Hey! Sorry this is so late, I had some things to deal with so I couldn't start writing this as quickly as I hoped I would. But on the plus side, this is the longest chapter yet by far. It was also probably my favourite to write, so hopefully you'll have as much fun reading it as I had writing it :D

Disclaimer: I do not own TMI or its characters, but I really wish I owned Smallville pyjamas. Do they even exist?

Chapter 10: Trying to avoid the wall

"Well," Jonathan says, rubbing his hands together. "Let's get this party started!"

"No," I shake my head at him, pushing him towards the kitchen door. Okay, well I'm attempting to push him to the kitchen door; with his weight, it's more me just placing my hands on his chest as my socks keep slipping backwards across the floor. "Absolutely not. There will be no partying here."

"But it's your birthday, Sis." Jonathan smiles at me innocently. "If your being in my life for seventeen years isn't reason enough to celebrate, I don't know what is."

"Yeah, that's sweet and all that, but I know what you're really trying to do here." I manage to move him back an inch. It's working!

"I honestly don't know what you're talking about. I'm just trying to make you happy." He takes a step forward, eradicating my progress and more besides. Why did I choose to wear fluffy frictionless socks today of all days? Really, I need to get my priorities straight. Choose the friction over comfort. Always choose the friction.

"Jonathan, I wasn't born yesterday."

"I know that, silly. You were born today, seventeen years ago. Sebastian go grab some champagne!"

"Sebastian, take one step towards that fridge and I will tell your aunt exactly what it was you were doing in the garage the other day," I threaten him. Sebastian freezes midway as the others watch him curiously. Knew that'd come in handy.

"Seb, who has more dirt on you?" Jonathan says, not taking his eyes off me. "Me or her? Go get that champagne." Sebastian looks between the two of us frantically, clearly torn.

"Don't you dare, Verlac," I glare at him and then at my brother. "You and Alec are the only ones who are already eighteen. Mum and Dad will go insane if they find out about this."

"They don't mind on special occasions which, I was led to believe, this is." Jonathan crosses his arms over his chest.

"Well it's my special occasion," I retort. God, that sounds so strange out loud. "So I get to choose what I want to do, which is for you guys to stay out of my way. You can start with getting out of this kitchen. None of you are getting your hands on any alcohol and to make sure of that, I will stay here all night with Isabelle if I have to."

"Too right, we will." Isabelle nods, backing me up. Jonathan stares at me for a second longer, then glances over my shoulder at Isabelle.

"Fine," he eventually sighs. "We'll just have to find some other ways to entertain ourselves." He rolls his eyes at me, then ushers the rest of the guys out of the kitchen. "We'll be in the next room if you need us."

"Are we seriously staying here all night?" Isabelle mumbles to me once the boys are safely out of earshot.

"No, just long enough for them to forget what they even wanted from here. It won't take much time, don't worry. All we need is for them to start playing Call of Duty or something and they won't disturb us for the rest of the night. In the meantime, do you want to play Uno?"

Isabelle and I spend the next hour playing Uno on the dining table. During that time, Jonathan pokes his head in through the door once, checking if we're still there. Around ten minutes after that, Jordan is sent to the kitchen. But then unlike Jonathan, who just said hello and left, he makes up some lame excuse about wanting some milk, so we keep our eyes on him as he reluctantly pours himself a glass. Then he sips it slowly, waiting for us to go back to our game, but we don't give him that satisfaction. Instead, we smile at him and let him stand there awkwardly as he finishes the entire glass. Every single drop. After that, Jonathan doesn't send anyone else.

We're finally ready to head upstairs when we hear the tell-tale noises of instruments being set up. I freeze halfway up the staircase.

"Surely they can't be thinking of having practice now?" I look at Isabelle, her face mirroring the panic that must be evident on mine. Then the wailing begins as they start to play their songs.

"I can't believe this!" Isabelle lets out a long string of curses as we both stomp over to the practice room. The boys completely ignore the two of us as we stand by the door, continuing with their crazy antics. Their music has taken on a whole different type of feel though. For some reason it sounds a lot more brutal than normal, like they're actually trying to play their instruments to death.

