Would you want to write nessian on a stargazing date because Nesta has never seen a shooting star before and Cassian grew up practically outside in Illyria so he knows how to see the best ones
i can only answer prompts if they fit under the very specific circumstances i already have in mind
Post-ACOSF but Cassian has been replaced by an alternate universe variant that has a crush on Nesta and she doesn’t know she just thinks her mate randomly became really nice one day
***
“Shall we spend a couple nights out in Illyria?” Cassian suggested over dinner that evening. A homemade, cooked-with-love, delicious dinner that hadn’t involved the House’s magic at all. Nesta loved the little imperfections in the flavoring and presentation of the food, finding it oddly preferable to the flawless meals the House usually provided.
“What’s there to do in Illyria?” Nesta said as she speared an asparagus with her fork. “Do you need me to scare the camp lords again?”
“Of course not. It’s because there’s a shower of shooting stars expected this weekend. You’ve never seen them before, right?”
Nesta’s fork slipped along her plate. “How did you know?” she said, meeting his gaze with wide eyes.
Cassian flushed and looked down. “I think you mentioned it in passing.”
Had she? Nesta tried to recall their conversations, of which there had been surprisingly many in recent weeks. “Well, I’ve been to Starfall. That counts.”
“These stars don’t splatter on you. It’ll be a very different experience than what you’re used to.”
“Fair enough. Let’s go, then.”
***
The tent was set up miles away from the nearest camp, at the peak of a snow-topped valley. Nesta shuddered in her heavy furs as she glanced across the expanse of land. “I think I can see the woods where I performed the Rite from here.”
Another thing that had baffled Cassian to find out. In this world, not only had Feyre’s sisters survived and become Fae, but Nesta, who had no Illyrian ties, had somehow been kidnapped and thrown into the Blood Rite. And for some insane reason, Rhysand had allowed it to happen under his nose.
Where Cassian came from, the two older Archeron sisters meant nothing to anybody. Feyre had mentioned once, over a century ago, that she had no interest in ever seeing her sisters again or reconnecting with the trauma of her childhood years. And that was that. Whether the sisters had died during the war with Hybern or managed to escape and live out the course of their human lives, nobody knew.
So after only hearing stories about her cruelty, when Cassian had met this world’s Nesta for the first time, he hadn’t expected her to be so… beautiful. Withdrawn. Haunted. In the fairytales, the cruel stepsisters were always the opposite of all those things.
He also hadn’t expected her to be locked up like a damsel in a tower.
“Come take a seat next to me.” He patted the ground beside him.
He had laid out so many furs that the wetness of the snow couldn’t soak through them. If they really wanted to, they could sleep quite warmly outside instead of in the comfortable tent he’d prepared.
Nesta’s steps were wary as she came over to sit beside him, but it was closer than he’d expected her to be. He could feel the warmth of her radiating against his side.
Feeling his face and neck heat, he cleared his throat and pretended to study the night sky. “I grew up watching shooting stars, so the novelty has worn off for me. You would enjoy it, though.”
“When is it supposed to start?” She scanned the sky, purposely avoiding looking at him. Even now she maintained a certain distance with him, as if she couldn’t fully trust him.
Their mating bond was… a fraught one. The original Cassian, the one who he was impersonating right now, had left scars behind that couldn’t be easily healed.
He didn’t know what he would do when he had to return home and let this world’s Cassian take back his place.
A gasp came from Nesta while he was lost in thought. “I think I saw something!”
He dragged his gaze off her for just a moment so he could check the sky. Indeed, one star had shot by, and after a few seconds two more followed in quick succession.
Like going from a drop of rain to a downpour, in no time at all the sky was filled with blazing streaks of white light, here for a second before vanishing forever.
“Wow,” Nesta breathed into cold night air.
He watched her eyes light up in wonderment, every falling star in the sky reflected in her wide pupils. “Wow,” he agreed.
The shower was over all too fast, but Nesta kept watching the sky as if more stars might happen to drop by.
She finally turned to him with shiny eyes and a grin that literally made his heart stop in his chest. “I thought it’d be boring. That was nicer than I expected it to be.”
He couldn’t tear his attention off that fucking smile. “I told you.” His voice sounded too tight to him.
Quiet fell between them, creating a hazy moment where there was only the two of them staring at each other.
“Can we sleep out here?” she said, breaking the trance.
He raised a brow with light playfulness even as his heart picked up speed again. “We’ll have to hold each other to stay warm.”
She raised a brow right back at him. “You’re my mate, aren’t you?”
The question lay heavily between them: why Cassian had refused to be intimate with Nesta these past few weeks. They’d very recently started sharing kisses in hallways and before bed, but he never let it get any further than that. Most of the time he made up some bullshit excuse about having work to do to avoid sleeping in the same bed as Nesta. Then he’d go to some random guest room in the House and sleep there.
There was no way for him to answer the question without revealing the truth of his identity, so he thanked the Mother and Nesta that she had yet to confront him directly on the topic.
“I am,” he said in answer to her question.
Just for tonight, he promised himself, he would let himself hold her. Have her.
no one teaches you what to do when a good man hurts you and you know you hurt him too
i'm finally clearing out the half-written drabbles that've been rotting in my drafts since 2022
***
“I can’t believe you’re doing this to me,” Nesta inhaled. For the first time since Cassian had reconnected with her, she looked truly enraged. More than that, she looked broken. “How can you say you love me after everything you’ve done to me?”
He scrambled for the right thing to say, wondering whether it wasn’t too late to backpedal on his confession, wondering whether she’d even believe him if he did. “I know—” he tried to say.
"What do you know? Do you know how I wake up in the middle of the night terrified I'll never move on from you? How I imagine having to tell my friends that the reason I can’t date men is because I can’t get past the man who treated me like shit six years ago?”
There it was. Her deepest, darkest fear, something she’d never have admitted to a single soul if she’d had the choice.
Not because she didn’t want to admit it, but because there was no one to admit it to. No one who could keep her secrets safe or face the wreckage of her bare soul without judgement.
“It’s like I slayed the monster but his ghost still haunts me,” she went on, emotion threading her voice. “You’re the fucking ghost, Cassian.”
“Living is already so hard for me,” she said, pressing a hand to her chest to hold her unraveling heart together. “And you make it worse.”
Cassian was at a loss for words— Nesta had snatched them all out of the air. He scrambled for something to say so he wouldn’t have to stare at her blankly like an idiot and upset her even more.
“For what it’s worth, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you. There’s everything wrong with me, but never you. Anyone who thinks otherwise doesn’t care about you the way they should.”
“I don’t need advice from you,” she hissed. “You’re in no place to comfort me. I’d take a cockroach’s opinion before I respected yours.”
He bowed his head low. “I’m sorry.” He didn’t know how to be here without hurting her. He didn’t know how to leave, either.
time flies, messy as the mud on your truck tires, now i’m missing your smile, hear me out. we could just ride around.
a/n: this is soooo long and MAJORLY unedited but it feels perfect for xmas eve so im posting it now. it might even be missing paragraphs but we ride
***
Nesta refused to go fully no-contact with her sisters. To this day, she didn’t know why, but that was how she found herself standing outside Feyre’s house for her mandatory family dinner, held only three times a year.
Three times a year, Nesta had to dress up and submit herself to a painfully awkward night of being left out of conversations and eating mediocre food. Tonight it was for Thanksgiving. She’d long resigned herself to the torture of it all, and she was nothing but grateful that it was only three nights out of the whole year.
That still didn’t make knocking on the door any easier, however.
“Nesta?” a voice behind her asked, immediately raising every hair on her neck. She turned away from the front door to find a familiar face walking up the lit pathway to the manor’s stone porch, approaching her.
Oh God. “Cassian?”
Wow, did he look… different. In the three years since he’d left to work for the Peace Corps, Cassian’s muscles had subtly grown not bigger, but more defined, his clothes now better-fitting. His dark hair was shorter than she’d ever seen it before, no longer wild and untamed, but still long enough to fall near his chin. He looked so tame in comparison to the hulking giant she’d used to know.
He laughed and rushed up to her to sweep her into a crushing bear hug, making her gasp in surprise. They’d never been close enough in the past for a greeting this enthusiastic, but maybe the Peace Corps had made him demented. “How have you been?” he exclaimed, setting her down on her feet and placing a hand at her shoulder so she wouldn’t tip over. “I was wondering whether I’d get to see you tonight.”
