─── jace herondale, t h o s e o f d e m o n b l o o d
it could’ve been said he’d never backed down from a challenge. but maybe it was that he had. that every other thing he’d tried to man up to, had just slipped right through his flimsy hands lately. as though every time he tried to FIX it, if you’ve made a mess, FIX it, jonathan, he was right back into the endlessly deep, bone-cold, gray, and he couldn’t beat the tide, no matter how hard he swam. he couldn’t breathe enough to keep moving, he couldn’t even get his head to stop spinning, under the pushing forces, for long enough to remember what to DO next. the whole day’d felt like a swim in the trash choked hudson, but that was becoming nothing new. what would a shadowhunter do, jonathan? fight. but for what? what is love? weakness. she’s making you weak. the only time he’d ever been wrong about him. not because jace wasn’t weak. but because he had turned himself weak, because maybe he’d just never been made of anything else but an impressive facade. it had never been clary. and he’d known it almost from the instant those words had made his knees buckle, and the nauseating disappointment in that baring stare had made him stop breathing.
finding out about his seemingly true lineage, had been the first time he’d felt maybe, just maybe, he could amount to something more than living his life in blood and death, until it caught up to him. since before his father died left him. since before his father had finally realized no amount of grooming, and making him better, would ever be enough. that even michael couldn’t make him great. michael, not valentine. never valentine. herondales work for what is good and just. had he actually believed it? he felt the urge to laugh like a maniac. he should had known better. when did anything that came from HIM came down to any good? he should have known he couldn’t trust her words. that he couldn’t trust this. or the ring around his neck. the ring that had made him feel like a fire alight inside him, and now felt like a dragging weight. a concrete symbol of everything he’d never be, just another house of cards, far from a home. he should have known valentine would never GIVE HIM anything that wouldn’t make him feel sick for having it, eventually. and yet, somehow, with the weight of the ring around his neck, he’d still hoped it’d last a little longer than that. what a stupid, stupid, thing to do.
you deserved it. the shove was familiar. so familiar it startled him into days past, and for a second he was paralyzed. memory-foam, like the brick wall hitting his back, hitting the air out of him. crack, made his back on the wall. crack had made his nose, jaw, ribs, countless times under the force of fists just like these. he gasped in air when his hands were pinned up, but it didn’t reach his lungs. water, water, water in his lungs, burning, burning like the ties around his wrists. helpless. bound. blood, thick and syrupy down his throat. did he taste like it, or did her? he kissed her harder to find out.
he breathed in when his hands were freed. a wave of air as dizzying as the lack of it. and he clasped fingers on her, hoping she’d do the same, and leave bruises on his limbs, again. bruises to remember her by. to make it last. to make his proof alive and black and blue. soothing. like the ones he so desperately sought out when those first hands that had held him and punished him, left him astray. lost like he felt under the weight of sudden responsibility, scraping by just to tell himself he still belonged in the new found warmth of the chain around his neck, in the name so fondly whispered to him, just barely acquired. lost like stepping on the pool of a body’s red stream. his father’s one. imogen, alec, clary. alec. he’d give that one stupid hope back, all of it, in exchange for never being slapped with the confirmation that where he truly belonged was exactly where he’d always feared to be, exactly from where he, deep down, had always known he could never escape. and as he opened his eyes, he saw older, knowing ones, looking back, and felt his skin crawl under the wanting touch.
her hands on his fluttering stomach, familiar like the claws that had gutted it under her supervision. he wished she would. rip out his rune and leave the gaping flesh behind. all those shadowhunter children he’d fought with, known, cursed with the touch of his hand or a glance of his eyes, left stripped bare by the same hand that had many times traveled his skin, just like this. the hand he had cursed too, because maybe the taste of him was the taste of death. all because he’d fallen back into valentine’s hands like he always did. why hadn’t she got him? maybe his blood would had been enough to drown her need for more, maybe it was what she’d needed all along. maybe his blood could finally sate the infinite piles of bodies growing all around him, suffocating him, trampling him, screaming, screaming into the night, even after death. now skinless, frozen in expressions of terror, a terror, precedence might just make him inclined to believe, the touch of his lips inspired.
