Here's some fluff, some expectations of smut to come, and some back story. I hope it's all right. Review?

Disclaimer: As much as I hate C Squared for making me read the Jessa kiss, I thank her for giving me my characters.

Chapter: Jem

Jem woke up to the feeling of a warm body curved around him. He tried to twist his head around to see who it was, but a sudden stabbing pain behind his eyes made him wince. All he saw was a flash of black hair, and his first thought was that Will, being the kind soul that he was, had fallen asleep trying to keep Jem warm when Jem shook with feverish chills. It had happened before.

When he had untangled himself and stood up, he saw with a pang of recognition the small, anxious face and slender body in an hourglass shape that most certainly did not belong to Will. "Belle!" he said before he could stop himself. She's asleep, he scolded himself.

Not anymore. She sat up slowly and rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands before squinting blearily at his face. "Jem… You're awake."

"No, I'm still asleep. I was surprised to see you, I thought you were Will."

"Of course it's me, you idiot. Why would Will be in your bed?"

Jem shrugged. "Long story. He can get a bit… carried away trying to get me well after an attack."

"Oh, yes, you were ill again. How– how are you now?" She looked terribly concerned, as though she had just remembered something she had tried to forget. "Are you all right?" She jumped up and went to his side, her eyes searching his, scrutinizing him for signs of sickness.

"I'm fine," he lied; he wasn't healthy, yet, but he was well enough for her. He always was. "I should be asking you that, you look awful." It was true. Her eyes were hollow and dark, her skin was paler than usual, and she looked tortured, as though something was tearing her apart from the inside.

"Thanks," she said dryly, the corner of her mouth quirking up the tiniest bit. "Look, I know I'm a mess, but… I… I have my reasons, can you accept that?"

"Of course," he said smoothly, dying to know her secret but knowing better than to push the issue. He ran a hand through his hair– still matted in places with dried blood– and rubbed his jaw, which was rough and unshaven. "I'll be back in a bit, okay? Hold on." He wasn't sure why she needed to hold on, but he grabbed a change of clothes and went into the bathroom.

He braced himself by tightening his hands on the porcelain edge of the sink and stared into the mirror. He hardly recognized the boy there– a boy still, slender and fine-featured with innocence in his eyes. The boy in the mirror had hair that shined the bright color of mercury, his eyes like pewter, his skin like the inside of a shell, pale and smooth.

"God, Jem," he murmured to himself. "You're a wreck." Scars, rune-, demon- and Church-inflicted were faintly visible on his hands and neck. There was blood in his hair and a red mark on his chest where his jade pendant had cut in. Suddenly unable to look at his reflection anymore, Jem changed quickly and washed up before heading back into his own room.

The expression on Belle's face confirmed his worst suspicions; with the circles under his eyes and his unshaven face, he looked like Will after a night of drinking. "You liar," he said gently, sitting on the edge of his bed and patting the spot next to him. "You're not okay. You're upset. I wish I knew why, but I don't. I look at you and think that I should know, I should know why you are the way you are, but I have no idea. I don't really know you at all, do I?"

"You know enough," she implored, sitting next to him and taking his hand. "Why does any of it matter? Why do you need to know?"

"Because I love you! I want to know everything about you, I want to know what your childhood was like, your family, the places you went… How did you meet Magnus? You told me once that your father fled the country with you and your family, but where did you go? How did you end up in London? And how did you find your way into my bed last night?"

"As to the last question, the only answer you will get is that I didn't want to be alone. As for the others…" She bit her lip. "Are you sure you want to know?"

"Of course."

"Then prepare yourself. If I'm talking about myself, I'm telling you everything."

"Go ahead. What was your life like growing up? What was your family like?"

She laughed without much humor. "My father was… something else. He was the mad-scientist type. He could never sit still, and he never let my brother or I sit still either. Always we were studying, learning, fooling around with one experiment or another. I didn't have a proper childhood, and I was raised much more like a mundane that a faerie. The faeries didn't want much to do with us after they found out what my father did, his experiments on children.

"I think he loved us, in his own way. He never let anything hurt us, that's for sure, but I think after my mother died he resented his decision to perform those experiments on us, and as such, resented us a bit. He wasn't a good father, but… Well, sometimes I miss him. I remember his laugh, remember seeing him dance with my mother…

"My brother Matthew was four years my senior. He was a fighter, physically, so I got into a lot of fistfights with him when I was young. He remembers our mother more than I do, so in our rare moments of familial affection he'd tell me about her." She looked down at her hands, twisting in her lap. "We haven't had one of those moments in a long time.

"When we left London, I was two years old. We went to New York, maybe I told you that once, I don't know anymore. We lived there until I was ten, when we moved to Paris. It was kind of sudden, so I think my father messed around with things too deep for him again, but he never told us, so I don't know. I lived in Paris until he died– an experiment gone wrong, Matt said– and so I came here. My father always said we were never to go back to London, I think because he had never gotten over losing my mother here. He loved her, despite all his faults.

"I honestly don't remember my mother very well. My father always said I looked like her, and had her sense of humor, so I suppose she lives on in me a bit. She always called me 'Bella', so that's what my father called me after she died. Before that he called me by my full name, which is Isabella. My mother named me that. 'Isa' means 'laughter' and 'Bella' means 'beautiful', so I suppose she wanted to give me an uplifting name. I was Bella until I went to France, where 'beautiful' is 'Belle', so I became Belle."

Jem took a few deep breaths and tried to absorb all this information. It was nice, Belle finally sharing herself with him. "Your real name is Isabella?"

She laughed again, a real laugh this time. "Of course that's the piece of information you'd cling to. Yeah, that's my real name. Isabella Marie Renault. Don't you dare call me Isabella, though, or I'll kick your ass. I'm still Belle."

