Chapter Text
Identified patient: the one bringing the family into therapy. For the therapist, the IP is the one in whom the family's issues have emerged, and their problems often function to disguise deeper family conflict.
-from Gregory Bateson's work on family homeostasis
--
Nesta Archeron is hiding.
Tucked behind the guest house to escape the wind and prying eyes, she exhales slowly, her breath coming out in a white cloud.
Fucking Feyre.
Of course her sister wants to host Thanksgiving this year, her first after getting married. And of course that means everyone trekking upstate to their palatial white McMansion, though Nesta will never call it that out loud. She and her brother-in-law have a stiff relationship at the best of times, and one too many eye rolls might tip the scales.
She doesn't hate being here so much as she hates not wanting to be here. A normal person would look forward to gathering around a West Elm dining table and stuffing themselves full, taking bloated half-naps and yelling at the Washington Commanders, who are losing yet again. Or, if Elain gets hold of the remote, the Purina dog show, flip-flopped with the Puppy Bowl on commercials.
Nesta hates herself for hating it. Hates the way she cringes and recoils from hugs and questions about work (stressful) and her love life (excruciating). Hates that everyone else seems to know how to do this, how to enjoy the togetherness without feeling like their face will crack from plastered smiles.
Hence the cigarette, her third of the day so far. It's an American Spirit kind of day, even though they make her throat burn, because they last longer than any other brand. No one else smokes, thank god, and it's too ass-clenchingly cold for anyone to follow her outside for company. Nesta imagines they're just as relieved to be rid of her for ten minutes.
Other people have good memories of holidays, she supposes. The Archerons don’t. She hoped this year they could finally give up the performance, but instead they’ve only added new overpriced set pieces and expanded the cast.
Their new family, an absurd crew of parentless late twenty-somethings, each more ridiculous than the last.
Rhysand, her sister’s new rich-ass husband, picking invisible lint off dark violet cashmere and trying to hide his grimace when anyone forgets to use a coaster. Morrigan, his trust fund baby cousin whose sheer burgundy bodysuit is bafflingly inappropriate for the occasion, though it does mask the wine she’s started to slosh on it over the last hour. Amren and her boyfriend whose name Nesta doesn’t even know yet, for when he isn’t sticking his tongue down her throat he’s disappearing to the kitchen, the front hall, the car to fetch whatever it is the tiny woman requests next. Azriel, who never got the message that emo went out in 2010.
And Cassian, the typical gym-bro walking red flag taking up half the sectional and shoving canapes in his mouth three at a time. And still stupidly, obnoxiously handsome as he does it.
Their new family, in sickness and in health, til death do they part. Nesta takes another drag and feels guilty for hoping it kills her faster.
Because Feyre was so excited on the phone last month, clearly trying to have a corrective experience of some kind, and Nesta doesn't want to get in the way. But she can't help but feel like Banquo's ghost, the spectre at the feast, reminding her sister of the past lurking beyond these greige walls.
Of the little years, all three of them in matching dresses, their grandmama meting out tiny portions and commenting on the thickness of their arms. Then Mom getting sick, still a tyrant in the kitchen, wig perfectly in place. Niles Archeron's last-minute rotisserie chickens, a pathetic addition to Elain's famous Dollar Tree stuffing.
Miserable, all of it.
Always ending in a scene, someone crying or throwing something or storming out. Usually her.
And now the scrutiny, the first holiday season since last year's catastrophe that managed to top all the others. Nesta feels her mouth go dry, mental calculus beginning of how she could sneak—
"Want some company?"
Nesta startles and hides her cigarette behind her back out of habit as around the corner appears the second-to-last person she hopes to see.
Cassian has his annoyingly thick hair pulled back in a bun, a stray curl falling free over one eye. His hands are stuffed his pockets as he sidles toward her, smiling, deep green sweater bringing out the bronze in his skin. Broad shoulders hunch against the cold but there’s no hiding that strong chest, the one his friend (sister?) kept slapping with familiarity while she sat practically across his lap in the living room.
"It's not my house, you can do whatever you want," she scoffs, ashing her cigarette and scooting her wrought iron chair farther from the table with an unpleasant screech. She pulls her coat tighter about her front when the idiot takes it as an invitation to sit down opposite her.
"You got a light?"
Nesta tries to look disinterested when Cassian pulls a flat sliver case from his back pocket and extracts a neatly rolled joint, parking it between his lips. She hands over her lighter wordlessly, realizing too late it’s the one Gwyn printed her face on to encourage Nesta to quit smoking. He sneaks a look up toward the house before sparking up the twisted end, inhaling.
"You know it's legal here, right? Unless you enjoy sneaking around like a teenager," Nesta says, hoping he’ll take the hint. Instead he extends his long legs beneath the table, exhaling slowly.
"Nah, Rhys'll freak out. My body is healing every day I am smoke-free," he reads off the lighter, smirking as he glances back up at her. “Whoops.”
