tangled up in blue

25

rat of the city- sidney gish

AN- smut ;)

The next morning, I became thankful that there was only one bed. I couldn't find the energy to leave the sheets where I was bundled up and to my surprise, Jace didn't make me. He only left once to secure the curtains so the room was shadowed, but he gave me the warmth I'd instantly missed straight after by pulling me into his embrace again. Neither of us were great at staying asleep usually and yet it seemed that whenever we laid next to each other, we both slipped into a comfortable unconsciousness. When I wasn't falling asleep to the gentle brush strokes of his hands on my back, I watched his eyelids flutter closed with drowsiness. His hair would go all messy and he'd mumble some sleepy string of words into my chest. Seeing Jace so unusually vulnerable and soft made me feel things that I'd never planned on feeling. That was, before he not only beat up a group of boys for the second time just to save me, but he'd looked after me. Although Monica and my friends were affectionate and endlessly kind, I hadn't been held like that since my Mom died and for once, I genuinely felt safe. Jace was impossible and complicated and unpredictable, but there was warmth in him too. He wasn't always a sharp edge. Sometimes, he was just a pair of arms to fall into and a voice that told me I was going to be okay.

I was terrified that I'd fall asleep and one of my friends would burst into the cabin only to see me and Jace looking like we'd just tried for a baby, but I was too exhausted to care. Everything that had happened kept replaying in my mind like a scratched record but I knew that the only thing keeping me from falling apart was the arms that encircled my waist. That was, until they prodded me awake.

"Ngh," I grunted, covering my face with a pillow. "Go away."

"Noah," Jace whispered before lightly poking me in the ribs again. My body contorted at the tickling sensation and I playfully pushed him away. "Wake up, we're leaving."

"Whadyumean..." I mumbled, my face squished against the sheets. Slowly, I opened one eye. Jace's hair was gloriously messy and I had to physically fight the urge to grab a handful of it as he leaned over me.

"I called my parents. You can't stay here."

My heart blinked furiously from behind the wall of my chest when I thought about how he could, even just a little bit, care about me. But then there was a small part of me that didn't want to go back, because I knew we wouldn't be like this again. That fireside charade of ours would shatter the second we left the sanctuary of our room, no matter how much I wanted to fall asleep every night to the sound of his breathing. Leaving only to have him hate me again was worse than staying in those beautiful, haunted woods forever.

"I... I don't want them to know. About what happened."

"They won't. Are you gonna go back to therapy?" He asked softly, resting his head beside mine.

I was silent for a moment. "Are you?"

He was silent for even longer.

It took us a whole five minutes to drag ourselves out from under the duvet to get dressed, and when we did Jace watched me change. Not in a sexual way, but in the sense that he was checking for any crack in my careful act of happiness. When I glanced his way and our eyes locked, he blushed and looked away. I held onto that moment in my mind for the entire walk to the car where Monica greeted me with a tight hug.

"I'm not gonna ask what happened, but I do love you. Remember that, okay?" She said into my hair.

"Okay," I whispered, suddenly emotional. I wanted to say it back. And I would, once I could say it to myself too.

I pretended not to notice as Jace pushed a confused Lee out of the way so he could sit in the middle next to me. As we rolled away the lake came into view, I watched transfixed in a strange chokehold of pain as the sunlight danced on the water's surface, a juxtaposition from the violence of its breathless depths. My hands shook inside my pocket, clutching the lighter in solitude until something warm interlaced them. I turned to my left to find Jace looking ahead as if he wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary, but the fingers wrapped around my mine were his own. I squeezed them in a silent show that I didn't want him to go. Without a word, he squeezed back.