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duskandstarlight · 8 months

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Read this friends, because it’s Nessian at their best

Always Been You

Nesta Archeron x Cassian, ~2.5k words

a/n: I saw a reel of a baby and this was born, it's trash but I love them, so enjoy!

"Sweetheart, do you know where my sweater is?! The black one?"

Cassian was rummaging through his wardrobe in desperate need of something heavy to wear in the frigid winter Velaris was hitting them with.

Nesta's robotic voice came from the speaker of his phone, hidden somewhere between his bed sheets. "Uh, might be here, actually."

Here, as in her place. On the other side of the city. More than half an hour from his flat.

He groaned, bending his head forward and halting his hunt.

"Care to tell me why yet another piece of clothing of mine is at yours?"

Nesta chuckled, rejoicing in his despair. He glared at the phone, thankful that his best friend couldn't see him and level him with an equally nasty look.

Her words came muffled this time, more distant, and Cassian knew he'd put him on speaker.

"Not my fault this time. You used it to wrap Little Miss Sunshine up," he couldn't help the smile at the nickname he used to call her daughter. "You claimed she was gonna be too cold on the oh so long way from your car to the door."

"Sounds like something I would do," he muttered to himself, a dopey grin on his lips still. He loved that little nug of happiness that was Nesta's daughter. He loved her as if she were his own.

He shook his head, focusing on the date ahead, and put on another sweater, of a light brown colour he despised, and shook out his duvet, fishing for the phone.

Turning off the speaker, he put it to his ear, "You think I could pass by after the pub?"

Nesta only hummed, seeming distracted.

A few beat of silence, "What is the girl's name again?"

Cassian clenched his jaw, pondering whether he should lie or not, and knowing full well that if he gave Nesta too much information she would stalk the poor lady till sunrise.

"Her name is Anne," he lied.

"Liar," she scoffed. Then she grunted, "Whatever, keep your secrets. But don't come crying to me when you'll find out she has a secret dark past as a pig slaughterer."

Cassian laughed, "You're so dramatic."

"And you love it." She couldn't even begin to understand just how true those words were. "Now leave me alone before you're late to the party."

Nesta didn't give him the time to say goodbye that she'd hung up.

***

Slamming the door and closing himself shut in his precious, silent car, Cassian finally got to open his texts app and check what Nesta had sent him mere minutes before.

The date hadn't gone terribly, but Lidia was not his type. And he wasn't hers.

That had been starkly clear after the first fifteen minutes they'd spent talking about a new friend of hers, a certain Ruhn that she'd been crushing on for a while now.

He was her type. He and him only.

She had apologised, and Cassian had laughed, confessing that he had been forced into this date by his brothers, who were so over seeing him brooding because he was single and they were married and with kids.

Their words, not his.

Because in reality, Cassian was happy.

He was happy waiting for his friend to notice he was there for her, when she decided she was gonna have him.

He was happy splitting his time between his own apartment and Nesta's, whenever Logan requested his presence. Which nowadays bordered on always.

Exactly why he wasn't surprised when, opening his thread with Nesta, he found a video of the little girl, now almost one year and a half old.

A weak smile blossomed on his face as he clicked on it.

Nesta was lying on her side, her right arm under Little Lo's head and the baby was looking up at the ceiling, probably staring at the bioluminescent stars he had glued there.

He didn't press play immediately, because the picture of his best friend's half face was too distracting.

Nesta wasn't even fully in the frame, but Cassian wasn't seeing anything else. Her lips were tugged on a corner, a half smile there as she cuddled with her daughter. Her nose glimmered with moisturizing cream, something he knew she put on every night before bed. Her eyes were hidden, out of the picture.

He could have killed, if it meant the promise of tracing his finger down the nape of her perfect nose, to her lips and chin. Of caressing her jaw, holding her face in his hands.

He would have killed to taste those lips, even once.

Taking a deep breath and pretending he wasn't unsettled by the mere thought of touching Nesta, he pressed play and his heart clenched in his chest.

"Da-da, dada, da-da-da-da," Logan was simply calling out for him, basically whispering in the quiet room, brushing her fingers on her lips. "Dadadadada, dada."

His eyes stung lightly and his pinched the tip of his nose, reigning in his emotions.

The little girl turned to the phone once she noticed her mom was recording her and the smile she gave him ended him. Lo yawned in the most cute and tiny way on video and Cassian's stomach tightened to the point of pain.

He loved her.

She smacked the phone from Nesta's hand, calling for her dada once again and everything went black for a few seconds.

The moment colours and pictures came back up, it was Nesta's face smiling at him, now sitting with a writhing Lo saying his name over and over again.

Nesta tilted her head to the side, avoiding being smacked in the face by the baby, "I need you to come here asap. This little beast won't go to bed unless she hears her favourite uncle's lullaby."

Uncle.

The video ended with an otherworldly screech from Logan and Cassian turned off the screen, throwing the phone on the seat, a weird kind of sorrow pulling at his heart.

Uncle.

Nesta had this bad habit of calling him uncle whenever Logan insisted on calling him dada, or dad, or any other way that pointed to the girl thinking he was her father.

And he couldn't be mad. Fuck, he couldn't do shit about it if not accepting the fact that that was the truth.

Logan wasn't his daughter and the only reason they had stopped trying to make her call him anything but dada was because of the meltdowns she had whenever they did.

She was definitely too little still to understand what they were saying, but she rejected the idea anyway. It was like trying to take her favourite toy away.

Putting the car in reverse, he drove out of the parking spot and on the road, hoping Lo would still be awake once he got to their house.

He tried to keep his thoughts at bay as much as he could, failing miserably.

