THIS COULD BE MORE
Chapter One: I Never Mentioned Love
"I kissed her. I kissed her but I was thinking about you."
Maia Roberts crosses her arms over her chest, not to be defensive but to ward off the chilly wind that whips through the alley behind Hunter's Moon on the early fall night. "You're confessing to me that you kissed the girl you're in love with? That doesn't make a whole lot of sense."
"You're not listening. I said I was thinking about you."
She sighs and leans against a more or less clean spot on the brick wall. "Thinking about me while kissing her does not necessarily mean you're not in love with her."
Jace Herondale gives her a frazzled look. "Do you want me to say I don't love her, that I'm not in love with her?"
"God, no. That would be lying," Maia replies with a shrug. "I just want you to realize that the two things you mentioned are not connected linearly."
He runs a hand through his blond hair and rolls his eyes. "Fine. They're not linearly connected, though I think it's fair to say you were making the connection more than me. I never mentioned love."
"Fair point," she agrees, because honesty is a good policy. "So you thought about me while you were kissing Clary. You didn't tell her, did you?"
"No." He jumps to sit on a short stack of boxes that held cases of beer. "No, I didn't tell her. Her phone rang and interrupted everything."
Maia chuckles and puts one booted foot on the wall behind her. "Saved by the proverbial bell. Nice." She bites her lip and asks the next question as a fellow woman and as a curious girl. "Do you think she loves you?"
Jace's shoulders hunch before he answers. "I don't know," he murmurs, eyes fixed on his hands. "She desired to kiss me in the Seelie Court but she feels horrible that it hurt Simon. Are you dating SImon?"
Caught off guard by the sudden question, Maia blinks and shakes her heads. "We went on a couple dates but… no. Did he say we are?"
"I don't talk to him about that," he exclaims. "I don't really talk to him. Just… rumors."
She scowls in agreement at the way rumors fly through the Shadow World. "Well, rumors lie. I'm not dating anyone. I don't think I want to date anyone." She doesn't look at him when she says this, not wanting to see if he's about to try and convince her to date him. She isn't sure she could turn him down.
"I'm not asking you that," Jace says quietly.
"So you were thinking bad things about me when you were kissing her?" she says, tilting her head to one side as she watches his strange vulnerability. "Like… by the Angel, she kisses so much better than Maia?"
He laughs because she does, but they both laugh uneasily. "No, it wasn't that. Nothing specific. You were just… on my mind."
Maia smiles in spite of the awkwardness. "I'm okay with that."
"Good."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
"I want to… know you. Get to know you. I never… friends aren't something I…" Jace blows out an impatient breath before plunging forward with his jumble of words. "Alec is my brother, Izzy is my sister and… I've never really known… friends. And I've never met anyone like you."
She blinks, grateful for being able to delay her response until a trio of police cars with sirens blaring goes by and the alley is quiet again. "So you want to, what, be BFFs? Exchange friendship bracelets?"
He expected to be mocked a little and he probably deserves it. "No. I just want to… be friends. By the Angel, I sound like an idiot," he mutters under his breath.
Maia bites her lip to keep from smiling. He's clearly struggling, even more clearly not used to struggling, and definitely determined to get through it. "You don't," she says. "You don't sound like an idiot. Too bad."
Jace laughs because he is relieved she's not laughing at him. "No?"
"No. And, well, okay."
"Okay what?" he asks.
Rolling her eyes, Maia stops biting her lip. "Okay, we can be friends, dumbass. But not by sitting in this alley freezing my ass off. Either our friendship starts tomorrow or we go somewhere warm tonight."
"There's an all-night diner one subway stop away that has the best cheeseburgers and fries," he offers. "And fresh pie right out of the oven."
She stands up from the wall and pivots to face the mouth of the alley. "If this food is as good as you make it sound, we just might have to exchange friendship bracelets before the sun comes up."
The diner is one of those places that has the air of a time capsule. Everything is just a little bit aged, there's a jukebox in the back corner, and the subway tiles on the walls match the black and white checked pattern of the floor. The stools are covered in red vinyl so shiny it squeaks when Maia sits on a stool beside Jace back near the jukebox. "Whoopee cushion effect aside," she says as waitress in a vintage diner uniform of pink dress and white apron gives her a laminated menu, "I'm impressed so far, Herondale. It's not a Shadow place, though, so how'd you find it?"
