Hey, guys :) Next chapter. A question I got asked that I actually meant to address a while earlier, is I was asked who I imagine as the characters when I'm writing. Well, to me, Lily and Jamie will always be Clary and Jace. I think they did a spectacular job. And to be totally honest, the TV actors really frustrate me. Not saying they're not good actors or anything, I'm sure they're just doing what the directors tell them to, but they drive me kind of nuts. I find Clary super whiny and Jace unbearably broody. For pretty much everyone else as well, I imagine the movie actors. The only ones I see from the TV show (other than people who obviously weren't featured in the movie) is Matthew Daddario as Alec and Emeraude Toubia as Isabelle.

A little nervous about this, because I love Halsey so much and I'm a bit worried I can't do her song justice! Anyway, here we go...

D : Drive - Halsey
Requested by Deadmenscurlyshoes

It's so simple but we can't stay
Over-analyze again
Would it really kill you if we kissed?

All we do is drive
All we do is think about the feelings that we hide
All we do is sit in silence waiting for a sign
Sick and full of pride
All we do is drive

And California never felt like home to me
And California never felt like home
And California never felt like home to me
Until I had you on the open road and I was singing

When Clarissa Morgenstern was sixteen, her father got a job in California. The marriage between Valentine and Jocelyn Morgenstern had been rocky for a while, and apparently this was going to be their chance to start over, and give their marriage another shot. Clary had begged and pleaded to stay in the city that she had grown up in. New York was her whole life; her friends, her school, even her part time job—but Valentine had put his foot down, saying that they were leaving and that was final. Her older brother, Jonathon Morgenstern, was at Columbia University on a partial scholarship, and he lived near campus, so he wasn't coming with them, which was just another reason that Clary didn't want to leave.

But two months after he broke the news, they were living in California, and she was miserable.

And it wasn't just her.

Jocelyn had tried to show outward support for her husband, but it was clear that she was missing New York as well. Even though California was beautiful, and less busy, and sunny, and everyone always seemed to be smiling and tanned, it just didn't feel like home.

Things just got worse between Valentine and Jocelyn, and now Clary didn't have the roof of their apartment building to escape to with her best friend, Simon Lewis. All she had now was the backyard, but she could still hear them yelling and things banging around inside.

She hated her school.

She hated her teachers.

She hated the other students.

She just hated everything.

The only thing that she didn't hate was the boy next door.

Well, at least, she didn't hate him yet. He could still possibly do or say something that might rub her the wrong way, but so far, it seemed that maybe they had a bit in common.

He was older than her, she knew that because he was in a higher grade than her at school. He hung out with a lot of people, and a lot of them were clearly popular, but he never really seemed interested in what was going on around him. He wore a leather jacket all the time, and he had ear buds in his ears permanently, hidden under his shaggy golden hair, and his golden eyes were always moving around his surroundings. And more often than not...He had bruises.

The first time they properly saw each other, or at least, at the same time, was six months after she moved in. She was sitting on the swinging chair in the back yard, holding one of the chains connecting the chair to the tree, rocking it with one hand while the other was clenched in her lap. Her parents were going at it again, and it was almost funny, the way it sounded as though they were trying to out shout the couple next door. The golden haired boy came storming out the back door, and for a moment, the shouting from inside the neighboring house got louder, and then it was muffled as the door shut. He saw her sitting there, and his walking slowed for a split second. He frowned when he heard the shouting in her own home, and Clary frowned back at him when she saw a bright red mark under his eye.

He paused and tipped his head in a nod at her, almost a sympathetic one, as though they were kindred spirits, and then he was stalking toward his car in the driveway. He got inside, turning on the engine, and then went roaring down the road.

At least he could escape, even if it was just for a little bit.

Clary wished she could go with him.

The next day at school, the red mark around his eye had turned into a bruise, and it was an ugly blue and purple for the next few days. It was the first time that Clary had actually appreciated the fights between her parents. At least they never turned physical. Sure, they were verbally vicious with their words, and sometimes Valentine would turn them on her, but they had never used their fists.

A few weeks later, they saw each other again. Over the screaming and the shouting of their parents, they looked at each other from over the meter high fence that separated their properties. He looked like he was going to start walking toward his car without anything further, but then he held up his keys at her, like a question. Clary lifted an eyebrow in surprise, her eyes widening, but then, probably against her better judgement, she nodded her head and walked alongside him on her side of the fence, until she got to the end and rounded onto his driveway. She let him open the passenger side door without a sound and slid inside.