"Of course you are. You've always been the same Belle. I just know who that is now. So how did you get tangled in the affairs of Shadowhunters? Where does Magnus come in?"

"Well, I was thirteen when I found an invitation to one of his famous parties. Literally found: it was just laying on the ground. I hadn't met many other Downworlders before, no Shadowhunters and no warlocks, so I was determined to go. I snuck out– easy enough, my father didn't pay enough attention for it to matter– and went to the party.

"I had heard of Magnus before, and he wasn't a hard person to miss. He noticed me, mostly because people like me don't frequent his parties and I was a bit younger than everyone else there. A lot younger, actually. There were no werewolves because the vampires were there, so with the attendees all being immortals– the Night's Children, a few warlocks, and the Fair Folk– I was by far the youngest.

"We sort of hit it off as friends, and I became a regular at his house. It was there, a few months later, that I met Michael Lightwood, but you already know that story. After him… Well, life went on until I found my way here." Belle had to catch her breath, her chest heaving. "I'm not used to telling people so much about myself."

"Well, I'm glad it was me you told. Anything else you think I should know?"

"Let's see…" She screwed up her face in mock concentration. "My favorite color is green, I love pomegranates, and there's nothing I'd rather do then spend the night with someone I love."

"That can be arranged," Jem blurted out, his face heating up alarmingly fast. "I mean, since you've shared so much of myself, I thought I'd return the favor. You know, with the sharing of myself."

"Oh, James," she sighed. "I'd love to, but are you sure you're–"

"Well enough? Positive. I'll be fine tonight, I promise you." He said it so emphatically that he almost believed it. He was better, but he still felt he had to prove that he wasn't the delicate china doll everyone thought he was. Everyone but Will, he corrected in his mind. Will saw him fight; Will helped him after an attack; Will alone knew how strong Jem was, even after he was ill.

She still looked doubtful, so he kissed her softly. "Come on," he breathed. "For me?"

If he didn't know better, he'd say that her eyes were filled with tears. "Anything for you," she whispered, closing her eyes and pressing her lips to his once again.

Chapter: Will

Will strode up to Magnus's front door, grumbling all the while. He waltzed in without knocking and found Magnus sitting alone in the darkness of his living room. Will flipped a light on. "Here's your… whatever it is," he said, tossing the warlock a small vial of scarlet powder and throwing himself in an armchair. "Remind me why I was doing your errands today?"

"Because I'm busy," Magnus said in a constricted voice.

"Yeah, it looks it. Look, I don't particularly care why you're depressed, but I have the feeling you'll keep 'needing' me until I ask, so I will, because I want to get back to Jem. What's wrong?"

"I can't tell you."

"Can't tell me like you think I won't understand, or can't tell me like you promised someone you wouldn't?"

"Neither. Well, I suppose the second one. I'm not supposed to tell someone, but you aren't that someone. You'd tell that someone, though."

"Glad to see you have such a high opinion of me," Will said wryly. "Just tell me. I can keep a secret."

Magnus sighed aggrievedly. "You can't tell Jem, no matter what."

"Jem?" Will said, taken aback. "I'm intrigued. All right, I won't tell him. What's your secret?"

"It's about… Belle." Without any more prompting from Will, Magnus launched into the whole story of the night before, starting with his idea and ending with Belle's deal with Nyx. "So now that foolish girl's got until next week before, well…"

Will felt as though time had stopped. His heart beat irregularly, his brain was sluggish, and his blood froze in his veins. He was filled with the same panic as when Jem got one of his attacks, which recently had gotten more frequent. "Belle's going to… die?"

"Isn't that what I just said, Shadowhunter? I don't like it either, but there's nothing we can do. It's too late for anything we could do."

"What if I did it instead?" Will jumped up. "I could do it, I would. I could… I could go to Nyx now, and ask to sacrifice myself in her place–"

"No, Will, you couldn't. For one thing, she'd kill you herself. For another, this is a binding contract. And…" He stood up and walked slowly to put his hand on Will's shoulder. "She did this for you, at least in part. She knew that if Jem died, you would die too, and she reasoned that her life was less important than that of two great Shadowhunters. She saved your life as well as Jem's."

Will shook with righteous anger and uncontrollable moroseness. "I don't want to lose her," he whispered, and he knew it was true. Of course Jem's life meant more than Belle's, more than his own, even, but the thought of losing Belle so soon after getting to know her made him sick.

"Of course," Magnus said soothingly. "You love her." It wasn't a question, and he managed to keep the surprise out of his voice. Yeah, I'm in love, Will though savagely. Surprising as it is, it's real, and I don't care how many other guys she has in her life. I. Love. Her.

"I have to go," Will said abruptly. "Thanks for telling me, I think." He turned, shrugging off Magnus's hand and striding off towards the Institute. He mused as he walked, his thoughts filled with shadowy demons, golden light that he thought was Heaven, a dark-haired Jem, and a tombstone with Belle's name on it. Maybe there wouldn't be a grave. What did Downworlders do with their dead? There might not even be a body…

These thoughts were enough to keep him occupied enough to keep him from crying. They also distracted him so thoroughly that he was outside Jem's bedroom door before he realized where he was. He went in without invitation, and sure enough, there was Belle, her arms around Jem.

Will cleared his throat, and they jumped apart. "I talked to Magnus," he said in a strangled voice. Belle shook her head behind Jem, eyes wide, and Jem just looked confused. "Just… thank you."

That was all he could say before he had to walk out. He didn't even want a drink. He just wanted to lay down and cry, which was exactly what he did. He threw himself down on his bed, buried his face in his pillow, and sobbed for the first time since he left home at age twelve.

...Yeah. Turmoil and angst.