All pairings for acotar and tog are welcome! How long it takes to get them out is variable at best, but I do try my best to get to all of them.
•••
> acotar masterlist
> tog masterlist
> 800 follower celebration masterlist
•••
> ao3
A/N: I’m still keeping track of all my tag lists and will continue to add them to the end of my fics. However, Tumblr can be a fickle little thing, so I decided to use specific hashtags in case anyone wants to use them to find my posts! The tags I’m using for each post will be ‘#twsd writes’ and ‘#twsd fics’.
a/n: An update (finally) 2 years in the making and in spite of the worst case of writer's block I've ever had. I hope that for those of you who are still even mildly invested in this story, the wait was semi-worth it.
I would love to hear your thoughts on these two if you feel compelled to share! Otherwise, enjoy some fluff, some mild reference to the past, and a reunion.
NSFW. ~ 6k words.
——————————————————————————
Nesta surveyed her nails for the fifth time since arriving at baggage claim. Shifting from foot to foot, she checked Cassian’s arrival time— again— to make sure she hadn’t tried to will an earlier landing into existence via her imagination. Logic told her she was anxious to see him, that any unit of time would be feel like an eternity considering their circumstances, but her longing wasn’t getting the memo.
She stood tall on her tiptoes, scanning every face. No luck, at least, not until a small group of passengers descended on the escalators and inch by glorious inch of Cassian came into view.
Her chest was heavy— almost full to bursting. Cassian was preoccupied with making sure his carry-on didn’t tumble down the steps and into his neighbors, and Nesta forced herself to be satisfied with his safe arrival rather than annoyed that she wasn’t yet pressed against him. He’d dressed for comfortable travel— t-shirt, hair half-up, and a pair of black joggers— and while she understood they were meant for Cassian’s physical comfort, she couldn’t help that he looked like the perfect, safe place to land at the end of any long day.
In his attempts to contain his luggage, Cassian hadn’t yet seen her. A good thing, if you asked Nesta, because it offered her the opportunity to summon a shred of dignity as opposed to melting into the airport’s stained, linoleum floor.
His attention shifted over his shoulder to a petite, elderly woman a couple of steps above him. She said something that made Cassian smile— a true, joyful smile— before she poked his shoulder to alert him that they were rapidly approaching the end of their ride. He stepped off gracefully with his bags and turned in one efficient movement to extend a hand to the woman. She beamed up at him as he settled her hand in the crook of his elbow and hauled her small, floral duffle onto his shoulder.
Guiding her to the side and out of the chaotic flow of foot traffic, he lifted his gaze to scan the room. Nesta felt the moment he saw her like a punch to the chest, and somehow, his winning smile grew even wider.
Nesta was known for many things— some more damning than others— but not one of them was her patience. She forced a casual pace into her steps to meet them halfway and slid her hands into the back pockets of her jeans as some rudimentary form of self-restraint.
Her lips parted, but before she could utter a greeting, she heard a soft voice. “This must be your Nesta.”
Eyes crinkling in the corners, showcasing years worth of joy, the petite woman looked up at Nesta with something akin to pride in her smile. It disarmed her enough that the thought of correcting the statement, to tell her she belonged to no one, left her head entirely.
“The very one,” Cassian drawled, his intense focus fixed on Nesta, even as he lowered his travel bag to the ground near her feet.
“She’s even more beautiful than you described,” the older woman beamed. “Striking, really.”
Nesta’s brows shot up in amusement— incredulity, too, but mostly amusement— just as Cassian’s furrowed, and his gaze shifted to the other woman’s face.
“Dorothy,” he chided, although his tone lacked any bite at all, “you’re telling stories.”
Dorothy tutted. “Only the best ones.”
A smile stretched across Nesta’s face. Dorothy’s gaze snapped behind Nesta, and she raised a wrinkled hand in a delicate wave. Somehow, the joy on her face was tenfold.
“My son has deigned to pick me up. Finally.”
“Our flight landed a bit early, Dot,” Cassian said, moving to usher the woman where she aimed to go.
Nesta’s eyebrows flew up again at the nickname and their familiarity. The barest chuckle left her chest as she watched them shuffle around her. Cassian lifted his attention from the woman for a split second, enough to offer Nesta a wink.
“Only minutes, Cassian,” Dorothy fussed, “don’t make excuses.”
“Fair enough,” he relented, with a soft, fond shake of his head at Nesta.
Their voices faded with the growing distance, and as if her body had a sense for Cassian’s growing proximity, her chest tightened. The commitment to his new friend was admirable, and logic kept any true bristling at bay, but Nesta had never been particularly good at sharing. This was no different.
She watched as Cassian passed Dorothy’s duffle to her son and exchanged a few words. Before long, Dorothy was tugging her son’s arm toward the airport’s exit. Cassian lifted his hand in a polite wave and pivoted to face Nesta again. His shoulders sagged in something like relief, his legs carrying him with long, purposeful strides.
Nesta dragged her teeth over her bottom lip and cursed silently at the sting behind her eyes. She would not cry, no matter how overwhelming the emotions felt beneath the delicate barrier of her skin. She and Cassian had fallen apart and come back together in a number of ways over the years. Schooling her reactions should not have been as challenging as it felt.
Cassian gained speed with his final steps, bending at the waist to wrap his arms tightly around Nesta’s middle. Her arms responded in kind around his neck, her face tucked beneath the sharp angle of his jaw. With a bend of his knees, Cassian moved one of his forearms to bracket her thigh and lifted her flush against his body.
She huffed a laugh against his skin and wrapped her legs around his waist. Everything went quiet, from her racing thoughts to the chaos of the airport’s baggage claim.
And maybe it was all in her head, or maybe it was the result of the way their hug muffled any outside sounds, but Nesta didn’t care. She would take the peace no matter how it found her.
“Hey, Sweetheart,” Cassian rumbled, his lips dragging the words over neck.
Something in Nesta purred at the sound, and she somehow pressed herself even tighter to his body. Her voice couldn’t be trusted to keep the secret of her crumbling composure.
Kisses pressed against her neck, her jaw, her cheek. Hands with an almost bruising grip against the curves of her body. The scent of his shampoo and the texture of his waves against her fingers. Nothing had ever centered her quite like any of it. She had been naive to think she was ever giving him up. They were always going to end up right where they were.
An annoyed voice offered a well-timed interruption to her thoughts, and her head snapped up from Cassian’s shoulder at a passerby’s passive aggressive grumbling about dodging their PDA. Nesta’s spine went ramrod straight, the hair on the back of her neck standing on end, her tongue curling around some scathing retort.
Cassian hummed in warning, followed by a soft, “Not worth it.”
He bent down to grab his bag and turned toward the exit without another word. Nesta looked down at him, a little disoriented at the sudden change in location and the fact that he was hauling her out of the airport as if he’d just grabbed her from the luggage carousel. Her brows furrowed in irritation.
“I can walk.”
Cassian rolled his eyes, but the soft uptick at the corner of his mouth gave him away. The fact that he found Nesta’s tendency to bristle endearing was a miracle most days, only followed closely by the way his body always felt sliding against hers. Her legs released him on instinct as he lowered her toward the ground, and she landed gracefully on her feet. Gracefully enough anyway, for someone who hadn’t gotten a proper warning.
It was curious the way Cassian carried himself with a certain strength and grace all at once. Without missing a beat, he gripped her hand as they waited at the crosswalk and smiled down at her with so much affection that every hard edge of her mood went soft almost instantly.
“You’ll have to lead the way from here,” he said, turning to scan traffic as they walked. “I don’t know where you parked.”
Nesta nodded and stepped slightly ahead. It took a second to remember where she’d left her car, but in minutes, she was opening the trunk to allow Cassian the opportunity to toss his bag inside.
With her hand was poised over the door handle, she allowed herself a quick glance over the top of the car to remind her that he was there. He was nowhere to be seen, but warm lips against the side of her neck chased any worry into a distant memory.
“Missed you,” he murmured, gripping her gently and turning her body to press it against the car.
Nesta placed her hands on the sides of his neck and tugged him forward, his mouth resuming the tortured affection against her heated skin. The departing planes were thunder, the sounds of traffic a buzz that matched the feeling in her veins.
Her nails dragged soft scratches against the nape of his neck, and Cassian hummed his appreciation. His body shuddered, curling tighter around her and trailing kisses across the line of her shoulder.
“Missed you, too,” she admitted and felt freer. Lighter.
They broke apart, climbing into the car and heading to The Merchant to check into their room. Nesta was renting Clare’s extra room, including the furniture that was already staged in the guest room. The twin bed she slept in every night wasn’t a viable option for Cassian alone, much less the two of them together. She appreciated her friend’s kindness more than she could express, especially since Nesta wasn’t ready to admit that the idea of finding her own apartment made her mouth dry and her skin erupt in goosebumps.
Circumstances had certainly changed since the last time they’d stayed at the hotel together, but the ugliness and heaviness of that visit didn’t linger the way they might have in the past. The guilt that choked her over Cassian’s involvement in her conflict with Tomas never boiled over. The tension associated with those memories didn’t crush her ribs from the inside.
Maybe the countless hours she’d spent in therapy were showing their effects in some tangible way after such a distant, abstract idea of improvement over the months.
Shaking the thoughts away, Nesta focused on the present. On the warm hand ghosting over the top of her thigh as she drove, the grip of the man who had loved her before she had a shred of progress to show of her healing. Who had loved her before and loved her through it, even when she hadn’t loved herself. Had loved her when he hadn’t truly known how, and she hadn't thought she could love him enough. Who loved her still.
—
The small flames atop each of the centerpiece’s candles danced over Cassian’s face, and while Nesta was happy to take her time admiring the way they enhanced the sharp contours of his jaw, his expression stopped her short.
His eyes tracked the room as his immutable attention to detail demanded, his left thumb rubbing absent-minded circles over the calluses of his opposite palm. The action stirred something in Nesta, a desire to ease whatever trouble roiled beneath his bronze skin, and she reached out to slide her hand over his.
“Let me,” she breathed, all but an order, and a smirk pulled at the edge of Cassian’s too-enticing mouth.
He stretched his arm toward her and rested it atop the table cloth. Nesta cradled his hand in both of hers, the size of it making hers look impossibly small. With slow, methodical pressure, her thumbs worked against his budding tension.
“What’s all this?” he teased. His smirk bloomed into an outright smile, and Nesta’s heart thudded in answer.
“You do this when you’re nervous,” she offered by way of explanation, “so I thought I would help.”
“Ah.” He nodded his understanding but didn’t elaborate.
With his free hand, he lifted his water glass and took several pulls. Nesta tried to be subtle in watching the way his throat bobbed, but the glimmer in Cassian’s eyes noted her failure. At least he was gentlemanly enough to stay quiet about it for once.
After a moment of taut silence, Nesta caved. “What?”
Cassian huffed a laugh at her irritation. “It’s just…” he trailed off, looked into the ether for the proper words. “It’s not only when I’m nervous.”
Her gaze snapped toward their hands and back to his face. “You always do this when you’re anxious.”
“Sure,” he agreed, and Nesta felt her brow furrow in both confusion and annoyance. “But it’s more when I’m antsy in general. When I feel like I need to move. Or like I’m crawling out of my skin.”
Dread pooled in her stomach while her brain picked furiously at each of Cassian’s words. If he was two ticks away from meltdown barely 8 hours into his visit, that didn’t bode well for the next several days. Or the rest of their days, for that matter.
Swallowing hard against the lump in her throat, Nesta continued in an effort to keep her chaotic emotions contained. Better to direct her attention to something productive, she reasoned.
An awkward squeeze of Cassian’s hand forced her attention back to the bustling restaurant and out of her mind. She struggled to keep it there, but the look on Cassian’s face fortified her.
Heat, unbridled and solely focused, turned his eyes a deeper shade of brown. “As much as I appreciate this,” he began, his voice like gravel, “you aren’t helping, Sweetheart.”
Another flex of his grip, and he pulled his hand away. For a moment, she missed the warmth that left along with it, until she realized all he’d done is send that warmth right to her core.
Understanding hit her with very little grace, and the force of his honesty went straight to her bloodstream. She reached for her own water for no other reason than to do something with her hands.
Something that didn’t involve dragging them across every inch of Cassian’s skin.
“We should go.” Never mind the fact that they’d only ordered a glass of wine and an appetizer. The waiter hadn’t yet made it back to take the orders for their first course, but every moment felt too full of inessential details.
Cassian chuckled, low and rough. Just for her.
“Dinner first,” he ordered, redirecting his gaze to the menu.
Jaw slack, Nesta blinked incredulously in his direction.
“Once we get back to the room, we’re not leaving again,” he promised.
Nesta had never been so decisive in choosing dinner.
—
Despite the earlier urgency, Nesta was enjoying dinner. Living in the moment wasn’t on her list of sharpest skills, but she managed if she did say so herself. The atmosphere was warm, yet private enough. The company was top tier, if not long overdue. And watching Cassian roll his head back and laugh at some harmless barb she lobbed his way, Nesta thought that maybe this could have always been enough.
A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, and she disguised it by taking another long sip of wine. Cassian’s eyes lowered to her face, smile still as bright as before, and shook his head before returning his attention to what remained of his meal. The speed at which the man could eat was remarkable, and even though he’d hardly held back in sharing about what she’d missed back home over the last few weeks, somehow he was almost finished. Nesta hadn’t even made it halfway through hers.
Spearing another bite with her fork, she popped it into her mouth and scanned the room. Her eyes caught over Cassian’s shoulder, and to her abject horror, she choked.
“Shit,” Cassian muttered, reaching across the table to shove Nesta’s water glass closer. It sloshed over the side, only barely, but enough that another curse fell from his mouth.
Nesta grabbed it, if for no other reason than to save it from an ill fate at the hands of the mother hen across the table. She forced her cough down long enough to take a deep breath and gulped the water down. It did wonders to soothe her throat, but unfortunately, it only served to recruit attention from the face that made her choke in the first place.
What was his name? God, she should know. They hadn’t been serious— especially since Nesta hadn’t been capable of anything remotely close to it when she first moved. They had seen each other a few times and had fun, but no one had ever written poetry with their arrangement in mind. Eventually, the pretense of dates had stopped, and they became a matter of convenience until they just… weren’t anymore.
Nesta couldn’t remember who ultimately called it off, and even worse, she wondered if no one ever had. For all she knew now, they fizzled out and never bothered with a proper ending. And if she’d had it in herself to be honest back then, she could have admitted they’d had decent chemistry at best. That was generous, in fact. Her best memory of him and sex actually didn’t involve him at all.
They made eye contact, and he smiled at her. The same way someone smiles at a co-worker or someone they met through a mutual friend. He lifted a hand in a wave, as if totally oblivious to Nesta choking, and she blinked through the tears in her eyes to wave back. His attention returned to the woman he was with— his date presumably, if the hand on her waist was any indication.
Cassian glanced over his shoulder to follow Nesta’s gaze, and before she could toss a silent prayer of thanks to the universe for the man’s diverted attention, his eyes rose again to to land on Cassian. His smile faltered, if only momentarily, but Cassian wasn’t pressed.
Her eyes must have been the size of saucers watching Cassian lift a hand over his shoulder in a casual wave. They exchanged a very bro-like up-nod, and just as quickly, Cassian turned back around to face Nesta. With a smile full of mirth, no less.
“Friend of yours?” he purred through a smile, eyes dancing with amusement. He was at his most beautiful like this. Relaxed, happy, and teasing Nesta. She hated him for it.
She indulged in another long pull of water before deciding on, “Mm.” She tilted her head side to side in consideration. “Not exactly.”
Cassian chuckled. “I have a few of those myself.”
She wished she had it in her to be unbothered by the reminders of their past. But Nesta had never been particularly graceful about accepting anyone else’s attention on Cassian. Whether it be for one night or for some short, doomed attempt at a relationship. Doomed, only because Nesta now had the benefit of hindsight. She’d never considered those relationships quite so rationally before now. Sometimes, progress was minimal, but it was progress all the same.
“Yep,” she said, forcing nonchalance into her voice.
Cassian didn’t buy it.
“Nes,” he groaned, though not in frustration. More like empathy and reassurance rolled into one. “I didn’t mean anything by it. Sometimes…” he trailed off, staring into the ether in that way of his. The way the night was going, Nesta was tempted to glance over her shoulder and check for Julia. “I know it matters, so I won’t say it doesn’t. But I guess it’s just easier to laugh about it now. It’s safer, anyway.”
“Safer?” That hadn’t been what she expected him to say, but oddly, she thought she understood it. Better to laugh it off than think on the details too much.
“Yeah,” he confirmed, running his hand over his jaw. “We’re here now, you know?”
“I think so.” Nesta chewed the inside of her lip, considering her next words. Guess she was sharing. “Can I tell you something? And you not judge me?”
Cassian rolled his eyes. “You know I won’t.” A beat, then, “Tell me.”
The waiter chose the moment to offer refills on their wine. Nesta was tempted to ask for the bottle to drown the embarrassment of the last several minutes, but she saved those thoughts while Cassian politely refused and asked for their check.
Nesta took a deep breath. “I don’t even remember his name,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut and easing one of them open to gauge Cassian’s reaction. His face gave nothing away until his head dropped forward, and Nesta noticed the subtle shake of his shoulders.
“Are you laughing?” she hissed, throwing her cloth napkin into his chest. A laugh bubbled out of her in answer. Everything about him was contagious.
“I’m not laughing at you.” Cassian wiped his eyes with his thumb and middle finger, his wide smile still on full display. “I thought you were going to tell me something serious— shit, Nesta.” Another chuckle, and he leaned back to prop his elbow on the back of his chair.
His casual posture and clear amusement, contagious as it was, spoke to the haunted little part of Nesta that couldn’t resist poking at his resolve. A night, so many months ago that it felt like a lifetime, knocked at the forefront of her mind. An unhealthier version of the two of them, near their lowest. A brief visit to Velaris, a stupid gathering she should have blown off like she’d originally intended when she realized she’d only packed clothes befitting of a couch potato.
She leaned forward, her voice pitched low. “It was his, you know. The sweater you’re so fond of.”
Cassian’s head cocked to the side, but Nesta noticed when it clicked. The way he righted his head, the glint in his eye. The way he fixed his focus on her and leaned forward on his elbows, his voice gravel.
“Makes sense that you wouldn’t remember his name, then.”
Nesta huffed a laugh through her nose and leaned forward, too. Cassian was close enough for secrets and bad decisions, and for a moment, they were in another time— full of both.
“That was the goal, wasn’t it?” she murmured, dragging a slender finger over his clasped hands. Cassian rolled his palm up and laced their fingers together. Breathing seemed to be harder, the air thicker.
“Not really,” he rasped. “I was the one who needed to forget.”
Nesta squeezed her hand tighter around his. “Cass—”
“Don’t,” he admonished. “I don’t want to make it heavy.” His thumb traced the back of her her own as his eyes lifted. All she could do was nod. “Truth be told, I kind of hated how good you looked in it when it wasn’t mine.”
Nesta huffed another laugh. A lump formed in her throat at the memory, at the chaotic way they always gravitated to one another no matter the consequences. They weren’t recognizable that way anymore, especially as they sat now in a fancy restaurant discussing their baggage. Some of it, anyway. It would have taken more than a single meal to get into the half of it.
“I was, though,” she rasped, tracing nonsense patterns on the tablecloth with her free hand. “Yours, I mean. Even if I ran. Even when I couldn’t accept it.”
Silence met her, and she couldn’t look at him. His emotions always belonged to himself and everyone else in a mile radius, and she wasn’t sure she could stomach the possibilities.
A gentle, callused finger tipped her chin up and tugged her gently forward. Before she realized his closeness, Cassian’s lips brushed hers. Soft, the exact opposite of all the thorns that built them. Everything she wished she could have shown him sooner. He pressed his lips to hers a second and third time before standing, his hand never leaving hers. The look of adoration on his face was so plain that Nesta struggled not to balk under it, and she wondered what it meant that it was harder to stand than his ire.
“Let’s get out of here,” he murmured, turning to tug her gently through the sea of people in the restaurant.
Her cheeks heated under others’ fleeting attention, as if they were privy to her erratic heartbeat and the intimacy of their conversation. Cassian, unbothered as always, strode confidently toward the door. And although she knew it deep down, it was then— staring at his shoulders under the fabric of his shirt as he led them to the restaurant exit— that it hit her in the chest and fizzed through her. Hope.
—
Everything felt significant.
The beep of the lock, the click of the door handle, the odd vacuum of silence that fell over any hotel room.
Sounds that were all too familiar to Nesta, especially where Cassian was concerned, but somehow, it all seemed different.
With an unceremonious flop, the key card landed next to the TV. Cassian’s voice was a velvet rasp in the loaded quiet.
“This is new,” he said through a huff of laughter, “meeting up in a hotel room where we both have a key.”
His hands slipped over her hipbones, each broad finger squeezing adoration and affection in a simple move that usually felt possessive and unwelcome by anyone else’s hands.
A chuckle rolled through her. “Not exactly,” she replied, turning within the circle of his arms. Her finger traced the line of buttons on the front of his shirt, already half undone. “We’ve shared a room here before.”
Cassian hummed. “Not really what I meant, Sweetheart.”
“I know.” She stood on her tiptoes, bracing a hand on his shoulder. “I was being funny.”
With a delicate tilt of her chin, Cassian dipped his head to capture her mouth. The smile she felt against her lips was her only warning before—
“Ah,” he said, pressing another chaste kiss to her mouth. “But you’re not funny.”
Nesta pulled back— all mock, steely rage— and eased out of her heels.
“My humor requires a certain wit.”
The farthest Cassian was willing to step away from her was a step or two, enough to allow Nesta room to move around her shoes. Once free of them, he stooped slightly to wrap his arms around her waist, tucking his face against the side of her neck and pulling her tightly to his body.
The ghost of his laugh warmed her from the inside out. “That’s true,” he admitted, running his nose along the side of her throat.
Nesta’s breath hitched. Her arms wrapped around his neck to keep him close, and she didn’t resist the urge to press her lips against his hair. His scent wrapped around her as it always did, leaving her almost boneless.
Cassian took her weight effortlessly and swayed them back and forth. A contented, raspy hum left him, and the sound tickled the length of Nesta’s spine.
Her body flushed, skin revolting against the barrier of clothing between them. She leaned back to tell him as much, but his hands twisted her hips to turn her around in his arms again.
Nesta’s head lolled to the side, her neck exposed completely to his affections with only her fingertips to keep her balance atop the small hotel desk. A pose too reminiscent of the night they’d discussed at dinner and one that had her arching her back to press against Cassian.
“Cass,” she whispered, her hand reaching for his hair. “Please, baby.”
His groan thrummed against her back, the perfect balance to his bruising grip. One of his hands left her waist, and she almost cursed him for it had she not heard the release of his belt buckle.
His teeth sank into her neck, only hard enough to send electricity through her body, and suddenly her weight was shifting forward against her hands. He made quick work of the long zipper of her dress, and the fabric pooled around her feet.
One hand pressed against her stomach, his hardness at her lower back. His other hand slipped beneath the elastic of her underwear to tease her. Her lips parted on a quiet moan, and she was spinning again, her hips lifted roughly onto the desk.
“Need to taste you,” Cassian rasped, his hands already tugging the fabric down her legs.
Nesta discarded her bra like it was on fire and leaned back on her hands. She loved the way he looked on his knees.
“Fuck,” she whimpered at the first press of his tongue. With an iron grip, he held one of her legs over his shoulder and used his other hand to free himself from the confines of his pants.
His moan vibrated against her, and Nesta’s head rolled back. Cassian’s tongue worked her with such precision it almost made her dizzy.
One of her hands snapped toward his head, her fingers threading through his hair. His eyes snapped up and darkened, and he was on his feet.
Nesta was almost bereft with the loss, but Cassian quickly rid himself of his button down shirt and his pants.
“Come here,” he ordered, tossing the comforter down and lying across the bed, his knees bent over the side. “On my face.”
Blinking, Nesta realized she was still leaning against the desk. She padded over to the side of the bed and ran her fingers over his knees, teasing all the way up his thighs.
“I want these,” she murmured, touching the elastic of his boxer briefs.
“Later,” he said, voice gruff, and tugged her gently by the wrist to coax her over him.
Nesta managed to kiss his collarbones, his neck, until he urged her quickly along to bring her over his face like he wanted. She straddled his head, his hands anchoring her thighs. Before she could assess her positioning, Cassian tugged her roughly down to his mouth.
Nesta keened, hands buried in Cassian’s hair. She moved over him, earning a hum of approval from Cassian, and soon her thighs were screaming to keep their rhythm.
“Cassian,” she begged, desperate to come. “Yes.”
His tongue moved expertly over her, making her thighs shake in earnest. She squirmed, and Cassian gripped her wrist again and tugged her upper body forward.
Nesta could have cried in relief. She was on an elbow, her other hand still buried in Cassian’s nest of hair. He never faltered in his attention, and Nesta couldn’t help but drop her forehead against the sheets as she rocked over his mouth.
She cried out, the sound blessedly muffled by the linens, but Cassian didn’t seem entirely impressed by that. He eased two fingers into her, her walls stretching to accommodate them, and she had to release his hair in favor of bracing on both elbows, her hands fisting the sheets.
Cassian groaned against her wetness. Nesta was strung out, her back arching in pursuit of release. The sensitive peaks of her breasts grazed the sheets with each rock of her body, and without warning, she splintered into a million pieces.
Tears stung her eyes at the intensity of her pleasure. Cassian eased his fingers from her and eased her through it, murmuring a quiet instruction to stay put.
Nesta wanted to melt into a puddle as Cassian slid from under her and turned to kneel on the bed behind her. His calloused hands ran over her back, squeezed her shoulders, gripped the back of her neck. She rocked her hips backwards against his length, and to her satisfaction, Cassian hissed at the contact.
“You look perfect like this,” he said, almost reverent. “Are you ready for me, baby?”
Nesta lifted her forehead in an attempt to shoot a glare his way for entertaining any doubt, but she didn’t have it in her. Instead, she made some embarrassing little noise in the back of her throat and pressed harder against him.
Cassian freed himself and entered her in one long, slow thrust. His lips touched the back of her neck until he leaned back and cupped a hand over one of her shoulders, his other hand splaying over the side of her waist.
The way they moved so naturally together always gave Nesta pause. Everything seemed to work without fail when they were pressed together. If only life had been so kind.
Nesta rolled her hips in time with his, cataloguing all the sounds he made and the things he whispered roughly for only her to hear.
So good, Nesta.
God, I could live inside you.
Perfect. Just like that, baby.
Nesta’s muscles tightened again in anticipation, her cries growing louder in the small room. Cassian’s hand shot out to the side to brace himself on the headboard, and his hips worked her hard and slow.
“Come for me, Nes,” he said, his voice strained. Nesta tightened around him, a sob leaving her at how perfect he felt. “There you go,” he encouraged. “That’s it. Let go, baby.”
Nesta shattered, her knuckles white in the tangle of the sheets. Cassian’s hips kept their steady rhythm until he was moaning her name and throbbing inside her.
His forehead fell between her shoulder blades as they recovered. He managed to keep his hulking weight from crushing her, barely, until he separated them and lay on his back next to her.
Snaking an arm beneath her, he pulled her over to rest her head on his chest, pressing her hair away from her sweat-slick brow. She sighed against him and nearly purred when he brought his hand up to massage her scalp.
When they could manage to move, they showered together, fumbling as they washed each other and pressing their smiles together in some approximation kisses. Nesta resumed her usual barbs, and Cassian took them gracefully as always before lobbing one of his own that shocked a loud laugh out of Nesta as they brushed their teeth. It was an odd time— but as good as any— to realize that this was everything.
To Nesta’s delight, Cassian wordlessly tossed an extra tee he’d packed for her to sleep in. She caught it against her chest, dropping it over her head and dragging her heavy limbs into the bed.
It was all so familiar. Familiar in the way that hurt a little, because although other moments like it had passed between them, they always ended. And even though everything about the night promised more, they would never have this one again, and the sheer existence of it carried a veil of melancholy because they couldn’t cocoon themselves in it to their content.
But maybe they didn’t need the stolen minutes together and the safety of their own little world anymore. As much as Nesta thought she’d loved the false intimacy their shared secrets offered, they didn’t need them anymore. Not when they had this— Cassian’s fingers tracing small paths through her hair, his heartbeat beneath her ear, his steady breaths regulating her own.
