#especially with a fountain pen? i bow to thee

[bellamyblcke]

Lilacs from the Dead Land

Pairing: Jocelyn Fairchild/Valentine Morgenstern/Lucian Graymark

Summary: Everyone gravitates around Valentine, even them.

Read on AO3

“What are you doing?”

Jocelyn looks up, startled, and sees Valentine Morgenstern coming out of the school’s meetinghouse and heading towards her.

Normally Valentine is surrounded by his disciples, especially after one of his little meetings, and she hadn’t thought she’d see him today. As she watches, he shrugs into his gear jacket, the movement rippling his shoulders and the stretch of chest she can see beneath his jacket.

Jocelyn closes her sketchbook with a snap. “Nothing,” she says. And then she realizes that isn’t quite true, and frowns. “I’m waiting for Luke.”

Valentine smiles. “He’s still inside,” he says. He walks over to where she’s sitting straddling the fountain lip. “He’ll be along in a bit.”

She’s wearing a dress today, a rarity for her, but summers in Idris are too warm for pants or heavy gear. She had felt pretty before he’d showed up, but next to Valentine in full gear it makes her feel frilly, and she sniffs.

“We missed you today,” he says, coming to sit beside her. One of her legs is in the fountain and one out, and that, the strangeness of it, her bare feet, one wet, one not, so close to his booted ones, sets her on edge.

“Why?” she asks him. She tilts her head to regard him, and watches him track the fall of her hair across her bare shoulders. His eyes flick quickly back to her face as if he hadn’t meant to do it.

“Why what?”

“Why’d you miss me?”

His smile spreads slow across his face. “Are you excited for the new school year?” he asks her instead of answering. “Seeing as it’s our last one.”

“I’m sure you’re ready to graduate,” she laughs. “So you can be off making your mark on the world.”

His eyes are strange, she thinks. So dark as to almost be black. With all the rest of him so light it’s disconcerting. She wonders how she would paint him. There’s no color in him at all.

“What are you two talking about?” She looks up, startled again, and sees Luke walking towards them. Unlike Valentine, he’s dressed as casually as she is in a pair of light wash denim jeans the same faded color as his eyes and a loose cotton t-shirt. He had buzzed his hair at the start of the summer, and he looks older now without his hair constantly falling in his eyes. “You left this,” he says, tossing Valentine a book.

Valentine catches it easily.

Jocelyn stands, and for a moment, she’s taller than Valentine, looking down at him, and he looks up at her as if surprised, and then she’s stepping out of the fountain and heading towards Luke. The stones are hot on her bare feet.

“Nothing,” she says, and smiles.

.

“You should come to the next one.”

Jocelyn has been staying at the Graymark’s for the last several weeks of summer. Amatis has been pissy about it, but then she’s never liked Jocelyn. Jocelyn doesn’t really mind. After a month back home at the manor, she’s been glad to be out of the country and back in the city. She can handle some snotty looks.

She rolls over onto her back on the carpet, spread eagle. Luke is on the couch, reading as per usual, and he shoots her an amused look. She reaches out with a bare leg to whack him, and he laughs.

“I have no interest in joining the Valentine Morgenstern fan club,” she says. “Besides, I’m pretty sure all the spots are full.”

Luke scoffs. “I hope you don’t think I’m a member of this fan club just because Val and I are friends.”

Jocelyn sits up, and looks over at Luke, and then makes a face. He raises an eyebrow at her.

“Don’t be silly,” she says. “You’re not a member. You’re the president.”

.

“So what do you think?” Jocelyn asks. They’re standing outside the main school building, staring up at the intimidating heft of it.

Luke shrugs. “Same as always, I imagine.”

It’s not, though, Jocelyn thinks. Not really. It’s the beginning of the end. Luke’s sentimental enough to think that too, even if he’s not saying it.

“Graymark!”

They turn, and then there is Valentine jogging down the street towards them. They both still to watch him approach. When he reaches them he stops short, and runs a hand through his hair, his eyes skidding to Jocelyn and then back to Luke.

“Morgenstern,” Luke grins.

Jocelyn shakes her head. “I’ll leave you two to talk shop.”