"Give me that,” she snarls, snatching it back. Up close she can see the gold in his eyes, trousers stretching around muscular thighs.“So your brother doesn’t just look like a he has a stick up his ass, then. Why risk it?"
"You've never spent a holiday with us. No way I'm making it through this shit unmedicated."
He doesn't elaborate, but Nesta catches a weariness when he pulls on the joint again, holding his breath. Her mouth itches, begging for a distraction.
"The way Feyre talks about you all, you'd think you're overflowing with familial bliss.”
Cassian smiles.
"Feyre’s a sweetheart, but she hasn’t been around long enough to know. Don't get me wrong,” he says when Nesta feels alarm cross her face, hackles raised in protectiveness. “Those idiots are mine forever. But we have our shit like any other family. Wanna trade?"
At first Nesta thinks he means trading families, but then he holds out the joint to her, pinched between a thumb and forefinger.
Memories of last year flood her mind, the dangling light in the kitchen, the staircase—
"I guess it can't make things worse."
Nesta inhales deep and holds it, exhales slightly and sucks back in out of habit, smoke dancing in front of her. When she offers it back to Cassian he's looking at her differently, as if he's just put something into place. They're both silent as he takes a drag of her cigarette.
His lips are soft and pink when they pull away in a grimace. "Eugh. I hate American Spirits."
"Ungrateful ass," Nesta grumbles, cheeks heating.
"Yeah probably. Kind of sacrilege on Thanksgiving, huh?"
It’s odd, how he’s disarming her. Not reacting to her jabs, her prickliness. If anything, he seems to have relaxed more as they’ve spoken, though that might just be the weed. Either way, it lowers her guard the tiniest bit, just enough to peek over.
"I'm not exactly bursting with gratitude at the moment, either."
"What's your excuse then?" he asks, tipping his face back toward the weak sun and closing his eyes. Nesta weighs her options as she stares at his profile, not wanting to reveal too much. She still has to make it through dinner. Dry leaves skitter across the patio, phantom whispers just out of earshot.
"Niles and I don't get along."
"Wow. Imagine having a kid and they end up calling you Niles," Cassian deadpans.
"This is the first time I've spoken to him since the wedding," Nesta hisses, looking away. Warm tingles seep through her body and the high loosens her tongue, letting the truth slip through the cage of her clenched teeth. "So 'Dad' doesn't exactly feel accurate."
A broad hand settles on her forearm, making her freeze.
"I'm fucking with you. Only people who deserve it should get to be called family."
Nesta pulls away slower than she means to, and Cassian mirrors her, settling back in his own chair. She takes in the slash through one of his dark eyebrows, rolling his words over in her head.
“Then what do you make of all this.. obligatory merging?”
“Don’t you want to be my family, Nes?”
His smirk is cryptic, and she can’t tell if the right answer is yes or no based on the blood now rushing into her cheeks. Nesta lights another cigarette off the end of the old one, feigning academic contemplation until her heart slows the fuck down.
"A: don’t call me that. And B: I’m not sure. You all are odd.” She gestures toward the house, the air crackling with cold and something else that makes her shiver. “You're like the Cullens. You say you're siblings but it seems like you all want to fuck each other."
Cassian's laugh rolls out like fog. "Not anymore. Well Az maybe, but that's a long story. Now we all want to fuck your family."
Nesta doesn’t miss the sweep of his eyes down her legs. She crosses them, feeling awkward.
"Niles is single.” She drags out the name, and his smile grows. “I'll let him know you're interested. He'd have to surgically detach Morrigan from your arm first."
The smile falters. Cassian scrubs a hand over his face and leans forward to rest his forearms on his thighs.
"Is that why you're hiding?"
"Kind of," he says offhandedly, rubbing his upper arms. "Fuck, it's freezing out here. You wanna go back in?"
"I-"
"Yeah me neither. Come on."
He stretches toward the keypad on the back door, punching in the code and twisting the doorknob before he stands. Inside it's warm, the apartment set-up understated but comfortable in shades of green and grey. A gas fireplace flickers along one wall, opposite the sofa where the contents of a huge black backpack are strewn.
“Sorry, I wasn’t expecting company,” he jokes, stuffing things into the backpack at random. Nesta catches the corner of a familiar foil wrapper, tries not to roll her eyes.
They’ve met before — once, at the wedding. He’s not her type, not by a long-shot, no hedge fund bro or corporate yuppie who makes her mother’s ghost stop screeching. But there’s no denying the certain magnetism she feels toward him. Can’t help but wonder where that tattoo ends, the one she spies on his side as he bends to pick up a pair of old basketball shorts.
He’s still got the joint clenched between his teeth, relighting it with a fancy stick lighter left on the coffee table for the dozens of candles Feyre’s put everywhere. Nesta takes it from him and lights one labeled ‘Gray Flannel’, whatever that means.
