A/N: Thank you for reading this! c: This is my first Jalec fanfiction and I'm shocked at the lack of fandom behind it - I just finished the series and, man, that pairing is practically canon! I had to write something right away. I'm sorry if this is confusing or you dislike this, as it's the first time I've ever tried out this style of writing. I've always admired it but DAMN, it's hard! Never again, man, never again.
I should explain... this is very much a long, pointless drabble. The reason I wrote this in the beginning was to give it a nice, happy ending. But I came to the realization that no matter what happens, no matter what works out - Jace and Alec won't ever have a happy ending. It stung a little but I deal with it. This deals with minor bits of suicide, Jalec, and how their relationship as parabatai makes them unable to function without each other. This is set in a small time gap after City of Bones.
A good song to listen to while reading this is Kings and Queens by 30 Seconds to Mars. Mostly because of the lyrics. Plus, it's epic. (Also, try reading this story with the 'centered' option. Makes it more pleasurable. Ciao!)
Winter came biting at the ankles of autumn with its pale head reared, washed away soiled sins with the icy-white scent of innocence lingering behind like perfume. It crawled unannounced from the crevices of Earth, chilling bones until they shattered like glass and stayed for eternity. It never faded, he noticed with a cigarette pinched tightly between his fingers and thawing away the cold, until you finally let it sink into your skin. Once you let Winter freeze your heart and stop your breath, collapse around your lungs and choke your throat with the burn of frigid arctic air, it would dive away under your feet in a grand escape. Then Spring would arrive, he murmured, with gentle grace and the sweeping of a dancer, stroked your cheek with a long finger, trailed it down the curve of your throat. But for now, he refused to let it into his mindscape and Winter refused to leave, scratching his back with frozen talons and cracking a whip of sharp wind against his ear.
And that was his downfall; his very weakness itself was stubbornness and the inability to pry his rib cage open, let the Winter seep in and make whistling music as it weaved through the hollows of his bones. So he lay with one hand always snaked around a cigarette with the bow of his lips close to the embers and the sheets drawn to the sharp point of his chin, limbs stiffened like a paralyzed corpse. It haunted in the dying corner of the room, smelling sweetly of corrosion and rotting life, stroking the back of his throat and coaxing out bloody coughs, coating his mouth in the acidic aftertaste of tobacco.
dreams came in flashes of copper-colored curls and banished with the words sister and brother and in between the suffering there was always the flash of blue like pale lantern light
An apartment trapped in the confines of concrete and crumbling mortar, decorated with step ladders eaten away with a crust of rust and the shimmering powder of broken windows. Constricted by glass cages of skyscrapers that laced over the poisonous green-grey of milky sky and the foul, pungent tinge of metal in the air that lurked in alleys underneath the window, that was his safe house. Winter's breath squeezed in through the cracks, nibbled on his toes while he shuffled around the house, back arched over in a crippled hunch and the jagged bumps of his spine pressing against the thin blanket curling over his body.
nightmares crept in with messy black hair and sharp edges and frayed sweaters and the sad thing was that during these nightmares he didn't suffer as much as when the dreams came
He looked for the name in the obituary (...passed away February 16th ...) each day with his fingers scraping each pressed letter, ink tracing the ridges of his thumb (...cause of death unknown for now...) and smudged over his wrists, like blurred swirls of runes.
(...suspected suicide by overdose of prescription drugs...)
That's how Alec would kill himself, he was sure. Too delicate for guns and razors and jumping off the glass towers that broke through the paper-thin sky. Pills, just like falling asleep until his breath dripped lethargically and when they came to check on him, the artificial lights flickering on, they wouldn't even notice the curve of his chest stopped heaving with thick air. But the name never showed up and he memorized the mess of letters of the other word ghosts, the ones dead but heart beating inside a mix of pulp and paper. Then there was the realization that perhaps, even though they were parabatai, he was wrong about how strong Alec's heart held up, how high he could lift his chin without his own finger to help coax it up.
"Jace, where are you going? It's midnight."
