AN: Not sure what inspired these, but if you like TMI or TID or TDA, check out my other fanfic Three Moments.
1. Artistic License (Clary)
When her mind begins to drift, Clary sees the people around her as paintings. Not just colours, but in different textures and styles. Alec would be an impressionist watercolour painting. Monet would paint his eyes. Isabelle would be something sharp and devastatingly beautiful, William Holman Hunt's Isabella and the Pot of Basil. Simon – she can't imagine Simon as a painting; she sees him in her sketchbooks, five years old, before she learned about the different styles of art, when she made him pose for her by the window when all he wanted to was to play cards. Her mother would be a Rembrandt painting, classical and blurred around the edges. And Jace… Jace would be something too beautiful to capture. Stained glass in a gothic cathedral, catching the first rays of sun or the last light of a sunset. Clary can't capture them the way she would like to, but sometimes Alec's eyes look like the ocean, Isabelle's lips are cadmium red, Simon is made of inconsistently wide or thin lines, and Jace is always edged with golden fire.
2. Experimenting (Isabelle/Jace)
Isabelle's lips press against his with a bruising force, but Jace does not pull back until his lungs burn for air. When he does, the expression on her face mirrors his own. Discomfort, amusement, and a silent agreement to never try it again.
She's my sister, he thinks. It was foolish for them to think they'd be anything but siblings to one another.
He won't appreciate the irony of the statement for some time.
3. Where is my mind? (Alec/Jace)
Imparting tenderness has never been a specialty of Jace's. Clary… Clary draws it from him naturally. Alec and Isabelle have been trying to see if he was capable of sympathy for as long as they've known him. When Alec waits outside the library of the Institute, to speak to Maryse and Robert in private for the first time since they were in Idris, since they saw him kissing Magnus in front of a mass of Shadowhunters, Jace is prepared to offer a piece of half-hearted sarcastic and continue on past. But Alec's face is so pale it looks like white paint, his hands twitch by his sides. In a rare moment in which the parabatai rune burns his collarbone and Alec's eyes are looking at him with the same terror as when they he was 10 years old, Jace briefly embraces Alec. Alec quickly snakes his arms around Jace before his parabatai can pull away. When Jace pulls away, Alec's parabatai rune beats like a second heart. Jace waits with him silently until the door opens and Maryse and Robert are watching him with expressions he's never seen.
4. Tangential (Clary/Simon)
"How are you doing?" Simon asks, closing her bedroom door and sitting beside her. She rests her temple on his t-shirt, her hair tickles the soft skin on the inside of his elbow.
"He's my brother," she says, softly, voice raw.
He touches her, a smile fixed on his face. He can't bear her to be in pain, especially because of him. "I'm sorry. Can I help you?"
"Make me feel better?" She asks, and he sees the little girl who walked into school on her own for the first time with mad determination, who bit back tears when she couldn't get her sketch perfect. "Please?"
This he can do. Or try, at least.
Their kisses are sad but hard, sweet as poison, as they press their hands against each other's skin. Their hearts ache, for being so close to the person they love, and not close enough.
5. Between the Lines (Alec/Magnus)
"I don't want to go to the Institute yet," Alec sighs, leaning back against Magnus' couch, glancing out the giant window into the city, the lights flickering to life like fireflies in the encroaching night.
"You could stay here," Magnus suggests, with more than a little hope in his voice. Alec hasn't spent the night at the loft yet, though Magnus has dropped hints, and clues, and anvils.
"You don't have to do that," Alec says, standing and zipping up his hoodie. He pushes his hair out of his face as he turns to the door.
"I wouldn't mind," Magnus says with a meaningful look. Which Alec doesn't catch.
"It's alright. Thanks for the offer though," Alec says absently, stepping around Chairman Meow, who is sprawled across the doormat.
Magnus sighs. Sometimes – often – Alec could be too oblivious.
6. Teenagers (Jocelyn/Luke)
It isn't as though Luke hasn't seen this much of her skin before, but their dynamics have shifted. Jocelyn has been forced into shorts and tank tops every summer in New York, but in their dim, now-shared bedroom, her nightgown makes his cheeks flush.
She lies beside him as though she doesn't notice. She smells spicy, like carnations, and very faintly of the Shadowhunter she used to be.
He strokes her shoulder and as she leans into him, he feels like a teenager, touching her bare skin for the first time. After Turning, losing his parabatai, and becoming the Alpha of his wolf pack, Luke feels old some – most days. Jocelyn's close proximity makes him feel a decade younger.
When she turns to face him, in her nightgown, in his bed, in his arms, his blood sings with more adrenaline than it ever has fighting any demon.
7. Possession (Clary/Sebastian)
Clary has always felt as though Jace sees a part of her that no one else does, the way lovers see into each other's hearts. But Sebastian's gaze, outside the Fairchild manor, strips away her pretense of being Jace's sister, and her skin and her bones, burning through her like acid. Perhaps it's because Jace has always looked at her with admiration and kindness, never with this possessiveness that makes her blood curdle and her heart press against her spine to get as far away from him as it can. Maybe it's because Jace isn't here that she feels so vulnerable, maybe it's the way Sebastian looks at her like she's already his that makes her feel naked and bloody.
8. Words of Wisdom (Valentine/Jace)
"Again."
Valentine's voice, angry, is as good an incentive as any to get up. But Jonathan's strength is gone, drained across the floor like his blood.
"Again. Now."
Jonathan knows better than to disobey his father twice. His muscles scream in protest as he pushes himself to his feet and sways.