A whisper, yet one that seemed to echo somehow in the quiet room. “I love you.”
——————————————————————————
f you’d like to be tagged in any of my fics, please send me an ask, a message, leave a comment, or mention being tagged in your reblog! I’ll be happy to add you!
a/n: An update (finally) 2 years in the making and in spite of the worst case of writer's block I've ever had. I hope that for those of you who are still even mildly invested in this story, the wait was semi-worth it.
I would love to hear your thoughts on these two if you feel compelled to share! Otherwise, enjoy some fluff, some mild reference to the past, and a reunion.
NSFW. ~ 6k words.
——————————————————————————
Nesta surveyed her nails for the fifth time since arriving at baggage claim. Shifting from foot to foot, she checked Cassian’s arrival time— again— to make sure she hadn’t tried to will an earlier landing into existence via her imagination. Logic told her she was anxious to see him, that any unit of time would be feel like an eternity considering their circumstances, but her longing wasn’t getting the memo.
She stood tall on her tiptoes, scanning every face. No luck, at least, not until a small group of passengers descended on the escalators and inch by glorious inch of Cassian came into view.
Her chest was heavy— almost full to bursting. Cassian was preoccupied with making sure his carry-on didn’t tumble down the steps and into his neighbors, and Nesta forced herself to be satisfied with his safe arrival rather than annoyed that she wasn’t yet pressed against him. He’d dressed for comfortable travel— t-shirt, hair half-up, and a pair of black joggers— and while she understood they were meant for Cassian’s physical comfort, she couldn’t help that he looked like the perfect, safe place to land at the end of any long day.
In his attempts to contain his luggage, Cassian hadn’t yet seen her. A good thing, if you asked Nesta, because it offered her the opportunity to summon a shred of dignity as opposed to melting into the airport’s stained, linoleum floor.
His attention shifted over his shoulder to a petite, elderly woman a couple of steps above him. She said something that made Cassian smile— a true, joyful smile— before she poked his shoulder to alert him that they were rapidly approaching the end of their ride. He stepped off gracefully with his bags and turned in one efficient movement to extend a hand to the woman. She beamed up at him as he settled her hand in the crook of his elbow and hauled her small, floral duffle onto his shoulder.
Guiding her to the side and out of the chaotic flow of foot traffic, he lifted his gaze to scan the room. Nesta felt the moment he saw her like a punch to the chest, and somehow, his winning smile grew even wider.
Nesta was known for many things— some more damning than others— but not one of them was her patience. She forced a casual pace into her steps to meet them halfway and slid her hands into the back pockets of her jeans as some rudimentary form of self-restraint.
Her lips parted, but before she could utter a greeting, she heard a soft voice. “This must be your Nesta.”
Eyes crinkling in the corners, showcasing years worth of joy, the petite woman looked up at Nesta with something akin to pride in her smile. It disarmed her enough that the thought of correcting the statement, to tell her she belonged to no one, left her head entirely.
“The very one,” Cassian drawled, his intense focus fixed on Nesta, even as he lowered his travel bag to the ground near her feet.
“She’s even more beautiful than you described,” the older woman beamed. “Striking, really.”
Nesta’s brows shot up in amusement— incredulity, too, but mostly amusement— just as Cassian’s furrowed, and his gaze shifted to the other woman’s face.
“Dorothy,” he chided, although his tone lacked any bite at all, “you’re telling stories.”
Dorothy tutted. “Only the best ones.”
A smile stretched across Nesta’s face. Dorothy’s gaze snapped behind Nesta, and she raised a wrinkled hand in a delicate wave. Somehow, the joy on her face was tenfold.
“My son has deigned to pick me up. Finally.”
“Our flight landed a bit early, Dot,” Cassian said, moving to usher the woman where she aimed to go.
Nesta’s eyebrows flew up again at the nickname and their familiarity. The barest chuckle left her chest as she watched them shuffle around her. Cassian lifted his attention from the woman for a split second, enough to offer Nesta a wink.
“Only minutes, Cassian,” Dorothy fussed, “don’t make excuses.”
“Fair enough,” he relented, with a soft, fond shake of his head at Nesta.
Their voices faded with the growing distance, and as if her body had a sense for Cassian’s growing proximity, her chest tightened. The commitment to his new friend was admirable, and logic kept any true bristling at bay, but Nesta had never been particularly good at sharing. This was no different.
She watched as Cassian passed Dorothy’s duffle to her son and exchanged a few words. Before long, Dorothy was tugging her son’s arm toward the airport’s exit. Cassian lifted his hand in a polite wave and pivoted to face Nesta again. His shoulders sagged in something like relief, his legs carrying him with long, purposeful strides.
Nesta dragged her teeth over her bottom lip and cursed silently at the sting behind her eyes. She would not cry, no matter how overwhelming the emotions felt beneath the delicate barrier of her skin. She and Cassian had fallen apart and come back together in a number of ways over the years. Schooling her reactions should not have been as challenging as it felt.
Cassian gained speed with his final steps, bending at the waist to wrap his arms tightly around Nesta’s middle. Her arms responded in kind around his neck, her face tucked beneath the sharp angle of his jaw. With a bend of his knees, Cassian moved one of his forearms to bracket her thigh and lifted her flush against his body.
She huffed a laugh against his skin and wrapped her legs around his waist. Everything went quiet, from her racing thoughts to the chaos of the airport’s baggage claim.
And maybe it was all in her head, or maybe it was the result of the way their hug muffled any outside sounds, but Nesta didn’t care. She would take the peace no matter how it found her.
“Hey, Sweetheart,” Cassian rumbled, his lips dragging the words over neck.
Something in Nesta purred at the sound, and she somehow pressed herself even tighter to his body. Her voice couldn’t be trusted to keep the secret of her crumbling composure.
Kisses pressed against her neck, her jaw, her cheek. Hands with an almost bruising grip against the curves of her body. The scent of his shampoo and the texture of his waves against her fingers. Nothing had ever centered her quite like any of it. She had been naive to think she was ever giving him up. They were always going to end up right where they were.
An annoyed voice offered a well-timed interruption to her thoughts, and her head snapped up from Cassian’s shoulder at a passerby’s passive aggressive grumbling about dodging their PDA. Nesta’s spine went ramrod straight, the hair on the back of her neck standing on end, her tongue curling around some scathing retort.
Cassian hummed in warning, followed by a soft, “Not worth it.”
He bent down to grab his bag and turned toward the exit without another word. Nesta looked down at him, a little disoriented at the sudden change in location and the fact that he was hauling her out of the airport as if he’d just grabbed her from the luggage carousel. Her brows furrowed in irritation.
“I can walk.”
Cassian rolled his eyes, but the soft uptick at the corner of his mouth gave him away. The fact that he found Nesta’s tendency to bristle endearing was a miracle most days, only followed closely by the way his body always felt sliding against hers. Her legs released him on instinct as he lowered her toward the ground, and she landed gracefully on her feet. Gracefully enough anyway, for someone who hadn’t gotten a proper warning.
It was curious the way Cassian carried himself with a certain strength and grace all at once. Without missing a beat, he gripped her hand as they waited at the crosswalk and smiled down at her with so much affection that every hard edge of her mood went soft almost instantly.
“You’ll have to lead the way from here,” he said, turning to scan traffic as they walked. “I don’t know where you parked.”
Nesta nodded and stepped slightly ahead. It took a second to remember where she’d left her car, but in minutes, she was opening the trunk to allow Cassian the opportunity to toss his bag inside.
With her hand was poised over the door handle, she allowed herself a quick glance over the top of the car to remind her that he was there. He was nowhere to be seen, but warm lips against the side of her neck chased any worry into a distant memory.
“Missed you,” he murmured, gripping her gently and turning her body to press it against the car.
Nesta placed her hands on the sides of his neck and tugged him forward, his mouth resuming the tortured affection against her heated skin. The departing planes were thunder, the sounds of traffic a buzz that matched the feeling in her veins.
Her nails dragged soft scratches against the nape of his neck, and Cassian hummed his appreciation. His body shuddered, curling tighter around her and trailing kisses across the line of her shoulder.
“Missed you, too,” she admitted and felt freer. Lighter.
They broke apart, climbing into the car and heading to The Merchant to check into their room. Nesta was renting Clare’s extra room, including the furniture that was already staged in the guest room. The twin bed she slept in every night wasn’t a viable option for Cassian alone, much less the two of them together. She appreciated her friend’s kindness more than she could express, especially since Nesta wasn’t ready to admit that the idea of finding her own apartment made her mouth dry and her skin erupt in goosebumps.
Circumstances had certainly changed since the last time they’d stayed at the hotel together, but the ugliness and heaviness of that visit didn’t linger the way they might have in the past. The guilt that choked her over Cassian’s involvement in her conflict with Tomas never boiled over. The tension associated with those memories didn’t crush her ribs from the inside.
Maybe the countless hours she’d spent in therapy were showing their effects in some tangible way after such a distant, abstract idea of improvement over the months.
Shaking the thoughts away, Nesta focused on the present. On the warm hand ghosting over the top of her thigh as she drove, the grip of the man who had loved her before she had a shred of progress to show of her healing. Who had loved her before and loved her through it, even when she hadn’t loved herself. Had loved her when he hadn’t truly known how, and she hadn't thought she could love him enough. Who loved her still.
—
The small flames atop each of the centerpiece’s candles danced over Cassian’s face, and while Nesta was happy to take her time admiring the way they enhanced the sharp contours of his jaw, his expression stopped her short.
His eyes tracked the room as his immutable attention to detail demanded, his left thumb rubbing absent-minded circles over the calluses of his opposite palm. The action stirred something in Nesta, a desire to ease whatever trouble roiled beneath his bronze skin, and she reached out to slide her hand over his.
“Let me,” she breathed, all but an order, and a smirk pulled at the edge of Cassian’s too-enticing mouth.
He stretched his arm toward her and rested it atop the table cloth. Nesta cradled his hand in both of hers, the size of it making hers look impossibly small. With slow, methodical pressure, her thumbs worked against his budding tension.
“What’s all this?” he teased. His smirk bloomed into an outright smile, and Nesta’s heart thudded in answer.
“You do this when you’re nervous,” she offered by way of explanation, “so I thought I would help.”
“Ah.” He nodded his understanding but didn’t elaborate.
With his free hand, he lifted his water glass and took several pulls. Nesta tried to be subtle in watching the way his throat bobbed, but the glimmer in Cassian’s eyes noted her failure. At least he was gentlemanly enough to stay quiet about it for once.
After a moment of taut silence, Nesta caved. “What?”
Cassian huffed a laugh at her irritation. “It’s just…” he trailed off, looked into the ether for the proper words. “It’s not only when I’m nervous.”
Her gaze snapped toward their hands and back to his face. “You always do this when you’re anxious.”
“Sure,” he agreed, and Nesta felt her brow furrow in both confusion and annoyance. “But it’s more when I’m antsy in general. When I feel like I need to move. Or like I’m crawling out of my skin.”
Dread pooled in her stomach while her brain picked furiously at each of Cassian’s words. If he was two ticks away from meltdown barely 8 hours into his visit, that didn’t bode well for the next several days. Or the rest of their days, for that matter.
Swallowing hard against the lump in her throat, Nesta continued in an effort to keep her chaotic emotions contained. Better to direct her attention to something productive, she reasoned.
An awkward squeeze of Cassian’s hand forced her attention back to the bustling restaurant and out of her mind. She struggled to keep it there, but the look on Cassian’s face fortified her.
Heat, unbridled and solely focused, turned his eyes a deeper shade of brown. “As much as I appreciate this,” he began, his voice like gravel, “you aren’t helping, Sweetheart.”
Another flex of his grip, and he pulled his hand away. For a moment, she missed the warmth that left along with it, until she realized all he’d done is send that warmth right to her core.
Understanding hit her with very little grace, and the force of his honesty went straight to her bloodstream. She reached for her own water for no other reason than to do something with her hands.
Something that didn’t involve dragging them across every inch of Cassian’s skin.
“We should go.” Never mind the fact that they’d only ordered a glass of wine and an appetizer. The waiter hadn’t yet made it back to take the orders for their first course, but every moment felt too full of inessential details.
Cassian chuckled, low and rough. Just for her.
“Dinner first,” he ordered, redirecting his gaze to the menu.
Jaw slack, Nesta blinked incredulously in his direction.
“Once we get back to the room, we’re not leaving again,” he promised.
Nesta had never been so decisive in choosing dinner.
—
Despite the earlier urgency, Nesta was enjoying dinner. Living in the moment wasn’t on her list of sharpest skills, but she managed if she did say so herself. The atmosphere was warm, yet private enough. The company was top tier, if not long overdue. And watching Cassian roll his head back and laugh at some harmless barb she lobbed his way, Nesta thought that maybe this could have always been enough.
A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, and she disguised it by taking another long sip of wine. Cassian’s eyes lowered to her face, smile still as bright as before, and shook his head before returning his attention to what remained of his meal. The speed at which the man could eat was remarkable, and even though he’d hardly held back in sharing about what she’d missed back home over the last few weeks, somehow he was almost finished. Nesta hadn’t even made it halfway through hers.
Spearing another bite with her fork, she popped it into her mouth and scanned the room. Her eyes caught over Cassian’s shoulder, and to her abject horror, she choked.
“Shit,” Cassian muttered, reaching across the table to shove Nesta’s water glass closer. It sloshed over the side, only barely, but enough that another curse fell from his mouth.
Nesta grabbed it, if for no other reason than to save it from an ill fate at the hands of the mother hen across the table. She forced her cough down long enough to take a deep breath and gulped the water down. It did wonders to soothe her throat, but unfortunately, it only served to recruit attention from the face that made her choke in the first place.
What was his name? God, she should know. They hadn’t been serious— especially since Nesta hadn’t been capable of anything remotely close to it when she first moved. They had seen each other a few times and had fun, but no one had ever written poetry with their arrangement in mind. Eventually, the pretense of dates had stopped, and they became a matter of convenience until they just… weren’t anymore.
Nesta couldn’t remember who ultimately called it off, and even worse, she wondered if no one ever had. For all she knew now, they fizzled out and never bothered with a proper ending. And if she’d had it in herself to be honest back then, she could have admitted they’d had decent chemistry at best. That was generous, in fact. Her best memory of him and sex actually didn’t involve him at all.
They made eye contact, and he smiled at her. The same way someone smiles at a co-worker or someone they met through a mutual friend. He lifted a hand in a wave, as if totally oblivious to Nesta choking, and she blinked through the tears in her eyes to wave back. His attention returned to the woman he was with— his date presumably, if the hand on her waist was any indication.
Cassian glanced over his shoulder to follow Nesta’s gaze, and before she could toss a silent prayer of thanks to the universe for the man’s diverted attention, his eyes rose again to to land on Cassian. His smile faltered, if only momentarily, but Cassian wasn’t pressed.
Her eyes must have been the size of saucers watching Cassian lift a hand over his shoulder in a casual wave. They exchanged a very bro-like up-nod, and just as quickly, Cassian turned back around to face Nesta. With a smile full of mirth, no less.
“Friend of yours?” he purred through a smile, eyes dancing with amusement. He was at his most beautiful like this. Relaxed, happy, and teasing Nesta. She hated him for it.
She indulged in another long pull of water before deciding on, “Mm.” She tilted her head side to side in consideration. “Not exactly.”
Cassian chuckled. “I have a few of those myself.”
She wished she had it in her to be unbothered by the reminders of their past. But Nesta had never been particularly graceful about accepting anyone else’s attention on Cassian. Whether it be for one night or for some short, doomed attempt at a relationship. Doomed, only because Nesta now had the benefit of hindsight. She’d never considered those relationships quite so rationally before now. Sometimes, progress was minimal, but it was progress all the same.
“Yep,” she said, forcing nonchalance into her voice.
Cassian didn’t buy it.
“Nes,” he groaned, though not in frustration. More like empathy and reassurance rolled into one. “I didn’t mean anything by it. Sometimes…” he trailed off, staring into the ether in that way of his. The way the night was going, Nesta was tempted to glance over her shoulder and check for Julia. “I know it matters, so I won’t say it doesn’t. But I guess it’s just easier to laugh about it now. It’s safer, anyway.”
“Safer?” That hadn’t been what she expected him to say, but oddly, she thought she understood it. Better to laugh it off than think on the details too much.
“Yeah,” he confirmed, running his hand over his jaw. “We’re here now, you know?”
“I think so.” Nesta chewed the inside of her lip, considering her next words. Guess she was sharing. “Can I tell you something? And you not judge me?”
Cassian rolled his eyes. “You know I won’t.” A beat, then, “Tell me.”
The waiter chose the moment to offer refills on their wine. Nesta was tempted to ask for the bottle to drown the embarrassment of the last several minutes, but she saved those thoughts while Cassian politely refused and asked for their check.
Nesta took a deep breath. “I don’t even remember his name,” she said, squeezing her eyes shut and easing one of them open to gauge Cassian’s reaction. His face gave nothing away until his head dropped forward, and Nesta noticed the subtle shake of his shoulders.
“Are you laughing?” she hissed, throwing her cloth napkin into his chest. A laugh bubbled out of her in answer. Everything about him was contagious.
“I’m not laughing at you.” Cassian wiped his eyes with his thumb and middle finger, his wide smile still on full display. “I thought you were going to tell me something serious— shit, Nesta.” Another chuckle, and he leaned back to prop his elbow on the back of his chair.
His casual posture and clear amusement, contagious as it was, spoke to the haunted little part of Nesta that couldn’t resist poking at his resolve. A night, so many months ago that it felt like a lifetime, knocked at the forefront of her mind. An unhealthier version of the two of them, near their lowest. A brief visit to Velaris, a stupid gathering she should have blown off like she’d originally intended when she realized she’d only packed clothes befitting of a couch potato.
She leaned forward, her voice pitched low. “It was his, you know. The sweater you’re so fond of.”
Cassian’s head cocked to the side, but Nesta noticed when it clicked. The way he righted his head, the glint in his eye. The way he fixed his focus on her and leaned forward on his elbows, his voice gravel.
“Makes sense that you wouldn’t remember his name, then.”
Nesta huffed a laugh through her nose and leaned forward, too. Cassian was close enough for secrets and bad decisions, and for a moment, they were in another time— full of both.
“That was the goal, wasn’t it?” she murmured, dragging a slender finger over his clasped hands. Cassian rolled his palm up and laced their fingers together. Breathing seemed to be harder, the air thicker.
“Not really,” he rasped. “I was the one who needed to forget.”
Nesta squeezed her hand tighter around his. “Cass—”
“Don’t,” he admonished. “I don’t want to make it heavy.” His thumb traced the back of her her own as his eyes lifted. All she could do was nod. “Truth be told, I kind of hated how good you looked in it when it wasn’t mine.”
Nesta huffed another laugh. A lump formed in her throat at the memory, at the chaotic way they always gravitated to one another no matter the consequences. They weren’t recognizable that way anymore, especially as they sat now in a fancy restaurant discussing their baggage. Some of it, anyway. It would have taken more than a single meal to get into the half of it.
“I was, though,” she rasped, tracing nonsense patterns on the tablecloth with her free hand. “Yours, I mean. Even if I ran. Even when I couldn’t accept it.”
Silence met her, and she couldn’t look at him. His emotions always belonged to himself and everyone else in a mile radius, and she wasn’t sure she could stomach the possibilities.
A gentle, callused finger tipped her chin up and tugged her gently forward. Before she realized his closeness, Cassian’s lips brushed hers. Soft, the exact opposite of all the thorns that built them. Everything she wished she could have shown him sooner. He pressed his lips to hers a second and third time before standing, his hand never leaving hers. The look of adoration on his face was so plain that Nesta struggled not to balk under it, and she wondered what it meant that it was harder to stand than his ire.
“Let’s get out of here,” he murmured, turning to tug her gently through the sea of people in the restaurant.
Her cheeks heated under others’ fleeting attention, as if they were privy to her erratic heartbeat and the intimacy of their conversation. Cassian, unbothered as always, strode confidently toward the door. And although she knew it deep down, it was then— staring at his shoulders under the fabric of his shirt as he led them to the restaurant exit— that it hit her in the chest and fizzed through her. Hope.
—
Everything felt significant.
The beep of the lock, the click of the door handle, the odd vacuum of silence that fell over any hotel room.
Sounds that were all too familiar to Nesta, especially where Cassian was concerned, but somehow, it all seemed different.
With an unceremonious flop, the key card landed next to the TV. Cassian’s voice was a velvet rasp in the loaded quiet.
“This is new,” he said through a huff of laughter, “meeting up in a hotel room where we both have a key.”
His hands slipped over her hipbones, each broad finger squeezing adoration and affection in a simple move that usually felt possessive and unwelcome by anyone else’s hands.
A chuckle rolled through her. “Not exactly,” she replied, turning within the circle of his arms. Her finger traced the line of buttons on the front of his shirt, already half undone. “We’ve shared a room here before.”
Cassian hummed. “Not really what I meant, Sweetheart.”
“I know.” She stood on her tiptoes, bracing a hand on his shoulder. “I was being funny.”
With a delicate tilt of her chin, Cassian dipped his head to capture her mouth. The smile she felt against her lips was her only warning before—
“Ah,” he said, pressing another chaste kiss to her mouth. “But you’re not funny.”
Nesta pulled back— all mock, steely rage— and eased out of her heels.
“My humor requires a certain wit.”
The farthest Cassian was willing to step away from her was a step or two, enough to allow Nesta room to move around her shoes. Once free of them, he stooped slightly to wrap his arms around her waist, tucking his face against the side of her neck and pulling her tightly to his body.
The ghost of his laugh warmed her from the inside out. “That’s true,” he admitted, running his nose along the side of her throat.
Nesta’s breath hitched. Her arms wrapped around his neck to keep him close, and she didn’t resist the urge to press her lips against his hair. His scent wrapped around her as it always did, leaving her almost boneless.
Cassian took her weight effortlessly and swayed them back and forth. A contented, raspy hum left him, and the sound tickled the length of Nesta’s spine.
Her body flushed, skin revolting against the barrier of clothing between them. She leaned back to tell him as much, but his hands twisted her hips to turn her around in his arms again.
Nesta’s head lolled to the side, her neck exposed completely to his affections with only her fingertips to keep her balance atop the small hotel desk. A pose too reminiscent of the night they’d discussed at dinner and one that had her arching her back to press against Cassian.
“Cass,” she whispered, her hand reaching for his hair. “Please, baby.”
His groan thrummed against her back, the perfect balance to his bruising grip. One of his hands left her waist, and she almost cursed him for it had she not heard the release of his belt buckle.
His teeth sank into her neck, only hard enough to send electricity through her body, and suddenly her weight was shifting forward against her hands. He made quick work of the long zipper of her dress, and the fabric pooled around her feet.
One hand pressed against her stomach, his hardness at her lower back. His other hand slipped beneath the elastic of her underwear to tease her. Her lips parted on a quiet moan, and she was spinning again, her hips lifted roughly onto the desk.
“Need to taste you,” Cassian rasped, his hands already tugging the fabric down her legs.
Nesta discarded her bra like it was on fire and leaned back on her hands. She loved the way he looked on his knees.
“Fuck,” she whimpered at the first press of his tongue. With an iron grip, he held one of her legs over his shoulder and used his other hand to free himself from the confines of his pants.
His moan vibrated against her, and Nesta’s head rolled back. Cassian’s tongue worked her with such precision it almost made her dizzy.
One of her hands snapped toward his head, her fingers threading through his hair. His eyes snapped up and darkened, and he was on his feet.
Nesta was almost bereft with the loss, but Cassian quickly rid himself of his button down shirt and his pants.
“Come here,” he ordered, tossing the comforter down and lying across the bed, his knees bent over the side. “On my face.”
Blinking, Nesta realized she was still leaning against the desk. She padded over to the side of the bed and ran her fingers over his knees, teasing all the way up his thighs.
“I want these,” she murmured, touching the elastic of his boxer briefs.
“Later,” he said, voice gruff, and tugged her gently by the wrist to coax her over him.
Nesta managed to kiss his collarbones, his neck, until he urged her quickly along to bring her over his face like he wanted. She straddled his head, his hands anchoring her thighs. Before she could assess her positioning, Cassian tugged her roughly down to his mouth.
Nesta keened, hands buried in Cassian’s hair. She moved over him, earning a hum of approval from Cassian, and soon her thighs were screaming to keep their rhythm.
“Cassian,” she begged, desperate to come. “Yes.”
His tongue moved expertly over her, making her thighs shake in earnest. She squirmed, and Cassian gripped her wrist again and tugged her upper body forward.
Nesta could have cried in relief. She was on an elbow, her other hand still buried in Cassian’s nest of hair. He never faltered in his attention, and Nesta couldn’t help but drop her forehead against the sheets as she rocked over his mouth.
She cried out, the sound blessedly muffled by the linens, but Cassian didn’t seem entirely impressed by that. He eased two fingers into her, her walls stretching to accommodate them, and she had to release his hair in favor of bracing on both elbows, her hands fisting the sheets.
Cassian groaned against her wetness. Nesta was strung out, her back arching in pursuit of release. The sensitive peaks of her breasts grazed the sheets with each rock of her body, and without warning, she splintered into a million pieces.
Tears stung her eyes at the intensity of her pleasure. Cassian eased his fingers from her and eased her through it, murmuring a quiet instruction to stay put.
Nesta wanted to melt into a puddle as Cassian slid from under her and turned to kneel on the bed behind her. His calloused hands ran over her back, squeezed her shoulders, gripped the back of her neck. She rocked her hips backwards against his length, and to her satisfaction, Cassian hissed at the contact.
“You look perfect like this,” he said, almost reverent. “Are you ready for me, baby?”
Nesta lifted her forehead in an attempt to shoot a glare his way for entertaining any doubt, but she didn’t have it in her. Instead, she made some embarrassing little noise in the back of her throat and pressed harder against him.
Cassian freed himself and entered her in one long, slow thrust. His lips touched the back of her neck until he leaned back and cupped a hand over one of her shoulders, his other hand splaying over the side of her waist.
The way they moved so naturally together always gave Nesta pause. Everything seemed to work without fail when they were pressed together. If only life had been so kind.
Nesta rolled her hips in time with his, cataloguing all the sounds he made and the things he whispered roughly for only her to hear.
So good, Nesta.
God, I could live inside you.
Perfect. Just like that, baby.
Nesta’s muscles tightened again in anticipation, her cries growing louder in the small room. Cassian’s hand shot out to the side to brace himself on the headboard, and his hips worked her hard and slow.
“Come for me, Nes,” he said, his voice strained. Nesta tightened around him, a sob leaving her at how perfect he felt. “There you go,” he encouraged. “That’s it. Let go, baby.”
Nesta shattered, her knuckles white in the tangle of the sheets. Cassian’s hips kept their steady rhythm until he was moaning her name and throbbing inside her.
His forehead fell between her shoulder blades as they recovered. He managed to keep his hulking weight from crushing her, barely, until he separated them and lay on his back next to her.
Snaking an arm beneath her, he pulled her over to rest her head on his chest, pressing her hair away from her sweat-slick brow. She sighed against him and nearly purred when he brought his hand up to massage her scalp.
When they could manage to move, they showered together, fumbling as they washed each other and pressing their smiles together in some approximation kisses. Nesta resumed her usual barbs, and Cassian took them gracefully as always before lobbing one of his own that shocked a loud laugh out of Nesta as they brushed their teeth. It was an odd time— but as good as any— to realize that this was everything.
To Nesta’s delight, Cassian wordlessly tossed an extra tee he’d packed for her to sleep in. She caught it against her chest, dropping it over her head and dragging her heavy limbs into the bed.
It was all so familiar. Familiar in the way that hurt a little, because although other moments like it had passed between them, they always ended. And even though everything about the night promised more, they would never have this one again, and the sheer existence of it carried a veil of melancholy because they couldn’t cocoon themselves in it to their content.
But maybe they didn’t need the stolen minutes together and the safety of their own little world anymore. As much as Nesta thought she’d loved the false intimacy their shared secrets offered, they didn’t need them anymore. Not when they had this— Cassian’s fingers tracing small paths through her hair, his heartbeat beneath her ear, his steady breaths regulating her own.
A whisper, yet one that seemed to echo somehow in the quiet room. “I love you.”
