Fic [TID]: More Infernal Drabbles
Tumblr-prompted fun things. Some for a Things-I-Would-Never-Write meme, ironically enough. Titles chosen to match 100yalit table.
Title: Green
Rating: G
Word Count: 92
Prompt: Jem/Tessa, flower
It wasn’t about the flowers, not really; it was the way Tessa’s sad eyes followed the little chuckaway girl with her tiny basket of wilted flowers, and the way it made Tessa smile when he purchased half the basket. It was about the way Tessa took them, and twisted them into a crown, setting them on Cecily’s head, making Will’s somber sister giggle in the mirror. It was the way he could use them to show her love and the way she used them to show her own boundless love to others.
❀
Title: Avoidance
Rating: PG
Word Count: 134
Prompt: Jem/Tessa, first married argument.
“The honeymoon at Bath was just the two of us, but Shanghai… Tessa, a trip like this… Will would want to come. You may bicker with him, but I’ve always believed the two of you got along where it counted. Why not invite him?”
Tessa felt a headache coming along. The three of them. Together at his uncle’s house. With language and circumstance trapping Will, keeping him close to them. With nowhere for Tessa to hide from Will. And Will with nowhere to hide from Jem’s post-marital tendency towards public affection.
Tessa was willing to endure many things to protect Jem’s heart. She was willing to make Will endure many things for the same reason.
But…
“Just ask him, Jem. Ask him if he wants to come with us. His answer may surprise you.”
❀
Title: Hard
Rating: G
Word Count: 60
Prompt: Will/Tessa, happy
Will’s attempts at sarcasm weren’t really meant to make people laugh. They were meant to annoy. To make people believe he couldn’t take anybody seriously. Will didn’t laugh. He expressed cynical amusement with a twitch of the lip. But saying things to make Tessa laugh was surprisingly easy. And it was hard to make Tessa laugh without joining in too.
❀
Title: Smooth
Rating: G
Word Count: 363
Prompt: Jem/Tessa, coincidence
Charlotte and Henry needed to meet with the Clave.
Cecily went with them.
Bridget minded her own business, as always.
Will had snatched Cyril as his drinking partner for the evening (apparently, he really did mean to drink himself into a stupor for once, with a witness to prove it.)
And this made Jem the sole shadowhunter left to keep the Institute.
And this-for all intents and purposes-meant she was alone with Jem.
With no interruptions.
No distractions.
With no others to serve, Bridget left the two of them a simple dinner of hash, toast, and tea in the library.
And then she swirled away singing another dirge.
Jem smiled at her as he nibbled at his toast, and Tessa remembered a year ago when he’d seemed like something not of his world-far too heavenly to be eating something so mundane.
But as she watched him, he blushed as if he could feel his eyes on her.
Between a bout of illness followed by training followed by missions and demon attacks and her own continued lessons… it had been a while since they had spoken.
But all at once, she could feel the pang of missing him, freshly remembered now that he was here in front of her.
Once the toast was nothing but crumbs on both their plate, and the teacups were emptied, she smiled at him, biting her lip a little nervously.
“Jem?”
“Yes?”
“I won’t tell if you don’t.”
He smiled back at her, though his brow twisted a bit in confusion.
“Tell about what?”
In that moment, she was across to his chair, perched on his lap, and kissing him.
It was so brazen a thing to do that it made her blush even as she did it, but she trusted that Jem would not object. There was no one else to mind… and she had missed him.
And when he overcame his surprise and began to kiss her back-so sweetly and so deeply-she felt her nervousness flee in lieu of warmth and joy.
The fireplace crackled, and the books gave away no secrets.
And for the first time, the library provided Tessa an entirely new kind of haven.
❀
Title: Bitter
Rating: PG
Word Count: 120
Prompt: Will kills Jem.
It’s only an instant before Will drives the splintered stake home that he realizes Jem has allowed it to come to this. A fifty year old shadowhunter. An insane yet spry vampire. Even with nephilim reflexes, there still never should have been a chance…
But as he feels the weapon pierce his old friend’s unbeating heart, he hears his dying gasp, and feels the pain reflected in his own soul.
“I never wanted… never planned to outlive her, Will. Surely you understand…?”
Will nods.
But Jem cannot see.
His eyes are open but they are glossed over.