Nesta could only open and shut her mouth, no words coming out. “You’re back,” was all she could say.
He grinned wide. His smile had remained the same. “I am.”
Her mind frantically flipped through the encyclopedia of social etiquette. “It’s good to see you again,” she forced out. “How was—life?”
His laugh was quiet, but she didn’t know what was funny. “I should be asking you the same thing. What are you waiting out here in the cold for?” He nudged her softly.
“Just trying to work up the nerve to knock on the door,” she answered honestly.
“I see.” He nodded. “Well, if we both put our heads together, I'm sure we can manage it before dinner is served.”
Was he making fun of her? His manner seemed serious and earnest, and it was confusing the hell out of Nesta.
Just then, the door swung open, a rush of light and warmth spilling out onto the front porch. “I thought I heard a ruckus outside,” Elain said, thin brows furrowing as her gaze swung to Nesta, then quickly smoothing out with a smile as her eyes landed on Cassian. “Come get out of the cold," she said. "We’re so glad you could make it.”
Nesta knew Elain was addressing both of them, but she couldn’t help but feel the last part had been directed to Cassian more than her.
Cassian swept inside with a grin and greeted Elain with a kiss to her cheek, and Nesta had to force herself to look away. Suddenly the hug she’d gotten no longer felt like overkill. A kiss had to mean more than a hug, right?
“You both are a little late, but you haven’t missed much. I’ll bring everyone else to the dining room,” Elain said, before wandering off down one of the mansion’s grand hallways to get the rest of their friends.
Nesta took in a subtle breath, but a deep one nonetheless, as she set about taking her coat off. It was stupid to be so anxious about a simple dinner. In no less than four hours, she'd be tucked in her warm bed with a swoony romance book, and the whole evening would disappear like the fragments of a bad dream. This was nothing.
Cassian came up to her side as they made their way to the dining room, bending down to speak into her ear. "There's so much I want to catch up with you about. I wish I'd known you were going to be here earlier, I would've prepared more."
Nesta's responding look was confused, if not bewildered. Prepared for what? Was there something grating about her presence that required preparation? He kept saying things that sounded like potential jabs in the softest, friendliest manner.
She ran her jittery hands down the sleek low ponytail of her hair, then the blue velvet of her simple dress. "Yes, well." She didn't follow through with the rest of the sentence.
They arrived at the dining room, where it was both a relief and a weight to no longer be alone with just Cassian. Everyone else in her sister's little friend group was already there, ooh-ing and aah-ing over the platters of food and rushing to claim seats at the table.
Nesta heard several exclamations of "Cassian's here!", all of which she ignored as she tried to decide which seat would suit her best tonight. She might have heard Cassian say, "Nesta's here, too," but it was quickly swallowed up and lost to the rest of the room's conversation.
Cassian took a seat next to Azriel and started pulling out the empty chair beside him. His eyes searched for and met Nesta's just as she picked her seat on the opposite side of the table, near the very end. A look of defeat took over his face as Morrigan took the chair beside him. Nesta didn't understand what the look was supposed to mean, but as it was awkward not to smile at someone after a certain amount of eye contact had been made, she offered him a small smile that probably came off as a tiny grimace before looking away.
After a lot of scrambling around, Elain ended up seated on Nesta's right. Not too bad, as conversation with Elain was less likely to make Nesta's skin crawl than with others at the table.
Everyone started piling their plates with food, and Nesta let Elain take her plate to serve her. It was easier than drawing attention to herself by reaching out and getting the food on her own.
"You shouldn't have come so late, Cassian," Feyre said from the head of the table. "You missed all the appetizers, they’re all finished now."
“Don’t tell me you didn’t save me any of Elain’s lobster rolls,” he said with wide eyes, acting offended.
Elain giggled at that, but the sound seemed more calculated than genuine. It probably wasn't nice to think everything that your sister did was calculated, but Nesta wasn't feeling very nice tonight. She felt like staring into her mashed potatoes while dreaming about a handsome man crashing this dinner party and promptly sweeping her off her feet.
Morrigan and Feyre led the conversation by gossiping about some work friend of Rhysand's they'd run into on their latest shopping trip, and time melded around Nesta and held her captive. She imagined she'd been painted to match the printed wallpaper behind her, rendering herself invisible to the rest of the room.
To everyone except one, that was. But everytime she accidentally made eye contact with Cassian, she looked away before he could even register it. By the time she looked back, he'd refocused on whatever jokes or stories his friends were telling.
Thirty minutes passed by without anyone asking Nesta a question. She counted each one, until—
"So what do you do these days?"
It took a long moment of awkward silence before Nesta looked up from her plate to find Cassian staring at her, his eyes warm. She realized the question had been directed at her. "Me?" she said in disbelief, because she needed the confirmation.
"No, one of these other losers," he teased. Some made noises of mock-offense, while others stifled their laughter.
Nesta shifted uncomfortably at how all the attention in the room had shifted to her. Being ignored wasn't fun, true, but this was far worse. "I run a dance studio," she answered. She didn't mention anything about how she was also a ghostwriter of romance novels on the side, although maybe she might have admitted it if they'd been alone.
Cassian's eyes lit up, and he imperceptibly leaned forward over the table. "No way. What kind of dance?"
"Um, just pole for now." Normally she'd leave it at that, but something in her wanted to give the full picture to Cassian. "I'm working on hiring more teachers and splitting it into contemporary and hip-hop-based classes, though."
"No ballet?"
She shook her head, distracting herself from his heavy gaze by taking a bite of salad. Ballet had been Nesta's first love, even more so than the ballroom dancing her grandmother had forced upon her, but she'd been bitter for a long time at how puberty and big boobs had taken away any chance she'd had to dance professionally. More than that, its ways were too rigid and painful, and Nesta would rather teach students how to let go rather than restrain themselves.
"That's crazy," he said, grinning. "I never imagined you doing anything than classical."
Right. He'd seen tapes of her old performances once a long time ago, though she was surprised he still remembered them.
"Nesta got the idea from dancing at that strip club a few years ago," Morrigan interjected with a wave of her fork.
Nesta's face flamed with heat at the misinformation, because even though there was nothing wrong with being a stripper, there were certain things you couldn't say to certain people without being judged for it. Like announcing that you wrote erotica in your free time, or that you were bisexual.
"It was just a regular club, and I was a go-go dancer," she corrected, as if that would lighten the blow. Rhysand made a noise that implied this was not much better than stripping.
"Holy shit, how much have I missed?" Cassian sat back in his chair in disbelief, not picking up on the light waves of discomfort that floated around the group whenever Nesta's past was brought up. Then again, he'd never found anything about her to be uncomfortable.
After Feyre and Rhysand had cut off all sources of her income, she’d been forced to find a real job. Dancing was the only thing she’d been good at doing, and she knew from the seedy bars she frequented that one of the nearby nightclubs was hiring. Thanks to her body and skills, she’d been able to indulge her alcohol problem off tips alone, at least until she’d made the decision to get her life together. That had been a year and a half ago.
But she couldn’t tell any of this to Cassian. She didn’t need to, either, because Amren answered his question for her. “Nesta's unrecognizable from when you last saw her, isn't she?" she drawled. "Don't worry; I promise her personality's still the same."
"Indeed," Rhysand grumbled, and a few others laughed.
Cassian still had that smile glued to his face, but it now looked frozen and false, as if he was no longer happy but didn’t know what to do about it.
But the conversation was out of his control now, due to the unfortunate fact that once attention landed on Nesta, it was usually difficult to make it go away. The next thing she knew, she was being bombarded with questions from all sides of the table.
"Were you late tonight because of that old Toyota again? I told you you could afford a new car if you took up my job offer."
"One of my friends took a class at your studio and said it wasn't too bad. You should give me a free membership so I can see for myself."
"What's your new address again?" This one from Feyre. "I need it for my Christmas cards."
Nesta blinked hard, head spinning at everyone's words being thrown at her, wondering how unacceptable it would be if she just—snapped. Wondering if maybe she could get herself uninvited from these things from good.
"I—" Mor started to lob another question.
