omg i just went tubing and thought of this - okay modern!jace and the family are camping at a camp ground and go swimming. jace and reader have their own camper (the family has their campers all together in a cute little area together) and reader wants jace to put sunscreen all over her body. so they go in the trailer and she take her top off so he can really get it all over and he’s so distracted looking at her boobs and she’s like “eyes up here”😜😭😭 and he just keeps getting distracted. and maybe she’s like fine i’ll just do it! and he’s like no no no, can’t i just admire my girlfriend? i’m sorry this is such a long request but my god is it adorable. also LUKE IS ALIVE HERE. EVERYONE LOVES EACHOTHER 🤧🤧 i love your writing genuinely so bad. you do such an amazing job and i might cry if you write this!!!
This is so swimming pool fic coded-&/!:8,&,&
Now, I know this will be like my second time teasing yall with the suggestive content that edges you but its lowkey fun-&/!,8,&,
I know its shorter than what I usually write but hopefully you like it!! 🫂
There is a scene inspired by this pic in here, do what you will with this info. 🥴🥴
Enjoyy~~
The camper smelled like coconut sunscreen and the coffee you'd forgotten to finish that morning, still sitting in a paper cup by the sink. Outside, someone was laughing, Joffrey probably, that sharp bark he did when Luke got him in the ribs. The screen door rattled every time the wind came off the water.
You climbed the two little steps up into your trailer and let the door slap shut behind you. "Jace. Come here a second."
He was already inside, digging through the cooler for a beer he wasn't going to drink yet. Navy swim trunks, no shirt, hair still damp from the quick dunk he'd taken with Luke twenty minutes ago. A towel hung around his neck. He straightened up when he heard you.
"What's up?"
"Sunscreen." You held up the bottle. Banana Boat, the thick white kind his mom always bought in bulk for these occasions. "I can't reach my back and I don't want to ask Baela again, she got it in my hair last time."
"Yeah. Yeah, okay."
You turned around, then paused. Reached back and untied the string of your bikini top at your neck, then the one across your back. Let it fall onto the little laminate table by the window.
"Full coverage," you said, glancing at him over your shoulder. "I burned so bad last year, remember?"
Jace made a sound that wasn't really a word.
You turned to face him because you needed the front done too, and his eyes went exactly where you knew they were going to go. Straight down. He didn't even pretend.
"Jace."
"Yep."
"Sunscreen."
"Yep. Doing it." He squeezed too much into his palm. It made a wet farting sound and he didn't laugh, which meant he was really out of it. He stepped closer and put his hands on your shoulders first, working the lotion in slow, thumbs moving along your collarbones. That part was fine. Then his hands slid down and he just…stopped and started staring.
"Hey." You snapped your fingers lightly near his chin. "Eyes up here."
"Sorry. Sorry." He dragged his gaze up. His ears were pink. He got another pump of sunscreen and rubbed it across your sternum, careful, and then his eyes dropped again the second his hands got close to anything interesting.
"Jace."
"I'm looking at your face."
"You're looking at my chest."
"IT’S RIGHT THERE. I’m just doing what you asked of me."
You snorted. He was smiling now, that lopsided one where the left side went higher than the right, but his hands had gone still again, cupped around your ribs.
"I'm serious," you said, though there was a flush climbing your own cheeks now. "You can't just stare at my tits all day. We're supposed to be swimming with your family. Remember them?"
"Can I not just admire my girlfriend for a second?" He set the bottle on the counter and put both hands on your waist and looked at you properly, really looked at you, and his face did the thing it did sometimes where all the joking dropped out of it. "Two years in, I still think I'm getting away with something. Let me have this."
"Oh my god."
"I'm serious."
"You're ridiculous."
"Both can be true." He leaned down and kissed the top of your shoulder, then the side of your neck, and you felt him smile against your skin. "I'm gonna finish. I promise. Just- hold on."
You sighed, but your hand had already come up to the back of his head, fingers twisting into the wet curls at his nape. Outside, a car door slammed. Rhaenyra's voice, calling something about hot dogs and did anyone bring the long lighter. Water dripped from Jace's hair onto your collarbone and ran down between your breasts, and he tracked it with his eyes like it was the most important thing that had happened all summer.
