And so, Tessa must deal with the complications of two rather shocking revelations. Hope you enjoy (:

Tessa swallowed. "We're all dying."

"I'm just going faster. Too fast."

Tessa was silent. What do you say, to something to huge, so terrifically unjust, and yet so fitting? So she turned her head instead, and found his lips again, already familiar. Kissing Jem was sweet and perfect, and she felt warm all over, like a hot bath. She reached for the zip on his hoodie, watching him blush. "I'm sorry… it's not…"

She kissed the curve of his pale, muscular chest, silver angles and delicately prominent ribs, all lined in steel. "You, Jem Carstairs, are perfect."

They curled up together not long after, pulling Jem's thick comforter over the both of them. His fingers were tangled in her hair, and his other hand entwined with hers, tucked safely beneath her chin. Their heartbeats slowed in tandem, their breathing synched as it grew deeper, his for once easy as it flitted from his chest and across her head. His eyelids fluttered, he sighed, sound asleep. She nestled back against him, pillowing her head on his arm.

This was how Will found them when he cracked open the door: Jem a small smile lifting the corners of his hollow face; Tessa, face free of worry lines, her lips pressed against the crook of his elbow, head tucked against his chest.

Will checked his watch. Dorm checks were in fifteen minutes, but the pair were so soundly asleep he could not bear to wake them. He pulled shut the door and turned back down the hallway.

Tessa awoke first, to the sound of the morning bell. Her eyes flew open, huge and startled and grey, right into Jem's fluttering silver ones. "Good morning," he murmured.

"Jem!" Tessa was already jumping to her feet, pulling on her shoes, checking her pockets for her keys. "We fell asleep. I missed dorm checks! Oh god, they'll have checked here, and seen us, and… oh fuck. I'm going to lose my scholarship, I'm going to be kicked out; I can't, I actually can't do this." She stopped suddenly, dropping the shoe which she had frantically been shoving on to her foot. She bit her lip, remembering. "And you…"

Jem passed her room key to her from where it had fallen out beneath the covers in the night. He smiled. "Tessa. Get to your room, get into uniform, get to class. The world must go on."

"But…"

"It was all happening before. You just didn't know about it."

"I wish I had."

"Don't. You promised you wouldn't treat me differently."

"I know. I just..."

"Tessa. Go to class. I'm fine."

She nodded decidedly, and, grabbing her shoe, scurried out the door. One foot in the hallway, she turned back. "Last night, I didn't just because…"

"Tessa."

"Right. Right. Gotcha. Later." She slammed the door.

Tessa showed up for English ten minutes late, starving, and still not having come to grips with her dramatic weekend; the fact that one of her best friends had drugged her and tried to use her (seduce her?) and the other was dying. It was rather a mind-full.

"Miss Gray?"

Tessa's head snapped up from where she had been doodling in the margins of her worksheet.

"Off who was the character Tess Durbeyfield modelled?"

Tessa shook her head. "I don't know. I'm sorry."

Mr. Scott pursed his lips. He was ballsy at best, with a sharp tongue and obvious enjoyment of drink, but he, waving his fancy cigars he kept in gold cases too expensive to not be tacky, could recite passages like poetry from every novel they studied, and loved literature for the language of storytelling and the way in which it taught all things, and so allowed him the superior air for which he had a marked propensity. Tessa had yet to decide if she loved or hated him.

Right now, she was leaning towards the latter. Had he quizzed her on the content of the novel, the themes, events, sacrifices and emotions therein, she could have pulled something off. Instead, he asked random facts and said, "I see," in the most disappointed, disapproving tone. She hated that tone.

She felt Sophie glance at her, ready to share a conciliatory grimace or to make some offensive imitation, but Tessa flushed and kept her eyes on the board. When she was kicked out, she'd have to leave Sophie behind too, after all. She couldn't help the gloomy surety that had descended.

"Augusta Way," Mr. Scoot replied. "Jot it down, jot it down. I'm not saying that it is going to be on your test, but it is going to be on your test. Anybody failing, in this antepenultimate semester, can hand in an essay on their similarities, or, perhaps, on the observed similarities between Tess of the d'Urbervilles, and the characters and social structures active today. No, Mr. Lightwood, name does not count." He looked pointedly at Tessa, who was trying (not very hard) to not enjoy Gabriel's reddening neck.