“Let the woman fucking breathe, Jesus,” Cassian chuckled into his wine glass, cutting her off. But it was targeted at the whole room to hear, and the bitterness beneath it was clear.
The room went still. Awkwardness, sharp and cold as ice, swept over the dinner table until Nesta felt like her bones were frozen in place.
When no one responded, Cassian took a large gulp of wine and set the glass down with a dull thud. “I mean, if we want her to come around more often maybe we shouldn’t be giving her reasons to never visit,” he said, his voice too loud in the quiet room.
“We’re just catching up since we never get to see her,” Feyre said, sounding hurt and defensive at the same time.
Rhysand’s barely-audible growl implied he wanted to kill whoever had put that hurt in her tone—which in this case and most cases, was Nesta.
“That’s enough,” a delicate but firm voice beside Nesta said. She felt a soft hand rest on her arm, and looked up to find Elain’s sympathetic brown eyes watching her. But when Elain opened her mouth to speak again, all that came out was, “Eat more, will you? You’re so skinny it’ll make the rest of us look bad.”
Nesta had actually been gaining healthy weight lately, but for some unfathomable reason this was Elain’s attempt at diffusing the hostility in the room, so Nesta hummed a sound that technically counted as a response and busied herself with picking at her cut of roast beef.
Her lack of aggression seemed to satisfy the table, and one by one, people slowly went back to ignoring her and redirecting their focus to another topic of conversation.
Not even a minute later, Morrigan cackled far louder than required at something Azriel had said, causing Nesta's shoulders to inch up toward her ears. The hand that held her fork had fallen still, and Nesta’s other hand was fluttering subtly on the table, her index finger digging sharply into the thin skin around her thumbnail. The pain was a welcome balm to her agitated nerves.
She forced her hand to straighten out and lie still when she noticed Cassian's gaze on her. The action only sent her pent-up nerves straight to her spine, where she feared they would spontaneously combust and cause a meltdown in front of the whole table.
But then she met his eyes, and something in her heart choked, then settled.
She’d long forgotten the true hazel of his eyes. Hazel could be any color and every color, but looking at Cassian now, even from this distance in this weak lighting, her brain was starting to fill in the gaps of her memory. So many shades of brown and yellow speckled with blue-green colliding together, reminding her of undiscovered planets.
He was the first to pull his gaze away, but it was slow and required effort. Spell broken, Nesta’s own gaze dropped to her plate. At the very least, she no longer felt like ripping her fingernails off.
Nesta was left fairly alone for the rest of the meal, but the odd tension that had formed with Cassian and spread over the rest of the room didn’t dissipate. Even when everyone once again became lost to bantering and arguing with each other, Nesta felt the sense of awareness burning along every line of her body. She tried telling herself it was just in her head, but when she caught Amren sneaking a glance at her out of the corner of her eye, it was undeniable.
As more and more people finished their plates, they got up from the table to use the bathroom, talk on the phone, or wander into the adjacent drawing room to make use of its minibar. Among the noise, Nesta quietly excused herself and made a beeline for the emptiest part of the first floor of the house.
Alone in the kitchen, she finally allowed herself a deep intake of air. It felt like her first breath all night.
Shuffling toward the liquor cabinet, she pulled the first bottle of red wine she could find and grabbed herself a glass. Low footsteps behind her made her look over her shoulder before she could open the bottle.
It was just Cassian. Though the sight of him made her insides flutter, she didn't think he would judge her for drinking, so she turned back to her glass and uncorked the bottle.
"I needed some air," he spoke after a few moments of silence. Nesta nodded as she filled her glass perhaps a little too high. He took a few more steps toward the counter where she stood, and she belatedly realized that he was trying to engage in conversation with her.
Her brain scrambled for something to say, and just as she thought of asking him if he wanted some wine as well, Cassian was speaking again. "I'm sorry for everyone's behavior back there. It was super embarrassing."
Oh no, Nesta internally groaned. She'd almost rather put up with Feyre's lecturing and Amren's nitpicking than deal with an apology.
"They're not usually like this," he promised. "Someone must have spiked their drinks tonight."
Nesta didn't bother telling him that he was wrong. She didn't know how to react to such an unexpected statement. "There's nothing to apologize for," she said, sounding stilted and awkward. "I'm not really a sensitive person."
"Still," he said, looking up at her, "the vibes in this place are so weird tonight." He shuddered to himself. "Don't you feel weird?"
Was he referring to his friends, the sharp-edged way they spoke to her, or something else? "Maybe because it's your first time back in a long time." Nesta shrugged. "I'm used to it."
"Well, I'm not. In fact, I can think of a dozen other things I'd rather be doing right now than having dinner here."
Nesta glanced at him, her eyes widened in surprise. "Haven't you missed your friends, though? They're so excited to see you."
He shook his head. "This is honestly, like, our fifth meeting together since I got back. I see them all the time."
"Ah."
"What about you?" he pressed. "Do you want to stay or go?"
Nesta looked around the kitchen as if someone else might have walked in during their conversation and he was talking to them instead. "What do you mean?" she said.
He let out a small laugh. "Do you want to ditch this dinner?"
"But—wouldn't that be rude?"
He shrugged as if the consequences didn't matter much to him. "The door's right there." He gestured with his head toward the hallway leading to the foyer.
Nesta didn't know what overcame her. She chugged as much of her glass of wine as she could and set it down with a thump, looking at Cassian. Less than a minute later, they were speeding out the front door on quiet feet, stifling laughter and the jingle of car keys as they went.
***
"What about my car?" Nesta asked as Cassian started up his Ford truck, turning the heat up to full blast.
"We'll come back for it later tonight," he promised, shifting into drive and pulling away from the hulking mansion. "After everyone's gone, so you don't have to run into them."
"That'll take hours, though," she said, chewing the inside of her cheek. There was never such thing as a short dinner when Feyre's inner circle were gathered together.
"I've got hours to kill," he shrugged, then glanced over at her. "You can go home whenever you want, though. I can drop you off or take you back to your car."
Nesta took half a second to mourn her dream of cuddling in bed with her books all night, then got past it. This wasn't such a bad replacement for her former plans, anyhow.
"What should we do?" she asked, hesitant excitement bubbling in her stomach. Cassian opened his mouth to answer, but she cut him off. "Should we go to the movies? I wanted to see that new horror comedy—"
"I thought it wasn't out for another week."
"Oh." She sat back, trying to think of something else. "Is Nude still in theaters?"
Cassian chuckled. "Don't think so, Nes."
She ignored how the nickname made her feel. "What about Back to Black?"
"Director's a creep."
"The new Marvel movie?"
"Terrible reviews, and you hate mega-franchises."
True. "...Maybe we can just keep driving around?" she finally suggested.
Cassian surrendered with a cheery grin. "I love that idea." He glided into the right lane and made a turn that led them straight onto the highway. The truck hummed as it accelerated from 45 to 70.
In the dark lit only by the dashboard lights, Nesta kicked her heels off and stretched out in her seat, letting herself smile. She could hardly remember why she'd been struggling for air back at that dinner. This, driving at night with Cassian in silence, was one of the most relaxing feelings she'd ever experienced.
Even so, she was surprised to find she didn't mind it much when Cassian eventually interrupted the quiet.
“I really did miss you.” His words took her by surprise, and it must have showed in the look she threw him.
He chuckled lowly. “Is it that hard to believe?”
It was, actually, though Nesta didn’t tell him that. “I just don’t remember us being that close,” she said, shrugging. They’d rarely talked without Feyre or one of her friends in the room, and when they had talked alone, the conversations hadn’t been very deep. He’d tried to tease and challenge her in the beginning, as she was sure he did with every worthy person who came his way, but when Nesta was unresponsive to his efforts, he eventually dropped the asshole act.
“We weren’t,” Cassian agreed, “but sometimes your favorite people are the ones you see the least.”
That made Nesta’s breath hitch. He couldn’t mean it the way she thought he meant it. She couldn’t be his favorite.
"I had a huge crush on you when we first met, you know," he added.
Nesta’s shoulders deflated, in either relief or disappointment, she didn’t know. Of course; that was what he’d meant. She gave him a dry look in response. "Yeah, I sensed that."
He did a double-take from the road to her. "You did?"
