Chapter Text
Growing up as a Morgenstern, Clary had very little freedom, especially when it came down to her brothers’ say. You would think that it would be cool to have twins in your family, but it sucked when the twins were your very protective older brothers. When Sebastian and Jonathan began school, two years before their precious baby sister, they made their very first life long friend. Jace Herondale was the most fun boy in kindergarten and instantly bonded with the rambunctious twins. Ever since that first day of school, Clary had three big brothers.
If you thought two protective brothers was bad, wait until you suddenly got a new one. The only good thing to come out of it was Clary’s guaranteed safety during school. No one even looked at the small ginger girl during school, but on her first day of fourth grade, when the boys started middle school, all the envious girls took advantage of Clary’s lack of body guards. The crying girl was sent home early with chocolate milk staining her shirt and woodchips in her hair. The twins comforted their baby sister as soon as they got home while Jace paced angrily around the room. He demanded that the crying Clary spill as to who had tormented her, but she could barely catch her breath. It went without saying that Clary never had a problem with those girls again.
Clary didn’t really start turning heads until her freshman year of high school. It wasn’t like the Morgenstern girl was unrecognizable; she was still one of the only gingers to step foot in New York, and although she was turning into a woman by gaining a bit of curves on her hips and a swell in her bust. Jocelyn taught her how to define her features with makeup and not turn herself into the typical teenage girls in New York. So, on the first day of ninth grade, Clary walked into James Madison High with her beautifully done face, light wash skinny jeans, and a grey striped shirt, her curls falling in flames over her shoulder and down her back. Her brothers fought off every boy that came after her that whole year, but when Clary began sophomore year and began to argue with them, Jonathan decided that they should back off. He made a good point that Clary wasn’t a little girl anymore, that she was almost sixteen and had to start dating at some point. Sebastian refused, and Jace seemed to have to think about it, but he ended up siding with Sebastian.
Clary got invited to her first party at the end of her sophomore year, right before the boys graduated. Her not-so-secret boyfriend, Raphael Santiago, had connections to pre-graduation parties, and convinced Clary to sneak out, claiming that her brothers didn’t know the guy who was hosting the party they were going to. It took days, but eventually Clary asked her boyfriend to help her pick an outfit. They both settled on a cropped, long sleeve, striped shirt and jean shorts, held in place by a maroon cardigan tied around the widest part of her narrow hips. The party was loud, and all Clary did for a majority of the night was sit on the dirty couch with a warm beer in her hand. Raphael began to drink as soon as he arrived, getting drunker and drunker with every minute that passed. The later it got, the more Clary just wanted to leave. Alcohol had been spilt on her by the dancing girls, the loud music was giving her a headache, and her boyfriend was nowhere to be found. But still, she sat alone on the couch, trying to enjoy the drunk kids surrounding her.
Eventually, Raphael stumbled his way to the couch, and immediately fell next to Clary. His hand fell on her thigh, and his lips found her neck. She immediately pushed him off, not wanting him to get any ideas, especially in front of all of her brothers’ friends. Seeing her immediate reaction to his intimacy, Raphael sucked his teeth and stood up, then walked off. Clary set her warm drink down and stood up as well, moving to follow the man that brought her to the party, but a hand wrapped around her arm. She whipped her head around, ready to scream or bite or something, but found harsh tawny eyes glaring at her.
“Jace!” She exclaimed, surprise making her entire body tingle. An innocent smile pulled at her lips, but the angry glare she was getting made her drop the act immediately.
“What the hell are you doing here? Do you realize that if your brothers see you, you’re done for?” He said low enough for only Clary to hear over the music.
“They’re here?!” Clary asked, her emerald eyes moving to scan the crowd for platinum hair, but Jace grabbed her attention once more.
“Yes! So you have to leave! Now!”
“I have to find Raph, we came together!” Clary’s eyes turned away once more in order to search the crowd for her boyfriend. Jace rolled his eyes and began to look as well. When he found him, He grabbed Clary’s arm tighter and tried to pull her away from the party. At first, she fought against him, but when her eyes fell on her boyfriend holding a curvy blonde girl in his embrace, his warm lips pressing against her skin. At first glance, her body went stiff, but then she let Jace lead her out of the party, but not before she grabbed the warm beer she had previously set down.