Cassian wanted in on their life. Cassian wanted to be part of it, every morning he wanted to wake up next to them and love them the way they deserved all day long and at night he wanted to hold them tightly to him and fall asleep again. And do it all over again the next day.

For the rest of his life.

He didn't have a single dream or goal that topped this one.

And he was so tired to pretend anything else was more important to him.

***

He cupped the chubby rosy cheek with his palm, passing his thumb over her eyebrow over and over again, watching the way her tiny, tiny lips moved in her sleep, as if she was latching. Logan's little body twitched in his arms, and Cassian repositioned, hoping not to disturb her too much.

Her minuscule hand clutched his shirt and she rubbed her face in the niche of his elbow.

He lowered just enough to place a kiss on her forehead and the small sigh she released did something to him.

He was so focused on memorizing every little detail on her baby face—knowing perfectly well how fast she was growing—that he hadn't noticed Nesta standing just outside the nursery door.

"I'm happy she has you," she whispered.

Cassian didn't look up from Logan, too afraid of his own feelings, which were riding rampant in his mind tonight.

"I'm glad she..." Nesta paused, drew a deep breath and stepped inside. She sat next to him on the fluffy couch and pulled her legs up to her chest.

He hoped she didn't feel him tense when she leaned against him, her head on his shoulder as she put her hand on Logan's belly.

"I'm glad she can count on somebody else. That is not me."

Cassian paused his face massage, sliding his hand under Logan's head and moving so her neck wasn't straining. He fixed his gaze on the floor, not daring moving a muscle.

"Sometimes I think I'm fucking everything up by not actively looking for someone that would step up as her dad, but–"

Nesta moved again, pressing closer to him, moving her hand from Lo to his arm. He knew that if he looked at her, even if he just turned her way, he would kiss her.

When she spoke again, her voice was trembling slightly and Cassian's heart was threatening beating out of his chest.

"What I'm trying to say is, thank you. For being here for her."

He stayed silent, not knowing what to say. He just resumed tracing lines on Lo's cheekbones, something that never failed to soothe her before bed and that knocked her out almost immediately.

It was a long time before he found the courage to talk.

"Nesta, I–"

Or maybe not.

What if he fucked everything up?

What if he was reading her wrong, and all of this was just in his head?

"Yes, Cassian?" She whispered.

He took a shaking breath, closing his eyes, and said, "I don't wanna be her uncle."

The words were out now. And he couldn't seem to be able to stop them.

"And I don't want you to text me during a date that you can't get her to sleep because she needs me to sing to her. I don't wanna have to drive all the way down here every other day because you might need something from me. And it's frustrating when I'm at home and I wanna eat something, just to remember that I bought it for your place and not mine. And don't even get me started on my clothes. Half of my wardrobe is in this house, as far as I know."

Nesta retracted from him so fast that his head whipped her way. He missed her warmth on the spot.

She was looking at him like she'd hit her. Her brow was furrowed and her eyes were shiny, watering with unshed tears.

His throat closed, "Nes, what–"

"I'm sorry we're such a fucking problem to you," she hissed, doing a piss poor job at hiding the hurt.

Cassian's eyes widened with horror, "Problem? What are you talking about?"

She didn't give any sign she'd heard him, "If it's such a pain in your ass driving here just to make her happy, then don't. I annoy you with my texts, I'll stop texting, no big deal." She was heaving now, emotion and exhaustion from a long day taking over. "And you can get your food and your clothes and get the fuck out of here and never come back for all I care. But you could've told me sooner that we were such a bother to you, I'd have kept her from getting so attached."

Cassian was moving before he knew what he was doing.

One second he was on one side of the couch, looking baffled and confused for all the shit that she was spitting at him, the next he was on her, Logan's body close to his chest as he lunged for Nesta's lips.

He moved his hand to her hair, sliding his fingers to the back of her neck, pushing her towards him. He closed his eyes, savouring the plush touch of her mouth on his for the first time.

Taking in everything she was giving him.

Nesta didn't react immediately, but as soon as she realized what was happening she melted into the kiss, backing away slightly before going back for more.

Her hands went to his face, cradling his neck and bringing him impossibly closer to her, as much as she could without hurting her daughter, and Cassian soared.

They both lost track of time before they stopped, never going far. Nesta pushed her forehead against his, brushing her nose sweetly to his.

"Explain," she breathed out.

He chuckled, stunned, "I want her to call me dad, dada, daddy, whatever she prefers. I wanna be there for her, I'm happy to be there for her." He started, leaving a kiss on her lips.

Nesta turned her head sideways, keeping the contact with him, "Focus."

"I hate driving up here every day because I wish I didn't have to go back to my house. It's just another reminder that I'm a guest, someone that is temporarily here.

"I forget I bought food and brought it here because I eat basically all of my meals with you girls, and I want the entirety of my wardrobe to be in this home. I hate going back there. It's lonely. And I want to be here. All the time.

"I want this to be my permanent home. I want you to be my permanent home."

Nesta was keeping her eyes closed, but a tear was running down her cheek. He swiped it away with a thumb, and then passed his fingertip to her lips.

"Cassian," she said.

He kissed her again, a slow, full-of-love peck on her lips.

He inhaled, "I love you, Nesta, and there's literally no other place I'd rather be, than here with you and Logan."

She opened her eyes then and let him in, at last. She let him see the love there, the wanting and longing that had been eating at them both for years.

But they were done running.

"It's always been you," she said, running a soft hand down his cheek.

Cassian nodded, puzzling her palm, "It's always been you."