William Herondale reaches out to touch his old parabatai for the last time, fingertips pulling down shadowed eylids.
“Ave atque vale, brother.”
❀
Title: Masquerade
Rating: G
Word Count: 297
Prompt: Jem & Tessa playing a game, with Will dragged into it.
At first, Will wants to yell at his parabatai that he’s doing it wrong.
The idea behind Blind Man’s Bluff is that you are supposed to make it difficult for the gray-eyed shapeshifter to find you behind her blindfold. You are supposed to speak softly. Mimic others. Not talk abnormally loudly and often.
Will remembers back to a moment ago when he was the one in the blindfold, fumbling toward a familiar and nattering voice, grabbing the edges of (too soft) cloth and shouting “Henry” only to be confronted with feminine laughter a moment later, as he whipped off the cloth to the sight of Henry in a dress transforming back into Tessa.
He’d declared her the new “Blind Man” on account of cheating.
But now he wishes he hadn’t.
Because something about the scene before him silences him completely.
Because Jem is cheating too.
“Blind man-” Tessa calls out once more.
“Bluff,” replies Jem. Normal voice. No whisper. No disguise.
And the smile that comes on Tessa’s lips, beneath her hidden eyes, makes Will’s breath catch.
But what grips him even more is the look on Jem’s face.
The way his teeth sink into his own bottom lip and the way his eyes focus. The way his voice is relaxed, and his body tensed.
Will has never seen his brother like this, radiating a desire to be touched.
He can see Tessa inhale as her hand hovers an inch above Jem’s chest, and he can see Jem hold his breath with her.
There is no repetition of “Blind man” or “Bluff”, only a succint “Jem,” and Tessa says it with joy and assurity.
As she calls his parabatai’s half-hearted bluff, Will wonders at the harsh truth of it all.
How he could have been so blind.
❀
Title: Awe
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 158
Prompt: Jem/Tessa pic prompt:
The knowledge that it’s Tessa’s warm breath on his neck, and her left arm hanging tiredly over his hip still creates this bursting sensation where Jem’s stomach should be. He almost can’t believe it even now, even after they are wed, even after they have made love for the first time.
Her cheek is soft, but oh-so real beneath his fingertips. She breathes as they are chest to chest, and he can feel her lungs gently expanding and contracting, and Angel hang it all if the brushing of those tender parts of her don’t distract him all over again from his own sleep.
But she is all peacefulness, and realness, and gray-eyed joy mixed with beauty that works it’s way under his skin from the inside out.
And as his own aching-but gladly so-body begins to drag his own consciousness away from him, Jem wonders at how such a quiet moment can speak to the heart so loudly.
❀
Title: Daylight
Rating: PG
Word Count: 212
Prompt: Simon/Tessa pic prompt:
In time, she knows she will probably end up like Magnus, utterly indifferent to the contrast of mortal youth and immortal age. But for now, she is still very aware of the fact that she is being courted by a gentleman-perhaps not by her era’s definition, but Tessa has seen much of the world since, and Simon is truly a gentleman-who is a hundred and fifty years her junior.
Yet, it doesn’t dissuade him. And Tessa begins to find, as Simon turns to her on the plush couch, focussing on her through glasses he doesn’t need, that she doesn’t mind either. His heart is like Camile’s in the sense that it doesn’t beat, but unlike her old acquaintance’s, it is filled with warmth and humor. And his temperate skin absorbs her own heat quickly enough.
It is a kiss of patience, and of promise. And though she knows he asks little, Tessa decides in that moment to give more, and leans her legs into his body, letting him know that he is welcome. Scandalous, that old part of her mind still insists.
Healing, her heart responds.
And in that moment, Tessa nods to herself. And in that shared warmth, they offer up more kisses, and begin to mend each other’s old wounds.
❀
Title: Black (Armor in Shadow)
Rating: G
Word Count: 547
Prompt: Jem/Tessa, hidden perches
She remembers the first time she saw Jem like this, scurrying like an agile cat in the rafters while Gabriel prepared for their first training lesson. She’d been so surprised-a good kind-that she’d just watched and tried to take it in.
But there’s something about it now-the way Gideon doesn’t know he’s there, the way Sophie doesn’t seem to have noticed either, the way that it’s just a secret between the two of them-that keeps Tessa on her toes.
