Hey, beautiful people!
I'm back! You guys have all been beautiful and I appreciate all of your kind words. I'm feeling a lot better, although, as anyone suffering from anxiety, depression and any other lovely mental health issues, I'm taking one day at a time. Still feeling a little...Iffy, but hey. That's life.
We're coming up to the end of the year and I always take a couple of months off over Christmas/New Years. So what I'm going to do is update all my stories at the beginning of each month until I go on a break over December/January and then I'll go back to a regular schedule with two monthly updates.
Also, a few of you guys tried to help out and suggested maybe if I didn't write so many stories, I wouldn't get overwhelmed. I absolutely love that you guys are trying to help, but the amount of stories isn't the problem. My problems are outside of this little fandom world I try to bury myself in, and the thing that was making it difficult for me to enjoy posting and updating and interacting with you guys was because of a few nasty reviews that just really hit when I was feeling pretty damn shit. So, thank you! But it's okay, I manage sharing out my time on each story well, since I get inspired for different stories all the time and bounce all over the place!
Anyway, on with the story...
Things settled down mid afternoon, although Clary could tell that there were still more people on the floor than there usually was. Alec came in, appearing out of thin air to hand a couple of manila folders over to Jace. Jace nodded, but didn't look at them, putting them on the table and then turning back to Clary. Usually if Jace was at his office, it was all about work, but obviously he didn't feel as though that applied today, because he was more than happy to put it all to the side and just talk to Clary. Or mainly, he listened.
She talked about her kids at work, and about Simon, Maia and Jordan. She might have also started gushing about the baby and flicking through a couple of websites for baby clothes. Jace gave her a small smile, letting her go on and on. He wasn't one for showing public affection, especially at his work, when there were people outside the glass walls of his office, but he reached out and touched her knee and shoulder a couple of times, his fingers trailing through her hair at one point when he got up get a glass of water from the jug in the corner of the room.
"You want to order something in?" Jace asked, holding out his hand and his phone snapped from the desk top to between his fingers. "It's getting close to dinner."
"You know I'm always down for food," Clary smirked.
"Thai?" Jace asked, although he was already dialing the number, and Clary was nodding and smiling. He placed their order, knowing exactly what Clary wanted given how frequently they ordered Thai. Not always from the same place, because Jace was paranoid about things like that, and so sometimes the food wasn't as good as the last time they had ordered, but they still always got the same thing. After Jace ordered their food, he made another call. "Max?" He waited for a response, before continuing to talk. "Yeah, I need you to go and pick up our dinner." He gave Max Lightwood the name of the Thai restaurant that they had ordered from and then put his phone back down on the desk.
"Not sending one of your minions from out there to get our dinner?" Clary teased as she jerked her thumb over her shoulder, to the three men that were sitting around the desk outside, all of them armed and armored.
"No, they're staying here," Jace replied off-handedly, although his eyes were calculated as they flickered toward the men outside. "Especially when you're here." Clary's eyebrows pulled together at that last comment, but then Jace was getting up from the leather seat that he had been sitting in beside Clary, and walked around to the other side of the his desk to tap something out on his keyboard. "How about we find something to watch while we're waiting for dinner? They said it was about a twenty minute wait."
"I'm always down for re-watching Sense8," Clary offered and Jace nodded, pulling up his Netflix account and finding the show that she had mentioned. He turned the laptop around, so that it was facing the two leather seats that they had been sitting in.
"Haven't we already watched that one?" Jace muttered as the show began.
"I've watched it about five times," Clary mumbled, her eyes fixed on the screen. "You're always been distracted when I've put it on, busy with your work. Besides, the finale just came out a few months ago, and I've only watched that twice. Those are rookie numbers," she grinned at him for a moment before looking back at the screen of his laptop. Jace glanced over at her, his eyes sliding down the gentle slope of her nose and the the flutter of her eyelashes against her cheekbones. It was true, he was a busy man, and a lot of the time that they were together, he was doing work, so he was distracted when she put things on the TV. Sometimes she would be doing work as well, writing notes and papers, occasionally she would even be painting or drawing, which he loved to watch.
Originally, he had only sought out Clary because he needed her help. He needed a telepath that he could trust.
He had come across four other telepaths in his life, they were uncommon, but they weren't impossible to find. Mutants as powerful as Clary, though, they were uncommon. It was Alec and a couple of his other closest men who had discovered her, and they had watched her for almost a month before they had approached her. A lot of telepaths ended up wrapped in illegal business, using their powers to their advantage. But everything that got reported back to him said that she was a genuinely good person.
She worked at the University, got on well with her students and the other staff members. She had a couple of good friends—her TA, a nerdy looking mutant, a couple of humans—and even though they didn't live in the city, she had a good relationship with both of her parents. She lived in a modest apartment, and didn't have any hidden bank accounts or safety deposit boxes under false names. She donated to charity, and she always smiled at the woman behind the counter of her coffee shop.
Clary had known that there were people following her and keeping an eye on her, although at first she didn't know who they were, what they wanted, who they worked for, and she didn't always know that she was being watched, only that they were occasionally there. Jace's men were discreet, Alec loved to disappear into the shadows if that meant he didn't need to hold conversation with people. It took her a while to catch on, since Jace's men wore telepathic blockers, which would never have worked if she was actually trying to read their minds, but she didn't even know that they existed, so she wasn't focusing on them. Jace was also careful to have his men swapping out, so that the same people weren't around her. Even so, after a few weeks, she seemed to sense familiar presences around her that she couldn't put her finger on, and that was when she started wheedling her way into their minds, picking out information that they had no idea she was stealing.