The car was surprisingly tidy for a male, although she didn't really have much to compare it to. No one really had their own car in New York, and especially none of the guys she had dated or any of her friends. It was all cabs or buses or the subway. They didn't talk as he turned the car on, waited for her to put on her seat belt, and then reversed out of the driveway.

And then they drove.

It must have been for hours.

She actually fell asleep in the passenger seat, lulled asleep by the quiet music playing on the radio, and the salty breeze coming from the open window as they drove alongside the beach, and the smell of his cologne. When she woke up, they were back in his driveway, and it was dark outside. He gave her a tiny smile as she got out of the car and she wiggled her fingers in a sort of goodbye wave, before going back into her own home.

She didn't even know his name.

It became a thing.

Once or twice a week, if they were both outside, they would gravitate toward his car, get inside, and drive until their minds didn't pound quite so hard. She learnt his name; not from him telling her, but from hearing someone call it out at school. He learnt her name as well, but she wasn't too sure how. At first they didn't really talk, although there was one time after a particularly bad fight, when tears were dripping down her face, and he reached across the center console and squeezed her thigh ever so slightly.

After that, they seemed to open up a little.

Sometimes she would sing along to the music on the radio—he seemed to like that, the way he gave her these soft looks out of the corner of his eyes.

He asked her about New York, she asked him about soccer.

She told him about Jonathon, he told her about his best friend, Alec Lightwood.

Most of the time, though, they traveled in silence, other than the music. And for some reason, she felt that that was when she understood him the most. Because they both just needed someone, someone who knew what they were going through without needing to try and put their feelings into words. They didn't necessarily want someone to talk to, just someone to be there.

They exchanged phone numbers at some point, maybe a month after all of their interaction started, and then their drives became more frequent, because even then even if one of them were okay, and they weren't trying to hide outside, they would come if the other needed them.

And then they would drive.

Clary had no idea what they were, but she knew that a couple of months after this had all started, they began holding hands, their fingers only unlacing when he needed to shift gear. The weight and warmth of his hand was comforting, and it made her feel relaxed, and a lot of the time, she fell asleep. She wasn't too sure what he told his friends about her, but they had started hanging out at school now, and his friends gave her these smiles in the hallways, as though they knew who she was. She hadn't really made any other friends, and he just one day started sitting at her lunch table.

And he held her hand when he walked her to class after.

There was this tension between them. This thing that they both knew was there, but they didn't want to push, just in case it changed things. If he tried to kiss her, Clary would kiss him back, and he knew that same about her, but neither of them made the first move. Because their lives were already mixed up enough, and full of uncertainty and worry; with their parents, with themselves, with their future—and they didn't want to risk the good thing that they had.

But when they were in his car...When they were racing along the highway next to the ocean, the waves crashing in on the surf...The windows wound all the way down so that Clary's hair was getting knotted beyond belief as it tangled around her face...The music turned all the way up so that even when she sung at the top of her lungs, she still couldn't properly be heard over the bass and the wind roaring in their ears...And there was this look in his eyes that promised that one day; one day they would just keep driving, just the two of them...And that was enough.

And it was the only time she felt like she was home.

Now! My music obsessions since my last update! Actually, heaps of old songs to be honest that have resurfaced on my iTunes. There's Thinking It Over by Dana Glover, seriously this song makes my heart ache like every time I hear it. I think I obsessively listened to it when I was a teenager when I went through a break up, melodramatic child that I was. Then there's Pony by Ginuwine. LOL. Don't know what's got me so into that one all of a sudden. And the third one is Bring Me Back To Life by Extreme Music. Seriously, the Shadowhunters show has a pretty great soundtrack, I think I've fallen in love with every song I've discovered through there!

Oh gosh, aaaaaaaand there's this cover of a Jesse McCartney song, Beautiful Soul, by SoMo. I watched a Stydia fan video to the song, and I'm now just completely in love.

Oooooh, and in the post the other day, I got my Stilinski 24 hoodie. Can you tell I'm obsessed with Teen Wolf just a little bit? Yes? No? Maybe? LOL.

As usual, please feed my obsession with songs and reviews :) It'd make me very happy, and I'll send you a preview xxx