She can’t glance up for long, only a moment, but it’s enough to see him press a finger to his lips, requesting her silence with a smile.
The lightness of his hair and skin contrast starkly with the jet-black shadowhunter armor, and it lets her keep him in the corner of her eye as Gideon mutters something about knives in Spanish.
Tessa finds herself impatient for when the lesson will be over.
Perhaps it has something to do with the way Jem’s smile seems to hold a certain promise.
A decision to not be entirely proper today.
A day without chaperones. (Though they never did decide if they wanted one at all.)
And when Gideon and Sophie finally leave-more than a little lost in each other, she notes-Tessa stands at the center and smiles.
A rope descends in front of her, and she recalls the illustrations from one of her favorite childhood books-an etch of Robin Hood gallantly swinging from a vine.
Jem is not woodcut-handsome like the Robin of her picturebook. He is slim movement and grace encased in a silver shadow. And while his smile is more shy, it is far more intimate and instead of sweeping her off her feet like some fairy tale princess, he instead crooks a finger and beckons her upward.
And Tessa feels that brush of adventure again and she climbs to meet him. Jem has always understood her desire to experience things for herself.
As Tessa sits in the rafters and looks down, she is struck by the scene. For she could truly be a fly on the wall like this, a secret purveyor of the world below.
As the thought fills her, she turns and sees the satisfied smile on her fiance’s face.
Fiance. There are some hard thoughts that she struggles with still, but she is getting more and more used to the thought every day.
Tessa reminds herself that this means many things. It means that there is truly no reason why she shouldn’t reach for him in that moment. Reach for him, kiss him, and perhaps even sigh into his mouth while doing it.
Remember every instant that that she looked over her shoulder, expecting Jem to be right beside her. Every gentle hand upon her arm, guiding her to some newly-discovered corner of London that she’d only thought she’d ever read about.
And as Jem’s hand tightens on her hip, and a slight helpless moan falls from his lips, Tessa smiles in her own bit of triumph.
As the training room door bursts open, they break apart.
And as Henry scuttles about, searching for some metal part on the weapon maintenance rack, Jem and Tessa grin and shake their heads at each other.
For there in the rafters, they are each other’s secret once more.
Title: Green
Rating: G
Word Count: 92
Prompt: Jem/Tessa, flower
It wasn’t about the flowers, not really; it was the way Tessa’s sad eyes followed the little chuckaway girl with her tiny basket of wilted flowers, and the way it made Tessa smile when he purchased half the basket. It was about the way Tessa took them, and twisted them into a crown, setting them on Cecily’s head, making Will’s somber sister giggle in the mirror. It was the way he could use them to show her love and the way she used them to show her own boundless love to others.
❀
Title: Avoidance
Rating: PG
Word Count: 134
Prompt: Jem/Tessa, first married argument.
“The honeymoon at Bath was just the two of us, but Shanghai… Tessa, a trip like this… Will would want to come. You may bicker with him, but I’ve always believed the two of you got along where it counted. Why not invite him?”
Tessa felt a headache coming along. The three of them. Together at his uncle’s house. With language and circumstance trapping Will, keeping him close to them. With nowhere for Tessa to hide from Will. And Will with nowhere to hide from Jem’s post-marital tendency towards public affection.
Tessa was willing to endure many things to protect Jem’s heart. She was willing to make Will endure many things for the same reason.
But…
“Just ask him, Jem. Ask him if he wants to come with us. His answer may surprise you.”
❀
Title: Hard
Rating: G
Word Count: 60
Prompt: Will/Tessa, happy
Will’s attempts at sarcasm weren’t really meant to make people laugh. They were meant to annoy. To make people believe he couldn’t take anybody seriously. Will didn’t laugh. He expressed cynical amusement with a twitch of the lip. But saying things to make Tessa laugh was surprisingly easy. And it was hard to make Tessa laugh without joining in too.
❀
Title: Smooth
Rating: G
Word Count: 363
Prompt: Jem/Tessa, coincidence
Charlotte and Henry needed to meet with the Clave.
Cecily went with them.
Bridget minded her own business, as always.
Will had snatched Cyril as his drinking partner for the evening (apparently, he really did mean to drink himself into a stupor for once, with a witness to prove it.)