"Eyes up," you said again, softer this time.
"In a minute."
"Jacaerys."
"One minute." He picked the bottle back up. "Turn around. I'll do your back. I'll behave."
You turned. His hands were warm and slippery as he started working across your shoulders, slow, thumbs pressing down along either side of your spine, then over each shoulder blade, then lower. He rubbed some into the small of your back and you thought that was it, thought he'd tie your top back on and you'd both go be normal people at a family campground.
Instead his hands slid around your ribs and forward, and he cupped your breasts from behind. Both of them. Held them, gentle, his palms still slick with lotion, covering you completely.
You gasped, caught off guard by how it felt, somehow, even though you'd done far more than this. Something about standing half naked in the middle of the afternoon while his whole family sat thirty feet away eating chips and arguing about tubing. Your heart was suddenly going way too fast.
"Jace-"
"Mm." His mouth found the spot behind your ear. One slow kiss, then another, trailing down toward your jaw. His teeth dragged lightly over your skin and goosebumps rose everywhere, even places he hadn't touched. He squeezed, gently, testing the weight of you in his hands, and your breath hitched into something embarrassingly close to a whimper.
"You said you'd behave," you managed.
"I lied." He pulled you back against him, hips pressing into you, and you could feel exactly how much he'd lied. He rocked into you once, slow, deliberate, his mouth still working down the side of your neck.
That was when you saw the mirror. The little one mounted above the kitchenette, and in it, you. Cheeks flushed, mouth open, eyes half-lidded. Jace's hands full of you, his chin hooked over your shoulder, water still dripping from his curls onto your chest. Smeared sunscreen everywhere. Neither of you caring.
He saw you looking, his eyes met yours in the glass and he grinned, slow, and squeezed again, harder this time, lifting slightly, and your back arched into him before you could stop it, a sound coming out of you that you'd have denied under oath.
"Jace, we can't-"
"Camper door is locked."
"Your entire family is-"
Footsteps. Fast ones, crunching gravel, coming straight for the door.
"JACE. MOM SAID TEN MINUTES AGO. WE'RE GOING BACK IN THE-"
The fist hit the side of the camper like a gunshot and you flew apart. Actually flew, Jace practically vaulted the two feet to the counter, grabbing his towel and holding it in front of himself like that was a normal way to stand, and you snatched your bikini top off the table with shaking hands.
"YEAH," Jace yelled, voice cracking on it. "YEAH. TWO SECONDS."
"THAT'S WHAT YOU SAID BEFORE."
"LUCERYS. GO. AWAY."
"RUDE."
Footsteps thumped back off toward the picnic table. You stood there, top clutched to your chest, both of you red-faced and breathing hard, staring at each other across four feet of laminate flooring.
Then you started laughing. You couldn't help it, one hand pressed over your mouth, shoulders shaking and a second later he broke too, dragging a hand down his face.
"Come here," he said. "Turn around, I'll tie it."
His fingers fumbled with the strings behind your neck, standing so close you could feel the heat still coming off his chest, both of you working fast now. He tied the second string. You grabbed his shirt off the bench and threw it at him. He pulled it over his head while you found your sunglasses on the counter, and by the time he pushed the screen door open you almost looked like two people who had just been applying sunscreen and nothing more.
The heat hit you both at once, pine needles baking in the sun, charcoal from the grill Rhaenyra was working on, the muddy freshwater smell of the lake. Rhaenyra waved from the picnic table. Leanor was doing something complicated with a folding chair. Luke was already halfway to the dock, dragging an inner tube and yelling for Joff to hurry up.
Jace's hand found yours as you came down the steps.
"Later," he said, low, just for you. "When Luke's asleep."
"Deal."
"You missed a spot, by the way," you said, as you hit the grass.
"Where."
"Not telling."
"That's- you can't do that to me."
"Figure it out."
He was still trying to figure it out an hour later, floating next to you on the tubes, squinting at your shoulders like the answer was written there as you weren’t just messing with him.
