed as he glanced sideways at the prince. "You're right, she was asking about you. Is there something going on between the two of you?"
It took every ounce of willpower in Jace's arsenal not to throw up or punch his friend in the face, but he managed it with a gag and a choke that left tears in his eyes. "That is such a disgusting idea I'm not even going to humour you this time."
"Siblings marry all the time, don't they? The Morgensterns have done it plenty."
"The Morgensterns are a vile brood of devil-spawn sent to remind us that there is still a hell. Do not follow any example they set, Simon. It will lead you nowhere good," Jace spat with a glare and a sound of disgust. His manservant threw his hands up in surrender before throwing the stable doors open to allow the prince to pass through and moving to saddle the horses.
"I was just saying."
"Well, don't."
A comfortable silence descended on them after that, easy in the way it could only ever be between close friends who had known each other since forever, as they had. Simon's hands worked nimbly at the tack of the first stallion, a great white beast that pawed threateningly at the ground when he approached, and Jace watched with mild interest as he pondered over whether or not to outwardly state that his friend had no chance whatsoever with Isabelle. He was more likely to fall into cohorts with Alec than he was the already engaged princess, although Alec too had someone in his sights at present.
Still, perhaps it was better to let Simon go on pretending they'd one day ride off into the sunset towards the chapel and return years later with two children and a love story incomparable to any other. Jace would prefer to let him dream of the impossible than crush him completely, if only so he wouldn't have to deal with his friend's poetic and unrelenting expressing of how broken his heart was. Yes, much better to simply let the boy dream.
"Here you go, sire," Simon cut in with a cheeky smirk at the use of the pronoun Jace used to throw the worst of temper tantrums over when they were younger. Accepting the now saddled horse from his manservant, Jace gestured for him to hop aboard his own and mounted the majestic white steed with the grace of a prince who had spent years learning combat atop a horse. Simon, however, was much less graceful and ended up with manure sticking to his trousers and the bottom of his tuniq.
For now, Jace decided he was content to leave things be.
"Married? What do you mean she's left to get married?"
Jace offered his friend a tired sigh, tossing the papers he'd been going over to the side to shoot him an impatient look. "I mean exactly that, Simon. The lovely little Isabelle has left overseas to get herself hitched to the lord of some castle or another and will from now on only be present during the most extravagant of feasts. Is that so hard to understand?"
Simon sputtered, eyes wide and hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. "But— But— Why didn't you tell me?"
"And have you whining about it for longer than completely unavoidable? I don't think so."
"But, Jace, she was meant to be mine! How can she be marrying someone else?"
"Actually, I suspect they're already married by now. She did leave a week ago, you know. They've probably consummated it as well. She may even be carrying his child already." He knew he was poking the sleeping bear just a little too hard here, but Jace also knew the bear was actually nothing more than a squeaky little mouse and it was incredibly amusing to watch him sputter with the new information.
"But now who am I going to use to cover up my feelings for you?" Simon whined to the skies, completely unaware that, despite his plans, Jace was now the one sputtering dumbly at his friend with wide eyes and an appearance quite similar to that of a fish out of water. Because, what? Where on earth did that come from?
Simon must have noticed something was off because he glanced back down at Jace and then, taking in the look on the prince's face, turned an alarming shade of white. "I didn't say that out loud, did?"
Jace could only nod, even as his friend swallowed thickly with a terrified look and took off out the doors at a speed to rival that of the castle's fastest mount. The prince stared after him in frozen shock, unable to so much as blink, and wondered when his life had become that of a character from one of the novels their ward, Tessa, was always reading. Dear God, he was so done with everything.
His manservant looked incredibly terrified, if the shaking was anything to go by, when he finally managed to corner him in one of the many unfrequented halls of the upper level of the castle after nearly two full weeks of being successfully avoided by the shorter boy. Simon gulped loudly, pushing as far back against the wall behind as he could so as to escape the warm press of Jace's body against his own where the blond might have been just a little too close for comfort. "About what I said, that was… A joke? Yeah, a joke. Haha, got you, didn't I? Wasn't it funny? Please don't kill me."
"I'm not going to kill you," Jace offered unreassuringly with a straight face and a serious look in his eyes. His arm had started to ache where the forearm of it was pressed against the wall beside Simon's head to keep his balance, but he paid it no mind.
"Are you sure? You look like you're going to kill me. Of course, it'd be wondrous if you didn't. But, um, you look like you're about to." Simon was trembling, hands pressed flat against the wall at his sides and eyes wide as they flitted nervously over Jace's face.
"I'm not going to kill you," Jace repeated, leaning in impossibly closer until their noses brushed against each other. "I'm going to kiss you," he informed the frozen boy before moving just that tiny bit further in and touching their lips together.
It was a soft kiss, gentle and unsure even though Jace had previously been exuding the confidence he had in every other aspect of his life. Simon didn't even have a chance to break out of his stony shock before the prince leaned back to look him in the eye. That just wouldn't do, though, and this time Simon reached to curl his hands around Jace's neck and yank him forward, crushing their lips together with a substantial bit more force than the blond had used. It was passionate and raw and desperate and heavy now, the servant's leg curling around the prince's hip as Jace shoved his own between the other boy's to press them closer together. Hands pulled at shirts and the slipped teasingly under, running over taut muscle and freckled skin until Jace was sure they were just one person.
It was the clearing of a throat behind them that broke them apart, though neither moved anything but their heads, and Jace turned to find his brother staring at them with a profoundly disturbed expression. "That," he said coarsely, "was something I never needed to see." And then he spun back around the way he came, presumably to go find his exuberant lover, and left the two boys to entangle themselves together even more.
Perhaps this was not exactly how Jace had pictured things happening when he informed Simon he would never have a chance with his sister, but he had to admit he liked this outcome far better.
*shakes head* I'm so sorry. I hadn't slept in three days when I wrote this and today I was completely whiped out for no reason other than school is exhausting so the editing was basically just me spellchecking and skimming it in two minutes. This is definitely not even close to my best work writing wise, but I do like the idea. Let me know what you thought?