WHAT: Nesta comes home after a very bad day. WHERE: Their apartment. WHEN: June 28th, evening WARNINGS: Depression, thought of lacking self-worth, a lot of angst and some darker thoughts here. Nothing graphic, just very hurt/comfort. STATUS:Complete!
It had started out a good day. That morning, there had been breakfast, quietly in the apartment, with her sister and Cassian. The conversation hadn’t sparked any brutal turn, and Nesta had gone off to work with the slightest hint of a smile on her face.
Obviously, that hadn’t stuck. The day had taken a sharp turn downward with such a simple thing. When she’d left the store, it had been with seething anger and determined shoulders. She took a walk in the city proper, heels clicking angrily with each step down the street, brushing past pedestrians with no care to avoid bumping shoulders.
Eventually, she walked her anger off, and it was replaced with a marked sadness. She made her way back home at this point, hoping neither of her housemates were around so she could let the tears that pricked behind her eyes flow freely with no audience.
Nesta was exhausted. She had been tired for a long time, since before the Cauldron, but now it was different. Once again, something she had appreciated, loved, put time and effort into, had been snatched away. It was a reminder of her loss of mortality and her father’s death all in one. The emotions swelled in her throat and Nesta barely made it to the wine rack in the kitchen before having to pause and brace herself against the counter.
She would not cry. Not allow that man to rule her feelings with his caustic actions. Instead, she took a shuddering breath and focused on opening the bottle of wine.
If Cassian had known what had happened at the bookstore, he wouldn't have taken his time returning from his patrol. He had been better about giving Nesta space—her comments about feeling like and obligations and duty hung heavy on his mind. He couldn't control Nesta or Elain, and he never wanted to. Perhaps his need to bring her safety had outweighed rationale, his protection becoming more like suffocation. He needed to step back. Cassian was navigating incredibly fragile waters, but with only the best intentions.
Nesta must have been aware of his feelings for her. How tightly knotted together they were. Cassian was afraid—an unusual feeling he grappled with often—what would happen if Nesta continued to ignore what he knew she could feel too. This was not a bond, real or intangible, Cassian wanted to break.
When he entered the shared apartment, he had planned to go to the library and carefully return the book he had finished—one Elain had suggested, though he wasn't sure if it was to benefit him or to learn more about her sister. Except, as he peeled off one leather guard then the other, he heard shuffling in the kitchen. Cassian tilted his head, curious, as he slowly stepped further inside to see Nesta wrestling to open a bottle of wine.
Cassian's instinct told him to pull it away from her. Maybe even crowd into her space and demand what was wrong. But instead he watched her, somber and serious for him, before he braced his hands on the counter across from her, leaned in, and asked, "Do you need help?"
Nesta heard him enter, and felt him nearby, but didn’t have the emotional energy left to tell him to go away. She hated to admit that his presence was calming until it wasn’t, and in this case she could use a moment to sap from someone else.
And Cassian was, as always, the type to just let her pull. He let her get away with a great deal, even when standing up to her when she was particularly brutish in her way. It was difficult for her to ask for help, her pride got in the way of a great many things, but there he was, looking as if he’d destroy anything for her if she only asked, and Nesta gave in, pushing the bottle across the counter towards him. “Yes.” As if that wasn’t a lot in itself, “please,” followed in a softer, quiet voice.
She wanted to explain, to ask him to murder for her, to vent, to cry… But could manage none of it just yet, the words stuck in her throat as she tried to figure out how to navigate yet another loss and failure. Please would have to do for now.
He took no pleasure in Nesta giving in rather than shunning his assistance. The unusual nature of the moment unfolding made Cassian bristle, an anger threading through him. He took the offered bottle, and made quick work of opening it. He put the wine back down but didn't slide it over to her. The please was enough to make his heart drop to his stomach, and he couldn't bear her closing him out again. Not right now. Returning the alcohol was an unintentional way of saying he wouldn't pry.
But this time, Cassian was absolutely going to.