As much as I love clace, I hate the “I’ve never loved anyone and don’t have the capacity for love until she fixed me” trope. Jace not knowing love is false, he may not have had a romantic love but he knows love, he’s felt it with the Lightwoods. He’s felt that bone deep love with Alec even though it wasn’t romantic. I understand it was 2007 but imagine what we could have had if Jace was written as aromantic? Parabatai are already written in way that’s very similar to queer platonic relationships but aromantic Jace would have been such a vibe. It would have explained why there were so many Alec-Clary comparisons because Alec is the only “more than platonic but not quite romance” love he had. Why else would he compare Clary to him so much? It would also explain why Jace didn’t understand Alec’s attachment to Magnus at first, because he didn’t FEEL it. It would have driven home the confusion and pain of Clary being his “sister”. Aro Jace Lightwood could have been something.
The Tattoo and Piercing parlor in Cadence is called The Inkwell. It is fairly decorative; the outer wall is brick, with climbing ivy threading along the grooves and over stone. The above area of the roof also contains greenery, some of which hangs over the the sides with pops of floral color, adding to the ambiance.
Where the Inkwell becomes distinct is the display windows painted with decorative flourishes on either side of a paint-splattered door, and the sizable 3d inkwell with a pen anchored above. Ink swirls made of metal spill out the sides of the 'bottle'. They end at the wall, and an archway around the door is painted in a light-absorbing shade of black, as if it is spilling down and over the brick. The dark encircling the door makes the colors dappled purposefully against the wood pop brightly in the sunlight. The name is hung above the door in metallic yellow lettering, and the left window echoes the name as well, with the first letter in a embellished manuscript style depicting the I as another inkwell.
The inside is brightly colored by rooms that can just be seen into. One is bright purple, one is vibrant blue, and the last is an orangey cream hue. The main area is a sage green and has dark cushioned chairs to wait in. There's a corner with a large round table, and chairs set up to be seated around it, scattered with papers and a few mason jars full of pencils and pens. All of the walls are covered in framed pieces of art, mostly tattoo inspiration or examples, but other decor like some planters, some knickknacks, and quite a few things like dragon statuettes are practically spilling from the shelves. There are several mirrors in the workrooms, and rolling toolbox shaped carts that have several pieces of equipment laid out on the top. The chairs are dark, and there's stool in each room, as well as a small metal sink against the wall. The ceiling in every room has a hanging trellis decorating it, which dangles with fake ivy wrapped around the study beams. Speakers are also bolted to them, playing what sounds like some older 70s synth.
Hank Ericson is the owner of the Inkwell, with two apprentices, Jace Blake and Ami Tanaka, working and training with him. He met them through hosting tabletop games for highschoolers in the back of the store, and encouraging their artistic pursuits. He's planning to retire in the next few years, and couldn't be more sure he's leaving the place in capable hands.
I feel like sometimes Jace feels jealous of his brother. Luke has the love of his mother and I think have sometimes Jace feelings left out of that.
Don’t get me wrong Jace loves his brother and will defend him till the end of time. He loves his family. But he knows Jace is his mothers favorite child. Maybe he as his fathers favorite child but he doesn't have a father anymore like he did.
But sometimes Jace can’t help but think, “would my mother go to war for me? Like she did for Luke?”
- Flirting with each other 24/7
- Alec going mad because of the flirting
- Izzy rolling her eyes at the two of you
- He is a massive fan of PDA
- Especially when he gets jealous
- He would wrap his arms around your waist
- He would kiss you in front of the stranger he was jealous of
- He would turn towards the stranger and say something like "she's mine. Get lost."
- You rolling your eyes and teasing him about being jealous
- He would never admit it, but the look on his face said enough
- Jealous, possessive sex
- Boy, would he show you who you belonged to
- Always being sore the morning after
- Him always taking care of you though
- He would teach you how to defend yourself
- The two of you kicking ass together
- Him hurting everyone that tries to hurt you
- You doing the same for him
- Jace kicking Raphael's ass when he starts flirting with you
- You being jealous of Clary
- Not being able to stand the way she looks at him
- Telling her to back away from your man
- Not being afraid to use violence in doing so (but it never gets that far)
- Jace getting a boner at the most random times
- Because he thinks you are so fucking hot
- You being flustered about it but taking care of that for him anyways
You seem like a nice human, I thought I’d share a shadowhunters headcannon that’s been stuck in my head for a while. I feel like when Jace eventually gets married (I’M NOT SAYING TO WHO), that he’ll want to take their last name. I know it seems random, but I feel like he’s lived his whole life unsure of who he is. And so, I think he’d want to take the last name of whoever he marries. Does that make any sense?