And this made Jem the sole shadowhunter left to keep the Institute.
And this-for all intents and purposes-meant she was alone with Jem.
With no interruptions.
No distractions.
With no others to serve, Bridget left the two of them a simple dinner of hash, toast, and tea in the library.
And then she swirled away singing another dirge.
Jem smiled at her as he nibbled at his toast, and Tessa remembered a year ago when he’d seemed like something not of his world-far too heavenly to be eating something so mundane.
But as she watched him, he blushed as if he could feel his eyes on her.
Between a bout of illness followed by training followed by missions and demon attacks and her own continued lessons… it had been a while since they had spoken.
But all at once, she could feel the pang of missing him, freshly remembered now that he was here in front of her.
Once the toast was nothing but crumbs on both their plate, and the teacups were emptied, she smiled at him, biting her lip a little nervously.
“Jem?”
“Yes?”
“I won’t tell if you don’t.”
He smiled back at her, though his brow twisted a bit in confusion.
“Tell about what?”
In that moment, she was across to his chair, perched on his lap, and kissing him.
It was so brazen a thing to do that it made her blush even as she did it, but she trusted that Jem would not object. There was no one else to mind… and she had missed him.
And when he overcame his surprise and began to kiss her back-so sweetly and so deeply-she felt her nervousness flee in lieu of warmth and joy.
The fireplace crackled, and the books gave away no secrets.
And for the first time, the library provided Tessa an entirely new kind of haven.
❀
Title: Bitter
Rating: PG
Word Count: 120
Prompt: Will kills Jem.
It’s only an instant before Will drives the splintered stake home that he realizes Jem has allowed it to come to this. A fifty year old shadowhunter. An insane yet spry vampire. Even with nephilim reflexes, there still never should have been a chance…
But as he feels the weapon pierce his old friend’s unbeating heart, he hears his dying gasp, and feels the pain reflected in his own soul.
“I never wanted… never planned to outlive her, Will. Surely you understand…?”
Will nods.
But Jem cannot see.
His eyes are open but they are glossed over.
William Herondale reaches out to touch his old parabatai for the last time, fingertips pulling down shadowed eylids.
“Ave atque vale, brother.”
❀
Title: Masquerade
Rating: G
Word Count: 297
Prompt: Jem & Tessa playing a game, with Will dragged into it.
At first, Will wants to yell at his parabatai that he’s doing it wrong.
The idea behind Blind Man’s Bluff is that you are supposed to make it difficult for the gray-eyed shapeshifter to find you behind her blindfold. You are supposed to speak softly. Mimic others. Not talk abnormally loudly and often.
Will remembers back to a moment ago when he was the one in the blindfold, fumbling toward a familiar and nattering voice, grabbing the edges of (too soft) cloth and shouting “Henry” only to be confronted with feminine laughter a moment later, as he whipped off the cloth to the sight of Henry in a dress transforming back into Tessa.
He’d declared her the new “Blind Man” on account of cheating.
But now he wishes he hadn’t.
Because something about the scene before him silences him completely.
Because Jem is cheating too.
“Blind man-” Tessa calls out once more.
“Bluff,” replies Jem. Normal voice. No whisper. No disguise.
And the smile that comes on Tessa’s lips, beneath her hidden eyes, makes Will’s breath catch.
But what grips him even more is the look on Jem’s face.
The way his teeth sink into his own bottom lip and the way his eyes focus. The way his voice is relaxed, and his body tensed.
Will has never seen his brother like this, radiating a desire to be touched.
He can see Tessa inhale as her hand hovers an inch above Jem’s chest, and he can see Jem hold his breath with her.
There is no repetition of “Blind man” or “Bluff”, only a succint “Jem,” and Tessa says it with joy and assurity.
As she calls his parabatai’s half-hearted bluff, Will wonders at the harsh truth of it all.
How he could have been so blind.
❀
Title: Awe
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 158
Prompt: Jem/Tessa pic prompt:
The knowledge that it’s Tessa’s warm breath on his neck, and her left arm hanging tiredly over his hip still creates this bursting sensation where Jem’s stomach should be. He almost can’t believe it even now, even after they are wed, even after they have made love for the first time.