——————————————————————————
f you’d like to be tagged in any of my fics, please send me an ask, a message, leave a comment, or mention being tagged in your reblog! I’ll be happy to add you!
❤️🔥 Join us in celebrating Prythian's hottest couple for the fourth year in a row! ❤️🔥
Come celebrate Nesta and Cassian with us from September 15 through September 22, 2024! Feel free to participate in any way you can, from headcanons, fanart, moodboards, playlists, fics, drabbles…. no matter how big or small, anything celebrating Nessian is welcome! Please note this event will be happening on Tumblr, AO3, and Instagram (fanarts) only.
Please tag @nessianweek and use the tag #nessianweek2024 to spread the word! If you're posting on Instagram, please tag @/nessianweek2024!
You can find Nessian Week 2023's masterlist here, Nessian Week 2022's masterlist here, and Nessian Week 2021's masterlist here!
This year's prompts are as follows:
Day One: Banter ✷ One of our favorite things about Nesta and Cassian's relationship is their banter. They're always ready to go back and forth with one another, and we're always ready to see it. Show us your favorite Nessian banter, or come up with your own!
Day Two: Yearning ✷ Nesta and Cassian didn't immediately act on their feelings for one another, despite how badly we wanted them to. How do you see them handling all that longing?
Day Three: Symphony ✷ Music has played such an important role in Nesta and Cassian's relationship. What does that mean to you?
Day Four: Alternate Universe ✷ What do you think Nesta and Cassian's lives would look like outside of canon? How would they live in the modern world, a completely different fantasy world, or within the plot of your favorite book or movie? [Non-Canon AUs requested]
Day Five: Behind Closed Doors ✷ Nesta and Cassian's relationship when they're alone can be very different from what they show the world. How do you see them behaving behind closed doors?
Day Six: Legends & Destiny ✷ As Lady Death and the Lord of Bloodshed, Nesta and Cassian were destined for one another. What does their predestined love mean to you? How do you portray Lady Death and her Lord of Bloodshed?
Day Seven: Free Day ✷ Any topic of your choosing!
We look forward to seeing everything that you create for this event, and make sure to tag @nessianweek once the event starts! Thank you so much to everyone who has contributed to planning this event, with special shoutouts to @unhealthyfanobsession, @podemechamardek, @kale-theteaqueen, @talkfantasytome, @c-e-d-dreamer, @melphss, @whyisaravenlike-awritingdesk, @separatist-apologist, and @dustjacketmusings! Our lovely graphics were created/commissioned by @podemechamardek and the artwork was drawn by Pablo Souza (@/pablochmn).
Please contact this page if you have any questions about the event. We can't wait to see what you create to celebrate Nessian for the FOURTH YEAR RUNNING!
Join us in celebrating our favorite bat boy from July 22 through 28, 2024!
Welcome to Cassian Appreciation Week 2024! Feel free to participate in any way you can, from headcanons, fanart, moodboards, fics, drabbles, playlists…. no matter how big or small, anything celebrating Cassian is welcome!
Please tag @cassianappreciationweek and use the tag #CassianWeek2024 so we can see all your lovely posts!
And if you plan to post on Instagram, make sure to follow us and collab with us on the post!
This year’s prompts are as follows:
Day One: Flying ⚔︎ Cassian feels most at peace when he takes to the skies. How do you see him showing off or sharing his love of flying?
Day Two: Hair ⚔︎ Cassian's hair is one of his most defining features. Does he have a multi-step hair routine, or is he a 3-in-1 kind of guy? You decide!
Day Three: Family ⚔︎ Amongst the Illyrians, within the Inner Circle, with Nesta, and even with potential future children, we can all agree that Cassian loves his family! How do you see him showing that love?
Day Four: Lover ⚔︎ Cassian has had many opportunities for love across Prythian — who do you ship him with? Nesta? Azriel? Eris? Lucien? Any and all ships are welcome!
Day Five: Scars ⚔︎ As a General, Cassian has earned a number of scars, some visible and others not. How do you see him getting them, tending to them, or healing from them?
Day Six: Birthday ⚔︎ Although we don’t know Cassian’s official birthday, we know how much Fire Sign Energy he gives off. How do you see Cassian celebrating his birthday and channeling his inner Leo?
Day Seven: Free Day ⚔︎ Any topic of your choosing!
Thank you to @talkfantasytome, @dustjacketmusings, @c-e-d-dreamer, @moodymelanist, @melphss, @whyisaravenlike-awritingdesk, @kale-theteaqueen, @podemechamardek, @perseusannabeth, and others for helping to plan this event!
hello! i hope you're doing well and i just wanted to say that i love all of your work! you have such a beautiful way with words and insane talent <333
i was also wondering whether you'd be up for writing something torturously heartbreaking for nessian??? i know it would never happen bc they're obsessed with each other and there would never be anyone else but i think a cheating thing would be interesting to read 😭 like if cassian cheats? or then (although they are going to live ETERNALLY TOGETHER), maybe something where one of them dies? like cassian's reaction to nesta's death or vice versa?
much love to you!!! 🩷🩷🩷
This is so so kind, thank you so much!
I will be the first to admit: I am a huge wimp. A big baby. I cannot handle too much angst or sadness in books, fics, any media, frankly. At this time, I don’t see myself writing anything angsty or toxic for any couple, unless there was some massive twist or misunderstanding involved.
BUT I fully understand most people don’t feel the same as me and want those angsty, toxic feels. I asked some of my Nessian friends for fic recs and this is what they gave me!
Can’t Help It by @moodymelanist. Honestly, her entire Nessian catalog is impressive and wonderful so here’s her entire Nessian masterlist. Also worth mentioning Paint It Red, especially if you’re in the mood for major character death.
Daughterofthesea on AO3 has some soft and angsty fics.
Also on AO3, theteaqueen is also very good for Nessian angst
Wonderland by @c-e-d-dreamer in which Nesta breaks the mating bond with Cassian
Somewhere by @thewayshedreamed for an ongoing toxic Modern AU
Finally, It Looks as Though You’re Letting Go by @xtaketwox. An ongoing soulmates AU fic tagged as “you’re going to suffer but you’re going to be happy about it” on AO3.
If I missed anyone or anyone else has fic recommendations or wants to shout out their own works, please feel free to comment and reblog!
Aw! Thank you for the tag, @labellefleur-sauvage! Smiling ear to ear because I opened this while working on Somewhere. And because I’m always humbled to be mentioned in such talented company.
She stood tall on her tiptoes, scanning every face. No luck, at least, not until a small group of passengers descended on the escalators and inch by glorious inch of Cassian came into view.
Her chest was heavy— almost full to bursting. Cassian was preoccupied with making sure his carry-on didn’t tumble down the steps and into his neighbors, and Nesta forced herself to be satisfied with his safe arrival for the time being rather than annoyed that she wasn’t yet pressed against him. He’d dressed for comfortable travel— t-shirt, hair half-up, and a pair of black joggers— and while she understood they were meant for Cassian’s physical comfort, she couldn’t help that he looked like the perfect, safe place to land at the end of any long day.
a/n: How has it been this long since I've updated? 😅 I've missed these two a ton lately, and I'm excited to finally share their next chapter! I'm also excited because I've been looking forward to the NEXT chapter for quite some time, and the inspiration for that one has been extra high lately 👀👀
If you want to re-read to get a refresher or need to catch up, I put the link below!
Cassian welcomes us back for this update! Hope y'all enjoy!
>> Somewhere masterlist >>fanfic masterlist
——————————————————————————
Hanging out with Feyre was long overdue, and despite the exhaustion settling into Cassian’s bones, he was looking forward to it. She always made tea the way he liked it— something they had in common— and after such a long day, he could use a cup to help keep his eyes open until a proper bedtime.
The door was unlocked when he approached the house, and Cassian chuckled at how his brother would no doubt react to that small fact. Nevermind that Feyre did it with Cassian in mind. His overprotective little brother was likely to have a heart attack if he knew she was so flippant with her safety while he was out of town on business. The secret was safe with Cassian, if only to spare Feyre the mild lecture for the millionth time.
“Hey Fey,” he called, wiping his shoes on the small rug.
His keys made a loud clang in the metal bowl on the entryway table, and Cassian scowled at the jarring sound as if he hadn’t been ultimately responsible. His fatigue was making him grouchy.
“Cass!” Feyre came around the corner beaming and wrapped him in a tight hug. She had always been like a baby sister to him, even in the earliest days of her relationship with Rhysand. Something had made sense between them, and Cassian loved her fiercely.
Squeezing her back with equal enthusiasm, Cassian pressed a kiss to her hair and smiled. “Lonely already?” he teased. “Rhysand only left yesterday.”
Feyre scoffed and pulled away, leading him to the small table off the side of the kitchen. Tea was already steaming in a cast iron kettle in the middle and small pastries were stacked nearby. Cassian’s mouth watered at the sight.
“I’ve hardly had time to be lonely,” she mused, and affection dripped from every word. “You know he’s called with every spare moment.”
“I figured as much. This looks great, by the way.”
“Thanks.” Feyre smiled and gestured toward one of the chairs. Cassian complied— mostly because he knew better than to challenge an Archeron in their own home— and leaned forward on his elbows to bend his neck in a stretch.
A cup of tea appeared in his field of vision, and he winked at Feyre in gratitude. She was poised across from him, her attention sliding to the garden through the window, and the sun illuminating her elegant profile. They sipped in silence for a couple of moments, content in each other’s comfortable, steady company.
Cassian was the first to break the silence, a role he served more often than not. “Have you made much progress on the pieces for your next exhibit with Rhysand being out of town?”
“Some. I haven’t hit much of a stride yet, and that’s daunting considering it’s only a couple of months away.”
Feyre wrapped her hands around her mug and rounded her shoulders as if the admission had cost her something. Whatever the case, Cassian didn’t care to see her stressed.
“You’ll get it,” he assured her. “You always do.” A small smile stretched across her face, and his chest felt a little lighter than before. The joke rolled off his tongue before he could think better of it. “Worst case, I’ll model for you.”
That earned an actual laugh. “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, her eyes sparkling, “should I get desperate.”
“We’ll pray it doesn’t come to that.”
They laughed together before turning their focus back to their tea. Cassian took the opportunity to snack on a small scone, which he was pretty sure was meant for children by the looks of it. He said as much, and Feyre rolled her eyes. It was an expression so like Nesta that longing threatened to choke him.
“What about you?” Feyre asked, interrupting his thoughts. “You said you had something to run by me?”
Damn, he’d forgotten he planted that seed when they made plans earlier in the day. The promotion Helion offered was eating him alive, and he needed a sounding board. While that was still true, he hadn’t been tired down to his bones when he’d originally brought it up.
“Yeah, sort of.” He leaned back in his chair and twisted to rest his elbow over the back. “It’s more that I have some things to work through out loud, and I think you could help with pros and cons.”
Feyre’s brows came together over the rim on her mug. With a nod, she placed her tea atop the table and gave him her full, undivided attention. His chest felt tighter than he’d anticipated, but he’d learned to push through uncertainty many moons ago.
“I got offered a promotion,” he began, each word leaving him through an exhale.
“Why do you say that as if it’s tragic?”
A smirk tugged at the edge of Cassian’s mouth. “It’s not tragic, and if I’m honest, I deserve it.”
“So humble.”
He winked in acknowledgement of Feyre’s ribbing. She wasn’t nearly as cutthroat as Nesta in her banter, but she did well enough if Cassian’s soft spot for her was any indication.
“Helion gave me some time to decide, but I need to get back to him soon. There’s not a position to compare it to, and with Nesta and me trying to work things out, I worry about how much of my time it’ll take up.”
Feyre was quiet for a beat too long, enough for Cassian’s lower back to bead with sweat. Stoicism wasn’t something he typically associated with Feyre, but he didn’t regret his limited experience with it.
“Have you told Nesta about it?”
He took a breath. “Yeah. She was supportive, but things are still new. I don’t know if she would try and sway me either way.”
“True,” Feyre replied, taking another long sip of her tea. “Although, if we’re being fair, Nesta will understand putting yourself first.”
Cassian must have failed at keeping his expression placid with how Feyre’s eyes tracked every angle of his face. “Fey, don’t.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I came here because I thought I wouldn’t have to defend Nesta to you, of all people.”
Silence fell. Hurt flashed over Feyre’s face, her blue eyes round, and Cassian hated himself for hurting her. Defending Nesta wasn’t something he could apologize for, though.
“That’s not what I meant.” Her voice was brittle, soft. “Nesta is practical, and she would understand the value of advancing your career in these early stages of your relationship. She won’t expect you to uproot your routine— your life— simply because you decided to work things out together.”
His eyes eased shut, and he took a measured breath. “I’m sorry.”
Feyre nodded, and the tension seemed to evaporate with the simple gesture. “Not everyone has been receptive, and I can respect you having Nesta’s back. She has too few in her corner as it is.”
Emotion gathered in his throat, and he swallowed against it. “Yeah,” he rasped. “Can I tell you something, just between the two of us for now?”
“Sure. As long as you’re not asking me to lie to Rhys.”
“Nah, not exactly.” Feyre gave him a pointed look, and he raised his hands in placation. “I only ask that you not tell him before I get a chance, but if he suspects anything, I don’t expect you to lie.”
Feyre nodded, but her brow remained furrowed.
“The timing of all this isn’t great, and I don’t know how to talk to Nesta about it,” he admitted. His shoulders relaxed for the first time in minutes. He had greatly underestimated the relief that would come with such a simple admission. “I know where I stand, but I’m trying to let Nesta settle in to all this. With us.”
He paused to assess Feyre’s expression, but she wasn’t giving much away for free. To her credit, Cassian hadn’t exactly spelled things out. He fixed his attention to his palm, using the thumb of his other hand to trace circles around his calluses.
“We talked about what happens if we see this working out long-term. We can’t live thousands of miles apart forever.”
“Well, yeah. Makes sense.”
Cassian cleared his throat. “Nesta isn’t in a place to come back to Velaris, at least not right now. Before Helion talked to me about this job, I’d already told Nesta I would move. To give us a fair shot.”
Feyre’s eyes flared in surprise, but she blinked it away. “And you think it’s too soon.”
“Isn’t it?”
Her laugh was affectionate. “Cass, you and Nesta are already years in the making.”
“Sure, but…” he trailed off, gathering his words. “We agreed to give it time, but I don’t know what she’s comfortable with before deciding to take the next step. What if I turn down the job, and I end up here for at least another year? Or, what if I take it, and I have to quit in three months? I hate the idea of putting anyone in a bind, but Nesta would come first.”
Feyre observed him, her shoulders rounding toward him as if compelled to pull him into a hug. “Cass,” she murmured, “you have to talk to her.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” he joked, leaning back in his chair. He felt raw after such a display of vulnerability, and he craved the levity he was known to bring to any situation. “I don’t want the pressure to freak her out.”
“It’s a risk you take. But she’s the only person who is in this with you and whose opinion really matters. If you’re both committed to this, a simple conversation shouldn’t derail everything. If it does, that’s another issue. I’m not saying it’ll be fun, but it’s necessary.”
Cassian groaned, dragging his hands over his stubbled cheeks. “I know that. You’re supposed to lie to me.”
Feyre’s head dropped back as she laughed, and it was so contagious that it managed to drag a chuckle from beneath the weight of Cassian’s ribs.
“You know, as quick as you are to defend Nesta, maybe it’s worth giving her a little more credit yourself,” Feyre said, her tone soft.
The truth of it hit him full force. He spent so much time preparing for war in Nesta’s honor that he failed to see how his own insecurities sold her short. It was hardly fair to assume the worst in her when he expected the opposite from anyone else. It hadn’t been intentional, but the way his hang-ups exerted influence over his assumptions exposed some lingering scar tissue stretched across his ego.
Cassian nodded and focused on his tea. Feyre had given him more than his fair share to think about, including his unresolved issues and how to shield Nesta from the aftermath.
“So, you’re leaving us, then?” The playfulness in her question was the life preserver he’d needed, and he shamelessly accepted the shift in tone.
“As soon as possible,” he said, deadpan. “Can’t wait, really.”
Feyre chuckled and rolled her eyes. “Liar. You’ll miss us the second you leave.”
Cassian responded with a tight, subtle shake of his head and punctuated it with a wink. His impish denial earned another laugh from Feyre, and his heart felt lighter in the way it usually did when he made his loved ones feel at ease.
A beat of silence passed, and then, “You really love her.”
“Yeah?” Cassian asked, barely suppressing a laugh. “What gave it away?”
A scone flew across the table and hit him square in the chest. He caught it just before it landed on the table and ate half in a single bite, staring at Feyre as if he hadn’t deserved her brutality.
“Don’t be cute, Cassian,” Feyre chided. “I don’t know… I stayed conflicted about you two a couple of years ago. I’ve never seen people who brought each other alive like you and Nesta did, but it always seemed to come at a price.”
Cassian nodded, overly invested in assessing the angle of his next bite. What was he supposed to say to that, anyway?
“Part of me wanted to be relieved when you split up, but you were both miserable,” she continued, another punch to the stomach. “After watching the two of you claw your ways back to yourselves over the last couple of years, it was hard to settle into the idea that things would all snap into place now.”
His fingers drummed a mindless rhythm on the table, the quiet thudding sound keeping his pulse in check. “Well, for what it’s worth, nothing has snapped into place.”
Feyre waited until his eyes met hers again to speak, her brows furrowed. “But I thought—”
“Everything is okay,” Cassian amended, maybe too quickly. It was the truth, but something about being under the microscope made him jumpy and a little defensive. “I just meant that it didn’t happen that way. Nesta and I…” he trailed off, trying to find his words in the ether and settling for the lame ones he found first. “We didn’t have a clean break a couple of years back.”
“So, you two have tried getting back together before?”
A huff of wry amusement left him before he could stop it. “I wouldn’t say that.”
At Feyre’s incredulous stare, he elaborated as much as he dared without sharing all the skeletons in his and Nesta’s closet. He hit the high points of their chronic push and pull. Their weakness and loose details of their misdeeds towards other partners in the name of whatever they hoped to resuscitate between them, no matter how little time they could have had.
“Gods,” Feyre muttered, draining the rest of her tea and setting the cup down heavily. “I had no idea.”
“No one did, except Nesta and me. Azriel suspected at times because he knew how much Nesta always got under my skin, but I was a vault on any of the details.”
“I guess it’s no one’s business, really.”
Cassian raised his brows in silent agreement and leaned back in his chair, stretched his arms one at a time across his chest to relieve some of the tension between his shoulder blades. That familiar pressure was building again, the one that seeped into Cassian’s bones and compelled him to redirect the conversation to less turbulent territory. If not for himself, to bring a smile and an ease back to his sister-in-law, who really had no reason to carry the burden of his past.
“Maybe keep your day job, Fey,” he teased, hoping his impulse didn’t interfere with his mark. “I don’t think your powers of deduction are going to pay the bills.”
She laughed, long and loud, and pride filled his chest to bursting. Feyre was still his ally, it would seem, and the future felt a fraction less daunting with her in their corner.
His tone shifted, suddenly thick with emotion that was a surprise to him as much as Feyre. “I’ve loved Nesta since the night we spent in that cabin. Years ago, now,” he rasped. Feyre’s eyes softened, and she reached across the table for his hand. He let her take it. “Nothing’s been the same since.”
The confession gutted him and eased a tension he’d been carrying for far too long in equal measure. Cassian wondered how he’d managed to keep it all contained to that point, but the realization hit him that he hadn’t. Not really.
Anyone who knew him well knew something chaotic and unyielding had always brewed beneath the surface of his self-control— that most of his conscious effort went toward burning off the constant unsteadiness in his veins. All to avoid a host of bad decisions along the path of shameless self-destruction. The way he carried the weight of his family members’ happiness on his shoulders, the energy he brought to his job and making himself indispensable. Making decisions for others, especially ones that protected them, had never been a challenge for Cassian, as he loved nothing more than to take care of anyone who needed it. The challenge had always been in making decisions that served him when it all came down to it, and he’d never been able to do that without the threat of impact to someone else. Not even that had been enough to keep him away from Nesta over the years, no matter the fallout.
Amren had been right when she’d finally laid it all out, but he would take that small fact to the damned grave. Cruel and unusual torture wouldn’t be enough to risk her smugness for the following millennium.
Feyre ended the prolonged silence, shattering the fragile bits of his impromptu soul search. It was probably for the best, he decided.
“It makes sense, you know,” she said, her voice hushed. “No one loves like you do, Cassian.” A lump formed in his throat, and he offered her a nod in thanks. He didn’t trust the emotions that would come spilling out if he deigned to open his mouth. “And I don’t think anyone feels quite like Nesta, either.”
All good things, he thought, if the individuals in question were healthy and settled. A disaster, if they weren’t. The path his thoughts had taken only moments before indicated that he was a long way from perfect, but Cassian realized with such a small revelation that he and Nesta weren’t damned to everything they’d been through before. Not when they’d both done the work on themselves, albeit incomplete. The game changer was in the choice, and the commitment to that growth and each other.
A weight heavier than he’d thought himself capable of carrying for so many years eased from his shoulders. Not everything, of course, but sometimes, all it took was a moment that offered a little bit of hope.
—
To Feyre’s credit, Nesta had been entirely receptive to Cassian’s perceived dilemma. He’d decided to rip off the proverbial bandaid that very evening, and if he was thankful for anything, it was the fact that he’d opted to untangle his thoughts with his sister-in-law before he’d made the potential mistake of word-vomiting all over Nesta.
He had carefully laid out his pros and cons of taking the promotion— making sure to include the items pertaining to life overall, as well as the implications for their future. Nesta was patient and had pointed out several additional considerations he’d yet to think of, and as it turned out, the two of them made a pretty solid team when they got out of their own way enough to work together through life’s hurdles.
For all her assistance in building both cases, Nesta’s stance on the matter had been straight forward and rather simple if Cassian allowed himself to acknowledge it.
“The thing is,” she’d said, “you need to do what makes the most sense for you right now. Not the Cassian 6 months from now, the Cassian a year from now, or Cassian from yesterday.”
It had been a particularly sobering realization, since Cassian’s usual method involved trying to control for every possible angle, but Nesta had gotten them straight to the heart of the matter. A former version of himself itched to take her position personally, to assume that her bluntness was some kind of directly proportional measure of how little she cared to have him closer. Still a work in progress, but Cassian was pleased that silencing that maladaptive voice in his head got easier every time he did it, and life was offering him plenty of practice.
His commitment to self-advocacy had paid off in his meeting with Helion, and he’d come away with several accommodations that he wasn’t sure they would have agreed to make. Now, days later, he dragged his heavy, sleep-deprived body up the stairs to his apartment— the only way he’d made peace with skipping his workout that day— after another long day at the office. Somehow, he was juggling his usual duties while trying to learn the new ones. His replacement couldn’t start soon enough.
The door shut heavily in his already-dark entryway, his keys landing on the small table near the door by sheer muscle memory. Cassian leaned against the shut door and eased his eyes closed, but his phone vibrated rudely almost immediately. With a groan, he shoved his hand into his pocket and hauled his phone into view. The shift in his mood at seeing Nesta’s name nearly gave him whiplash.
“Hey, Sweetheart.”
He flipped the light switch, muttering a soft curse at the sudden brightness. The assault on his vision was worth it to hear the low, melodic chuckle that came shortly after.
“Hey,” she said, her smile still evident. “Long day?”
Another groan. A rough, calloused hand over the stubble on his cheek. “Yep. Anymore of this, and my brain is going to melt.”
“That feels dramatic.”
Cassian huffed a laugh, tucking his phone against his shoulder and working the buttons on his shirt. “Doesn’t make it less true. Why are you awake?”
The time difference made their nighttime phone calls a luxury. Cassian worried all the time that Nesta didn’t rest enough, but the balance was a delicate one with voicing that concern.
“Missed you,” she said simply, as if it didn’t still rock Cassian to hear Nesta admit such intimacy. “I got in late tonight anyway because I had dinner with Claire. And I made the mistake of picking up my book once I got home.”
“You should set a timer.”
Nesta scoffed. “That’s not how it works.”
He understood the way Nesta lost herself in whatever she read, had witnessed it countless times. Hours passed sometimes before Nesta’s head would lift, her eyes bleary, and she would start the task of re-orienting to the present.
“Yeah, yeah,” he dismissed, smiling at how he knew she would bristle. “How was dinner?”
She took a long, deep breath. “It was good. We were overdue for a catch-up.”
Cassian paused to throw his shirt into the laundry basket and traded his pants for some athletic shorts. With little grace, he threw himself onto his bed, his face buried in his pillow.
“How’s she doing?” he asked, propping on an elbow.
“Good.” Her response was almost too swift, but it felt haunted all the same. “Really good.”
“That’s good.” Cassian cringed. Usually, if the word “good” entered a conversation any number of times in rapid succession, things were quite the opposite. His response felt awkward and uninspired, but he couldn’t put a finger on why. His intuition with Nesta was solid usually, but distance complicated even the things that came most naturally. A lesson he continued to learn.
“She mentioned a promotion.” Nesta sounded detached from the information she shared, and Cassian offered her the time to work through it without comment. “She deserves it. She’s wanted it for a long time and has been passed over several times now. I’m happy for her.”
Cassian considered his words, his mouth opening and slamming shut a couple of times before he landed on, “Why don’t you sound happy?”
“I am,” she insisted, her voice adamant. “I really am… I just…” Cassian let her words linger, afraid that if he made any sudden moves that Nesta may refrain from elaborating. “Some days it feels like I’ve been stuck in place for months while the rest of the world kept moving all around me.”
A grimace pulled at the edges of his mouth. Nesta had done so much work to heal over the months, and while Cassian knew she was moving mountains in their own right, he understood where she was coming from. He and Claire— two people close to Nesta whose lives hadn’t been immeasurably disrupted by recent events — were moving forward in their goals, and Nesta still consistently mentioned how she felt like she would be trying to catch up from her time off in perpetuity.
“I’m sorry, Nes,” he murmured, his voice rough.
“Nothing to be sorry for.” A forced casualness floated along her words, and he hated them for the mask they were. A deep breath in, a deep breath out, and then, “Nothing is set in stone as of now, but it would mean a relocation for Claire. And honestly, I’m not ready to face that yet… the possibility of being here alone all over again.”
Cassian nearly choked on a curse. The thought of Nesta feeling like it was her alone against the world made his chest ache with the need to pull her against him. To press a kiss to her temple and remind her who she was— that, despite being perfectly capable on her own to handle anything life threw her way, she was never fighting alone as long as Cassian was alive.
“I wish there was something I could do.”
Nesta allowed herself a soft laugh, and Cassian’s breath came a little easier, albeit not much. “I know you would if you could.”
“In a heartbeat,” he assured her. “Look, I know the timing isn’t great, but I don’t know— maybe we can talk about our timeline again. Maybe move it up.”
“Cass, absolutely not.” Her tone left no room for discussion, and Cassian felt his eyebrow quirk up as if he’d been challenged. Before he could argue in spite of her silent warning, Nesta’s voice softened. “Not that I don’t want you here. I appreciate that you would, but I won’t be that person that you feel the need to swoop in and save. I’ll be okay.”
His eyes eased shut. How was he supposed to argue with that?
“I know you will.”
An almost-comfortable silence fell over them for a few minutes until Cassian realized that part of their conversation was effectively over. Searching for lighter territory, he cleared his throat.
“Three more sleeps until I see you.”
Her laugh was the reward he’d wanted. Anything to know he’d put a smile on her face. “Most people countdown in days.”
“Mm,” he replied, seemingly unimpressed, but his smile came through anyway. “I’m not most people.”
“Isn’t that the truth?”
“I’m not sure if I should take offense to that.”
Nesta was quiet, and Cassian pictured the way her teeth sank into her lower lip when she fought a smile. Then, because he felt indulgent, he thought of the way he would trace her mouth with his thumb, how her eyes went round when he tipped her chin up.
“No,” she almost whispered. “It’s a good thing.”
Rolling over to his back, he ran a hand through his wild hair and groaned at his mental to-do list.
“Shit. I still need to pack.”
“I have some of your stuff here,” she reminded him. “A toothbrush, shampoo, body wash. All you need is clothes and shoes.”
“That helps. Still have to do my laundry first.”
Nesta hummed her understanding. “Well, if our schedules line up, I’ll keep you busy while you wait for the machine to finish.”
The lazy drawl of his words was courtesy of the many images her promise inspired. “I like the way your brain works, Sweetheart.”