It had been painfully obvious any time they were in the same room together, with the weight of Cassian's gaze feeling like hefting a barbell of anxiety and discomfort and embarrassment. She remembered how her skin would itch with how she blushed, how her throat would close up and her breathing would shallow out. It had felt like suffering from an allergic reaction.
Nesta didn't say any of that to Cassian now, though. "What made you stop liking me?" she asked instead, propping her elbow on the passenger-side window and leaning her head against her fist. She was genuinely curious to hear his answer. It had happened before she'd fallen too deep into her hole of depression and brought shame onto Feyre and the Archeron name, so it couldn't have been the fact that she'd been a hot mess. "Was I too rude? Too quiet? Too boring?" How had she let him down?
"What?" Cassian looked over at her like she'd gone insane. "No."
"Then what was it that made you stop liking me?" Because Cassian had stopped liking Nesta at a certain point. After a few awkward conversations and a failed attempt to spend time alone with her, Cassian had pulled away from Nesta as if he'd never known her in the first place. The heavy gazes lessened, then stopped altogether, and the conversation would rarely go past a friendly "hello" up until the day Cassian had left for the Peace Corps.
Cassian bit down on his lip, looking both amused and flustered by her scientific questioning. "I didn't stop liking you. I just stopped chasing you."
That information took Nesta by surprise. She was stunned, still figuring out what to say in response when Cassian continued, "I was too young and too stupid back then. I didn't know how to make decisions for myself, and I let other people convince me not to go after the things I wanted. I regretted it for a long time while I was away overseas, but eventually I just had to get over it, you know?"
Nesta blinked, staring out the windshield and saying nothing.
He'd wanted her. Even when she was drinking and fucking her way through every bar and club in the city, he'd wanted her, all the way up until the day he left—and even after that, if she was understanding him correctly.
"Anyway, what about you?" Cassian said, changing the topic. "You been seeing anyone lately?"
"Why? Are you asking for yourself?" She meant it to be taunting, but her natural deadpan tone made most things she said sound serious.
Cassian made a noise that sounded like a choked cough. "It was just a question."
She tried not to be disappointed at his response, even though it was no surprise that he was over her by now. Why would he be interested in reigniting something that had never sparked in the first place?
"No," she finally answered, her voice sounding small but not weak. "I haven't really been interested in meeting people lately, not even for casual hookups."
He threw a glance over at her, the surprise subtle but there. "Can I ask why?"
She shrugged, never having had to explain the answer to anyone else before. "I don’t like putting myself in situations where men want my body. I already feel like a blowup sex doll as it is, so it’s better to not date at all."
"Why would you feel like that?" Cassian said, the slightest hint of alarm and concern creeping into his tone. "Did somebody call you that?"
She shifted in her seat, feeling awkward at being put on the spot. "I don’t know, it’s just the way my body’s built. I’m always getting asked whether I do porn or have an OnlyFans. People always give me their unwanted opinions on my boobs or my hips or my butt."
"Who said that to you?" he demanded.
"I was a go-go dancer, remember?"
"That's not an answer." His voice was hard. "Or an excuse."
"I only told you because you asked why I don't date," she said sharply, suddenly cold. "I don't need your pity." And she was regretting opening up so much to him so soon.
Cassian opened his mouth to speak and she cut him off before he could decide to pity her anyway. "What would you do with the names of my harrassers, anyway? Find them and beat them up? Give them a real piece of your mind?" she mocked. "You can barely stand up to your own friends when they're being dickheads, tough guy."
Cassian made a choking sound, which soon devolved into wheezing, and when Nesta finally looked over at him she found that his shoulders were shaking with restrained laughter. Her brows scrunched up in confusion, her nerves getting whiplash from the sudden shift in mood.
"Holy shit, there she is," he barely got out between laughs of disbelief. "Where the hell was she all this time?"
"Who?" Her bafflement must have been written all over her face.
"The proud Nesta I first met so many years ago," he stated. "The one who'd rather choke to death on her own arrogance than give in to someone else."
Nesta felt like he'd just pointed to an obvious crumbling corpse that everyone else was trying hard to forget was in the room. That prideful Nesta was the opposite of the person she was trying to be these days, even though her ghost might have made an appearance when she'd been a little unnecessarily rude to Cassian just now.
She only shook her head, denying that old version of herself's right to exist. "I don't have the time or energy to be that person anymore. And I hate getting into fights. Losing all the time gets exhausting fast."
Instead of responding with something witty, Cassian drummed his thumbs against the steering wheel, his tongue poking into his cheek as he clearly thought something over. "The Nesta I knew never used to lose an argument," he finally said.
"A lot of things change once you lose all your financial and social capital," she murmured, almost too quiet for him to hear. It was the closest they'd gotten all night to touching upon that uncomfortable period of her life—Alcoholic Whore Gone Wild, as Amren had coined it. But she couldn't bear exposing that part of her past to Cassian, even though he'd already witnessed it with his own two eyes. She refused to say more, not wanting him to remember what a mess she'd been only a few years ago.
"Is it Rhys and the rest of the guys?" Cassian said, plowing right through the topic she was trying to avoid. "Did they outnumber you into changing so you'd fit into his PR campaigns or something?"
Cassian was scarily close to being on the nose of what had actually gone down, and it made Nesta flare her nostrils in defense. "I don't think we're close enough to be talking about things like this." She was back to being cold, even though it required more effort this time. "Change the subject."
"Fine," he said casually, though not even the dark could hide the subtle tightness of his jaw. "Let's go back to that sex-doll thing then. Did that start before or after I left?"
"Are you my therapist?" she felt the need to resist against him.
"Do you ever answer questions without another question?" he shot back. When Nesta still refused to budge, he released a sigh. "You just never seemed to me like someone who gave a shit about how others saw you. That was what made you Nesta. So yeah, sue me if I wanna know more about how your pretty little brain works."
Nesta swallowed his words like a rough pill, doing her best not to linger on the word "pretty". Now that he didn’t seem so uncomfortably shocked by her confession, she twisted toward him like she was telling a juicy story. Honestly, she felt a perverted excitement at getting to discuss parts of her life that she never got to speak about otherwise. "I used to not care that much about it," she started, "but one day while I was alone at home I saw my ass in skinny jeans in the mirror. I don’t know, it just flipped a switch in me. I felt so dirty. Like an object to be used instead of a person. And I realized that was how most people probably perceived me, too. It freaked me out so bad I just retreated from men and the dating pool altogether."
She felt dirty going out in certain clothes, and dirtier still when other people looked at her in those clothes. Even the dress she’d worn tonight, formfitting with the neckline cut out to accentuate her chest, had required her to avoid full-length mirrors while getting ready. She knew it wasn’t normal to feel the way she felt, but she also knew there wasn’t much to be done about it.
Cassian let out a low whistle. "That’s fucked."
"Is that all you have to say?"
"No." His answer was smooth. "But I think you'll get mad at everything else I want to say, so I'll leave it at that. It's really fucked you have to feel that way, Nesta."
Her swallow was tight, and she was more than a little surprised. Never in a million years could the Nesta of three years ago have imagined Cassian talking with her about things like this, and more than that, comforting her.
In truth, she had thought about Cassian too while he was gone. She wouldn’t say she’d missed him, because she didn’t know how to miss something she never had, but there’d been an empty longing on the rare occasions she thought of him. A bittersweet desire for what could have been, if only she’d been less of a mess and more of an easy person to be around.
She didn’t know how to tell him this, so she settled for, “For what it's worth, I really am happy that you're back.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Cassian stifle a smile. He roughly cleared his throat and changed the subject. “You wanna go to Town Square and see the Christmas lights?”
“Sounds good.”
“Okay.”
Nesta tucked her feet beneath herself and got comfortable, and they continued driving in companionable silence. Twinkling holiday lights and towering decorations passed in a blur outside the windows, and at one point Cassian stopped at an In-N-Out to order fries and a milkshake. "You didn't eat much back at the house," was his only explanation as he handed the food over to Nesta.
She accepted the kindness without complaint, happily munching on fries and melting into her heated seat. Something about the warm truck made her forget time was moving, but the next time she pulled her gaze away from the windshield to check the clock, she saw it was already midnight.
