Author's Note: Loosely inspired by the movie 16 Candles. Leave a review if you like :)
What I want, you got
And it might be hard to handle
But like the flame that burns the candle
The candle feeds the flame
-"You Make My Dreams" by Hall & Oates
Really, she should've known the day would turn out terrible. After all, days don't usually go so well when they start with you waking up with abundant amounts of hair sticking up in different directions and the distinct feeling that something has died in your mouth. Leave it to Clary Fray to remain hopeful that her sixteenth birthday wouldn't turn out like that disturbing cake Izzy had attempted to bake her last year, all soggy and sad, lying limp in the pan like one of those underwater sponges.
That's what her sixteenth birthday had been. A soggy, underwater sponge cake.
Clary sighed loudly, disturbing a ginger curl in front of her face. Birthdays were never all that fun for Clary anyway. They just happened to be especially not fun when your parents forgot them. Or when you spend the majority of 1st period sitting in a stall, painted a grotesque chartreuse, staring at the wall and trying not to sob because wow, they forgot, and that sucks.
And there she was, sitting in English thinking about how depressing her life was like some gloom-trodden emo, while arguably the most attractive male in the school sat behind her, tapping his fingers and staring at the wall.
Jace Herondale would probably never notice her, and she'd really accepted that fact a while ago, but it just seemed so much worse in the new light that no one else apparently noticed her either. Even her parents.
Another defeated sigh came from her mouth and Isabelle Lightwood turned to stare at her, black eyes narrowing in an accusation.
"Clary," she hissed quietly, leaning toward her friend's desk. "Stop with the sighing. It's fucking depressing. And annoying."
Clary turned to Izzy, mumbling, "Sorry, long morning I guess."
She sighed.
Izzy rolled her eyes good naturedly. "Here," she thrust a battered sheet of notebook paper in Clary's direction. "This'll cheer you up." Isabelle winked.
Clary looked upon the wrinkled paper with hesitancy. The words Sex Quiz were scribbled hastily at the top of the paper, and following this original name were several personal questions.
She turned toward her friend. "I'm not filling this out. It's ridiculous."
Isabelle grinned, revealing perfectly straight teeth. Sometimes Izzy was so perfect it was frustrating to be around her. If one spent all their time with a leggy, dark-haired beauty while resembling a gnome more closely than a human, it was difficult to forget one's status as aforementioned gnome.
"It's for your amusement, dumbass. I mean, who made this? What is this, the 80s? Dear God."
Clary wrinkled her nose as she came across the poetically phrased, Have you ever done it in the ass? Would you do it in the ass if you could?
"It's very classy."
Isabelle snorted. She flipped some of her long black hair behind her and many a teenage boy looked up to stare. "'Bout as classy as doggy style."
At this point in their friendship, Clary had pretty much learned to ignore Izzy's crude observations and unnecessary comments. However, seeing as this particular observation was said in anything but a whisper, she looked about the class, attempting to discern if anyone had heard Isabelle's comment, when a pair of gold eyes found her green ones. She stared.
Jace Herondale was a bit of a catch. It was the general consensus from most of the Institute that not only did he have a "rockin bod" as Eric would say, but one sexy pair of eyeballs, which not all people could boast.
But Clary could absolutely put to rest any rumors that they weren't quite as mesmerizing in person because at that moment, they were trained on her.
His lip twitched upward into a lazy smirk as he stared at her unabashedly from four seats away while she blinked slowly, trying to grasp that Jace Herondale was staring at her and she was staring at him and they were having an odd moment of intense eye contact and honesty, it was kind of erotic.
Clary felt her cheeks heating up, his smirk only intensifying, and she abruptly turned away from him, blushing furiously and feeling somewhat annoyed that he had looked so smug. She chanced a quick glance back at him and he lifted one hand in a little wave, his smirk now a full blown grin.
She wrenched her entire body back around to stare at the whiteboard at the front of the class with growing horror.
"Clary." Isabelle narrowed her eyes. "Please tell me you weren't just making sexual eye contact with my cousin."
"No," she hissed. "No—gah—that wasn't sexual eye contact. That was—I dunno—he was just staring at me, like I'm some sort of seal-human mutation, but also kind of like he wanted to eat me? Does that make sense?"
Izzy turned around to glare at her cousin, who was grinning and looking far too pleased with himself, before looking at an extraordinarily pink Clary once more.
