A/N: 18+ for the chapter, please! I didn't write The Lesson of the Moth.
Liliana had the funniest expression for about half a second, before her shock and confusion changed to a polite but still sly smile. She bit down on her thumb and nodded at her professor.
"DO you buy your all your students lunch when they get ditched by their roommates?" Her grin changed from polite to mischievous in another half-a-second breath. Jace couldn't keep up. He didn't know if he even wanted to.
"You've set quite the precedent," Jace said, a sly smile crossing his lips, too.
"So I'm your first," Liliana laughed.
An unwilling picture of Sabrina Soto popped into his head- he'd long since been over her, they'd went their separate ways and hadn't spoken in nearly three years.
"Close to it, yeah." Jace let a grin flit across his face.
"Me too. This is the first time I've ever let a professor buy my lunch." She bit down onto her thumb again.
Jace knew what she was hinting at, that it was an attempt at innuendo, but he elected to ignore it, instead drawing the attention away from him and onto her. It's where he wanted it, anyways. Lili smiled. She knew he knew, but ever the gentleman, he decided to nod and change the subject. She was also fairly certain he didn't believe what she was trying to say, but no one ever, ever did.
"You should get your thumb out of your mouth- aren't you a grown lady?" Jace shot at her.
"HOw long have you been here, anyways," Liliana said, dodging the question, but wiping her thumb on her skirt regardless.
"Since my undergrad- so eighteen. I'm twenty-nine now."
"Eleven years. More than half my life," Liliana giggled.
"I know- you're still wet behind the ears," Jace said. So why the fuck can't I get you out of my mind? He thought.
I'd like to be wet somewhere else, she thought, but banished it quickly.
Almost subconsciously, but very blatantly, and it painfully obvious to Liliana, Jace gave her a look of appraisal. Something he hadn't done since the break up with Sabrina nearly five years prior. He cocked his eyebrow and tilted his head up in what Lili knew to be silent approval. She winked, jolting him out of his unwilling yet oh-so-sexy trip to fantasyland, one where this relationship wasn't forbidden. When she did, she giggled, because his whole body jumped from the shock.
"How becoming of you, young lady," Jace jokingly chided her.
"Only in the street-" she shot back. He chuckled, trying not to let her know that she had caused a stir in the pit of his stomach as he got up to pay the young man for his reuben and Liliana's chicken caesar wrap.
She smiled and unwrapped a package as well, which contained lemon bars. She generally baked something every two days for her suite, and this was this weeks' treat.
"What's your favorite pastry?" Liliana queried.
"Raspberry danishes, why is it relevant?" he continued.
"I don't know. Maybe I'll visit more since Karey doesn't love me anymore."
"I'm not a very good friend." Jace stated, thinking of the falling out with Ral over Teysa, even though that hadn't really been his fault. He hadn't spoken to Lia, either. He'd been busy with school starting and she'd been busy with her new job and then Nova, who he needed to go see. Sure, there was Lucian, but he was a professor at Wofford and just as busy as Jace was. Adulting, he thought. He had his siblings, Kallist, Will, and Chandra, but they didn't even come close to counting.
"Maybe I'm not looking for a friend," Liliana said, smirking again.
Jace choked on his food but recovered, he desperately wanted to ask her what her intentions were, but again, in the interest of keeping it professional, he refrained.
He broke off a piece of the lemon bar.
"Do we have a prompt today?" LIliana asked, curious.
"Nope," Jace said, his lips popping on the 'p' sound. "We're reading a poem and doing a response to that."
"What?" She'd probably read it already, to be honest.
"YOu'll find out soon enough," Jace said, reaching across his desk and brushing caesar dressing from her face.
"Unf…" Liliana didn't even mean to make a noise like that, but Jace's insides clenched. He felt his pants get tighter at the sound, and that was fucking impossible. He didn't know anyone besides Sabrina that had been able to stir this sort of connection within him, and even she hadn't obliterated Jace's walls and self control with a couple of sentences. Jace looked over his desk and pined, pined for an alternate reality where this wasn't seven different ways of wrong. Liliana breathed in, sharply as Jace inhaled the lemon pastry. She smiled, happy that he liked it. His breath caught in his chest as his eyes raked over her form again, aching, sorely wishing for different circumstances.
"If I open up to you, you'll just run like everyone else," Karen sighed over the pasta she was picking on for her lunch.
"DO I look like I run?" Will said, trying to make light of the comment. He reached over and grabbed her hand and squeezed it, trying to show her that he was there and that he was going to be there regardless; he didn't know what to do or say to make her feel comfortable. Will knew that she was a physical person period; the past few days of steamy makeout sessions in the parking lot of their dorms had said such.