I think so too, like this boi has questioned who he is and where he belongs for so long that I think taking the name of whoever he marries would give him a sense of home.
Don’t get me wrong I do believe the Lightwoods, namely Izzy and Alec, are his family and will always be his family no matter what his last name is and they’ve done a great job of proving that, both in the books and the show.
I just think that he would feel a sense of easiness with taking his S/O’s last name, like “My name is Jace [insert last name] and this is who I am.”
(also thank you i hope i’m a nice human lol i try)
Since my stewpid ass accidentally posted it and then panic-deleted it instead of just saving it as a draft… 👩🏻🦯😭
It does get a little spicy toward the end 😏 And fair warning, my lingerie descriptions are absolute garbage, so I included some links to help with the visuals in case my rambling doesn’t make any sense 🥹💀
Once more, enjoy?? 😭
Jace had been in a good mood since breakfast.
You could tell because he kept humming under his breath in the car, one hand on the wheel and the other resting on your thigh, thumb moving in slow absent circles over the seam of your jeans. He'd asked, somewhere between the second and third traffic light, if you wanted to go anywhere in particular. You'd said yes. He'd said okay and that’s how you found yourself at the mall.
The first stop was a skincare counter on the ground floor of the department store, all white marble and lights so bright they made the sales associate's eyeliner pop. You picked up a small glass bottle of serum, turned it over, tried to read the price sticker on the bottom but Jace slid it out of your hand before your eyes could focus.
"Do you want it," he said. Not a question the way most people ask questions. Flat, already halfway to yes.
"I was just looking."
"Do you want it."
You made a face at him. He put it on the counter next to the moisturizer he'd already added, and a cleanser, and a little tub of something you'd sniffed and put back that had apparently offended him by being returned to the shelf. The card came out of his wallet before the woman at the register had finished totaling. Matte black, his name etched in silver, that dumb little dragon sigil embossed in the corner. He handed it over without looking at the screen.
"Sir, would you like the receipt in the bag or-"
"Bag's fine. Thanks."
He tucked the card back into his wallet, took the paper handles from her, and looped them over his wrist. You had opened your mouth to say something about the total and he was already walking, herding you gently toward the escalator with a hand at the small of your back shushing you.
By the second store he had four bags. By the fourth he had eight, plus a coffee for you balanced improbably in his free hand, along with your jacket over his forearm because you'd said you were warm and he'd taken it off you without comment. He looked ridiculous and yet he looked pleased about it. Every time you turned to him with something new to consider, some sweater or a pair of earrings, his face did the same thing: a small twitch at the corner of the mouth, one eyebrow going up, the head tilt that meant and?
"You don't have to buy everything I touch."
"Mhm."
"Jace."
"Mm."
"I'm serious."
"I heard you."
He was scrolling through something on his phone by then, screen tilted away from you, the pad of his thumb dragging along the glass in that lazy way he had when he was half-reading and half-waiting. Some email, probably from his mother. The bags rustled at his hip. You slipped a matte lipstick from a display into his hand and he put it in the pile without looking up.
You had, at that point, developed a small idea.
The next storefront was tucked between a shoe boutique and a place that sold overpriced candles. Blush pink signage in a curling script, a mannequin in the window wearing something that was mostly ribbon and lace. The name above the door read Realms Delight in soft gold lettering, and beneath it, in smaller print, the tagline the marketing team had apparently gotten paid actual money to write: for every princess in the seven kingdoms, and the one who spoils her. (Consider this kings landing version of Victoria’s Secret🥴)
Truly, whoever came up with that deserved to be fired and hired again on the spot. You steered him inside and Jace followed without checking, thumb still moving across the screen.
Then he looked up.
The color that appeared on his face happened in stages. First a blink, slow, the kind you do when your brain refuses the visual for a half-second. Then a stiffening at the shoulders. Then heat rolling up his throat from beneath his collar, past the line of his jaw, into his cheeks and the tops of his ears. He looked at the pink walls, looked at the pale wood display tables piled with folded silk and then at a mannequin wearing a black harness of some description over a lace bralette and finally looked at you.