Day after day, wrapped up in the ripped sheets and frozen in his spot - either by cold or from sheer fear from breaking reality - chain-smoking cigarettes as if he knew how to, but they were clenched too hard in his fingers and he sputtered too much after every hot, tar-coated exhale. New York City sprawled out for him in a mess of gray cinderblocks and smog, green capped trees of Central Park eating the horizon. An apartment with a view (he imagined that he would stand here with him and the ugliness of the city would reflect in the icy ring of his eyes and he laugh about the shitty view but suddenly, when he said it, it sounded like the most beautiful place in the world) of absolutely nothing, unless nothing qualified as rape and murder and everything horrifyingly beautiful about this urban society. Watch the top of heads float by underneath him, skin-toned pin pricks underneath the crumbling embers from the end of his cigarette before turning around when sunset cast everything in a sickly, burning orange glow. Sleep off the weight choking his stomach and wake up with a whole new sickness, retching over his bed with dry, frightened intakes of breath.
"Christ, Alec, I'm just taking a walk. Or are you so attached you can't function for five seconds without clinging onto me?"
His sister (he hated the word he hated her he hated his father he just hated) had her own boyfriend and he was supposed to be happy, smiling horrible smiles that reached the corners of his jaw in morbid, skeletal fashions. She'd told him to find somebody else to love. So he found an apartment and a city and a stale, cold bedroom to love where he could curl up with frozen toes pushed against his thighs on the mattress and erase things he actually loved. Things that ripped his heart, stomped on them, chased after it, longed after it.
...parabatai, closer then brothers...
...what was closer then brothers?...
Beautiful, delicate Alec had crashed into his life in his clumsy fashion, shattering everything sacred then clutching his arms subconsciously, head ducked with murmured apologies. Traces of him smeared faintly on everything he did until the red of Clary's hair erased itself from hauntings during the night, which made him wake up in a sheen of glossy sweat the made the sheets sticky and the darkness in the corners even blacker. Flat blue eyes and messy, inky hair and those frayed sweaters and the very skin he wanted to be out of, that made him so uncomfortable and so easy to love. Congesting his mind in sleep, in smoking, in waiting, in watching. Those were what replaced the red and he was quick, almost too hasty, in saying that Alec's shade of blue filtered over everything.
Everything was blind and winter and Alec's blue.
In February's dragging end, when the snow covered the dirty with white then soiled with city sin, Alec appeared in a swirl of bus exhaust and midnight-blue twilight. A play of the light, he deemed, with his body curled over the railing and sick stomach hunched over, cigarette falling slowly, twisting in battering winds. A mirage, a trick of flickering snowflakes that burned against his skin like the touch of melting heat and when he would close his eyes, stare holes through the pink of eyelids and open them again, Alec wouldn't be there.
deep breaths deep breaths fill your lungs empty them drown in it deep breaths
This figment of imagination. This taunting hallucination. Alec froze, nails digging into the thick wool of its coat, shoulder pushed against the bus stop sign. His tongue danced over the petal pink of its lips, skin flaking at the corners of his mouth before letting out a heaving breath, his sharp collarbones pushing out from the expanse of pale skin peeking out
he could hear every breath underneath the balcony and he pressed his forehead against the wall, mouth hovering over the speaker and waiting to taste Alec's voice
It buzzed, a broken hum like mosquitoes before fading off into blank.
deep breaths deep breaths deep breaths
Finger pushing the button like a trigger.
don't choke don't choke don't choke
There was the hum again, the one of white noise and empty air space and a pair of parabatai cracked in two.
"...Jace?"
it fucking hurts to breathe
"Yeah?"
A stifled cough. "It... it's Alec."
Waves of soundless nothing and he can't bring himself to say anything.
"...you know, your parabatai. Unless, of course, you forgot. That seems to happen a lot."
Frozen laughter, fading into broken, hurt silence. He doesn't want to be forgotten.
"Do you want me to buzz you in?" He can't figure out who's speaking; his sensible mind or those urges to be able to see Alec, shifting back and forth in place, nervous laughs bubbling up like blood, the look of dead light against the creamy skin stretched over his glass bones.
