Hey, guys! Just a quick heads up that I'm not sure if there will be two updates for every story next month, like there has been for the past couple months, we'll just see how it goes. Working a lot at the moment and my husband and I are doing renovations on our home and just general busy life stuff, so don't have a lot of free time right now x
"What you got there?" Helen poked her nose over Clary's shoulder to have a look into the plastic container that Clary had just gotten out of the microwave in the tiny make-shift kitchen that the employees could use. The term employees was used pretty loosely as well, given most of them were students, and there was a dark room and a computer lab in the same building as them, and the people who worked in those used the same kitchenette. "Shit, that smells good."
"Jace took me shopping yesterday," Clary announced proudly as she stabbed her into the pesto chicken pasta that she had cooked up last night with Simon—after she had made meatballs for all of their dinner—so that all of them had substantial lunches to take to class.
For probably the first time since they started college.
"Food shopping?" Helen asked as she reached into Clary's container with her bloody fingers, and grabbed at a slice of red capsicum and pulled it out, shoving it her mouth and moaning. "Holy shit, this is amazing."
"I know, right? I'm a damn good cook when I actually have food in the house," Clary stated proudly, but then picked up her fork and threatened to stab Helen's fingers as she reached in to try an pick up a piece of pasta. "Don't you fucking dare. This is the best food I've eaten in two months, since I was back home with mum and Luke." Helen arched an eyebrow, but she pulled her hand back.
Wise decision, if Clary did say so herself.
"Anyway, like I said before—food shopping? That's a very specific kind of shopping," Helen rested her ass on the help desk next to Clary.
"Is it?" Clary mumbled through a mouthful of food that she had just shoved between her lips. "I would think something like lingerie shopping would be a very specific kind of shopping," she continued talking around the pasta, and clearly she had been living with Simon and Jordan for too long, because she never used to talk with her mouth full when she had been living back at home.
"It is. But that's—that's a different type of lingerie shopping," Helen said. "Food shopping is domestic as fuck. It's, like...A proper relationship type of thing." Clary's head jerked at that, and the fork clattered out of her hand and onto the desk. Helen frowned as she looked down and she seemed to realize her mistake.
Because no.
There was no proper relationship type of thing.
It wouldn't be fucking fair if people were classing them as a proper relationship type of thing—her first ever proper relationship thing—when she hadn't even gotten to have sex with Jace, and only to have kissed him yet.
So no.
Not to say there never would be, maybe, far into the future, at some point, after they had had a lot of sex that she knew was going to be mind blowing, but they had literally only kissed because of a dumb Kiss Cam and gone out for coffee once and now Helen was saying that it sounded like they were in a proper relationship type of thing because Jace had brought her some food? Jace just seemed like a nice guy! Who did nice things! Like buying poor college students food!
"Clary?" Helen said tentatively and Clary blinked at the blonde. "You haven't said anything...For about three whole minutes now." Clary cleared her throat and looked down at the desk, making a face when she saw some of the pesto had spilled off her fork and onto the desk top. She glanced around, looking for a tissue or a napkin to wipe up the desk with.
"There's no proper relationship type of thing or anything, Helen," Clary mumbled and Helen shrugged.
"Okay," she replied easily, as though putting those ideas in Clary's head was just easily swept aside and forgotten about. Clary rolled her eyes as she found a crumpled tissue under one of the books that was piled up on the edge of the desk and wiped up the mess. When she threw it toward the rubbish bin, Helen was still watching her with a small smile. "So when are seeing your not-relationship guy again?"
"Saturday," Clary replied, pointedly ignoring her little jibe.
"Well, that sounds like fun," Helen grinned. "You'll have to let me know how your date goes." Clary narrowed her eyes a little bit, wondering if Helen meant anything else, but she just kept on grinning at her, and so Clary let it go. "Anyway, I only just came by because I left a book here on my shift yesterday," the blonde eyed Clary carefully for a moment before lunging forward and grabbing a piece of pesto chicken with her fingers before dancing backwards a few steps and laughing as Clary picked her fork up again and gave a threatening jab in her direction. "See ya, Clary!" She picked up a book from one of the tables, the one that she must have left there during her shift yesterday, and was then leaving and letting the door slam shut behind her.
Clary couldn't help but frown after her.
It wasn't that she had any type of issue with a relationship, it was just that she really liked Jace a lot already and she didn't want to rush anything.
Except sex.
She would be really keen to rush sex.
They didn't even have to go full on, right in there sex, it could just be kissing and mostly clothed actions that lead to orgasms that were only partly satisfying. She'd be happy with that, because she knew that it would be good with Jace.
She settled back into her chair with her plastic container of pasta and fork and almost grumpily finished her pesto pasta.
Clary didn't have any classes on Friday, which was why Friday was the absolute best week day, and she stayed in bed until after she had heard all her roommates leave, including Jordan, who didn't have class until eleven. And then for some reason, she decided to get up and do some cleaning.