"What happened?" Cassian asked. He wasn't trying to charm her, he wasn't trying to plead his case. He wanted—needed—the facts. Cassian did not wear helplessness well; Illyrians were ill-suited for it when war ran in their blood. His expression was complicated, wanting to comfort and attack all in the same breath.
A devious voice inside his head reminded him of the conversation they had ages ago, of Nesta's previous distress. This was a frantic way his mind attempted to fill in the blanks so that Nesta wouldn't have to relive whatever details of the day had made her like this. His fingers curled dangerously against the counter. Restraint kept him from breaking the whole thing in half. "Did someone hurt you?
She could feel him holding back, and his anger washed over Nesta like a wave. It was almost as if she could push it off on him and her shoulders felt just a little lighter. But she also felt an intense pull of guilt, of making him think something had happened like--
That thought was one she wanted nothing to do with, and Nesta couldn’t focus on it right now. She had enough pain to deal with, and adding to it would serve no one.
“No.” The answer was firm and decisive, just so he would believe her, even as she was shaking her head. She reached over and grabbed the bottle now, pouring a glass before she continued. The sick feeling in her stomach didn’t go away, even as she told herself quietly that she was overreacting. It was just a shop, Nesta. “The owner of AZ Fell is an unpleasant little man. But the short summary is that the store is no longer mine, as he has returned and I was told to leave.”
There was a blip of confusion on Cassian's face as she told him no. All the fury of cut off at the knees, and he didn't know where to place it or how to juggle the emptiness it left inside of him. But as she explained how someone took away the one thing that had made Nesta smile in the weeks they had been here, a new sort of anger burrowed into him.
"What do you mean it's no longer yours?" Cassian asked, coming around the counter to be by her side rather than across from her, separated by a physical barrier. If she allowed him, if he could find the words to ask for permission, he wanted to waste no time gathering her up in his arms. There was sadness, his own and hers, palpable in the air. He didn't like it, he didn't want it. He didn't want Nesta to have it either. "Not even keeping you on as a co-owner? Manager? How does he think that the work you have done while he wasn't here means so little?"
Threatening an unpleasant little man's life seemed like something that would be worthy of his time. Cassian took a deep breath and shook his head, swallowing down the violent ways he could dismantle a person. Nesta's well-being was far more important. "We'll find another bookshop. Somewhere else that you can be happy in and that is yours."
Nesta huffed a humorless laugh, and took her first large gulp of wine. The drinking when she needed a break was an issue for future Nesta, one that past Nesta had tried to work at but wasn’t willing at this point to compromise. She deserved it. Nesta didn’t like dealing with men on a regular basis anyway, but add in unpleasantness and an ugly little attitude and she was done.
“A clerk, perhaps. Someone to balance his books.” She waved her free hand in the air, a dismissive action just waving away the whole idea of it. She started walking towards the living room and the open couch, kicking off her heels one at a time as she went. “What is it with men and offering me lesser jobs in order to placate me?”
Nesta shot him a quick look and pointed a finger. “Don’t give me any Rhysand sob story about it right now, I know that’s exactly what he did.” Maybe talking about Feyre and Rhys would bring her annoyance level to a manageable normality.
"Nesta," Cassian said, in a way that sounded like you don't believe that. He wrestled with this often, his love for the woman in front of him and his love for his High Lord. Rhysand was his brother in all but blood, and Cassian was duty-bound to protect him. That did not always mean he agreed with the swift actions Rhysand made against fae that were not so deserving, only that he carried out orders when commanded. It was easier not to question the leadership of the people he put so much faith in and the family he had grown up with.
Cassian did not know how to hold his tongue against those who outwardly disparaged the court. But it had also been such a source of deep hurt for Nesta. He had thought the job granted to her by the Night Court was well suited for her skills. As he watched her down the wine, Cassian realized he had missed something rather obvious.
"I won't, I know our attachments to the court are—" Cassian paused for diplomacy, "strained. But that does not mean that you are only meant to be placated. It is because they do not know you, Nesta. Not like others do." Her sister. Him.