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@my-fan-side @superspiritfestival @simpingfornestaarcheron @the-regal-warrior @princess-rumi-blog1 @live-the-fangirl-life @sayosdreams @rowaelinismyotp @swankii-art-teacher @bookstantrash @lordof-bloodshed @nahthanks @sannelovesreading @courtofjurdan @imagine-me @moodymelanist @dread3r @sv0430 @mariamuses @leiawritesstories @thewayshedreamed @duskandstarlight @letstakethedawn @perseusannabeth

#nessian #nesta archeron #cassian #acotar #domestic fluff #nesta x cassian #nessianfic

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duskandstarlight · 10 months

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The Girl (Part Three)

Summary: Nesta and Cassian start meeting at the coffee shop, but on a Friday night at Rita's, Nesta is someone else. After all, old habits die hard.

Notes: Hi! I loveddddd writing this chapter and I hope you guys enjoy it too. I know you've all been keen for more Nesta and Cassian interaction and you absolutely get it in this one… The pain is still there, though, sorry not sorry (but also it's me, what do you really expect?) Let me know what you guys think! I really hope you enjoy it :)

Part Three: Cassian

Cassian doesn’t forget his phone charger next time.

He materialises in front of her early one afternoon, all broad shoulders and windswept hair, half of which brushes his shoulders, the other half tangled into a top knot. He waves a hand in front of her face in a way that’s only mildly irritating.

Nesta yanks off her headphones, stifling a frown as the noise of the coffee shop slams back into her. “What?”

It comes across with a little too much bite and Nesta wishes she could turn back time, force the hands of the clock back a few seconds and try again. But like always, Cassian just sends her that characteristic crooked smile.“What are you drinking?”

Nesta frowns down at her empty cup, the grains of tea leaf at the bottom. “Earl grey and oat.”

Cassian simply nods. Nesta tracks him as he head to the counter. Watches him pay with his phone.

When he comes back over, he simply pushes her tea and a mass of sugar packets across the table. She nods, headphones still on, and he doesn’t bother her. Merely settles down opposite, takes out his own laptop, his own headphones, and starts tapping away.

Together, they work in silence. And when the hours have passed and Nesta closes her laptop screen with a sigh that she wishes hadn’t been so audible, Cassian follows her lead.

This time it’s not raining. The sky has darkened to an indigo clotted with sooty clouds that Nesta thinks is kind of beautiful, kind of moody. It’s the sort of sky she’d write about. The sort of sky that, if she was alone, she’d snap a photo of so she can describe it in vivid detail in the next appropriate book scene.

But she’s with Cassian, so she doesn’t do any of that.

“Do you want me to walk you back?”

She does, desperately. Not for his company, but for the safety he brings.

“If you like.”

“I haven’t seen you here in a while.”

Nesta shrugs her laptop bag higher up onto her shoulder and then loops it over her head so it crosses over her chest. The scabs on her back from her midnight tryst have long since healed. “I don’t come here every day.”

Shoving his hands in his pockets, Cassian hunches over at the cold. Even so, he still seems larger than life when he glances sideways at her. “You write at home?”

Nesta shrugs noncommittally, not wanting to explain that she doesn’t truly write anymore, and Cassian clearly has enough sense not to pursue the conversation.

“I finished Epiphany last week.”

Because Nesta doesn’t know what to say, what to do when anyone confesses they’ve read one of her books - not least Cassian - she just dips her chin. Stares straight ahead at the lamplight pooling on the street.

“It’s my favourite.”

Now, Nesta does turn her head. Examines him, head cocked. Epiphany is notoriously known as her ‘second book’. The book that’s not as good as the first, not as sharp. “Why?”

Again, it comes across too blunt, but Cassian just lifts a shoulder as if he’s searching for the words.“I don’t know. Elodie’s tussle with identity resonated with me, I guess. I’ve spent so much of my life just existing without knowing who I am and I only realised it a few years ago.”

Nesta’s staring at him now, unabashed, unflinching. She can’t stop, even as Cassian keeps his gaze locked on his feet as they track their way across the pavement. “I can’t remember the exact quote. But Purdi says something like…” Cassian searches for a minute, a frown pinching at his brow, but he plunders on anyway, ‘Isn’t it weird that we’re born strangers to our own mind—“

“— People get to know us, understand us, before we even know who we are. Before we even think about it.”

Cassian looks up as she finishes the quote. And as their eyes lock, it strikes Nesta that here - this moment - is the most connected Nesta has felt to someone in a very long time, her late night rendezvous included.

“Right,” Cassian says, the knot in his throat bobbing. And Nesta knows that he’s giving away a piece of himself, something secret that he won’t get back again, a self-revelation that’s been undisclosed until now. “I don’t think it was until I got into my thirties that I realised I had no idea who I truly was, deep down, without any walls. I was just this… alien to myself.And I think you put it so poignantly. It felt like something just clicked inside of me and I was like oh shit, that’s me.”

There’s so much Nesta wants to say - so much she can’t say anything at all for a while. Until finally, “Do you know yourself now?”

“Does anyone?”

Nesta lets out a huff of a breath that says it’s a fair question. Then, “That thought came to me on a walk.”

Now, Cassian glances at her. In the fading light, his eyes are so dark yet so open. Bottomless and vast. “Oh yeh?”

Nesta nods, swallowing down the instinct to stop talking, to push down the imminent confession that wants to pour out of her. But Cassian has been so open with her and for once Nesta doesn’t want to keep things locked up, not in this moment, not during this rare moment of shared understanding. Not when Nesta feels seen for the first time in a long time.

