Dedication: To the ones who inspire the importance of words.
Disclaimer: Disclaimed once again.
Notes: I'm glad you all liked Buried. :) Now, onto this one, which came to me while I was trying to sleep two nights ago. Plot bunnies - the main cause of insomnia (Not really).

Tessa had seen many a nice girls standing by the schoolyard back in America. They cluster in a group, chatting about one more scarf they'd knit the night before as their fingers absentmindedly tug at the one around their neck. The apples on the teacher's desk come from the tree planted just a few feet from their front stoop. Never trouble, they look over the younger siblings during recess, but shyly leave the older boys alone.

They're nice enough, she had supposed.

When she would see them at the grocery store a few months or years later, skirts mischievously swaying a little closer to their knees and hanging over one guy or another with a lit cigarettes, all she could think was that some girls are only nice when they don't know anything else.

She was a nice girl.

Maybe that's why spending time in the training room with Will, his mouth next to her ear as he guides her left hand back till the bowstring is taut, makes her body quiver like her hand when Will isn't lending her some of his expertise and strength. It's not that he tries anything, but she can't help the strain in her shoulders when he's mentioned in the same room, even when he tells her to loosen up or she'll pull something.

His breath glances across her ear and she starts, releasing the arrow. It flies straight and false, a foot away from the target.

"Sorry," Tessa says, letting her hands drop to her side as she turns to face him, "I got distracted."

"It's okay." Will sighs before taking a step back so they can look at each other. It's possible when his dark blue eyes aren't squinting at her with faint exasperation. His thumb and index finger rub his nose. "Let's try this again."

She wants to ask him what's the point of repeating the same thing over and over again when nothing had changed. He tends to avoid eye-to-eye contact, but never seemed to tire of training her, especially when it meant being close to her.

Was it harder to avoid someone when they knew how you feel than if they remained oblivious?

Will can speak of the former and Tessa the latter, she thinks, but it is not really the kind of thing she wants to share, despite her curiosity.

Nevertheless, he allows her to position herself and he stands on the other side of the bow as she stands as still as her trembling will let her. He is a bit distracting; something he knows yet is ignorant of. It's confusing, she supposes, but he doesn't think she notices him, how his body is clad in tight yet limber Shadowhunter gear that hides the strength in his upper body while emphasizing his broad shoulders and narrow hips.

It's his eyes that she feels so dearly.

Gently, he tugs the bow from her hands.

"You need to do this," he murmurs, as he manipulates her fingers on her right hand so that they lie on top of each other before curling them together. She feels the callouses on his fingers as he does so and cannot help shivering.

They are both looking at her palm intently before she realizes how close their faces are to each other at approximately the same moment he does. Tessa feels her cheeks heat and watches as his eyes narrow.

They immediately jump to her lips before back at her eyes. She sees something in them that looks like the desire she'd seen on the night he confessed as well as a… reluctant restraint.

Her own eyes aren't paying much attention to his; they've zeroed in on his lips and she has an irrational impulse to return to the night in the attack when they'd kissed. His mouth on hers in all its fiery passion…

Her body shudders.

But Jem –

Gravity disobeys all reason and propriety as the pull between them ends.

There's nothing in her that is capable of denying the lazy softness that steals across them as the tension that had been around them snaps. He tastes like strawberries with the bite of a shot of brandy on her tongue. It is intoxication at its very finest, and so she is sucked in with a moan that she can barely suppress. Her arms twined around his neck, Tessa tries to press herself into Will until they are chest to chest and their dark Shadowhunters uniform is indistinguishable.

She dares to take their suppressed chasteness a bit further and traces the seam between his lips before nipping at them. His mouth opens and his tongue slides past hers. Tracing along the line of her upper teeth, it retreats to the recess of his mouth before he sucks lightly on her lower lip. Hands rest securely on her hips as she finds her back against the wall while her own are threaded into hair darker than twilight.

He breathes in with his rusty yet familiar, "Tess," and she surrenders to the heat.

Reality impatiently yanks her back to Earth when the door creaks open with the last person she wants to see standing there in the doorway.

Jem is all dead, disbelieving black eyes and flat silver hair as the two of them stand there next to the wall, frozen in one horribly beautiful moment.

Love tastes like betrayal, only sweeter.

She is, she believes, just another one of those nice girls who hadn't meant it.

NotesB: Uh… kissing scenes are not my forte. For a lot of really good reasons. Or maybe just one. I don't really know…