romancing the storyline,

Date Night. Lena seriously hated date night.

Collapsing onto her bed, she crossed her arms under her head and focused her eyes on the silver swirls that occupied her ceiling. She had put them there six months after she had moved to New York (eight years ago) and realised she was never leaving. It had been Izzy's idea, to just live with it and make it as comfortable as possible. It was why she had ended up painting her entire room turquoise and covering that with silver swirls. Her ceiling on the other hand had been painted black and with the silver swirls it kind of looked like a mashed-up sky at night.

Pulling herself back into the moment, she let out a deep sigh. Friday night wasn't always date night. But tonight was different, everybody had a date. Everybody except Lena.

She didn't usually mind, she hadn't dated since Jordan and that didn't really bother her. She had loved, she had lost, and she never really intended on loving again. But nights like this made her think that she was missing out.

Jace and Clary had headed out earlier on in the evening. The sarcastic blonde had enlisted the resident Spaniard to help plan something special for his girlfriend and she had spent a good few hours already today dragging the young artist to shop after shop to distract her. She had obviously known something was wrong. Clary may have been her best friend's girlfriend, but the two girls had never really hung out. Lena preferred to spend her time while she was in New York either with her parabatai or with Izzy and no matter how nice Clary was she had never really needed someone new in her life. She was happy for Jace, that didn't mean she had to spend twenty-four/seven sucking up to his tiny ass girlfriend.

Lena turned herself slightly in bed and managed to manoeuvre herself under her duvet before continuing with her thoughts.

As planned as Jace and Clary's date was, Alec's and Magnus' had been anything but. Magnus had shown up not even an hour ago to whisk Alec off to a spontaneous date in Sicily. She was also happy for her brother, but Magnus was now the reason Lena was spending the evening curled up in her duvet. Magnus was an amazing guy, or warlock, he was glittery, fun, handsome and he actually cared about Alec, but he had swooped in and ruined Lena and Alec's annual brother/side fun night.

She knew they could just reschedule but that wasn't really the point.

And Izzy? Well her 'baby sister' had disappeared off for the evening with her flavour of the month. That much wasn't new. Izzy was always out on a Friday evening, one of the many reasons the two girls made plans on Wednesday's instead. Izzy - she wasn't angry with. She could never be angry with Isabelle, and she knew that if she called the young Lightwood would drop everything she was doing, come home and spend the evening wrapped up with her big sister watching chick flicks and pigging out on ice cream.

But she would never do that, after everything that happened recently, she deserved to have fun.

Turning to lay on her front, she shoved her face into her pillow and let out a quiet scream of frustration.

She didn't know why this was affecting her so much, she had never been bothered before. She hadn't dated in two years - not since Jordan had died - and she had never felt like she needed to. It had been hard for her after Jordan's death and she had just pushed herself further into her work and training.

But now, now she was the oldest one in the institute and she just felt like a lonely old spinster. Her family all out on dates, her parabatai in London trying to sort out her brother's crap and probably on a date as well. And here she was, the beautiful (according to Izzy) Latina, wrapped up in her duvet, cuddled up to her childhood teddy on a Friday night sulking about being alone.

She had to admit it... date night sucks.