A/N: So here is the next chapter. I think it's my favourite thus far - read it and try and guess why, haha (spoiler alert: it's the Clace moment).

Disclaimer: I don't own TMI. Cassandra Clare does.

(Also: have any of you read City of Heavenly Fire yet? I haven't (so please don't give me any spoilers), but I'm curious to know what you thought of it.)

to To Love Is To Destroy: Thank you! Awwing seems to be a side effect of Clace fluff.

to Region and District: Thank you! Awwing is contagious.

to the ticking clock: Thanks! I really like writing from Jace's point of view - in fact, I think everything I've written for the TMI fandom has been from his POV.

to dianscot: Thank you! Yeah, I'd imagine Jace would like the idea of Clary with a thigh sheath. The line's added :)

to LucianDaughterofHades: Thanks! It's one of mine, too.

Jace smirked smugly as he walked down to the residence wing. So far, his plan had gone perfectly—he'd stolen the apples form Izzy and had slipped Clary's present into his pocket. Now, all he had to do was get the red-haired beauty herself.

Clary's door came into view, and instead of barging in as he'd normally do, Jace decided to be polite and knock on the door, figuring that it would keep her in a better mood. The doorknob turned only a moment later and Clary stood on the other side, her hair mushed flat on one side and looking tired.

"Were you asleep?" Jace asked, curiosity coloring his voice.

"No." Clary opened the door wider and treaded out into the dim corridor. "Why would you think that?"

Jace looked over her blue and slightly revealing (not that he minded) pajama set. "No reason."

"I was in bed most of the day," she said, sounding slightly nervous. "What about you? Aren't you exhausted?"

He shook his head. "Much like the postal service, demon hunters never sleep. 'Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these—'"

"You'd be in major trouble if gloom of night did stay you," Clary felt the need to point out. Jace grinned at her teasingly.

Clary gripped her elbows as if she was starting to get cold. "What are you doing here, anyway?" She asked, changing the subject. Jace smiled inwardly.

"'Here' as in your bedroom or 'here' as in the great spiritual question of our purpose here on this planet? If you're asking whether it's all just a cosmic coincidence or there's a greater meta-ethical purpose to life, well, that's a puzzler for the ages. I mean, simple ontological reductionism is clearly a fallacious argument, but—"

"I'm going back to bed." Clary reached for the doorknob, but Jace couldn't let her leave until her birthday was celebrated. He quickly slid between the door and her petite body. "I'm here," he started, "because Hodge reminded me it was your birthday."

Clary exhaled. She sounded exasperated, as if she'd been saying this to people for all time. "Not until tomorrow."

"That's no reason not to start celebrating now."

She looked at him warily. "You're avoiding Alec and Isabelle."

Jace nodded. "Both of them are trying to pick fights with me."

"For the same reason?"

"I couldn't tell." He glanced surreptitiously around the hallway. "Hodge, too. Everyone wants to talk to me. Except you. I bet you don't want to talk to me."

"No," Clary confirmed. "I want to eat. I'm starving."

Jace brought his hand out from behind his back and showed her the bag. "I snuck some food from the kitchen when Isabelle wasn't looking."

Clary grinned widely. It made her whole face light up, and Jace swallow and look away. "A picnic? It's a little late for Central Park, don't you think? It's full of—"

He waved a hand, cutting her off. "Faeries. I know."

"I was going to say muggers," Clary retorted, glancing at him in what seemed to be a subconscious manner. "Though I pity the mugger who goes after you."

"That is a wise attitude, and I commend you for it," said Jace, feeling appreciative. There was nothing that he liked more and came less rarely than ego boosts, as Isabelle and Alec had both learned not to compliment him or risk having his ego turn supernova. "But I wasn't thinking of Central Park. How about the greenhouse?"

"Now? At night? Won't it be dark?"

Jace smiled cryptically, not wanting to tell her yet. "Come on. I'll show you."