Once out of the humid house, Clary chugged down the half cup of beer before Jace could snatch the cup from her delicate hands, then gave him a sad, but successful smile. His hand moved to the small of her back, and they began to walk in silence towards the house that Clary lived in with her mother and brothers. The more they walked, the more the small amount of alcohol pulsed through Clary’s veins. About five minutes into their walk, Clary turned to Jace and stopped walking.
“He only did that because I didn’t want him to touch me.” She muttered, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Did he touch you?” Jace asked instantly, his fists balling at his sides.
“Well, yeah, kinda. Not in the way you’re thinking, so just… relax.” Clary put a small hand on Jace’s chest. He felt his hands relax and his heart rate speed up, which really confused him. He was Jace Herondale, the star of the show, and she was… just Clary, his best friends’ little sister. She lived across the hall from where he spent most days. He could hear her sing in the shower every now and then, or hum to the music blaring in her ears while she created her art. While he found himself lost in thought about the girl standing in front of him, he barely noticed her double over until her hand reached out to touch his leg.
“Clary!” Jace exclaimed, immediately kneeling down in front of her and placing a hand on her back, and the other on her arm.
“I don’t feel good.” She muttered, moving to sit down on the ground. Jace stayed kneeling and began to rub her back while moving his other hand up to push her curly hair over to one side.
“You shouldn’t have chugged that beer like that.” Jace offered his advice, but Clary didn’t seem to take it the way he was hoping. She leaned against his body and pulled her knees up to her chest, squeezing her doe eyes closed.
“I’m dizzy, I feel like I’m moving. Am I moving?”
The thought hadn’t occurred to Jace that Clary had picked up a drink she had set down until that moment. His body was yelling that Clary had been roofied, and that meant someone was planning on hurting her. His strong arms looped around Clary so he could lift her up and carry her the rest of the way home.
It was difficult to manage unlocking to door and holding a barely conscious Clary up at the same time, but Jace was able to get Clary up to her room in no time. He placed her down on top of her blankets, then sat at the foot of her bed so he could take her shoes off. Lazily, Clary sat up and ran her hands over her face, before looking around her room. She reached to the other side of her bed and grabbed a black shirt, then began to take off the shirt she was wearing.
“Woah! What are you doing?” Jace asked, reaching to pull Clary’s shirt back down over her white bra.
“Putting on pajamas, it’s okay.” Clary muttered sleepily, then continued to pull her shirt off, only to replace it with the over sized graphic tee that he recognized from a thrift shop he took her to after school. It fit her differently now than it did when she first got it, and he could pinpoint exactly how it was different. Clary laid back down and lifted her shirt up around her waist so she could unbutton her shorts and slide them down her seemingly endless legs. Jace felt guilty for watching and observing how Clary’s blue cotton underwear hugged her hips and seemed to fit her absolutely perfectly. Jace forced himself to look back down at her feet so he could finish taking her shoes off. Once her converse were back in her small show pile beside her door, Jace turned to watch Clary roll onto her side and relax her body.
Clary didn’t see Jace again until graduation. She was surprised that he hadn’t been over in almost a whole week, especially because the boys spent the week at home. She woke up early the morning of graduation in order to have time to put on her baby blue dress and put on an appropriate amount of makeup. The ceremony was long and quite boring, but the aftermath was quite eventful.
The graduated filed outside of the building, Jace immediately finding the twins. While they stood, waiting for Clary and Jocelyn to find them, one of the boys that they all played football with clasped Jace’s shoulder and pulled his attention. “Hey!” He said, smiling cheekily. “Saw you go home with Clary the other night. How was she?” The grin on his face was unfading. “You’re welcome, by the way. I just wished I had swooped in before you did.”
Realization hit Jace like a train. The boy he had once called a friend, and was a good friend of the twins, had drugged Clary at the party they all had attended. His fists balled up, and when the boy acknowledged Clary as she approached, Jace’s couldn’t hold back and pounced onto the other football player. Jocelyn put her arm in front of Clary to keep her back, and the twins jumped in not to break up the fight, but to aid Jace. There was no chance for the poor boy, so it was only fair when the rest of the team rushed to pull the almost triplets off of their teammate.
Once the three boys were alone, heading towards the car, Sebastian turned to Jace and shoved him back. “What was he talking about, Jace? Did you have sex with my sister?”
“No way! She was at the party the other night and it turns out that Tanner back there tried roofying her. I took her home just in time, though. Nothing happened.” Jace immediately defended himself, earning a raised eyebrow from each of the twins.