——————————————————————————
If you’d like to be tagged in any of my fics, please send me an ask, a message, leave a comment, or mention being tagged in your reblog! I’ll be happy to add you!
[And, if I’ve left you off my list unintentionally, please don’t hesitate to remind me! I promise I won't be offended!]
a/n: How has it been this long since I've updated? 😅 I've missed these two a ton lately, and I'm excited to finally share their next chapter! I'm also excited because I've been looking forward to the NEXT chapter for quite some time, and the inspiration for that one has been extra high lately 👀👀
If you want to re-read to get a refresher or need to catch up, I put the link below!
Cassian welcomes us back for this update! Hope y'all enjoy!
>> Somewhere masterlist >>fanfic masterlist
——————————————————————————
Hanging out with Feyre was long overdue, and despite the exhaustion settling into Cassian’s bones, he was looking forward to it. She always made tea the way he liked it— something they had in common— and after such a long day, he could use a cup to help keep his eyes open until a proper bedtime.
The door was unlocked when he approached the house, and Cassian chuckled at how his brother would no doubt react to that small fact. Nevermind that Feyre did it with Cassian in mind. His overprotective little brother was likely to have a heart attack if he knew she was so flippant with her safety while he was out of town on business. The secret was safe with Cassian, if only to spare Feyre the mild lecture for the millionth time.
“Hey Fey,” he called, wiping his shoes on the small rug.
His keys made a loud clang in the metal bowl on the entryway table, and Cassian scowled at the jarring sound as if he hadn’t been ultimately responsible. His fatigue was making him grouchy.
“Cass!” Feyre came around the corner beaming and wrapped him in a tight hug. She had always been like a baby sister to him, even in the earliest days of her relationship with Rhysand. Something had made sense between them, and Cassian loved her fiercely.
Squeezing her back with equal enthusiasm, Cassian pressed a kiss to her hair and smiled. “Lonely already?” he teased. “Rhysand only left yesterday.”
Feyre scoffed and pulled away, leading him to the small table off the side of the kitchen. Tea was already steaming in a cast iron kettle in the middle and small pastries were stacked nearby. Cassian’s mouth watered at the sight.
“I’ve hardly had time to be lonely,” she mused, and affection dripped from every word. “You know he’s called with every spare moment.”
“I figured as much. This looks great, by the way.”
“Thanks.” Feyre smiled and gestured toward one of the chairs. Cassian complied— mostly because he knew better than to challenge an Archeron in their own home— and leaned forward on his elbows to bend his neck in a stretch.
A cup of tea appeared in his field of vision, and he winked at Feyre in gratitude. She was poised across from him, her attention sliding to the garden through the window, and the sun illuminating her elegant profile. They sipped in silence for a couple of moments, content in each other’s comfortable, steady company.
Cassian was the first to break the silence, a role he served more often than not. “Have you made much progress on the pieces for your next exhibit with Rhysand being out of town?”
“Some. I haven’t hit much of a stride yet, and that’s daunting considering it’s only a couple of months away.”
Feyre wrapped her hands around her mug and rounded her shoulders as if the admission had cost her something. Whatever the case, Cassian didn’t care to see her stressed.
“You’ll get it,” he assured her. “You always do.” A small smile stretched across her face, and his chest felt a little lighter than before. The joke rolled off his tongue before he could think better of it. “Worst case, I’ll model for you.”
That earned an actual laugh. “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, her eyes sparkling, “should I get desperate.”
“We’ll pray it doesn’t come to that.”
They laughed together before turning their focus back to their tea. Cassian took the opportunity to snack on a small scone, which he was pretty sure was meant for children by the looks of it. He said as much, and Feyre rolled her eyes. It was an expression so like Nesta that longing threatened to choke him.
“What about you?” Feyre asked, interrupting his thoughts. “You said you had something to run by me?”
Damn, he’d forgotten he planted that seed when they made plans earlier in the day. The promotion Helion offered was eating him alive, and he needed a sounding board. While that was still true, he hadn’t been tired down to his bones when he’d originally brought it up.
“Yeah, sort of.” He leaned back in his chair and twisted to rest his elbow over the back. “It’s more that I have some things to work through out loud, and I think you could help with pros and cons.”
Feyre’s brows came together over the rim on her mug. With a nod, she placed her tea atop the table and gave him her full, undivided attention. His chest felt tighter than he’d anticipated, but he’d learned to push through uncertainty many moons ago.
“I got offered a promotion,” he began, each word leaving him through an exhale.
“Why do you say that as if it’s tragic?”
A smirk tugged at the edge of Cassian’s mouth. “It’s not tragic, and if I’m honest, I deserve it.”
“So humble.”
He winked in acknowledgement of Feyre’s ribbing. She wasn’t nearly as cutthroat as Nesta in her banter, but she did well enough if Cassian’s soft spot for her was any indication.
“Helion gave me some time to decide, but I need to get back to him soon. There’s not a position to compare it to, and with Nesta and me trying to work things out, I worry about how much of my time it’ll take up.”
Feyre was quiet for a beat too long, enough for Cassian’s lower back to bead with sweat. Stoicism wasn’t something he typically associated with Feyre, but he didn’t regret his limited experience with it.
“Have you told Nesta about it?”
He took a breath. “Yeah. She was supportive, but things are still new. I don’t know if she would try and sway me either way.”
“True,” Feyre replied, taking another long sip of her tea. “Although, if we’re being fair, Nesta will understand putting yourself first.”
Cassian must have failed at keeping his expression placid with how Feyre’s eyes tracked every angle of his face. “Fey, don’t.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I came here because I thought I wouldn’t have to defend Nesta to you, of all people.”
Silence fell. Hurt flashed over Feyre’s face, her blue eyes round, and Cassian hated himself for hurting her. Defending Nesta wasn’t something he could apologize for, though.
“That’s not what I meant.” Her voice was brittle, soft. “Nesta is practical, and she would understand the value of advancing your career in these early stages of your relationship. She won’t expect you to uproot your routine— your life— simply because you decided to work things out together.”
His eyes eased shut, and he took a measured breath. “I’m sorry.”
Feyre nodded, and the tension seemed to evaporate with the simple gesture. “Not everyone has been receptive, and I can respect you having Nesta’s back. She has too few in her corner as it is.”
Emotion gathered in his throat, and he swallowed against it. “Yeah,” he rasped. “Can I tell you something, just between the two of us for now?”
“Sure. As long as you’re not asking me to lie to Rhys.”
“Nah, not exactly.” Feyre gave him a pointed look, and he raised his hands in placation. “I only ask that you not tell him before I get a chance, but if he suspects anything, I don’t expect you to lie.”
Feyre nodded, but her brow remained furrowed.
“The timing of all this isn’t great, and I don’t know how to talk to Nesta about it,” he admitted. His shoulders relaxed for the first time in minutes. He had greatly underestimated the relief that would come with such a simple admission. “I know where I stand, but I’m trying to let Nesta settle in to all this. With us.”
He paused to assess Feyre’s expression, but she wasn’t giving much away for free. To her credit, Cassian hadn’t exactly spelled things out. He fixed his attention to his palm, using the thumb of his other hand to trace circles around his calluses.
“We talked about what happens if we see this working out long-term. We can’t live thousands of miles apart forever.”
“Well, yeah. Makes sense.”
Cassian cleared his throat. “Nesta isn’t in a place to come back to Velaris, at least not right now. Before Helion talked to me about this job, I’d already told Nesta I would move. To give us a fair shot.”
Feyre’s eyes flared in surprise, but she blinked it away. “And you think it’s too soon.”
“Isn’t it?”
Her laugh was affectionate. “Cass, you and Nesta are already years in the making.”
“Sure, but…” he trailed off, gathering his words. “We agreed to give it time, but I don’t know what she’s comfortable with before deciding to take the next step. What if I turn down the job, and I end up here for at least another year? Or, what if I take it, and I have to quit in three months? I hate the idea of putting anyone in a bind, but Nesta would come first.”
Feyre observed him, her shoulders rounding toward him as if compelled to pull him into a hug. “Cass,” she murmured, “you have to talk to her.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” he joked, leaning back in his chair. He felt raw after such a display of vulnerability, and he craved the levity he was known to bring to any situation. “I don’t want the pressure to freak her out.”
“It’s a risk you take. But she’s the only person who is in this with you and whose opinion really matters. If you’re both committed to this, a simple conversation shouldn’t derail everything. If it does, that’s another issue. I’m not saying it’ll be fun, but it’s necessary.”
Cassian groaned, dragging his hands over his stubbled cheeks. “I know that. You’re supposed to lie to me.”
Feyre’s head dropped back as she laughed, and it was so contagious that it managed to drag a chuckle from beneath the weight of Cassian’s ribs.
“You know, as quick as you are to defend Nesta, maybe it’s worth giving her a little more credit yourself,” Feyre said, her tone soft.
The truth of it hit him full force. He spent so much time preparing for war in Nesta’s honor that he failed to see how his own insecurities sold her short. It was hardly fair to assume the worst in her when he expected the opposite from anyone else. It hadn’t been intentional, but the way his hang-ups exerted influence over his assumptions exposed some lingering scar tissue stretched across his ego.
Cassian nodded and focused on his tea. Feyre had given him more than his fair share to think about, including his unresolved issues and how to shield Nesta from the aftermath.
“So, you’re leaving us, then?” The playfulness in her question was the life preserver he’d needed, and he shamelessly accepted the shift in tone.
“As soon as possible,” he said, deadpan. “Can’t wait, really.”
Feyre chuckled and rolled her eyes. “Liar. You’ll miss us the second you leave.”
Cassian responded with a tight, subtle shake of his head and punctuated it with a wink. His impish denial earned another laugh from Feyre, and his heart felt lighter in the way it usually did when he made his loved ones feel at ease.
A beat of silence passed, and then, “You really love her.”
“Yeah?” Cassian asked, barely suppressing a laugh. “What gave it away?”
A scone flew across the table and hit him square in the chest. He caught it just before it landed on the table and ate half in a single bite, staring at Feyre as if he hadn’t deserved her brutality.
“Don’t be cute, Cassian,” Feyre chided. “I don’t know… I stayed conflicted about you two a couple of years ago. I’ve never seen people who brought each other alive like you and Nesta did, but it always seemed to come at a price.”
Cassian nodded, overly invested in assessing the angle of his next bite. What was he supposed to say to that, anyway?
“Part of me wanted to be relieved when you split up, but you were both miserable,” she continued, another punch to the stomach. “After watching the two of you claw your ways back to yourselves over the last couple of years, it was hard to settle into the idea that things would all snap into place now.”
His fingers drummed a mindless rhythm on the table, the quiet thudding sound keeping his pulse in check. “Well, for what it’s worth, nothing has snapped into place.”
Feyre waited until his eyes met hers again to speak, her brows furrowed. “But I thought—”
“Everything is okay,” Cassian amended, maybe too quickly. It was the truth, but something about being under the microscope made him jumpy and a little defensive. “I just meant that it didn’t happen that way. Nesta and I…” he trailed off, trying to find his words in the ether and settling for the lame ones he found first. “We didn’t have a clean break a couple of years back.”
“So, you two have tried getting back together before?”
A huff of wry amusement left him before he could stop it. “I wouldn’t say that.”
At Feyre’s incredulous stare, he elaborated as much as he dared without sharing all the skeletons in his and Nesta’s closet. He hit the high points of their chronic push and pull. Their weakness and loose details of their misdeeds towards other partners in the name of whatever they hoped to resuscitate between them, no matter how little time they could have had.
“Gods,” Feyre muttered, draining the rest of her tea and setting the cup down heavily. “I had no idea.”
“No one did, except Nesta and me. Azriel suspected at times because he knew how much Nesta always got under my skin, but I was a vault on any of the details.”
“I guess it’s no one’s business, really.”
Cassian raised his brows in silent agreement and leaned back in his chair, stretched his arms one at a time across his chest to relieve some of the tension between his shoulder blades. That familiar pressure was building again, the one that seeped into Cassian’s bones and compelled him to redirect the conversation to less turbulent territory. If not for himself, to bring a smile and an ease back to his sister-in-law, who really had no reason to carry the burden of his past.
“Maybe keep your day job, Fey,” he teased, hoping his impulse didn’t interfere with his mark. “I don’t think your powers of deduction are going to pay the bills.”
She laughed, long and loud, and pride filled his chest to bursting. Feyre was still his ally, it would seem, and the future felt a fraction less daunting with her in their corner.
His tone shifted, suddenly thick with emotion that was a surprise to him as much as Feyre. “I’ve loved Nesta since the night we spent in that cabin. Years ago, now,” he rasped. Feyre’s eyes softened, and she reached across the table for his hand. He let her take it. “Nothing’s been the same since.”
The confession gutted him and eased a tension he’d been carrying for far too long in equal measure. Cassian wondered how he’d managed to keep it all contained to that point, but the realization hit him that he hadn’t. Not really.
Anyone who knew him well knew something chaotic and unyielding had always brewed beneath the surface of his self-control— that most of his conscious effort went toward burning off the constant unsteadiness in his veins. All to avoid a host of bad decisions along the path of shameless self-destruction. The way he carried the weight of his family members’ happiness on his shoulders, the energy he brought to his job and making himself indispensable. Making decisions for others, especially ones that protected them, had never been a challenge for Cassian, as he loved nothing more than to take care of anyone who needed it. The challenge had always been in making decisions that served him when it all came down to it, and he’d never been able to do that without the threat of impact to someone else. Not even that had been enough to keep him away from Nesta over the years, no matter the fallout.
Amren had been right when she’d finally laid it all out, but he would take that small fact to the damned grave. Cruel and unusual torture wouldn’t be enough to risk her smugness for the following millennium.
Feyre ended the prolonged silence, shattering the fragile bits of his impromptu soul search. It was probably for the best, he decided.
“It makes sense, you know,” she said, her voice hushed. “No one loves like you do, Cassian.” A lump formed in his throat, and he offered her a nod in thanks. He didn’t trust the emotions that would come spilling out if he deigned to open his mouth. “And I don’t think anyone feels quite like Nesta, either.”
All good things, he thought, if the individuals in question were healthy and settled. A disaster, if they weren’t. The path his thoughts had taken only moments before indicated that he was a long way from perfect, but Cassian realized with such a small revelation that he and Nesta weren’t damned to everything they’d been through before. Not when they’d both done the work on themselves, albeit incomplete. The game changer was in the choice, and the commitment to that growth and each other.
A weight heavier than he’d thought himself capable of carrying for so many years eased from his shoulders. Not everything, of course, but sometimes, all it took was a moment that offered a little bit of hope.
—
To Feyre’s credit, Nesta had been entirely receptive to Cassian’s perceived dilemma. He’d decided to rip off the proverbial bandaid that very evening, and if he was thankful for anything, it was the fact that he’d opted to untangle his thoughts with his sister-in-law before he’d made the potential mistake of word-vomiting all over Nesta.
He had carefully laid out his pros and cons of taking the promotion— making sure to include the items pertaining to life overall, as well as the implications for their future. Nesta was patient and had pointed out several additional considerations he’d yet to think of, and as it turned out, the two of them made a pretty solid team when they got out of their own way enough to work together through life’s hurdles.
For all her assistance in building both cases, Nesta’s stance on the matter had been straight forward and rather simple if Cassian allowed himself to acknowledge it.
“The thing is,” she’d said, “you need to do what makes the most sense for you right now. Not the Cassian 6 months from now, the Cassian a year from now, or Cassian from yesterday.”
It had been a particularly sobering realization, since Cassian’s usual method involved trying to control for every possible angle, but Nesta had gotten them straight to the heart of the matter. A former version of himself itched to take her position personally, to assume that her bluntness was some kind of directly proportional measure of how little she cared to have him closer. Still a work in progress, but Cassian was pleased that silencing that maladaptive voice in his head got easier every time he did it, and life was offering him plenty of practice.
His commitment to self-advocacy had paid off in his meeting with Helion, and he’d come away with several accommodations that he wasn’t sure they would have agreed to make. Now, days later, he dragged his heavy, sleep-deprived body up the stairs to his apartment— the only way he’d made peace with skipping his workout that day— after another long day at the office. Somehow, he was juggling his usual duties while trying to learn the new ones. His replacement couldn’t start soon enough.
The door shut heavily in his already-dark entryway, his keys landing on the small table near the door by sheer muscle memory. Cassian leaned against the shut door and eased his eyes closed, but his phone vibrated rudely almost immediately. With a groan, he shoved his hand into his pocket and hauled his phone into view. The shift in his mood at seeing Nesta’s name nearly gave him whiplash.
“Hey, Sweetheart.”
He flipped the light switch, muttering a soft curse at the sudden brightness. The assault on his vision was worth it to hear the low, melodic chuckle that came shortly after.
“Hey,” she said, her smile still evident. “Long day?”
Another groan. A rough, calloused hand over the stubble on his cheek. “Yep. Anymore of this, and my brain is going to melt.”
“That feels dramatic.”
Cassian huffed a laugh, tucking his phone against his shoulder and working the buttons on his shirt. “Doesn’t make it less true. Why are you awake?”
The time difference made their nighttime phone calls a luxury. Cassian worried all the time that Nesta didn’t rest enough, but the balance was a delicate one with voicing that concern.
“Missed you,” she said simply, as if it didn’t still rock Cassian to hear Nesta admit such intimacy. “I got in late tonight anyway because I had dinner with Claire. And I made the mistake of picking up my book once I got home.”
“You should set a timer.”
Nesta scoffed. “That’s not how it works.”
He understood the way Nesta lost herself in whatever she read, had witnessed it countless times. Hours passed sometimes before Nesta’s head would lift, her eyes bleary, and she would start the task of re-orienting to the present.
“Yeah, yeah,” he dismissed, smiling at how he knew she would bristle. “How was dinner?”
She took a long, deep breath. “It was good. We were overdue for a catch-up.”
Cassian paused to throw his shirt into the laundry basket and traded his pants for some athletic shorts. With little grace, he threw himself onto his bed, his face buried in his pillow.
“How’s she doing?” he asked, propping on an elbow.
“Good.” Her response was almost too swift, but it felt haunted all the same. “Really good.”
“That’s good.” Cassian cringed. Usually, if the word “good” entered a conversation any number of times in rapid succession, things were quite the opposite. His response felt awkward and uninspired, but he couldn’t put a finger on why. His intuition with Nesta was solid usually, but distance complicated even the things that came most naturally. A lesson he continued to learn.
“She mentioned a promotion.” Nesta sounded detached from the information she shared, and Cassian offered her the time to work through it without comment. “She deserves it. She’s wanted it for a long time and has been passed over several times now. I’m happy for her.”
Cassian considered his words, his mouth opening and slamming shut a couple of times before he landed on, “Why don’t you sound happy?”
“I am,” she insisted, her voice adamant. “I really am… I just…” Cassian let her words linger, afraid that if he made any sudden moves that Nesta may refrain from elaborating. “Some days it feels like I’ve been stuck in place for months while the rest of the world kept moving all around me.”
A grimace pulled at the edges of his mouth. Nesta had done so much work to heal over the months, and while Cassian knew she was moving mountains in their own right, he understood where she was coming from. He and Claire— two people close to Nesta whose lives hadn’t been immeasurably disrupted by recent events — were moving forward in their goals, and Nesta still consistently mentioned how she felt like she would be trying to catch up from her time off in perpetuity.
“I’m sorry, Nes,” he murmured, his voice rough.
“Nothing to be sorry for.” A forced casualness floated along her words, and he hated them for the mask they were. A deep breath in, a deep breath out, and then, “Nothing is set in stone as of now, but it would mean a relocation for Claire. And honestly, I’m not ready to face that yet… the possibility of being here alone all over again.”
Cassian nearly choked on a curse. The thought of Nesta feeling like it was her alone against the world made his chest ache with the need to pull her against him. To press a kiss to her temple and remind her who she was— that, despite being perfectly capable on her own to handle anything life threw her way, she was never fighting alone as long as Cassian was alive.
“I wish there was something I could do.”
Nesta allowed herself a soft laugh, and Cassian’s breath came a little easier, albeit not much. “I know you would if you could.”
“In a heartbeat,” he assured her. “Look, I know the timing isn’t great, but I don’t know— maybe we can talk about our timeline again. Maybe move it up.”
“Cass, absolutely not.” Her tone left no room for discussion, and Cassian felt his eyebrow quirk up as if he’d been challenged. Before he could argue in spite of her silent warning, Nesta’s voice softened. “Not that I don’t want you here. I appreciate that you would, but I won’t be that person that you feel the need to swoop in and save. I’ll be okay.”
His eyes eased shut. How was he supposed to argue with that?
“I know you will.”
An almost-comfortable silence fell over them for a few minutes until Cassian realized that part of their conversation was effectively over. Searching for lighter territory, he cleared his throat.
“Three more sleeps until I see you.”
Her laugh was the reward he’d wanted. Anything to know he’d put a smile on her face. “Most people countdown in days.”
“Mm,” he replied, seemingly unimpressed, but his smile came through anyway. “I’m not most people.”
“Isn’t that the truth?”
“I’m not sure if I should take offense to that.”
Nesta was quiet, and Cassian pictured the way her teeth sank into her lower lip when she fought a smile. Then, because he felt indulgent, he thought of the way he would trace her mouth with his thumb, how her eyes went round when he tipped her chin up.
“No,” she almost whispered. “It’s a good thing.”
Rolling over to his back, he ran a hand through his wild hair and groaned at his mental to-do list.
“Shit. I still need to pack.”
“I have some of your stuff here,” she reminded him. “A toothbrush, shampoo, body wash. All you need is clothes and shoes.”
“That helps. Still have to do my laundry first.”
Nesta hummed her understanding. “Well, if our schedules line up, I’ll keep you busy while you wait for the machine to finish.”
The lazy drawl of his words was courtesy of the many images her promise inspired. “I like the way your brain works, Sweetheart.”
——————————————————————————
If you’d like to be tagged in any of my fics, please send me an ask, a message, leave a comment, or mention being tagged in your reblog! I’ll be happy to add you!
[And, if I’ve left you off my list unintentionally, please don’t hesitate to remind me! I promise I won't be offended!]
a/n: How has it been this long since I've updated? 😅 I've missed these two a ton lately, and I'm excited to finally share their next chapter! I'm also excited because I've been looking forward to the NEXT chapter for quite some time, and the inspiration for that one has been extra high lately 👀👀
If you want to re-read to get a refresher or need to catch up, I put the link below!
Cassian welcomes us back for this update! Hope y'all enjoy!
>> Somewhere masterlist >>fanfic masterlist
——————————————————————————
Hanging out with Feyre was long overdue, and despite the exhaustion settling into Cassian’s bones, he was looking forward to it. She always made tea the way he liked it— something they had in common— and after such a long day, he could use a cup to help keep his eyes open until a proper bedtime.
The door was unlocked when he approached the house, and Cassian chuckled at how his brother would no doubt react to that small fact. Nevermind that Feyre did it with Cassian in mind. His overprotective little brother was likely to have a heart attack if he knew she was so flippant with her safety while he was out of town on business. The secret was safe with Cassian, if only to spare Feyre the mild lecture for the millionth time.
“Hey Fey,” he called, wiping his shoes on the small rug.
His keys made a loud clang in the metal bowl on the entryway table, and Cassian scowled at the jarring sound as if he hadn’t been ultimately responsible. His fatigue was making him grouchy.
“Cass!” Feyre came around the corner beaming and wrapped him in a tight hug. She had always been like a baby sister to him, even in the earliest days of her relationship with Rhysand. Something had made sense between them, and Cassian loved her fiercely.
Squeezing her back with equal enthusiasm, Cassian pressed a kiss to her hair and smiled. “Lonely already?” he teased. “Rhysand only left yesterday.”
Feyre scoffed and pulled away, leading him to the small table off the side of the kitchen. Tea was already steaming in a cast iron kettle in the middle and small pastries were stacked nearby. Cassian’s mouth watered at the sight.
“I’ve hardly had time to be lonely,” she mused, and affection dripped from every word. “You know he’s called with every spare moment.”
“I figured as much. This looks great, by the way.”
“Thanks.” Feyre smiled and gestured toward one of the chairs. Cassian complied— mostly because he knew better than to challenge an Archeron in their own home— and leaned forward on his elbows to bend his neck in a stretch.
A cup of tea appeared in his field of vision, and he winked at Feyre in gratitude. She was poised across from him, her attention sliding to the garden through the window, and the sun illuminating her elegant profile. They sipped in silence for a couple of moments, content in each other’s comfortable, steady company.
Cassian was the first to break the silence, a role he served more often than not. “Have you made much progress on the pieces for your next exhibit with Rhysand being out of town?”
“Some. I haven’t hit much of a stride yet, and that’s daunting considering it’s only a couple of months away.”
Feyre wrapped her hands around her mug and rounded her shoulders as if the admission had cost her something. Whatever the case, Cassian didn’t care to see her stressed.
“You’ll get it,” he assured her. “You always do.” A small smile stretched across her face, and his chest felt a little lighter than before. The joke rolled off his tongue before he could think better of it. “Worst case, I’ll model for you.”
That earned an actual laugh. “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, her eyes sparkling, “should I get desperate.”
“We’ll pray it doesn’t come to that.”
They laughed together before turning their focus back to their tea. Cassian took the opportunity to snack on a small scone, which he was pretty sure was meant for children by the looks of it. He said as much, and Feyre rolled her eyes. It was an expression so like Nesta that longing threatened to choke him.
“What about you?” Feyre asked, interrupting his thoughts. “You said you had something to run by me?”
Damn, he’d forgotten he planted that seed when they made plans earlier in the day. The promotion Helion offered was eating him alive, and he needed a sounding board. While that was still true, he hadn’t been tired down to his bones when he’d originally brought it up.
“Yeah, sort of.” He leaned back in his chair and twisted to rest his elbow over the back. “It’s more that I have some things to work through out loud, and I think you could help with pros and cons.”
Feyre’s brows came together over the rim on her mug. With a nod, she placed her tea atop the table and gave him her full, undivided attention. His chest felt tighter than he’d anticipated, but he’d learned to push through uncertainty many moons ago.
“I got offered a promotion,” he began, each word leaving him through an exhale.
“Why do you say that as if it’s tragic?”
A smirk tugged at the edge of Cassian’s mouth. “It’s not tragic, and if I’m honest, I deserve it.”
“So humble.”
He winked in acknowledgement of Feyre’s ribbing. She wasn’t nearly as cutthroat as Nesta in her banter, but she did well enough if Cassian’s soft spot for her was any indication.
“Helion gave me some time to decide, but I need to get back to him soon. There’s not a position to compare it to, and with Nesta and me trying to work things out, I worry about how much of my time it’ll take up.”
Feyre was quiet for a beat too long, enough for Cassian’s lower back to bead with sweat. Stoicism wasn’t something he typically associated with Feyre, but he didn’t regret his limited experience with it.
“Have you told Nesta about it?”
He took a breath. “Yeah. She was supportive, but things are still new. I don’t know if she would try and sway me either way.”
“True,” Feyre replied, taking another long sip of her tea. “Although, if we’re being fair, Nesta will understand putting yourself first.”
Cassian must have failed at keeping his expression placid with how Feyre’s eyes tracked every angle of his face. “Fey, don’t.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I came here because I thought I wouldn’t have to defend Nesta to you, of all people.”
Silence fell. Hurt flashed over Feyre’s face, her blue eyes round, and Cassian hated himself for hurting her. Defending Nesta wasn’t something he could apologize for, though.
“That’s not what I meant.” Her voice was brittle, soft. “Nesta is practical, and she would understand the value of advancing your career in these early stages of your relationship. She won’t expect you to uproot your routine— your life— simply because you decided to work things out together.”
His eyes eased shut, and he took a measured breath. “I’m sorry.”
Feyre nodded, and the tension seemed to evaporate with the simple gesture. “Not everyone has been receptive, and I can respect you having Nesta’s back. She has too few in her corner as it is.”
Emotion gathered in his throat, and he swallowed against it. “Yeah,” he rasped. “Can I tell you something, just between the two of us for now?”
“Sure. As long as you’re not asking me to lie to Rhys.”
“Nah, not exactly.” Feyre gave him a pointed look, and he raised his hands in placation. “I only ask that you not tell him before I get a chance, but if he suspects anything, I don’t expect you to lie.”
Feyre nodded, but her brow remained furrowed.