Her cheek is soft, but oh-so real beneath his fingertips. She breathes as they are chest to chest, and he can feel her lungs gently expanding and contracting, and Angel hang it all if the brushing of those tender parts of her don’t distract him all over again from his own sleep.
But she is all peacefulness, and realness, and gray-eyed joy mixed with beauty that works it’s way under his skin from the inside out.
And as his own aching-but gladly so-body begins to drag his own consciousness away from him, Jem wonders at how such a quiet moment can speak to the heart so loudly.
❀
Title: Daylight
Rating: PG
Word Count: 212
Prompt: Simon/Tessa pic prompt:
In time, she knows she will probably end up like Magnus, utterly indifferent to the contrast of mortal youth and immortal age. But for now, she is still very aware of the fact that she is being courted by a gentleman-perhaps not by her era’s definition, but Tessa has seen much of the world since, and Simon is truly a gentleman-who is a hundred and fifty years her junior.
Yet, it doesn’t dissuade him. And Tessa begins to find, as Simon turns to her on the plush couch, focussing on her through glasses he doesn’t need, that she doesn’t mind either. His heart is like Camile’s in the sense that it doesn’t beat, but unlike her old acquaintance’s, it is filled with warmth and humor. And his temperate skin absorbs her own heat quickly enough.
It is a kiss of patience, and of promise. And though she knows he asks little, Tessa decides in that moment to give more, and leans her legs into his body, letting him know that he is welcome. Scandalous, that old part of her mind still insists.
Healing, her heart responds.
And in that moment, Tessa nods to herself. And in that shared warmth, they offer up more kisses, and begin to mend each other’s old wounds.
❀
Title: Black (Armor in Shadow)
Rating: G
Word Count: 547
Prompt: Jem/Tessa, hidden perches
She remembers the first time she saw Jem like this, scurrying like an agile cat in the rafters while Gabriel prepared for their first training lesson. She’d been so surprised-a good kind-that she’d just watched and tried to take it in.
But there’s something about it now-the way Gideon doesn’t know he’s there, the way Sophie doesn’t seem to have noticed either, the way that it’s just a secret between the two of them-that keeps Tessa on her toes.
She can’t glance up for long, only a moment, but it’s enough to see him press a finger to his lips, requesting her silence with a smile.
The lightness of his hair and skin contrast starkly with the jet-black shadowhunter armor, and it lets her keep him in the corner of her eye as Gideon mutters something about knives in Spanish.
Tessa finds herself impatient for when the lesson will be over.
Perhaps it has something to do with the way Jem’s smile seems to hold a certain promise.
A decision to not be entirely proper today.
A day without chaperones. (Though they never did decide if they wanted one at all.)
And when Gideon and Sophie finally leave-more than a little lost in each other, she notes-Tessa stands at the center and smiles.
A rope descends in front of her, and she recalls the illustrations from one of her favorite childhood books-an etch of Robin Hood gallantly swinging from a vine.
Jem is not woodcut-handsome like the Robin of her picturebook. He is slim movement and grace encased in a silver shadow. And while his smile is more shy, it is far more intimate and instead of sweeping her off her feet like some fairy tale princess, he instead crooks a finger and beckons her upward.
And Tessa feels that brush of adventure again and she climbs to meet him. Jem has always understood her desire to experience things for herself.
As Tessa sits in the rafters and looks down, she is struck by the scene. For she could truly be a fly on the wall like this, a secret purveyor of the world below.
As the thought fills her, she turns and sees the satisfied smile on her fiance’s face.
Fiance. There are some hard thoughts that she struggles with still, but she is getting more and more used to the thought every day.
Tessa reminds herself that this means many things. It means that there is truly no reason why she shouldn’t reach for him in that moment. Reach for him, kiss him, and perhaps even sigh into his mouth while doing it.
Remember every instant that that she looked over her shoulder, expecting Jem to be right beside her. Every gentle hand upon her arm, guiding her to some newly-discovered corner of London that she’d only thought she’d ever read about.
And as Jem’s hand tightens on her hip, and a slight helpless moan falls from his lips, Tessa smiles in her own bit of triumph.
As the training room door bursts open, they break apart.
And as Henry scuttles about, searching for some metal part on the weapon maintenance rack, Jem and Tessa grin and shake their heads at each other.
For there in the rafters, they are each other’s secret once more.