After that, Clary didn’t see Jace again for another few days, at the twins’ and his combined party. It was one of those combo things, where you invite your family during the day and dress up nicely and accept the kind gifts, then you invite your friends over later that night and get drunk as a skunk. Uncle Luke agreed to let the boys use his house out of the city as long as they didn’t break anything and no one died. The daytime thing would never be as fun as the night, and the four kids knew that, but they still let the day play out accordingly. By midnight, Clary was the only sober one in the house, save for Jace, who was keeping a sly eye on the ginger girl to make sure nothing happened. Clary’s outfit was similar to what she wore to the graduation; a skater cut dress with thin straps and a plunge neckline. The light pastels complimented her pale skin and fire red hair, illuminating her green eyes. The more Jace looked at her, the more he felt an urge to drink.
When it came to be three in the morning, Clary had consumed a few drinks that she had made herself and kept in her hand at all times, and Jace had done a keg stand, so they both felt a little tipsy. People were falling asleep on the couch and on the chairs, one guy was sleeping on the dining room table, and Clary was walking around to make sure that everything was still intact. While she was at it, her hands picked up empty cups and cans in order to throw them away outside, but when she walked out and found Jace sitting alone, all thoughts of the garbage left her clouded mind, and she sat on the porch next to him.
“Why aren’t you in there with everyone else?” Clary asked, bumping her shoulder against his.
Jace turned to look at her, then bit down at his lip. “Clary, you should go inside.” He muttered, turning to look away.
“Why, what’s wrong?” She asked, reaching a hand out to touch his arm. He shrugged her hand off of him and stood, leaving her sitting there in shock. “Jace,” She started, but he cut her off.
“I can’t get you out of my head, Fray.” He growled, using the nickname he gave her when they were little, referring to the fray her jeans always got after a few days of being dragged on the ground and stepped on with Clary’s short legs. “Every since I saw how bad you got hurt when Raphael cheated on you, and just the thought of someone wanting to hurt you, it makes me furious. Like there’s a fire in my chest that I cant manage to put out. I’ve always seen you as just one of us, one of the boys. Jon and Seb’s little sister. But now… You’re Clary. Why are you Clary now?”
The blonde boy would have made no sense to anyone else but Clary. She had noticed his change in attitude towards her since the last party, and it had made her wonder if he knew about her unrequited love towards him. She knew that while he always thought of her as the little ginger girl that he was forced to protect during school time, she watched him grow from a cute little boy, to a handsome young man, and slowly but surely, she knew that she had fallen in love with him. Raphael was always just a distraction from her forbidden love, and she had a feeling that the Hispanic boy knew it, and that was why he never took her seriously.
Clary stood and approached Jace, placing her small hand on his shoulder.
“Clary,” He whispered, watching her raise herself up onto her tiptoes, but she shook her head.
“It’s okay, Jace.” Clary whispered back to him, tilting her chin up ever so slightly. Jace lowered his head down so their lips could touch, and from there he knew he was a gonner.
The next thing Jace knew, they were in Clary’s bedroom in Luke’s house, Clary laying under Jace, her head turned to the side while Jace pressed wet kisses to her neck and down her chest. His hands found her legs, and while he rubbed them, he pushed her flowy skirt up to bunch around her hips. Feeling Clary’s shaky leg press up against Jace’s side made him stop where he was and earned a soft grunt from Clary.
“Jace, it’s okay.” She whispered, feeling his hesitation. “I trust you.”
Jace sat up on his knees and observed how Clary was laid out under him, a flush on her cheeks and the straps of her dress pulled down her arms. Noticing how his eyes scanned over her body, Clary held her breath and moved her hands down to smooth the dress down over she narrow body.
“Not like this,” Jace muttered, shaking his head. “I’m not gonna have sex with you like this. You’re not just some girl.”
“Jace,” Clary started, moving to sit up. He placed his hands on her face and pressed a kiss to her forehead, before crawling out of the bed. She immediately followed him, standing on her feet, but he just smiled at her and nudged her back on the bed.
“Get some sleep, Fray.” Jace whispered, walking to the door. He opened it, shot Clary a wink, then locked it from the inside. “Don’t let anyone in here. We promised Luke no one would die.”
Clary rolled her eyes, sitting on the edge of the bed with her arms crossed over her chest. When Jace closed the door, Clary sighed and fell back onto the bed. Eventually, even though her mind was running on alcohol and the though of Jace, she finally fell asleep.