Cassian seemed to take note of it at the same time she did. “Damn, I have an early morning tomorrow…” He trailed off, not stating the obvious—that their little getaway drive had to come to an end.
“Me too,” Nesta lied, so she didn’t sound stupid for wanting to stay like this, driving in silence.
She turned on her phone for the first time all night, finding no less than five missed calls and a handful of upset texts from her sisters. Holding back a grimace, she shut her phone off again. "Maybe you can drop me off at home instead of at Feyre’s."
"You sure?" Cassian looked over at her. "What about your car?"
She waved a hand. "I'll get it back later. I just want to be home right now."
Cassian didn’t hesitate before making a U-turn off the left lane. “You still live in Brentwood?” he asked casually.
Brentwood, with the roach-infested grimy one-bedroom she’d inhabited in the depths of her depression, back when it was all she could afford and all she could stomach to come home to after a long day of self-hatred.
Unlike most, Cassian had never judged her for it. He’d even shown up on her ratty doorstep one Christmas Eve to drop off gifts from her sisters, saying nothing but that he hoped she would be okay, and to have a merry Christmas. There was no direct mention of her obvious miserable state, but no tense avoidance of it, either. It had been the most ordinary interaction Nesta’d had that year: short, sweet, and simple.
Nesta blinked herself out of the sudden memory. Being reunited with Cassian was bringing back too many moments she’d forgotten had happened. She shook her head, even though he probably couldn’t see. “I moved to Goldridge.”
“Ooh, fancy,” he teased. He pulled out his phone and held it out to her. “Put your address into the GPS.”
Clicking on his phone, Nesta found notifications for several missed calls and texts on his screen as well. They were at least double the amount she had, but she didn’t let her eyes linger on the messages as she swiped up onto the home screen. Of course he didn’t have a password on his phone. He could be so dumb sometimes.
Typing her address into his Maps app, she turned the navigation on and set his phone down in the cupholder between them.
Cassian glanced over to it and squinted to read her address while he drove. "That's only twenty minutes away from where I live."
"Really?" Nesta perked up, intrigued. In the past, Cassian had always been an hour or so away, considering the heavy traffic between Velars and it's poorer outskirt cities. Now he was basically her neighbor. "But isn’t it far from your friends and family?”
She'd purposely chosen her current home for the distance it placed between her and said friends and family.
Cassian shrugged as he merged onto the highway. “Not too far, but not too close, either.”
The rest of the drive passed with light conversation between them. Addicted to how the low rumble of his voice paired with the darkness of the night roads made her feel fuzzy and sleepy, Nesta let Cassian ramble to her about his time in Tunisia while she leaned back in her seat, her eyes millimeters away from drooping shut.
Sometime later, Cassian pulled up to the curb of her brownstone townhouse and put the truck into park. He let out a low whistle as he inspected the tall windows and the quality brickwork, then looked back at Nesta, who was still blinking the sleep out of her eyes, with an embarrassed grin. “I’m a fool. I completely forgot to ask how you ended up with your dance studio.”
Nesta opened her mouth to tell him about her business, but Cassian shook his head fast. “Don’t tell me now. I want to hear the whole story, sometime when the night isn’t right about to end.”
Sometime other than now…? “What do you mean?” she voiced.
He met her gaze with serious intention, no amusement or nervousness to be found. “I’d like to see you again, Nesta Archeron.”
The words hung between them like the start of a promise.
Despite the sudden warmth flooding her insides, Nesta was hesitant with her answer. She still didn't completely trust Cassian—nor herself when she was around him. She didn't want to spiral into obsession over him just for him to break her heart. She still needed to test the rock face of this thing between them, checking for cracks and loose areas that could give way. “I’ll think about it," she finally said.
Cassian's lips slowly curled up into a clever smile, looking like he'd just won a prize. "Give me your keys." He held his broad hand out.
Nesta frowned. "What for?"
"I'll bring your car over in the morning. It'll be a quick drop-off."
"You really don't need to..." She trailed off as Cassian reached over and stuck his hand in her tiny purse, quickly finding and pulling out the shiny keys. He jingled them in her face. "Thanks for these," he said, as if she were the one doing him a favor.
She opened her mouth, closed it, then nodded. She'd given up on trying to keep pace with their conversations, especially not when he rendered her speechless so often. "I should get inside now," she said.
"Don't freeze on the way to the door," he said, even though it couldn't have been more than a ten second walk. Again, was he teasing or being genuine? Or somehow both at the same time?
"Get home safe," she responded, because that was the only phrase her encyclopedia for social etiquette held right now. She exited the car and reached inside again to grab her purse. She might have left it behind so she'd have an excuse to linger in the pinecone-scented warmth of his truck for a bit longer. Eventually, she had to force her head out of the front seat, away from Cassian's kind smile and gorgeous eyes. "Goodnight, Cassian." Nesta shut the door between them, eager to end their interaction quickly so she could go inside and spend the whole night thinking about him.
Even with the door shut and the windows too dark to make out Cassian's face, Nesta swore she could feel it in her bones when he murmured back, "Goodnight, Nesta."
***
a/n: the gifts were not from her sisters…but that’s a story for later (never)
I haven’t read Acotar but I’ve read snippets online lmao and kinda get the jizzzzz. I keep seeing it as highly recommended and I know there’s still books to be released and I keep seeing the whole 3 sisters and 3 brothers gets together thing and that sounds boring (no shade to anyone preferring that). Anyways is it still worth the read? Does it live up to the hype?
Thanks.
sjm is the most frustrating white woman i’ve ever dealt with in my life and that’s coming from someone who reads dark romance
acotar is badly written and each book takes five years (no exaggeration) to come out only to be worse than the one that came before it. sure some parts of it are buzzy but unless you’re a fey/sand lover it’s hell on earth out here. acotar single-handedly created the badly written fantasy romance genre, causing a decade’s worth of damage to fictional straight couples everywhere. the elain love triangle is one of the worst things to happen to society
i would recommend just reading acotar fic honestly, they have the same characters but most are better plotted than the books. or if you want fun low quality writing with a buzzy enemies to lovers romance, read shatter me. i read it in 2016 right after reading acotar for the first time and it’s basically the same high with way less of a headache
If you are still taking Elucien requests, maybe Lucien falling sick and Elain going all mother hen on him
Cold Hands, Warm Touch
a very long canon-verse oneshot, post-acosf
***
Elain knew something was wrong when she woke up in the Band of Exiles' manor that morning.
There was something uncomfortable lodged in the back of her throat, irritating enough to have her clearing her voice all the way through breakfast. If she'd still been human, it would have been a telltale sign that she was about to develop a sore throat—and a cold not long after that. But she was fae now, and fae simply did not catch colds.
Yet as the day passed, her not-quite-sore throat was soon joined by a dull headache, and she found her hand reaching up to rub her chest from time to time with no apparent reason. Vassa was the first to pick up on it.
"Something wrong with the mating bond?" the redhead inquired that afternoon, looking up from the book of spells she was reading.
Elain quickly dropped her hand from her chest as if she'd just been caught stealing from a cookie jar. "What?" she spluttered. "No, of course not."
As far as Elain was concerned, there was no mating bond. Even if she was holing up in the same manor as Lucien, providing her seer abilities to help take down Koschei—and more importantly, making a point to her family that she was capable of participating in Things—the mating bond was no more or less relevant to her than it had been back when she'd ignore Lucien for months at a time. If he couldn't pick up a hint by now, well, it was hardly her fault.
Vassa only raised a brow. “Then are you having chest pains? Those are rarely a good sign.”
“I’m not having chest pains.” Elain squeezed her eyes shut against Vassa’s questions, her headache sharpening in its pounding. Hell, maybe she was getting sick. The dark gray clouds slowly overtaking the sun outside weren't helping her mood, either.
When she reopened her eyes, she found her hand had again drifted toward her chest, as if it could clasp the invisible thread there that tied her to a male she didn’t want.
And then what would her hand do? Elain wondered distantly. Would it snap the thread in half, or tug on it the way a child tugs on their blanket, blindly seeking comfort from it?
Elain didn’t need comfort right now, though. She didn’t know why such a thought had just passed through her head, but she was going to blame her headache for it.
