Hi! I'm back! Hope everyone in the U.S. had a nice Thanksgiving, and is staying up to date and aware on all that's going on right now. I went on a little vacation and while on the road I got 7,000 words written! It's left me feeling super accomplished, and the next two chapters after this one are 100% written. This means prompter updates and can give me time to write several more chapters and things should basically be running smoother for a little while.

This is once again unbeta'd because IWriteNaked is currently writing from her phone, and I know how much of a bitch it can be to beta from a phone, so I'm giving her a bit of a break. That doesn't mean that the quality of her oneshots is being affected at all however, and she's cranking them out faster than ever before. So I'd head over there fast if I were you.

Happy reading and don't forget to review!


He has a grin that overtakes at least half his face. His eyes are so bright they look as though they could burn. I nervously run my toe over the back of my ankle.

"An idea?" I ask. His excitement is so contagious I can feel the tempo of my heart increasing.

"An idea," he repeats. I wait for him to elaborate, but he just stares at me, his eyes flicking back and forth between the two of mine. After a few stale seconds, I clear my throat. He still doesn't quite catch on. He still looks at me with the same goofy grin, still leaning nonchalantly against the railing behind him. Despite the apparent one-way awkward atmosphere, I can't help smiling along with him.

"Come on in. Do elaborate," I tell him. And so he does.

"So, as you know, this is Jordan's first time in the Pacific Northwest, and I want it to be pretty special." I nod along with him. "I want to throw him a party. It doesn't have to be huge, but big enough that he can meet all the people we like out here, you know? I'll bring Alec and his boyfriend and Isabelle and you can bring Simon and it'll just be really personal and fun. I can buy booze, you can buy some food and we'll just chill." I think about it for a moment, and how utterly perfect it sounds. And I can't see a single drawback to his plan.

"That sounds great, Jace," I tell him. He beams at me from his spot on the plush chair.

"You think so?" He replies. I nod and fold my legs under me as I grab a pillow and plop onto the couch.

"Absolutely. We'll do it at my place," I say to him. He beams again. "But not Friday, because I was wanting to just spend some time with him Friday night. I haven't seen him in two and a half years, and he is my best friend. But we can do Saturday, definitely."

"Sure," he continues. "Here's the real question, though: do we tell him? Or do we keep it a secret? Like a surprise party?"

I think for a beat before replying. "I think we tell him, but not yet. He should know why people randomly start showing up, but not until they start showing up, or a couple hours before at least. So let's do this. We can all have lunch together and tell him the news on Saturday. Sound good?"

"Perfect."

"Good."

He continues to smile at me in that way that makes it impossible for me not to smile back. "What do you want to do?" he asks me, as if it's totally normal for us to hang out. But then I think about it, and there really isn't anything keeping us from hanging out.

"Well, I do have to go grocery shopping in preparation for Jordan's visit. Do you want to come with?"

"Absolutely, I do," he replies. He stands up from his chair and as he does so, his muscles ripple in his arms. It makes my cheeks flush and I squirm a little in my chair, embarrassed that I blushed. He doesn't seem to notice, and only takes my hand in his own and pulls me off the couch. I stand, and run to grab my shoes from my room.


We walk the aisles of the grocery stores, while Clary grabs items she needs along with items she know Jordan will like. Occasionally she sends me off to grab something that she says, in her own words, "are too far away for her", much like she just did. I'm headed off to grab paper towels and toilet paper. The brand with the dog on it, she'd said.

Despite the fact that she sends me parading around like a little errand boy, I love hanging out with Clary. She's just so easy to be around, and I feel as though everything in the world becomes more honest when she's there. That and she is just such a strange bird. And I mean that in the most endearing way possible, she's just so peculiar. She lives in Portland, the self-proclaimed city of bicycles and says she doesn't like them. She doesn't even own one! Which led to a funny scene in the parking lot of our building a little while ago. I had run inside my flat to grab my bike and when I came out she was sitting in her car.

"What is that?" we had yelled at each other in unison.

I take my bike everywhere, it's just habit. And she somehow doesn't own a bicycle. I had trudged with my bike back into my flat and locked the doors before grudgingly climbing into her little car.