"For the smell,” she says when he looks confused.
“Thought for a second you were trying to set the mood.”
“Yes, because that’s exactly what I need right now: for my sisters to catch me fucking our new stoner brother-in-law at our first Thanksgiving.”
“Hey, you’re white, I’m brown. Just as the pilgrims intended.”
“God, this is a cursed holiday, isn’t it?”
“About as cursed as this house has to be.”
She can’t help but laugh. He’s not scared of her, either because he’s stupid or high enough he doesn’t feel the cuts of her sharp edges, but Nesta doesn’t know if she cares. It’s better than watching Niles try to talk about his moronic business ideas with Rhysand, as if he’s gained an investor in the marriage instead of a son.
Nesta settles down on the sofa while Cassian flips through the channels, pausing on Addams Family Values before lounging with both arms stretched across the back.
“Anjelica Huston, my beloved.”
She catches a whiff of his cologne as he wiggles to get comfortable. Woodsy and expensive, definitely a gift — from a girlfriend, maybe?
“Not who I would’ve pegged as your type.”
“Something about women who look like they’ll be mean to me. Short-circuits things upstairs,” he drawls, tapping his temple.
“And how’s your circuitry at the moment?”
Nesta realizes she’s miscalculated when Cassian looks over with heavy-lidded eyes, drags them up and down her body. Lingers on her face, the scowl that deepens in her horror, and smiles.
“Oh, I’m totally fucked.”
She doesn’t know who moves first, only that his face is suddenly very close to hers, smoke and cinnamon playing on his breath.
“And who’s your type, Nes?”
His hand is big and warm on her thigh, her mouth like a desert and her blood is singing, unencumbered for the first time in weeks, months. It’s so fucking tempting to fall down this spiral staircase again. And even though Nesta knows she shouldn’t, that there’s a house full of people up the hill who could make her life hell for this, she wants it. If only to feel anywhere but here.
Their lips meet, hot and insistent. He’s too good a kisser for someone so good-looking, and she’s suddenly determined to find something he’s bad at before the day is out. Within moments of kicking off her heels, she has him flat on his back on the sofa, staring up at her like she came straight from his dreams.
This is familiar, for Nesta. This is known. Cassian is just another one of the slideshow of faces who have been beneath her like this, kissed her neck like this, wound their hands through her hair. Another member of the lucky club to receive the gift of her very particular brand of genius. Here she feels powerful, masterful.
But something tugs at the back of her mind, something that doesn’t want her to perform the way she usually does.
Something tired.
It must be the weed.
“Sorry,” Cassian mumbles without sincerity against her throat, teeth scraping over the skin there. “I can be more uh.. receptive when I smoke.”
The muscles of his stomach are hard and grooved where they flex beneath her fingers. Nesta waits until she catches his eyes again, relishing in the way they dilate when she purrs, “My ex-fiance was the opposite. Couldn’t stop giggling when I just wanted him to fuck me,”
Cassian lets out a tortured sound and slides his hands beneath her blouse, across the scars on her lower back, sending a distinctly November chill down her spine.
Self-loathing begins to build alongside the burning need, and Nesta can’t help but remember this time last year, searing pain in her back. Her father’s disappointment, shattered glass. Blood and wine on the snow.
As if noticing she’s drifted, Cassian pulls her mouth back to his, gentler. His plush lips feel even softer than they look when they press against hers, hands cradling her face like she’s something precious.
The something tugs again, the tiredness. Nesta winds her fingers through silky dark curls and wonders if he’s like this will all the people he sleeps with. Because she’s barely done anything and he’s kissing her like a starving man, like his whole life has been leading to this moment. It feels too deliberate, too intentional to be a facade.
Her stomach flutters, a tender ache she hasn’t felt in years. It’s all happening too fast and Nesta feels like her head is one of those rides at the county fair, old round rainbow bulbs flashing, spinning and spinning.
“What is happening?” she gasps, to gone to be embarrased by how breathy she sounds.
“Are you okay?” Cassian props up on his elbows and has the audacity to look concerned, brushing stray hairs from her face. “Did you overdo it?
“No, I — this is nice.”
“I’m glad you think so.”
He sits up with renewed enthusiasm and gathers her closer where she straddles his lap now, grabbing huge handfuls of her ass. Nesta fumbles with the buttons on her shirt, fingers slipping on the silk.
"Cass, are you in there?"
A male voice through the door shatters their lusty haze, reality settling in the grooves of the shiplap lining the walls. Cassian shoots her a guilty look and calls back, "Yeah, what's up?"
"Dinner's in five," the voice responds, and Nesta can tell it’s Rhysand now from the crisp ‘v’. Fie-vuh.
"I'll be right out."
"Is Nesta with you? I haven't seen her."
Nesta clamps a hand over her mouth as if Rhysand can hear her breathing. Cassian gives her ass another squeeze and winks.
