This one didn't quite go as I planned. Hope you guys still find it okay?
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters or the title, which comes from Enchanted by Taylor Swift.
Jace Herondale had been thrust into the spotlight nearly three years ago, at the age of nineteen, when he had won a popular television contest.
With his floppy hair and charming smirk and smooth voice and sparkling eyes, he was a hit with the tweens when he had first broken into the singing world, and he became an instant heart throb.
His songs went flying to the top of the charts, his first album going triple platinum. Then his second album came out, featuring a couple of other hot artists, and those songs did even better, staying at the tops of the charts for months and the album going six times platinum in four countries. His music videos were getting millions of hits and he could barely go out in public without being swarmed.
Despite all this, though, Jace didn't feel as though he was living the life he was meant to.
He didn't feel as confident as he knew he should, and he definitely knew that he wasn't enjoying things as much as he could be.
He was living a life that many people could only dream about, but he was so worried about making a wrong step and having it plastered all over the tabloids, or doing something that the public didn't like and being crucified. He never used to be so worried about other peoples opinion, but then again, he had never before had so much to lose before. If he was being honest, he really missed having a normal part of his life, and he really missed just going out and letting loose.
"Ten minutes!" Came a shout from the stage manager who had been running around for the past hour as though this wasn't a job he had done a hundred times before. Jace let out a sigh, rolling his shoulders and trying to ignore the craziness that was going on around him. This was the last night of the Downworlder tour and even though he loved touring and he loved the concerts and the rush that he got from them, he was ready to have a break. He was looking forward to being in one place for longer than three days and being able to have lazy nights in.
Tonight was going to be a bit different though, because he had a special guest coming in. They had collaborated on a song and there was even a music video that they had filmed and had dropped two weeks ago, but he still hadn't actually met her. The beauties of technology made it look as though they were together in the video, but in reality, they had only spoken on the phone and via text.
Clarissa Morgenstern.
Her parents were both popstars in their own right and so she had been in this life for as long as she had been alive. When she was thirteen, she had featured a lot on a reality series with her older brother and other children of popular singers, and when she was sixteen, she had dropped her first album. It hadn't been great, because it seemed as though her producers were trying to make her sound too much like her parents. But her voice was deeper, rougher, and her second album that came out at eighteen was a lot better received, a lot truer to herself, more rock than pop.
She was in the media a lot—nothing too crazy; smoking weed at festivals, getting crazy piercings and showing them off, pulling the fingers at paparazzi who were following her, performing while hungover...Jace was a bit jealous.
She made it seem easy, like she could just do what she wanted, live the way she wanted, and still have chart topping songs and a wildly loyal fan base.
Jace just didn't feel like that.
He had seen others shoot to fame, around the same time as him or just before, and he saw them do everything right and then trip up just once or twice and then everything came crashing down around them. And he had come from a life where his father had left his mother and himself struggling when he was fourteen, and his mother had worked two jobs to make sure he could still take singing lessons and get driven to his gigs around town. She had loved him and adored him, and last year she had died in a car accident, and the last thing Jace could imagine doing is letting her down after she was gone.
But things just felt...Strained.
He wasn't having fun.
Sometimes things felt good and he laughed, but that was always when he was on stage. Singing his music, playing his guitar, listening to people sing along with the lyrics that he had written...Other times, though, when he was sitting in his apartment, or hiding his face as he ran from the gym to his car, or eating take out for the hundredth time alone on the balcony of his apartment...He wasn't happy.
He felt alone and sort of like he was trapped.
"And you're on!" The stage manager shouted and Jace pressed the ear plugs into his ears, helping to muffle the screams around him as he ran onto the stage and also to play the backing track for him. The lights were blinding and even with the ear plugs, he could barely hear himself think as his first song kicked off as he reached the microphone.
Things were going normal, and Jace felt his blood pumping, just like it always did when he was on stage. He played his way through the first set of songs, before he ran off stage to manage to take a short break. When he got back onto the stage, he would do one song, and then start the first verse—his verse—of Shewolf, his song with Clary, and then she would come in. She wasn't actually meant to come by, but her team had called his team just a few days ago, and said that she had come back into the city a few days ago and she would be happy to drop by.
Jace was fucking nervous.
And it was obvious when he went back onto the stage and performed his next song. When he picked up his bottle of water at the end of the song, and he turned back to look at his band, Alexander Lightwood was standing in the back, behind the drummer, and he arched an eyebrow at him. Isabelle Lightwood, his cousin and Alec's sister, was his personal assistant, and Alec was a photographer, who often came with him on his tours and to his concerts.
Which meant that Alec knew when Jace's performance was off.
Jace took in a deep breath, tossing his water bottle toward the side of the stage and then turning around to face the crowd. The bright lights that were shining up at him from the front of the stage dimmed a little, so that he could see past them, could see the thousands of people in the stadium, on the ground in front of him, and then in the stands on either side. He tapped his finger against the the base of the microphone.