“I’d run away to the mountains one week,” she confesses. “It rained the entire time. It was completely miserable but I didn’t care. It matched my mood - felt good even. One day I dragged myself out of the house and went for a hike. I went ambitious, too ambitious really, but I refused to admit defeat and made it up Ramiel limping and covered in blisters.”

When Nesta looks up from the pavement, Cassian is wholly focussed on her, his eyebrows raised in appreciation. “That’s quite the feat.”

Nesta snort is a dismissal. “I’m stubborn.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” Cassian comments and it’s with such deadpan that a laugh escapes Nesta without her trying to quash it down.

Cassian grin is brief and brilliant, before it falls back into something serious. “Why’d you run away, Nesta?”

“Why do you think?”

“Right.”

For a few beats, they walk in silence. But it’s not scary. It’s not tense or something that would mean to speak would be to break it. It just is; existing, quiet. So, Nesta carries on in her own time. “At the top of this mountain, I was looking out at this view and it just… it stretched out for miles and miles. And I realised how small I was, how insignificant. That I was just here in this world for a minute amount of time and I had no idea who I was - but this view made sense to me. It was so crystal clear. So profound.”

“What did you do next?”

“I had this certainty that I’d never had before and I’ve never had since. I just knew what the road ahead needed to be and I made it happen. I went back to the cabin, began the first draft of Epiphany. And then I travelled home, packed all my belongings and moved my life back to Velaris two years ago. I’m a writer, I’m not tied anywhere.”

It’s not entirely true. Nesta had been tied to Tomas. To a house, but Nesta doesn’t want to mention any of that.

“Back to your roots?”

“Back to the only roots I have - my sisters.”

Cassian’s head tilts slightly and Nesta knows what’s he’s going to say next, what he’s trying to puzzle out. “I’ve only known you for a year.”

They’ve reached Nesta’s apartment building. Nesta presses her fob against the gate pad. “It turns out finding myself wasn’t as easy as realising I had no idea who I was.”

“A couple of steps through the darkness is better than staying put.”

Nesta turns, stares at Cassian. He’s quoted directly from her book again. But all she says is, “Thanks for walking me home.”

“Nesta,” Cassian calls when the gate closes with a clang. “You’ll be at Feyre’s on Saturday?”

Again, the iron bars separate them and Nesta feels safe enough to forego the iciness, the hard-to-get brutal attitude. Instead, she’s just honest. “I don’t know.”

Again, that lopsided smile, as if Cassian knows what she’s just granted him. “I’ll bring my book for you to sign then.”

***

Together, they fall into a haphazard method of meeting one another at the coffee shop. It’s never planned. Nesta doesn’t even have Cassian’s number. But sometimes, on the days she makes herself pretend she is still a writer, when her agent is on her back again for the first draft of a manuscript she absolutely has not written, Cassian slides into the seat opposite her. Removes the bag she’s definitely not placed on the seat to save it for him just in case and places a pot of tea on the table alongside his espresso.

Together, they stare at their own screens. Tap away. Frown. Sigh. Sometimes, Cassian has meetings about complexities Nesta had no idea existed when it comes to running a gym, but it doesn’t bother her. She finds the deep timbre of his voice compliments the scores she listens to. And whilst they rarely converse, they do get up intermittently to replenish each other’s drinks.

At the end - which is only when Nesta closes her laptop with an internal sigh heavy enough to make her stomach lurch with dread - Cassian walks her home and leaves her at the gate, watching her through the bars as she makes her way safely to her apartment.

When they are at the coffee shop, they quietly exist like the silence from the other night. It’s unassuming and unrestrictive. Freeing.

But when they’re at Rita’s, they’re something else.

Nesta’s something else.

After all, old habits die hard.

When it’s Friday night and Nesta heads to the bar, she slips into a different version of herself. Someone who is starting to feel askew but so familiar and habitual after months of practice that she can’t seem to shrug them off. Nesta polishes off a bottle of wine before she gets there and doesn’t stop. Sometimes, things are so hazy the next morning, there are punctured holes in Nesta’s memory. The night before becomes flashes of bright lights and dancing bodies before they fade into writhing shadows only to do it all over again. There’s booming music that makes the floor shake, the smell of tequila that makes her stomach roil. Heavy hands on her shaking hips. A hungry mouth but no face. Panting, hot and sticky on her neck and face. Rolling hips.

Nesta always chooses a man out of the crowd and leaves with him out of principle.

After all, she doesn’t sleep with the same man twice.

Most of the time, she doesn’t remember the face of whoever she goes home with. Too often, she has no idea what she’s done until she wakes in the morning in her own bed - always in her own bed - sore and tender. Often covered in bruises the shape of fingerprints.

Rarely on those nights does she speak to Cassian beyond the necessary hello. She makes a point of not looking his way. Because at Rita’s, when Nesta is this different version of herself, she can’t deny that being around him is dangerous. At Rita’s, everything has the capability of becoming electrically charged, back to the roots of their first meeting, the ghost of their encounter. Nesta never has to search for the memory of that night. Too acutely, Nesta remembers the scratch of Cassian’s stubble against her face and neck, the coaxing demand of his mouth, his calloused palm running up the column of her throat before it twists to slide up the back of her neck and into her hair. She remembers how he tastes and the exact scent of him.

So, Nesta ignores him as best she can.

It’s the easiest thing to do. She doesn’t know how to consolidate the version of the Cassian she slept with on that Friday night to the softer version of him in the coffee shop. She knows he’s both, but she doesn’t want to unite the two. Can’t trust her gut, because when she finally let someone in before, he tore her down, brick by brick until she was nothing but rubble.

So, the drinking becomes worse. The men she sleeps with become worse. The quality of her decisions suffer in the face of temptation and Nesta knows it’s a downward spiral but also doesn’t know how to stop.