“When are the others getting back?” Elain asked Vassa, affecting a casual tone. To say Lucien’s name in front of a woman like the firebird queen was to invite teasing and harassment into one’s life. Never mind that he and Jurian had been gone conducting work on the continent for almost a month now, and being in the manor alone with Vassa was starting to get dreadfully awkward.
Elain’s efforts weren’t enough, though, because Vassa still had the nerve to smirk as she said, “Give it a few more days. It’s not like the boys can winnow.”
Elain always shifted uncomfortably at those words—“the boys”, which implied “Vassa’s boys”. She avoided thinking about the pink couch in the manor’s sitting room, which she’d heard far too many stories about in the days that Lucien and Jurian had been gone.
It was nearing dinnertime when the sound of heavy knocking rang throughout the manor, cutting through the patter of rain drenching the world outside. Elain, who was about to make her way down the grand staircase toward the dining room, paused at the top of the steps as Vassa went to answer the door. The queen threw a questioning look up at Elain as she took hold of the knob—they were the only two people in the manor and its surrounding area, and neither of them were expecting anybody. Elain clenched the railing with her hands, wondering if this was one of those situations where it'd be best to have a weapon at hand.
But then Vassa swung open the door to the storming night. “What are you two doing back so soon?” she said in surprise. She moved to the side to usher two hooded figures inside, drenched and shivering from the rain. Jurian barked a curse. “Fuck, it's freezing outside.”
Vassa hurriedly shut the door and turned to Jurian and Lucien. On instinct, Elain's feet moved toward the steps, wanting to join the group and find out what was wrong, but she forcibly held herself back. They weren't her group of friends to join, and people tended to speak more freely when she wasn't nearby, anyway.
Elain took notice of how Jurian's arm was occupied with supporting Lucien's weight, and again her hand drifted to her chest. Lucien still had his hood on, though his back was turned to Elain, and he was the only one still visibly shivering at this point.
“This idiot,” Jurian's voice drifted up to where Elain waited at the top of the stairs, “went and got himself stabbed with ash wood and cut our mission short by five days. He's recovering just fine,” he added at the fear crossing Vassa's face, “but the wound was prone to infection and we thought it best to return. The storm hit as soon as we made land here, and he's been down with a fever since last night.”
“And what of you?” Vassa’s voice was sharp, pointed in its concern.
“I,” Jurian sounded on the verge of passing out, “could use a warm bed and some soup.”
“I really am feeling fine,” Lucien spoke up for the first time since he’d entered the house. Elain flinched from where she stood, not having been prepared for the sound of his voice after going weeks without hearing it. It was hoarse and weakened from sickness, but it was his voice, and it made her want to cover her ears and run until she could escape the flipping sensation in her stomach.
Vassa just looked both of the males over and shook her head. “Come on,” she waved them along, “you both need to get changed and fed. And Lucien—”
Lucien chose that moment to sneeze.
“Jurian,” Vassa amended. “Give me the rundown on what you discovered on the continent.”
They all moved toward the stairs with that, and Elain instinctively moved back. She ducked into a darkened hall before either Jurian or Lucien could spy her and stayed there, waiting like a coward until she heard the group walk past toward their own rooms.
Elain chose to forgo dinner to spend the evening hiding out in her room. Only an hour passed this way before her restlessness got the better of her and she emerged once again, planning to go straight to the kitchens and knead her frustrations out on some dough. She was uncharacteristically anxious, despite knowing that Vassa could take care of Lucien and Jurian just fine on her own. The same thoughts kept plaguing Elain over and over again: why hadn't she felt it when Lucien got stabbed? Why had she felt it when he fell ill this morning? Was he alright? Was he in pain?
The bond made all these questions unavoidable, no matter how much Elain did or didn't want to care about him.
She was caught halfway to her destination by Vassa, who was carrying a small pail of water with a washcloth flung over the rim. “Oh, Elain.” Vassa stopped her in her tracks with an all-business look. “If you're heading for the kitchens, could you grab some dinner and bring it up to Lucien? I don't think he's eaten anything all day.”
Elain leaned away from the other woman, taken aback despite her best efforts. “He hasn't eaten anything yet? What have you been doing this whole time then?”
Vassa's flame-blue eyes narrowed on Elain in a way that would send shudders through most people. “Taking care of our other friend Jurian, who lacks a fae immune system and also caught a cold during the journey here. I cannot nurse two males to health at once, and it's past time you started pulling your weight around here.”
“It's been over an hour since he returned,” Elain replied in cold indignation. There was no excuse for leaving a wounded and sick male unattended for that long.
“Then you'd better get to feeding him, hadn't you?” Without another glance, Vassa pushed past Elain for the staircase.
Repressing her fury, Elain stormed to the kitchen to prepare a tray of food. Ridiculous—just because Vassa had clear preference for one of her so-called boys over the other, didn't mean that Lucien should have to suffer. It definitely didn't mean that Elain should be the one burdened with taking care of him.
Except she knew that if Lucien had been any other male, she would have looked after him without hesitation. No one deserved to be ill and injured alone. But this was yet another drawback of the mating bond: Elain wasn't allowed to treat Lucien as if he were any other male. She couldn't grant him the same kindness and concern she'd grant anyone else without everyone in her vicinity staring and thinking loud enough to hear: She must love him, she must want to accept the bond, when is the date for the mating ceremony?
She brought the tray up to Lucien’s room and paused outside the door. She’d never wandered into his wing of the manor before, much less his bedroom. It was all terrifyingly uncomfortable.
Elain put on her most bland face and balanced the tray on one hip, knocking briefly with her free hand before entering the room.
A fire blazed in the hearth to her left, sending a blast of heat across her skin. But Elain didn’t take notice of the borderline stuffy warmth as she honed in on Lucien, who lay still beneath a mountain of blankets on the bed.
Crossing the room, she set the food on the nightstand and stood over Lucien, unsure of what to do now.
"Lucien," she tried saying, although his name came out half-whispered. Even after all this time, it felt foreign on her tongue.
She tried saying his name again louder, and when she got no response, she reached over and lightly shook the pile of blankets. The figure beneath it only trembled and clutched the quilts closer to himself.
Growing impatient, Elain tore the covers back and snapped, “Lucien!”
The male in question made a pained noise, taking an eternity to peel his eyes open. When his gaze finally landed on Elain, part-metal and part-russet brown, he blinked several times. “Elain?”
The sound of her name coming from that voice sent an involuntary shiver down Elain’s spine. He sounded nothing like his usual self, the poor thing.
Elain shook off the chills and said, “I brought dinner. You must eat.” Or else he would only get worse, was what she left unsaid.
“I see,” Lucien said. His eyes slipped back closed, and he added nothing else.
“Lucien,” Elain prodded again. Gods, this must have been the most she’d said his name aloud in years.
“I’m doing it,” he murmured, even though he was clearly not doing it.
He really must have been sick, if he wasn't showing a hint of difference that Elain had come here to his room of her own volition. Or maybe a month away had finally hit the nail on the head of what Elain suspected had started a long time ago: Lucien was losing interest in her.
She snatched up the steaming bowl of potato-and-beef stew from the tray and shoved it under Lucien's nose, feeling both annoyed at the male and sorry for him. “If you don't get up to eat this, I’ll have to feed you myself.”
Those weren't the words that had intended to leave her mouth at all, but it was too late to take them back. Elain didn't have much experience in making threats, and this was apparently the best she could do.
Lucien cracked his eyes open to look up at her, but did nothing else. As if waiting to call her out on her bluff.
Huffing aloud, Elain took a determined seat at the edge of the bed and shoved a spoon into the stew. "I'll do it," she threatened again, scooping up a spoonful.
"Take your time," he said. The words would have been more taunting if he hadn't had to turn his head into his pillow to cough right after.
Elain winced, but managed to shove away her pity enough to extend the spoonful of stew warily toward Lucien, like offering a hand out to a rabid dog that might bite it off.
Lucien was unamused by her bedside manner, yet he opened his mouth to accept the food. Elain managed to awkwardly shovel stew into his mouth a total of two times before he finally lost his patience, snapping his limbs out from under the covers and grabbing the spoon and bowl from Elain. "Give me that," he snarled.
Elain gave up the food with relief.
