#vidalinav hc

[vidalinav]

I love thinking of Nesta as this quiet romantic person that she is in canon and so I love imagining Nesta going out to the city one day, just kind of walking through residential streets and discovering a small dress shop where she finds the dress she wants to wear for her mating ceremony. 

Nesta practically has a boutique back at the House of dresses laid out for it so she doesn’t need one, but they’re at the river house one day and Nesta wanders off. She goes into this small shop, where she sees dresses in the store front window. There’s an an attendant who asks what she’s searching for, what the occasion is but Nesta says she’s merely looking. She glides her fingers along fabric, a little bored, a little in her own mind. 

But then she sees it. It’s on a mannequin tucked in the back. Classic and romantic and something so Nesta, it should have her name sewed on the tag. Nesta wants to try it on so she calls over the attendant, desperate to see how she looks in it, how she feels.   

Then Nesta’s standing in front of a bunch of mirrors, twisting around to see how the fabric moves like waves. She feels beautiful. A different sort of beautiful than she’s ever felt before. Nesta feels... loved in this dress, and it’s then that she realizes that she’s not marrying someone for money. Not for status, or conquest, or power like her mother wanted. Nesta’s getting mated to someone she loves.  Someone who loves her. And it’s that thought that has her hands running over the fabric, clutching it in her hands, because she doesn’t want to take it off. She wants the ceremony to come sooner. 

Nesta buys that dress. The attendant wraps it a pretty box and Nesta holds it close to her chest. She goes to Cassian with it first. She wants him to be the first person who gets to see her in it. But Nesta waits until they get back to the House before putting it back on. The House gives her a pretty comb to put in her hair and she steps out a little shy, a little warm in her cheeks. “What do you think?” on her lips. 

Cassian can’t begin to form sentences as he looks her over. He has to stand up just from seeing her as if sitting down is blasphemous. He wonders if he should get on his knees. She’s stunning. Gorgeous. Too beautiful for words and he wants to touch her, but that seems wrong. She seems untouchable somehow, holy and angelic. But then she’s smiling, so gently and precious that he lays his hands on her cheeks. Rests his forehead on hers. 

“You’re my forever,” he says, “time stood still when I saw you.” 

[vidalinav]

Cassian with reading glasses.

~

Cassian with reading glasses that he pushes up his nose. Nesta feels just a little to warm when he’s wearing them. He’s adorable in some sense but also… he just looks smart. Speak to me of philosophy big man… or at least that’s what Nesta can’t help but think when he’s wearing them. Cassian’s always like, “do I have something on my face?” And Nesta’s like… just my lips. She’s hot for a Cassian with glasses.

[vidalinav]

Okay but Gwyn, Emerie, and Nesta’s periods sync (I don’t care if they only have one or two a year, they’re around each other too often) so when Cassian wakes up to a Nesta who’s cranky and doesn’t want to get out of bed and then goes to training to let the others know that Nesta will not be in training he finds two other girls who are cranky and don’t want to be there. So Gwyn, Emerie, and Nesta all end up in their bed as they often do. It’s large enough to fit them all and Cassian spends the day trying to stay away at the same time he’s trying to take care of Nesta. So he decides he’s going to have to take care of all of them, even if they get irritated at him every few minutes. Even the House seems crankier, because it’s slamming doors and cabinets. Not getting them food if they ask. So cue Cassian running back and forth with desserts, cups of tea, and heat packs while the others are tucked under blankets. The only reason he still knows they’re alive is because every so often a hand reaches out from under the covers to grab whatever he’s offering. He hears groans like ghosts are haunting their room, but at least when he starts to hear giggles and see the faint light of Nesta’s reading lamp that Azriel gives her, he knows he’s done well.

[vidalinav]

I actually do like the literal concept of Cassian being there for Nesta when she goes through those weeks of silence where she’ll talk to him at the end of it. 

I just love thinking about something going awful or something being entirely too stressful and Nesta not even lashing out, she just gets solemn and quiet. She stops talking to him for a while. Just reads, walks around, is pointedly more absent, and through the entire week Cassian follows her around like a duckling or is just there behind the door when she opens it, raises his brows like is it time yet? And Nesta just continues on. 

But when the week is over, when the ice has thawed, Nesta just sits down beside him, looks him over, a little blushy because it’s a strange sort of intimacy to have time for herself and for him to be okay with that, and it feels like a gate she has to push open. It’s a little awkward and uncomfortable, and she doesn’t know what to say, so she just blurts some random fact that she’s read in one of her books during the week. Did you know that over 20,000 years ago, there was a cosmic shower that almost wiped out the entire planet? 

And that fact, whatever it may be, is a sigh of relief to Cassian.

[vidalinav]

I raise you… Nesta massaging Cassian’s back because she learns it aches sometimes after flying. Nesta kissing the space between his wings. Nesta hugging Cassian from behind and his wings rising to make room for her. Cassian’s wings unconsciously shielding her from the sun, draping over her like a blanket.

[vidalinav]

Y’all don’t know how much I want Nesta to get banned from the Summer Court. If nothing else but for their relationship to come full circle as to yes, Nesta and Cassian are meant for each other. But also because I just think it would be funny to see Nesta oddly excited about getting to tell Cassian while the others are like she’s all stoic and quiet, she must feel bad, but really Nesta’s just holding it in because she can’t wait to tell Cassian! And Cassian is just so filled with pride in that moment when she does. He’s like that’s my girl, now let’s go get banned from other places too.

[vidalinav]

Sometimes... I like to think that the reason Feyre doesn't have Nesta on her wall of photos is not because she excludes her or for a lack of trying but because when Feyre finally finishes a portrait that she thinks perfectly resembles Nesta and who she is to her, Cassian takes it. 

He doesn’t mean to, of course. It’s just in his hands and then it’s in his home and he’s looking around the place thinking about what he’s done. How invasive it might seem, but her face is staring back at him, and for a second it feels like she’s in his home. That she wants to be here with him, to take up space here when there’s so much room to fill. In reality she refuses to answer her door and Cassian doesn’t know what to do. He can’t hang it on his wall in fear that someone might pop up unannounced and he can’t hang it, because she’s not his. He’s not hers. He is not standing next to her in this painting because it’s not a family portrait. It’s not an image he hangs to proclaim the lady of the house. 

So Cassian hides it behind a bookshelf. A fitting place, he thinks. Behind books and behind walls and behind dark crevices where his feelings are stored, where so many words go unspoken. Whispered promises as he tries to memorize the color of her eyes, the shape of her face. 

[vidalinav]

I like the thought that Nesta never calls Cassian anything but Cassian. I mean I also like the thought of her jokingly calling him sweetheart and Cassian melting into a puddle of goo. But besides that I like thinking that whenever Nesta says his name, whether that be whispered words or wanton moans or the word in between laughs, Cassian holds onto that sound. Cassian has never loved his name more, the way it rolls off of her tongue, the clarity of her voice. Three strong syllables. He’s heard so many different names for himself, even from her, but when Nesta says his name, it’s like she’s been storing every usage away and it sounds reverent somehow. Like it’s the last word she ever wants to say.