Until, finally, one night it goes too far.

Already her memory is patchy. Already, the night is like the flashing lights in the club. One moment it’s dark, the next it’s twisting bodies in blue and yellow and green. One moment she’s sitting on a jean-clad lap, a claiming sweaty palm on her inner thigh. Even in her drunk state, she recognises the gleam in the man’s blue eyes that would have anyone running the other way. Yet she leads him out the club anyway, ignoring the warning signs, too drunk to act on that niggling thought on the fuzzy edges of her mind.

But Cassian isn’t.

Nesta is so far gone that she can barely remember her own name, but the sound of his voice is enough. It has her turning and then he’s there. For the most part, he’s a blur in front of her yet there are fragments of time when he’s so sharp he’s all she can see.

“Nesta.”

Cassian doesn’t touch her but his voice in her ear is startling enough that it shocks through the alcohol in her veins, that fuzzy buzz.

The room spins, straightens. And there he is, leaning down. Cassian’s hand slips into hers so slowly, so cautiously, that Nesta doesn’t want to yank away from him. Instead, she lets herself become tethered and looks up at him to find his hazel eyes simmering.

“Let me take you home.”

It takes too long for her brain to register his words. She wants to yank her hand out of his, but she’s suddenly too unsteady on her feet. If she lets go of him, she’ll fall.

Instead, she digs her fingers deep into his jacket. Leans her head into the coolness of the dark leather. “I’m leaving.”

“You’re too drunk.”

Nesta steps back from him, wanting that distance from his accusation. But she stumbles and then Cassian’s catching her, his hands closing tightly around her as if he’s scared she might slip away.

“This isn’t part of the deal.”

It comes out slurred, pushed together, some letters out of line.

Cassian’s brow furrows. “Deal?”

“We’re not in the coffee shop. Leave me alone.”

She remembers staggering away. Remembers leaving with the guy she’s chosen for the night, whose just observing them darkly as he stubs out a cigarette with his boot.

It’s only when she’s in the alleyway pressed too hard against the wall that Nesta realises what she’s doing. That she doesn’t want this.

She tries to push the man away, but he just grunts, thinking that she’s egging him on. He smells grimy, like old sweat and grease and all Nesta can think about is that he has two fingers inside of her and his nails must be crusted with dirt.

It’s then that she starts to panic. One moment she was sure she wanted it and now she doesn’t so fiercely that terror sets in. It fills her so quickly, so fast, that she doesn’t realise she’s screaming until she’s screaming. Her lungs ragged, her voice hoarse at the same time that her chest feels like she can’t breathe. Like she can’t get enough oxygen into her lungs, as if they can’t expand properly. As if they’re not working.

Nesta doesn’t know what happens next. She thinks she pushes the man away from her with a strength she didn’t know she possessed, because she ends up falling hard. A sharp pain steals the breath from her, cutting through the alcohol and the panic, robbing her vision.

When she finally opens her eyes, the man is gone and Cassian is in front of her in a waft of leather and musk.

“Nesta,” he says. But Nesta’s vision is swimming again and whilst his mouth is moving to indicate that he’s speaking, her name comes out muffled, as if Nesta’s head is submerged under water. He’s gripping her shoulders hard, his fingers biting into her skin, his expression full of thunderous concern. And that should ground her, his worry should, but Nesta can’t think of anything but the pain and her desperation to breathe.

It’s only when Cassian’s hands move to cup her face and his thumb strokes at her cheek does Nesta realises that her vision isn’t blurry because she’s intoxicated, but because she’s crying.

“My ankle,” she manages to slur through her heaving chest. She tries to indicate where it hurts with her hands, but that only makes her realise that her panties are what caused her to fall. They’re still around her ankles from where they’d been yanked down from underneath her skin-tight dress, before she all wanted it to stop.

And that makes the breathing even harder. The reality of her circumstances even more humiliating. The understanding that she is a mess, an utter wreck, askew on the floor of a dirty alleyway, garbage on the stained concrete around her, questionable puddles and cigarette butts stuck to her soiled heels.

“It’s ok,” Cassian tells her, his voice suddenly stark and clear, but the frown on his face says otherwise. He’s still cupping her face and Nesta wants to lean into his touch because she’s so tired and he’s being so kind even though she can tell he’s furious beyond measure. “Deep breaths, Nesta. It’s going to be ok.”

“I want to go home.”

“We need someone to look at your ankle, sweetheart.”

That is absolutely not what Nesta wants. She pushes away from him with a strength that catches him off guard. But when she tries to stand, when she tries to put weight on her ankle, the sound that draws out of her comes from somewhere deep, halfway between a gasp and a cry.

The way Cassian grabs for her as she falls is not gentle. His fingers clasp her so hard she feels her skin bruise. But she’s reeling from the pain and then it’s all too much - the excessive alcohol, the agony, the panic.

With her panties still around her ankles, Nesta throws up all over Cassian’s shoes.

After that, her memory comes back in snatches. She remembers Cassian bribing a cab and him carrying her in. She remembers the only thing she keeps repeating is that she needs her laptop which she’d checked into Rita’s cloakroom when she’d arrived and Cassian trying to calm her down. She remembers the sound of a key in a lock. She remembers how cold the bathroom tiles are as she retches into an unfamiliar toilet.

She remembers large hands holding her hair back.

She remembers lying down in a bed, the pillows soft beneath her head, the duvet crisp.

She remembers Cassian talking to her, but she’s too drunk to comprehend what he’s saying.

When she wakes, it’s because light has sliced through the gap in the curtains and her mouth and throat is so dry it’s as if someone has stuffed them with cotton wall.