"Sweets."
"Yes?"
"Where are we."
"Shopping."
He inhaled through his nose. The bags in his hands crinkled as his grip tightened.
"I'll wait outside," the words leaving his mouth quickly. "Like a normal person. I'll wait outside. That's what boyfriends and Husbands- Whoever- That's the convention. That's the accepted-"
"Jace."
"There's a bench. I saw a bench."
"Jaceeee." You caught his sleeve. "The shop's empty. Look."
He looked. It was, aside from a woman in a silk blouse folding thongs at the back counter and another arranging robes on a rack near the fitting rooms. Neither of them had glanced up. You could hear the hum of the overhead speakers playing something soft and instrumental, and past that, faint traffic from the street outside, and somewhere in the ceiling a vent breathing cool air onto the back of your neck.
"I need your opinion," you said.
His jaw worked. He glanced at the floor once more, then he looked at you and away again, because looking at you here apparently constituted a moral hazard.
"Please."
He exhaled the exhale of a man who had, over the course of two years, learned that this particular please was not one he was equipped to refuse.
"Fine."
You pointed him toward the little seating area outside the dressing rooms. He walked over there with the stiff dignified gait of a hostage being escorted to a photo op, arranged himself on the velvet sofa, set the bags neatly beside his feet, put his hands on his knees, and fixed his gaze on a tile of the floor about three feet in front of him. He looked like a man attending a funeral for his own reputation.
You bit the inside of your cheek and went to browse.
The first set you picked up was practical. A cotton T-shirt bra in nude, with matching briefs, something you'd actually come in for and would actually wear beneath every other piece of clothing in your life. You carried it to the fitting room, gave Jace a small pat on the shoulder as you passed, and disappeared behind the curtain.
Inside the little booth the light was warmer than out on the shop floor. There was a mirror on each wall and a small hook and a padded stool, and the faint smell of clean fabric and lavender from whatever sachet the store hung in the vents. You changed. You looked at yourself. You looked fine. Bra fit. Briefs fit. You could have walked back out and shown him and been done in ninety seconds.
You peeked through the curtain instead.
Jace hadn't moved. His posture was so straight it looked painful. His hands were still on his knees, eyes were still on the floor. Occasionally his throat moved when he swallowed. He looked like a very handsome garden statue.
Something wicked settled behind your ribs.
You pulled the curtain closed, put your own clothes back on over the plain set, and slipped out of the fitting room past him.
"Stay right there," you said.
"Where are you going."
"Shopping. Stay."
He made a noise but you were already gone.
Gods, what did I do in a past life, he thought, watching you disappear between the racks. Which of my ancestors did what, and to whom.
The rack you found first was the good rack. The pieces you had never in your life purchased for yourself because you had never had a reason to justify the cost. You ran your fingers over silk and lace. You found a slip in a deep crimson that looked, on the hanger, like something out of a painting, and you carried it back to the dressing room over your arm along with two other things and a small mischief you were not going to explain to anyone.
Jace looked up as you passed. His eyes tracked what you were carrying. His face did a very small, very telling thing.
You winked.
He looked back at the floor with renewed intensity.
Behind the curtain you shed everything and pulled the slip on carefully, one strap and then the other, feeding the delicate lace up over your thighs. The satin was cool against your skin at first and warmed quickly. The bodice cupped you close, structured seams running up along your ribs, sheer mesh panels between them so that the shape of you underneath became a suggestion the fabric only half-kept. The neckline sat low, gathered lace framing the top of your chest, tiny rosettes stitched at the center. Below the corseted bodice the chiffon skirt fell in weightless folds to the middle of your thighs, its scalloped hem brushing your skin every time you shifted your weight. Ribbon ties trailed at each hip. The crimson caught the light and looked, in the fitting room mirror, like something you'd stolen.
You turned to check the back and remembered, conveniently, that the clasp needed help.
"Jace."
Silence.
"Jaceeee."
A cough. "Yes."
"I need help with the back."
"You can't reach it?"
"No."
"There's no-" A pause. You could practically hear him rubbing his face. "There's no attendant?"
“Do you see anyone around here?"