It wasn't as if their apartment was an absolute tip or anything, but they didn't exactly clean the place regularly. They attempted to have a cleaning schedule, which worked well enough to get the dishes clean and the washing down and the bathroom not absolutely disgusting, but there was still a lot to be desired. Simon usually did any of the extra cleaning, like the vacuum cleaner that they had got cheap because it only turned on half the time and the piping was so short that everyone but Clary had to hunch forward while using it, or dusting behind the TV or wiping along the window sills.
She turned a Hey Violet playlist up as she connected it to the speaker and started in the kitchen. Jordan and Simon had done the dishes last night after she and Isabelle had made dinner, and the boys didn't do a bad job, but they also didn't wipe around the sink and the drying rack once they were done, and they didn't take out any food that got trapped in the plug hole, since they didn't have a waste disposal unit in their sink, just leaving it there. Clary climbed up on the bench to pull things out of the cupboards and put them on the bench so that she could wipe down inside the cupboards, something that she was pretty sure hadn't been done since they had moved in, and honestly, time seemed to fade away.
It was surprising how therapeutic cleaning was.
She remembered her mum saying that when she was younger, and later she could think about that and make a face about how adult that must make her, but at the time, it was kind of nice.
She shifted through playlists as she worked, moving on from Hey Violet to Eminem to Miley Cyrus to Niall Horan until the front door was opening and Jordan was stumbling in with his boyfriend, their arms wrapped around each other and their faces smushed together. Clary was in the lounge now, having finished in the kitchen, and she looked up with an arched eyebrow. Jordan slammed the door behind him with a kick of his foot and then him and Lambert Connell stumbled forward a bit more before Jordan all of a sudden jerked away, sticking his nose in the air.
"What the—" he broke off as he saw Clary in the lounge, crouched down beside the entertainment unit, their DVD's and playstation games all pulled out as she wiped down the shelves. "It smells really clean in here."
"Yeah. Coz I've been cleaning," Clary waved her dirty paper towel over her head exaggeratedly. Lambert raised a pierced eyebrow at her and she grinned over at him. It was actually kind of funny, the way Jordan and Lambert had originally been introduced. He was a year older than Clary, and had been an apprentice at a tattoo place that also did piercings. Clary and Izzy had gone in to get piercings, and Clary had walked out with Lamberts phone number, and the next week they all met up at a bar to go dancing and drinking with their fake IDs. Clary had been completely ready for a fun hook up with the dark haired man, but then him and Jordan had met, and they had been tripping over each other ever since. Clary didn't resent either of them for it, her and Lambert were friends now and he and Jordan were happy with the thing that they had going on, even if it was super on and off.
"Do you...Want help?" Jordan winced as he asked the question, and with a quick glance down, Clary smirked, because it was obvious that Jordan had been hoping to take care of something else with Lamberts help.
"You go take care of your own issues," Clary waved a hand at the two of them with a grin and then leaned over to turn her music up louder, because they could be loud, and then went back to cleaning. She had finished with the entertainment unit and was ripping off some more paper towels when she heard her phone buzz from a text, and she reached over to pick it up, a grin spreading across her face when she saw a message from Jace.
Hi, Clary. I just wanted to check that everything was still okay for tomorrow night?
Of course, it was fucking alright.
She was pretty sure that if he cancelled on her, she was going to throw a tantrum.
YES!
She couldn't help but stare down at her phone, waiting for a reply to come. But then a few minutes went by, and nothing came and she grumbled under her breath and put her phone back down and went to pick up the paper towel and the cleaning spray when her phone buzzed again.
I just wanted to check before I made us a booking. I'll pick you up at six-thirty?
As far as excuses went for not replying to texts immediately, making a booking for their date tomorrow night was a pretty good one.
Thats okay. Do I have to dress fancy? Where are we going
Ninos. It's a beachfront restaurant.
Uh, yes, she knew where Ninos was. Luke had taken her mum there last year for their anniversary—he'd had to book nearly six months in advance to make sure that they had a table. She'd spent an hour looking at the menu the night that they had gone out to dinner, and she had practically drooled all over the keyboard of her laptop.
But it had also been incredibly expensive.
As in—a meal there would probably cost more than what she earned in two months.
She'd known that wherever they were going to go was going to cost a bit more money than she expected, and so she had compromised with herself to take some of her sock money out so that she would have the money if she needed it, but she would have to take out almost all of it to pay for dinner there. And to buy something to wear? She didn't have shit to wear there!
She assumed he was paying, but then she also didn't just want to make that assumption. It was a date, but she hadn't actually been on that many dates, per se, and so she guessed that he was going to be paying, but...She scrunched up her nose.
She was still staring down at her phone, thumb hovering over the screen as her brain fumbled for something to say when another text came, and then a third one.