"JONATHAN!" I yell at the top of my lungs, but he doesn't pay me any heed. Even Isabelle's screaming can't be heard over the din. The music is so loud it seems as if it's affecting the room itself. The lights even look like they might be flickering. Unless that's just the headache that's inevitably coming on.

No wait. The lights are definitely flickering. I glance at Isabelle at the same moment she looks at me. Our eyes lock for a second and then I can't see them anymore. In fact, I can't see anything anymore. I belatedly realise that I can't hear anything either. Did I just die? Is that what happened? Was the music so awful that it literally killed me!?

"Why are the lights off!?" I hear someone howl. I think it's Jordan, but I can't be sure.

"Power cut," I hear someone else say. Jonathan. Yeah okay, so that's probably a more likely explanation than death. Though if anyone's music could be bad enough to actually kill someone, it would be Mallard Massacre's.

"This is all your fault!" I shout in frustration.

"Ouch, Clary," Isabelle groans. "That was right in my ear."

"Sorry, Izzy." I turn myself around a little and yell again in what I hope is Jonathan's general direction. If he hadn't completely soundproofed the practice room, we might have a little light coming in from outside, but instead it's pitch black.

"How is it my fault?" Alec asks. Wrong direction again.

"Not you, Alec," I huff. "Jonathan, wherever the hell you are, this is your fault."

"I highly doubt that," Jonathan replies. "We practice all the time and we've never had a problem with the electrics before. I think the whole street is down."

"I don't care whose fault it is," Jordan says, his voice coming from somewhere incredible close by. "Can we please just get some light in here?"

"I think there are some candles in the living room," I say, feeling my way to the door. My fingers encounter something rock hard. I grope the wall, trying to find my way back to the entrance. Where the hell is the door? The wall grunts. My hands fly off it in surprise. Did the wall just make a noise?

"Isabelle," I squeak. "The wall just made a sound."

"That's because it's not a wall," it grunts again. Jace. Crap, the wall is Jace. The wall is Jace. That means I was just feeling up Jace. Oh dear lord. I'm glad it's dark because then he can't see that all the blood has just rushed up to my face. If I were ever to undergo spontaneous combustion, now would be a pretty good time for it. Any other time, he'd probably just find this funny, but given our current situation he's probably either furious or feeling incredibly awkward. I can't quite tell from his voice. I mean, grunts aren't all that expressive. This is why I have such a hard time understanding Jonathan.

"Sorry," I mumble, backing up as far as I can from him, only to collide with someone else.

Jordan lets out a high-pitched scream.

"Jordan!" I try to reassure him, but he won't stop screaming. "It's just me, for goodness' sake." He's still screaming. Is this what Maia has to put up with? I've got to say though, that boy sure has a set of lungs on him. No wonder he's the vocalist. He's definitely being very vocal right now. Bad time for jokes, Clary.

"Kyle, pull yourself together, man." Jonathan snaps, suddenly right next to me. Jordan shuts up immediately. How he managed to make his way over here without impaling himself on some kind of equipment is beyond me. You got mad skills, bro.

"I know I do," he says, and then he places his hands on my shoulders, showing me to the door. Damn, did I just say that out loud? Before I know it, we're safely through the door and I can vaguely make out the hallway. I can't see any of the streetlamps outside, so Jonathan's probably right. It's the whole street. Then he guides me into the living room, which is lit with an eerie glow from the moonlight streaming in through the windows. My eyes have adjusted a little better at this point, so I look behind me to see that everyone is hanging on to each other in some sort of way. It's like we've formed some sort of conga line and I'm leading it. Once the last person has piled into the living room, Jonathan lets go of me.

"Dude, what is wrong with you?" He asks, slowly prying Jordan's fingers off his own shoulders.

"I just feel a little uneasy without light, that's all." Jordan says, stuttering a bit. A little uneasy? I'll say.