Jace led the familiar way up to the greenhouse, not taking any note or interest in the many empty rooms. The walk was over five minutes long, but he kept himself busy by sneaking looks at Clary. Her fiery hair shone with copper tints in the moonlight, curling freely in what could only be described as a mane of hair, every single curl as stubborn as the person whose body they belonged to. Jace wondered what it would be like to run his hands through that hair, feel the curls straighten out and then boing back into place like liquid fire—

Jace shook his head and clenched his hands at his sides; he couldn't let his thoughts run astray like that. Clary didn't like him that way. And to love is to destroy, after all. And Clary was too perfect to be destroyed.

Jace opened the greenhouse door quickly for Clary and stepped in after her. She seemed taken in by the sights in front of them, glancing everywhere from the view to Manhattan and the flowers.

"Wow." She spun around slowly, taking everything in in awe. Her coral-tinted mouth had dropped open in a small o without her noticing. Jace swallowed. "It's so beautiful here at night."

He smiled down at her. "And we have the place to ourselves. Alec and Isabelle hate it up here. They have allergies."

Clary shivered, though Jace wasn't completely sure that it was because she was cold. "What kind of flowers are these?"

He shrugged and sat down carefully next to the Midnight Flower. If he broke anything, Hodge would kill him. "No idea. You think I pay attention in botany class? I'm not going to be an archivist. I don't need to know about that stuff."

"You just need to know how to kill things?"

Jace looked up at her and smiled mischievously. "That's right." He took paper-wrapped sandwich out of the back. "Also, I make a mean cheese sandwich. Try one."

Clary smiled grudgingly and sat down across from him. He pulled the apples, a bar of some fancy chocolate, and a bottle of water out of the bag. "Not a bad haul," she said, sounding approving.

He then produced the long bone-handled knife that Isabelle had threatened him with earlier. He picked up the apple and quickly cut them into eighths. "Well, it's not birthday cake," he answered, handing her a piece just as a strange and very out-of-character nervousness. "But hopefully it's better than nothing."

"Nothing is what I was expecting, so thanks." Clary took a bite of the apple.

"Nobody should get nothing on their birthday." Jace gave the second apple the same treatment and also cut it into eights. "Birthdays should be special. My birthday was always the one day my father said I could do or have anything I wanted."

"Anything?" She laughed. "Like what kind of anything did you want?"

"Well, when I was five, I wanted to take a bath in spaghetti."

"But he didn't let you, right?"

"No, that's the thing. He did. He said it wasn't expensive, and why not if that was what I wanted? He had the servants fill a bath with boiling water and pasta, and when it cooled down ..." Jace shrugged casually. It was funny (or kind of scary, depending how you looked at it) how easily the words flowed around Clary. "I took a bath in it."

Clary looked incredulous. "How was it?"

"Slippery."

"I'll bet." It looked as if Clary was trying to picture it, but couldn't. "What else did you ask for?"

"Weapons, mostly," Jace responded, his mouth quirking up slightly. "Which I'm sure doesn't surprise you. Books. I read a lot on my own."

"You didn't go to school?"

"No," Jace answered her cautiously. He didn't want to talk about his past with Clary.

"But your friends—"

"I didn't have friends," he countered shortly. "Besides my father. He was all I needed."

Clary stared at him as if he were speaking Martian. "No friends at all?"

Jace stared back. "The first time I saw Alec," he replied, "when I was ten years old, that was the first time I'd ever met another child my own age. The first time I had a friend."

She dropped her gaze, a pink tinge appearing on her cheekbones.

"Don't feel sorry for me," Jace responded; it was clear what she was thinking. "He gave me the best education, the best training. He took me all over the world. London. Saint Petersburg. Egypt. We used to love to travel." His eyes were dark. "I haven't been anywhere since he died. Nowhere but New York."

"You're lucky," Clary told him, looking morose. "I've never been outside this state in my life. My mom wouldn't even let me go on field trips to D.C. I guess I know why now," she added, sounding melancholy.

"She was afraid you'd freak out? Start seeing demons in the White House?"