Another silence. Then the soft sound of him standing, and his footsteps coming across the tile, the pause outside the curtain during which you knew he was doing whatever calming breathing his father had taught him for board meetings.
He pushed the curtain open just enough that his head and shoulders and one arm came through. The rest of him stayed firmly on the other side, as though the threshold were a legal boundary.
"Where's the-"
He saw you in the mirror.
The sound that came out of him was small and mostly involuntary, a soft catch of breath that he tried to swallow and could not quite manage. His eyes moved without his permission. Down the sheer panels at your ribs, across the shadow of your nipples where they poked through the fabric, over the curve of your waist, down the chiffon to the strip of thigh below the hem. His Adam's apple moved once and he looked at your face in the reflection and then, when your eyes met his there, he looked at the ceiling like a man being tested by his gods.
"The clasp," you said sweetly.
His fingers came up to the small of your back. They were warm. Slightly unsteady. He hooked the clasp on the first try, which honestly was disappointing of him, and his knuckles brushed your spine as he let his hand fall.
"What do you think?"
He looked back at the mirror because you asked him to. He wet his lower lip. When he spoke his voice had gone low and slightly rough, the way it did when he'd just woken up.
"You look breathtaking, love."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
His eyes flickered again, down the length of you and back up.
"What's this about, though."
You shrugged one shoulder. The strap slid a little. His gaze followed it.
"I want to look pretty for you like this sometimes. That's all."
He was quiet for a beat. Then he leaned in through the gap in the curtain, his hand coming up to cradle the side of your neck, and pressed his mouth just under your ear. Not a kiss you could call innocent but not a kiss you could label anything else, either. Warm lips, the faintest edge of teeth, then his voice against your skin.
"You're always pretty for me, love."
He then pulled back. His hand lingered on your jaw a second longer than it needed to as he stepped out through the curtain and let it fall closed behind him.
You stood there in the crimson for a long moment listening to him settle back onto the velvet sofa. You could hear his exhale from here.
You smiled at yourself in the mirror.
Oh, you thought. No. We're doing this.
The second piece you tried came out of the box with the reverence of an heirloom. Ivory lace, so pale it looked almost like unbleached linen against your skin. The balconette cups sat low, lightly structured, embroidered all over with tiny flowers that you could feel more than see, scalloped edges tracing along the neckline. A row of pearl buttons ran down the center between the cups, sitting on a panel of sheer lace. Shoulder straps so thin they almost disappeared. The matching high-waisted briefs came up to sit at your natural waist, the same floral lace, scalloped edges at the leg openings, and small cutouts at each hip that showed off the curve of the bone underneath.
The pearl strand was a piece that came with the set. You draped it low around your hips, letting it settle over the waistband like jewelry someone's grandmother might have worn to be scandalous.
Everything about it looked delicate. Everything about you in it did not.
"Jace."
He came without being asked twice this time. His face appeared in the gap of the curtain, and this time he didn't pretend to look for the clasp. His eyes went to the pearls first, then up to your face and slowly, back down.
You hooked one finger under the waistband of the briefs and let it snap softly back against your skin. You watched his jaw tense.
"What do you think?"
"I think-" he started.
You turned around, slowly. Let him see the back. The lace over your ass. The strand of pearls around your hips. You looked at him over your shoulder.
"Hm?"
You caught it in the mirror. The line of his trousers where they should have been flat and where they very much were not. The way his weight shifted, and the way one of his hands drifted from the curtain down to adjust himself before he caught himself doing it and put the hand back on the fabric.
"Oh," you said. "Oho. Did Jace Jr. decide to join us."
"Love- please."
"He looks excited."
"You are going to get us kicked out."
"How? We're just shopping."
"You are shopping."
"That's what I said."
"Come on, sweets. Let's just go home."
You pouted at him in the mirror. You watched his eyes drop to your mouth and back up.
"Patience. I have one more."
He shook his head slowly. Not a no. More like a man trying to physically dislodge his own thoughts. He backed out of the curtain, and you heard him make his way back to the sofa, and you heard, very faintly, the sound of him adjusting his trousers before he sat down.
You waited until you were sure he was seated before you started laughing quietly into your hand.
The third piece was the one you had been saving to be absolutely mean.
