Hello all! I am working on a massive edit for this story, as it is the lovechild of several different documents, and I keep finding little pieces I wanted in certain places. In the meantime, please enjoy this update!
Life Update:: I left my toxic job, was accepted into a PhD program, and moved across the country with my fiance! Life is good right now, so I'm hoping to update more frequently.
The song used in this chapter is Best I can by Art of Dying.
Read on, lovelies!
American Thighs
Chapter 7: Self Revolution
He knows the whiskey would feel fantastic, burning down his throat, spreading heat through his frozen insides as it transferred the numbness to his brain, allowing him a moment of peace. But instead, he finds himself staring at the amber liquid through the crystal tumbler, watching each cube slowly melt into the alcohol as the bartender hands shot after shot to the teenagers partying beside him.
He's unrecognizable, with purple bags beneath his eyes, dark as bruises. He has his blond curls tucked up in a beanie, his eyes downcast to avoid any lurking paparazzi. The women don't need to know of his fame and fortune to sidle up next to him and take a swing at wooing him to bed. He waves them off each time, wanting nothing more than to stare at the whirlpool he's creating in his glass.
It's karaoke night—a night for all the amateurs to stumble drunkenly from the shadows and belt out the wrong lyrics to eighties hair bands before ultimately falling face first into a pile of their own vomit on their way to the restroom.
Not entirely his crowd of people.
"Jace," a voice murmurs in his left ear, making him crane his neck just a little to see her. Aline, he recognized almost immediately, her almond eyes rimmed in black smoke and sleek hair brushing her bare collarbones. Her lips are lined in a shade darker than her skin, drawing his attention to them as she speaks.
"Hello," he greats conversationally, smelling alcohol on her breath. Fruity cocktail type—he deduces as she twirls a small, decorative umbrella in one hand. Clary always preferred Miller Lite. There it is, the name he'd come here to forget. Yet he finds her in everything. He thinks of her carefree, howling laughter as he tickled her sides, wishing it was that he heard instead of the squealing of the woman beside him. Her eyes were at the bottom of his glass, winking upward with mischief and joy. He compares everyone and everything to her, even the woman before him, and nobody comes close.
"You should sing for me," her sultry voice purrs, claws—not as sharp as Kaelie's—reach out to run up his arm. He shivers, but not from pleasure. He shivers because they aren't the hands he wants to be touched by, the ones of his dreams. Those are much paler, more delicate, driven by love instead of lust. "I signed you up."
As if on cue, the previous act comes to a close, a rumpled looking announcer taking to the stage. "And next we have…Jace Herondale!" His glare lands on Aline as hordes of screaming women rush forward, surging around him with his heartbeat.
Fuck it, he thinks, telling the DJ to cut the selected song with a glare. "I…uh…I guess I'll play something that's been on my mind for a while," he grumbles into the microphone, determined not to make this a media nightmare for Maia, mostly to save his own ass from her wrath. He accepts a beaten acoustic guitar from someone in the crowd as he settles on a barstool placed at the center. He strums the first notes to an unrecorded song. "This is an exclusive, on night performance," he tells the crowd to deafening cheers.
Tonight I feel like the world won't miss me,
So much to say, but there's no one listening.
If we're alone are we all together in that?
It was the first song he'd written in years, one of several his pencil had drawn out since the wheels hit American soil. He wanted to attribute it to the nostalgic sense of home, even if he didn't know where his actual home was. Was it London, where his parents taught him to crawl and then to walk and run and jump? Was it where Maryse took him to his very first PG-13 movie, dropping Alec and Izzy and him off at the theater's door with shimmering eyes? Was it with Clary in his arms, her small fist curled against his chest and her leg thrown over his hips? Home is where the heart is, but what happens when his heart is shattered into a million pieces?
I threw a penny in a well for wishing,
Prayed for all the things I think I'm missing.
A little time is all I really need.
He feels like Oprah sometimes. "You get a piece! You get a piece!" his heart would yell to anyone walking into his life. He wears his heart on his sleeve, except his sleeves are reinforced with steel walls, and his family is left banging at the barrier while Clary burst through like hydrochloric acid, dissolving a doorway for everyone else who ambles by. He doesn't know how he's been so dumb to let enough people in just to leave him empty.
I am doing the best I can with everything I am.
Don't you know nobody's perfect?
Do you understand how hard I'm trying to do?
The best I can
The best I can
Hope was gone when he'd looked into her eyes. They'd once held so much love and awe in his presence. Now they're ferocious, angry, and hollow. They don't automatically find his in a crowded room anymore, in fact, they don't find his at all. He's not good enough. He'll never be good enough.
A second chance to give you something
It takes a lifetime to come from nothing
I refuse to believe in running away, no
Broken, beaten, shattered—he wonders what he looks like to her, returning to her life after so much time has passed. He wonders if she can still peel him back, layer by layer, until his muscle is gone, revealing how truly weak and terrified he is.
I am doing the best I can, with everything I am.
Don't you know nobody's perfect?
Do you understand how hard I'm trying for you?