Nesta took a seat, a little less delicately than she normally did. He’d missed the smile that cropped up with her name - she liked how he said it like that. With such exasperation. Nesta didn’t like things to be easy, ever. “Others.”
This vantage point gave her the opportunity to look straight at him, focusing on something other than her failure to play nice with others. She allowed herself this for a long moment - probably too long - but cut it off with another sip of her wine. “You would never put me in the place of shoving clerk work at me, I suppose.” It took Nesta a long time to be sure that Cassian wasn’t just humoring her, or trying to sleep with her, and even still, the idea of reaching out to him? Terrifying.
They’d had a moment. They’d had several. Times where she wanted to reach out and touch him, desperately, but Nesta usually stayed her hand. Right now, she wondered why she was so unbearably good at keeping everyone at arm’s distance, and so terribly bad at pulling anyone in.
The thought made her sad again, and Nesta frowned into her wine. “Is it me? The reason I can’t keep anything?”
Cassian didn't know what to make of the silence that stretched between them. Something was changing, but before he could wrap his head around it, Nesta was pushing him away again by putting up her walls. He had never been anything but honest with her—there was no ulterior motive behind it, Cassian simply didn't want his feelings toward her or situations to be misconstrued. There was no space inside of him to be a liar.
"I suppose I wouldn't, you're right," Cassian said, though he sounded strange. He stayed standing, his eyes searching for some way in, behind the fractures that Nesta allowed him to see, as small and indiscernible as they were. He was so focused on her movements, the elegant grace of her holding her composure and drinking wine, that he was certain he dreamed the question.
He frowned, deeply. "No." That was all that was needed, he believed, but the answer felt incomplete. Cassian continued. "It's not you. And that is not true. You have not lost everything. Today was hard, and I will give you that, I can give you today." And if he prowled threateningly outside the bookshop to get out his own residual frustration about Nesta's dismissal out of his system, then no one could stop him.
"But I will not let you believe that this is because of you or that you will not get something better back. You deserve better, Nesta."
For all of her confidence on the outside, Nesta was crumbling just a little on the inside. Cassian’s words should have been a reassurance, but she was spiraling hard and unable to pull herself up the way she usually did. Elain knew more of her future than she did, and even without knowing specifics, Nesta knew it wasn’t great.
She wished she could believe him, but everything over the last several months started swelling up in her brain and Nesta pulled her legs up onto the sofa and stared into her wine. Doubt swirled around in her head just like the dark liquid in front of her, and she eventually just shook her head. “I know that I’ve-” Nesta couldn’t bring herself to say that maybe Feyre was right, that thought soured in her stomach before it took hold.
But there was still doubt there. “You should leave me to my dramatic pout. Wine will do away with it in good time.”
He thought maybe were going to continue this conversation when she spoke again. Maybe dig in a little further and finally pull back that first outer layer once and for all. Cassian had seen glimpses of that Nesta. If not for their pointed conversations where they avoided talking about a very specific event, Cassian would have thought he hallucinated Nesta shielding his body on the battlefield not so long ago. But Cassian could be patient. He always had been, whether or not Nesta believed him was another story.
His fingers reached out, touching a small strand of her hair and placing it ever-so-carefully behind her ear. His hand didn’t linger; the gesture was like a ghost, there and gone, with more stealth than Azriel contained. It was supposed to be comforting. He wanted to be a source of reassurance and solace, and he didn't want to lose to a glass of wine. And he didn't particularly feel like leaving her to pout alone.
In a low voice, Cassian said, "I will still tear him apart, if you want. Perhaps just his arm. He doesn’t need two."
A part of Nesta knew that Cassian wouldn’t leave her even when she asked. He was, if anything, stubborn to the core. But it was why she offered, because she knew she could save face, and still wouldn’t have to admit she appreciated his subtle touch and gentle hand when she needed it. Because comfort was still not a beast Nesta was used to wrestling.