“The timing of all this isn’t great, and I don’t know how to talk to Nesta about it,” he admitted. His shoulders relaxed for the first time in minutes. He had greatly underestimated the relief that would come with such a simple admission. “I know where I stand, but I’m trying to let Nesta settle in to all this. With us.”
He paused to assess Feyre’s expression, but she wasn’t giving much away for free. To her credit, Cassian hadn’t exactly spelled things out. He fixed his attention to his palm, using the thumb of his other hand to trace circles around his calluses.
“We talked about what happens if we see this working out long-term. We can’t live thousands of miles apart forever.”
“Well, yeah. Makes sense.”
Cassian cleared his throat. “Nesta isn’t in a place to come back to Velaris, at least not right now. Before Helion talked to me about this job, I’d already told Nesta I would move. To give us a fair shot.”
Feyre’s eyes flared in surprise, but she blinked it away. “And you think it’s too soon.”
“Isn’t it?”
Her laugh was affectionate. “Cass, you and Nesta are already years in the making.”
“Sure, but…” he trailed off, gathering his words. “We agreed to give it time, but I don’t know what she’s comfortable with before deciding to take the next step. What if I turn down the job, and I end up here for at least another year? Or, what if I take it, and I have to quit in three months? I hate the idea of putting anyone in a bind, but Nesta would come first.”
Feyre observed him, her shoulders rounding toward him as if compelled to pull him into a hug. “Cass,” she murmured, “you have to talk to her.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” he joked, leaning back in his chair. He felt raw after such a display of vulnerability, and he craved the levity he was known to bring to any situation. “I don’t want the pressure to freak her out.”
“It’s a risk you take. But she’s the only person who is in this with you and whose opinion really matters. If you’re both committed to this, a simple conversation shouldn’t derail everything. If it does, that’s another issue. I’m not saying it’ll be fun, but it’s necessary.”
Cassian groaned, dragging his hands over his stubbled cheeks. “I know that. You’re supposed to lie to me.”
Feyre’s head dropped back as she laughed, and it was so contagious that it managed to drag a chuckle from beneath the weight of Cassian’s ribs.
“You know, as quick as you are to defend Nesta, maybe it’s worth giving her a little more credit yourself,” Feyre said, her tone soft.
The truth of it hit him full force. He spent so much time preparing for war in Nesta’s honor that he failed to see how his own insecurities sold her short. It was hardly fair to assume the worst in her when he expected the opposite from anyone else. It hadn’t been intentional, but the way his hang-ups exerted influence over his assumptions exposed some lingering scar tissue stretched across his ego.
Cassian nodded and focused on his tea. Feyre had given him more than his fair share to think about, including his unresolved issues and how to shield Nesta from the aftermath.
“So, you’re leaving us, then?” The playfulness in her question was the life preserver he’d needed, and he shamelessly accepted the shift in tone.
“As soon as possible,” he said, deadpan. “Can’t wait, really.”
Feyre chuckled and rolled her eyes. “Liar. You’ll miss us the second you leave.”
Cassian responded with a tight, subtle shake of his head and punctuated it with a wink. His impish denial earned another laugh from Feyre, and his heart felt lighter in the way it usually did when he made his loved ones feel at ease.
A beat of silence passed, and then, “You really love her.”
“Yeah?” Cassian asked, barely suppressing a laugh. “What gave it away?”
A scone flew across the table and hit him square in the chest. He caught it just before it landed on the table and ate half in a single bite, staring at Feyre as if he hadn’t deserved her brutality.
“Don’t be cute, Cassian,” Feyre chided. “I don’t know… I stayed conflicted about you two a couple of years ago. I’ve never seen people who brought each other alive like you and Nesta did, but it always seemed to come at a price.”
Cassian nodded, overly invested in assessing the angle of his next bite. What was he supposed to say to that, anyway?
“Part of me wanted to be relieved when you split up, but you were both miserable,” she continued, another punch to the stomach. “After watching the two of you claw your ways back to yourselves over the last couple of years, it was hard to settle into the idea that things would all snap into place now.”
His fingers drummed a mindless rhythm on the table, the quiet thudding sound keeping his pulse in check. “Well, for what it’s worth, nothing has snapped into place.”
Feyre waited until his eyes met hers again to speak, her brows furrowed. “But I thought—”
“Everything is okay,” Cassian amended, maybe too quickly. It was the truth, but something about being under the microscope made him jumpy and a little defensive. “I just meant that it didn’t happen that way. Nesta and I…” he trailed off, trying to find his words in the ether and settling for the lame ones he found first. “We didn’t have a clean break a couple of years back.”
“So, you two have tried getting back together before?”
A huff of wry amusement left him before he could stop it. “I wouldn’t say that.”
At Feyre’s incredulous stare, he elaborated as much as he dared without sharing all the skeletons in his and Nesta’s closet. He hit the high points of their chronic push and pull. Their weakness and loose details of their misdeeds towards other partners in the name of whatever they hoped to resuscitate between them, no matter how little time they could have had.
“Gods,” Feyre muttered, draining the rest of her tea and setting the cup down heavily. “I had no idea.”
“No one did, except Nesta and me. Azriel suspected at times because he knew how much Nesta always got under my skin, but I was a vault on any of the details.”
“I guess it’s no one’s business, really.”
Cassian raised his brows in silent agreement and leaned back in his chair, stretched his arms one at a time across his chest to relieve some of the tension between his shoulder blades. That familiar pressure was building again, the one that seeped into Cassian’s bones and compelled him to redirect the conversation to less turbulent territory. If not for himself, to bring a smile and an ease back to his sister-in-law, who really had no reason to carry the burden of his past.
“Maybe keep your day job, Fey,” he teased, hoping his impulse didn’t interfere with his mark. “I don’t think your powers of deduction are going to pay the bills.”
She laughed, long and loud, and pride filled his chest to bursting. Feyre was still his ally, it would seem, and the future felt a fraction less daunting with her in their corner.
His tone shifted, suddenly thick with emotion that was a surprise to him as much as Feyre. “I’ve loved Nesta since the night we spent in that cabin. Years ago, now,” he rasped. Feyre’s eyes softened, and she reached across the table for his hand. He let her take it. “Nothing’s been the same since.”
The confession gutted him and eased a tension he’d been carrying for far too long in equal measure. Cassian wondered how he’d managed to keep it all contained to that point, but the realization hit him that he hadn’t. Not really.
Anyone who knew him well knew something chaotic and unyielding had always brewed beneath the surface of his self-control— that most of his conscious effort went toward burning off the constant unsteadiness in his veins. All to avoid a host of bad decisions along the path of shameless self-destruction. The way he carried the weight of his family members’ happiness on his shoulders, the energy he brought to his job and making himself indispensable. Making decisions for others, especially ones that protected them, had never been a challenge for Cassian, as he loved nothing more than to take care of anyone who needed it. The challenge had always been in making decisions that served him when it all came down to it, and he’d never been able to do that without the threat of impact to someone else. Not even that had been enough to keep him away from Nesta over the years, no matter the fallout.
Amren had been right when she’d finally laid it all out, but he would take that small fact to the damned grave. Cruel and unusual torture wouldn’t be enough to risk her smugness for the following millennium.
Feyre ended the prolonged silence, shattering the fragile bits of his impromptu soul search. It was probably for the best, he decided.
“It makes sense, you know,” she said, her voice hushed. “No one loves like you do, Cassian.” A lump formed in his throat, and he offered her a nod in thanks. He didn’t trust the emotions that would come spilling out if he deigned to open his mouth. “And I don’t think anyone feels quite like Nesta, either.”
All good things, he thought, if the individuals in question were healthy and settled. A disaster, if they weren’t. The path his thoughts had taken only moments before indicated that he was a long way from perfect, but Cassian realized with such a small revelation that he and Nesta weren’t damned to everything they’d been through before. Not when they’d both done the work on themselves, albeit incomplete. The game changer was in the choice, and the commitment to that growth and each other.
A weight heavier than he’d thought himself capable of carrying for so many years eased from his shoulders. Not everything, of course, but sometimes, all it took was a moment that offered a little bit of hope.
—
To Feyre’s credit, Nesta had been entirely receptive to Cassian’s perceived dilemma. He’d decided to rip off the proverbial bandaid that very evening, and if he was thankful for anything, it was the fact that he’d opted to untangle his thoughts with his sister-in-law before he’d made the potential mistake of word-vomiting all over Nesta.
He had carefully laid out his pros and cons of taking the promotion— making sure to include the items pertaining to life overall, as well as the implications for their future. Nesta was patient and had pointed out several additional considerations he’d yet to think of, and as it turned out, the two of them made a pretty solid team when they got out of their own way enough to work together through life’s hurdles.
For all her assistance in building both cases, Nesta’s stance on the matter had been straight forward and rather simple if Cassian allowed himself to acknowledge it.
“The thing is,” she’d said, “you need to do what makes the most sense for you right now. Not the Cassian 6 months from now, the Cassian a year from now, or Cassian from yesterday.”
It had been a particularly sobering realization, since Cassian’s usual method involved trying to control for every possible angle, but Nesta had gotten them straight to the heart of the matter. A former version of himself itched to take her position personally, to assume that her bluntness was some kind of directly proportional measure of how little she cared to have him closer. Still a work in progress, but Cassian was pleased that silencing that maladaptive voice in his head got easier every time he did it, and life was offering him plenty of practice.
His commitment to self-advocacy had paid off in his meeting with Helion, and he’d come away with several accommodations that he wasn’t sure they would have agreed to make. Now, days later, he dragged his heavy, sleep-deprived body up the stairs to his apartment— the only way he’d made peace with skipping his workout that day— after another long day at the office. Somehow, he was juggling his usual duties while trying to learn the new ones. His replacement couldn’t start soon enough.
The door shut heavily in his already-dark entryway, his keys landing on the small table near the door by sheer muscle memory. Cassian leaned against the shut door and eased his eyes closed, but his phone vibrated rudely almost immediately. With a groan, he shoved his hand into his pocket and hauled his phone into view. The shift in his mood at seeing Nesta’s name nearly gave him whiplash.
“Hey, Sweetheart.”
He flipped the light switch, muttering a soft curse at the sudden brightness. The assault on his vision was worth it to hear the low, melodic chuckle that came shortly after.
“Hey,” she said, her smile still evident. “Long day?”
Another groan. A rough, calloused hand over the stubble on his cheek. “Yep. Anymore of this, and my brain is going to melt.”
“That feels dramatic.”
Cassian huffed a laugh, tucking his phone against his shoulder and working the buttons on his shirt. “Doesn’t make it less true. Why are you awake?”
The time difference made their nighttime phone calls a luxury. Cassian worried all the time that Nesta didn’t rest enough, but the balance was a delicate one with voicing that concern.
“Missed you,” she said simply, as if it didn’t still rock Cassian to hear Nesta admit such intimacy. “I got in late tonight anyway because I had dinner with Claire. And I made the mistake of picking up my book once I got home.”
“You should set a timer.”
Nesta scoffed. “That’s not how it works.”
He understood the way Nesta lost herself in whatever she read, had witnessed it countless times. Hours passed sometimes before Nesta’s head would lift, her eyes bleary, and she would start the task of re-orienting to the present.
“Yeah, yeah,” he dismissed, smiling at how he knew she would bristle. “How was dinner?”
She took a long, deep breath. “It was good. We were overdue for a catch-up.”
Cassian paused to throw his shirt into the laundry basket and traded his pants for some athletic shorts. With little grace, he threw himself onto his bed, his face buried in his pillow.
“How’s she doing?” he asked, propping on an elbow.
“Good.” Her response was almost too swift, but it felt haunted all the same. “Really good.”
“That’s good.” Cassian cringed. Usually, if the word “good” entered a conversation any number of times in rapid succession, things were quite the opposite. His response felt awkward and uninspired, but he couldn’t put a finger on why. His intuition with Nesta was solid usually, but distance complicated even the things that came most naturally. A lesson he continued to learn.
“She mentioned a promotion.” Nesta sounded detached from the information she shared, and Cassian offered her the time to work through it without comment. “She deserves it. She’s wanted it for a long time and has been passed over several times now. I’m happy for her.”
Cassian considered his words, his mouth opening and slamming shut a couple of times before he landed on, “Why don’t you sound happy?”
“I am,” she insisted, her voice adamant. “I really am… I just…” Cassian let her words linger, afraid that if he made any sudden moves that Nesta may refrain from elaborating. “Some days it feels like I’ve been stuck in place for months while the rest of the world kept moving all around me.”
A grimace pulled at the edges of his mouth. Nesta had done so much work to heal over the months, and while Cassian knew she was moving mountains in their own right, he understood where she was coming from. He and Claire— two people close to Nesta whose lives hadn’t been immeasurably disrupted by recent events — were moving forward in their goals, and Nesta still consistently mentioned how she felt like she would be trying to catch up from her time off in perpetuity.
“I’m sorry, Nes,” he murmured, his voice rough.
“Nothing to be sorry for.” A forced casualness floated along her words, and he hated them for the mask they were. A deep breath in, a deep breath out, and then, “Nothing is set in stone as of now, but it would mean a relocation for Claire. And honestly, I’m not ready to face that yet… the possibility of being here alone all over again.”
Cassian nearly choked on a curse. The thought of Nesta feeling like it was her alone against the world made his chest ache with the need to pull her against him. To press a kiss to her temple and remind her who she was— that, despite being perfectly capable on her own to handle anything life threw her way, she was never fighting alone as long as Cassian was alive.
“I wish there was something I could do.”
Nesta allowed herself a soft laugh, and Cassian’s breath came a little easier, albeit not much. “I know you would if you could.”
“In a heartbeat,” he assured her. “Look, I know the timing isn’t great, but I don’t know— maybe we can talk about our timeline again. Maybe move it up.”
“Cass, absolutely not.” Her tone left no room for discussion, and Cassian felt his eyebrow quirk up as if he’d been challenged. Before he could argue in spite of her silent warning, Nesta’s voice softened. “Not that I don’t want you here. I appreciate that you would, but I won’t be that person that you feel the need to swoop in and save. I’ll be okay.”
His eyes eased shut. How was he supposed to argue with that?
“I know you will.”
An almost-comfortable silence fell over them for a few minutes until Cassian realized that part of their conversation was effectively over. Searching for lighter territory, he cleared his throat.
“Three more sleeps until I see you.”
Her laugh was the reward he’d wanted. Anything to know he’d put a smile on her face. “Most people countdown in days.”
“Mm,” he replied, seemingly unimpressed, but his smile came through anyway. “I’m not most people.”
“Isn’t that the truth?”
“I’m not sure if I should take offense to that.”
Nesta was quiet, and Cassian pictured the way her teeth sank into her lower lip when she fought a smile. Then, because he felt indulgent, he thought of the way he would trace her mouth with his thumb, how her eyes went round when he tipped her chin up.
“No,” she almost whispered. “It’s a good thing.”
Rolling over to his back, he ran a hand through his wild hair and groaned at his mental to-do list.
“Shit. I still need to pack.”
“I have some of your stuff here,” she reminded him. “A toothbrush, shampoo, body wash. All you need is clothes and shoes.”
“That helps. Still have to do my laundry first.”
Nesta hummed her understanding. “Well, if our schedules line up, I’ll keep you busy while you wait for the machine to finish.”
The lazy drawl of his words was courtesy of the many images her promise inspired. “I like the way your brain works, Sweetheart.”
——————————————————————————
If you’d like to be tagged in any of my fics, please send me an ask, a message, leave a comment, or mention being tagged in your reblog! I’ll be happy to add you!
[And, if I’ve left you off my list unintentionally, please don’t hesitate to remind me! I promise I won't be offended!]
a/n: How has it been this long since I've updated? 😅 I've missed these two a ton lately, and I'm excited to finally share their next chapter! I'm also excited because I've been looking forward to the NEXT chapter for quite some time, and the inspiration for that one has been extra high lately 👀👀
If you want to re-read to get a refresher or need to catch up, I put the link below!
Cassian welcomes us back for this update! Hope y'all enjoy!
>> Somewhere masterlist >>fanfic masterlist
——————————————————————————
Hanging out with Feyre was long overdue, and despite the exhaustion settling into Cassian’s bones, he was looking forward to it. She always made tea the way he liked it— something they had in common— and after such a long day, he could use a cup to help keep his eyes open until a proper bedtime.
The door was unlocked when he approached the house, and Cassian chuckled at how his brother would no doubt react to that small fact. Nevermind that Feyre did it with Cassian in mind. His overprotective little brother was likely to have a heart attack if he knew she was so flippant with her safety while he was out of town on business. The secret was safe with Cassian, if only to spare Feyre the mild lecture for the millionth time.
“Hey Fey,” he called, wiping his shoes on the small rug.
His keys made a loud clang in the metal bowl on the entryway table, and Cassian scowled at the jarring sound as if he hadn’t been ultimately responsible. His fatigue was making him grouchy.
“Cass!” Feyre came around the corner beaming and wrapped him in a tight hug. She had always been like a baby sister to him, even in the earliest days of her relationship with Rhysand. Something had made sense between them, and Cassian loved her fiercely.
Squeezing her back with equal enthusiasm, Cassian pressed a kiss to her hair and smiled. “Lonely already?” he teased. “Rhysand only left yesterday.”
Feyre scoffed and pulled away, leading him to the small table off the side of the kitchen. Tea was already steaming in a cast iron kettle in the middle and small pastries were stacked nearby. Cassian’s mouth watered at the sight.
“I’ve hardly had time to be lonely,” she mused, and affection dripped from every word. “You know he’s called with every spare moment.”
“I figured as much. This looks great, by the way.”
“Thanks.” Feyre smiled and gestured toward one of the chairs. Cassian complied— mostly because he knew better than to challenge an Archeron in their own home— and leaned forward on his elbows to bend his neck in a stretch.
A cup of tea appeared in his field of vision, and he winked at Feyre in gratitude. She was poised across from him, her attention sliding to the garden through the window, and the sun illuminating her elegant profile. They sipped in silence for a couple of moments, content in each other’s comfortable, steady company.
Cassian was the first to break the silence, a role he served more often than not. “Have you made much progress on the pieces for your next exhibit with Rhysand being out of town?”
“Some. I haven’t hit much of a stride yet, and that’s daunting considering it’s only a couple of months away.”
Feyre wrapped her hands around her mug and rounded her shoulders as if the admission had cost her something. Whatever the case, Cassian didn’t care to see her stressed.
“You’ll get it,” he assured her. “You always do.” A small smile stretched across her face, and his chest felt a little lighter than before. The joke rolled off his tongue before he could think better of it. “Worst case, I’ll model for you.”
That earned an actual laugh. “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, her eyes sparkling, “should I get desperate.”
“We’ll pray it doesn’t come to that.”
They laughed together before turning their focus back to their tea. Cassian took the opportunity to snack on a small scone, which he was pretty sure was meant for children by the looks of it. He said as much, and Feyre rolled her eyes. It was an expression so like Nesta that longing threatened to choke him.
“What about you?” Feyre asked, interrupting his thoughts. “You said you had something to run by me?”
Damn, he’d forgotten he planted that seed when they made plans earlier in the day. The promotion Helion offered was eating him alive, and he needed a sounding board. While that was still true, he hadn’t been tired down to his bones when he’d originally brought it up.
“Yeah, sort of.” He leaned back in his chair and twisted to rest his elbow over the back. “It’s more that I have some things to work through out loud, and I think you could help with pros and cons.”
Feyre’s brows came together over the rim on her mug. With a nod, she placed her tea atop the table and gave him her full, undivided attention. His chest felt tighter than he’d anticipated, but he’d learned to push through uncertainty many moons ago.
“I got offered a promotion,” he began, each word leaving him through an exhale.
“Why do you say that as if it’s tragic?”
A smirk tugged at the edge of Cassian’s mouth. “It’s not tragic, and if I’m honest, I deserve it.”
“So humble.”
He winked in acknowledgement of Feyre’s ribbing. She wasn’t nearly as cutthroat as Nesta in her banter, but she did well enough if Cassian’s soft spot for her was any indication.
“Helion gave me some time to decide, but I need to get back to him soon. There’s not a position to compare it to, and with Nesta and me trying to work things out, I worry about how much of my time it’ll take up.”
Feyre was quiet for a beat too long, enough for Cassian’s lower back to bead with sweat. Stoicism wasn’t something he typically associated with Feyre, but he didn’t regret his limited experience with it.
“Have you told Nesta about it?”
He took a breath. “Yeah. She was supportive, but things are still new. I don’t know if she would try and sway me either way.”
“True,” Feyre replied, taking another long sip of her tea. “Although, if we’re being fair, Nesta will understand putting yourself first.”
Cassian must have failed at keeping his expression placid with how Feyre’s eyes tracked every angle of his face. “Fey, don’t.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I came here because I thought I wouldn’t have to defend Nesta to you, of all people.”
Silence fell. Hurt flashed over Feyre’s face, her blue eyes round, and Cassian hated himself for hurting her. Defending Nesta wasn’t something he could apologize for, though.
“That’s not what I meant.” Her voice was brittle, soft. “Nesta is practical, and she would understand the value of advancing your career in these early stages of your relationship. She won’t expect you to uproot your routine— your life— simply because you decided to work things out together.”
His eyes eased shut, and he took a measured breath. “I’m sorry.”
Feyre nodded, and the tension seemed to evaporate with the simple gesture. “Not everyone has been receptive, and I can respect you having Nesta’s back. She has too few in her corner as it is.”
Emotion gathered in his throat, and he swallowed against it. “Yeah,” he rasped. “Can I tell you something, just between the two of us for now?”
“Sure. As long as you’re not asking me to lie to Rhys.”
“Nah, not exactly.” Feyre gave him a pointed look, and he raised his hands in placation. “I only ask that you not tell him before I get a chance, but if he suspects anything, I don’t expect you to lie.”
Feyre nodded, but her brow remained furrowed.
“The timing of all this isn’t great, and I don’t know how to talk to Nesta about it,” he admitted. His shoulders relaxed for the first time in minutes. He had greatly underestimated the relief that would come with such a simple admission. “I know where I stand, but I’m trying to let Nesta settle in to all this. With us.”
He paused to assess Feyre’s expression, but she wasn’t giving much away for free. To her credit, Cassian hadn’t exactly spelled things out. He fixed his attention to his palm, using the thumb of his other hand to trace circles around his calluses.
“We talked about what happens if we see this working out long-term. We can’t live thousands of miles apart forever.”
“Well, yeah. Makes sense.”
Cassian cleared his throat. “Nesta isn’t in a place to come back to Velaris, at least not right now. Before Helion talked to me about this job, I’d already told Nesta I would move. To give us a fair shot.”
Feyre’s eyes flared in surprise, but she blinked it away. “And you think it’s too soon.”
“Isn’t it?”
Her laugh was affectionate. “Cass, you and Nesta are already years in the making.”
“Sure, but…” he trailed off, gathering his words. “We agreed to give it time, but I don’t know what she’s comfortable with before deciding to take the next step. What if I turn down the job, and I end up here for at least another year? Or, what if I take it, and I have to quit in three months? I hate the idea of putting anyone in a bind, but Nesta would come first.”
Feyre observed him, her shoulders rounding toward him as if compelled to pull him into a hug. “Cass,” she murmured, “you have to talk to her.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” he joked, leaning back in his chair. He felt raw after such a display of vulnerability, and he craved the levity he was known to bring to any situation. “I don’t want the pressure to freak her out.”
“It’s a risk you take. But she’s the only person who is in this with you and whose opinion really matters. If you’re both committed to this, a simple conversation shouldn’t derail everything. If it does, that’s another issue. I’m not saying it’ll be fun, but it’s necessary.”
Cassian groaned, dragging his hands over his stubbled cheeks. “I know that. You’re supposed to lie to me.”
Feyre’s head dropped back as she laughed, and it was so contagious that it managed to drag a chuckle from beneath the weight of Cassian’s ribs.
“You know, as quick as you are to defend Nesta, maybe it’s worth giving her a little more credit yourself,” Feyre said, her tone soft.
The truth of it hit him full force. He spent so much time preparing for war in Nesta’s honor that he failed to see how his own insecurities sold her short. It was hardly fair to assume the worst in her when he expected the opposite from anyone else. It hadn’t been intentional, but the way his hang-ups exerted influence over his assumptions exposed some lingering scar tissue stretched across his ego.
Cassian nodded and focused on his tea. Feyre had given him more than his fair share to think about, including his unresolved issues and how to shield Nesta from the aftermath.
“So, you’re leaving us, then?” The playfulness in her question was the life preserver he’d needed, and he shamelessly accepted the shift in tone.
“As soon as possible,” he said, deadpan. “Can’t wait, really.”
Feyre chuckled and rolled her eyes. “Liar. You’ll miss us the second you leave.”
Cassian responded with a tight, subtle shake of his head and punctuated it with a wink. His impish denial earned another laugh from Feyre, and his heart felt lighter in the way it usually did when he made his loved ones feel at ease.
A beat of silence passed, and then, “You really love her.”
“Yeah?” Cassian asked, barely suppressing a laugh. “What gave it away?”
A scone flew across the table and hit him square in the chest. He caught it just before it landed on the table and ate half in a single bite, staring at Feyre as if he hadn’t deserved her brutality.
“Don’t be cute, Cassian,” Feyre chided. “I don’t know… I stayed conflicted about you two a couple of years ago. I’ve never seen people who brought each other alive like you and Nesta did, but it always seemed to come at a price.”
Cassian nodded, overly invested in assessing the angle of his next bite. What was he supposed to say to that, anyway?
“Part of me wanted to be relieved when you split up, but you were both miserable,” she continued, another punch to the stomach. “After watching the two of you claw your ways back to yourselves over the last couple of years, it was hard to settle into the idea that things would all snap into place now.”
His fingers drummed a mindless rhythm on the table, the quiet thudding sound keeping his pulse in check. “Well, for what it’s worth, nothing has snapped into place.”
Feyre waited until his eyes met hers again to speak, her brows furrowed. “But I thought—”
“Everything is okay,” Cassian amended, maybe too quickly. It was the truth, but something about being under the microscope made him jumpy and a little defensive. “I just meant that it didn’t happen that way. Nesta and I…” he trailed off, trying to find his words in the ether and settling for the lame ones he found first. “We didn’t have a clean break a couple of years back.”
“So, you two have tried getting back together before?”
A huff of wry amusement left him before he could stop it. “I wouldn’t say that.”
At Feyre’s incredulous stare, he elaborated as much as he dared without sharing all the skeletons in his and Nesta’s closet. He hit the high points of their chronic push and pull. Their weakness and loose details of their misdeeds towards other partners in the name of whatever they hoped to resuscitate between them, no matter how little time they could have had.
“Gods,” Feyre muttered, draining the rest of her tea and setting the cup down heavily. “I had no idea.”
“No one did, except Nesta and me. Azriel suspected at times because he knew how much Nesta always got under my skin, but I was a vault on any of the details.”
“I guess it’s no one’s business, really.”
Cassian raised his brows in silent agreement and leaned back in his chair, stretched his arms one at a time across his chest to relieve some of the tension between his shoulder blades. That familiar pressure was building again, the one that seeped into Cassian’s bones and compelled him to redirect the conversation to less turbulent territory. If not for himself, to bring a smile and an ease back to his sister-in-law, who really had no reason to carry the burden of his past.
“Maybe keep your day job, Fey,” he teased, hoping his impulse didn’t interfere with his mark. “I don’t think your powers of deduction are going to pay the bills.”
She laughed, long and loud, and pride filled his chest to bursting. Feyre was still his ally, it would seem, and the future felt a fraction less daunting with her in their corner.
His tone shifted, suddenly thick with emotion that was a surprise to him as much as Feyre. “I’ve loved Nesta since the night we spent in that cabin. Years ago, now,” he rasped. Feyre’s eyes softened, and she reached across the table for his hand. He let her take it. “Nothing’s been the same since.”
The confession gutted him and eased a tension he’d been carrying for far too long in equal measure. Cassian wondered how he’d managed to keep it all contained to that point, but the realization hit him that he hadn’t. Not really.