"You're scared of the dark?" Jonathan says, disbelief plain in his voice.

"I wouldn't put it that way…"

"You're scared of the dark," he says again, though without it being a question this time.

"Maybe."

"Just stay there with Alec," Jonathan chuckles. "I'm going to look for some candles."

A few minutes later, we're all sitting in a circle on the floor, a selection of lit candles set up in the middle. Mum tends to go through quite a few phases since she's always trying to 'discover' herself, so luckily we still have a lot of candles and the like left over from her month of meditation.

"Dude, what is up with those candles?" Sebastian says, looking a little freaked out. He's sitting opposite me, in between Jace and Alec. "Are you trying to set up a séance or something?"

"Why would you think that?" Jonathan asks. He's sitting to the left of me, with Jordan on the other side of him. To my right is Isabelle, who in turn is next to her brother. Jace is still very obviously trying to avoid making eye contact with me. I can't say I blame him after the way I just violated him. I let my hair fall in front of my face to hide my cheeks, just in case everyone can see me blush now.

"Well, for one, you've created a pentagram." Sure enough, when I take a closer look I realise Jonathan has indeed set up the candles in a pentagram shape.

"Completely unintentional, I assure you," Jonathan laughs, though something tells me it's not.

"Well can you change it then!?" Jordan whimpers, hugging his legs to his body. He looks around the circle nervously. "I don't want any freaky voodoo going on here."

"Chill, man." Jonathan moves a couple of the candles around. Now the pattern looks more like some kind of chicken. "Is that better?"

"Yeah," Jordan nods, but he doesn't relax his position.

"Now everyone just calm down, okay? I'm sure the lights will be back on soon enough. In the meantime, why don't we tell some horror stories to pass the time?"

"Can we not?" Jordan squirms.

"Oh come on, Kyle. If anything it's for your own good."

"Why's that?"

"Well, it's better that you're prepared."

"Prepared for what?" His eyes bug wide. I should probably stop my brother, but I'm kind of getting a kick out of someone else being the butt of his jokes for once.

"For one, there's the spirit that lives on our street."

"What spirit?" Alec pipes up, egging him on.

"The spirit of a young boy who used to live a few doors away from us."

"What happened to him?"

"Well, he went out with his brother and his friends one night when they got into a bit of trouble. You know that old abandoned hotel a couple of miles from here?"

"The Hotel Dumort?" Jace asks, leaning forward.

"That's the one. Well, they thought it would be a good idea to break into it that night. No one knows why. Something just possessed them to do it. They went in, but here's the thing, only three of them came out. The boy never came back, and his brother and his two friends wouldn't say a word about what happened. They were all too traumatised by whatever had happened to them inside. But sometimes, even now, people say they can see the lost brother wandering these streets, looking for the others, wondering why they hadn't gone back for him."

"And how long ago did it happen?" Jace presses. "How long ago did he go missing?"

"Over a hundred years ago…"

"And have you ever seen him?"

"I haven't myself, but De Quincey next door once told me that a boy knocked at his door one night, asking if he'd seen his brother. But before he had a chance to ask the boy who he was, he just disappeared." Jonathan whispers the last part for dramatic effect.

"SHIT NO!" Jordan yelps, scrambling off the floor. I jump at the sudden noise. I didn't realise I'd been getting so sucked in to the story, despite the fact that Jonathan had told it to me many times when I was younger. Of course, I didn't believe him now, but I still always feel a little uneasy whenever I pass the old Hotel Dumort.

"I'm joking, geez…" Jonathan laughs, gesturing for Jordan to sit back down.

"No way," Jordan shakes his head. "I'm not sitting anywhere near you, Morgenstern."

Suddenly we hear a tapping sound coming from the front door and Jordan lets out a blood-curdling scream.

"Shut up!" Jonathan jumps up and slaps his hand over Jordan's mouth, muffling his protests. We all freeze, looking at each other across the circle. Then our eyes drift to the hallway. Jonathan's story wasn't true. Of course it wasn't true. My brother's full of crap most of the time. Maybe we just imagined it?