So when she leaned just a little into his touch, she didn’t comment on it. Didn’t make a big deal out of the way gooseflesh rose along the pointed curve of her ear. The wall she had put up wasn’t down, but it was like the door had just cracked open a little bit to let in light.
The wine hadn’t hit her head just yet, so Nesta had no true excuse as to why she huffed out a quiet little laugh in response to his threat. Even quiet, it was still more genuine than she usually gave from any laugh. “And if I say yes to that offer?”
That tiny little laugh, as hidden and rare as it was, levied Cassian's mood. Maybe it was because he felt that sliver of happiness with her, maybe it was because he helped coax it out of her. Or maybe it was because he touched her without being immediately shrugged off. Cassian wanted to replicate the moment again and again, but he didn't want to push his luck.
"If you say yes, then I will have to find a way to dispose of an arm. I don't suppose you want it as recompense, do you?" Cassian teased. He was half-joking, half-serious, all earnest. There was a certain level of respectful behavior he committed to, but it was Nesta who made him rethink those carefully controlled and militaristic values that were instilled in him. Harm to others needed a good reason, and this felt on par with injustices. If Rhysand were here, he might not agree, but then again, he had done much worse and threatened far more fae for Feyre.
Why couldn't Cassian do that for Nesta?
"I would rather use the time to find you a new place. Somewhere that is better than the tiny bookstore. A place I might not bump into the shelves quite so often if I were to come visit you?"
Nesta liked that he didn’t immediately push too much, that they could just simply exist without expectations or previous history cropping up. Or her own issues, of which she knew there were many. Her face was warm, but Nesta was determined to think it was from the alcohol, and not the man next to her.
Determination only went so far when one was blushing, however. “We could mount it on the wall,” she mused, only half-joking herself. She was just a little bloodthirsty at times, and didn’t have a tiny Rhysand in the back of her mind telling her it was wrong, because she’d just tell him to fall off a cliff. Convenient.
“Perhaps I need to find company that won’t wreck priceless books so easily,” to cut her words with a little softness, Nesta’s hand reached out to touch along the very edge of one of his wings, a more intimate gesture than she fully realized.
Cassian hummed thoughtfully. "In your library. As a reminder, for anyone who tries to tell you no. Or a warning, outside of our balcony." Our, he liked the way that sounded. He liked how he could sneak it into a sentence without placing pressure on it meaning more.
Except then, that gentle contact from Nesta was like a match to a readied flame. Cassian ignited.
He took a deep breath. Cassian was not subtle about the effect the smallest reciprocation of touch from her caused him. It felt like they were having two conversations, one where he maintained his distance and they continued along this dance, while in the background another unspoken one occurred where they gravitated closer together.
"It's not on purp—" Purpose. It's not on purpose he tried to say but priceless books felt unimportant. His attention focused pointedly at where her fingers had grazed the end of his wing. Cassian wanted it to be intentional, to mean more than whatever it was supposed to be. But he always wanted to give her an out. "Nesta."
I’m tired of feeling terrible were the words Nesta tried to speak, but nothing came out. It was more difficult, somehow, to put herself there and in that moment, than it was to just angle her neck and tilt a look at him. To hope that Cassian could just take the leap and Nesta could accept it, for once.
But then she couldn’t blame him if he didn’t. Their relationship thus far had been a long time of push and shove. Of Cassian moving in, and Nesta moving back. The times she had stepped forward to him had been few, but there, scrambling to the surface as they just barely touched.
“Was that a question or a warning?” She could have saved that ask. Made an assumption. Made a move. But Nesta stayed where she was, and only looked at Cassian through her eyelashes, as if daring him.
It felt ridiculous how easily Cassian wanted to kiss Nesta. The urge that he so helplessly kept at bay was raging now. Trying to worm its way out of the box within a box he had put it in, for Nesta's sake. Cassian's mind unsuccessfully provided logic behind why this would be a bad idea—a terrible, horrible idea—but he did just offer to dismember someone on her behalf because they were unkind to her.