"Make love with me first," Karen stated, matter of factly.
"Wait, what?" Will said, flabbergasted. Of course he'd thought about it. But It'd only been twoish weeks since they'd been together.
"I want to give you everything he took if you're not going to run from me; I want you to give me your whole self if you're not going to choose someone else."
"A-are you in love with me?"
"I'm in love with this, with us, with you, with the whole thing. And I know that it would help me cement it all…" Karen trailed off. "You probably think I'm easy." She sighed. "But that's not it at all."
"No, I think you're hurting and I think I could potentially hurt you worse." Will was still floored.
Of course he wanted her. No one made him feel like she did. No one ever had. Mom said that he would knew when he knew, and to trust his gut. Jace had said that from the beginning, he knew Sabrina wasn't it, but he tried to shape her into it, and it had ended more than disastrously. But Will, he knew. He knew that when he felt things, those feelings lasted. He'd never had a relationship- any type, that hadn't lasted. He put all of himself into his relationships, friendships, family, all of it. And he was staring at a broken girl- a broken girl that needed physical touch and love to feel together. And if he could give her that, if he could give her that whole feeling that she gave him, he would. He would do it today, tomorrow, every single day for the rest of his life.
"No, he hurt me, he nearly killed me, and I'm asking you to glue me back together, because you make me feel whole again- I won't regret it, not if you won't." Will sighed and continued. "I don't want to make you into something you aren't, Karen, that doesn't work, but this person that you are, I don't understand why you see nothing. I see everything. Everything I could have dreamed of if I'd known myself well enough to ask."
"I'm not a virgin," Karen stated, again.
"I don't care," Will shot back. "I am, though." He said, slightly sheepishly.
"I don't care," echoed him. "Are you willing to give me this? You can't get it back?"
"You gave me a chance. No one else ever has," Will stated. "I want you to have it." Karen looked haphazardly down at her watch. They had approximately an hour before she had to be in Jace's class. Liliana had no prayer of getting out of that office, even if she'd wanted to. She grabbed William's hand and he wrapped his around her waist, they headed back up to Lawton Hall, where they lived.
Will had been in here, of course. He'd laughed with Liliana and Karen, watched Liliana draw and Karen draw conclusions about her and his brother, but the atmosphere was something like electricity, now. Will was unsure of what to do. He didn't know anything about how to do this. He did know that Karen liked to be kissed roughly, but he didn't want to give that to her in this moment.
He gently pushed her flush to her bed, bracing her back and taking care that her head hit the pillow and not the wall. Their lips met, softly, slowly, like a burning, roaring flame. She felt all of the insecurity melt away, she had never felt like this with Grimsley. Her hands shook as she fumbled with the button up, she wasn't sure of herself at all, this was the most uncomfortable part. She'd never cared, before. Sex was sex. This, this wasn't sex… This was everything.
He gingerly cradled the back of her head and she brought her face to his, kissing him slowly and lovingly, the exact opposite of how she'd been kissed before. He breathed in her scent, she was intoxicating, everything about her was to him. He ran his hands up and down her sides, slowly, squeezing like he'd read in so many books, like he'd heard to do from Jace and Kallist. She bit her lip and moaned his name into his mouth, almost breathless. She wrapped her supple thighs around his hips, bringing him in closer. He began to fumble with his belt, clueless as to what happened after he got his clothes off. She shrugged off the slinky, floral pants she'd been wearing and Will watched them fall to the floor in awestruck wonder. She raised her arms above her head and he slowly, surely let the lace top fall by the wayside as well. She slowly grazed her hand around his solid manhood as she unbuttoned the jeans, allowing herself a second to catch her breath before she wrapped her hand around him and moved.
The noise he made was the most primal thing she'd ever heard.
She felt herself grow wetter, her thighs soaked with herself. He was still squeezing her hip, peppering her neck with hot, slow kisses, but she was impatient, she took his hand and pushed it to the growing heat between her legs.
"Oh, god, oh god, Karen…" Will said, unsure, completely clueless. He gathered his wits and then moved his finger, feeling her; she was slick around him, so aroused and so very needy. She gasped and arched as he added a second, something Jace had told him to do, using his thumb to appease the needy bundle of nerves that he knew was the where he needed to be. Her hand was still wrapped tightly around him, moving, his own arousal making himself slick around her hand as well, moans and grunts punctuating the air.