She nibbled a piece of chocolate. "There are demons in the White House?"

"I was kidding," Jace told her. He almost laughing at her surprised expression, but wisely refrained. "I think." He shrugged non-commitantly. "I'm sure someone would have mentioned it."

"I think she just didn't want me to get too far away from her. My mom, I mean. After my dad died, she changed a lot."

He raise an eyebrow at her. "Do you remember your father?"

She shook her head, still looking sad. "No. He died before I was born."

"You're lucky," Jace told her darkly. "That way you don't miss him."

"Does it go away?" Clary asked him. "Missing him, I mean?"

Jace glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, but didn't answer. "Are you thinking of your mother?"

"Of Luke, actually."

"Not that that's actually his name." He thought it best to tell Clary what he was thinking. "I've been thinking about him. Something about his behavior doesn't add up—"

"He's a coward," Clary responded bitterly. "You heard him. He won't go against Valentine. Not even for my mother."

"But that's exactly—" The bell tower struck midnight and interrupted him. "Midnight," he said aloud, putting the knife down hastily before getting to his feet. He offered a sticky hand to Clary and pulled her up. "Now, watch."

He directed his gaze to the Midnight Flower. Clary was obviously still confused, and started to ask him what she was supposed to be looking at, but Jace merely held up a hand to stop her. "Wait," he cautioned, trying to not sound too eager.

All of the sudden, one of the tightly closed buds began to shake. It swelled to double its size and split open. The many petals were dusted with pale gold pollen, luminous in the moonlight like the petals themselves were embedded with thousands of tiny stars.

"Oh!" said Clary, and looked up to meet Jace's gaze. She smiled up at him, her fingers twitching around an invisible pencil. "Do they bloom every night?"

"Only at midnight," Jace said softly, wondering if she'd come back to sketch the plant. He'd never seen her actually draw anything before; he might have to take more frequent midnight trips up to the greenhouse if that were the case. "Happy birthday, Clarissa Fray."

Clary looked touched, as if no one had ever done something like this for her before. "Thank you."

Jace cleared his throat inconspicuously. "I have something for you," Jace said, barely keeping the nervous quaver from his voice. He dug around in his pocket and brought out the rune-stone, pressing it into her hand.

"Huh," said Clary, looking it over as if he'd given her space rock. "You know, when most girls say they want a big rock, they don't mean, you know, literally a big rock."

"Very amusing, my sarcastic friend. It's not a rock, precisely. All Shadowhunters have a witchlight rune-stone."

"Oh." She looked at it with more interest, and closed her fingers around it experimentally. Apparently, she was a quick study; small beams of light filtered through her fingers.

"It will bring you light," Jace told her quietly, thinking although you already have enough light yourself. "Even among the darkest shadows of this world and others."

Clary slipped the rune-stone into the pocket of her shorts. "Well, thanks. It was nice of you to give me anything." (She must've felt the tension, too.) "Better than a bath in spaghetti any day."

He smacked himself mentally. "If you share that little bit of personal information with anyone, I may have to kill you," he told her darkly.

"Well, when I was five, I wanted my mother to let me go around and around inside the dryer with the clothes." Clary was clearly trying to make him feel better. "The difference is, she didn't let me."

"Probably because going around and around inside a dryer can be fatal," Jace told her, smiling slightly. "Whereas pasta is rarely fatal. Unless Isabelle makes it."

The midnight flower was already shedding petals. They drifted toward the floor, glimmering like slivers of starlight. "When I was twelve, I wanted a tattoo," Clary told him melodiously. Apparently, she was also having trouble keeping her words in. "My mom wouldn't let me have that, either."

It did make sense. "Most Shadowhunters get their first Marks at twelve. It must have been in your blood."

"Maybe. Although I doubt most Shadowhunters get a tattoo of Donatello from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on their left shoulder."

Jace felt puzzled. He didn't understand many of the mundane references that Clary or the mundie spewed out, but this one in particular really made no sense. "You wanted a turtle on your shoulder?"