Anyone who knew him well knew something chaotic and unyielding had always brewed beneath the surface of his self-control— that most of his conscious effort went toward burning off the constant unsteadiness in his veins. All to avoid a host of bad decisions along the path of shameless self-destruction. The way he carried the weight of his family members’ happiness on his shoulders, the energy he brought to his job and making himself indispensable. Making decisions for others, especially ones that protected them, had never been a challenge for Cassian, as he loved nothing more than to take care of anyone who needed it. The challenge had always been in making decisions that served him when it all came down to it, and he’d never been able to do that without the threat of impact to someone else. Not even that had been enough to keep him away from Nesta over the years, no matter the fallout.
Amren had been right when she’d finally laid it all out, but he would take that small fact to the damned grave. Cruel and unusual torture wouldn’t be enough to risk her smugness for the following millennium.
Feyre ended the prolonged silence, shattering the fragile bits of his impromptu soul search. It was probably for the best, he decided.
“It makes sense, you know,” she said, her voice hushed. “No one loves like you do, Cassian.” A lump formed in his throat, and he offered her a nod in thanks. He didn’t trust the emotions that would come spilling out if he deigned to open his mouth. “And I don’t think anyone feels quite like Nesta, either.”
All good things, he thought, if the individuals in question were healthy and settled. A disaster, if they weren’t. The path his thoughts had taken only moments before indicated that he was a long way from perfect, but Cassian realized with such a small revelation that he and Nesta weren’t damned to everything they’d been through before. Not when they’d both done the work on themselves, albeit incomplete. The game changer was in the choice, and the commitment to that growth and each other.
A weight heavier than he’d thought himself capable of carrying for so many years eased from his shoulders. Not everything, of course, but sometimes, all it took was a moment that offered a little bit of hope.
—
To Feyre’s credit, Nesta had been entirely receptive to Cassian’s perceived dilemma. He’d decided to rip off the proverbial bandaid that very evening, and if he was thankful for anything, it was the fact that he’d opted to untangle his thoughts with his sister-in-law before he’d made the potential mistake of word-vomiting all over Nesta.
He had carefully laid out his pros and cons of taking the promotion— making sure to include the items pertaining to life overall, as well as the implications for their future. Nesta was patient and had pointed out several additional considerations he’d yet to think of, and as it turned out, the two of them made a pretty solid team when they got out of their own way enough to work together through life’s hurdles.
For all her assistance in building both cases, Nesta’s stance on the matter had been straight forward and rather simple if Cassian allowed himself to acknowledge it.
“The thing is,” she’d said, “you need to do what makes the most sense for you right now. Not the Cassian 6 months from now, the Cassian a year from now, or Cassian from yesterday.”
It had been a particularly sobering realization, since Cassian’s usual method involved trying to control for every possible angle, but Nesta had gotten them straight to the heart of the matter. A former version of himself itched to take her position personally, to assume that her bluntness was some kind of directly proportional measure of how little she cared to have him closer. Still a work in progress, but Cassian was pleased that silencing that maladaptive voice in his head got easier every time he did it, and life was offering him plenty of practice.
His commitment to self-advocacy had paid off in his meeting with Helion, and he’d come away with several accommodations that he wasn’t sure they would have agreed to make. Now, days later, he dragged his heavy, sleep-deprived body up the stairs to his apartment— the only way he’d made peace with skipping his workout that day— after another long day at the office. Somehow, he was juggling his usual duties while trying to learn the new ones. His replacement couldn’t start soon enough.
The door shut heavily in his already-dark entryway, his keys landing on the small table near the door by sheer muscle memory. Cassian leaned against the shut door and eased his eyes closed, but his phone vibrated rudely almost immediately. With a groan, he shoved his hand into his pocket and hauled his phone into view. The shift in his mood at seeing Nesta’s name nearly gave him whiplash.
“Hey, Sweetheart.”
He flipped the light switch, muttering a soft curse at the sudden brightness. The assault on his vision was worth it to hear the low, melodic chuckle that came shortly after.
“Hey,” she said, her smile still evident. “Long day?”
Another groan. A rough, calloused hand over the stubble on his cheek. “Yep. Anymore of this, and my brain is going to melt.”
“That feels dramatic.”
Cassian huffed a laugh, tucking his phone against his shoulder and working the buttons on his shirt. “Doesn’t make it less true. Why are you awake?”
The time difference made their nighttime phone calls a luxury. Cassian worried all the time that Nesta didn’t rest enough, but the balance was a delicate one with voicing that concern.
“Missed you,” she said simply, as if it didn’t still rock Cassian to hear Nesta admit such intimacy. “I got in late tonight anyway because I had dinner with Claire. And I made the mistake of picking up my book once I got home.”
“You should set a timer.”
Nesta scoffed. “That’s not how it works.”
He understood the way Nesta lost herself in whatever she read, had witnessed it countless times. Hours passed sometimes before Nesta’s head would lift, her eyes bleary, and she would start the task of re-orienting to the present.
“Yeah, yeah,” he dismissed, smiling at how he knew she would bristle. “How was dinner?”
She took a long, deep breath. “It was good. We were overdue for a catch-up.”
Cassian paused to throw his shirt into the laundry basket and traded his pants for some athletic shorts. With little grace, he threw himself onto his bed, his face buried in his pillow.
“How’s she doing?” he asked, propping on an elbow.
“Good.” Her response was almost too swift, but it felt haunted all the same. “Really good.”
“That’s good.” Cassian cringed. Usually, if the word “good” entered a conversation any number of times in rapid succession, things were quite the opposite. His response felt awkward and uninspired, but he couldn’t put a finger on why. His intuition with Nesta was solid usually, but distance complicated even the things that came most naturally. A lesson he continued to learn.
“She mentioned a promotion.” Nesta sounded detached from the information she shared, and Cassian offered her the time to work through it without comment. “She deserves it. She’s wanted it for a long time and has been passed over several times now. I’m happy for her.”
Cassian considered his words, his mouth opening and slamming shut a couple of times before he landed on, “Why don’t you sound happy?”
“I am,” she insisted, her voice adamant. “I really am… I just…” Cassian let her words linger, afraid that if he made any sudden moves that Nesta may refrain from elaborating. “Some days it feels like I’ve been stuck in place for months while the rest of the world kept moving all around me.”
A grimace pulled at the edges of his mouth. Nesta had done so much work to heal over the months, and while Cassian knew she was moving mountains in their own right, he understood where she was coming from. He and Claire— two people close to Nesta whose lives hadn’t been immeasurably disrupted by recent events — were moving forward in their goals, and Nesta still consistently mentioned how she felt like she would be trying to catch up from her time off in perpetuity.
“I’m sorry, Nes,” he murmured, his voice rough.
“Nothing to be sorry for.” A forced casualness floated along her words, and he hated them for the mask they were. A deep breath in, a deep breath out, and then, “Nothing is set in stone as of now, but it would mean a relocation for Claire. And honestly, I’m not ready to face that yet… the possibility of being here alone all over again.”
Cassian nearly choked on a curse. The thought of Nesta feeling like it was her alone against the world made his chest ache with the need to pull her against him. To press a kiss to her temple and remind her who she was— that, despite being perfectly capable on her own to handle anything life threw her way, she was never fighting alone as long as Cassian was alive.
“I wish there was something I could do.”
Nesta allowed herself a soft laugh, and Cassian’s breath came a little easier, albeit not much. “I know you would if you could.”
“In a heartbeat,” he assured her. “Look, I know the timing isn’t great, but I don’t know— maybe we can talk about our timeline again. Maybe move it up.”
“Cass, absolutely not.” Her tone left no room for discussion, and Cassian felt his eyebrow quirk up as if he’d been challenged. Before he could argue in spite of her silent warning, Nesta’s voice softened. “Not that I don’t want you here. I appreciate that you would, but I won’t be that person that you feel the need to swoop in and save. I’ll be okay.”
His eyes eased shut. How was he supposed to argue with that?
“I know you will.”
An almost-comfortable silent fell over them for a few minutes until Cassian realized that part of their conversation was effectively over. Searching for lighter territory, he cleared his throat.
“Three more sleeps until I see you.”
Her laugh was the reward he’d wanted. Anything to know he’d put a smile on her face. “Most people countdown in days.”
“Mm,” he replied, seemingly unimpressed, but his smile came through anyway. “I’m not most people.”
“Isn’t that the truth?”
“I’m not sure if I should take offense to that.”
Nesta was quiet, and Cassian pictured the way her teeth sank into her lower lip when she fought a smile. Then, because he felt indulgent, he thought of the way he would trace her mouth with his thumb, how her eyes went round when he tipped her chin up.
“No,” she almost whispered. “It’s a good thing.”
Rolling over to his back, he ran a hand through his wild hair and groaned at his mental to-do list.
“Shit. I still need to pack.”
“I have some of your stuff here,” she reminded him. “A toothbrush, shampoo, body wash. All you need is clothes and shoes.”
“That helps. Still have to do my laundry first.”
Nesta hummed her understanding. “Well, if our schedules line up, I’ll keep you busy while you wait for the machine to finish.”
The lazy drawl of his words was courtesy of the many images her promise inspired. “I like the way your brain works, Sweetheart.”
——————————————————————————
If you’d like to be tagged in any of my fics, please send me an ask, a message, leave a comment, or mention being tagged in your reblog! I’ll be happy to add you!
[And, if I’ve left you off my list unintentionally, please don’t hesitate to remind me! I promise I won't be offended!]
The door was unlocked when he approached the house, and Cassian chuckled at how his brother would no doubt react to that small fact. Nevermind that Feyre did it with Cassian in mind. His overprotective little brother was likely to have a heart attack if he knew she was so flippant with her safety while he was out of town on business. The secret was safe with Cassian, if only to spare Feyre the mild lecture for the millionth time. - what happened to ringing the doorbell? Feyre what if it was a serial killer instead of Cassian
“You’ll get it,” he assured her. “You always do.” A small smile stretched across her face, and his chest felt a little lighter than before. The joke rolled off his tongue before he could think better of it. “Worst case, I’ll model for you.” - nesta would spend a good deal of money to buy those, I’m sure
They laughed together before turning their focus back to their tea. Cassian took the opportunity to snack on a small scone, which he was pretty sure was meant for children by the looks of it. He said as much, and Feyre rolled her eyes. It was an expression so like Nesta that longing threatened to choke him. - thanks for the reminder, I’ll go cry now
A smirk tugged at the edge of Cassian’s mouth. “It’s not tragic, and if I’m honest, I deserve it.” - you damn right do
Silence fell. Hurt flashed over Feyre’s face, her blue eyes round, and Cassian hated himself for hurting her. Defending Nesta wasn’t something he could apologize for, though. - as you should Cassian, you’re 100% right
“That’s not what I meant.” Her voice was brittle, soft. “Nesta is practical, and she would understand the value of advancing your career in these early stages of your relationship. She won’t expect you to uproot your routine— your life— simply because you decided to work things out together.” - Feyre’s got a point
Cassian cleared his throat. “Nesta isn’t in a place to come back to Velaris, at least not right now. Before Helion talked to me about this job, I’d already told Nesta I would move. To give us a fair shot.”
Feyre’s eyes flared in surprise, but she blinked it away. “And you think it’s too soon.”
“Isn’t it?”
Her laugh was affectionate. “Cass, you and Nesta are already years in the making.” - YES THEY WERE ALWAYS DESTINED TO END UP TOGETHER
The truth of it hit him full force. He spent so much time preparing for war in Nesta’s honor that he failed to see how his own insecurities sold her short. It was hardly fair to assume the worst in her when he expected the opposite from anyone else. It hadn’t been intentional, but the way his hang-ups exerted influence over his assumptions exposed some lingering scar tissue stretched across his ego. - the way both of them came such a long way. Look at my boy self reflecting
“Part of me wanted to be relieved when you split up, but you were both miserable,” she continued, another punch to the stomach. “After watching the two of you claw your ways back to yourselves over the last couple of years, it was hard to settle into the idea that things would all snap into place now.” - they’re the definition of right person wrong time, but now the time is righting itself *sobs*
“So, you two have tried getting back together before?”
A huff of wry amusement left him before he could stop it. “I wouldn’t say that.” - not the cliche of “it’s complicated” but it really is 😭
His tone shifted, suddenly thick with emotion that was a surprise to him as much as Feyre. “I’ve loved Nesta since the night we spent in that cabin. Years ago, now,” he rasped. Feyre’s eyes softened, and she reached across the table for his hand. He let her take it. “Nothing’s been the same since.” - she was always the one for him 😭🫶🏻
Anyone who knew him well knew something chaotic and unyielding had always brewed beneath the surface of his self-control— that most of his conscious effort went toward burning off the constant unsteadiness in his veins. All to avoid a host of bad decisions along the path of shameless self-destruction. The way he carried the weight of his family members’ happiness on his shoulders, the energy he brought to his job and making himself indispensable. Making decisions for others, especially ones that protected them, had never been a challenge for Cassian, as he loved nothing more than to take care of anyone who needed it. The challenge had always been in making decisions that served him when it all came down to it, and he’d never been able to do that without the threat of impact to someone else. Not even that had been enough to keep him away from Nesta over the years, no matter the fallout. - Cassian would also benefit from seeing a therapist. If only to deal with his idea that he is not deserving of being selfish, because he cares too much for others and too little about his own happiness
“It makes sense, you know,” she said, her voice hushed. “No one loves like you do, Cassian.” A lump formed in his throat, and he offered her a nod in thanks. He didn’t trust the emotions that would come spilling out if he deigned to open his mouth. “And I don’t think anyone feels quite like Nesta, either.” - SOULMATES THEY ARE SOULMATES YOUR HONOUR
All good things, he thought, if the individuals in question were healthy and settled. A disaster, if they weren’t. The path his thoughts had taken only moments before indicated that he was a long way from perfect, but Cassian realized with such a small revelation that he and Nesta weren’t damned to everything they’d been through before. Not when they’d both done the work on themselves, albeit incomplete. The game changer was in the choice, and the commitment to that growth and each other. - YEEES WE LOVE TO SEE GROWTH
To Feyre’s credit, Nesta had been entirely receptive to Cassian’s perceived dilemma. He’d decided to rip off the proverbial bandaid that very evening, and if he was thankful for anything, it was the fact that he’d opted to untangle his thoughts with his sister-in-law before he’d made the potential mistake of word-vomiting all over Nesta.
He had carefully laid out his pros and cons of taking the promotion— making sure to include the items pertaining to life overall, as well as the implications for their future. Nesta was patient and had pointed out several additional considerations he’d yet to think of, and as it turned out, the two of them made a pretty solid team when they got out of their own way enough to work together through life’s hurdles. - COMMUNICATION THE MAGIC WORD IS COMMUNICATION
It had been a particularly sobering realization, since Cassian’s usual method involved trying to control for every possible angle, but Nesta had gotten them straight to the heart of the matter. A former version of himself itched to take her position personally, to assume that her bluntness was some kind of directly proportional measure of how little she cared to have him closer. Still a work in progress, but Cassian was pleased that silencing that maladaptive voice in his head got easier every time he did it, and life was offering him plenty of practice. - look at my boy, all grown up trying to be rational and conquer his feelings
Cassian paused to throw his shirt into the laundry basket and traded his pants for some athletic shorts. With little grace, he threw himself onto his bed, his face buried in his pillow. - I’m sorry, I know this is supposed to be a very serious scene from the likes of it, but I’m picturing Cassian and being a whore and drooling
“I am,” she insisted, her voice adamant. “I really am… I just…” Cassian let her words linger, afraid that if he made any sudden moves that Nesta may refrain from elaborating. “Some days it feels like I’ve been stuck in place for months while the rest of the world kept moving all around me.” - oh nesta dear *sobs*
“Nothing to be sorry for.” A forced casualness floated along her words, and he hated them for the mask they were. A deep breath in, a deep breath out, and then, “Nothing is set in stone as of now, but it would mean a relocation for Claire. And honestly, I’m not ready to face that yet… the possibility of being here alone all over again.” - this was uncalled for Daniela, fuck off
Cassian nearly choked on a curse. The thought of Nesta feeling like it was her alone against the world made his chest ache with the need to pull her against him. To press a kiss to her temple and remind her who she was— that, despite being perfectly capable on her own to handle anything life threw her way, she was never fighting alone as long as Cassian was alive. - I AM SCREAMING CRYING SOBBING DANI HOW DARE YOU HURT ME LIKE THIS
“Three more sleeps until I see you.” - THIS IS SO CUTE OMG
Nesta was quiet, and Cassian pictured the way her teeth sank into her lower lip when she fought a smile. Then, because he felt indulgent, he thought of the way he would trace her mouth with his thumb, how her eyes went round when he tipped her chin up. - the good thing about long distance is all the cuddling and horny times when they reunite later
Nesta hummed her understanding. “Well, if our schedules line up, I’ll keep you busy while you wait for the machine to finish.” - UAHSUSUDUD HORNY NESTA
The lazy drawl of his words was courtesy of the many images her promise inspired. “I like the way your brain works, Sweetheart.” - love how you gave us angst and then BAM! cuteness and horny. All is forgiven dani 🫶🏻
I’m so so happy you updated, I’m obsessed with this fic of yours and I missed nessian so much, this was the best notification to wake up to 😭💜
I cannot wait to read what you have in mind for the next chapter, but for now I leave you with some memes
HERE IT IS! The Rowaelin Month 2023 Prompt List! We are ecstatic to be back for a the full month of September once again!
We hope you all love these prompts as much a we do and we are so excited to see what everyone will create in honor of our beloved Fireheart and Buzzard!
We've included a handy calendar image for you all, but if for any reason the image isn't working or is hard to read, the full list will be written out below the cut.
START DATE: September 1st
Green filled boxes denote CANON SPECIFIC PROMPTS
1. Participation every day is not required. You can create a many or as few submissions for the listed prompts as you like!
2. Please remember to tag your creations with #rowaelinmonth so people following the tag can find them! And don't forget to mention @rowaelinscourt in your post do we can reblog it!
3. Please remember that all works MUST have appropriate tags and content warnings. NSFW content is required to be tagged clearly and hidden below a 'Read More cut. We want everyone to have a fun and safe time engaging with content!
4. All genres of work are welcome, but please note any major warnings at the top of the work so readers or viewers have some idea what to expect.
5. Canon Week is back (with 2 whole extra days!) to fill that canon shaped hole in our hearts! While we kindly request that Canon Week prompts remain specifically for canon scenarios, remember that any and all prompts are welcome to be interpreted as canon/a canon-inspired setting as well! With creativity and imagination, the possibilities are limitless!
6. Any kind of fanwork can be submitted for this event so long as it can be applied to the prompt! Fanfiction, fanart, headcanons, playlists or any thing else you can think of! There are no requirements and you can submit multiple works for the same prompt of your so wish.
Rowaelin Month Prompt List
September 1: Song Fic
September 2: Accidents Happen
September 3: Rowaelin as teens
September 4: "Friends don't do this"
September 5: A Bad Date
September 6: Forced Proximity
September 7: Vacation or Outdoor Adventure (ie a road trip, beach day, hiking ect)
September 8: Single Parents
September 9: Renaissance Fair
September 10: Co-host/Guest Star with Chemistry
September 11: Getting Arrested/ A Trip to the Police Station
September 12: Meet Cute / Meet Ugly
September 13: Babies / Kids / Next Gen
September 14: An Argument/ Making up After an Argument
September 15: Meeting the Parents
September 16: Mob AU
September 17: Mating Ceremony
September 18: Aelin with hawk Rowan
September 19: Telling Their Children about Their Tattoos
September 20: Drunken Antics
September 21: Scars
September 22: Magic/Shifting Lessons with the Children
September 23: Domestic Fluff
September 24: How Rowan Knew "Fireheart"
September 25: Arranged Marriage
September 26: Taking care of the littles solo
September 27: Person A is touch starved but didn't know how to reach out to Person B
September 28: Wartime Sweethearts
September 29: Firsts (date/kiss/time/child/ect)
September 30: A Missing or Alternate Scene from Canon
a/n: How has it been this long since I've updated? 😅 I've missed these two a ton lately, and I'm excited to finally share their next chapter! I'm also excited because I've been looking forward to the NEXT chapter for quite some time, and the inspiration for that one has been extra high lately 👀👀
If you want to re-read to get a refresher or need to catch up, I put the link below!
Cassian welcomes us back for this update! Hope y'all enjoy!
>> Somewhere masterlist >>fanfic masterlist
——————————————————————————
Hanging out with Feyre was long overdue, and despite the exhaustion settling into Cassian’s bones, he was looking forward to it. She always made tea the way he liked it— something they had in common— and after such a long day, he could use a cup to help keep his eyes open until a proper bedtime.
The door was unlocked when he approached the house, and Cassian chuckled at how his brother would no doubt react to that small fact. Nevermind that Feyre did it with Cassian in mind. His overprotective little brother was likely to have a heart attack if he knew she was so flippant with her safety while he was out of town on business. The secret was safe with Cassian, if only to spare Feyre the mild lecture for the millionth time.
“Hey Fey,” he called, wiping his shoes on the small rug.
His keys made a loud clang in the metal bowl on the entryway table, and Cassian scowled at the jarring sound as if he hadn’t been ultimately responsible. His fatigue was making him grouchy.
“Cass!” Feyre came around the corner beaming and wrapped him in a tight hug. She had always been like a baby sister to him, even in the earliest days of her relationship with Rhysand. Something had made sense between them, and Cassian loved her fiercely.
Squeezing her back with equal enthusiasm, Cassian pressed a kiss to her hair and smiled. “Lonely already?” he teased. “Rhysand only left yesterday.”
Feyre scoffed and pulled away, leading him to the small table off the side of the kitchen. Tea was already steaming in a cast iron kettle in the middle and small pastries were stacked nearby. Cassian’s mouth watered at the sight.
“I’ve hardly had time to be lonely,” she mused, and affection dripped from every word. “You know he’s called with every spare moment.”
“I figured as much. This looks great, by the way.”
“Thanks.” Feyre smiled and gestured toward one of the chairs. Cassian complied— mostly because he knew better than to challenge an Archeron in their own home— and leaned forward on his elbows to bend his neck in a stretch.
A cup of tea appeared in his field of vision, and he winked at Feyre in gratitude. She was poised across from him, her attention sliding to the garden through the window, and the sun illuminating her elegant profile. They sipped in silence for a couple of moments, content in each other’s comfortable, steady company.
Cassian was the first to break the silence, a role he served more often than not. “Have you made much progress on the pieces for your next exhibit with Rhysand being out of town?”
“Some. I haven’t hit much of a stride yet, and that’s daunting considering it’s only a couple of months away.”
Feyre wrapped her hands around her mug and rounded her shoulders as if the admission had cost her something. Whatever the case, Cassian didn’t care to see her stressed.
“You’ll get it,” he assured her. “You always do.” A small smile stretched across her face, and his chest felt a little lighter than before. The joke rolled off his tongue before he could think better of it. “Worst case, I’ll model for you.”
That earned an actual laugh. “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, her eyes sparkling, “should I get desperate.”
“We’ll pray it doesn’t come to that.”
They laughed together before turning their focus back to their tea. Cassian took the opportunity to snack on a small scone, which he was pretty sure was meant for children by the looks of it. He said as much, and Feyre rolled her eyes. It was an expression so like Nesta that longing threatened to choke him.
“What about you?” Feyre asked, interrupting his thoughts. “You said you had something to run by me?”
Damn, he’d forgotten he planted that seed when they made plans earlier in the day. The promotion Helion offered was eating him alive, and he needed a sounding board. While that was still true, he hadn’t been tired down to his bones when he’d originally brought it up.
“Yeah, sort of.” He leaned back in his chair and twisted to rest his elbow over the back. “It’s more that I have some things to work through out loud, and I think you could help with pros and cons.”
Feyre’s brows came together over the rim on her mug. With a nod, she placed her tea atop the table and gave him her full, undivided attention. His chest felt tighter than he’d anticipated, but he’d learned to push through uncertainty many moons ago.
“I got offered a promotion,” he began, each word leaving him through an exhale.
“Why do you say that as if it’s tragic?”
A smirk tugged at the edge of Cassian’s mouth. “It’s not tragic, and if I’m honest, I deserve it.”
“So humble.”
He winked in acknowledgement of Feyre’s ribbing. She wasn’t nearly as cutthroat as Nesta in her banter, but she did well enough if Cassian’s soft spot for her was any indication.
“Helion gave me some time to decide, but I need to get back to him soon. There’s not a position to compare it to, and with Nesta and me trying to work things out, I worry about how much of my time it’ll take up.”
Feyre was quiet for a beat too long, enough for Cassian’s lower back to bead with sweat. Stoicism wasn’t something he typically associated with Feyre, but he didn’t regret his limited experience with it.
“Have you told Nesta about it?”
He took a breath. “Yeah. She was supportive, but things are still new. I don’t know if she would try and sway me either way.”
“True,” Feyre replied, taking another long sip of her tea. “Although, if we’re being fair, Nesta will understand putting yourself first.”
Cassian must have failed at keeping his expression placid with how Feyre’s eyes tracked every angle of his face. “Fey, don’t.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I came here because I thought I wouldn’t have to defend Nesta to you, of all people.”
Silence fell. Hurt flashed over Feyre’s face, her blue eyes round, and Cassian hated himself for hurting her. Defending Nesta wasn’t something he could apologize for, though.
“That’s not what I meant.” Her voice was brittle, soft. “Nesta is practical, and she would understand the value of advancing your career in these early stages of your relationship. She won’t expect you to uproot your routine— your life— simply because you decided to work things out together.”
His eyes eased shut, and he took a measured breath. “I’m sorry.”
Feyre nodded, and the tension seemed to evaporate with the simple gesture. “Not everyone has been receptive, and I can respect you having Nesta’s back. She has too few in her corner as it is.”
Emotion gathered in his throat, and he swallowed against it. “Yeah,” he rasped. “Can I tell you something, just between the two of us for now?”
“Sure. As long as you’re not asking me to lie to Rhys.”
“Nah, not exactly.” Feyre gave him a pointed look, and he raised his hands in placation. “I only ask that you not tell him before I get a chance, but if he suspects anything, I don’t expect you to lie.”
Feyre nodded, but her brow remained furrowed.
“The timing of all this isn’t great, and I don’t know how to talk to Nesta about it,” he admitted. His shoulders relaxed for the first time in minutes. He had greatly underestimated the relief that would come with such a simple admission. “I know where I stand, but I’m trying to let Nesta settle in to all this. With us.”
He paused to assess Feyre’s expression, but she wasn’t giving much away for free. To her credit, Cassian hadn’t exactly spelled things out. He fixed his attention to his palm, using the thumb of his other hand to trace circles around his calluses.
“We talked about what happens if we see this working out long-term. We can’t live thousands of miles apart forever.”
“Well, yeah. Makes sense.”
Cassian cleared his throat. “Nesta isn’t in a place to come back to Velaris, at least not right now. Before Helion talked to me about this job, I’d already told Nesta I would move. To give us a fair shot.”
Feyre’s eyes flared in surprise, but she blinked it away. “And you think it’s too soon.”
“Isn’t it?”
Her laugh was affectionate. “Cass, you and Nesta are already years in the making.”
“Sure, but…” he trailed off, gathering his words. “We agreed to give it time, but I don’t know what she’s comfortable with before deciding to take the next step. What if I turn down the job, and I end up here for at least another year? Or, what if I take it, and I have to quit in three months? I hate the idea of putting anyone in a bind, but Nesta would come first.”
Feyre observed him, her shoulders rounding toward him as if compelled to pull him into a hug. “Cass,” she murmured, “you have to talk to her.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” he joked, leaning back in his chair. He felt raw after such a display of vulnerability, and he craved the levity he was known to bring to any situation. “I don’t want the pressure to freak her out.”
“It’s a risk you take. But she’s the only person who is in this with you and whose opinion really matters. If you’re both committed to this, a simple conversation shouldn’t derail everything. If it does, that’s another issue. I’m not saying it’ll be fun, but it’s necessary.”
Cassian groaned, dragging his hands over his stubbled cheeks. “I know that. You’re supposed to lie to me.”
Feyre’s head dropped back as she laughed, and it was so contagious that it managed to drag a chuckle from beneath the weight of Cassian’s ribs.
“You know, as quick as you are to defend Nesta, maybe it’s worth giving her a little more credit yourself,” Feyre said, her tone soft.
The truth of it hit him full force. He spent so much time preparing for war in Nesta’s honor that he failed to see how his own insecurities sold her short. It was hardly fair to assume the worst in her when he expected the opposite from anyone else. It hadn’t been intentional, but the way his hang-ups exerted influence over his assumptions exposed some lingering scar tissue stretched across his ego.
