“Because I can’t talk to you,” Jace said.
“I can’t talk to you, I can’t be with you, I can’t even look at you.”
—City of Fallen Angels
Jace will never forget the look on Clary’s face after he says it. Shock at first, blanching into pain.
He has hurt her before, never because he
wanted to, though he had lashed out in his own blindness. The time she
walked in on him kissing Aline and he said every awful thing he could
think of as if the mere words themselves might have the power to make
her disappear, to send her back where she was safe.
He has always cared more about whether she
was safe than anything else. If he didn’t, none of this would be
happening. Jace wonders if she can see it in his eyes, that terror, the
shards of all those dozens of dreams in which he stabbed her or choked
her or drowned her and looked down at his hands afterward, wet with her
blood.
She backs up a step. There is something in
her face, but it isn’t fear. It’s infinitely worse. She turns, almost
tripping in her haste to get away, and rushes out of the club.
For a moment he stands and looks after her.
This is exactly what he wanted, a part of his mind screams at him. To
drive her away. To keep her safe, away from him.
But the rest of his mind is watching the door
slam behind her and seeing the final ruin of all his dreams. It was one
thing to push it to this point. It is another to let go forever.
Because he knows Clary, and if she goes now, she will not ever come
back.
Come back.
Somehow he is outside the club and the rain
is pelting down like gunfire. He sees everything in a single sweep, the
way he always has, the way he was trained to do. The white van at the
curb, the slant of the street as it curves back toward Greenpoint, the
dark opening of an alley behind the bar, and Clary at the corner, about
to cross the street and walk out of his life forever.
She yanks her arm out of his when he reaches
for her, but when he puts his hand against her back she lets him guide
her into the alley. His hand slides across her back to her arm as she
whirls to face him — and he can see everything around them again: the
wet brick wall behind them, the barred windows, the discarded musical
equipment soaking in puddles of rainwater.
And Clary is lifting her face, small and
pale, her mascara running in glittery streaks beneath her eyes. Her hair
looks dark, pasted to her head. She feels both fragile and dangerous in
his grasp, a glass explosive.
She jerks her arm away from his. “If you’re
planning to apologize, don’t bother. I don’t want to hear it.” He tries
to protest, to tell her he only wanted to help Simon, but she is shaking
her head, her words like stinging missiles: “And you couldn’t tell me?
Couldn’t text me a single line letting me know where you were? Oh, wait.
You couldn’t, because you still have my goddamned phone. Give it to
me.”
He reaches to hand the phone back to her, but he is barely aware of his movements. He wants to say: No,
no, no, I couldn’t tell you. I can’t tell you. I can’t say I’m afraid
of hurting you even though I don’t want to. I can’t say I’m afraid of
becoming my father. Your faith in me is the best thing in my life and I
can’t bear to destroy it. “—Forgive me —”
Her face goes white, her lipstick bright
against her stark skin. “I don’t even know what you think I’m supposed
to forgive you for. Not loving me any more?”
She moves away from him and stumbles,
blindly, and he can’t stop himself: he reaches for her. She is delicate
and shivering in his arms and they are both soaking wet and he can’t
stop. Her mouth is part-open, and be brings his own lips down against
hers, tasting lipstick and sweet ginger and Clary.
I love you. He can’t say it, so he tries to tell her with the pressure of his lips and his body and his hands. I love you, I love you. His hands are around her waist, lifting her, and he had forgotten: she isn’t fragile; she is strong. Her
fingers are digging into his shoulders, her mouth fierce against his,
and his heart is pounding like it’s trying to get free of his body as he
sets her down on a broken speaker.
Stop, his mind is telling him. Stop, stop, stop. He forces his hands away from her and places them on the wall, on either side of her head. Only that
brings his body closer to hers, and that is a mistake. He can see the
pulse slamming in her throat; her lipstick is gone he can’t look away
from the carnation-pink of her mouth, flushed from kissing, as she
breathes: “Why can’t you talk to me? Why can’t you look at me?”
His heart is pounding as if it wants to leave his body and take up independent residence somewhere else. “Because I love you.”
It is the truth, and an inadequate truth at
that, but he feels it punch through him with the force of a lie. Her
face softens, her eyes widening. Her hands are against him, small and
delicate and careful, and he leans into her, breathing the scent of her
under the smell of rainwater. “I don’t care,” he hears himself say. “I’m
sick of trying to pretend I can live without you. Don’t you understand
that? Can’t you see it’s killing me?”
He is drowning, and it is too late. He
reaches for her like an addict reaching hopelessly for the drug he has
sworn not to touch again, having decided it is better to burn up in one
final blaze than live forever without it.
And the gray world blazes up around him with
color as they come together, bodies slamming hard against the wall
behind them. The water soaking her dress has made it as slick as motor
oil under his fingers. He catches and pulls at her, desire reshaping
their bodies with every touch. Her breathing is ragged in his ears, her
eyelids half-closed and fluttering. He is touching her skin everywhere
he can: her throat, the back of her neck, her collarbones hard under his
fingertips, her arms, smooth and slippery. Her hands are on him, too,
no shyer than his own, and every touch seems to burn away the rain and
the cold.
She is gripping his shoulders when she raises
her legs and wraps them around his waist, and he makes a noise he
didn’t even know he could make. It is too late to go back now. His hands
clench involuntarily, and he feels the fabric of her tights rip under
his fingers, and he is touching her bare skin. And their kisses taste
like rain. And if he wasn’t falling before, he is falling now.
He thinks of the Fall, of angels tumbling
forever in fire, and Icarus, who had flown too close to the sun. He had
thought of the agony of the fall, the terror of it, but never that it
might be joyful. Lucifer had not wanted to fall, but neither had he
wanted to serve, and as Jace gathered Clary close against him, closer
than he had ever thought they could be, he wondered if it was only in
the act of falling that one could be truly free.
***
Aww, isn't that steamy? And NOT JUST steamy... EMOTIONAL. and so very Jace. It's impossible to not fall for our bad boy Jace Lightwood (or Herondale).
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