The tapping stops. But then there's a knock. A solid knock on the door.

Isabelle grips my hand. Even Jonathan looks ruffled. Our eyes lock and he just shrugs at me.

Another knock.

"Is someone going to get that?" Alec mutters. No one dares to speak too loudly. No one looks like they're about to move anytime soon either.

"Maybe it's Mum and Dad?" I look at Jonathan hopefully. "Maybe they forgot something."

Three more knocks.

I push myself off the floor shakily.

"Jon?" I look to him again. We'll have to open the door eventually but there's no way in hell I'm going out there alone. He nods at me, then releases his hold on Jordan. By this point, Jordan is just too frozen in shock to make a sound. Jonathan makes his way into the hallway slowly, with me not too far behind. None of the others look like they're going to join us. Dweebs. Always leaving it to the Morgensterns.

We both pause momentarily as we see the silhouette behind the front door. One silhouette. Not two. So our parents aren't back, after all. Then who on earth is it? Jonathan looks over his shoulder at me.

"What do we do?"

"Well, it doesn't look like they're going anytime soon." As if they can hear us, the person knocks again.

"So we open the door?" He gulps.

"We open the door," I nod. Jonathan edges forward slowly. I grip the edge of his shirt as we both move closer and closer to the front door.

"Ah!" Jonathan squeaks. I scream.

"Clary, keep it down!" He places his hand over my mouth. Ew, that hand just touched Jordan's mouth too. That's literally the first thing I think of. I know, I wouldn't survive long in horror films.

"Then why the hell did you make that noise?" We speak in harsh whispers.

"You stepped on my bloody foot!"

"Oh, sorry."

The figure knocks again. Jonathan places his hand on the door handle.

"Clary, if anything happens to me tonight, I just want you to know that…"

"Jon, just open the damn door."

He turns the knob and wrenches the door back before he can think too much into it. I prepare to scream again as the figure looms up overhead. He has a rather large rectangular object in his hand, which he raises towards us. I duck behind Jonathan. This is it, we're going to die. We're going to be bludgeoned to death by –

"Pizza?" The man steps backwards into a pool of light on the porch, revealing himself and the three boxes of pizza in his hands. I let out the breath I've been holding, but I still can't bring myself to speak. Even Jonathan's at a loss for words. "Oh sorry, is this the wrong house?" The man checks a sheet of paper that is lying on top of the boxes. "Three pizzas for Jonathan Morgenstern?" He speaks with a foreign accent, though I can't quite place it.

"Oh. Oh!" Jonathan snaps out of whatever trance he's in. "Sorry, I completely forgot about that."

"How convenient," I grumble, smacking him in the shoulder. I could have had a heart attack and died, all because my brother forgot about some pizza.

"No problem, I'm Raphael, by the way!" The boy smiles, the moonlight illuminating his shiny teeth, and passes the boxes over to Jonathan.

"Thanks," Jonathan reaches into his jeans pocket for some cash and hands it to Raphael. "Why didn't you just ring the doorbell?"

"Power's out," Raphael shrugs.

"Ah yes," Jonathan laughs awkwardly. "Keep the change."

"Thank you," Raphael grins. "Enjoy your evening!" Then he waves and runs back down the path where a small moped is parked. As he revs the engine, the streetlamp above him flickers and then the whole street floods with light. I blink as all the lights in the house turn on at once. The rest of the band and Isabelle come running into the hallway.

"Are you guys alright!?" Jordan asks, his gaze flicking between the two of us.

"Yes we're quite fine, no thanks to Jonathan." I roll my eyes at my brother. "The idiot forgot he'd ordered pizza. It was just Raphael the delivery man at the door."

"Raphael?" Alec raises his eyebrows.

"Yes, why?"

"The name just sounds familiar, that's all."

"I think he was Spanish or something."

Alec gives Jonathan a weird look, but then he shakes it off.