"Last I saw her she said she had to make a phone call, maybe she went to her car."
His reply is followed by a long silence on the other side of the door, and Nesta half-thinks Rhysand has gone back to the house until she hears him clear his throat.
"..are you smoking?"
The question is tentative, loaded. Her mind flashes back to Cassian’s furtive glances toward the house, the way he sat to better see someone approaching.
"It's mine,” she calls out before thinking, and Cassian’s eyes go wide with surprise. “Sorry, I didn't want to make anyone uncomfortable."
He regards her with a guilty sort of gratitude when they rise from the sofa, scurrying to straighten themselves when they hear the beeps of the keypad.
Rhysand looks annoyed when he appears in the doorway, though whether from the smell or the rumpled state of their clothing it's hard to say. Maybe both.
"Does Feyre know about this?" His voice is clipped, a splotchy red patch forming on one side of his neck. She notices Cassian move slighter in front of her, just the tiniest step as if to block her from his brother’s view.
Idiot. As if that could save her from the inevitable.
"I don't know," Nesta sighs, trying to muster a smile. Failing. "But I'm sure she will soon.”
Notes:
stay tuned for the next chapter, where we go inside cassian's big ol noggin and examine the circuitry nesta is definitely overloading
Chapter 2
Notes:
happy thangstgiving part II, this shit is straight bursting from my head like athena popped outta zeus’ dome fully-formed
CW for past sexual assault and childhood abuse, drug use, explicit sexual content, discussions of drug/alcohol abuse and sobriety, mental health crisis, and toxic families.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“The difference between passion and addiction is that between a divine spark and a flame that incinerates.”
―
Gabor Maté,
In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction
Cassian is not feeling full of holiday cheer.
He’s full of everything else — turkey, macaroni and cheese, Elain’s insanely good stuffing that tastes familiar somehow. Full of shit as he laughs loudly at Mor’s recounting of her date with a guy whose name neither of them will remember. Full of remorse when he sees Azriel tip another two fingers of bourbon into his glass, sinking lower into the chair by the window. Full of envy at the way Rhys and Feyre pet each other, the syrupy devotion in their eyes enough to put him off dessert.
And in spite of it all, he still feels empty.
He’s long thought it his lot in life to feel chronically empty, born with missing pieces. Where others have memories of family beach trips, biking in the neighborhood, squishing onto the same couch to watch Aladdin, he has nothing, a hole where those experiences should be. A vague memory of watching Aladdin on the RadioShack display TVs at the mall, straining to read the characters’ lips because they’ll chase him out of the store if he tries to linger.
It’s too boring to be depressing in any satisfying kind of way. Big trauma gives people something to rage against, an enemy to fight and overcome. The empty spaces do nothing but whistle when he tries to blow through them, and scratching at the walls only hurts himself in the end. He’s given up on trying to make sense of it, come to accept that his birth was an inevitable factory error on the conveyor belt of human beings, spitting him out with a defect but shipping him off anyway.
His family would call his bullshit, tell him he’s feeling sorry for himself. Cassian wonders who’s going to be sorry if not for him. Someone has to hold the blame, and with no other shoulders to bear it, he’s become the Atlas of his own pain.
He remembers thumbing through the books on Greek gods and goddesses in the public library on rainy days, admiring how strong the demigod looked, the corded muscles capable of lifting so much. The hours he’s spent in the gym to look like that, to be that powerful, so anybody would think twice about fucking with him. Now he thinks them necessities of survival, that Atlas had no choice but to strengthen lest he be crushed.
Strength that lives too in easy laughs and unruffled shrugs, the laidback persona that puts everyone else at ease so they can’t see how hard he’s working. Because when Cassian falls apart, the rest of them cascade in succession without fail.
Mor needs him more than the others, needs another body strapped under the crossbar on the unrelenting rollercoaster of her life. Azriel will disappear into depression if Cassian isn’t careful, if he isn’t consistent about making sure they see each other face-to-face. Rhys is haunted by his own demons, quick to get tyrannical and impulsive when he sees the others spinning out.
So Cassian goes to the gym with Az and has weekly debriefs with Mor and makes fun of Rhys enough he remembers other people have opinions, and all the while ignores how the empty spaces ache.
But then he sees blue-gray eyes, a scowl the exact curve of the missing piece in his heart, and he wonders if it was carved out just so she can nestle inside.
He recognized her from the wedding, of course. Looking petal-soft in lavender, her hair pulled up with wisps about her face. Slut strands, Mor called then when she leaned over beside him at the head table. Rhys told me about her, she’s a nightmare. Steer clear.
Cassian doesn’t want to steer clear of Nesta Archeron, not then and not tonight. He wants to know why she frowns like that, why she puffs up like a hedgehog every time he tries to get close. Why it doesn't bother him, why he finds it weirdly endearing, this spiky woman who wants absolutely nothing to do with him.
Or so he thought before this afternoon.