Mr. Scott pulled a rather wicked lighter out of his desk drawer and closed it with a bang, the whole class jumping slightly. He waved it around lavishly a few times, using it to accent his next monologue, so dryly spoken as to be near humorous. "Tell me now, what was Tess' main opposition within the first two parts of the story? For those who have not read it, that includes not the first two chapters, in which little we truly care about was discussed, except for, of course, the introduction of characters, setting, circumstance, and conflict. No, I refer to The Maiden, and Maiden No More, which is quite telling, if anyone thinks to read into it. But of course, pardon my forgetting the generation gap. No one reads voluntarily anymore! So enlighten me, since this was assigned. The conflict, the opposition, the outcome. Go."

Forty minutes later, Tessa dragged out of the classroom, Sophie hot on her heals. A dark-haired girl breezed past them, ranting to her companion- "Antepenultimate? Could he have not just said that its first term!"- and into the hallways, just crowding with the between classes rush. Of course, the school population was small even at peak, and the classes so scattered as to disperse large crowds altogether, but the English building was no more than four classrooms, divided by two extremely narrow hallways that crossed dead centre, and leaving it in exactly the direction one had hoped was nearly impossible.

Sophie grabbed her sleeve just as Tessa breached the doorway and was expelled onto the grass beside the cobbled walk. "Hey. Is everything okay, between us? Because you've been kind of avoiding me, and I wanted to know that I didn't do anything or, you haven't heard something…"

Tessa's eyes widened. "Oh no, you can't think that! There's just been so much going on, and I think I've made a fairly terrible fool of myself, and I'm sure to be kicked out any moment, I'll tell you all later, I'm sure, just as soon as I get through French. Oh fuck, that's with Will." Tessa pulled up one of her knee socks. "Lunch then. Alright?"

Sophie nodded. "Okay. Lunch." As Tessa ran off, she wondered if, perhaps, the other girl had been caught under Jessamine's spell; the shiny hair and pretty nails. Tessa wouldn't be the first to make a new friend and become to good for her. She bit one of her ragged fingernails and, having a spare period, went to find Charlotte.

When Tessa arrived in French, it was to see the seat in front of her blessedly empty. She shuffled through her notes, trying desperately to remember the correct conjugations of irregular verbs in the conditional tense; less for fear of one of Madame Belecourt's infamous pop quizzes, and more for something to occupy her mind aside from praying the seat would remain empty.

She had no such luck however. Just as the last bell rang, Will sauntered through the classroom door, shaking his hair out of his eyes. He met hers across the room and grinned, sliding easily into his seat. "Bonjour Madame. Ça va? Il fait beau aujourd'hui, n'est pas?"

"Bon appris midi, tous. Un examen petite maintenant, mes élevés. Surprise!" Madame Belecourt giggled. "Est-ce que ce n'est pas amusant?"

She handed round the papers, a quiz which was indeed on the conditional tense; her ruby heels clacking across the wooden floor, and the scent of her perfume wafting out behind her.

Tessa bent over it. Manger. This was easy. She could do this. She scribbled in the first few answers, then looked up to check the remaining time. Her eyes caught on Will's hair, a lock of which had curled perfectly at the back of his neck. She suddenly felt like Ramona Quimby, terribly anxious to tug the girls of the person in front, and watch it spring, or, in Ramona's words, sproing back into place. Of course, her motives, she was sure, were quite different. His hair, she knew already, was very soft. She wouldn't mind running her hands through it again, or feeling his in her own. Her gaze wandered down the strong line of his shoulder through his dress shirt. She was suddenly (well, not too suddenly) intensely curious as to what he looked like without it. What he looked like compared to… Jem.

She shut her eyes, trying to shake the fantasies that were half memory rushing through her brain. Jem. Jem was sweet, and kind, considerate, and lovely, and dying. And she had spent the last night in his bed. Just kissing (mostly) but still. Jem. She must think of Jem.

"Deux minuit." From the front, Madame Belecourt scratching it on the board, white chalk flaking on to the ground.

What Tessa needed to focus on, this minute, was her test. Etre is irregular, she knew that. But turns to what?

"Temps. Ca suffit."

She, along with the rest of the class, groaned.

"Passez votre examen a la personne sur votre droit."

Will twisted in his seat. "Charles isn't here. Can the three of us trade instead?" He glanced between Tessa and her desk partner Tatiana, who had turned out to be nearly as insufferable as Will, and just as in love with herself.

"Fine." Tatiana tossed her paper to Tess, and snatched Will's from his outstretched hand. Frowning, Tessa passed hers forward.

"Thanks love." He glanced down at it, then smirked. "Nice illustration."

Tessa's eyes widened, but he had already turned back to the front, where Madame Belecourt had already started to write the answers up in crisp, perfect cursive. She sat in the agony of curiosity for another ten minutes before they were instructed to return their quizzes to the owners and then take their marks up to the front.

Will was still smirking when he passed it back.