Head pounding and ankle throbbing, Nesta cracks an eye open to the blurry outline of the bedroom Cassian put her in the night before. It takes a while for her eyesight to correct itself but when it does, what she see’s is not what she’s expecting.

In truth, Nesta expects a bachelor’s pad. Not that she has any evidence of the sort besides the assumption of the “night-version” of Cassian she has in her head - still single in his mid-thirties and taking women home from Rita’s rather than a serial dater.

When Nesta had come home with Cassian that fateful night, Nesta had been too preoccupied to glance around. She’d remembered his apartment in Illyria, the borough of Velaris that sits on the northern outskirts closest to the mountains, because it had cost her an arm and a leg to get back to her place. But beyond that, Nesta had only remembered the burn of the fabric couch against her bare knees as she’d straddled his waist, the scrape of his teeth against her neck and his hands sliding from her exposed waist to cup her ass.

Now, what she see’s has her propping herself up onto an elbow. There’s exposed brickwork and old wooden beams that run in lines across the ceiling. There are rustic wooden shelves stacked with what appear to be mainly business books and old diaries. Leafy tall plants that stand in rattan pots and others that sit on the bookshelves, their leaves trailing down in different shades of purple.

And to her right, a deep oak desk that runs across the entire length of the floor-to-ceiling arched window. The sun is still slicing through the slight partition in the oatmeal curtains and Nesta finds herself sitting up properly now, even though the mere movement of her ankle against the sheets has her stomach turning, the nausea rising as the pain hits her, deep and wrong.

But Nesta’s fuelled by curiosity and nothing is going to stop her. That gap in the curtains is calling to her, the dust motes dancing in the stream of light that spans from the window to the bed now an irresistible path. Nesta doesn’t know how she makes it to the desk, but when she draws the string curtains back swaying precariously on one foot, her breath is snatched in an entirely different way.

Forest green. Rolling pine forests immersed in a mist that makes them even more breathtaking. And above those, the Illyrian mountains, their snowy peaks barely visible through the wispy low-lying clouds.

It’s one of those rare moments, the stillness the view brings. The all-encompassing clarity. The window is cracked open and Nesta smells the air, fresh and clean. She feels and with it she can push the embarrassment of last night even farther back, burying it deep, that humiliation she can’t bring herself to face for fear of the self loathing that will kick in.

Here, she thinks, focussing on the here and now rather than the wreck she was yesterday - the wreck she still is now. The mountains. The forest. This is it, finally.

She sits down at the desk. Her laptop bag is lying atop it and she takes it out, fires it up. And with the view before her, stretching out for miles and miles - magnificent in its splendour, its natural beauty - Nesta begins to write.

***

Nesta doesn’t notice the knock on the door an hour later, but she hears the door handle, the creak of the hinges.

A tray is held between the same hands that held back her hair last night, strapped up her throbbing ankle. Nesta spies a cup of tea with notes of bergamot and oat milk, toast and what she presumes is a bag of ice wrapped in a charcoal tea towel.

Her chest hurts at the sight of it, as if her ribs are creaking under some sort of invisible, mounting pressure. The horror of last night threatens to consume her, but Nesta battles it back, struggles with all her might.

Instead, she focusses on how Cassian stops in his tracks in surprise. One swift evaluation of his expression tells Nesta that he expected to find her gone, the bed made and empty. No trace of her left. Certainly, he hadn’t expected to find her sitting at the arched window, headphones jammed firmly over her ears, her fingers hovering over the keyboard of the laptop he’d saved the night before.

He’d prepared a tray, anyway.

“Morning.” His eyes fly to her laptop and then respectfully flit away just as quickly, settling back onto her face. Suddenly, with their eyes connected, Nesta wants to die of a shame so visceral she wishes she could turn invisible. But Cassian doesn’t mention last night, doesn’t berate her for the excessive drinking and her bad life decisions. The relief hits her so swiftly, so fast, that she’s almost bowled over by it. “How’s the ankle?”

Nesta cuts off the score she’s been listening to and lowers her headphones. “Swollen.”

She thinks it might be worse than that and she’s certain Cassian thinks the same. There’s worry etched between his eyebrows as he tries to catch a glimpse of her ankle hidden beneath the deep desk.

Eventually, he just nods to the tray in his hands. “I brought you some ice. You should really be elevating it.”

Nesta knows by the tone in which he speaks that he’s not quite sure how she’s managed to get herself to the desk, that she should under no circumstances be walking on it. But Nesta doesn’t know how to explain how the inspiration has hit her, that hum in her blood urging her fingers to write. That she needed to sit at this desk, look at this view, shut out the world and write the words that have dogged her for the past eight months.

Nesta’s not felt like this since Epiphany. And although she’s experiencing a hangover from hell, it’s fuelling her, somehow. The pounding in her head an insistent, driving beat, the nausea compelling her. And the shame trying to push its way to the forefront drives her to keep typing, because if she keeps going she might just out-write it. Might never have to face what she’s done.

Cassian sets the tray down on the desk beside her with a soft thunk and Nesta wonders how he can be so gentle when he’s so large. “Ok to take a break?”

Nesta wants to tell him that; No, it’s not ok. I can finally write, it’s back, the inspiration is finally here and I can’t let it go. I have to sit here and chase it and hope I never run out of steam if I ever want to be paid again. But then the night before is flashing in front of Nesta’s eyes, and suddenly, Nesta’s reliving it all: the mortification of her panties twisted around her ankles, the humiliation of her throwing up over his shoes, the relief of Cassian’s rough hands as they cupped her face, his thumbs catching the tears as they slipped down her cheeks.