“Care to explain yourself?”
Mor nods after where he’s watching Nesta disappear into the kitchen to help Elain with dessert. She has her legs draped across his lap again, stocking feet wriggling as if to entice him to rub them.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Cassian drags a thumb up one of her insoles out of habit. They’ve always been like this with each other, himself so touch-starved, and her needing a convenient excuse to avoid—
Anyway.
“There are a million other disaffected women on Bumble tonight just begging to be rescued from their families,” Mor is saying when he tunes back in. “Stop being lazy and settling for the one you’re related to now.”
She tugs at a curl of his hair that’s sprung free—from Nesta’s hands he thinks, the sharp press of her nails still imprinted on his scalp. God, her skin was so fucking soft, the smell of her perfume, that perfect scowl making him crazy. He glares at Rhys again where his brother is tilting up Feyre’s chin to kiss her. Mor takes a healthy sip of wine, brown eyes narrowing, and Cassian prepares himself for another of her drunk lectures.
“Rhys and Azriel are too nice to say it, so I will. You can’t just fuck the next charity case because you don’t want to deal with your problems, Cass.”
Resentment boils low in his stomach, somewhere next to the tiny finger food he housed before dinner to avoid looking between the woman on his lap and the brother in the shadows now going slightly cross-eyed. His high is fading and Cassian feels himself turning cranky in the comedown.
“What are my problems, Mor? Enlighten me. Finally use that Psych minor for something.”
“You can be a real asshole, you know that? We’re your family, we care about you in case you fucking forgot.”
“Caring about me feels a lot like telling me what to do.”
Mor crosses her arms, pouting in a way that makes her look seven instead of twenty-seven. “I’m not doing this shit with you again.”
“What does that mean?”
“This. You getting into shit again because you can’t keep your dick in your pants. Because you have no self-control.” She tosses blonde hair over one shoulder, put out. “I’m over it, Cass. I’m tired of making sure my ringer is on as loud as possible at night in case you’re in trouble.”
“I never asked you to do that.”
“No, but you did promise to be a part of my life forever and that means I get to have an opinion about what you’re doing to yourself.”
Cassian’s mind flashes to high school, her Dr. Pepper Lipsmackers in his cupholder. Sees her smoking menthols on the curb in the 7-11 parking lot, Azriel’s lovestruck glances as she needs both hands to lift the full Colt45 to her lips. The plaid of her school uniform skirt floating back and forth on the lamp-lit swing set as he tries to teach Rhys to throw a decent punch.
The bite of an X-acto knife into his palm, the press of four hands together, sealing them forever. The red of a hundred dresses. The red of her blood.
“Mor—”
“No, shut the fuck up.”
Others are turning their way now, and Cassian forces his face into an easy smile, lowering his voice as he hisses through his teeth, “What about you and Az, huh? Do you enjoy torturing him or are you really that much of a coward?”
He digs into her foot a little harder than he should, holiday fatigue making him feel cruel.
“Cass—”
“You think I’m the only one with problems? What about Rhys and his child bride?”
Mor makes a sloppy move to cover his mouth, but Cassian catches her wrist, holding fast. He can smell the cab sav in her glass, dangerously close to spilling onto the white sofa.
“Don’t get me wrong, I love Feyre, but seriously Mor?” he murmurs low, so only she can hear. “She’s twenty-one. They’re barely known each other a year. That doesn’t make you feel a little weird?”
Mor clicks her tongue. “They love each other.”
“Yeah, I’m sure that’ll hold up in court.”
She regards him for a long moment, and Cassian realizes she’s checking his pupils. Half-expects her to start patting down his pockets and shifts away, her feet thunking onto the floor.
“Do I need to be worried about you?”
It’s a generic question with a specific meaning, and he knows there’s only one acceptable answer if he wants any peace tonight.
“No,” he lies. “You don’t.”
Cassian doesn’t tell her about the nightmares that have plagued him recently, how more mornings than not he wakes in sheets drenched with sweat. How he’s having the old thoughts again, a bad case of the fuck-its, exhausted by trying to keep up with what everyone expects of him. How he’s empty and lonely and lost again. That maybe it never stopped.
Because he knows what will happen if he tells the truth. In his mind he sees his family five years ago on the sofa in his wrecked apartment, Az helping him pack a bag, white linoleum and plasticy blue mattress protectors.
“You’d tell me if I did, right?”
“Of course.” The second lie rolls out smoother, and Cassian feels a sick sort of pride when Mor drains her glass, content to move on.
The next hour passes without event save for much ooh-ing and aah-ing over Elain’s rosette-style apple pie. Everyone’s starting to get drowsy now the sun has set, and Cassian helps Mor hobble upstairs to one of the guest rooms when her words become conjoined and wavy. Az seems to perk up a bit after her exit, debating with Amren about cryptocurrency, a large black coffee clutched in a scarred hand.