He had written a little commentary beside each of the questions. Things like, 'you're going great sweetie,' and 'missed just one, keep your chin up'. Better, or worse though, was that in the bottom corner of the page, she had, while off in space, doodled an intricate letter W, the end of which looked rather like a J. Beside it, with his red pen, Will had written, 'I won't tell if you don't.'

She ripped a corner off of her notebook, balled it up, and chucked it at the back of his head, but he just chuckled, and rose to report his grade.

When class ended, Tessa hurriedly packed up her things, terribly grateful that it was lunch. She had to meet Sophie, to talk this whole thing through.

"Tessa." Will grabbed her sleeve. "Where are we eating?"

"Not together."

Will looked taken aback. "What?"

"Did you know what was in the lemonade?"

"The lemonade? What—Oh, at Benedict's. Was something wrong? I had a rather good time, I thought you did too."

"Yes well, drugs can have that affect." She pushed past him, then thought of something and turned over her shoulder. "And tell Jem… tell him to find me when he has a moment. Please."

She hurried out the door, leaving Will, bewildered, to gather his books.

Sophie was seated beneath one of the ornamental oak trees in the quad when Tessa found her, taking advantage of the good weather. "You mustn't ever," Tessa said as she sat down, "think I'd leave you for Jessamine. We may be roommates, but you and I? We're friends."

Sophie blushed, turning an apple over in her hands. "I'm sorry."

"I didn't mean for you to think anything was wrong. I've just got a bit going on."

"With the boys?"

Tessa nodded, then proceeded to recount the whole weekend' events. "I'm so stupid! I don't even know what's going on."

"Why did you even go to Benedict's?"

"Jessamine. She said I was too isolated, and that the two of us needed some bonding time, and that she had a dress I could wear, and that she couldn't very well show up alone. I don't know. It all sounds so stupid."

"And he really drugged you?"

"That's what Magnus… er, Mr. Bane said. That the lemonade had molly in it. And Jessamine said that every boy knows to use that."

"You know, you claim your just roommates, but you're taking a lot of her advice."

"I don't mean to. It's just, she's always there, and then she says something, and it's like it's stuck in my head, like a popcorn kernel in your gum. You know it hurts, and it shouldn't be there, but you just can't get it out. I suppose you knew about Jem."

"Yes. I've been bringing him extra doses from Charlotte, or helping him to the hospital wing if something goes wrong since he got here. I'm more discreet than a Brother."

Tessa nodded. "Yeah, you are. Less creepy too."

"Thanks." Sophie tugged a handful of grass free. "So do you like Will or Jem?"

"I… I don't know. I mean, I like kissing both of them, but that seems a little too Italian to pass as a real answer. They're so similar, and so different, but such a package deal. How do you like one without the other?"

Sophie bit her lip. "It's not that hard. Jem is good, kind, honest, considerate. Will… well, there are worse."

Tessa raised her eyebrow. "You know, you can tell me if there's something else here…?"

The other girl flushed and shook her head violently. "Heaven forbid, no." But she was blushing. "Just, think of it this way. On man drugs you to try and get you to bed. The other, opens up his heart to you. Which is a better recommendation?" She bit into her apple with a loud crunch, and leaned back against the tree, closing her eyes.

"Have you heard anything about me being expelled?"

"What? Why?"

"I was in Jem's room at dorm checks."

"They probably thought you were at the Lightwoods. Didn't Gabriel get the curfew extended, market it as a school event?"

"Yeah, but I mean, for the later check. I was there the whole night."

"Alone. With Jem." Sophie didn't stir, but her voice was keener.

"Yeah. I mean, like I said, we didn't do anything other than kiss, but…"

"I haven't heard anything."

"You won't have," Jessamine cut in, spreading out Tessa's jacket and sitting down beside them. "As far as the administration are concerned, Tessa was in her bed last night, right on time."

"I was? Did you… how?"

"It wasn't me. It was Will. He was there when I woke up this morning, said he knew you needed someone to fill in for the bed check. So you're not in any trouble. But tell me: if you weren't out galivanting with him, where were you?"

Tessa tugged up her knee socks. There was one worry down. But if Will had known to cover for her, then he knew how she spent the second half of her night. Then he thought she was as flip about their encounter at the party as he had been. Then he was must be so confused. She was so confused. She sprang to her feet. "I've got to go."

So this was all relationship drama! Oh well… I guess I'm in the mood.
I'm feeling pretty sick, and so I spent all day in bed and watched a season and a half of Sherlock (If you watch it, you know its not that impressive) but you have no idea how impossible it was not to turn Will into some kind of random, bad ass detective here, over analyzing her pencil strokes in the commentary.
R&R please!
Love