Hey, guys! So, I got the idea for this on the bus...and decided to write it. I don't know why, since I have lots of work and I'm on my last month of school, which means teachers try to make us work more than usual. It's almost one in the morning...sorry if there are any typos. Anyway, this is my new story, I guess. Hope you like it. :)

*I do not own The Mortal Instruments or anything written by Cassandra Clare*

Clary looked down at her hand to inspect the pendant that she held tightly, as if she didn't want to let it go—which she didn't. The golden colors traced a pattern that only she would recognize, because she knew this pendant by heart. For months, she had looked at it and kissed it and every single night, it reminded her of him. It reminded her of kisses in the rain and long talks under the covers and running down a hill and watching him fall and catching him and burying each other in I love yous.

The doorbell rang, quickly followed by a text message from him. I'm here, it read, making her smile stupidly as if she hadn't gotten used to these messages. She slipped the pendant into a chain and, with it around her neck, right above her heart, she ran down the stairs to see him.

What he was wearing never really mattered, but it did that night: he wore a suit, with a white shirt and everything else black, which made his golden eyes and golden hair and sharp features stand out. He looked at her, and she didn't know what she felt—it was overwhelmingly wonderful and she couldn't catch her breath, because his lips were on hers before she could register what was happening, and he whispered that she looked beautiful.

Her mom came in then, offering to take pictures, telling Clary to pose certain ways and encouraging Jace to smile, even though he didn't smile for cameras much. That was the thing about Jace: he lived in the moment. He couldn't smile just because someone waved a camera in his face. He couldn't laugh at a joke that wasn't funny. He wasn't good at pretending all of the things that people only pretended to be liked—which, ironically, was the reason most people liked him.

Including Clary.

"Are you two ready to go?" Jocelyn, her mother, asked, smiling excitedly at the couple.

"Sure," she said with a smile. Looking at Jace, she asked, "Do you want something before we go?"

"Nah, I'm good." He smiled a real smile and Clary's mom said her goodbyes, and Clary snuck a glance at herself as she exited her house. She looked at her long, olive green dress, and thought of the way it made her hair, which was the color of fire, of the most beautiful sunset, stand out against its dark coloring.

"So," Clary said once the two were out of the house, "we're really going to the prom?"

Jace snorted. "Not if I have a say in it. But I don't. You might not wanna go now, Clary, but you'll want to some other time, and you don't get a second chance."

"Jace, I'm a sophomore," she reminded him. "I have two more chances. Let's do something fun instead."

"But how many sophomores get to say that they went to the prom?" He raised her eyebrows at her. His argument would be more convincing if he wanted to go to the prom, but from the moment it was announced he had admitted to her that he thought prom was a stupid, pointless event that would benefit absolutely no one and would bring no good to the world.

"Lots. Can we please do something else?"

He sighed. "If you insist."

She kissed his cheek. "I love you."

He grabbed her waist, gripping it tightly enough so that it felt like a comforting gesture and not like he was strangling her. "I love you more."

"So," Clary said, "I'm thinking that you should teach me how to drive."

"Now?" Jace asked, incredulous. They had been over this before: he didn't want to teach her. He was, indeed, a horrible teacher, and she got too distracted by the way his lips moved when he spoke and the way his words sounded like a wonderful melody. Needless to say, he wouldn't be able to teach, and she wouldn't be able to learn.

However, since they weren't going to follow the stupid tradition of prom that year, Clary wanted to do something new. Something they wouldn't usually do. She wanted to remember the night, but she didn't want to remember it the way some girls were, kissing boys while dancing with dimmed lights and drinking spiked punch. She wanted to remember the feeling of Jace's eyes on hers and the way his hands felt on her bare skin and she wanted to remember a thousand things, and she wanted to remember them in a thousand different ways.

And it wasn't that they couldn't kiss—if she wanted, he would take her somewhere and do whatever she wanted him to. But he knew, somehow, that she wanted a different kind of adventure.

"Do you have a better idea?" Clary asked him, meeting his eyes.

"I might," he told her with a wicked smile. "But you have to trust me."

"You're horrible," she said, sighed, and told him to lead the way.

He led her to a place where the stars shone bright and the moonlight lit up their faces. They didn't talk. They didn't even make noise. The only thing audible was the sound of their contempt breathing as they looked up at the sky and they counted the stars and she remembered how he had once said that there was a star for every thing he loved about her. She remembered how cheesy he had sounded, and how she didn't stop teasing him about it for days. Even now, six months after that, she would mock him when the subject came up.