"You guys made weird sexual eye contact. Just admit it—oh my God, you don't still have a crush on him, do you? That was middle school, babe, you don't want to go down that path. Trust me."
"Isabelle shut up!"
Thankfully for Clary, the bell rang and she had time to wrench her and her traitorous friend into the hallway where no one could hear her sad pity story about being into a guy who was pretty much sex on legs, while she hobbled about with her gnarled gnome feet.
"Yes," she whispered adamantly as she tugged Isabelle down the hallway, which must have looked quite comical considering their vast height difference. "I'm completely over that small, um, infatuation. In fact, I wouldn't even call it that because I liked him for about five seconds before he opened his stupid mouth and ruined it with that joke about Simon, and you know how I get about Simon. How could I like him after that?"
How indeed?
Clary was hardly fooling herself with her bizarre rant about how much she did not care about Jace Herondale. At all.
But she really did, so much so it was kind of embarrassing. Alas, this was something she had sworn she would keep under wraps because he was still kind of a tool and it would crush Simon to know that all their talk of publicly embarrassing him and videotaping it was just Clary covering her sorry ass.
In reality, Clary thought Jace was sweet. Through all the sarcasm and dry humor, there was a kind boy who had stood by Alec's side when he came out as gay, offered her his bus money when she'd been short after staying late for an art class that ended the same time as his soccer practice.
Jace Herondale was sweet, and despite unnecessary comments aimed at Simon's band—who, if she was being honest, probably needed a little work—Clary was smitten.
"So you don't mind that he's slutting up a storm with Aline Penhallow?"
"He is?"
"I knew it! You're still into him! And of course he's not, she's lesbian, Clary, get with the times."
Clary flushed. "Oh… right."
They had reached their lockers and Clary was quickly realizing that it would be harder to convince Isabelle of her indifference than initially expected. Not that it would be the end of the world if she knew of Clary's… fondness for her cousin, just that they were close and if Isabelle knew than that meant that Jace would know within the hour. At this point, that was probably the worst thing she could think of.
"Isabelle, seriously, I don't like him."
Isabelle quirked a beautifully shaped black eyebrow displaying her obvious disbelief, and Clary was just a little jealous because she'd never been able to raise one eyebrow. In fact, she couldn't even wink.
"I like someone else." Feeling desperate, her eyes traveled down the hallway toward a group of lacrosse players. None of them were really bad looking, especially the guy leaning against the locker, black hair in a nice quaff, classically handsome. Really he wasn't half-bad. "That guy," she said pointing at said lacrosse player. His name was on the tip of her tongue, what was it again? Something to do with The Little Mermaid?
"Sebastian Verlac?" Isabelle asked, swiveling to look at the boy.
"Yes!" Clary exclaimed, but then schooled her expression, trying to look as if she had already known this. "He's got the nicest—clavicles."
This wrenched Isabelle's gaze from Sebastian, who she was currently unabashedly checking out. "Bet he's got a nice dick too."
Clary's cheeks matched her hair. "That's not why I like him!" However, considering she'd never talked to the guy, she didn't know why else she would. "He's… sensitive," she croaked.
Isabelle's eyebrows were up into her hairline, staring at her friend as if she'd just expressed her desire to become a professional stripper clown. "Sebastian Verlac is sensitive? Clary, have you met the guy? He's a douche."
Both of them were now looking at him, perhaps a little too obviously because the object of their gaze soon saw them— or more specifically, saw Clary. He smirked at her, and Clary could very clearly see what Isabelle had been talking about. He looked arrogant, probably because he was handsome enough to know he was handsome but not quite smart enough to realize the whole world didn't need to know it too.
He caught her eye, and she was surprised to find his eyes were black, weirdly reminding her of a bottomless pit and she was suddenly beyond creeped out. Clary was quick to look away, but not before receiving a smirk as he raised his eyebrows knowingly.
"He's looking over here, Clary!" Isabelle exclaimed, tugging at Clary's elbow while she flashed a dazzling smile at Verlac to make up or Clary's lack of enthusiasm.
"Yay," she said, trying to sound enthused.
It wasn't that he was unattractive, quite the opposite actually, but more so that he gave off a generally creepy vibe. He also had beef with Jonathan that she'd only just remembered. It was probably just lacrosse drama, but Jon had said he had a dark sense of humor and insisted she shouldn't hang out with him.