Valentine calls after her. She turns and looks back at the two of them, side by side: Luke, as familiar to her as her own face in the mirror, and Valentine, the foreign element.

“What?” she asks.

He opens his mouth, as if to say something and then closes it. “I’ll see you in class,” he says instead.

.

“He likes you, you know,” Luke says.

They’re eating lunch out in the courtyard, soaking up the last of the late summer sun before it fades. Jocelyn will miss the freckles, and the heat. Valentine is holding court on the other side of the yard, surrounded by Maryse and Robert and all the rest of them. There’s so many people vying for his attention that you can barely see him through the masses. If Jocelyn wasn’t here, she knows that Luke would be with them.

“Who?”

“Valentine.”

She looks over at Luke, shielding her eyes so that she can see him better. “Be serious,” she says.

Valentine could have anyone he wanted. She’s pretty sure that half the girls in school have tried, and some of the boys too. But she’s never seen him with any of them, not really. For while he flirts with anyone and everyone, dating doesn’t quite seem his style.

Still, a traitorous warmth spreads through her chest. Valentine was untouchable, she knew that. And if he was anyone’s, he was Luke’s.

“I am,” Luke says.

.

“Impressive,” she hears from behind her. Jocelyn is wiping the sweat from her brow with a towel, and when she lowers it and turns, she sees Valentine, closer than she had expected. “You’ll have to show me that parry sometime.”

Jocelyn tilts into one hip, and raises an eyebrow. “You don’t know it?”

Valentine smiles. “I didn’t say that,” he said. He is sweaty too, and she can feel the heat radiating off of him. “I like watching you fight,” he says, low and intense.

“Yeah?” she asks.

She’s surprised by the amount of power that she feels having him watch her. He swallows, and Jocelyn watches his throat work. Perhaps this is how he seduces all of them, she thinks. Flies to the honey trap.

“Good,” she says.

.

Luke is late for their meetup, and Jocelyn taps her pen against her sketchbook, looking around for him, impatient. When he does finally show, it is with Valentine in tow. Valentine’s arm is slung around Luke’s shoulders, and they’re both laughing. It causes Jocelyn’s heart to seize, though she couldn’t say why.

“We’re celebrating,” Valentine says when they arrive in front of her like conquering heroes. She wonders how he manages to make leaning against Luke look elegant.

“How come?”

He looks at Luke, and Luke shrugs, sheepish. “He wants me to be his parabatai.”

“He agreed to be my parabatai,” Valentine amends, grinning.

Jocelyn doesn’t know why the idea is so repugnant to her, just that the thought of it goes through her like a shock. “Well, I doubt you’re used to people saying no to you,” she says.

Valentine turns his gaze from Luke to her. “No,” he says, slowly. “I’m not.”

.

“You don’t think I should do it,” Luke says to Jocelyn, later. They’re sitting on Fairchild House’s roof, kicking their feet into the empty air.

Jocelyn sighs. “Do you want to do it?”

Luke flushes, but doesn’t answer. Jocelyn supposes it was a ridiculous question. It’s Valentine. Everyone in Alicante would kill to be his parabatai, and it’s Luke that he wants.

“I think if you feel okay about it, then okay,” she says. “It’s your soul.”

“He’s not that bad, you know,” Luke says, nudging her. “You might even like him, if you’d actually talk to him.”

Jocelyn wrinkles her nose. “I’ll leave him to you, thanks.”

.

At the bonding ceremony, their heads bowed close together, Luke’s shorn hair is several shades darker than Valentine’s, although they are almost exactly the same height. Jocelyn feels like Valentine should be taller.

“Entreat me not to leave thee, or return from following after thee — for whither thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest, I will lodge. Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried. The Angel do so to me, and more so, if aught but death part me and thee.”

Valentine meets her gaze over Luke’s shoulder.

Jocelyn looks away, face flushing.

.

There’s a party to celebrate the ceremony, the official one with all of their parents there, and then later, another smaller one. A group of accolades all sneak out the big plaza in the center of Alicante, the disciples mainly, but just this once, Jocelyn doesn’t mind being one of them. Someone brings wine, and soon they’re all tipsy.

Jocelyn’s hair is down, the weight of it tickling her bare back, she has glitter on her eyes, and she feels loose limbed and happy, despite the late autumn chill.

