Chapter 21: It's Time
Hello everyone! I hope you're all well. Thank you for all of your lovely reviews on this story. Feel free to review with any question, comments or suggestions you may have. Now, on to the chapter!
Clary has imagined Simon's wedding for as long as she had imagined her own. Despite the amount of times she'd thought about it, there were a few things that she never imagined. She and Simon were never getting married. He was never getting married on a beach. And she was never seven months pregnant. Two out of three of those things weren't happening today.
Clary was standing in front of the mirror, in the dress Izzy had custom made for her crying. She felt as wide as she was tall, her feet hurt too much to wear heels and no amount of contour seemed to bring back the shape of her face. She was beyond proud to be Izzy's maid of honour, but it didn't help that she would be standing next to Izzy, who could make a garbage bag look sexy.
She knew it was stupid to cry about this; she was making two humans inside of her - of course a few changes were going to happen.
"Clary, are you ready to go soon?" Jace asked, walking into their wardrobe. She quickly tried to wipe her tears, but he had already noticed. He walked up behind her, wrapped her arms around her waist and looked at her in the mirror.
"Absolutely beautiful," he whispers in her ear.
"It's not fair," Clary says, "you're all tall and skinny and I'm this," Clary says, frowning at her appearance.
"Well I think you look more and more beautiful everyday. And in two months you're going to have two babies, and then I'm sure you'll think it was all worth it," Jace says, bending down and kissing her cheek.
Clary sighs, before walking away from the mirror. "I don't want to be pregnant for two more months."
"And why's that?" Jace says, holding his wrists out to Clary so she can put on his cuff links.
"It's not just that I've put on heaps of weight - I get that I can lose that later," Clary says, starting to put in earrings.
"Then what is it? Jace says, watching her, looking amused.
"I haven't been able to play the guitar for over a month! And I can't write a song for the life of me. And food that I've loved forever now makes me sick, and I crave food I've hated since I was little," Clary says, and then looks at Jace's smirk and adds, "And don't you dare say I'm still little!"
"I was going to say… that you should look at the positives too," Jace says, walking out of the wardrobe but waiting outside the door so Clary could catch up.
"Oh, like the positives that I have to pee every ten minutes. Or that none of my shoes fit me anymore. Or that I have pimples all over my back?" Clary says. Jace looks her up and down, and Clary says, "don't say my boobs getting bigger is a positive."
"Well, I mean… that is a positive," Jace says, and then quickly dodges Clary's hit. "But what I was actually going to say is that you're doing things you haven't in a long time too. You've gotten back into your art. And playing the piano again. You're getting into new foods, and you've met new people at your pregnant Pilates… I'm just saying it's not all bad."
"Whatever," Clary says, and holds out her hand so Jace can help her into the car. "If we have kids again, you're the one that has to be pregnant." Jace laughs before softly closing the car door.
As one would expect, Izzy's wedding was beautiful. She had planned everything with Magnus, and had spent the whole day before setting up so everything would be perfect. Clary had tried to help her and Magnus set up, but eventually they all decided they could probably do it more quickly if she just sat and watched, so instead she played good music and asked Izzy about her makeup and honeymoon.
Clary was currently in a room where Izzy was putting on the finishing touches to her makeup - thankfully she'd waited until the makeup artists had left until she did. Clary was her maid of honour, but Rebecca - Simon's sister, was a bridesmaid. Izzy's mom was also in the room. The three women helped Izzy get into her wedding dress, and then Clary was sent to let Simon know that she was ready, while Rebecca took some photos.
Izzy knocked on the door that Simon and all of his groomsmen were in. Jace opened up, and smiled down at Clary.
"Izzy's ready to go," Clary told him, and then there was a crash from inside the room. "Kit didn't get Simon drunk, did he?" Izzy would kill Simon if he was drunk.
"No, no. He's just excited. I don't think he ever imagined he'd land someone so far out of his league…" Jace says.
"Oh shut up," Clary says. "Just tell Simon to go down to the altar."
"Hi Clary!" Max says, appearing under Jace's arm.
"Hey Max," Clary says, smiling down at the younger boy. "You look very handsome in your tux!"
"Yeah - it's the same one that Kit, and Alec and Magnus and Jace are wearing!" Max says excitedly, and then looks back in the room as if to confirm what he just said was true.
Clary bends down a little bit - honestly he wasn't that much shorter than her anymore, but that was probably a good thing since she couldn't bend very far. "I think you look the best," she tells him quietly, and he practically beams back at her.
"I think you look really pretty too, Clary!" Max answers, and then hurries back into the room.
"I'll see you in a little bit," Clary says to Jace, before going back to Izzy's room.
The wedding is absolutely beautiful - as you would expect of Isabelle Lightwood, now Lewis's wedding.
The reception is a great party, but Clary has to leave early and Jace insists on going with her, so they wish the new couple goodbye and bon voyage before going back home.
"That was really nice," Clary says, easing off her shoes once they get home.
"Yeah, it was. I still think our wedding was better, though," Jace says, taking off his tie and undoing the top few buttons on his shirt.
"Yeah well, I would be slightly concerned if you enjoyed someone else's wedding more than ours," Clary says, "the reception, sure. But not the wedding."