Nesta remains in a large armchair in the corner throughout, feet tucked under her and a thick book in her lap. Feyre tries to engage her every now and then, but the conversations quickly run dry, a cracked riverbed in a drought. Cassian wants to go over and talk to her more, find out what she’s reading, what she’s thinking. But he feels Rhys’ eyes on him, disapproving, and he doesn’t want to risk getting her in deeper shit.
It was kind of Nesta to take the fall for him earlier. Just how kind she doesn’t even know. Cassian finds himself wanting to tell her, if only so he can put his lips near her ear again. He’s quickly becoming obsessed with her, how she’s surprising in ways few people are, complex, guarded.
And yeah, okay, it doesn’t hurt that she’s fucking stunning.
Cassian catches her slipping out while her dad is leaving, giving him a subtle cock of her head in invitation to follow her out into the backyard, unnoticed in the flurry of coats and Tupperware and awkward one-armed hugs.
It makes his heart hurt a little, knowing she doesn’t expect her dad to come find her to say goodbye, maybe even to notice. He wonders what it’s like lose a parent while they’re still alive.
He catches up to her on the swing, the last remnant of the family whose house Rhys and Feyre tore down. A single plank is tied to two ropes secured high in the walnut tree.
“Had enough togetherness?”
Nesta huffs without turning around at his words, fingers curling around the ropes as she pushes herself back and forth gently.
“Just needed some air.”
His hands on her mid-back are tentative when he gives her a small push, and Cassian feels a leap of triumph when she tucks up her feet so they don’t drag in the leaves.
“Thanks for taking the fall earlier, by the way.”
“Tell me why you didn't want Rhysand to catch you."
It’s halfway between an invitation and a demand. Nesta shifts her grip on the ropes and he feels the lie roll forward on his tongue. But he owes her one, and something about her earlier intuition on the Mor of it all makes him pause.
“Do you actually want to know or is this just to get dirt on me?”
“What do you think?
“Definitely for blackmail.”
Cassian’s grin is unabashed when she rolls her eyes.
“Fine, then. I don’t want to know anymore.”
"I used to play hockey, tore my ACL bad. Bad enough they gave me a fuckton of Norcos and, well." He shrugs. This part of the story is well-trod at this point. "When you're nineteen with no parents and nothing ahead of you, getting high seems like a good enough idea."
Nesta has stilled on the swing but he can tell she’s listening from the slight tilt of her chin over one shoulder. It makes the next part easier, his palms sweating despite the chill air.
"It got pretty rough for a while. They had an intervention, told me how my addiction was affecting them and everything. I went to rehab, sober living, the whole deal. I do meetings every now and then, but it's not really for me."
"But you're not sober now."
Cassian looks for judgment in the words and finds none. Looks again. Still comes up empty.
"I guess technically not. But I don't drink much anymore and I haven't touched an opiate in four years. What do they call it now? California sober or some dumb shit. I don't know if it's right or wrong, but it helps with my PTSD."
She doesn’t press for details, and for that he’s grateful, feeling too raw with the wind whistling through his missing spaces.
"Then why hide it?"
"It freaks them out, I think. Az knows, but Mor would fucking flip. I just don't want the scrutiny."
Nesta stands then, her hair stirring in the night breeze and she’s beautiful in a way that almost hurts. He's half-terrified she's about to say something like I'm so sorry you went through that and can't bear the idea of it.
"Are you heading back down tonight?" Cassian hears himself saying, already knowing this is a horrible idea. Something the old him would do, but his rational self seems to have taken the holiday off, too.
"No, I was just going to find a hotel when I get tired."
"Stay with me." He gestures toward the guest house, its windows glowing yellow. "If you want. If you'd like to. I could use the company."
“Are you sure that’s your invite to extend?”
Nesta glances up at the main house, and he follows her gaze to where Rhys and Feyre are visible in the kitchen, inside of each others’ mouths. Cassian winks when she looks back at him, all the bravado he has left.
“I guess you’ll have to be brave enough to find out.”
He can’t help but press her against the door with his body the moment they’re back inside, reeling at the height difference when she discards her heels.
“Seems someone’s changed their opinion of me,” Cassian teases when Nesta rips out his hair tie, digging her fingers into his curls once more.
“As if I’ve had an opinion of you at all.”
“You seemed to want nothing to do with me at the wedding.” His mouth traces a hot trail along the underside of her jaw, searching for weaknesses.
“That’s not true.”
“Yes it is. I asked you to dance and you shot me down.”
“I didn’t..” She moans when he finds a sensitive spot behind her ear, his blood singing with victory. “It wasn’t you. I didn’t want to answer any questions. The idea of having to debrief with my sisters made me nauseous.”
“How come?”
“Don't—”
Nesta pushes at his shoulders so his mouth detaches from her collarbone. Cassian can’t look away from her full lips but feels her scanning his face for something, a curl of self-consciousness rising in the back of his mind.