"So..." he spoke softly, although his voice was projected throughout the stadium. "This next song is one that I sung with a woman who..." he let out a chuckle, pausing for a moment at what he was about to say next. What he was about to say had been published in a few magazines and spoken about on talk shows, but it was the first time he was blatantly going to say it in front of an audience.
And the woman herself, since she must be backstage by now.
"She was the first celebrity crush that I ever had," he admitted and there was a huge cheer that went up as they realized what was happening, what song Jace was talking about. "And singing with her had always been a far fetched dream...And then a few months ago, it came true." The lights dimmed for a moment, and Jace was in darkness, screams going up from the audience that would probably deafened him if he didn't have plugs in his ears. He heard the electric guitar begin and then a few bars in, he began singing.
He was glad that his voice wasn't shaky.
He got through the first verse, and began on the bridge, and then he heard her voice mingling together with his.
"And I see her eyes, fire burning over her skin..."
"And I meet his eyes, fire burning up my skin..." Clary's voice joined together with his own and the roar from the audience was insane. Jace could feel a grin spread across his face as the lights all came on, just as Clary stepped out from the curtains to the left. She was so small in person, but her presence was incredible, Jace could feel it washing over him as they began a slow walk toward the centre of the stage, toward each other.
They reached each other, just as the drums crashed in on the chorus, and Clary's voice was so powerful, flowing out of her petite frame, and she challenged him to push his voice, meeting her vocals.
Jace was pretty sure it was the best he had ever sung.
When the song came to an end, Clary let out a laugh that echoed through the microphone as she pulled it away from her mouth and threw an arm around Jace. Jace was taken aback by the familiarity she treated him with, especially since none of this was scripted, they had just been walking and circling each other as they sung.
"You're fucking brilliant!" Clary shouted into his ear over the sound of the claps and cheers from their audience. Jace wasn't sure what to say as she pulled back, then she leaned in and smacked a kiss against his cheek, which earned whistles and screams from the crowd, before she was waving at the audience and skipping off stage. Jace watched her go, completely understanding the craziness that was going on in the crowd because he was still taken aback that he had just performed with her.
It took a few moments for him to recover, and he thanked her multiple times into the microphone, cheers and screams coming from the crowd, and he pushed on with his next song, hoping that his heart rate would slow down at some point.
It didn't.
And then it just got crazier when he ran off stage after the show but before his encore, and he realized that Clary was still there.
Obviously not for long, because she wasn't in the jeans and leather jacket that she had been in before when she was on stage, she was in this ridiculously tight and ridiculously sparkly dress which showed off her legs and cleavage. She looked up from her phone when she saw him come back stage, and there was a wide grin on her face as she waved him over. Jace was sweating from the dancing and singing and from the heat of the stage lights, and even though he knew that she would completely understand, he did feel a little self conscious as he walked up to her, wiping a hand through his shaggy hair which was a little damp from sweat and from the water that had been splashing around in his last song, the lead up to the big finale.
"We need to hang out properly," Clary told him with a wide grin. The wardrobe ladies were running around him, stripping him out of the wet shirt and tossing it away, and Clary unabashedly let her eyes wander over his chiseled torso. "We need to break you out of this cookie cutter mold that the world seems to think you fit in," she grinned as a dark coloured shirt was pulled over his head, the sleeves ripped off. "Because we both know that we could have so much fun together," she winked at him and Jace's eyes widened.
"Jace!" The stage manager called urgently, and Jace could hear the screams for 'encore' getting louder and louder.
"I know you need to get back—and I need to get out of here, I've got a friend's club opening," she waved a hand down at her outfit. "But I've given my number to the gorgeous one in the amazing shoes—" she jerked her head backwards, and Jace saw Isabelle waving her phone in the air, looking starstruck, and he couldn't help but look down at the jeweled booties that she was wearing. "So...Text me. Yeah?"
It was phrased as a question but they both knew it wasn't.
He was going to text her.
"Yeah," Jace nodded, and his heart was beating crazy fast in his chest, and he couldn't help but dwell on the fact that Clary had waited around for him. Forty-five minutes she had waited backstage, when she undoubtedly had a hundred better places to be, including a club opening which seemed exactly like something she would enjoy a whole lot more.
He was going to overthink that later.
"I will," Jace cleared his throat and let out a heavy breath through his nose.
"I look forward to it...Lover Boy," she smirked teasingly up at him, so obviously she had heard about the little crush comment he had made. Jace blushed, but he smiled back at her as she wiggled her fingers at her and then skipped off, a tall, dark haired man following after her, probably her bodyguard.
Jace stared for a few moments longer, even after she was out of sight, and there was a teasing whistle from Isabelle before the stage manager was yelling again, along with his agent, telling him he needed to get back on stage.
He did.
But first he needed to take a minute, because his breath was still stolen by the red haired beauty who had winked at him.
Let me know what you think x