But as they lay there, underneath the moon and the stars and the universe, as they thought about how they were miniscule in comparison to the world, to all of the wonderful, great things that existed, she remembered his words as she counted the stars like he counted the freckles that spilled from her nose to her cheekbones.

"Are you asleep?" His voice sounded far away, and she realized that she had been falling asleep.

"No," she said, looking up at him. He had an amused smile on his face.

"Do you wanna get going?"

"Nope," she said, positioning herself so that she was sitting on his lap. "I'm fine."

"Tease." His smile gave him away, and he kissed her nose and ran his hand through her hair. She smiled at him, at the way he treated her as if she was breakable. At the same time, however, he knew she could defend herself, and he didn't suffocate her with his worry and protectiveness. He let her be, and that was more than she could ask from anybody.

That was one of the reasons why she loved him.

When their lips met, it wasn't crazy and desperate. It wasn't the way people kiss when they've been apart. They kissed like they were all too familiar with the way their lips met—which they were—and like they knew the world was around them, but they just chose to ignore it—which they did—and like they could stop and resume and the world wouldn't fall apart. That wasn't to say that they didn't feel as if they had a whole new energy—they did. There were no words perfect enough to describe the way his hands felt as they touched her bare shoulders or the way he responded to her in general.

Their breathing was heavy when they pulled away. "Clary Fray," Jace said with a smile, "you take my breath away."

She playfully slapped his arm. "Jace Herondale, don't be a cheesy, lame boyfriend. Buy me some burgers."

"Are you asking me out on a date?"

"It's more of a command, really."

"By the way, was the whole 'cheesy' thing a pun?"

"Only," she said with a grin, "if I order a cheeseburger."

"You're ridiculous."

"You love me."

"That's debatable." He smirked.

"Asshole."

"Come on," he said, standing up and holding the door open for her. "Let's go get food." He had a smile on his face that he could not shake off, she noticed, soon enough smiling despite herself.

"Are you getting me home anytime soon?" she asked, and they both knew that she was in no hurry to go home. "It's almost midnight."

"Don't make me crack a stupid Cinderella joke," he said. "Seriously, it'll be bad."

"Catastrophic, one might say," Clary added with a half smile. "I'm actually kind of craving a cheeseburger now. Damn you, Jace Herondale."

"And by damn, you mean fuck. And I completely okay with that."

"You're way inappropriate," she said, trying not to smile. It was something that took some time getting used to at the beginning, but his inappropriateness was part of what made him who he was, and she couldn't phantom not loving him the way she did, inappropriate jokes included.

"Are we taking this to go?" he asked, still scanning his menu.

"Yep," Clary replied easily, still exploring her options. She was thinking about whether or not to order fries instead of her beloved onion rings. "My mom will kill me if I'm not home by ten. Can you order fries? I wanna have some."

"Only if I can have some of your onion rings."

"We have a deal."

After the two ordered their food, they made their way back to her house. It hadn't been a night with an adventure beyond her wildest dreams, really. Nothing extraordinary happened in a way that can be noticeable if she retold the events of that night to one of her friends. To her, however, what happened had been one of the best nights of her life. She had to clean off bits of grass from her dress, and she had to look exhausted, like she had danced all night long with her three inch heels making her life miserable. It was fun, pretending.

But remembering the way her heart felt like it was seconds away from bursting—that was what she went back to in her mind.

After Jace walked her to her doorstep and kissed her goodnight, Clary's mother opened the door and made small talk with him. Soon enough, he was gone, and Clary's mom was drowning her in questions about dance and how people were dressed and whether or not it was anything like her prom, which she had shown videos of to Clary in order to prepare her for the event.

She didn't have the heart or the energy to tell her mom that she ditched prom, so she faked smiles and gave her information that she knew because she had friends in the prom committee. When her mother finally acknowledged that Clary was exhausted, Jocelyn bid her daughter goodnight and went to bed.

Clary, with a stupid smile on her face that wouldn't go away, went into her room and sighed, leaning against the closed door like people did in movies. That rush, that feeling of excitement and happiness that came from being with him never went away. She took the pendant, the one hovering over her heart, the one Jace gave to her on their six month anniversary, when he told her he loved her and he didn't want her to let go, and squeezed it.

Hey again! So...did you like it? Did you hate it? Leave a review and tell me what you think!

Thanks to maxwaylandgrey for helping me choose a title even though we're both brain dead at the moment. Congratulations on officially(ish) being a senior! Be happy about it. xx

Thank you to all of you for reading. I won't be updating this as frequently as I would if I wasn't in school, but I'll do my best to get the next chapter up soon.

:)