Cassian nodded and focused on his tea. Feyre had given him more than his fair share to think about, including his unresolved issues and how to shield Nesta from the aftermath.
“So, you’re leaving us, then?” The playfulness in her question was the life preserver he’d needed, and he shamelessly accepted the shift in tone.
“As soon as possible,” he said, deadpan. “Can’t wait, really.”
Feyre chuckled and rolled her eyes. “Liar. You’ll miss us the second you leave.”
Cassian responded with a tight, subtle shake of his head and punctuated it with a wink. His impish denial earned another laugh from Feyre, and his heart felt lighter in the way it usually did when he made his loved ones feel at ease.
A beat of silence passed, and then, “You really love her.”
“Yeah?” Cassian asked, barely suppressing a laugh. “What gave it away?”
A scone flew across the table and hit him square in the chest. He caught it just before it landed on the table and ate half in a single bite, staring at Feyre as if he hadn’t deserved her brutality.
“Don’t be cute, Cassian,” Feyre chided. “I don’t know… I stayed conflicted about you two a couple of years ago. I’ve never seen people who brought each other alive like you and Nesta did, but it always seemed to come at a price.”
Cassian nodded, overly invested in assessing the angle of his next bite. What was he supposed to say to that, anyway?
“Part of me wanted to be relieved when you split up, but you were both miserable,” she continued, another punch to the stomach. “After watching the two of you claw your ways back to yourselves over the last couple of years, it was hard to settle into the idea that things would all snap into place now.”
His fingers drummed a mindless rhythm on the table, the quiet thudding sound keeping his pulse in check. “Well, for what it’s worth, nothing has snapped into place.”
Feyre waited until his eyes met hers again to speak, her brows furrowed. “But I thought—”
“Everything is okay,” Cassian amended, maybe too quickly. It was the truth, but something about being under the microscope made him jumpy and a little defensive. “I just meant that it didn’t happen that way. Nesta and I…” he trailed off, trying to find his words in the ether and settling for the lame ones he found first. “We didn’t have a clean break a couple of years back.”
“So, you two have tried getting back together before?”
A huff of wry amusement left him before he could stop it. “I wouldn’t say that.”
At Feyre’s incredulous stare, he elaborated as much as he dared without sharing all the skeletons in his and Nesta’s closet. He hit the high points of their chronic push and pull. Their weakness and loose details of their misdeeds towards other partners in the name of whatever they hoped to resuscitate between them, no matter how little time they could have had.
“Gods,” Feyre muttered, draining the rest of her tea and setting the cup down heavily. “I had no idea.”
“No one did, except Nesta and me. Azriel suspected at times because he knew how much Nesta always got under my skin, but I was a vault on any of the details.”
“I guess it’s no one’s business, really.”
Cassian raised his brows in silent agreement and leaned back in his chair, stretched his arms one at a time across his chest to relieve some of the tension between his shoulder blades. That familiar pressure was building again, the one that seeped into Cassian’s bones and compelled him to redirect the conversation to less turbulent territory. If not for himself, to bring a smile and an ease back to his sister-in-law, who really had no reason to carry the burden of his past.
“Maybe keep your day job, Fey,” he teased, hoping his impulse didn’t interfere with his mark. “I don’t think your powers of deduction are going to pay the bills.”
She laughed, long and loud, and pride filled his chest to bursting. Feyre was still his ally, it would seem, and the future felt a fraction less daunting with her in their corner.
His tone shifted, suddenly thick with emotion that was a surprise to him as much as Feyre. “I’ve loved Nesta since the night we spent in that cabin. Years ago, now,” he rasped. Feyre’s eyes softened, and she reached across the table for his hand. He let her take it. “Nothing’s been the same since.”
The confession gutted him and eased a tension he’d been carrying for far too long in equal measure. Cassian wondered how he’d managed to keep it all contained to that point, but the realization hit him that he hadn’t. Not really.
Anyone who knew him well knew something chaotic and unyielding had always brewed beneath the surface of his self-control— that most of his conscious effort went toward burning off the constant unsteadiness in his veins. All to avoid a host of bad decisions along the path of shameless self-destruction. The way he carried the weight of his family members’ happiness on his shoulders, the energy he brought to his job and making himself indispensable. Making decisions for others, especially ones that protected them, had never been a challenge for Cassian, as he loved nothing more than to take care of anyone who needed it. The challenge had always been in making decisions that served him when it all came down to it, and he’d never been able to do that without the threat of impact to someone else. Not even that had been enough to keep him away from Nesta over the years, no matter the fallout.
Amren had been right when she’d finally laid it all out, but he would take that small fact to the damned grave. Cruel and unusual torture wouldn’t be enough to risk her smugness for the following millennium.
Feyre ended the prolonged silence, shattering the fragile bits of his impromptu soul search. It was probably for the best, he decided.
“It makes sense, you know,” she said, her voice hushed. “No one loves like you do, Cassian.” A lump formed in his throat, and he offered her a nod in thanks. He didn’t trust the emotions that would come spilling out if he deigned to open his mouth. “And I don’t think anyone feels quite like Nesta, either.”
All good things, he thought, if the individuals in question were healthy and settled. A disaster, if they weren’t. The path his thoughts had taken only moments before indicated that he was a long way from perfect, but Cassian realized with such a small revelation that he and Nesta weren’t damned to everything they’d been through before. Not when they’d both done the work on themselves, albeit incomplete. The game changer was in the choice, and the commitment to that growth and each other.
A weight heavier than he’d thought himself capable of carrying for so many years eased from his shoulders. Not everything, of course, but sometimes, all it took was a moment that offered a little bit of hope.
—
To Feyre’s credit, Nesta had been entirely receptive to Cassian’s perceived dilemma. He’d decided to rip off the proverbial bandaid that very evening, and if he was thankful for anything, it was the fact that he’d opted to untangle his thoughts with his sister-in-law before he’d made the potential mistake of word-vomiting all over Nesta.
He had carefully laid out his pros and cons of taking the promotion— making sure to include the items pertaining to life overall, as well as the implications for their future. Nesta was patient and had pointed out several additional considerations he’d yet to think of, and as it turned out, the two of them made a pretty solid team when they got out of their own way enough to work together through life’s hurdles.
For all her assistance in building both cases, Nesta’s stance on the matter had been straight forward and rather simple if Cassian allowed himself to acknowledge it.
“The thing is,” she’d said, “you need to do what makes the most sense for you right now. Not the Cassian 6 months from now, the Cassian a year from now, or Cassian from yesterday.”
It had been a particularly sobering realization, since Cassian’s usual method involved trying to control for every possible angle, but Nesta had gotten them straight to the heart of the matter. A former version of himself itched to take her position personally, to assume that her bluntness was some kind of directly proportional measure of how little she cared to have him closer. Still a work in progress, but Cassian was pleased that silencing that maladaptive voice in his head got easier every time he did it, and life was offering him plenty of practice.
His commitment to self-advocacy had paid off in his meeting with Helion, and he’d come away with several accommodations that he wasn’t sure they would have agreed to make. Now, days later, he dragged his heavy, sleep-deprived body up the stairs to his apartment— the only way he’d made peace with skipping his workout that day— after another long day at the office. Somehow, he was juggling his usual duties while trying to learn the new ones. His replacement couldn’t start soon enough.
The door shut heavily in his already-dark entryway, his keys landing on the small table near the door by sheer muscle memory. Cassian leaned against the shut door and eased his eyes closed, but his phone vibrated rudely almost immediately. With a groan, he shoved his hand into his pocket and hauled his phone into view. The shift in his mood at seeing Nesta’s name nearly gave him whiplash.
“Hey, Sweetheart.”
He flipped the light switch, muttering a soft curse at the sudden brightness. The assault on his vision was worth it to hear the low, melodic chuckle that came shortly after.
“Hey,” she said, her smile still evident. “Long day?”
Another groan. A rough, calloused hand over the stubble on his cheek. “Yep. Anymore of this, and my brain is going to melt.”
“That feels dramatic.”
Cassian huffed a laugh, tucking his phone against his shoulder and working the buttons on his shirt. “Doesn’t make it less true. Why are you awake?”
The time difference made their nighttime phone calls a luxury. Cassian worried all the time that Nesta didn’t rest enough, but the balance was a delicate one with voicing that concern.
“Missed you,” she said simply, as if it didn’t still rock Cassian to hear Nesta admit such intimacy. “I got in late tonight anyway because I had dinner with Claire. And I made the mistake of picking up my book once I got home.”
“You should set a timer.”
Nesta scoffed. “That’s not how it works.”
He understood the way Nesta lost herself in whatever she read, had witnessed it countless times. Hours passed sometimes before Nesta’s head would lift, her eyes bleary, and she would start the task of re-orienting to the present.
“Yeah, yeah,” he dismissed, smiling at how he knew she would bristle. “How was dinner?”
She took a long, deep breath. “It was good. We were overdue for a catch-up.”
Cassian paused to throw his shirt into the laundry basket and traded his pants for some athletic shorts. With little grace, he threw himself onto his bed, his face buried in his pillow.
“How’s she doing?” he asked, propping on an elbow.
“Good.” Her response was almost too swift, but it felt haunted all the same. “Really good.”
“That’s good.” Cassian cringed. Usually, if the word “good” entered a conversation any number of times in rapid succession, things were quite the opposite. His response felt awkward and uninspired, but he couldn’t put a finger on why. His intuition with Nesta was solid usually, but distance complicated even the things that came most naturally. A lesson he continued to learn.
“She mentioned a promotion.” Nesta sounded detached from the information she shared, and Cassian offered her the time to work through it without comment. “She deserves it. She’s wanted it for a long time and has been passed over several times now. I’m happy for her.”
Cassian considered his words, his mouth opening and slamming shut a couple of times before he landed on, “Why don’t you sound happy?”
“I am,” she insisted, her voice adamant. “I really am… I just…” Cassian let her words linger, afraid that if he made any sudden moves that Nesta may refrain from elaborating. “Some days it feels like I’ve been stuck in place for months while the rest of the world kept moving all around me.”
A grimace pulled at the edges of his mouth. Nesta had done so much work to heal over the months, and while Cassian knew she was moving mountains in their own right, he understood where she was coming from. He and Claire— two people close to Nesta whose lives hadn’t been immeasurably disrupted by recent events — were moving forward in their goals, and Nesta still consistently mentioned how she felt like she would be trying to catch up from her time off in perpetuity.
“I’m sorry, Nes,” he murmured, his voice rough.
“Nothing to be sorry for.” A forced casualness floated along her words, and he hated them for the mask they were. A deep breath in, a deep breath out, and then, “Nothing is set in stone as of now, but it would mean a relocation for Claire. And honestly, I’m not ready to face that yet… the possibility of being here alone all over again.”
Cassian nearly choked on a curse. The thought of Nesta feeling like it was her alone against the world made his chest ache with the need to pull her against him. To press a kiss to her temple and remind her who she was— that, despite being perfectly capable on her own to handle anything life threw her way, she was never fighting alone as long as Cassian was alive.
“I wish there was something I could do.”
Nesta allowed herself a soft laugh, and Cassian’s breath came a little easier, albeit not much. “I know you would if you could.”
“In a heartbeat,” he assured her. “Look, I know the timing isn’t great, but I don’t know— maybe we can talk about our timeline again. Maybe move it up.”
“Cass, absolutely not.” Her tone left no room for discussion, and Cassian felt his eyebrow quirk up as if he’d been challenged. Before he could argue in spite of her silent warning, Nesta’s voice softened. “Not that I don’t want you here. I appreciate that you would, but I won’t be that person that you feel the need to swoop in and save. I’ll be okay.”
His eyes eased shut. How was he supposed to argue with that?
“I know you will.”
An almost-comfortable silent fell over them for a few minutes until Cassian realized that part of their conversation was effectively over. Searching for lighter territory, he cleared his throat.
“Three more sleeps until I see you.”
Her laugh was the reward he’d wanted. Anything to know he’d put a smile on her face. “Most people countdown in days.”
“Mm,” he replied, seemingly unimpressed, but his smile came through anyway. “I’m not most people.”
“Isn’t that the truth?”
“I’m not sure if I should take offense to that.”
Nesta was quiet, and Cassian pictured the way her teeth sank into her lower lip when she fought a smile. Then, because he felt indulgent, he thought of the way he would trace her mouth with his thumb, how her eyes went round when he tipped her chin up.
“No,” she almost whispered. “It’s a good thing.”
Rolling over to his back, he ran a hand through his wild hair and groaned at his mental to-do list.
“Shit. I still need to pack.”
“I have some of your stuff here,” she reminded him. “A toothbrush, shampoo, body wash. All you need is clothes and shoes.”
“That helps. Still have to do my laundry first.”
Nesta hummed her understanding. “Well, if our schedules line up, I’ll keep you busy while you wait for the machine to finish.”
The lazy drawl of his words was courtesy of the many images her promise inspired. “I like the way your brain works, Sweetheart.”
——————————————————————————
If you’d like to be tagged in any of my fics, please send me an ask, a message, leave a comment, or mention being tagged in your reblog! I’ll be happy to add you!
[And, if I’ve left you off my list unintentionally, please don’t hesitate to remind me! I promise I won't be offended!]
a/n: How has it been this long since I've updated? 😅 I've missed these two a ton lately, and I'm excited to finally share their next chapter! I'm also excited because I've been looking forward to the NEXT chapter for quite some time, and the inspiration for that one has been extra high lately 👀👀
If you want to re-read to get a refresher or need to catch up, I put the link below!
Cassian welcomes us back for this update! Hope y'all enjoy!
>> Somewhere masterlist >>fanfic masterlist
——————————————————————————
Hanging out with Feyre was long overdue, and despite the exhaustion settling into Cassian’s bones, he was looking forward to it. She always made tea the way he liked it— something they had in common— and after such a long day, he could use a cup to help keep his eyes open until a proper bedtime.
The door was unlocked when he approached the house, and Cassian chuckled at how his brother would no doubt react to that small fact. Nevermind that Feyre did it with Cassian in mind. His overprotective little brother was likely to have a heart attack if he knew she was so flippant with her safety while he was out of town on business. The secret was safe with Cassian, if only to spare Feyre the mild lecture for the millionth time.
“Hey Fey,” he called, wiping his shoes on the small rug.
His keys made a loud clang in the metal bowl on the entryway table, and Cassian scowled at the jarring sound as if he hadn’t been ultimately responsible. His fatigue was making him grouchy.
“Cass!” Feyre came around the corner beaming and wrapped him in a tight hug. She had always been like a baby sister to him, even in the earliest days of her relationship with Rhysand. Something had made sense between them, and Cassian loved her fiercely.
Squeezing her back with equal enthusiasm, Cassian pressed a kiss to her hair and smiled. “Lonely already?” he teased. “Rhysand only left yesterday.”
Feyre scoffed and pulled away, leading him to the small table off the side of the kitchen. Tea was already steaming in a cast iron kettle in the middle and small pastries were stacked nearby. Cassian’s mouth watered at the sight.
“I’ve hardly had time to be lonely,” she mused, and affection dripped from every word. “You know he’s called with every spare moment.”
“I figured as much. This looks great, by the way.”
“Thanks.” Feyre smiled and gestured toward one of the chairs. Cassian complied— mostly because he knew better than to challenge an Archeron in their own home— and leaned forward on his elbows to bend his neck in a stretch.
A cup of tea appeared in his field of vision, and he winked at Feyre in gratitude. She was poised across from him, her attention sliding to the garden through the window, and the sun illuminating her elegant profile. They sipped in silence for a couple of moments, content in each other’s comfortable, steady company.
Cassian was the first to break the silence, a role he served more often than not. “Have you made much progress on the pieces for your next exhibit with Rhysand being out of town?”
“Some. I haven’t hit much of a stride yet, and that’s daunting considering it’s only a couple of months away.”
Feyre wrapped her hands around her mug and rounded her shoulders as if the admission had cost her something. Whatever the case, Cassian didn’t care to see her stressed.
“You’ll get it,” he assured her. “You always do.” A small smile stretched across her face, and his chest felt a little lighter than before. The joke rolled off his tongue before he could think better of it. “Worst case, I’ll model for you.”
That earned an actual laugh. “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, her eyes sparkling, “should I get desperate.”
“We’ll pray it doesn’t come to that.”
They laughed together before turning their focus back to their tea. Cassian took the opportunity to snack on a small scone, which he was pretty sure was meant for children by the looks of it. He said as much, and Feyre rolled her eyes. It was an expression so like Nesta that longing threatened to choke him.
“What about you?” Feyre asked, interrupting his thoughts. “You said you had something to run by me?”
Damn, he’d forgotten he planted that seed when they made plans earlier in the day. The promotion Helion offered was eating him alive, and he needed a sounding board. While that was still true, he hadn’t been tired down to his bones when he’d originally brought it up.
“Yeah, sort of.” He leaned back in his chair and twisted to rest his elbow over the back. “It’s more that I have some things to work through out loud, and I think you could help with pros and cons.”
Feyre’s brows came together over the rim on her mug. With a nod, she placed her tea atop the table and gave him her full, undivided attention. His chest felt tighter than he’d anticipated, but he’d learned to push through uncertainty many moons ago.
“I got offered a promotion,” he began, each word leaving him through an exhale.
“Why do you say that as if it’s tragic?”
A smirk tugged at the edge of Cassian’s mouth. “It’s not tragic, and if I’m honest, I deserve it.”
“So humble.”
He winked in acknowledgement of Feyre’s ribbing. She wasn’t nearly as cutthroat as Nesta in her banter, but she did well enough if Cassian’s soft spot for her was any indication.
“Helion gave me some time to decide, but I need to get back to him soon. There’s not a position to compare it to, and with Nesta and me trying to work things out, I worry about how much of my time it’ll take up.”
Feyre was quiet for a beat too long, enough for Cassian’s lower back to bead with sweat. Stoicism wasn’t something he typically associated with Feyre, but he didn’t regret his limited experience with it.
“Have you told Nesta about it?”
He took a breath. “Yeah. She was supportive, but things are still new. I don’t know if she would try and sway me either way.”
“True,” Feyre replied, taking another long sip of her tea. “Although, if we’re being fair, Nesta will understand putting yourself first.”
Cassian must have failed at keeping his expression placid with how Feyre’s eyes tracked every angle of his face. “Fey, don’t.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I came here because I thought I wouldn’t have to defend Nesta to you, of all people.”
Silence fell. Hurt flashed over Feyre’s face, her blue eyes round, and Cassian hated himself for hurting her. Defending Nesta wasn’t something he could apologize for, though.
“That’s not what I meant.” Her voice was brittle, soft. “Nesta is practical, and she would understand the value of advancing your career in these early stages of your relationship. She won’t expect you to uproot your routine— your life— simply because you decided to work things out together.”
His eyes eased shut, and he took a measured breath. “I’m sorry.”
Feyre nodded, and the tension seemed to evaporate with the simple gesture. “Not everyone has been receptive, and I can respect you having Nesta’s back. She has too few in her corner as it is.”
Emotion gathered in his throat, and he swallowed against it. “Yeah,” he rasped. “Can I tell you something, just between the two of us for now?”
“Sure. As long as you’re not asking me to lie to Rhys.”
“Nah, not exactly.” Feyre gave him a pointed look, and he raised his hands in placation. “I only ask that you not tell him before I get a chance, but if he suspects anything, I don’t expect you to lie.”
Feyre nodded, but her brow remained furrowed.
“The timing of all this isn’t great, and I don’t know how to talk to Nesta about it,” he admitted. His shoulders relaxed for the first time in minutes. He had greatly underestimated the relief that would come with such a simple admission. “I know where I stand, but I’m trying to let Nesta settle in to all this. With us.”
He paused to assess Feyre’s expression, but she wasn’t giving much away for free. To her credit, Cassian hadn’t exactly spelled things out. He fixed his attention to his palm, using the thumb of his other hand to trace circles around his calluses.
“We talked about what happens if we see this working out long-term. We can’t live thousands of miles apart forever.”
“Well, yeah. Makes sense.”
Cassian cleared his throat. “Nesta isn’t in a place to come back to Velaris, at least not right now. Before Helion talked to me about this job, I’d already told Nesta I would move. To give us a fair shot.”
Feyre’s eyes flared in surprise, but she blinked it away. “And you think it’s too soon.”
“Isn’t it?”
Her laugh was affectionate. “Cass, you and Nesta are already years in the making.”
“Sure, but…” he trailed off, gathering his words. “We agreed to give it time, but I don’t know what she’s comfortable with before deciding to take the next step. What if I turn down the job, and I end up here for at least another year? Or, what if I take it, and I have to quit in three months? I hate the idea of putting anyone in a bind, but Nesta would come first.”
Feyre observed him, her shoulders rounding toward him as if compelled to pull him into a hug. “Cass,” she murmured, “you have to talk to her.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” he joked, leaning back in his chair. He felt raw after such a display of vulnerability, and he craved the levity he was known to bring to any situation. “I don’t want the pressure to freak her out.”
“It’s a risk you take. But she’s the only person who is in this with you and whose opinion really matters. If you’re both committed to this, a simple conversation shouldn’t derail everything. If it does, that’s another issue. I’m not saying it’ll be fun, but it’s necessary.”
Cassian groaned, dragging his hands over his stubbled cheeks. “I know that. You’re supposed to lie to me.”
Feyre’s head dropped back as she laughed, and it was so contagious that it managed to drag a chuckle from beneath the weight of Cassian’s ribs.
“You know, as quick as you are to defend Nesta, maybe it’s worth giving her a little more credit yourself,” Feyre said, her tone soft.
The truth of it hit him full force. He spent so much time preparing for war in Nesta’s honor that he failed to see how his own insecurities sold her short. It was hardly fair to assume the worst in her when he expected the opposite from anyone else. It hadn’t been intentional, but the way his hang-ups exerted influence over his assumptions exposed some lingering scar tissue stretched across his ego.
Cassian nodded and focused on his tea. Feyre had given him more than his fair share to think about, including his unresolved issues and how to shield Nesta from the aftermath.
“So, you’re leaving us, then?” The playfulness in her question was the life preserver he’d needed, and he shamelessly accepted the shift in tone.
“As soon as possible,” he said, deadpan. “Can’t wait, really.”
Feyre chuckled and rolled her eyes. “Liar. You’ll miss us the second you leave.”
Cassian responded with a tight, subtle shake of his head and punctuated it with a wink. His impish denial earned another laugh from Feyre, and his heart felt lighter in the way it usually did when he made his loved ones feel at ease.
A beat of silence passed, and then, “You really love her.”
“Yeah?” Cassian asked, barely suppressing a laugh. “What gave it away?”
A scone flew across the table and hit him square in the chest. He caught it just before it landed on the table and ate half in a single bite, staring at Feyre as if he hadn’t deserved her brutality.
“Don’t be cute, Cassian,” Feyre chided. “I don’t know… I stayed conflicted about you two a couple of years ago. I’ve never seen people who brought each other alive like you and Nesta did, but it always seemed to come at a price.”
Cassian nodded, overly invested in assessing the angle of his next bite. What was he supposed to say to that, anyway?
“Part of me wanted to be relieved when you split up, but you were both miserable,” she continued, another punch to the stomach. “After watching the two of you claw your ways back to yourselves over the last couple of years, it was hard to settle into the idea that things would all snap into place now.”
His fingers drummed a mindless rhythm on the table, the quiet thudding sound keeping his pulse in check. “Well, for what it’s worth, nothing has snapped into place.”
Feyre waited until his eyes met hers again to speak, her brows furrowed. “But I thought—”
“Everything is okay,” Cassian amended, maybe too quickly. It was the truth, but something about being under the microscope made him jumpy and a little defensive. “I just meant that it didn’t happen that way. Nesta and I…” he trailed off, trying to find his words in the ether and settling for the lame ones he found first. “We didn’t have a clean break a couple of years back.”
“So, you two have tried getting back together before?”
A huff of wry amusement left him before he could stop it. “I wouldn’t say that.”
At Feyre’s incredulous stare, he elaborated as much as he dared without sharing all the skeletons in his and Nesta’s closet. He hit the high points of their chronic push and pull. Their weakness and loose details of their misdeeds towards other partners in the name of whatever they hoped to resuscitate between them, no matter how little time they could have had.
“Gods,” Feyre muttered, draining the rest of her tea and setting the cup down heavily. “I had no idea.”
“No one did, except Nesta and me. Azriel suspected at times because he knew how much Nesta always got under my skin, but I was a vault on any of the details.”
“I guess it’s no one’s business, really.”
Cassian raised his brows in silent agreement and leaned back in his chair, stretched his arms one at a time across his chest to relieve some of the tension between his shoulder blades. That familiar pressure was building again, the one that seeped into Cassian’s bones and compelled him to redirect the conversation to less turbulent territory. If not for himself, to bring a smile and an ease back to his sister-in-law, who really had no reason to carry the burden of his past.
“Maybe keep your day job, Fey,” he teased, hoping his impulse didn’t interfere with his mark. “I don’t think your powers of deduction are going to pay the bills.”
She laughed, long and loud, and pride filled his chest to bursting. Feyre was still his ally, it would seem, and the future felt a fraction less daunting with her in their corner.
His tone shifted, suddenly thick with emotion that was a surprise to him as much as Feyre. “I’ve loved Nesta since the night we spent in that cabin. Years ago, now,” he rasped. Feyre’s eyes softened, and she reached across the table for his hand. He let her take it. “Nothing’s been the same since.”
The confession gutted him and eased a tension he’d been carrying for far too long in equal measure. Cassian wondered how he’d managed to keep it all contained to that point, but the realization hit him that he hadn’t. Not really.
Anyone who knew him well knew something chaotic and unyielding had always brewed beneath the surface of his self-control— that most of his conscious effort went toward burning off the constant unsteadiness in his veins. All to avoid a host of bad decisions along the path of shameless self-destruction. The way he carried the weight of his family members’ happiness on his shoulders, the energy he brought to his job and making himself indispensable. Making decisions for others, especially ones that protected them, had never been a challenge for Cassian, as he loved nothing more than to take care of anyone who needed it. The challenge had always been in making decisions that served him when it all came down to it, and he’d never been able to do that without the threat of impact to someone else. Not even that had been enough to keep him away from Nesta over the years, no matter the fallout.
Amren had been right when she’d finally laid it all out, but he would take that small fact to the damned grave. Cruel and unusual torture wouldn’t be enough to risk her smugness for the following millennium.
Feyre ended the prolonged silence, shattering the fragile bits of his impromptu soul search. It was probably for the best, he decided.
“It makes sense, you know,” she said, her voice hushed. “No one loves like you do, Cassian.” A lump formed in his throat, and he offered her a nod in thanks. He didn’t trust the emotions that would come spilling out if he deigned to open his mouth. “And I don’t think anyone feels quite like Nesta, either.”
All good things, he thought, if the individuals in question were healthy and settled. A disaster, if they weren’t. The path his thoughts had taken only moments before indicated that he was a long way from perfect, but Cassian realized with such a small revelation that he and Nesta weren’t damned to everything they’d been through before. Not when they’d both done the work on themselves, albeit incomplete. The game changer was in the choice, and the commitment to that growth and each other.
A weight heavier than he’d thought himself capable of carrying for so many years eased from his shoulders. Not everything, of course, but sometimes, all it took was a moment that offered a little bit of hope.
—
To Feyre’s credit, Nesta had been entirely receptive to Cassian’s perceived dilemma. He’d decided to rip off the proverbial bandaid that very evening, and if he was thankful for anything, it was the fact that he’d opted to untangle his thoughts with his sister-in-law before he’d made the potential mistake of word-vomiting all over Nesta.
He had carefully laid out his pros and cons of taking the promotion— making sure to include the items pertaining to life overall, as well as the implications for their future. Nesta was patient and had pointed out several additional considerations he’d yet to think of, and as it turned out, the two of them made a pretty solid team when they got out of their own way enough to work together through life’s hurdles.
For all her assistance in building both cases, Nesta’s stance on the matter had been straight forward and rather simple if Cassian allowed himself to acknowledge it.
“The thing is,” she’d said, “you need to do what makes the most sense for you right now. Not the Cassian 6 months from now, the Cassian a year from now, or Cassian from yesterday.”