It came off the hanger heavier than it looked. A bodysuit, corset-inspired, the mesh so sheer it wasn't really mesh so much as a suggestion of fabric held together by embroidery. Pale blush pink, embroidered from bust to hip with clusters of pink blossoms and thin green vines that climbed the boning channels in soft curling lines. Satin piping ran along every seam. The cups were sweetheart-shaped, softly padded but not enough to hide anything, and above them the embroidery gave way to a straight line of sheer mesh that stopped just below your collarbones. Satin ribbons tied at each shoulder in loose bows. Larger ribbons bloomed at each hip like something out of a doll's dress. The bottom half was cut high on the thigh, mesh framed by satin trim, and the mesh at the front hid absolutely nothing.
You could see yourself through it. Every inch. The intimate spot between your thighs. The shape of your nipples pressed against the embroidery. The faint pink flush that had started somewhere at the base of your throat and was creeping down.
You tied the shoulder ribbons yourself and took a small breathe before-
"Jace."
You expected the shuffle and the sigh and the head-through-the-curtain routine.
What you got instead was silence for a beat too long, and then the soft controlled sound of him standing up, and then his footsteps, and then the curtain being pushed aside just enough for him to look at you fully.
Whatever you had planned to say slid backwards down your throat and died there.
He wasn't avoiding your gaze anymore.
His eyes moved down your body once, slowly, like he was cataloguing every inch of the embroidery and every inch of what it wasn't covering. When he reached your feet he came back up just as slowly. When his eyes met yours in the mirror they were dark, pupils blown wide, and his tongue was poking against the inside of his cheek, his chest was moving with a slow deliberate rhythm that meant he was counting his own breaths.
You tried to smile.
"Jace-"
He glanced backwards. Over his shoulder, out through the shop, at the empty aisles and the woman at the counter still on her phone and the other associate who had wandered into the back room. He measured the space with a look. Then he stepped forward, into the fitting room, and let the curtain fall closed behind him.
The space was small. He filled it.
"Jace, what are you-"
His mouth was on yours before you finished. Not soft, his hands came up and caught your wrists and pinned them to the wall on either side of your head as he pressed his whole body flush against yours and kissed you like he'd been holding it in for the past 20 minutes or so, all tongue and heat, wet at the corners, teeth catching your lower lip once and letting go. Your back hit the wall. The mirror was cool against your shoulder blade where the mesh didn't cover. He tasted like the coffee he’d bought mixed with the mint gum he'd chewed after.
He rolled his hips against yours. Slowly and deliberately and you could feel him through his trousers, hard against your hip, the friction of the satin between your legs pressed against you in a way that made your knees almost give out.
He pulled back an inch. Just enough to look at you.
His eyes dropped between your bodies. He looked at the front of the bodysuit. He looked at the small dark patch that had bloomed on the satin gusset in the last thirty seconds, wet enough to shine faintly under the fitting room lights.
He groaned, quiet but Deep, the noise coming from somewhere deep.
“Fuck," he says quietly. Then, closer to your ear, "Listen, love. Listen to me. The absolute last thing I want is to end up in some tabloid, drag the family name through the mud like my uncle Aegon. So here's what you're going to do."
His thumb traces your bottom lip. Your wrists are still above your head. You couldn't move them if you tried.
"You're going to change, quickly. And I'm going to buy every single thing you tried on today. And when we get home I am going to tear each of them off you. Okay?"
Your head is buzzing. Your knees are somewhere on the floor, metaphorically. You nod.
"Say it, sweets."
"Okay."
He kisses you once more, softer this time, almost apologetic. Releases your wrists and steps back. Adjusts himself with a wince and pushes his hair off his forehead, and by the time he sweeps the curtain aside and walks out toward the register he looks like a functional adult human being again.
You slide down the mirror until you're sitting on the little bench, still in the blush mesh, cheeks hot, thighs pressed together, one bow already coming untied at your shoulder.
You distantly heard his voice at the counter, and the polite murmur of the associate, and the beep of the card reader.
You looked at yourself in the mirror, the lipstick was almost gone, hair loose from where he'd pinned your head to the wall and your legs were shaking. The wet patch at the front of the bodysuit had gotten worse.
You reached back for the ribbon on your shoulder with fingers that wouldn't quite cooperate, and started, very slowly, to change.