"That'd be..." A shaking sigh. "...that'd be nice."
It's moments like these that, when he presses his back against the wall, sliding down with knees drawn to his chest, breath heaving, that he's glad he's Jace Wayland. Jace Wayland, with the tawny hair and unshakable sense of gluttonous self-indulgence, the confidence that shatters too many people to remember, the remarks that sting and bury themselves under skin. That he can shapeshift, like a Downworlder, into this figure and smash emotions under the heel of his foot, blood dripping across the floor, murdering whatever humanity he has left. It's never tasted as good as this, to blind himself from the world, but when he opens the door and Alec's breath is warm against frigid cold, it's going to hurt like hell to ignore everything in front of him.
deep breaths because as soon as he shuts himself away, it's when he realizes how deeply in love with him and how badly it's going to bruise when it's over
A faint echo from the door, hollow rapping of knuckles that flinched back immediately as if regretting coming up, climbing stairs, attempting to right out his life.
He was supposed to sound unfazed but teeth and tongue tangled together, spitting his words in a mess. "Come o- In... Alec. Just come in."
The door nudged open slightly, a strip of light spreading over with dust dancing in pale sunlight and only now does he realize how bad his apartment looks, damp sheets in coiled masses on the ground like lurking snakes and the floors dotted with wet brown footprints, trailing across like dirty bloodstains. Alec slips in, stomach sucked in, top lip curled up and teeth biting down on the bottom with a look of frazzled distress, like he wants to be here with every whim and every intangible hurting in his heart but this is the last place he ever wants to be.
"You know..." He lets out a wisp of faint sighs from between his teeth, "...you always did take really long walks."
He could run his hands through it, smash the choking tension in the air within the grip of his fist because if it's bad enough that Alec (scowling confused uncomfortable breakable hurt Alec) would try to ease up, make a slight of humor from the corner of his mouth, then it's only going to get worse. It's going to get worse until the point where his lungs are twisted and neither of them can look each other in the eye without the crushing shame that both of them are disgusting creatures of filth and there isn't a thing they can do about it. But he lets out a cough of a laugh anyway, a hacking and ill one backed with the heaviness of tar and the scent of decay. Alec's cheek twitches in a partial-somewhat-maybe look of displeasure-happiness-relief-longing before letting his heel click the door back into the frame and suddenly it's just them and emotions like nooses wrapped around necks threatening to pull.
and then there's the parabatai white noise
Fingers stroking hardwood floors, to keep from jumping across and grasping each other's and holding on like they're drowning. "Isn't four months a long enough walk?"
Faces buried in hands, digging their grave, humid and dense on the supple curve of flesh. "I'll come home when I find myself."
"Jace." Graceful and fluttering with a bitter undertone, like the tinkling of a broken bell. "You can't find yourself if you don't know what you're looking for in the first place."
"I'm trying to figure out why I never get anything I want."
Sharp laughter like the stabbing of knives and Alec is in hysterics, cruel and feverish howling with the muscles in the side of stomach knotting themselves tighter. And it's suddenly apparent that, when Alec has nothing to live up to and nobody to be distressed over, he was a beautiful, dangerous, elusive something.
Tears stain like ink, following the path down his cheek and take a dangerous dive off the tip of his chin. "You never get anything you want? You get everything you've ever wanted. One thing doesn't work out your way and the world is out to get you when you don't even realize how fucking good life is to you."
seductive, passionate, angry, self-destructive creature
"Shut up, Alec. Just shut up. She turned out to be my fucking sister and I loved her. I don't even think you can fucking fathom what I'm feeling right now." Let's grace over the things he's done to you and he doesn't even know it. Suddenly, it's not about dreams flashing with red hair and supple curves of petite sisters you're not allowed to have but with murky images swimming with cameo features and a smile snapped in half and the water was turning that shade of blue again.