It had been a particularly sobering realization, since Cassian’s usual method involved trying to control for every possible angle, but Nesta had gotten them straight to the heart of the matter. A former version of himself itched to take her position personally, to assume that her bluntness was some kind of directly proportional measure of how little she cared to have him closer. Still a work in progress, but Cassian was pleased that silencing that maladaptive voice in his head got easier every time he did it, and life was offering him plenty of practice.
His commitment to self-advocacy had paid off in his meeting with Helion, and he’d come away with several accommodations that he wasn’t sure they would have agreed to make. Now, days later, he dragged his heavy, sleep-deprived body up the stairs to his apartment— the only way he’d made peace with skipping his workout that day— after another long day at the office. Somehow, he was juggling his usual duties while trying to learn the new ones. His replacement couldn’t start soon enough.
The door shut heavily in his already-dark entryway, his keys landing on the small table near the door by sheer muscle memory. Cassian leaned against the shut door and eased his eyes closed, but his phone vibrated rudely almost immediately. With a groan, he shoved his hand into his pocket and hauled his phone into view. The shift in his mood at seeing Nesta’s name nearly gave him whiplash.
“Hey, Sweetheart.”
He flipped the light switch, muttering a soft curse at the sudden brightness. The assault on his vision was worth it to hear the low, melodic chuckle that came shortly after.
“Hey,” she said, her smile still evident. “Long day?”
Another groan. A rough, calloused hand over the stubble on his cheek. “Yep. Anymore of this, and my brain is going to melt.”
“That feels dramatic.”
Cassian huffed a laugh, tucking his phone against his shoulder and working the buttons on his shirt. “Doesn’t make it less true. Why are you awake?”
The time difference made their nighttime phone calls a luxury. Cassian worried all the time that Nesta didn’t rest enough, but the balance was a delicate one with voicing that concern.
“Missed you,” she said simply, as if it didn’t still rock Cassian to hear Nesta admit such intimacy. “I got in late tonight anyway because I had dinner with Claire. And I made the mistake of picking up my book once I got home.”
“You should set a timer.”
Nesta scoffed. “That’s not how it works.”
He understood the way Nesta lost herself in whatever she read, had witnessed it countless times. Hours passed sometimes before Nesta’s head would lift, her eyes bleary, and she would start the task of re-orienting to the present.
“Yeah, yeah,” he dismissed, smiling at how he knew she would bristle. “How was dinner?”
She took a long, deep breath. “It was good. We were overdue for a catch-up.”
Cassian paused to throw his shirt into the laundry basket and traded his pants for some athletic shorts. With little grace, he threw himself onto his bed, his face buried in his pillow.
“How’s she doing?” he asked, propping on an elbow.
“Good.” Her response was almost too swift, but it felt haunted all the same. “Really good.”
“That’s good.” Cassian cringed. Usually, if the word “good” entered a conversation any number of times in rapid succession, things were quite the opposite. His response felt awkward and uninspired, but he couldn’t put a finger on why. His intuition with Nesta was solid usually, but distance complicated even the things that came most naturally. A lesson he continued to learn.
“She mentioned a promotion.” Nesta sounded detached from the information she shared, and Cassian offered her the time to work through it without comment. “She deserves it. She’s wanted it for a long time and has been passed over several times now. I’m happy for her.”
Cassian considered his words, his mouth opening and slamming shut a couple of times before he landed on, “Why don’t you sound happy?”
“I am,” she insisted, her voice adamant. “I really am… I just…” Cassian let her words linger, afraid that if he made any sudden moves that Nesta may refrain from elaborating. “Some days it feels like I’ve been stuck in place for months while the rest of the world kept moving all around me.”
A grimace pulled at the edges of his mouth. Nesta had done so much work to heal over the months, and while Cassian knew she was moving mountains in their own right, he understood where she was coming from. He and Claire— two people close to Nesta whose lives hadn’t been immeasurably disrupted by recent events — were moving forward in their goals, and Nesta still consistently mentioned how she felt like she would be trying to catch up from her time off in perpetuity.
“I’m sorry, Nes,” he murmured, his voice rough.
“Nothing to be sorry for.” A forced casualness floated along her words, and he hated them for the mask they were. A deep breath in, a deep breath out, and then, “Nothing is set in stone as of now, but it would mean a relocation for Claire. And honestly, I’m not ready to face that yet… the possibility of being here alone all over again.”
Cassian nearly choked on a curse. The thought of Nesta feeling like it was her alone against the world made his chest ache with the need to pull her against him. To press a kiss to her temple and remind her who she was— that, despite being perfectly capable on her own to handle anything life threw her way, she was never fighting alone as long as Cassian was alive.
“I wish there was something I could do.”
Nesta allowed herself a soft laugh, and Cassian’s breath came a little easier, albeit not much. “I know you would if you could.”
“In a heartbeat,” he assured her. “Look, I know the timing isn’t great, but I don’t know— maybe we can talk about our timeline again. Maybe move it up.”
“Cass, absolutely not.” Her tone left no room for discussion, and Cassian felt his eyebrow quirk up as if he’d been challenged. Before he could argue in spite of her silent warning, Nesta’s voice softened. “Not that I don’t want you here. I appreciate that you would, but I won’t be that person that you feel the need to swoop in and save. I’ll be okay.”
His eyes eased shut. How was he supposed to argue with that?
“I know you will.”
An almost-comfortable silent fell over them for a few minutes until Cassian realized that part of their conversation was effectively over. Searching for lighter territory, he cleared his throat.
“Three more sleeps until I see you.”
Her laugh was the reward he’d wanted. Anything to know he’d put a smile on her face. “Most people countdown in days.”
“Mm,” he replied, seemingly unimpressed, but his smile came through anyway. “I’m not most people.”
“Isn’t that the truth?”
“I’m not sure if I should take offense to that.”
Nesta was quiet, and Cassian pictured the way her teeth sank into her lower lip when she fought a smile. Then, because he felt indulgent, he thought of the way he would trace her mouth with his thumb, how her eyes went round when he tipped her chin up.
“No,” she almost whispered. “It’s a good thing.”
Rolling over to his back, he ran a hand through his wild hair and groaned at his mental to-do list.
“Shit. I still need to pack.”
“I have some of your stuff here,” she reminded him. “A toothbrush, shampoo, body wash. All you need is clothes and shoes.”
“That helps. Still have to do my laundry first.”
Nesta hummed her understanding. “Well, if our schedules line up, I’ll keep you busy while you wait for the machine to finish.”
The lazy drawl of his words was courtesy of the many images her promise inspired. “I like the way your brain works, Sweetheart.”
——————————————————————————
If you’d like to be tagged in any of my fics, please send me an ask, a message, leave a comment, or mention being tagged in your reblog! I’ll be happy to add you!
[And, if I’ve left you off my list unintentionally, please don’t hesitate to remind me! I promise I won't be offended!]
a/n: How has it been this long since I've updated? 😅 I've missed these two a ton lately, and I'm excited to finally share their next chapter! I'm also excited because I've been looking forward to the NEXT chapter for quite some time, and the inspiration for that one has been extra high lately 👀👀
If you want to re-read to get a refresher or need to catch up, I put the link below!
Cassian welcomes us back for this update! Hope y'all enjoy!
>> Somewhere masterlist >>fanfic masterlist
——————————————————————————
Hanging out with Feyre was long overdue, and despite the exhaustion settling into Cassian’s bones, he was looking forward to it. She always made tea the way he liked it— something they had in common— and after such a long day, he could use a cup to help keep his eyes open until a proper bedtime.
The door was unlocked when he approached the house, and Cassian chuckled at how his brother would no doubt react to that small fact. Nevermind that Feyre did it with Cassian in mind. His overprotective little brother was likely to have a heart attack if he knew she was so flippant with her safety while he was out of town on business. The secret was safe with Cassian, if only to spare Feyre the mild lecture for the millionth time.
“Hey Fey,” he called, wiping his shoes on the small rug.
His keys made a loud clang in the metal bowl on the entryway table, and Cassian scowled at the jarring sound as if he hadn’t been ultimately responsible. His fatigue was making him grouchy.
“Cass!” Feyre came around the corner beaming and wrapped him in a tight hug. She had always been like a baby sister to him, even in the earliest days of her relationship with Rhysand. Something had made sense between them, and Cassian loved her fiercely.
Squeezing her back with equal enthusiasm, Cassian pressed a kiss to her hair and smiled. “Lonely already?” he teased. “Rhysand only left yesterday.”
Feyre scoffed and pulled away, leading him to the small table off the side of the kitchen. Tea was already steaming in a cast iron kettle in the middle and small pastries were stacked nearby. Cassian’s mouth watered at the sight.
“I’ve hardly had time to be lonely,” she mused, and affection dripped from every word. “You know he’s called with every spare moment.”
“I figured as much. This looks great, by the way.”
“Thanks.” Feyre smiled and gestured toward one of the chairs. Cassian complied— mostly because he knew better than to challenge an Archeron in their own home— and leaned forward on his elbows to bend his neck in a stretch.
A cup of tea appeared in his field of vision, and he winked at Feyre in gratitude. She was poised across from him, her attention sliding to the garden through the window, and the sun illuminating her elegant profile. They sipped in silence for a couple of moments, content in each other’s comfortable, steady company.
Cassian was the first to break the silence, a role he served more often than not. “Have you made much progress on the pieces for your next exhibit with Rhysand being out of town?”
“Some. I haven’t hit much of a stride yet, and that’s daunting considering it’s only a couple of months away.”
Feyre wrapped her hands around her mug and rounded her shoulders as if the admission had cost her something. Whatever the case, Cassian didn’t care to see her stressed.
“You’ll get it,” he assured her. “You always do.” A small smile stretched across her face, and his chest felt a little lighter than before. The joke rolled off his tongue before he could think better of it. “Worst case, I’ll model for you.”
That earned an actual laugh. “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, her eyes sparkling, “should I get desperate.”
“We’ll pray it doesn’t come to that.”
They laughed together before turning their focus back to their tea. Cassian took the opportunity to snack on a small scone, which he was pretty sure was meant for children by the looks of it. He said as much, and Feyre rolled her eyes. It was an expression so like Nesta that longing threatened to choke him.
“What about you?” Feyre asked, interrupting his thoughts. “You said you had something to run by me?”
Damn, he’d forgotten he planted that seed when they made plans earlier in the day. The promotion Helion offered was eating him alive, and he needed a sounding board. While that was still true, he hadn’t been tired down to his bones when he’d originally brought it up.
“Yeah, sort of.” He leaned back in his chair and twisted to rest his elbow over the back. “It’s more that I have some things to work through out loud, and I think you could help with pros and cons.”
Feyre’s brows came together over the rim on her mug. With a nod, she placed her tea atop the table and gave him her full, undivided attention. His chest felt tighter than he’d anticipated, but he’d learned to push through uncertainty many moons ago.
“I got offered a promotion,” he began, each word leaving him through an exhale.
“Why do you say that as if it’s tragic?”
A smirk tugged at the edge of Cassian’s mouth. “It’s not tragic, and if I’m honest, I deserve it.”
“So humble.”
He winked in acknowledgement of Feyre’s ribbing. She wasn’t nearly as cutthroat as Nesta in her banter, but she did well enough if Cassian’s soft spot for her was any indication.
“Helion gave me some time to decide, but I need to get back to him soon. There’s not a position to compare it to, and with Nesta and me trying to work things out, I worry about how much of my time it’ll take up.”
Feyre was quiet for a beat too long, enough for Cassian’s lower back to bead with sweat. Stoicism wasn’t something he typically associated with Feyre, but he didn’t regret his limited experience with it.
“Have you told Nesta about it?”
He took a breath. “Yeah. She was supportive, but things are still new. I don’t know if she would try and sway me either way.”
“True,” Feyre replied, taking another long sip of her tea. “Although, if we’re being fair, Nesta will understand putting yourself first.”
Cassian must have failed at keeping his expression placid with how Feyre’s eyes tracked every angle of his face. “Fey, don’t.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I came here because I thought I wouldn’t have to defend Nesta to you, of all people.”
Silence fell. Hurt flashed over Feyre’s face, her blue eyes round, and Cassian hated himself for hurting her. Defending Nesta wasn’t something he could apologize for, though.
“That’s not what I meant.” Her voice was brittle, soft. “Nesta is practical, and she would understand the value of advancing your career in these early stages of your relationship. She won’t expect you to uproot your routine— your life— simply because you decided to work things out together.”
His eyes eased shut, and he took a measured breath. “I’m sorry.”
Feyre nodded, and the tension seemed to evaporate with the simple gesture. “Not everyone has been receptive, and I can respect you having Nesta’s back. She has too few in her corner as it is.”
Emotion gathered in his throat, and he swallowed against it. “Yeah,” he rasped. “Can I tell you something, just between the two of us for now?”
“Sure. As long as you’re not asking me to lie to Rhys.”
“Nah, not exactly.” Feyre gave him a pointed look, and he raised his hands in placation. “I only ask that you not tell him before I get a chance, but if he suspects anything, I don’t expect you to lie.”
Feyre nodded, but her brow remained furrowed.
“The timing of all this isn’t great, and I don’t know how to talk to Nesta about it,” he admitted. His shoulders relaxed for the first time in minutes. He had greatly underestimated the relief that would come with such a simple admission. “I know where I stand, but I’m trying to let Nesta settle in to all this. With us.”
He paused to assess Feyre’s expression, but she wasn’t giving much away for free. To her credit, Cassian hadn’t exactly spelled things out. He fixed his attention to his palm, using the thumb of his other hand to trace circles around his calluses.
“We talked about what happens if we see this working out long-term. We can’t live thousands of miles apart forever.”
“Well, yeah. Makes sense.”
Cassian cleared his throat. “Nesta isn’t in a place to come back to Velaris, at least not right now. Before Helion talked to me about this job, I’d already told Nesta I would move. To give us a fair shot.”
Feyre’s eyes flared in surprise, but she blinked it away. “And you think it’s too soon.”
“Isn’t it?”
Her laugh was affectionate. “Cass, you and Nesta are already years in the making.”
“Sure, but…” he trailed off, gathering his words. “We agreed to give it time, but I don’t know what she’s comfortable with before deciding to take the next step. What if I turn down the job, and I end up here for at least another year? Or, what if I take it, and I have to quit in three months? I hate the idea of putting anyone in a bind, but Nesta would come first.”
Feyre observed him, her shoulders rounding toward him as if compelled to pull him into a hug. “Cass,” she murmured, “you have to talk to her.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” he joked, leaning back in his chair. He felt raw after such a display of vulnerability, and he craved the levity he was known to bring to any situation. “I don’t want the pressure to freak her out.”
“It’s a risk you take. But she’s the only person who is in this with you and whose opinion really matters. If you’re both committed to this, a simple conversation shouldn’t derail everything. If it does, that’s another issue. I’m not saying it’ll be fun, but it’s necessary.”
Cassian groaned, dragging his hands over his stubbled cheeks. “I know that. You’re supposed to lie to me.”
Feyre’s head dropped back as she laughed, and it was so contagious that it managed to drag a chuckle from beneath the weight of Cassian’s ribs.
“You know, as quick as you are to defend Nesta, maybe it’s worth giving her a little more credit yourself,” Feyre said, her tone soft.
The truth of it hit him full force. He spent so much time preparing for war in Nesta’s honor that he failed to see how his own insecurities sold her short. It was hardly fair to assume the worst in her when he expected the opposite from anyone else. It hadn’t been intentional, but the way his hang-ups exerted influence over his assumptions exposed some lingering scar tissue stretched across his ego.
Cassian nodded and focused on his tea. Feyre had given him more than his fair share to think about, including his unresolved issues and how to shield Nesta from the aftermath.
“So, you’re leaving us, then?” The playfulness in her question was the life preserver he’d needed, and he shamelessly accepted the shift in tone.
“As soon as possible,” he said, deadpan. “Can’t wait, really.”
Feyre chuckled and rolled her eyes. “Liar. You’ll miss us the second you leave.”
Cassian responded with a tight, subtle shake of his head and punctuated it with a wink. His impish denial earned another laugh from Feyre, and his heart felt lighter in the way it usually did when he made his loved ones feel at ease.
A beat of silence passed, and then, “You really love her.”
“Yeah?” Cassian asked, barely suppressing a laugh. “What gave it away?”
A scone flew across the table and hit him square in the chest. He caught it just before it landed on the table and ate half in a single bite, staring at Feyre as if he hadn’t deserved her brutality.
“Don’t be cute, Cassian,” Feyre chided. “I don’t know… I stayed conflicted about you two a couple of years ago. I’ve never seen people who brought each other alive like you and Nesta did, but it always seemed to come at a price.”
Cassian nodded, overly invested in assessing the angle of his next bite. What was he supposed to say to that, anyway?
“Part of me wanted to be relieved when you split up, but you were both miserable,” she continued, another punch to the stomach. “After watching the two of you claw your ways back to yourselves over the last couple of years, it was hard to settle into the idea that things would all snap into place now.”
His fingers drummed a mindless rhythm on the table, the quiet thudding sound keeping his pulse in check. “Well, for what it’s worth, nothing has snapped into place.”
Feyre waited until his eyes met hers again to speak, her brows furrowed. “But I thought—”
“Everything is okay,” Cassian amended, maybe too quickly. It was the truth, but something about being under the microscope made him jumpy and a little defensive. “I just meant that it didn’t happen that way. Nesta and I…” he trailed off, trying to find his words in the ether and settling for the lame ones he found first. “We didn’t have a clean break a couple of years back.”
“So, you two have tried getting back together before?”
A huff of wry amusement left him before he could stop it. “I wouldn’t say that.”
At Feyre’s incredulous stare, he elaborated as much as he dared without sharing all the skeletons in his and Nesta’s closet. He hit the high points of their chronic push and pull. Their weakness and loose details of their misdeeds towards other partners in the name of whatever they hoped to resuscitate between them, no matter how little time they could have had.
“Gods,” Feyre muttered, draining the rest of her tea and setting the cup down heavily. “I had no idea.”
“No one did, except Nesta and me. Azriel suspected at times because he knew how much Nesta always got under my skin, but I was a vault on any of the details.”
“I guess it’s no one’s business, really.”
Cassian raised his brows in silent agreement and leaned back in his chair, stretched his arms one at a time across his chest to relieve some of the tension between his shoulder blades. That familiar pressure was building again, the one that seeped into Cassian’s bones and compelled him to redirect the conversation to less turbulent territory. If not for himself, to bring a smile and an ease back to his sister-in-law, who really had no reason to carry the burden of his past.
“Maybe keep your day job, Fey,” he teased, hoping his impulse didn’t interfere with his mark. “I don’t think your powers of deduction are going to pay the bills.”
She laughed, long and loud, and pride filled his chest to bursting. Feyre was still his ally, it would seem, and the future felt a fraction less daunting with her in their corner.
His tone shifted, suddenly thick with emotion that was a surprise to him as much as Feyre. “I’ve loved Nesta since the night we spent in that cabin. Years ago, now,” he rasped. Feyre’s eyes softened, and she reached across the table for his hand. He let her take it. “Nothing’s been the same since.”
The confession gutted him and eased a tension he’d been carrying for far too long in equal measure. Cassian wondered how he’d managed to keep it all contained to that point, but the realization hit him that he hadn’t. Not really.
Anyone who knew him well knew something chaotic and unyielding had always brewed beneath the surface of his self-control— that most of his conscious effort went toward burning off the constant unsteadiness in his veins. All to avoid a host of bad decisions along the path of shameless self-destruction. The way he carried the weight of his family members’ happiness on his shoulders, the energy he brought to his job and making himself indispensable. Making decisions for others, especially ones that protected them, had never been a challenge for Cassian, as he loved nothing more than to take care of anyone who needed it. The challenge had always been in making decisions that served him when it all came down to it, and he’d never been able to do that without the threat of impact to someone else. Not even that had been enough to keep him away from Nesta over the years, no matter the fallout.
Amren had been right when she’d finally laid it all out, but he would take that small fact to the damned grave. Cruel and unusual torture wouldn’t be enough to risk her smugness for the following millennium.
Feyre ended the prolonged silence, shattering the fragile bits of his impromptu soul search. It was probably for the best, he decided.
“It makes sense, you know,” she said, her voice hushed. “No one loves like you do, Cassian.” A lump formed in his throat, and he offered her a nod in thanks. He didn’t trust the emotions that would come spilling out if he deigned to open his mouth. “And I don’t think anyone feels quite like Nesta, either.”
All good things, he thought, if the individuals in question were healthy and settled. A disaster, if they weren’t. The path his thoughts had taken only moments before indicated that he was a long way from perfect, but Cassian realized with such a small revelation that he and Nesta weren’t damned to everything they’d been through before. Not when they’d both done the work on themselves, albeit incomplete. The game changer was in the choice, and the commitment to that growth and each other.
A weight heavier than he’d thought himself capable of carrying for so many years eased from his shoulders. Not everything, of course, but sometimes, all it took was a moment that offered a little bit of hope.
—
To Feyre’s credit, Nesta had been entirely receptive to Cassian’s perceived dilemma. He’d decided to rip off the proverbial bandaid that very evening, and if he was thankful for anything, it was the fact that he’d opted to untangle his thoughts with his sister-in-law before he’d made the potential mistake of word-vomiting all over Nesta.
He had carefully laid out his pros and cons of taking the promotion— making sure to include the items pertaining to life overall, as well as the implications for their future. Nesta was patient and had pointed out several additional considerations he’d yet to think of, and as it turned out, the two of them made a pretty solid team when they got out of their own way enough to work together through life’s hurdles.
For all her assistance in building both cases, Nesta’s stance on the matter had been straight forward and rather simple if Cassian allowed himself to acknowledge it.
“The thing is,” she’d said, “you need to do what makes the most sense for you right now. Not the Cassian 6 months from now, the Cassian a year from now, or Cassian from yesterday.”
It had been a particularly sobering realization, since Cassian’s usual method involved trying to control for every possible angle, but Nesta had gotten them straight to the heart of the matter. A former version of himself itched to take her position personally, to assume that her bluntness was some kind of directly proportional measure of how little she cared to have him closer. Still a work in progress, but Cassian was pleased that silencing that maladaptive voice in his head got easier every time he did it, and life was offering him plenty of practice.
His commitment to self-advocacy had paid off in his meeting with Helion, and he’d come away with several accommodations that he wasn’t sure they would have agreed to make. Now, days later, he dragged his heavy, sleep-deprived body up the stairs to his apartment— the only way he’d made peace with skipping his workout that day— after another long day at the office. Somehow, he was juggling his usual duties while trying to learn the new ones. His replacement couldn’t start soon enough.
The door shut heavily in his already-dark entryway, his keys landing on the small table near the door by sheer muscle memory. Cassian leaned against the shut door and eased his eyes closed, but his phone vibrated rudely almost immediately. With a groan, he shoved his hand into his pocket and hauled his phone into view. The shift in his mood at seeing Nesta’s name nearly gave him whiplash.
“Hey, Sweetheart.”
He flipped the light switch, muttering a soft curse at the sudden brightness. The assault on his vision was worth it to hear the low, melodic chuckle that came shortly after.
“Hey,” she said, her smile still evident. “Long day?”
Another groan. A rough, calloused hand over the stubble on his cheek. “Yep. Anymore of this, and my brain is going to melt.”
“That feels dramatic.”
Cassian huffed a laugh, tucking his phone against his shoulder and working the buttons on his shirt. “Doesn’t make it less true. Why are you awake?”
The time difference made their nighttime phone calls a luxury. Cassian worried all the time that Nesta didn’t rest enough, but the balance was a delicate one with voicing that concern.
“Missed you,” she said simply, as if it didn’t still rock Cassian to hear Nesta admit such intimacy. “I got in late tonight anyway because I had dinner with Claire. And I made the mistake of picking up my book once I got home.”
“You should set a timer.”
Nesta scoffed. “That’s not how it works.”
He understood the way Nesta lost herself in whatever she read, had witnessed it countless times. Hours passed sometimes before Nesta’s head would lift, her eyes bleary, and she would start the task of re-orienting to the present.
“Yeah, yeah,” he dismissed, smiling at how he knew she would bristle. “How was dinner?”
She took a long, deep breath. “It was good. We were overdue for a catch-up.”
Cassian paused to throw his shirt into the laundry basket and traded his pants for some athletic shorts. With little grace, he threw himself onto his bed, his face buried in his pillow.
“How’s she doing?” he asked, propping on an elbow.
“Good.” Her response was almost too swift, but it felt haunted all the same. “Really good.”
“That’s good.” Cassian cringed. Usually, if the word “good” entered a conversation any number of times in rapid succession, things were quite the opposite. His response felt awkward and uninspired, but he couldn’t put a finger on why. His intuition with Nesta was solid usually, but distance complicated even the things that came most naturally. A lesson he continued to learn.
“She mentioned a promotion.” Nesta sounded detached from the information she shared, and Cassian offered her the time to work through it without comment. “She deserves it. She’s wanted it for a long time and has been passed over several times now. I’m happy for her.”
Cassian considered his words, his mouth opening and slamming shut a couple of times before he landed on, “Why don’t you sound happy?”
“I am,” she insisted, her voice adamant. “I really am… I just…” Cassian let her words linger, afraid that if he made any sudden moves that Nesta may refrain from elaborating. “Some days it feels like I’ve been stuck in place for months while the rest of the world kept moving all around me.”
A grimace pulled at the edges of his mouth. Nesta had done so much work to heal over the months, and while Cassian knew she was moving mountains in their own right, he understood where she was coming from. He and Claire— two people close to Nesta whose lives hadn’t been immeasurably disrupted by recent events — were moving forward in their goals, and Nesta still consistently mentioned how she felt like she would be trying to catch up from her time off in perpetuity.
“I’m sorry, Nes,” he murmured, his voice rough.
“Nothing to be sorry for.” A forced casualness floated along her words, and he hated them for the mask they were. A deep breath in, a deep breath out, and then, “Nothing is set in stone as of now, but it would mean a relocation for Claire. And honestly, I’m not ready to face that yet… the possibility of being here alone all over again.”
Cassian nearly choked on a curse. The thought of Nesta feeling like it was her alone against the world made his chest ache with the need to pull her against him. To press a kiss to her temple and remind her who she was— that, despite being perfectly capable on her own to handle anything life threw her way, she was never fighting alone as long as Cassian was alive.
“I wish there was something I could do.”
Nesta allowed herself a soft laugh, and Cassian’s breath came a little easier, albeit not much. “I know you would if you could.”
“In a heartbeat,” he assured her. “Look, I know the timing isn’t great, but I don’t know— maybe we can talk about our timeline again. Maybe move it up.”
“Cass, absolutely not.” Her tone left no room for discussion, and Cassian felt his eyebrow quirk up as if he’d been challenged. Before he could argue in spite of her silent warning, Nesta’s voice softened. “Not that I don’t want you here. I appreciate that you would, but I won’t be that person that you feel the need to swoop in and save. I’ll be okay.”
His eyes eased shut. How was he supposed to argue with that?
“I know you will.”
An almost-comfortable silence fell over them for a few minutes until Cassian realized that part of their conversation was effectively over. Searching for lighter territory, he cleared his throat.
“Three more sleeps until I see you.”
Her laugh was the reward he’d wanted. Anything to know he’d put a smile on her face. “Most people countdown in days.”
“Mm,” he replied, seemingly unimpressed, but his smile came through anyway. “I’m not most people.”
“Isn’t that the truth?”
“I’m not sure if I should take offense to that.”
Nesta was quiet, and Cassian pictured the way her teeth sank into her lower lip when she fought a smile. Then, because he felt indulgent, he thought of the way he would trace her mouth with his thumb, how her eyes went round when he tipped her chin up.
“No,” she almost whispered. “It’s a good thing.”
Rolling over to his back, he ran a hand through his wild hair and groaned at his mental to-do list.
“Shit. I still need to pack.”
“I have some of your stuff here,” she reminded him. “A toothbrush, shampoo, body wash. All you need is clothes and shoes.”
“That helps. Still have to do my laundry first.”
Nesta hummed her understanding. “Well, if our schedules line up, I’ll keep you busy while you wait for the machine to finish.”
The lazy drawl of his words was courtesy of the many images her promise inspired. “I like the way your brain works, Sweetheart.”
——————————————————————————
If you’d like to be tagged in any of my fics, please send me an ask, a message, leave a comment, or mention being tagged in your reblog! I’ll be happy to add you!
[And, if I’ve left you off my list unintentionally, please don’t hesitate to remind me! I promise I won't be offended!]