"Will, please," she moaned against the quietness of the noontime dorm, "don't stop, I'm going to…"
Will didn't have to know what was coming next. He'd read it in books, he'd seen it in movies. He felt Karen's body clench around his fingers and her other hand grab at the hair that was near her neck where he'd made marks, accidentally, of course. He'd apologize to her later. The control rested with her, he'd never wanted or needed anything like he needed her in this second. He cupped her face to his, kissing it softly, slowly. She thought for a second about taking him into her mouth, but she knew that there would be time for such things later, this wasn't about physical pleasure as much is was about mental love and being one with each other.
"Please," she said again, he could muster no words. "I don't want to beg, but I will. Please, William Jeremiah," Karen said, choking on her words. "Show me," she said. "Let me show you," she finished.
"I love you, nothing could change that, nothing will, nothing you say to me about him or the past or the present will change the future that we have," he stammered, placing crooked, sloppy kisses on her mouth again.
She wrapped her legs tighter around his hips, bringing him close to her. He was barely inches away from the throbbing heat of her center, but there was something so much more important.
"I love you, Karen Isabelle, thank you for giving me this," he said, sliding slowly into her and the groan became a near shout of her name, he felt the onslaught coming, literally, but he managed a thrust and then two, and she arched into him, not as fiercely as before, but her body responded to his as he flooded into her. The place where they were joined was soaked with him and her, and she crushed her to him, kissing him fiercely.
"That was worth everything, you are everything, thank you," Karen breathed as he rolled onto the other side of the bed.
"You gave me everything he took."
Karen rushed into Jace's class, very nearly late, hair still a mess but more satisfied with her life than she'd been in months. Jace barely cocked his eyebrow and nodded, he knew that something had happened between his brother and Karen; he knew that things had been happening anyways. Jace had a phone he used specifically for the AC job and gave out to students, Lili had made him aware that they'd kept her up more than once during the night. He sighed.
On the SMARTBoard, Jace placed a picture of a moth and a generic lightbulb. Liliana cocked her head in confusion, Jace had said that they were reading, and this was far from words on a screen, or a page.
As the class got seated, Jace straightened his tie and smiled as if nothing pleased him more than seeing them all there in front of him, ready and willing vessels for the knowledge he was about to bestow upon them. He cleared his throat and looked around again, handing Liliana a piece of paper. There was a poem on it. She knew the poem well, and she knew the message. There was a feeling building in the pit of her stomach that hadn't happened to her, ever before. She knew this poem and it's message about fear and beauty. Was she scared or was she beautiful, she asked herself. She looked around the classroom. She was the only one who got one- it didn't make sense to her, but she smiled at him. He nodded.
i was talking to a moth
the other evening
he was trying to break into
an electric light bulb
and fry himself on the wires
why do you fellows
pull this stunt i asked him
because it is the conventional
thing for moths or why
if that had been an uncovered
candle instead of an electric
light bulb you would
now be a small unsightly cinder
have you no sense?
"Miss Vess? Will you help me out?" Liliana straightened the paper and her thoughts. Did she have no sense? She stayed in that office when she knew that Josu and Nicolai would have told her to leave. She thought of him even when Karen threatened to put a "Jace Jar" in their room for when she mentioned him.
plenty of it he answered
but at times we get tired
of using it
we get bored with the routine
and crave beauty
and excitement
fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while
Jace breathed in. That's what his life was, honestly, boring. He wanted to provoke their attention, with beauty, but the only beauty he could see was in front of him, the knowledge that he was imparting upon them. And the smile, of course. Liliana Vess' beautiful, perfect smile.
I could be his flame, she thought. I could be his warmth. She smiled even wider, brighter. Jace noticed, too.
so we wad all our life up
into one little roll
and then we shoot the roll
that is what life is for
it is better to be a part of beauty
for one instant and then cease to
exist than to exist forever
and never be a part of beauty
our attitude toward life
is come easy go easy
we are like human beings
used to be before they became
too civilized to enjoy themselves
Jace didn't give her any time to collect herself, he just pressed her to read the next verse, to conclude the poem.
and before i could argue him
out of his philosophy
he went and immolated himself
on a patent cigar lighter
i do not agree with him
myself i would rather have
half the happiness and twice
the longevity
but at the same time i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself
So, class, there are a couple questions that I pose you. What is important? Define the word importance without MIster Webster. What is want? Define want. Define beauty. And finally, respond to this. What do you want? Jace briefly met Liliana's eyes. They were so deep into thought that he could tell nothing from them, not that he wanted to. He wanted her thoughts on paper, articulated as he knew she was capable of.
Your conclusion will be thus: Give me one quote, either taken and cited or written yourself, summing up who you are, what beauty and want are to you. I want to know what you live by. Show me your convictions.
Class dismissed, the professor said.