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Jem had always felt a certain affinity to drawing runes; it felt more natural than he expected, the scrawling lines, the dark ink, as if his stele were dipped into a pot of calligraphy liquid, tracing words and symbols across Will's skin that had meaning only to those who knew of them, who had studied their art. He'd always enjoyed the wall length scrolls of characters from his childhood--he could remember them, vaguely, the way they seemed intimidating only as long as he didn't understand them. Understanding, he found, made the world more at ease, complications less stressful. It was something Will would probably appreciate, too, if he had the head to listen.

"You're fidgeting," Jem noted, good-natured and calm, as his one hand, the one holding Will's wrist, tightened, as if to keep his arm straight while he drew. The iratze came rather quickly once he'd focused on it, flicking the stele off Will's skin on a rather succinct, pointed note. "I told you it wasn't safe to come here," Jem reminded him; he knew that Will didn't need that particular reminder, and yet, it fell from his lips before he could stop it, mostly because he liked the way Will's face looked in that moment, twisted and playfully annoyed with him. They were 'too young' to go out alone, but with the rest of the adults at the Institute preoccupied, and Charlotte unable to completely stop them from doing anything, really, they had set out to get rid of the demon prowling the edges of Hyde Park, preying on the couples that came for a bit of stargazing.

They'd gotten rid of the demon--that part had been easy, but Will had charged in before completely prepared and Jem had lost both of his throwing knives in the battle, and Will's arm had been cut open when he thrust his sword in all the way. So they sat, parked up against a tree, comfortable Glamoured, while Jem painstakingly applied that iratze, and Will grumbled at him about this or that, and finally, with some effort, Jem sat back on the grass, pushing his bangs out of his face with one dirt-stained hand. He could feel his shoulders heaving, some, the effects of the Strength runes wearing off, leaving him more in the darkness of his body's inability to fight for long. Bearing a smile, he slid his stele back and forth between his fingers, watching Will in anticipation.

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The weight of Will's head was a comfort that Jem thought, perhaps, he shouldn't take such comfort in at all--the way it slid down from his shoulder, sinking into the curve of his lap, where, if he were a woman, he would feel more content, that Will's head would be pillowed in the comfortable rise of plush thighs and those sorts of feminine comforts that came from a position like the one they had settled into, but all he had to offer was the rumpled cotton of his trousers and the weak muscle underneath. His hands itched to touch him, to brush long fingers through his hair, sort out all the dust and muck and comfort him, and for a moment, he was unsure of what to do at all. Both hands hovered, a minute trembling, before one settled loosely atop Will's shoulder, and the other folded over the top of his head, fingertips touching briefly at the edges of Will's bangs that stuck together against his forehead.

"Well," Jem said at first, thoughtfully, and though he could feel Will's eyes peering up at him, surely warm with amusement, Jem instead cast his gaze out towards the water, as though looking at it would give him the answer to the playfully difficult love story they had concocted. His lips twitched, once, with the threat of a smile, but he swallowed it down, fingers idle now as they brushed along Will's forehead and then, further, across his temple. "You could always just...have a wash. That would solve the problem, wouldn't it?" Unable to keep himself from it, Jem started to smile, glancing down at Will as he tugged at the top of his closest ear. "I am sure that you are charming enough that it's only the smell that's keeping the poet and the translator apart."