the back of his head hit the wall again when her mouth found his, pounding just like when his hands had slipped as he tried to stumble his way through the alley with that same maia hot on the scent of his dripping blood. each hard kiss exploding like the fists on his face, when he could feel alec dying, dying, dying. and just as satisfying as just now, when he’d actually begged her again not to, but didn’t even try to escape, when he knew with sweet liberation, that he had it coming all along. the former, the only moment in which he could ever recall feeling what it was like to actually desperately grasp at his own life. they’d made him feel so blaringly alive then. while his brain swam in the pulsing blood of his racing heart, trying frantically to keep him awake, for alec, for just one more second, and his ears ringed with the blows he couldn’t dodge. when so many hands were gripping at him, blowing up and cracking dents on him. and he wanted more.
that was the type of connection that felt like home. the most essential, raw, way to be connected to someone, after having them beat the walls out of you, the walls that made you even slightly human, and they’d been there, already. the hands that cracked him, had always been the ones that caught him better when he fell, after all.
why would that change anything?
why indeed. why had he ever even thought he was entitled to an ounce of clary? clary with her endless kindness, unbroken strength, attested purity, and that heart of fire he’d dare anyone not to want to be closer to, just to feel warm. he’d never blamed simon for it. how had he ever thought that ANYTHING in her belonged with him? by blood or love. with his death covered hands, and slippery steps on the wrecked path. no. this was where he belonged, choking on the tongue pushing his, on the punishment implied, choking on all the blood. choking on the disgust inside the eyes all over him, all day, when he’d dared think he could actually accomplish- when even valentine had tossed him away because he’d realized jace would never be the leader he had been, the leader he wanted and needed. that all those years had been for NOTHING. that he wasn’t meant to lead. had never had. and these days he finally knew what even alec had come to realize, he wasn’t meant for much of anything that wasn’t given to him, and he managed to break anything that was.
teeth on his jaw, teeth on his throat, teeth like fangs slicing down his skin like hot butter, and jace grunted as he took it - so grateful for every sore muscle, and mixed, strained, memory that washed away his sins, by the hands of someone else. relief, relief like clary’s gentle touch had never quite brought him. he knew it now. relief like the illusion of her love had only stole away from him, with the ever present knowing parts that chanted themselves hoarse, every time they’d kissed and he’d tried to burn himself onto her, reminding him he’d never deserved it.
she touched him like she hated him too. and it was incredibly comforting. like something about him just ticked her off. like she too was trying to wash out sins on the drag, shove, pull, and marking of him. but not her own. like he was every bad thing that had ever happened to her, every hand that had ever touched her wrong, or locked her away, and the rush of finally getting the upper hand felt just good enough to fall apart over. and definitely too good to let go. he could hardly blame her. she’d hunted him down before, and now she had him. he’d given himself before, too, but this was so much better than swift nothingness. he’d done too much, caused too much, to have earned that.
hate on her fingertips, hate on her lips, just enough hate on both of them to make it feel, to make it last, make it last, hate imprinted on every inch of his skin. just enough to feel like he was good enough to want. oh yeah, this was easy. and he moaned. this he had always been good at.
the kind of love he’d always been good at.
breaths mingled, as clothes were yanked open and tossed aside or pulled down. her eyes on him making him dizzy as memories overlaid: the eyes in the hospital that wanted nothing more than to rip his throat apart, the eyes at the bar like he was every confirmation she’d ever needed about his people, the blazing eyes now as his pants were down. he let her take the lead without struggle, but grasped her when she needed him, and sunk his fingers onto her thighs just enough to make her nails sting down his back in turn. he shouldn’t even be touching her back, didn’t earn as much, but he did. he did hoping she’d punish him further, and again, ad again, that they’d do this longer; that the warmth of her body would consume him until everything he’d ever broken with his hands, didn’t matter anymore. her hold on him, like the hold before the strike. werewolf fists blending without a difference to the shadowhunter ones in the ship. being awaken by the taste of his own blood, just like he had then, with cold water pushing it down his throat, instead of the glass smashing under his face, washing through the numbness and making him breathe it in, until it finally reached his lungs.
he sunk into her and she pinned him voraciously.
to love is to destroy. and he needed to be.
and when she left, far too soon, leaving him alone, far too whole, whole enough to still think, whole enough to still feel, to still hold himself up, with his pants down, he hunched over and he hurled. he hurled trying to spill out every sickening bit that was left inside. numb, shaken, fingers hurrying to come up in and jerk the chain off his head and down to the floor. the ring clinking on it, before he clutched the wall and hurled again. simon’s voice and song echoed on the background.