“Do you feel different now?” she asks Luke.

He’s watching Valentine, who’s talking to Maryse but looks over as if he heard them. Luke raises his mug of wine, and Valentine mirrors him.

“Yeah,” Luke says, quietly.

Later, when Luke is laughingly pulled into a dance by Simone Marchetti, Valentine comes and sits beside Jocelyn on the stoop. He’s flushed from the wine, and appears to Jocelyn bright-eyed and strange.

“Not dancing?” he asks.

She shakes her head. “It’s Luke’s night.”

“And mine,” he says. The parabatai rune is drawn on the center of his chest, but he’s not wearing heavy gear for once, just a white button down, and she can see the edges of it curling raw and dark beneath the sheer fabric. She shivers.

“You’re not dancing either,” she says.

He shakes his head. He’s all silver in the moonlight. “I prefer your company.” He settles back against the steps next to her as if he is in it for the long haul.

Across the square, Luke looks up at them.

.

Luke paces back and forth in Jocelyn’s room. She’s been working on a landscape painting, the view from her room back at the Fairchild manor. Normally, it calms her to paint, to get the fall of light just so, but his mania is spreading into her as well, and she feels restless.

“Do you think he’s okay?” he says.

“You’d know if he wasn’t,” Jocelyn says, setting down her brush.

Luke nods, but he doesn’t stop pacing. Jocelyn wonders if it’s his anxiety or Valentine’s. If he can even tell the difference. But then the parabatai bond has always been a mystery to her. She values her independence too much to easily understand why you’d be willing to give it up.

“He’ll be back soon,” she says. “And you can check on him.”

“I know,” Luke says.

Jocelyn picks her brush back up, shooting another glance at Luke over the canvas. He looks wrecked. She wonders what Valentine looks like. She can’t imagine him as anything but immaculate.

He’s human too, she reminds herself.

But the thought doesn’t stick.

.

“Graymark.” Valentine drops into the grass beside Luke and Jocelyn. Luke makes a muffled noise of surprise, and then throws himself at Valentine, wrapping him in a fierce embrace.

Valentine meets Jocelyn’s gaze over Luke’s head, his expression amused. For all Luke’s worry, Valentine looks just the same as he always does. “You fucking scared me, Morgenstern,” Luke mumbles. “Leaving without saying goodbye.”

Valentine nods, but doesn’t apologize. “You’ll both be at the funeral, I imagine.” Luke and Jocelyn both nod. “And we’re having a meeting after. To discuss plans.” It’s not a question.

Valentine pushes to his feet, although he had just arrived. Standing over them he looks quite tall. Luke lifts his hand as if to reach towards him, but then lowers it.

Valentine looks as if he might say something more, but then he just turns on his heel and leaves.

.

At the funeral, Valentine’s face is like stone. He is kind to everyone who greets him, and none of it reaches his eyes,

Next to Jocelyn, tears drip down Luke’s face.

.

Jocelyn is sleeping when she hears the patter of something hitting her window. She lies in bed for a moment listening, and then pads across the room, confused, and finds Valentine Morgenstern outside her window, throwing stones. His hair is a beacon in the dim light. Jocelyn frowns at him. He doesn’t gesture, just stares back, pebbles in hand. Jocelyn sighs, and heads for the door.

When she steps outside, he is waiting, looking up at the sky.

“What do you think is up there? Heaven?”

“I don’t know,” she says. She doesn’t think it would be helpful just now to say that she doesn’t believe in heaven. But then, Valentine is not one to need false comforts.

“Despite our angel blood we have so little control over any of it,” he says, still not turning. “Does that seem right to you?”

He is ruminative tonight, Jocelyn thinks. She walks down the steps until they are both standing at street level. He is close enough that she can feel the hairs on her arm reaching for him. She wonders if there is anyone who is not hyper-aware of him, if he ever exists and is not drawing everyone in the room towards him.

It is him that closes the gap between them. He pulls her into his arms all at once, burying his face in her neck. She can feel him breathing there, ragged and warm, and she thinks for a moment that he might sink his teeth into her skin. She thinks for a moment that she might want him to.

He pulls back just enough that their faces are pressed close together. This way, all she can see is him. He blocks out anything else.