Lucien's skin was uncharacteristically pallid and his eyes were tired and watery, which is how Elain knew he must have been starving to be able to gather the energy to feed himself. Yet his chewing was slow and unenthusiastic; Elain wasn't sure if he could even taste the food in his current state.
"How are you feeling?" she made herself ask. It was only the polite thing to do.
"Cold. Weak," he grunted in answer. "Did you make this?"
Elain half-thought she was dreaming, for she couldn't remember the last time she'd held a casual conversation like this with Lucien, without his pining and their unresolved mating bond standing between them. "I did; they're yesterday's leftovers."
She had once been hypervigilant and paranoid about feeding Lucien her cooking and accidentally accepting the mating bond as consequence. She'd refused to cook for the Band of Exiles in her first days at the manor, and Lucien had been the one to finally catch on to her worries. He'd restrained himself from laughing in her face and instead explained that that was not how mating bonds worked, all with an amused little smile on his lips. That had been one of the only times Lucien had broken their unspoken agreement of ignoring each other since Elain had come to the Human Lands.
"How—where is your wound?" Elain awkwardly inquired.
Lucien took a moment too long to respond, entirely focused on downing his food. “Left shoulder. Got it in a tavern brawl.”
“Someone was carrying ash blades with them in a tavern brawl?” Elain’s eyes widened. She honed in on Lucien’s left arm, which he held tucked close to his body. What had he been doing in a tavern brawl, anyway?
He shrugged with his good shoulder. “Anti-magic sentiment is strong among humans on the continent, and I doubt all of this helped.” He gestured to his whirring enchanted eye and the scar framing it. “Why do you ask?” Why do you care?
Elain didn’t care. However, she was genuinely curious about something. "How come I didn't know you were stabbed?" The question had been poking at her ever since she'd found out about his injury. There was a lot she still didn't understand about the workings of the mating bond, but sensing when one's mate was gravely injured seemed like a requirement for it, didn't it?
Lucien chuckled, but it came out as more of a bitter rasp. "Usually only stronger bonds can sense such things. Especially accepted ones."
Elain didn't flinch. "I felt your sickness today, though. I felt ill as you felt ill." She knew now that was what had caused the odd sore throat plaguing her all day.
Lucien was silent for a long moment, his spoon hanging limply from his hand. He coughed a little and continued eating. "You must be mistaken," he said through bites. "It was only coincidence. You should take a draught if you're not feeling well, though."
Despite knowing he was being dishonest, Elain accepted his words with relief. She feared that pushing the matter would be like opening a door with blood pooling from beneath it, instead of choosing to turn her head and keep walking.
She changed the subject to another matter that had been irritating her recently. "Vassa told me some interesting stories while you and Jurian were gone." She was aware of the neutral distance between her and Lucien as she spoke, and she maintained it with a straight back and a blank face.
"Did she?" Lucien seemed surprised at this, which irritated Elain for reasons she couldn't explain.
"I couldn't tell which ones were true and which ones she made up to play around with me, but..." Elain toyed with a stray thread on the quilt tucked around Lucien.
"But what?"
Elain did not consider herself a calculating female, but her next words had been stewing in her head for quite some time now. "Have you ever... lain with Jurian and Vassa? Together at the same time," she added. "On the pink couch, specifically."
Lucien choked on his stew, which quickly evolved into a coughing fit. Elain only watched unempathetically and waited for him to catch his breath.
“She told you that?” he rasped.
“Is it true?” Elain repeated. She was only curious, after all.
Lucien put down his bowl. “You were in love with Azriel before he fell for someone else. You would have run away with him if you'd had the opportunity.” His words were frank, matter-of-fact.
“But I never—did anything with him.” All this time she'd thought Lucien had been celibate out of loyalty to the mating bond.
“You didn't get the chance to.” Before he left you for another female, was what went unsaid. “But I'm not blind, and I could see your intentions every time you two were in the same room.”
Elain stiffened. “I asked a question about you. What does this have to do with me?”
“At least I've never developed feelings for someone while being openly mated to another, is what I'm saying.”
"Are you—are you judging me?" Elain said, incredulous and indignant. She owed him nothing. Where did he get the right?
"Before you try to judge me for fooling around? Yes, of course." His response was smooth and light-hearted, diffusing some of the tension in the room.
"So you admit to doing it." She raised a brow. Whether it made her a hypocrite or not, she would judge all she wanted to judge.
"I admit to nothing." Lucien shrugged, though he clearly looked like he wanted to laugh at her.
Elain grabbed a bread roll off the tray and stuffed it into his unexpecting mouth before he could do such a thing. "Eat your bread," she snapped.
She looked away as he choked on the roll and struggled not to imagine the implications of his words. She hated the image of it. Was every time that Lucien had come around to Velaris, looking miserable while pining after her, been a lie if he'd been having so much...fun behind the scenes?
She didn't know why she cared either way. If anything, it should have been a relief that Lucien hadn't remained celibate while waiting around for her. It would have been, well, pathetic if he had.
Lucien thankfully said nothing about her behavior, and ate for a handful of more minutes before groaning and pushing his bowl back onto the tray, then pushing the entire tray away from himself. "No more, please." He shoved his arms back under the blankets as soon as he was done, trembling with cold despite the blazing fire.
“Ah,” Elain said, not really knowing what to do now that her task was over. “Is there anything else you need?” she asked, quite insincerely.
Lucien caught her false politeness, that metal eye narrowing at her in disapproval. "Thank you for dinner. I apologize for all the trouble it must have brought you," he gritted out.
Elain thought he was pissed at her innocent question, until she realized he was clenching his teeth together to stop them from chattering. He wasn't just cold, Elain noticed for the first time that night—he was freezing.
She opened her mouth to say something else, but he’d already turned his back to her, facing the fire and burrowing into his covers.
Elain was more than ready to leave; she'd already gone far beyond than was required of her by making sure Lucien ate his food. She was practically a saint at this point. It was time for her to get the hell out of this stuffy overheated room and back to her own bed.
Elain picked up the half-finished dinner, but didn’t turn toward the door. She just stood there unable to move. “I’ll leave you to it then,” she said.
Lucien hummed in response, eyes shut once again, but his shoulders were shaking.
Elain gritted her teeth against the emotions rising within her. She needed to leave, but she physically couldn't move, not with him trembling like he was trapped naked in a snowstorm. His muscles would start to ache from how violent his chills were.
It was the damn mating bond that made her put the tray back down and put one foot in front of the other. It must have been the mating bond, because Elain would never willingly walk toward Lucien and say to his back, "Move over."
"Moving hurts." Even his words came out in a shiver.
"The other side of the bed is closer to the fire." Elain softened her voice, trying to sound more appealing.
Lucien still shook his head from beneath the blankets.
Elain gave up with a sigh. She crossed the room to stoke the fireplace a bit more before toeing out of her slippers and climbing into the empty half of the bed.
"Don't mention this to anyone ever," Elain said as she pulled his blankets over herself, refusing to look at Lucien. "Especially me."
"What?" Lucien sounded like he was trapped in a dream. He barely seemed to be aware that Elain was still in the room, much less in his bed.
The severity of his symptoms made her stomach turn with worry.
A year ago, Elain might have gone so far as to hope that whatever Lucien was sick with was serious. She might have hoped it would silently take him away in the night, leaving her without the burden of a mate and free to love whomever she wanted.
But she knew him too well now to even consider such a thing. She knew his quiet kindness, his dedication to his work, how his indulgence in clothes was the only indulgence he ever allowed himself. He'd never revealed those things about himself to her—she had observed it on her own over the course of days and weeks, out of the corner of her eye. Elain was forced to admit that, mating bond or not, Lucien was an objectively decent male. And she didn't want him to suffer or die.
Rolling closer to him, Elain wrapped her arms around his lean body and huddled into his burning hot chest, intertwining her legs with his. Her movements remained distant and practical, about as intimate as performing mouth-to-mouth rescuscitation on a dying man. Despite this, she swore she heard an audible sigh of relief shudder out of Lucien.
It made her feel oddly proud of herself. Elain was a dainty thing, with thin skin and permanently cold hands and feet. People didn't tend to appreciate her body for the warmth it could offer.