The sparring gear is heavy. It puts him off balance. Perhaps that's what's making the room spin.
"I said, now." Valentine stands on the other side of the mat, waiting. He's barely broken a sweat.
As Jonathan moves back into his first stance, he repeats his father's words in his head, like a mantra.
Never be the first to attack, identify their weakness – to love is to destroy, to be loved is to be destroyed…
9. Father, Worse Son (Valentine/Jonathan)
"What's she like?" Jonathan asks. He's imagined his sister so many different ways, and he sees a younger version of his mother, standing atop a burning pyre, looking at him with eyes as dark as his own. The centre of a dying world. By his side.
"She is very much like her mother," is Valentine's only response.
"And I'll get to keep her, when she joins us, right?"
"She won't need keeping. We are her family, Jonathan."
Family is stretching it a bit. But Valentine uses words like that, words that force Jonathan to hold back a scoff. Then again, many of Valentine's ideas make him laugh. They're soft, kind. He's practically giving the Nephilim a second chance. He doesn't understand what it takes, to change the world. Too much self restraint, Jonathan thinks, and he hopes, desperately, that his sister won't be the same.
10. It's a Sibling Thing (Alec/Isabelle)
Isabelle doesn't understand why Alec hides himself. Perhaps it's partly out of habit, but she isn't stupid; she knows that attention makes him nervous. Which she also doesn't understand, but she doesn't have to. She loves him. He's just as beautiful as her, pale, dark-haired, with striking eyes. She wonders what he would look like if he put in some effort. But she gave that up long ago.
Alec doesn't understand why Isabelle feels the need to look beautiful. She's a more formidable foe than 80% of the Shadowhunters he's met in his life, and when she glares at others it's a wonder their heads don't catch fire. He knows she wants some approval, knows she wants to prove herself, but he's sure she could do it without 7-inch heels and eye shadow as thick as dust on a dirty window. Trying to get her to understand that is something he found out he would never be able to do.
There are a million things they'll never understand about each other – why Isabelle likes Jasmine perfume, why Alec will eat bacon but not ham, but on the anniversary of Max's birthday, sitting in the Institute library, staring at their books without seeing the words, they come together without words. Her hand trembles in his and without looking they put up – just for the day – a united front against the rest of the world.
11. Ephemeral (Simon/Magnus)
The cemetery sits in thoughtful melancholy. The rain comes as inconsistently as their words.
"The first ones are always the hardest," Magnus says. "It will get easier."
Simon can't imagine it getting harder, so it must get easier. Perhaps the next two graves he stands by will not be his best friend's or his lover's. Maybe they'll be another friend that he knew from the beginning he would outlive.
Perhaps it was meeting Isabelle and Clary when he thought he was mortal that made it so hard. He thought he had his whole life with them. But he only had theirs.
Glancing at Magnus, who has gone silent beside him, his conviction fades. The expression on Magnus' face as he gazes on Alec's grave does not suggest that it gets easier.
This is what Simon has to look forward to. There is no reprieve for the ever-lasting.
12. Dark Chocolate (Clary/Isabelle)
Clary would be lying if she didn't say she was a little bit curious. She admired Isabelle's curves, wondered what it would be like if she had curves of her own. What they would feel like under her fingertips.
When Isabelle gave her that smile, Clary knew she didn't need to wonder.
Jace wouldn't mind, Isabelle says somewhere between their kisses and the shedding of Clary's shirt.
Clary is sure he wouldn't. He would understand. Jace understands sin, desire. He would understand that this is not indecent. This is not wrong.
This is so so good.
13. (Jace/Aline)
Aline's fingers remind him of his own, long and slender, but her nails dig into his shoulders and her lips are trying to coax something from him that he cannot give.
Their kisses are fierce, each striving to prove something to themselves. He doesn't know what she wants, apart from him, or to want to want him, and he doesn't care. He just wants to forget that Clary, Clary, Clary, is his sister.
Her hands are on his waist, tracing his belt, dipping below the waistband of his pants. He can't begin to think how lucky he is that he pulls them out just before Clary comes in.
14. Scrapbooking (Clary/Alec)
Since Alec accepted Clary as a part of their lives, as Jace's girlfriend, his sister's friend, they've been struggling to find a common rhythm in speaking. They have little in common so most of their conversations boil down to training, and Shadowhunting, and the occasional wry comment about Jace that draws a shy smile from him.
Until Alec begins telling her tales from their adolescence.
Hearing about Isabelle's first attempt at make up, Jace's tumble down the stairs while incredibly inebriated, the moment Isabelle was chasing him so blindly that she ran headfirst into a pole, and Jace laughed so hard he didn't notice he hadn't stopped running until he tripped on the sidewalk and tumbled into a sewer grate.
Clary begins to look forward to their training sessions together. It's more than his humour and the stories. Alec is comfortable. He laughs louder, he smiles more widely.
When Jace and Isabelle stop by, Alec and Clary are laughing so hard they can't begin to explain themselves.
15. (Clary/Jace)
When Clary and Jace first kissed, and the world pin wheeled around them in a haze of heat and colour, neither had imagined that their first time together would be slow, soft, maddeningly gentle, but would burn as though they trapped the sun between their bodies. Clary blossoms beneath him like the midnight flower. She is beautiful and delicate, and Jace tells her so. Clary cannot imagine his fingers being more gentle as he guides her lips to his and whispers, breathless and raw, I love you... Clary, I love you.