"I wanted to cover my chicken pox scar," she explained, pulling the strap of her top aside slightly, exposing tantalizingly bare skin and a white scar identical to his. "See?"

He looked away before he couldn't control himself from kissing her right then and there. By the Angel, Jace, it's just an arm. But it wasn't just an arm—it was Clary. Beautiful Clary. I really like you, he wanted to say. I really like you, and I really want to kiss you until your head spins and you're breathing out my name, but hey. No big deal. "It's getting late," he said instead. "We should go back downstairs."

Clary pulled her strap back up. There was a distinct air of awkwardness about them as they moved slowly towards the door.

"Have you and Isabelle ever—dated?" Clary suddenly blurted out.

Jace stopped in his tracks and looked back at her, his eyes widening slightly. "Isabelle?" He repeated vacantly.

"I thought—" Now the air was even more awkward. "Simon was wondering."

"Maybe he should ask her."

"I'm not sure he wants to," Clary told him frankly. "Anyway, never mind. It's none of my business."

Jace smiled uneasily at her. Isabelle? Sure, Isabelle was beautiful, if Jace really thought about it, but she wasn't really his type (turns out, his type was redheaded fiery girls named Clary). "The answer is no. I mean, there may have been a time when one or the other of us considered it, but she's almost a sister to me. It would be strange."

"You mean Isabelle and you never—"

"Never," Jace repeated.

"She hates me," Clary confessed.

"No, she doesn't," Jace told her, to both their surprise. "You just make her nervous, because she's always been the only girl in a crowd of adoring boys, and now she isn't anymore."

"But she's so beautiful."

"So are you," Jace said, and without thinking about it, the words had slipped out of his mouth without his consent. "And very different from how she is, and she can't help but notice that. She's always wanted to be small and delicate, you know. She hates being taller than most boys."

Jace felt awkward. He wanted to hide in one of the many rooms of the Institute and never appear again, but he couldn't. He was a Shadowhunter, and Shadowhunters were brave (well, most of the time).

Clary continued to stare at him. "We should probably go downstairs," Jace suggested again.

"All right," she agreed after a long pause, and she started to walk towards the door, Jace at her heels. But there was a glint of metal on the floor and as Clary jerked sideways to avoid it, she lost her balance, her shoulder bumping against Jace's. And when he reached out to steady her and she turned towards him to apologize, somehow Jace's arm was around her and he was kissing her.

Jace was rigid with shock. The one thing that Jace had always prided himself on was his ability to control his emotions, but he couldn't stop kissing her. She tasted like the apples they had eaten before, and Jace gave in, wrapping both arms around her and pulling her flush against him. He'd always thought Clary delicate, in a way, but right then she was not delicate at all—she was a siren, the worst kind of seductress, her hands fisted in Jace's hair and every line of her body pressed against him, gasping against his mouth, being entirely too beautiful and dangerous to exist. She was the kind of creature that made Jace want to forget the world, and for one blissful moment, nothing else mattered to him but the feel of his hands cupping the sides of her waist—

A rushing sound slowly made itself known; the sound was uncannily similar to beating wings. The lines managed to connect in Jace's head and he pulled his mouth off Clary's with a muttered curse. His arms were still around her, holding her against him as his eyes fixed on the black bird behind them. "Don't panic, but we've got an audience."

Clary turned her head around and spotted Hugo up in a tree behind them. Her eyes were a dark emerald, blown wide at the pupils, her cheeks flushed red. Entirely too beautiful.

"If he's here, Hodge won't be far behind," Jace said in an undertone. "We should go."

"Is he spying on you?" Clary hissed back. "Hodge, I mean."

"No. He just likes to come up here to think. Too bad—we were having such a scintillating conversation." Jace laughed noiselessly.

They made their way back to Clary's room, hands joined. He wasn't quite sure how it had happened, but Jace felt a kind of pleasant fire in the hand holding hers.