With the fire roaring at her back and Lucien at her front and the layers and layers of blankets atop them both, it was easily the most uncomfortable and stifled Elain had ever felt in her life. And yet she didn't move an inch, because Lucien's teeth still hadn't stopped chattering. This close to him, Elain could feel how the chills went all the way to his bones.
She tightened her limbs around him, as if it could get his muscles to rein in their uncontrollable shivering. At the same time, she breathed in his rain-soaked scent of lemongrass and verbena, hoping it would distract her from the unbearable heat all around her.
She knew he was asleep as soon as the thumping beat of his heart slowed into a staccato rhythm. The sound of it was enough to eventually lull her into a tired daze as well.
Whatever sleep she and Lucien found was short and restless. Lucien was troubled even while asleep, writhing and squirming in Elain's hold with either chills or discomfort. In her half-conscious state, Elain had to reach out several times throughout the night to grasp his injured arm so he wouldn't end up agitating it further. Throughout all of this, she clung to him like ivy to a stone wall.
Elain's eyes peeled open again much later in the night, closer to early morning. There was no particular reason for her waking up, only a sense of intuition that told her to check on Lucien.
Despite having fallen asleep facing him, Elain now found herself pushed away nearly to the edge of the mattress. Turning on her side, she further found that Lucien had kicked his blankets off to the foot of the bed, and sweat dampened the hair along his temples and neck. He was trembling again, but not from the cold this time. From pain.
Elain sat up, reaching out to touch the shoulder where he'd taken that ash blade—and caught herself at the last second. She scrambled out of the bed instead, circling it to come stand at Lucien's side. This way she felt more like a nurse and less like a concerned wife.
"Is your wound hurting?" she inquired, though she already knew the answer. She was surprised she couldn't feel the dull pain in her own shoulder as well, even if she was pretty sure mating bonds didn't work that way.
He whimpered, not quite awake or aware of himself yet. "I need Vassa," he whispered.
Elain froze.
"Or Jurian," he continued. "Anybody."
"I'm here," she murmured, keeping her voice low and even. "Tell me what you need."
"Vassa," he repeated.
Elain would absolutely not get Vassa, as Lucien was clearly delirious while his body was fighting to defeat his fever. And yet, jealousy twisted through her heart at the realization that Lucien had more friends than Elain would ever have.
She remembered seeing Vassa bringing water and a cloth up to Jurian's room, and she remembered how her childhood nurse would use a damp washcloth on her forehead to cool her body temperature down whenever she fell ill.
"Wait here," she said grimly. "I'll be right back."
Lucien was fully sobered up by the time Elain returned with a jug of cold water and a clean cloth. He'd removed his thick sweater and left only his thin undershirt on. "What time is it?" he rasped, eyeing her with more caution than he had all night. Gone was any of his sardonic ease from dinner or his eagerness to be held by her.
"Too late for you to be awake." Elain set the jug down on the nightstand with a thump and dunked the washcloth inside. "Close your eyes and go back to sleep, Lucien."
He released a deep sigh, but seemed too tired to argue with her.
Elain folded the cloth neatly and laid it across his forehead. She’d have been lying if she said she didn’t feel a twinge of satisfaction from the way his muscles visibly relaxed at the coldness.
A few minutes passed in silence with Elain sitting on the edge of the bed like this, resoaking the cloth whenever it got warm and occasionally wiping away beads of sweat forming along Lucien’s temples. She’d thought Lucien had fallen back asleep until he murmured without opening his eyes, “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
“What wasn’t supposed to be like this?” she responded in reflex.
“Us.” The short word was a mere breath on his lips.
Elain had no idea what he meant, but she knew she didn’t want to prod further. “Do you want me to put out the fire?” she asked instead. The heat must have been unbearable when his fever was trying to break.
“I’m sorry.” He clearly wasn’t listening to her anymore—he might not have even been awake.
Elain stood up swiftly and suddenly from the bed, nearly dropping the washcloth in the process. “I’ll put the fire out then,” she said, hurrying away from Lucien as if she could escape his too-honest words.
***
The majority of the night was a blur to Lucien, spent in half-dream and half-reality. He remembered soothing touches, flashes of golden brown hair, a dying fire, but he couldn’t for the life of him tell his waking moments apart from his sleeping ones.
When dawn finally broke, so did Lucien’s fever. He woke early that morning to an empty bed, but the scent of jasmine still lingered in the sheets, as if its owner had been here not too long ago.
Logic and sense made its slow return to Lucien, and he used them to piece together the discordant pieces from the night before. He remembered a tender kiss on his forehead—that had been a dream, obviously, and a lovely one at that. Elain putting out the fire in the middle of the night—that had likely been real, considering that the air was no longer stuffy but cold and still.
Elain feeding him: real. Elain trying to cool him down with a damp washcloth: real. Elain crawling into bed with him to help combat his chills: he couldn't judge the extent to which this memory was true. The scent she'd left behind told Lucien she'd been in his bed, yes, but to spend the whole night there with him, holding him? That part had to be a product of his imagination.
WIth a weary groan, Lucien pushed himself upright in bed. His body ached all over, but his throat and chest were clear and there was a renewed vigor in his bones.
He knew better than to feel bad that Elain had had to take care of him last night. No matter how much she disliked being around him, Lucien couldn't take the blame every time they were forced into interacting with each other. It wasn't like he'd asked her to sit at his bedside in worry and handfeed him stew.
That was what he told himself, despite how embarrassed he was over the whole situation. And yet he knew Elain deserved at the very least a thank you. He just wasn't sure how to deliver it to her.
If she had been Vassa, he could have simply gone up to her and expressed his gratitude to her in person. But Elain was Elain, and she had something of an intolerance toward Lucien's face.
In the two months she'd been living under the same roof as Lucien, she hadn't warmed up to him a bit. He'd been a fool to think getting Azriel out of the picture would have changed her feelings toward him in the slightest. Even without another male to turn her attentions to, Elain didn't want Lucien—not just in a romantic sense, but in any and every sense. And Lucien, feeling too pathetic to pretend otherwise, had accepted that fact and wholeheartedly given in to it. It both stomped on his pride and only annoyed Elain further to try to create a connection where there would never be one, so he'd since refused to attempt conversation with his mate unless it involved work or other practical matters.
Ironically, this was the only thing that had gotten Elain to relax around him in the entire time they'd known each other. Once she'd realized that he had no interest in her and only ever spoke to her out of necessity, it was like watching her entire demeanor thaw and a weight be lifted off her shoulders. She'd even started adding little comments during their brief conversations, notes about the weather and how her day was going and whatnot.
An older Lucien would have been torn between being hurt and being relieved at the subtle change in her behavior. The current Lucien didn't care either way, because he knew better than to hope for anything more. He knew their bond was a hollow one that would never be supported by real emotions. They were both better off seeking that sort of true love elsewhere.
Last night had been an exception of…unimaginable proportions, but it could be easily excused due to his sickness. Lucien had been delirious with pain and fever, and even Elain wasn't cruel enough to have ignored him in that state. Today, everything would go back to normal.
He couldn't thank her in person if she'd only end up uncomfortable for it. It would break their unspoken rule of only addressing each other out of necessity, so that morning he settled on writing her a note instead.
He kept it short and simple, not really knowing what he could add that wouldn't potentially irritate Elain. Thank you for last night, he printed on a plain card. Perfectly, painfully neutral, with no hidden expectations or connotations. Just the way Elain would like it.
Lucien placed his note in the kitchens for her to find, and left feeling quite proud of himself for how he'd handled that situation. The storm had long since passed, and the arrival of a new day brought a brisk energy with it. It was definitely the stew, he thought. It must have been imbued with healing powers.
***
and then elain gets the note and is like what is wrong with this cunt he cant even say five words to my face what a pussy i hate him
Please look into Claudia De la Cruz! She's a 2024 USA presidential candidate with the Party for Socialism and Liberation and she is actively participating in pro-Palestine protests. If you like her, please help spread her name!
i was wondering what her name was thank you for this!!!
Something major must have happened behind the scenes on EAW between eps 11 and 12 because the whole tone of the show shifted at that point and so much of what happened in eps 12 onwards doesn't even feel like it was written by the same person who wrote the first 11 eps. I have no idea WHAT happened but something clearly did.
something dark lmaoo like watching the bts even kang tae oh is like “are you sure these are my lines??”