That was... well, hardly romantic, but he would do anything for her, and he just wanted to keep showing her that it would never change. Perhaps in kinder, sweeter ways. Cassian was not all brute. She had to know that by now.
"Both," Cassian said, without waiting a beat. He was asking permission and signaling to her what was impending. He didn't want to surprise her, because it already felt like bad timing. His large hands reached to frame her face; another slow step, another long second for her to change her mind. And then Cassian pressed his lips against her forehead and left them there as he spoke against her skin. "I do not want to overstep, I have been trying not to."
Nesta sucked in a breath that was far steadier than she would have given herself credit for. She had a weird calm about her, her heartbeat was faster than normal, but the world around her seemed a little more quiet, being this close to Cassian. Her anger and annoyances were slowly seeping away, even if she knew they would crop up again later. But for now, she felt blanketed.
Safe.
Nesta wasn’t usually one to take advantage of that, but Cassian had been the only man she’d felt safe around in years, and she had expected his lips to end up elsewhere. When they didn’t, but still touched her skin, Nesta’s eyes closed. “Oh,” She breathed out the word, a mixture of relief and disappointment mingling together to make a swirl of confusion around her brain. But the world was quiet, and even as Cassian talked she had a hard time focusing on the words instead of a touch that made her feel things aside from repulsion.
With an unsteady hand, she slipped her wineglass onto a nearby solid surface without looking away from him. In a small, quiet voice, she finally spoke up. “You make me feel quiet.” Safe.
There was a stillness reflected inside of him, a sudden overwhelming thing. And he didn't hate it. He turned his face to rest his cheek against her hair, just for a moment. The sheer closeness to Nesta seemed to make all that Illyrian blood inside of him calm. If she was quiet, then so was he by the unspoken connection they held. How could she think they weren't? How could she dismiss the obvious feelings that were there?
She wasn't now, and Cassian silently wished for this to last forever.
"I can only hope that is enough for you," Cassian said. He scooped up her hand, now free of the wine glass, and brought it to his lips, pressing one kiss to her knuckles—softly romantic and ever so gentlemanly. He had not been lying when it came to Nesta deserving better, the best things. The world had been so unkind to her for no reason other than existing within the family that was destined to rule the Night Court.
"Do you still want to be alone in your dramatic pout? I have the rest of the evening open to spend at my leisure and I would prefer it to be with you."
In a world where Nesta often felt like she might explode with oncoming emotions, where she blocked herself away from a constant barrage of feelings radiating from others, she usually preferred to be alone with that. To suffer in peace, and not subject those closest to her. It was part of the reason why she’d held him at arm’s distance after the battle.
But it had taken until this very moment to wonder if perhaps Morrigan hadn’t been right that he was better off without her. Why else would have tried so hard with her?
It was tempting to stay in his personal space, but it was similarly just as tempting to give him a little more, since he’d been incredibly patient with her. “Just this once, you may join me.” A smirk on her face grew, and Nesta reached out to caress the tips of her fingers - the ones that had just been kissed by him - along part of his wing, before turning away and grabbing the bottle of wine as she started towards her library.
His smile could quite literally light up the room. Cassian was pleased that she had agreed to his company, and pleased that in some way he had won her over. Maybe just this once, maybe only for a short time, but he wouldn't take it for granted.
And then she was doing that thing again, her delicate slender hands tracing his wing and Cassian slowly, happily losing his mind about it. He swore, soft and nearly inaudible, because he could not hide it. His wings fluttered instinctually; it felt so intimate and at the same time, embarrassing. Cassian was a male of many talents but none of them involved the ability to not be honest—in words and in actions.
Again, he said, "Nesta," in that exasperated and utterly fond way, as she headed toward the library, wine in hand. He trailed after her, magnetized. An evening, of barely reading books and mostly staring at Nesta, loomed ahead; Cassian, as always, didn't mind.