"Last Thanksgiving I broke up with my fiance, told my dad I hated him, then got so blackout I fell down the stairs and ended up in the hospital," she says in a clipped voice.
Cassian’s eyes snap to hers, passion doused. It feels like a gauntlet has been thrown at his feet, and it takes a moment for her words to sink in, each revelation in succession.
"Jesus."
"I know, it's pathetic."
It’s not what he’s expecting, and Nesta looks so hollow as she says it that he can’t help but cradle her face in both hands, thumbs brushing soft skin.
"It’s fucking intense is what it is, Nes, I’m glad you’re okay. Is that why your sisters worry?"
"They’re probably more worried I’d embarrass them, but I don't know. We’ve never talked about it."
"Fuck, really? You were upset enough to drink that much and no one said anything?"
She’s biting her lip hard now, and Cassian wonders if he’s opened a door too quickly. If he’s so eager not to be alone that he’s ripped away her shield without asking what she’s defending herself against.
"Feyre came to see me in the ER and Elain checked in on me about once a week until I left treatment. But otherwise no. I don't think they expected anything less from me. Typical over-dramatic Nesta."
“What happened?”
“No.”
Her golden brown hair glows as she sidesteps him and moves farther into the living room, fingers rubbing at her temples.
“Why not?” Cassian pursues her on slower steps, not wanting to press his luck but feeling something kindred in her wanting to surface. “What have you go to lose? I shared my shit with you. Not that it means you have to, but. Y’know. I get it. Or I’d like to.”
A single knock interrupts them. Cassian swears if it’s Rhys behind the door, he doesn’t care whose fucking house it is, he’s going to kick his brother in the dick.
“Oh, hey.”
It’s Azriel who stands on the tiny stoop instead, eyes shadowed in the downcast porch light.
“I’m heading out, I just wanted to say bye.”
“Yeah, of course man. I’m sorry we didn’t get to chill more.” They clasp hands, shoulders bumping together. “We still on for Sunday?”
“Yeah, I’ll be there. See you, Cass,”
A flash of bitterness crosses Azriel’s face as he turns to go, almost too quick to register. But Cassian’s learned to read people the hard way.
“Hey, Az,” he calls after him. “Are we good?”
“Why wouldn’t we be?”
“You tell me.” Cassian crosses his arms over his chest, the past converging into a hundred nights like this, the never-ending routine of self-defeat. “Why are you doing this to yourself?”
“I could ask you the same thing.” Azriel looks pointedly behind him at the closed door, where Nesta is still inside. Cassian can’t help his chuckle.
“We’re determined not to learn our lessons, aren’t we?”
His brother shakes his head, suppressing a grin. Cassian walks into the yard and pulls Azriel into a tight hug before the latter can slip away.
“Happy Thanksgiving. I’ll see you soon. I love you.”
“Love you, too,” Az grumbles, but Cassian knows what it means to say it, and he releases his brother in mercy. Watches him weave through the pools of light on the pathway until he slumps into the backseat of Amren’s Tesla.
Nesta is quiet when he walks back in, stretched out on the sofa, staring at the fire. Cassian is shivering despite his short venture outside, so he can’t resist sliding down behind her, skimming a hand over the curve of her waist beneath the soft silk.
“Sorry, you were saying—”
“Stop talking.”
Then she’s on top of him again, weaving back and forth like a cobra, only he’s the one who’s hypnotized. Feels what little shame he has left when he groans as she takes off her shirt, his hands skimming up her stomach to cup her breasts through the pale blue lace of her bra. Tugs her down so he can get his mouth on something, anything.
He’s tasting everything about her, the past written across her skin like the freckles on her shoulders. It’s hard to figure out why he’s so fucking high on her except for the fact that his confession has freed him, that he doesn’t have to pretend. That he can be as fucked up as he is and still she’ll moan and throw her head back, still she’ll grip tighter around his biceps and grind down into his lap.
It’s all so fucked but he doesn’t care. Tomorrow she’ll go back to the city and tell her friends about the huge mistake she made over the holiday. How she was in her feelings and settled for a Mr. Red Flag with too much baggage to ever take on a couples vacation, to ever move into a house like the one up on the hill.
He’ll always be a man with a shadow cast across him, always damaged in the eyes of those who’ve seen him crumble no matter how much work he does. It’ll never matter, at least not in any way that counts.
But with Nesta, he feels the faintest glimmer of possibility. Cassian wants to give her everything, wants to go back in time and become whole again for her. It’s bizarre, the hold this woman has on him already. How he knows he'll beg to worship at her altar, devoted to her pleasure, to have a worthy purpose in his life once more.
Codependent, he hears Mor say in his head, though she’s fucking one to talk. Curling around him like a weed while Azriel got more and more wasted, Cassian himself claustrophobic and guilt-riddled. And yet he’s the one with problems, he’s the one who needs to be monitored, according to Rhys, to all of them. They still can’t fucking trust him after all this time. Cassian loves his family, but in this moment he hates them too.