“We probably shouldn’t move you,” Cassian remarks through her silence. “You’re fine to sit here? Or I can carry you into the living room—”

“No.” Nesta’s voice is sharp, cutting him off mid-sentence. It’s so rude, so awfully abrupt and Nesta wishes she could take it back, both the panic in her voice and her desperate interruption. She takes a deep, steadying breath. “The desk is fine.”

“Alright.”

Cassian brings over a footstool that accompanies an armchair by the bookshelves and pushes it beneath the desk. Together they help to manoeuvre Nesta’s ankle up onto it and Nesta does her best not to make a sound, panting through her nose, grinding her teeth so hard that tears burn her eyelids.

“Ok?” Cassian asks, as he carefully rolls up the leg of the black sweatpants she woke up in this morning. Nesta’s not wearing her vomit-covered panties, only these sweatpants that are so large they barely hold up at the waist and a large t-shirt that comes down to her knees.

“Mmhm,” Nesta hums, breathing desperately through her nose and trying not to think about the fact that he must have dressed her.

But, again, Cassian doesn’t bring it up. Instead, he jerks his head towards his laptop screen as he continues to examine her foot. “Productive morning?”

For a moment, Nesta just stares at the man before her and is struck with how kind he is, how well he seems to know her despite the fact that they barely know one another at all. In the stark light that floods in from the window, Nesta sees Cassian plainly for the first time. The two versions of him melded together - not the version of him at Rita’s or the version of him at the coffee shop, but both of them, just Cassian - and realises that she was right: together they make him so attractive it’s dangerous.

Yet, she keeps staring at him, even when he presses his calloused fingertips to the swollen skin and she hisses. She clocks the scar that cuts through his right eyebrow. Follows the dark curl of a tattoo that finishes just behind his ear. Watches the way his wild ebony hair glints in the morning sunlight.

He smells of sleep, musk and ground coffee.

When Cassian glances up at her, Nesta realises that she hasn’t replied. That amidst his hazel eyes, there are shards of gold. “The view is good here,” is all she finds she’s able to say, but recognition flares in Cassian’s eyes as he sits back on his heels.

“It makes sense to you.”

“It does,” Nesta agrees.

“It’s why I bought the place,” Cassian confesses after a moment. Gently, he presses ice to her foot, holding her firm as she jerks and hisses on instinct. “I like being by the mountains.”

They’re still skirting over last night but it hangs in the air above them like a raincloud. All of those unspoken words, the anger she’d seen clear in his expression when he’d found her in the alleyway, the man with his fingers inside of her, his breath sticky on her neck.

Nesta presumes the man ran off when she’d started to scream.

And all of that suspends above them. Nesta knows its only a matter of time before the cloud spills open and everything rains down on them.

But to Nesta’s surprise, Cassian abruptly stands.

“You can keep writing, if you like,” he tells her. “I’ve got a call to make."

***

Cassian is gone for over an hour and in that time Nesta writes better than she’s written in eight months. It’s not all fully formed. In fact, it’s a bit all over the place. Snippets upon snippets of inspiration driven by the emotions and seeds of thought roiling about in her chest. Here, with the pine trees, the snow-capped mountains and the different blues of the silhouettes of the mountains behind them, Nesta can finally unwind.

Her hangover is still raging with a vengeance, the nausea a roiling sea inside of her stomach, the back of her throat, but she uses it as a driver rather than an excuse. If last night happened, it has to mean something.

But then she knocks her foot.

It happens within seconds. Nesta only has time to grab for the waste paper basket before she’s emptying her stomach. In the back of her mind, she hears the door open and Cassian come back in, but she’s retching and for once she doesn’t hate throwing up because all she can focus on is the pain that is so sharp it steals her breath.

When she’s done, she spits into the bin. Drags one hand through the hair that became an unfortunate victim of her sick and pushes it back.

“Perfect timing.”

Nesta gives Cassian a half-hearted hiss and tries to breathe, tries to gather herself again but the pain radiating from her swollen ankle too much. She bends over again, empties her stomach into the bin.

There’s a brief pause as Nesta coughs and gags. Then, “Hold on, sweetheart,” and Cassian is carrying her into the bathroom, his grip firm yet gentle.

Nesta manages to hold on until he’s deposited her in front of the toilet. Then she’s throwing up again until she can’t throw up anymore.

“Tea and toast didn’t settle the stomach then.”

Nesta is too busy gasping to snap at him - or to care. Cautious of her ankle, she twists herself around until she can slump against the bathroom wall, her leg stretched out in front of her. She’s covered in sweat, Cassian’s t-shirt damp and sticking to her chest and there’s vomit burning the back of her throat and nose. But whilst her skin feels like it’s on fire, her ankle feels like lava. She swipes at her mouth with the back of her hand. “I knocked my foot.”

Cassian flushes the toilet, closes the lid, sits on top of it.

And Nesta knows from the intentioned way in which he moves that he’s about to bring up last night. Panic should be a wild, living thing in Nesta’s chest but she’s too poorly to feel it. Instead, she tilts her head back onto the cool tiles and announces hoarsely to the ceiling, “I have a proposition.”

Her words have Cassian taking stock. For a few seconds, all he does is study her. Nesta knows, because his eyes are burning into her, marking her like a tattoo needle inking her skin.

In the periphery of her vision, Nesta see’s Cassian lean forward until his elbows are resting on his knees.

Nesta rolls her head until she’s looking directly at him, right into those hazel eyes. “It’s not sex.”

“Disappointing,” Cassian drawls. A light glints in his eyes but quickly dies and Nesta knows that he’s still concerned. Knows that he’s just acting the part with her, unsure of his next move in the game they’re always playing.