In too short a time, they reached her door. Clary leaned her body against the wall beside it and looked up, smiling up at him. "Thanks for the birthday picnic," she said, trying to keep her tone neutral.

Jace was feeling rather unwilling to let her hand go. "Are you going to sleep?"

"Aren't you tired?"

"I've never been more awake," Jace answered her honestly. His voice was low as he leaned over to kiss her, cupping her face with his other hand. The kiss had started out chastely, but deepened quickly, just getting deeper and more passionate when—

The door banged open and the mundie stepped out. His hair was flattened to one side and he wasn't wearing his geeky glasses. "What the hell?" His voice was so loud and angry, so raucous and ringing that Clary leapt away from Jace.

"Simon! What are you—I mean, I thought you were—"

"Asleep? I was," he told her. His cheeks were an angry tomato red that didn't suit him at all. "Then I woke up and you weren't there, so I thought..."

Clary looked speechless. Jace was starting to feel a kind of fury towards the mundie, and even slight anger towards Clary. Were they together? Why was she acting so ashamed? Was it because of him?

"I'm sorry," the redhead in question said.

Jace looked at her with pure, unhidden rage. She shouldn't be apologizing! She doesn't need to apologize for anything except her idiocy!

Jace molded his usual look onto his face easily to hide his emotions.

"In future, Clarissa," he told her, a mocking edge to his voice. It was a blade without a handle: it cut him just as much as it must have hurt her. "It might be wise to mention that you already have a man in your bed, to avoid such tedious situations."

"You invited him into bed?" Simon demanded, looking thoroughly nauseated at the thought.

"Ridiculous, isn't it?" Jace asked him cuttingly. "We would never have all fit."

"I didn't invite him into bed," Clary yelled at them both. "We were just kissing!"

"Just kissing?" Jace wove false hurt into his voice. "How swiftly you dismiss our love."

"Jace..." Clary looked up to meet the malice in Jace's eyes and trailed off.

"Simon, it's late," she said, sounding mentally exhausted. "I'm sorry we woke you up."

"So am I." He stalked back into the room and slammed the door behind him.

Jace molded a bland, insincere smile onto his face and prepared to say the words that would cut her most. "Go on, go after him. Pat his head and tell him he's still your super special little guy. Isn't that what you want to do?"

God, he was an ass. But he couldn't stop being one. "Stop it," Clary demanded, sounding shaky. "Stop being like that."

Jace's smile widened bitterly. "Like what?"

"If you're angry, just say it. Don't act like nothing ever touches you. It's like you never feel anything at all."

"Maybe you should have thought about that before you kissed me," he said.

Clary glanced at him disbelievingly. "I kissed you?"

Jace looked back at her with bright malice. "Don't worry," he assured her. "It wasn't that memorable for me, either." Lie. It was the only kiss that he'd ever really remember.

Jace walked away angrily, and vaguely heard Clary slam the door.

As soon as he reached his bedroom, Jace ripped the door open and walked in, kicking it shut behind him.

The image of Clary came into his mind. "Go on, go after him. Pat his head and tell him he's still your super special little guy. Isn't that what you want to do?"

Jace slammed his fist into the wall, leaving an angry hand-shaped hole in the wall. When pain rose over the anger, Jace slid down to the floor ad leaned his head against the wall.

(To love is to destroy. And he'd been hell-bent on destroying her, hadn't he?)

Jace knew he wasn't supposed to feel this way. Jace Wayland never felt this way about a girl. Hell, he never really cared this much about a girl—

Jace stopped and groaned, putting his face in his hands. There, that was it: he, Jace Wayland, was in love with Clarissa Fray.

Great.

So I really hate to sound whiny, but I haven't gotten any reviews on the edited chapters. Normally that wouldn't be a big deal, but when I first pitched the idea of editing this fic I had a lot of support for it and now that I've actually started re-posting, I haven't gotten any feedback at all. I do sound kinda whiny, don't I? But I just want to know if you guys want me to keep editing or not. So please leave a review if you liked it.

~Alex (aka dontforget2live) :) xx