I am doing the best I can with everything I am.
Don't you know I think you're worth it.
Do you understand how hard I'm trying to do the best I can?
The best I can
He's always known she was worth it. That's why he cut himself out of her life. A moment of pain would certainly save her from a lifetime of it.
I got a picture of what matters and I keep it close to my heart
It's a little faded but so am I
He thinks of the tattoo on his chest, her name written so plainly it tends to get lost among the swirling newer additions, the black ink several shades lighter than the others.
Cause I am doing the best I can with everything I am
Don't you know nobody's perfect?
This drunken rockstar is the same Jace to hold her hand at prom when nobody asked her to go, the same one to push her higher on the swings until her toes touched the clouds, to kiss the tears from her cheeks when the silence of the night became to much. He is different and the same, and he doesn't know if she remembers who he used to be, if she still sees it in him now.
Do you understand how hard I'm trying for you?
I am doing the best I can with everything I am
Don't you know I think you're worth it?
Jace's love doesn't come from his heart. It comes from his soul, rooted so deeply into his entire being until each and every part of his body is yearning for her. Her mind, her body, her soul—he wants all of it, and Angel, if he doesn't feel like he's being burned alive every time he sees her. It's slowly killing him.
Do you understand how hard I'm trying to do the best I can?
The best I can
The best I can
The best I can
He doesn't want to be alone, but he'd be alone before breaking her all over again. He'd break himself a million times over just to make her heart whole again.
And I'm doing, oh I'm doing the best I can
I am, I'm doing the best, oh the best I can
The best I can, oh the best I can
Oh I keep doing, keep trying
The rockstar lies so easily, pretending to be a carefree party animal when all he really wants is a life that revolves around his best friend from a long time ago. The roaring in his brain drowns out the cheers as he haphazardly scrawls his name on the face of the guitar he's handed back to the beaming man. He stumbles from the bar, completely sober, brushing past Aline's grabby hands as he hails a taxi back to his mother's new house.
X.O.X.O.X
Jace looks up from the chords he's strumming on his guitar as Isabelle uses her shoulder to shove through the sorry lock on his door.
It's been years, he realizes, as he struggles to recognize his gangly teenage sister in the graceful model before him. Her hair is longer, falling to her waist in glossy strands that swirl around her with every step. The planes of her face are still smooth, but no longer covered with hidden acne. Her lips are painted in the darkest shade of red he's ever seen, eyes rimmed in layers of kohl eyeliner. It's there, in those onyx irises, he finds a sliver of familiarity.
He hadn't expected her to be timid in his presence, though he'd thought she'd carry some caution when seeing him after so long. Instead, she is livid, charcoal eyes blazing with fury as she stomps across the room toward him. She grips him harshly by the shoulder, squeezing a spot that makes him cringe. Even years and miles of separation can't quell the firestorm that is Isabelle Lightwood.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?!" Angel, that is a loaded question. He can't decide what she wants an answer to.
Why did he leave?
Why did he come back?
Were the tabloids right?
What's with the bags beneath his eyes?
Why can't he stop thinking about Clary?
"Nothing," he responds indignantly, dragging his pick along the strings of his guitar, only to have the instrument wrenched from his grasp and tossed across the room, where it splinters against the wall.
He scowls. Isabelle doesn't flinch.
She's always been stronger than him. Better than him.
He knows her anger is warranted, that the vicious response to his return is completely his own doing. He'd left without a word, just disappeared during the night, not even leaving a cryptic note in his place.
He barely called, never visited. So why the hell is he suddenly back in the States? He doesn't exactly enjoy stumbling through these strange hallways, where people walk to stiffly and the air smells too clean. He doesn't want to be here, sitting on a bed he's never slept in, talking to a sister he's never deserved. It had been his manager's idea for him to tour the Americas, not a delayed case of separation anxiety, not an overwhelming sense of millennial nostalgia like he's read about. And certainly not a specific redhead.
Back to Clary, he muses to himself.
"Why are you doing this?" she all but whispers, collapsing beside him on the bed as she refuses to meet his eyes. She digs her painted toes into the plush carpet, clenching her fists like she's struggling with control. She licks her lips when he fails to respond. He's always been good at avoiding his problems. "Mom…she's so happy that you're home."
"This isn't home," he bites out a bit harshly, catching Isabelle's audible squeak. "You know what I mean."
And she does. The big estate with its flowing gardens and musical fountains doesn't hold the same memories as that old brownstone, where they used to sneak cheap wine onto Clary's roof and drink until the stars swirled above them and dusk became dawn. It's not where they would hide in Alec's dusty closet and scare him when he crawled into bed at night.
"I just…I can't watch you crush her like that again."
He grits his teeth. He's never told anyone about the night he'd left. Not Maryse, not Alec, not Clary—how could anyone find it in themselves to forgive him when he can't even summon the strength to trust those who love him the most.
And he doesn't know if it's his refusal to be vulnerable or the fear of rejection that has kept him silent for so long. He's wrapped himself so tightly in his secrets that he's suffocated himself, killed off the innocent Jace that existed long before his voyage to America.