“I want to pay for your spare bedroom.”

This time, Cassian can’t hide how thoroughly taken aback he is. But he doesn’t straighten although Nesta can tell that he wants to. “You want to pay for my spare bedroom?”

Nesta claws her hands through her knotted hair and tries to concentrate on taking deep breaths. “That’s what I said. I want it.”

Cassian continues to watch her as he tries to read her, tries to understand. His words are slow as if he can’t quite comprehend them. Knows they can’t be right. “You want to live here?”

A soft snort. “Absolutely not. I want to write here. With that view, specifically.”

Nesta lowers the hand she’s waved in the direction of the bedroom. Even that movement is too exhausting for her. She feels spent. Bled dry.

Cassian stares at her a fraction too long in the subsequent silence.

“And I’ve made him speechless.” Nesta rolls her eyes. “Am I computing?”

Rolling his eyes to mirror her, Cassian snickers. “Very good, sweetheart.”

Nesta looks back at the ceiling. The nausea is rising again and she focusses on breathing for a moment. Says finally, “You don’t have a roommate. I need somewhere to write my book. It’s a good fit.”

“The coffee shop not working out for you?”

Nesta cuts her gaze back to his, serious now. “Would I be asking you if it was?”

For a few heartbeats, two ticks of a clock, they stare at one another. Then, Cassian says, “How about this. You don’t have to pay for the room at all, but on two conditions.”

Nesta cocks her head at him, pushing down the fresh wave of nausea that rolls through her. “Out with it.”

“We go to the hospital and have someone look at your ankle.”

It’s the last thing that Nesta wants to do, but she can no longer deny that it’s just a small sprain. Even with it stretched out in front of her, without her moving an inch, the pain is unparalleled.

“Fine. What’s the second?”

That muscle flecks in Cassian’s jaw again. Then, even though he’s looking directly at her, something shifts in his eyes, hardens, and Nesta almost wants to shrink away at the scrutiny of it. If Nesta wants to, she could read that expression, could admit what it means.

“Stop taking men home who I want to punch in the face.”

Her insides immediately scald with a mixture of shame and fury. But then Nesta thinks of the man’s damp breath on her neck, of his sour-smelling body pinning her to the wall. Nesta thinks of the bedroom she woke up in this morning. Of the laptop full of words that aren’t off kilter but right.

It takes her a moment to collect herself. To be able to scoff and go bold. To pretend his request hasn’t touched her at all. “Isn’t that everyone?”

Cassian’s concrete expression doesn’t so much as crack. “When you drink you make bad choices. Or do you drink to make bad choices? Whatever it is had you in quite the predicament yesterday.”

They’re going there, then. There’s no outrunning it now. And Nesta wants to open her mouth, to vocalise how if he hadn’t been there she’s not sure what would have happened to her. That she thinks he might have saved her from something she couldn’t go back from. But she can’t get the words out.

Cassian reaches towards her as if he’s going to touch her, but he stops himself at the last minute. He’s no doubt thinking of the times she’s recoiled from him and he’s no way of knowing that Nesta wouldn’t have leant away from him this time. That she would have welcomed his hands on her face again.

“Did he hurt you, Nesta?”

His voice is quiet, soft but there’s no denying the intensity he’s trapping beneath it.

“No,” Nesta replies honestly, but she can’t look at him when she says it so she fixes her eyes on the wall opposite. On the sharp corner of a photo frame that’s hung on the wall — a lethal, arrowed point — so fiercely that it hurts. She thinks of the way her throat had closed up in that alleyway, how she couldn’t breathe. How the panic that Nesta tries so desperately to run from every day had consumed her once again but when she’d been drinking this time. That had never happened before. Normally, when Nesta was out at Rita’s she purposefully drank so she felt nothing at all, so she could finally breathe without fear.

“I just…” she continues when Cassian keeps watching her, searching for the words to try and explain whilst not really explaining at all, “didn’t want it anymore.”

Her words fall into silence. Cassian’s jaw clenches, the muscles straining and Nesta can’t bear to see that look on him, so she adds, “I couldn’t breathe.”

There’s a rustle of fabric as Cassian sits back. “Ah.”

“It doesn’t usually happen at Rita’s.”

Time passes as Cassian studies her. And Nesta can almost hear him putting the pieces of her life together, the shameful way in which she tries to control the uncontrollable. “That’s why you drink so much.”

“No.” She snaps the lie and grows furious when Cassian merely raises an eyebrow at her. He doesn’t believe her and she hates that he can see through her, can dissect her so easily when no-one else has managed before.

He leans forward again, his elbows resting back on his knees. And Nesta has the uncanny feeling that the balance has shifted in his favour, that’s he’s calling the shots. “Do we have a deal, Nesta?”

No, Nesta thinks bitterly, out of instinct. Fury is still heating her insides at the audacity that Cassian not only thinks he can control this situation but understand her motivations. But… Nesta can’t afford to say no. If Nesta fails to hand in her first draft, she doesn’t get paid. She might lose her publisher. She’ll have to move out of her apartment and get a job that she hates.

And… there’s something at the back of Nesta’s head, a voice that tells her that this could be the out she’s after. The hand reaching out, guiding her back to something better.

But she doesn’t want to think about that now, not really, when she’s covered in vomit and her ankle is bleating agony.

So, Nesta stretches out her clammy hand between them despite the anger hot and roiling in her stomach. Watches Cassian’s eyes widen ever so slightly, the only hint of his surprise.

Callouses scratch at her palms, but Cassian’s grip is strong, his skin warm.

And with that one clasp of their hands, the deal is struck.

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