"Well, don't just stand around then. I'm starving!" Sebastian announces. I glare at Jonathan one more time before we all follow Seb into the kitchen. Personally, I think I've lost my appetite.

It doesn't take long for the seven of us to finish off the pizzas. Jonathan sets up some beds downstairs in the living room for the boys to sleep on, while Isabelle and I make our way back to my room upstairs. I leave her to get ready for bed and head to the bathroom to brush my teeth. My Mum decided to have a massive cleaning spree before she left, so the only pyjamas I'm left with are my slightly holey Smallville ones. I only really bought them in the first place because of Tom Welling's face on the shirt, despite the fact that they're meant for boys and are way too big for me. My gaze is too fixed on my own shirt to notice that the bathroom is occupied. My eyes snap up as I almost trip over the threshold of the bathroom door, and then I'm close to tripping over again as they land on the half-naked man before me.

Jace stands a few feet away from, wiping his hands on a towel. Oh, and he's only wearing a pair of pyjama bottoms, but that's no big deal. He freezes as he looks up to see me by the doorway.

"Sorry, I…err…" I gasp, stumbling backwards. Then I turn and begin to head back out of the bathroom before I can embarrass myself anymore.

"Clary, wait!" I stop. Not because he told me to wait though. I stop because he just called me Clary. Not Midge, or Shorty, or Clarissa packed with sarcasm. Just Clary. I turn back around slowly, making sure to keep my eyes on his face and not on his bare muscly chest. Face, Clary, face.

"Yes?" I squeak, my voice barely audible.

"I just, I…uhm…" He runs his hand through his hair. "I just wanted to say I'm…err…I'm sorry."

"What?" I was definitely not expecting that.

"I'm sorry," he says again, with more conviction. "I've been a complete arse to you this past week, and you didn't deserve it." I start to speak, but he raises his hand to stop me. "Just let me talk, and then you can say what you like. I was wrong, okay? I don't say that often, so don't expect me to say it again. I mean, at first I was really pissed, but then I realised I had no right to be like that. I shouldn't have put you in that position, no matter how much I hate Smeliorn." I stifle a giggle at his nickname for Meliorn. I almost can't quite believe what I'm hearing. All this week I've been trying to apologise, but he hasn't even seemed interested in talking to me. And now he's apologising to me? "I get that we're not close, and I'm sorry that I made you uncomfortable. I won't do it again. That's why I've been keeping my distance lately." And just like that, my heart sinks. "I'm sorry. I understand if you don't want to talk to me again, but I just wanted you to know that. That's all." He looks at me carefully, as if he's assessing whether or not I'm about to explode at him. I don't quite know myself. This isn't the Jace I want. I'm glad he's talking to me again, but I want things back the way they were before. I don't want us to be treading on eggshells around each other from now on. So tell him, duh. Right, yeah. Maybe I should.

"I'm sorry, too," I say, instead. His eyes widen. "Yeah, you were being a little overbearing, but I shouldn't have said the things that I said."

"You don't have to…"

"I didn't mean them, Jace." I cut him off. "I was so angry at you and I just couldn't help myself. Once I started talking, I couldn't stop. I regretted them as soon as they'd left my mouth."

"So you don't hate me?" The words come out slowly, as if he's testing them. He still sounds unsure, but his expression seems a little more open than before. It's almost like he wants to hope, but he can't bring himself to.

"No, Jace. I don't hate you." I roll my eyes at him. A ghost of a smile plays on his lips. "Don't get me wrong, you drive me up the wall sometimes and there are moments when I really think I might strangle you and…"

"Okay, okay! I get it!" He laughs. A proper, genuine laugh. His whole face lights up with his eyes crinkling at the corners, and all of the sudden my chest feels ten times tighter than it did a few seconds ago. "So we're good?"

"Yeah," I smirk. "We're good." I try to play it cool but inside I'm running around with my arms flailing all over the place. He's back. Jace is back. One guy shouldn't have the power to make my mood rollercoaster like this, but somehow he's managing it.

