“He’d shared beds with Emma a hundred times. Maybe a thousand. But it had mean nothing when they were children, and later, when they weren’t, he had told himself it still meant nothing, even when he was waking up in the middle of the night to watch the way strands of her hair tickled her cheek while she slept. Even when she started to leave early in the morning to run on the beach, and he’d curl up in the warmth she left against the sheets and inhale the rose-water scent of her skin.”
“I don’t know what’s likely to happen,” she said. I know you have nothing to worry about. I wasn’t in love with Mark. I’ll never be in love with anyone again who isn’t you. “Just that there are things we can and can’t control.”
“Em,” he said. “This is me we’re talking about.”
[…]“So you admit you’re a control freak?”
He smiled, the sweet smile that went straight to Emma’s heart because it recalled for her the Julian of her childhood. It was like sun, warmth, the sea and the beach all rolled up in one punch to the heart. “I admit nothing.”
“You could draw me,” said Emma. She flung herself down onto her seat, leaning her head on her hand. “Draw me like one of your French girls.”
Julian grinned. “I hate that movie,” he said. “You know I do.”
Emma sat up indignantly. “The first time we watched Titanic, you cried.”
“I had seasonal allergies,” Jules said. He’d started to draw again, but his smile still lingered.
“Julian was standing in front of a half-timbered house with a restaurant menu pasted up in the diamond-paned window. A group of girls passed by, in shorts and bikini tops, on their way to the sweetshop next door. They giggled and nudged each other when they saw Julian.
Emma wondered what he looked like to them -handsome, with all that windblown brown hair and luminous eye”
Julian, grinning, trying to scare Emma talking about rats because she was afraid of rats when she was a child.
“It’s not a book,” Julian said in a slightly odd voice. “It’s a portfolio.”
He retrieved it and carried it into the living room, Emma hurrying after him. Two steaming cups of tea stood on the kitchen island, and a fire was blazing away. Emma realized that the black stuff on Julian’s face was probably ash. She pictured him kneeling here, starting a fire for them, patient and thoughtful, and felt a wave of overwhelming tenderness for him.
“‘Annabel says,’” she whispered. “He fell in love with her so early.”
Julian cleared his throat and stood up. “Looks like it,” he said.
I need to write this whole thing because it’s just… UUUUGGGHHH
“When his eyes fluttered open, he could see the dark glow of the fire in the hearth, nearly burned down to embers. And he could feel Emma, beside him, her arm thrown across his chest.
He froze. She must have moved in her sleep. She was curled against him. He could feel her eyelashes, her soft breath, against his skin.
She murmured and turned her head against his neck. Before they climbed into bed, he’d been frightened that if he touched her, he’d feel again the same willpower-smashing desire he’d felt in the Seelie Court.
What he felt now was both better and worse. It was an overpowering and terrible tenderness. Though when awake Emma had a presence that made her seem tall and even imposing, she was small curled against him, and delicate enough to make his heart turn over with thoughts of how to keep the world from breaking something so fragile.
He wanted to hold her forever, to protect her and keep her close. He wanted to be able to write as freely about his feelings for her as Malcolm had written about his dawning love for Annabel. You took my life apart and put it back together.
She sighed softly, settling into the mattress. He wanted to trace the outline of her mouth, to draw it —it was always different, its heart shape changing with her expressions, but this expression, between sleeping and waking, half-innocent and half-knowing, caught at his soul in a new way.
Malcolm’s words echoed in his head. As if you have discovered a beach you have been visiting all your life is made not of sand but of diamonds, and they blind you with their beauty.
Diamonds might be blinding in their beauty, but they were also the hardest and sharpest gems in the world. They could cut you or grind you down, smash and slice you apart. Malcolm, deranged with love, had not thought of that. But Julian could think of nothing else.”
JUST…. UUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH.
When Emma woke up after that and she found she and Julian tangled in each other and she falls from the bed and Julian goes “Why are you on the floor?” and Emma “Training for surprise attacks” and Julian “What does shouting ‘holy crap!’ do?”
When Julian stretches and Emma looks away and we read “There was no reason to sail down Sexy Thoughts River to the Sea of Perversion when it wasn’t going to go anywhere.” Chill down sis lmao
When Emma says she wants a selfie with a piskie and Julian is all “Emma, don’t” because of the shit she says
When they are on the rooftop of the cottage waiting for the piskies to come and they are laughing and joking and chuckling about Shadowhunters’ family mottos
Julian making toasts for himself and Emma and dreaming about having a house on the beach he himself designed in which he could live in with Emma like a married couple
When they’re gonna burn down the church and Emma “instinctively” touches Julian’s chest 😏😏😏😏😏
Emma noticing the freckles on the back of Julian’s neck —I’m gonna die because it’s all too much adorable
ok but
“Julian’s heartbeat. The hundred thousand other times she had heard or felt it crashed into her like an express train. Six years old, she had fallen off a wall she was balanced on and Julian had caught her; they had fallen together, and she had heard his heartbeat. She remembered the pulse in his throat as he held the Mortal Sword in the Council Hall. Racing each other up the beach, putting her fingers to his wrist and counting the beats per minute of his heart afterward. The syncopated rhythm as their heartbeats matched during the parabatai ceremony. The sound of the roar of his blood when he carried her out of the ocean. The steady beat of his heart as she’d laid her head on his chest that night.”
Julian wanting her to understand how he felt like when she “dumped” him because he thought she didn’t love him
Emma scared af when she thought the Rider was about to kill Julian
Emma confessing to Julian and “It has always been you”
i just need to say two words: “sex” and “wall” 😏😏😏
cuddling after that and Julian’s hands in Emma’s hair
Julian telling her that her name means Universe
Emma kissing him because of that
When they almost did it again on Emma’s bed and their hands went everywhere
Emma saying she wanted him but they couldn’t
Julian thinking about when he noticed he was in love with her
“His Emma. His universe. His blade.” /wails/
“It was a move she had practiced over and over with Julian in the training room, using a bar that they raised just a little bit every day. The blades whipped by beneath her feet, and in her mind’s eye she saw Julian, his arms raised to catch her. Julian.”
Emma wanting to kiss Julian’s face after they fight the Riders at the London institute to make sure he is ok and Julian squeezing her hands to make sure she is fine
“She couldn’t have done it in the infirmary, but it was just Magnus, and he already knew. She went up to Julian and put her arms around him. “Be careful,” she said. […] Magnus disappeared down the hallway, leaving them alone. For long moments, they held each other in silence, letting the anxiety of the day dissipate: their fear for each other in the battle, their fear for the children, their worry over what was going to happen in Alicante. Julian was warm and solid in her arms., his hand tracing a soothing line down her back. He smelled of cloves, as always, as well as antiseptic and bandages. She felt his chin nudge her hair as his fingers flew across the back of her shirt.
D-O-N-T W-O-R-R-Y.
“Of course I’m worried,” said Emma.
[…]He kissed her forehead. His lips moved against her skin, his voice so low that no one who didn’t know him as well as Emma did could have understood him at all. “I will do,” he said, “whatever I need to do.”
She knew he meant it. There was nothing more to say, she watched him go down the corridor toward the library with troubled eyes.“
when they brush hands before meeting with Robert Lightwood
Emma wanting to throw Manuel Villalobos out of the window because he basically says that Julian is a loser
