glass house
(jason / tess)

I guess you might call this angsty fluff or whatever. I don't know. It's sort of...different? I'm not sure that's the word I'm looking for, but whatever. :p

I took a different take on Tess in this fic, one that's not so extreme. In fact, it's a relatively plain take on Tess...but it's not boring. At least, I hope it isn't!

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She lives in a glass house.

Safe and perfect, with pristine white furniture and spotless tabletops. Because Tess Tyler needs absolute perfection and control in her life. Anything too far from the status quo, and what is expected, is absolutely unacceptable and inferior to her.

Even the almighty, perfect Tess Tyler cannot anticipate the arrival of Jason, Shane, and Nate Gray into her hopelessly vanilla house.

Nate Gray enters through the front door, knocking politely on his way in. She allows him to enter, and they sit on her immaculate furniture. Nate is sweet and unoffensive, but it's clear that he tires of her constant trek for the next best thing.

He entered through the front door, and exits in the same polite, careful fashion.

Tess doesn't care, not really. Nate was nice to have around, and fit perfectly into her lifestyle, but he didn't quite understand her.

Shane Gray enters the house through a window, but is swift and quick about it. He is just as polite as Nate, but slightly offbeat (though not in the annoying way that Tess abhors so much), Shane mostly thinks with his head, and fits just as neatly as Nate did. Tess and Shane are similar; both cool and collected, cold and calculated.

But then Shane meets that Torres girl, and makes a clean escape for the window.

The Torres girl changes Shane, into someone not so harsh and distant, and warmer. He sort of glows these days. Tess Tyler forgets about Shane Gray – normally she would try to fight for her man, but Torres changed him too much, and she doesn't particularly care for the "new" Shane. He's nice and everything, but he doesn't fit through the window of Tess's glass house anymore.

And then comes along Jason Gray.

Tess Tyler doesn't like Jason Gray; he's weird and his obsession with birdhouses is excessively annoying.

But Jason Gray, somehow, manages to find the location of her glass house. She doesn't care, so long as he doesn't try to fight his way in. There are plenty of other contenders that have waited years for entry.

Jason Gray plows through the crowd of other boys, though. And he just runs into Tess's house, shattering the glass. He splatters paint all over the white furniture – the bright, bold kind – and ruins Tess Tyler's perfection.

Tess Tyler's throat burns with anger, and she can't believe that he would have the NERVE to trash her house, after all the years of hard work she's put in.

Jason clearly holds no regard for what is sacred in Tess's eyes, though, because he continues to wreck serious havoc on her glass house, until there's no more white left, and the whole place is stained with every color of the rainbow.

She tries to get the stains out, but it seems that the damage Jason Gray has done is permanent.

Jason Gray does not exit her glass house. He's very persistent, and stays there for many years before Tess Tyler finally just gives up and lets him have the glass house. She doesn't even care anymore – it's entirely too hard to fight Jason, and it's a battle she knows she's going to lose.

Tess Tyler, in all reality, has become quite attached to Jason Gray in the years following his advent into her glass house.

And through time, she's learned something about her house.

The years she spent refusing entry to so many people, and trying to keep everything immaculate...

Were actually her most imperfect years.

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Hmm. What was that? Dramatic fluff? I don't know, I have no idea what I'm saying right now.

The "glass house" is an analogy for Tess's heart. If you didn't get that. I tried to write a Tess-centric fic that wasn't so typical, where she doesn't get her happy ending, and she hates herself...lol.

Please review with more than "so sad/cute" or "i loved it," thanks!