He shrugs, not looking at the menu. "I get hungry after nighttime patrols and no Downworld place likes to see a Shadowhunter fresh from patrol."
"Fair point," she agrees. "So cheeseburgers and fries are the best?"
"Yep."
She tells the waitress she wants that, and a chocolate milkshake, and Jace copies her order. "I'm impressed you haven't flirted with her."
"I don't flirt with everyone," he says, a little defensively.
"She turned you down?"
"We're not really allowed to date mundies so we mostly try to avoid them."
"But werewolf besties are a-ok?"
Jace grins as he accepts the milkshakes from the waitress, who promises their food will be up a five minutes. "Who said you already achieved bestie status, Roberts?"
She claps her hands to her face in feigned shock. "You can tease! Who know?"
Smirking, he shakes his head as the waitress brings the food.
Maia is thrilled to find out that Jace did not lie about the food on offer. The cheeseburger is cooked just right, the bun is fresh and maybe homemade, and the cheese - Gouda - is gooey and crisp at the same time. The fries are neither too thick or too thin and seasoned just right with salt and pepper. Even before the pie, she knows that she's found a new place to come after full moons when Chinese just won't do the trick.
"Admit it, you doubted me," Jace smirks when she tells him that.
"Maybe a little," she admits. "Downworld says you guys eat unseasoned raw potatoes and plain, cold oatmeal."
"Only when Isabelle cooks," he retorts.
Maia laughs and, as suggested by Jace, orders hot apple pie with cinnamon ice cream for dessert. That's when decides that full moons probably won't be often enough to come to this place. She lets Jace pay, because he picked the place. "But next time, I pay," she warns him.
Jace cuts his eyes to her as the waitress drops the change into his hand. "Next time?"
She rolls her eyes but smiles. "Yeah, next time. You weren't insufferable so we should do this again. I liked it, maybe because we were away from… shadowy things, you know?"
He does know and he accepts the vague promise of next time. Since she let him pay, he takes the chance that she won't punch him for holding the door for her. She doesn't, and she even talks to him about her favorite parts of the city at night, when it's what counts for quiet in a city that never sleeps. So he walks beside her, sharing stories of things he's seen on quiet nights of patrol.
"What do you do on quiet nights?" she asks. "Break into Coney Island and ride the roller coaster?"
"We only did that twice," he says, smiling at the memory. "Alec was out of town, it wasn't a full moon, I think the vampires were on vacation or something so me and Izzy and did that, two nights in a row. It was a fun."
"You don't have fun with Alec?"
"In different ways. He's not really up for going into places that are closed without having a reason, like a demon. We tried to get him to come once, telling him we knew how to stop the roller coaster at the highest point to scan the ocean for demonic activity but, well, he didn't buy it."
Maia laughs easily at this, flicking the collar of her jacket up to protect her neck from the cold wind. "Smart guy."
Jace bristles and shakes his head. "How do you know you can't see demonic activity from the top roller coaster?"
"Because you said you tried to get him to go, not that you got him to go. If it was possible, Alec would know and he would have gone for that reason, illegal trespassing aside." She bumps her shoulder against his when he doesn't respond, which she takes as validation. They walk in silence for a little while, and Maia's stomach starts to knot with nerves as they get closer to Hunter's Moon, where she lives in the apartment directly above the bar. "Jace? Can we talk? Keep talking, I mean. Now."
His brow furrows at her change in tone but he nods. "Sure. Are you okay?"
She bites her lip and unlocks the door to the stairs that lead to her floor and the two floors above it. It's not the first time Jace has been there, they spent most of the night there when he came to unchip her, but he follows two steps behind her until they are inside her apartment. Maia doesn't take off her coat. She walks to the center of the small spaces that doubles as a living room and kitchen and turns to face him. "I'm sorry."
"For what?"
"For… letting tonight be normal, normalish and not telling you right off what I'm telling you now." Her brown eyes are fixed on an undefined spot somewhere over his left shoulder. "I should have told you before."
Jace balls his hands into fists at his sides and watches her warily. "What is, Maia? You can tell me anything."
She squeezes her eyes shut, turns her head so she'll be facing him, and opens them slowly. "I'm pregnant."
Notes: One of my favorite parts of Shadowhunters is the all too brief existence of Jaia as a thing. I had to write about it, to make it last longer. Let me know what you think? Do you love Jaia like I do?
Disclaimer: I own none of this. Just playing with what's already there.