Alec's teeth dig into the soft flesh of his tongue, sour saliva curdling in his mouth and it's times like these that he's glad he isn't Jace Wayland and that he, in turn, has learned to drink up each dizzying shot of frustrating disappointment. "I think I understand. I understand not being able to love somebody. To watch somebody lust over a person they're never going to be able to have and you're waiting for them to notice but they won't. At least she only turned out to be your sister and I turned out like this, like this thing and I can't fix that as much as she can't fix being related to you."
Mental warfare, battling sharp-tipped gazes with each other. "So, Jace, I think I fucking fathom what you're saying."
He's leaning too close now, back arched in a gentle swoop of a curve, each bone pushing through the thin membrane of skin stretched across. "But do you fathom what I'm saying?"
horrible divine alluring enchanting scandalous hideous little siren, calling to him with the flushed bow of his lips and unnerving blue eyes like the milky azure of opals and when he opens his mouth, he sings nothing but parabatai white noise that stings like dirty needles on pure skin and there's only one way to shut him up
Mouths meshed against each other, sharing those taboo kisses and his tongue burns against Alec's because it's wrong and unholy and the only thing worse he could do is to kiss his own sister. It's too warm to breathe so he keeps pushing himself on to make up for the lost oxygen and suddenly, Alec feels much too small and he can just snap him in half and he's going to break him into tiny china pieces, scatter him across the ground. Smash him until he's reduced to nothing and won't even make his throat catch itself in a gasp with tight, squeezing hands because he's learned to stop feeling anymore. But the minute Alec's fingers brush over the twisting muscles lean in his neck, trailing down his chest (how had his shirt come off, thrown into nowhere and he wasn't sure he really wanted to find it again because the way each finger pressed was made his head numb and his breathing into rugged gasps) was the second he held his wrists, ran his thumbs over the rivers and currents of ice-colored veins, pushed up against ivory skin.
"What are you doing?" Alec writhes in his grip (he doesn't remember how he got situated in his lap but all he knows is that if his mouth brushes any closer against the crook of his neck and his tongue is drawing runes on his collarbones, Alec will be stumbling over the fine line between fooling around and being stripped of all innocence) before everything goes slack and time itself seems to slip the weight off their shoulders, the city outside dead and in ruins, coated in sticky, dripping silence. "What are WE doing?"
Through frayed pieces of sweater and layers of protection he's built up (but the mortar is crumbling and he'll be pushing himself apart, brick by brick and he's going to be the one that builds up each piece until he's back to this wispy, unstable structure), he can see patches of skin like puddles of cream stretched over the expanse of murky fabric and suddenly, he doesn't want peeks of little patches, he wants to see everything and trace the map of lean muscle and curved stomach and feminine hips. Fingers wrapped around the hem (Alec holds his breath and tenses and when he opens his eyes, he's fucking freezing and the sweater is off in Wonderland with his shirt in a disappearing act of magic) and they tug, like he's taking this biggest leap of his life with his face scrunched in anticipation and when everything is off that needs to be off, they're allowed to look but not touch.
"We're doing what I want to." When he flicks the words out, it's not selfish; it's just Jace Wayland resurfacing and the only sign they've seen of him in months, bobbing in choppy waters and clinging to whatever keeps his head up, swallowing mouthfuls of bitter ocean. "You see, I'm trying to go for a world record in incest. Thought I'd fall in love with my sister and then when that didn't work out, I moved onto my brother."
Cherry-red lips stained with sin and laced with thick stitches of anxiety coil into a disgusted half-smile. "We're figurative brothers. You're making it sound like a crime."
"In our society," He lifts the hair from his face, kisses those lips and tastes everything wrong with him, every last flaw and savors it, "it is a crime."
pushed up against the sheets and the first button of his jeans are undone with a fine line of hair riding up the smooth plain of stomach, lifting and falling, while his fingers linger too closely, too long near the sharp twists of bony hips
"I'm going to hurt you, Alec." And Alec doesn't understand because he knows he's delicate and breakable and slowly dripping apart till he falls through the cracks of Jace's fingers, but he built taller then that and refuses to slip away like gentle wisps of smoke.
"We're parabatai. We're synched perfectly to each other."
"That's for fighting."
