Emma and Julian always slept in the same bed as children, loving the warmth provided by the other. No one ever thought anything of it, until a visiting Shadowhunter family deemed it improper.

Taboo

a Dark Artifices story

by EmilyHelene

Her head was curled up, buried in the nape of his neck. All she could breathe in was Julian and she never felt so at peace with the world as she was when she was with him. He had grown up a lot in the past four years. He towered over her now, the six inches nullifying the meager two inches she had grown since the summer they turned fifteen. He was no longer a mess of gangly limbs and awkward two left feet, though he had somehow always managed to stay on his feet in combat. He was warm. He was, and always would be, home.

Sometimes, when the dreams got especially bad, one of them would crawl into the bed of the other seeking comfort, understanding, and solace. They got each other like no one else did; completely and on every level. It hurt to see the other in pain and neither of them had ever questioned; it was unspoken contract. Their friendship was forever.

Emma found her mind wandering, sifting through memories of the past, before the Dark War, before her own parents were killed, before Julian's mother passed away. The images that filled her mind did little to numb the pain of the present, but they did succeed in distracting her if only momentarily. Julian filled the majority of her memories, both insurmountably happy and painfully tragic. They had been with each other through everything and maybe that was why no one who knew them ever questioned their habit of falling asleep together.

She recalled the first time when sleeping in the same bed as Julian had ever seemed like anything other than the most natural thing in the world. Marion and Peter Hightower had been visiting the Los Angeles Institute on business from Idris with their daughter Lorraine when they stumbled into Julian's room by accident late one evening and changed everything, whether they realized it or not.

It had been a long day and Julian had been feeling particularly down on himself for one reason or another. They had been about nine or ten at the time. He refused to talk to anyone but her about it, and even she had needed to pry the words from his mouth. He had looked so small lying curled up on his bed that she scurried in beside him quickly. She felt his shoulders relax and pressed herself against him in a warm, heartfelt embrace. She traced her fingers on his back with a delicate hand, W-A-N-T-T-O-T-A-L-K-? He shook his head, rustling the pillow.

"Jules," she whispered, "Are you mad at me?"

"Why would I be mad at you?" he asked, turning to face her. His features were painted with confusion.

Emma's voice was quiet, "I don't know."

"You don't need to worry about me ever getting mad at you, Emma. I don't think it's possible." His smile stretched, illuminating his ocean blue eyes and reaching every crevice in his face.

"You don't always have to keep everything to yourself, you know. You can talk to me," she whispered. "If, you know, you want to."

"Okay," he said, turning onto his back.

"You're never alone." She wasn't sure why she said it, it just seemed like the right thing to say at the time. When she peered over the colours to look at him, she knew immediately that it had been exactly what he needed to hear.

He reached out for her and she tucked herself neatly at his side, resting her head right next to his. All they could hear was the sound of the rain droplets falling to the ground outside his window.

They stayed like that for what felt like an eternity, floating off to a world where everything made sense and soft waves kissed the sandy shores and washed all their worries away. The sound of a rattling at the door woke them and Mrs. Hightower stepped into the room. She cried out in surprise, startling Emma who had been the first to wake.

"My apologies, wrong room," she said, before realizing that the nearest body on the bed was not, in fact, Julian's, but Emma's. "What do you two think you're doing?" Her tone was sharp and unforgiving.

Emma rubbed at her eyes, feeling somewhat groggy and more than a little dazed by the older woman's presence. "We were sleeping," she said, irritated.

"Get to your room, young lady. This business is not proper and you ought to be ashamed of yourself."

Emma's mouth hung open. "Julian needed me," she said, offering an explanation. But, by the Angel, what did she mean? She hadn't done anything wrong, as far as she could tell, and Julian was still sleeping.

"I'm going to be speaking to your parents about this, just you wait Miss Carstairs."

When she left the room, Emma was seething. Had she stayed in the room a moment longer, Mrs. Hightower would have found out the true extent of Emma's "lady-like behaviour" in a fashion the younger girl would have deemed most appropriate.

It had never been a big deal, and ever since she hadn't been able to see sleeping next to Julian in the same way. Emma's parents had told her not to worry about Mrs. Hightower whom they knew to be famous for overreacting and yet, sometimes it still got to her. A life without comforting Jules felt almost as empty as a world without him at all. She reached across Julian's sleeping frame to trace letters across the bare skin of his upper arm. I-M-A-L-W-A-Y-S-H-E-R-E.

His response was near soundless, "I know."

"Do you remember when your dad told us about what Mrs. Hightower said?" she asked, rolling onto her stomach and propping her chin up on her hands.

"What? Oh, when she saw that we slept in the same bed?" Emma nodded, leaning in closer to him. She hadn't realized then what Mrs. Hightower had been getting at because it had never been like that between them. They were just Emma and Julian and it had always been the two of them against the world.

"It's just, now it feels like this is taboo for us. Like we're not supposed to be doing this." She motioned toward them both, her hand grazing the covers. To anyone else, it probably looked like an intimate moment between two love struck teenagers, but to the two of them it was as natural as breathing.

Julian let out a deep breath. "I don't really care what she thinks, honestly. We know what we were doing, even if she seemed to think otherwise. It's not like we're in love with each other."

Emma felt her stomach drop at his last few words. It's not like we're in love with each other. Of course not. That was completely out of the question for them both, even though she felt her cheeks grow warm whenever he was near and even though when his skin brushed hers, all she felt was electricity. Even though being with him made more sense to her than any of the rules imposed by the Clave.

"Exactly," she said, lying back down leaving a few inches between them. "Because that would be crazy."

Had she looked over at him a moment sooner, she would have seen the same conflicted emotion dance across his face.

It's not like we're in love with each other.

The words raced through their mind, setting fire to all of the silly figments of her imagination where Julian would look at her like she was his anchor to the world and she would stand in awe because there was no way in the world that she could mean more to him than he could to her.

The fire tore up all of her errant scenarios, the little movies in her head where they were together and nothing else mattered. She'd never been the law's biggest fan anyway.

Not that any of that mattered.

"Can we just go to sleep?" she asked, sliding deeper under the covers. She couldn't bear to look him in the eye, not trusting herself not to grab his face and kiss him until Mrs. Hightower actually had a reason to interrupt.

She felt his fingers on her skin, familiar and constant. Y-E-S.

"Night, Em. Sleep tight."

"Night," she mumbled. It was silent for a few minutes before Julian broke it with a single word. Just her name.

"Em?" he asked and she poked her head back out of the blankets. She stared at his eyebrows, ignoring the endlessness of his eyes and the feeling in her gut reminiscent of a hard punch. She almost couldn't manage it.

"Yeah?" she asked, doing her best to appear sleepy.

"I love you." Her stomach twisted and her heart sunk until it felt as though it had left her body entirely. He didn't know how painful he was making this and even though she wanted to tell him, she knew she never could.

She pasted on a smile, something she absolutely hated doing, and slipped under the covers to cuddle up next to him. "Love you, too," she breathed, inhaling the sweet smell of eucalyptus and spearmint that made her feel at ease. More than you'll ever know.

Love.

Even though he threw that word around like it was nothing, to her, it was and always would be taboo.