Clary? Did you change your mind about Italian food?
We could go somewhere else, I can cancel the reservation.
Clary clicked her teeth together nervously as she thought about her response, which she was going to have to get together very quickly. She blew out through her lips and just went with the truth.
It sounds amazing, but I don't know if I can afford it
She sent off the reply before she could second guess it, and then a moment later, her phone was ringing. There was no picture that came up, because she didn't have one assigned to his contact, but she was also kinda frozen because who the fuck called anymore?
Old people!
Old people called!
Literally the only time she called people was when she was drunk, or if she really had to call Helen or Izzy to vent over something that had happened, although even then, she generally video called them instead, rather than call-call. Or her mum. But even then, the only reason she rang her mum was because she tried texting her mum, and then her mum just rang her back, so she might as well just cut out the middle shit and just ring her straight away. At least Luke could hold a conversation by text.
Sure, fine, she would call other people sometimes, but not really!
"Oh, fuck!" Clary groaned as she realized that she had been thinking for so long that she hadn't answered the call and it had rung out, so she just looked like a fucking idiot, staring at the missed call icon on her screen. She was about to try and call him back when her phone lit up again, with Jace calling her again, and she grinned, feeling a little loosened up knowing that he wanted to talk to her so badly that he was calling her back a second time. She swiped her thumb over the screen and lifted her phone to her ear, quickly answering the call. "Hi!" She chirped.
"Hey, um—are you busy?" Jace asked, probably wondering why she had totally blanked and not answered his call, even though it was obvious that she had her phone on her because they had been texting.
"No, no—just, uh—cleaning," she shrugged a shoulder and made a face at her reflection in the TV.
"Okay," he took an obvious breath over the phone, and Clary arched an eyebrow, not saying anything, because she was pretty awkward on the phone and so she settled for making another face at her reflection. "Uh—the money isn't a thing, Clary. Don't worry about that. I asked you out, I chose the place, I'm paying for dinner." Clary pursed her lips together for a moment and then nodded.
"Okay, that's fine then," she agreed.
She'd literally just been joking with Helen the other day about how she wanted someone to buy her expensive things and say she had a pretty face and...Now she had just had to work on him telling her that she was pretty.
That would be a good next step.
Or, dinner was the next step, so...Maybe if she wasn't going to use some of her sock money to pay for dinner, she could use it to pay something really good to wear to dinner.
"Clary?" Jace was asking and she blinked.
"Shit, what?" She asked.
"I just wanted to make sure you were okay with still going out. You sound kind of distracted?" Jace questioned and Clary felt bad.
"Sorry, I'm just...I really like cleaning?" She attempted, grasping at straws for a reason as to why she wasn't paying attention to the gorgeous older guy on the other end of the phone who was taking her out on a proper date tomorrow night, to a fancy ass restaurant, and was going to pay for it.
"Really?" Jace let out a laugh that sounded full-bellied and beautiful.
"No," Clary responded honestly and Jace laughed again, not in a way that he was laughing at her, but like he genuinely found her funny.
Which, yeah, point to him, because she was great and had her funny moments.
"So picking you up at six-thirty works?" Jace clarified and Clary nodded, even as she verbally answered.
"Sounds good," she replied and then winced. "Oh, yeah—I also feel as though I should warn you that my roommates will probably be here tomorrow? And probably drunk, since it's Saturday night. I mean...They might not be, but they probably will be." She thought about last Saturday night, and then the Saturday nights for the past, say, three months, and they had been drunk almost all of them, even if they didn't go out and club those nights, they would generally be drunk in their apartment.
"That doesn't bother me, Clary," Jace replied before hesitantly continuing. "Unless that's a problem for you?"
"No! I mean—well, one of my roommates is your cousin, so I should probably tell her that I'm going out with you..." Clary trailed off and tilted her head to the side.
Izzy had seemed totally fine when her and Jace had kissed, so...She was guessing this wasn't going to be a problem?
Maybe?
Back in high school, some of the girls she had been friends with had had crushes on her brother, but nothing had ever happened with any of them. She wasn't sure how she would have felt about that, but Jonathan Morgenstern had always been a total player, so she would have been looking out for them, more than being protective of her own brother.
"I actually thought you might have mentioned it to her, since you live together. But I can give her a call, if you want?" Jace suggested and Clary smirked and rolled her eyes at the fact that he was so eager to make another call.
"No, no, it's okay. I'll talk to her," Clary told him. "Uh—so I'll see you tomorrow?"
"Yeah," Jace's voice was softer now. "I'll see you tomorrow." Clary didn't take her phone away from her ear straight away, chewing down on her bottom lip and taking in a deep breath and ending the call.
Then she quickly sent a quick message out in her Facebook message group with Helen and Izzy.
I need to go dress shoppinggggg. TONIGHT