"Do you know how big the carbon footprint of this thing is? You're destroying the environment," I had told her exasperatedly. But she had just fired them right back at me.

"Yeah, but at least I'm safer. The bicycle fatalities have increased almost three-fold in Portland since 2006. Also, how am I supposed to carry groceries home on a tiny little metal rod with wheels?" Her ears had turned pink when she'd gotten exasperated, and without noticing I'm sure she kept tugging on the same lock of her hair. She'd reach for it up over her shoulder and back toward the nape of her neck and then tug it close and absentmindedly twirl it around her finger. It was extremely cute.

She was also, I noticed once we got on the road, an exceptionally good driver. She was so focused but also looked so comfortable. She seemed very much in her element there. And if what she had told me about her drawing and painting was true then it made sense. She liked to be in control. Not in a domineering, lead a revolution type of way, because that could easily get away from you. She likes to be in control in the most intimate of situations, where her control could not be challenged or questioned.

She likes to be in control of herself.

I grab the toilet paper and paper towels and start heading back over to the produce. She smiles at me when she sees me, and it's like the moon appears in a starry night, its radiant light blocking out that of all the stars around it, until it's swimming in solitude against the blackness. I smile back immediately and her smile reshapes into a small crescent, decorated by blushing cheeks. It makes me smile just a little bit bigger, just like it had when she'd blushed at me on her couch.

I had tried to play it off nonchalantly at the time, but I did see the layer of crimson hiding under her blanket of freckles as she took my hand. It made my heart feel weird and fluttery. God damn, I have a crush.

What is this, the fucking first grade?

I need to get over myself.


Jace even helped me carry the groceries inside when we got back. I unloaded them into the fridge and their various cupboards as he carried them up from the car. this was of course after he had also paid for half the groceries. He had originally tried to pay for all of them, to which I had stomped my foot and thrown a hissy fit. I was not going to let him buy my groceries. I then tried to buy them all, rightfully (they were my groceries after all), to which he threatened to pop all the tires in my car. His exact words were "Fine, buy your groceries. But I won't be the one helping you carry them home on two feet."

So we had made a compromise. Both fuming at the other, and the cashier looking entirely amused, he paid for half. "You two are such a cute couple," the cashier had remarked after the groceries had all been loaded back into the cart.

Nobody talked the whole drive home.

But once we had arrived back home, it was like the veil of awkwardness had been dissolved and we were both back to ourselves.

I finish putting away the last bag of groceries, and turn around. Jace is nowhere to be seen. Where could he have gone?

"Jace?" I call, "You still here?"

"Back here!" He calls. It sounds like his voice is coming from... The guest room!

"You're not in the guest room, are you? Please tell me you're not in the guest room," I plead. When he doesn't reply it only solidifies what I seemed to already know. I run and stop at the doorway to find him standing there with one of my sketchbooks in his hands. He's flipping through the pages like he owns the place.

He looks up at me and an admiring smile graces his features. "These are really good," he says to me.

"No shit Sherlock, I didn't get into art school because of my impressive yodeling technique. Why did you come in here? This isn't yours to look at." My eyebrows are furrowed and my voice keeps catching on the lump in my throat.

Leave it to me to never be able to get angry without crying.

I can already feel the hot tears threatening to spill. I snatch the sketchbook from his hands and snap it closed furiously.

"Woah, woah, please don't be mad. I didn't mean to overstep any boundaries. I was going to put the toilet paper in the bathroom and I just saw it on my way back. I shouldn't have touched it. I'm really sorry."

"No, it's okay it's just really personal and I don't like sharing my art very much. It's like a document of all of my emotions and my feelings and my past and it's like a diary to me. It's just really hard for me to let people in like that."

Of course my tears pick that moment to spill over. Before the first one has even left my cheek, Jace has wrapped his arms around me. His body is so warm and his sweatshirt is like a barrier of softness protecting me from the hard plain of his chest. He smells like pine and coffee beans and clouds and books.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I didn't think."

I try to tell him it's okay but suddenly there are so many tears blocking the path of my words. They started out as angry tears and now they're just meaningless. They're just a streak of emotion that I can't contain.

He rests the surface of his cheek on the top of my head and holds me there in my little makeshift art studio until my eyes run dry.


-katethewriter