"I think every single thing about our wedding was the best," Jace says, sitting down next to Clary. "Every. Single. Thing."
"Maybe we could go back to France soon," Clary says, rubbing her stomach, thinking of how dreamy the scenery was.
"I would love that," Jace says, kissing her forehead. "But one thing at a time, yeah?"
"I think I'm going to go to bed," Clary says, fully aware that it was only eight o'clock.
"Love you," Clary says as she slowly stands up.
"I love you too," Jace says, and then turns on the TV.
"I thought I would paint the nursery," Clary tells Jace the next day.
"Today?" Jace asks, closing his laptop.
"There's no time like the present right - and I want to do it before I'm too pregnant to get on a ladder. And you never know… doctor Jeremiah said that twins are born early all the time," Clary answers.
"Sure, early. But he said a few weeks - you've still got at least another month to go," Jace says.
"It's still good to be ready I think," Clary says, gently resting her hands on her stomach.
"Okay, sure," Jace says. Honestly, he wanted to hire someone to paint the room. Not because he didn't think Clary would do an amazing job, but because he didn't really want his heavily pregnant wife to go up on a tall ladder. But he knew she wouldn't have any of that, so he just wanted to help as much as possible. "Do you need anything?"
"No, I bought it all a few weeks ago, but thank you." She runs her fingers through his hair before going to where the twins room was going to be. It had a bunch of boxes with furniture that needed to be assembled; cribs and dressers and change tables and bookshelves. There was also a massive pile of clothes and toys to fill all of the furniture that hadn't been built yet.
Clary laid a tarp over everything, and then started painting the base coat of navy blue over the whole ceiling. She did another coat of the navy blue, before taking a nap. She ate some lunch, and then started painting starts across the whole ceiling. She did a few bigger and smaller ones, and even tried to replicate a couple of constellations.
She finished in the afternoon by painting a few navy blue stars on the walls, and then she called Jace in to view her handy work.
"Oh wow," Jace says. He'd expected some animals, maybe something to do with music, but this was amazing. "This is so cool."
"Wait, it gets cooler," Clary says, moving as quickly as she can to close the blinds. "Turn the lights off."
The moment Jace turns the lights off, all of the stars begin to glow. "I thought it could be kind of like a night light," Clary says, with her head turned towards the ceiling. "And I thought it would be nice for them to fall asleep under the stars every night - well sort of.
"This is amazing, Clary," Jace says genuinely. "You're amazing." He walks over to her and wraps his arms around her waist and rests his head on her shoulder.
"Maybe tomorrow you could start building some of the furniture?" Clary says. She'd wanted to hire someone to build it all - mainly because she didn't actually know if Jace could, and she didn't want one of her children's cribs falling apart during the night, but he'd insisted. "I could get Alec to come over and help if you want?"
"Sure," Jace says, kissing her on the cheek, secretly grateful for the help. "Come on, I'll make dinner." He slowly pulls Clary from the room, taking one last look at the glowing stars on the ceiling.
"Hey, don't forget that I've got James Cordon tonight - for the announcement," Clary tells Jace as he and Alec sit on the floor building the second crib.
"Yeah, I remember," Jace says, "and I'll be there!" It had been his idea to announce it on a TV show - it would give them an opportunity to actually talk about it, and release the news how they wanted to. There had been a few speculations that Clary was pregnant, but weren't there always?
In true Clary fashion, she'd written a song to announce the news. It was called 'I've Been Waiting for You'. It was the second and last song she'd written since becoming pregnant, but she loved it. She'd always found it a lot easier to get out her feelings in a song rather than sitting down and telling someone.
Later that night, Clary and Jace were laying in bed. Everything had gone as planned. Jace was reading over all the well wishes everyone was sending them out, and reading Clary the good ones. Clary was reading a book.
When she starts struggling to keep her eyes open, she slowly lowers herself into the bed and begins to fall asleep. A few minutes later Jace turns the light off, and she soon hears him begin breathing evenly.
When she's finally about to start falling asleep, she feels a pain in her stomach. She slowly sits up and turns on the lamp on her bed side table, trying to take deep breaths. Jace sits up and looks over at her.
"Is everything okay?" he asks, rubbing his eyes.
"I don't know-" she begins saying but is cut off by another pain in her stomach. She tries to stifle her moaning so she doesn't freak Jace out, but she soon feels something wet in her legs.
She lifts the cover to look. "Jace," she says, still looking under the covers, "I'm bleeding."
"Okay Clary, everything's going to be okay. We're going to go to the hospital to make sure though, okay?"
"Jace, it's too early. It's too early for them to be born," Clary says.
"I know, and it's going to be okay we're-" he stops talking when Clary let's out another moan.
He helps Clary out of bed, and then into the bathroom so she can change her pants. He quickly runs around the room, collecting everything she might need at the hospital, silently praying that Clary and the babies will be okay.
Song Mention:
I've Been Waiting for You by ABBA - but actually the version in Mamma Mia 2, because the lyrics are different!
Sorry to leave you on a cliff hanger, but I thought I needed to add some more tension to the story! I hope you're all staying safe and happy, and I'll see you next week!