And somehow, his family is still here, throwing open the doors, welcoming him back in with arms wide.
Maybe it's the way Isabelle is looking at him, like she might shatter all over again. Maybe it's those empathetic eyes, the ones no longer an echo of the man who'd cast him out so many years ago. Maybe it's his need to breathe.
For the first time, he loosens his armor, shrugging off layer after layer of shame, of guilt and regret. With hands tightened into fists, the words finally spill from his mouth.
X.O.X.O.X
Jace had his first beer the summer before eighth grade. A group of them had stolen a pack of Busch Light from Mark Blackthorn's basement and snuck it out into the woods. It became a monthly ritual, huddled around a dimly lit fire with dopey grins on their faces as they exchanged stories of girls and games.
Freshman year, they'd managed to snag a bottle of tequila. The first sip tasted like shit—it always did, but the way it made him feel was immeasurable. It numbed his brain, replacing his normal emotion cocktail of guilt and pain with that of pure euphoria. Jace never talked about his past—not to Maryse, not to Clary, not even to the court-mandated therapist after the entire ordeal. Nobody truly knew what he saw that night—or every time he closed his eyes.
But with a stomach full of alcohol, Jace felt like he was soaring. It was like he'd finally shed the weight of his mother's death and could finally exhale.
And when the high would wear off, the feelings would return tenfold.
Their monthly activity had become a daily necessity for Jace. Yet, somehow he was able to hide how heavily he relied on the amber liquid in his thermos, continuing to pass his classes and excel in athletics. His mother either never noticed when a liquor bottle went missing or pretended not to.
Soon, around sophomore year, the alcohol wasn't doing its job anymore. Jace could drink and drink, and his demons still hovered around him like a cloak. They were immovable, unshakeable. That is, until his friend introduced him to pot. The cloud of smoke pushed out the darkness.
Until it didn't.
Senior year—pot became pills.
He'd go to parties and reach into a bowl, popping whatever he grabbed into his mouth and waiting for them to take effect.
The night—the cursed night—he'd attended one of these parties, pulling a handful of pills from the crystal bowl being passed around in the strobing lights and swallowed them all.
He woke up the next day in a house he didn't recognize, face pressed into the cold tile of a bathroom floor, drenched in his own sweat and vomit. In the bathtub was a boy, younger than him, staring forward, unblinking. There was a needle dangling from his arm.
He'd somehow managed to stumble home at three in the morning, jiggling the locked door of the brownstone. When it opened, he fell forward through the threshold.
He could only imagine what Robert saw when he lifted him up by his armpits. His eyes—black eyes—Isabelle's eyes—were brimming with disappointment and regret. There was so much hatred in his voice when he finally spoke.
"Get the fuck out of my house. Don't ever come around here again."
Jace's only clear memory of that night was the door shutting in his face, the lock clicking as loud as an explosion.
When he finally sobered up that afternoon, he checked himself into an anonymous rehab facility. They took his phone, cut off any communication to his past life. For months, he sat in his six by three cement room, staring at the tree out his window, wondering what was going on outside.
The first thing he did when he got out was go to the bar.
And that's when he knew he couldn't return to his family. He couldn't subject them to his addiction the way his father had to him.
In a perfect world, his love for his family would have healed him, would have driven him away from the drugs and the drink. He used what was left of his inheritance to buy a guitar and a one-way ticket to London. Where, somehow, even in his darkest moments, his deepest spiral, he'd found success.
He thinks now that it's because he chose a career that validated that lifestyle. A rockstar addicted to alcohol and pills is just a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's tolerated, expected even.
X.O.X.O.X
Isabelle Lightwood does not cry. But her eyes are not dry when Jace finally finishes his story, mustering all his courage to meet her gaze.
"I don't want to be that man anymore, Iz." He can tell she wants to hug him, the way her hands are twitching in his direction, not knowing if the affection would be welcomed. He closes the distance between them, wrapping his arms tightly around his sister as she cries softly into his shirt. "I've been a horrible brother," he tells her. She pushes him an arm's length away.
"A better sister would have seen the pain you were going through." She sniffles. "I had no idea."
He gives her a sad smile. "I've always been good at hiding it. Comes with the territory." His scars burn beneath his gray shirt. She blots the tears forming in the corners of her eyes with the corner of her sleeve, exhaling sharply to compose herself.
And then a sniffle comes from behind the slightly ajar door. Jace pulls is open to reveal a conveniently located Maryse and Alec.
Jace, who probably should feel violated by their eavesdropping, is grateful for their tight embraces as they tumble through the doorway. "I'll divorce that man a second time," Maryse says of Robert, but Jace quiets the notion. There's no one to blame but himself.
"You are my son, for the good and the bad," Maryse tells him. "And this time, you're not doing this alone." For the first time in nearly a decade, the tenseness in Jace's shoulders eases, the weight against his chest lifts without the aid of his chosen vices.
"I love you," he tells them, the words forming easily on his tongue as he allows himself to be overcome by his emotions.
All My Love,
BallinBlonde21