Sebastian was making his way over to them, and very much not wanting to talk to him, Clary grabbed at Isabelle's arm.
"Isabelle," she hissed, searching for an escape route. "I've changed my mind. His clavicles aren't that nice."
"But you just said—"
Clary tugged them down the hallway, heart racing because this guy was weird and she needed to remove herself ASAP and then suddenly—ooph. She had collided into something solid, but very warm. Two hands came to rest on her shoulders and they pulled her back slightly. Before she knew it, she was looking into pools of gold.
"Hey, didn't see you there."
Jace was smiling at her, but in a different way from their eye contact from that morning. He wasn't smirking as he had been earlier, but he was smiling in a pleasant way, like he couldn't be happier to see her.
"Yeah—um, I should've been watching where I was going. Sorry." Her voice sounded painfully awkward to her own ears, but he didn't look like he minded.
His smile widened. "Don't worry about it."
He was even nicer to look at up close. Everything about him seemed sharper when she was so near his face and it made her breath hitch in a stupid sort of way. His eyelashes seemed longer when he blinked at her, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he smiled. If she was just a little bit closer, she would be able to lean her head against his collarbone and touch the skin that peeked out from the edge of his black t-shirt and—
"Yeah, well, maybe I need to worry about it because you almost killed us. So, thanks for that," an annoyed voice said from her right, and Clary was reminded that they weren't alone in this hallway. Isabelle stood next to her, arms crossed, glaring at Jace and tapping her foot impatiently.
Jace grinned, his smile turning from sweet to arrogant. He dropped his hands from Clary's shoulders, but stayed just close enough to stir her hair with his breath when he said, "Sorry Izzy, I just can't keep the ladies away. They want me."
Clary's eyebrows puckered as she frowned. He sounded both arrogant and presumptuous, and feeling quite done with male ego, she snapped, "I didn't run into you because I 'want you.' I ran into you on accident, just like I said earlier."
He looked smug, and huh, she was just realizing that was his natural facial expression. "Likely story, Ginger."
Her frown deepened and she was probably making her angry frog expression, as Simon called it, but she didn't really care. "Listen here, buddy," she said, jabbing a finger into his chest. "I don't make a habit of bumping into random people—on purpose—simply to grab their attention. I have a better way to do that. It's this new thing called 'language.' You know, words. Maybe you should try it some time."
Looking both shocked and delighted at her response, Jace put his hands up in mock surrender. "I didn't mean any offense. It's just that, given your size, I assumed most people of a normal height might have trouble hearing these 'words.'"
Izzy, grinning, muttered to herself, "Low blow."
Clary scowled, both at Jace and her friend's terrible pun. "I suppose you would know. Is it hard fitting under doorways with that large head of yours?"
His eyes were growing darker, his expression smug and sexy. He tilted his head in her direction, voice pitched down an octave. It made her throat feel dry and her cheeks heat up. "Well, you know what they say about guys with big heads—or is that big hands?"
"I suppose you wouldn't know."
"Wanna find out?"
"Maybe I do."
"Maybe you should."
Her voice hitched in her throat. "Fine."
Jace wasn't smiling anymore, his mouth parted as he breathed in sharply. "Fine."
Isabelle, looking slightly nauseated and annoyed at having been so clearly forgotten, grabbed Clary's arm and began to steer her away from the conversation. "Clary is suddenly ill," Isabelle said in a bored tone. "We'll just be on our way. Bye-bye Jace."
Jace, eyes still gleaming in the aftermath of their sexually charged verbal tennis match, smirked. "That's alright, I was just leaving anyhow. Gotta hit the books and all that." He reached out to brush a strand of red hair behind Clary's ear, who was still glowing red with anger and embarrassment.
"This was fun, Ginger," he breathed, leaning in just a little too close. "Get better soon."
He was off in the next second, walking with a kind of casual arrogance towards the exit at the end of the building.
As if waking from a dream, Clary shook her head back and forth a little. She felt both dirty and vaguely turned on, and in this haze of confusion, turned to Isabelle to ask, "What was that?" She stared at the wall, seemingly dumbfounded. "Did he just come onto me?"
Shaking her head in disbelief, Isabelle grabbed Clary's hand and proceeded to march in the opposite direction that Jace had gone in.
"If you two start fucking, I swear to God—"
Huh. Maybe birthday wishes did come true.