"In that case…" he fumbles around inside one of his pockets. Seriously though, how it fair that even men's pyjama bottoms have pockets? Don't stare at his trousers, Clary, geez. I move my eyes up. No, don't stare at his perfectly toned abs either! My eyes widen. Who knew guitar-playing could give you a six-pack? I know he plays a bit of football in his spare time, but damn. It's hardly a surprise that I mistook him for the wall earlier. "Err…" he coughs. It's only then that I realise he's been holding something up to me for the past few seconds. Oh god. You couldn't give me a power cut now, could you? Too late. He can probably already see that my face has just turned fifty shades of red. I mean, he did just catch me staring at his body. I shudder. It sounds so dirty when I put it like that.

I decide to avert my eyes, finally, and pay attention to his hand. He's holding a little black box, small enough to fit in my palm.

"What's this?" I whisper.

"Open it," he smirks at me, all of his smugness back.

I gingerly take the box from him, desperately trying to ignore how much my hand is shaking. What could be small enough to fit in something like this? In the back of my mind I'm getting an idea, but for the moment I'm too fixated on the box to make much sense of my thoughts. I open the lid gently, treating it as if it could explode at any moment, then I gasp. Inside the box on a little cushion, sits a gold ring.

My thoughts go wild.

I look up at him, mouth wide open. He's still just smirking. This doesn't make any sense. Is he- no. Surely not. He definitely can't be.

"Take it out then," he says, still the picture of ease.

It's only as I reach for the ring, that I realise it's attached to a silver-link chain. I take hold of the chain and pull it out, holding the ring up in front of me. As the ring rotates and catches the light, I finally notice the engravings on it. This is no ordinary ring. This is –

"THE ONE RING!?" I breathe, gazing at it in wonder. I've wanted this from Forbidden Planet for so long and I've been hinting it to everyone, but I didn't think anyone was every listening to me. Apart from him.

"I thought you might like it," Jace grins. "Happy Birthday."

"Aaaaaaaaah!" I squeal, throwing my arms around his neck. "Thank you so much, oh my god. This is the best thing ever." He wraps his arms around my waist tentatively.

After about five seconds of fangirling, I realise what I've done. I'm hugging Jace. I don't think I've ever hugged Jace. We're usually at each other's throats so much of the time, that I've never had a moment like this with him.

"You're very welcome," he says, and I can feel his chest vibrate as he speaks. Then I realise what I've really done. I'm hugging him topless. I'm suddenly hyperaware of how pathetically thin my shirt is.

Okay, think Clary. Let's do this step by step.

Firstly, detach yourself from the half-naked Jace.

I pry my fingers from his neck slowly. Luckily, he also chooses this moment to remove his arms from my waist. That'll definitely make it easier to think.

Secondly, move away from the half-naked Jace.

I take a step backwards so we're no longer in contact with each other, staring at my feet the whole time.

Thirdly, stop referring to him as the half-naked Jace.

I gulp and he coughs awkwardly.

"Really though, thank you," I say again, biting my lip.

"It's cool," he shrugs. Silence falls between us.

"Well, I should probably be getting back to the guys now," he says, ruffling his hair again. I notice he does that a lot when he's nervous.

"Yeah." I step aside so he can move past me to the door, without any more contact.

"Goodnight, Clary." He says, looking at me over his shoulder before he closes the bathroom door on me.

"Goodnight, Jace." I say. Then I turn to the bathroom mirror and scream silently.

Fourthly, just admit that you like him already.

There it is! Phew.

I really hoped you guys liked this :D Also it just occurred to me that tomorrow is the one-month anniversary of this story's publish date. So this time a month ago, the first couple of chapters were just random documents on my computers. One month later, I never dreamed this story would get as much of a response as it has done, so thank you all so much for supporting it. It means the world to me to have so many of you following this and taking your time to give it a chance. It's become so much more to me than I thought I would, and I love you all for giving me this chance. I didn't realise how much I'd missed writing until now. So thank you.

Till Wednesday guys...

smim xx