Alec pushes fingers through tufts of Jace's hair, forcing him back under the waves and drowns him, loses him in the current and takes breath away with a forceful tangle of lips.
"Love is just like fighting, but it hurts much more."
Months and weeks, rolling into one until they're a creamy blur like abstract paints, collected of bodies pushed against walls and mouths clashing, burning like spitfire and he's back, with those half-smirks and off-handed comments that sting like the backside of his hand. Going to sleep in the morning, limbs tangled and tying themselves over another, washed out in a stream of murky, cream-colored light and waking up covered heavy, smothering blankets of crisp twilight, hands running through hair and exhausted lips meekly fighting each other.
It had taken little coaxing (just shifted the sweater off his shoulder slightly, tongue smoothing over the tips of his teeth, hands coddling his cheek and a smile, needled with lust, slipping over his jaw and Jace dripped apart for him) to convince him to slip back into the Institute, quiet and padding along like Church, averting eyes from the scarlet flashes of red hair ("I just want to talk," she said, "I just want to snap you and break you and crush the only piece of mortality you have left, that you've let Alec care for. I want you to crumble.") and avoiding questions like they were bullets, splintering against his chest and burying themselves in the soft, peeling flesh of his outer core.
When the sun buried itself beneath the buildings, rolling itself in blankets of glass-blown clouds streaked with heavy salmons and licked with blinding orange flames, it let the creatures of night come out. They were no better then the demons, him with his heavy steps through the hallway, slinking into the room with the sheets shifting and making room and Alec with his bare chest, closing his eyes and when he opened them, he would be there. Bathed in celestial silver from open windows, cool breeze kissing each pore on his face, his fingers tracing each pale rune on Alec's paper skin and forehead pushed against the crook of his neck.
"You're beautiful, you know." And it's perfect the way he says it because he's Jace Wayland and describing Alec has become like poetry, built up with unstable and simple sentences, and beautiful is the only word that begins to skim the glass surface.
Alec dips his head back, laboring his breaths slowly because he feels his lips moving lower, gracing his navel with the pressure of feathers brushing stark, moonlit skin. "We always look our most beautiful when we have nobody to look beautiful for."
And it's moments like these when he forgets everything about being Jace Wayland. When the words write themselves in faint scratches across his closed eyed vision and he forgets that Isabelle is in the next room, thinking Alec is having night fits and that Clary is down the hallway, busying herself with trying to dilute her thoughts (you're not supposed to think about your brother that way and she hopes he's worrying himself about the same thing) and the fact that everything Alec says is an articulate twist of words. Nothing else to describe them because if he tried to, each word would fall like lead through water and he realizes he has to let it soak into his skin whenever Alec's voice spills out because each memory preserved of his unblemished words will never live up to that moment. The moment when they bubble up and he checks himself to make sure he heard correctly and when he looks over at Alec, he's got a smile like he's mourning the dead and it's as if it never happened.
"When I had the apartment, I would look outside and I would think and I would see the jumpers ready to dive into the arms of Death. And I thought you killed yourself."
Palms pressing Alec tighter against the sheets. "I can function without you. I can live once this is all over and you realize that it's your sister you want and I can lick my wounds and I'll be shattered like glass into nothing more then dust. But, dammit, Jace, I'm not going to kill myself. I'm stronger. I don't need you."
"It was with pills. You would do it with pills because you wouldn't be able to see your blood splattered everywhere."
Alec's own delicate fingers struggle to push back. "Stop it, Jace. Just stop it."
"I got the apartment because I wanted to run away from Clary and the Lightwoods and my parabatai. I wanted to waste away when winter came but when you can see the skeleton of the city in winter, you think of Death." He's whispering it, chanting it like a mantra and he could snap Alec's struggling wrists underneath his hands. "And then I realized I was running from you. And you consumed me; my thoughts, my imagination, every single breath. You've ruined me. All I want to do is go back to when it was summer and I was in love with the color red and not your ugly, staining blue."
Uncaged, broken free, wrists slipping through like water and he pushes him off, knees pulled to his chest.
