This one-shot for me is not really about a specific couple. I intentionally refrained from using names and certain specifications because I feel that so many relationships have this sort of conflict or dilemma. My inspiration was Jace/Clary of course, but I can easily name several couples that have that "bad boy falls for a good girl" relationship.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy this little piece and let me know what you think!
He could never put a date to when he started to fall in love.
When he truly started to see her the way he realized he always had, when the emotions he feared of spilled across his mind with every waking thought.
He remembered wondering if he was lonely.
If he was bored.
So he started to mess around, to flirt shamelessly, to bring home girl after girl- endless names of of meaningless people. It made him sick to think of his behaviors, of the lifestyle he had, but he knew that that sickness wasn't always felt.
Once upon a time, he had enjoyed it, the blurry faces and girls that kept him company.
Company wasn't the right word. He never wanted their company, never asked for it and certainly never missed it.
Entertainment.
That's what it was, he missed kissing girls without feeling his insides burn, he missed touching without his pulse beating in his ears like a fucking stampede, he missed being able to hold a girl's heart in his hand without returning the attraction she felt for him. He was physically attracted yes, but there was never that emotional attraction, that burning desire, never a girl that found a place in his mind and most certainly not his heart.
He wondered if she knew how recklessly he used to live.
He wondered if she would hate him for it. If she would call him sick, a jerk, an asshole.
He wished she did, he wished she did because in his horrible, wretched way, he liked that agony, he liked be shouted at, being tormented, being treated the way he felt he should be.
And because then he could put this whole situation behind him. Then she could hate him and move far far away and he could pretend he never fell for her in the first place.
It was easier that way, it was easier to bury the feelings and go back to a loveless lifestyle.
He didn't understand why people wanted this. Love. To feel so vulnerable all the time, to fall asleep with a name on your tongue, to dream frantically of them- of what could be, of their eyes and their body and their words, and then wake, wondering where they were.
What they were doing.
How they looked in the morning, with their hair curling behind their neck, with their eyes opening slowly-delicately.
How the sun glistened on their legs, on their cheeks, on the soft planes of their cheekbones and ridges of their nose, and to wonder, oh to wonder- are you thinking of me now too?
He hated how she had his heart on the palm of her hand, he hated that he was to her as every girl was ever to him.
He hated her.
He hated her because he knew he could never get over her, he hated her because she stole his present, but also the future, and even the past that he once enjoyed she took too because now, all he could feel was disgust in himself.
And yet- on those long long nights, when the world around them was buried in their oblivion and the moon shone its time, when she looked at him like that,
with the light in her eyes, light and a darkness merging and mixing. The way she held his gaze for the longest time and smiled at him with nothing, nothing more than the goodness of her heart.
The way she cupped his chin in her hand and her fingers left trails of ash along the side of his face, burning away the boy he once was.
The way she gleamed at him and made him laugh and made his heart sing and fingers throb, itching to touch her, itching to trace her lips, itching to tell her how he felt-
Did everyone see her the way he did? Because how could they not?
He was falling in love. And he couldn't stop himself if he wanted to.