“Help me,” he says. His voice is raw, tinged with panic. He does not sound at all like Valentine Morgenstern.

“Help you what?” She feels as if she is drunk. Like she might actually still be dreaming.

“Does it matter?” he asks her.

No, she supposes. With Valentine, it does not.

.

There is a grand ball for their graduation. Jocelyn wishes she could work up some excitement for it, but it feels like everything, even their graduation, is eclipsed by Valentine’s sudden fervor for action. The circle, he’s calling his group now. He talks of little else, and brings everyone along with him. Some mornings she’ll find him sitting outside of her door so that he can walk her to class, and pick her mind about new ideas for it. It’s both annoying and so deeply flattering that Jocelyn is embarrassed. You don’t talk like this with Maryse Trueblood, do you? she wants to ask him. But then comparing herself to Maryse is a fruitless cause. And she’s not meant to care what Valentine thinks at all.

“What do you think?” Luke asks her. “Think we should go, for old time’s sake?”

Jocelyn looks up from her sketchbook in surprise. His gaze is steady, and unhurried. “Oh,” Jocelyn says. “Yes, that sounds nice.”

She turns from him and screws her eyes up tight, before smoothing her face back out. An exhale. It wasn’t like she had been expecting Valentine to ask.

She draws her hand in a large arc over the paper. She’d meant to draw a landscape, but looking at it, it’s nothing at all.

It wasn’t like she would go with him even if he did ask.

.

The next morning, Valentine is waiting outside her stoop, writing in a book. He snaps it shut when she comes out.

“What’s on the agenda today?” she asks him. “More Nietzche?”

“Are you going to the ball?” His expression is eager, almost boyish, although she rarely thinks of Valentine as a boy.

She blinks back at him stupidly for a moment, and then starts down the street like an automaton.

He hurries to catch up with her. “Come on, Jocelyn,” he says. “Go with me.”

“I thought you’d have a queue lined up,” Jocelyn says. Her heart is beating butterfly fast in her chest.

Valentine stops her with a hand to her arm. “Everyone else,” he stops, and then tries again. "I want to go with you. If you’ll have me.”

The morning light has turned his hair more blond than silver, and he looks like a painting come to life. It seems unfair that he should be beautiful as well as all the rest of it.

“Will you?” he asks. “Have me, I mean?”

He runs his hand down her arm to take her hand, hesitant, as if she might startle at the slightest movement. But Jocelyn couldn’t run away from him even if she wanted to. She feels trapped by her desire. It rises like a tidal wave within her.

He presses her hand to the center of his chest. “It’s yours,” he says. “Anything you want. All of me.”

She curls her hand into the fabric of his gear, and pulls him towards her, as if all she’d needed was an invitation. He’s smiling when she kisses him. She can feel that smile pressed against her own. Mine, she thinks. Mine for the taking.

.

They meet up with Luke at the entrance to the school. Their days there are numbered, and Jocelyn can’t help but feel that every day is precious.

“She said yes,” Valentine tells him.

“To what?” Luke asks, frowning.

“Yes, to what, dear?” Jocelyn asks, turning to look at him. He reaches out and brushes a strand of hair from her face, and the intimacy of the act causes a flush to spread across her cheeks. Silly, when they’d just done something so much more intimate.

Valentine grins at her though, as if she had delighted him. His smile makes her heart expand in her chest. Looking at him feels like exploding. “To eternity,” he says. “An eternity of my adoration.”

“I wasn’t aware that’s what I was getting into,” she says, and wishes it didn’t sound so breathless. She buries her face in his shoulder to chase the feeling, and he wraps the arm around her.

“It’s always eternity with Valentine,” Luke says. His smile does not quite reach his eyes.

Valentine slings his other arm over Luke. “I’ll have an eternity of you as well, Lucian,” he says.

“Yes,” Luke says. “I suppose you will.”

#shadowhunters fic #valentine morgenstern #jocelyn fairchild #luke garroway #jocelyn x valentine x luke #valentine x jocelyn #this fic is like seven years too late to be relevant but you know #book verse teen!jocelyn x valentine x luke #why are ppl not writing teen!valentine i can't fathom it? #my writing