Jace didn't actually know any of this until she actually decided to help him.
Jace had approached her late one night, it was nearly midnight, and she had been at some meeting at the University, and Jace hadn't been sure how long she was going to be, but he had decided that tonight was going to be the night that he introduced himself. He was in a limo, Raphael in the drivers seat, singing along to some stupid song on the radio, Alec sitting next to him in the back, muttering about what a bad idea this was.
Jace was ignoring them both and gotten out of the car to go down the street after her.
She had sensed him following her, he could tell by the subtle changes of movement, her footsteps hesitated and then quickened, and her fingers twitched at her side, flexing around the strap of her bag. She kept on walking, but she had been nervous. Jace was used to that, and so he had told Alec and Raphael to hang back as he had called out her name.
He needed her help for two reasons. The first was that telepaths were usually types of mutants that his enemies would try to have on their side. Some telepaths would manipulate thoughts and force others to do as they wanted. Others could easily just read people's minds. Either way, they were powerful allies. There were ways to strengthen ones mind to at least be able to protect the most dangerous and important of secrets. It wasn't something that would stand up to the most powerful telepaths—such as Clary—but it would work for some of the lower, more common types of telepaths. The second thing was that there was a leak inside his organization, someone who was relatively high up, because they were giving information out to several of his competitors, and he needed her help finding out who it was.
In just a minute of actually meeting her and speaking to her for the first time, Jace knew that Clary was going to have an impact on his life.
A big impact.
She took a few days before giving him a reply, and when she did, she told him that she had conditions. Jace wasn't used to be told the rules, and he respected that about her. She didn't want to know details about his business unless she specifically asked. She had heard about him, and she had an idea of what kind of world he was apart of, and while she wasn't going to judge him on his life choices, she didn't want to know more than she had to. Clary also didn't want him showing up at the University where she taught, not unless she specifically agreed to it beforehand. That was her place of work, and that job was her priority, not whatever side deal she had with him. She also didn't want any of her friends or family involved, ever, they had to be completely protected from his life. And the last thing was that he never ask her to enter into the mind of someone that he was planning to kill within the next few hours. Her breathing had hitched when she had said that, and Jace had worried for a moment that she was going to back out at the idea of being surrounded by people that were had the possibility of actually committing murder. But she had just shaken her head and said that if she was specifically delving into someone's mind, it could take several hours for the connection to fully dissipate, and she didn't want to still be connected to someone who was going to be dealt a violent death.
It hadn't take long for them to get together.
They had never had a discussion of exclusivity, but after several months, Clary knew that there was no one else. Jace was a possessive man in general, and as he and Clary got closer, it was clear that extended to her.
Unlike so many of her previous lovers, Jace had no problem with her inside his head. In fact, he encouraged it. He knew that she wouldn't betray him, go searching for things that he wasn't ready to share. Because of this, Clary knew that he wasn't seeing anyone else, given she was always the only one on his mind. Jace also knew that Clary wasn't seeing anyone, because he was having her watched. His intentions were good, and he had been having her watched right from the start—before they started sleeping together—it was his way of keeping her safe in case anyone linked them together, but that little extra bit of information helped as well.
"Hey," Clary's voice was soft, and he felt her in his head, just gently, drawing him back to the present. "You alright?"
"Yeah," Jace reached out to take her hand, his thumb rubbing over the metal ring on her finger, feeling it hum under his touch. "I'm fine."
Okay! I have so many recommendations, so I apologize in advance for how long this is going to be.
Songs! Back To You by Selena Gomez. Holy shit. Words can't even express how much I love this song. Like...My heart, every time...Shit. Yes. And all the fandom videos to this song on Youtube, I'm just loving all of them, they're just incredible. Then there's Somethin' We Shouldn't Do by Chad Brownlee, Bad Company by Five Finger Death Punch, Higher by The Score, Panic Attacks by Elohim and then I Said Hi, Mess Her Up and Middle of the Night by Amy Shark. I've become completely obsessed with Amy Shark. Haha. Then there's also Sober by Demi Lovato...Which does all sorts of different things to my heart now, than Back To You. After her recent relapse, I get a little teary when listening to it...
So movie/TV series wise...Alex Strangelove - It's quirky and awkward and fucking hilarious and it made me so happy. All of the characters are just so beautiful and well-written and realistic. It's a bit weird, I absolutely cringed a few times and definitely has some areas it could improve on, but if I'm being totally honest...I think it may actually be in like my top twenty movies. It just made me feel so good. My hubby loved it as well. And then there's Jane The Virgin, which we're slowly getting through. My husband is firmly Team Raphael while I'm firmly Team Michael...Now that he's back, I have high hopes. LOL. Also I've recently gotten into Reign, and I'm in love.
Also, is anyone else watching Who Is America? Holy shit. It makes me cringe to the point where I hide my face in a pillow, but it's hilarious and chilling and I recommend to all.
Anyway, let me know if you guys have any recommendations. Leave a review, let me know what you think, because your reviews mean so much to me xx