"Stop it! I said stop it!" And just like that, the barrier shatters and the dam breaks and everything snaps under the pressure. He picks himself off the ground, nursing his own ego and trying to capture the image of Alec, chapped lips and naked skin and sheets covering all the teasing parts and the flush of a boy betrayed. The magic is gone, like the sharp explosion of fingers snapping, and the watercolor picture swirls away with the water, melting in pale, translucent rivers.
He won't cry, he swears himself and swears to the Angel. "Stop it. Stop all of it. Stop everything and leave and when I wake up, you will be making moves on your sister and mouthing off to me and Isabelle will stop having to check up on me in the night to see why I'm screaming and I'll be screaming because of nightmares this time. And you'll marry a pretty girl and I'll lurk underneath the uncomfortable itch of my own skin and try to function. But I'm going to live. So stop having your fantasies about me taking my pills and we're going to stop. Winter is over and everything is melting now."
Winter is over and everything is melting now. It makes sense now because he realizes with each word he's spit out has burned his throat and it's not the pain of realism, it's the acceptance of Winter. He's let Alec and Winter burrow in and close their eyes and make home and just when everything is aligned like clean lines, he knows what happens when you let Winter in. You lose everything built up of snow and thoughts of suicide and a beautiful, haunting boy and fingertips stained that blue and kisses that burn more with cold taboo then actual passion. Now everything will melt away, showing spotted peeks of Clary's red against the grass and this time, the taboo won't be kisses from brother to brother but from brother to sister and it will all be alright again, with a parabatai that fights instead of seduces. Maybe when Autumn fades and Winter blooms into view again with its blinding whites, the cycle will start again in a dead apartment with no heat. It will start with a boy who checks with the newspaper each day, hoping but not wanting to see a name in the obituary (a boy who loved him enough to swallow each pill like it was going to melt away sweet on his tongue with the tang of the fact that he can't have Jace Wayland) and the same boy with his floral voice stumbling blunt words through the speakers and a whole Winter being alive with each other as opposed to the dead of everything else, darkened in their own pure contrast. Kissing and fighting and knotting themselves up tightly until the only way to free themselves is to cut the rope in half.
And then Spring would dance in and it would all explode again, dragging Summer afterwards and then Autumn again, Winter bringing up the back of the train. A destructive circle made of every deadly sin and if there's a Hell, he's going straight there.
But in this moment, he's concerned about the now. He doesn't care about the next morning or the next month, the next year, the next decade. He only cares about when he turns his head over his shoulder, hands closing the door behind him (reality or metaphor, it doesn't matter anymore, but the door is shutting for the last time and it's staying shut) and the look of Alec. Made of marble and decorated with crystal, from the ones collected at the corners of his eyes and curling down his jaw, down the liquid muscles of his neck. In that moment of now, Alec was finished and absolutely perfect with his stomach sucked in to sob and in a second, he will crumble into cries that scrape against the walls of the room like a creature scratching to get out until its nails crust with blood, and then the flawless illusion would break like a splintered mirror.
The breeze had turned warm, salty and humid with its ugly undertones of soil and it was the disgustingly delicious perfume of Spring, who had interrupted his view. Just like that, she had swept the Winter out and the mirage was broken. Alec had the sheets pulled up, wiry limbs trembling and he's chanting (don't cry anymore don't cry anymore you are better then this).
we're parabatai, closer then brothers; what's closer then brothers?
filthy, disgusting, oh-so-human, sinister lovers. that's what.
Jace shuts the door behind him and the whole world falls dead.
...and the only sound left is parabatai white noise.
A/N:
GEEZ, YOU MADE IT TO THE END WITHOUT GETTING BORED AND CLICKING OUT?
I, my friend, applaud you. Thank you AGAIN for reading this. I love all of you so much, so a big thank you to reviewers, to favoriters, to just plain read-and-runners. It doesn't matter if I know you read it, I just appreciate you doing it anyway.
Any reviews, either they be long or just "cool", are loved and jumped upon with lots of happiness. Also, if you favorited it, a big thank you to you too.
Much love!