So he can understand the desperation with which Nesta crushes her mouth to his, drags his sweater over his head and tears at his belt buckle. He understands the need to just feel one good thing, to have ownership over your own pleasure. That’s what the pills gave him at the end of the day, the ability to stop being buffeted around by the wind and float above all the shit. To not feel for one fucking second the crushing weight of all the earth on top of him, all he had to dig through to get free.
His current therapist would tell him to be self-compassionate, his old sponsor would tell him to be disciplined. His former coach would tell him to shut the fuck up, Valladares, I don’t care if you’re fucking dying, get out there and fucking play.
His mother would say nothing.
“Cassian, are you crying?”
Fuck.
He is crying.
Notes:
i would apologize for all my mythology and shakespeare allusions, but i’m just trying to honor the classic literary tradition of using others’ work to explain your points better than you could
if this made you ouch, it made me ouch, too. maybe we can meet there and have a lil coffee or tea or joint or cigarette. or kiss.
Chapter 3
Notes:
full disclosure that i didn't edit this very much
and big big content warning for discussion of past sexual violence
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
For Scylla is not mortal; moreover she is savage, extreme, rude, cruel and invincible. Then we entered the Straits in great fear of mind, for on the one hand was Scylla, and on the other dread Charybdis kept sucking up the salt water.
-Homer's Odyssey
---
“What’s wrong, are you okay?”
Bewildered doesn’t even scratch the surface of how Nesta feels as all six feet four inches of Cassian begins to shudder with sobs beneath her. The absurdity of both their shirtlessness falls away when he sits up and smacks his palms over his eyes and cries harder, tears leaking out the sides.
“What’s wrong?” she repeats. “Is it something I did?”
He makes a muffled sound somewhere between choking and laughing. “No. God. You’re too nice to me. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Nesta feels awkward as she strokes hair back from his face, one hazel eye peeking out between his fingers. “Tell me what’s happening.”
Cassian pulls his hands away at last, sniffling, sucks a deep breath in and out as though through a straw. Rivulets still stream down his face, drip onto her skin when he rests his hands on her waist and his forehead on her shoulder.
“I don’t know, today was just a lot. I can take my family one at a time, but when we’re all together it brings up so much shit.”
“Like what you mentioned before?” Her own voice is small to her ear, the back of his neck warm beneath her fingers.
“Kind of.”
“Then what?
Nesta doesn’t know why she’s being so persistent. Maybe because he tried to do the same for her, even if she wasn’t receptive. Maybe because she’s lonely and wants to crawl inside his pain and out of her own. The fire flickers, illuminating the dimensions in his black hair.
“A few months before I got hurt, Mor and I had sex,” he says quietly.
She hates herself for recoiling a bit, the reaction automatic. Hates herself because when he tilts his head back, Cassian looks so fucking wrecked, that whatever was lost goes much deeper than pride.
“Mor’s old family is super Christian,” he explains, shifting so Nesta is seated between his spread legs, her knees around his hips. “Super uptight and controlling. Purity culture bullshit and all that.”
She nods, familiar with this sort of suffocation. Her mother’s family isn’t far-off.
“Her dad was trying to make some ‘courtship’ happen or whatever the fuck they call it, some guy they decided was ‘suitable’ without even consulting her.”
He looks at his hands. A tiny part of her feels sorry for Morrigan, knowing what that pressure is like. Then Nesta remembers her brand new sister-in-law cornering her in the bathroom at the wedding, hissing at her to stay the fuck away from Cassian.
It makes sense now in a way that turns her thoughts sluggish and hopeless. How her reputation precedes her, a bad influence. The desire to give up is a riptide that threatens to pull her under.
But Cassian sucks in another one of those deep, slow breaths and it centers her too, the slow rub of his hand on her thigh grounding both of them. It’s more important to show up right now than be swallowed by the past, she thinks. To be the one holding the lantern in the dark cave of his memories, if only because she knows how it feels to be left alone in the black.
Cassian clears his throat.
“She’d come visit Rhys in the summers in high school, and the four of us got close. Azriel was in love with her. I think I was a little in love with her, too, if only because she was a girl who wanted to hang out with us. And I was jealous when Mor and Az started flirting, doing things together without the rest of us.
“So when she came to my dorm one night and my roommate was out, I was too weak to turn her down. Apparently her engagement had just been made official. I didn’t realize it was her first time until it was too late.”
Fresh tears begin again, and Cassian lets them fall unadulterated this time. His face is still deeply handsome, somehow even moreso in its complete nakedness. Nesta feels like she can see all of him, even the parts she doesn’t recognize yet, and a terrified fascination pounds in time with her heart.
“Did her family freak out?”
“They fucking disowned her. But not before her dad beat the shit out of her.”
It all comes crashing in, the magnitude. Why he was so cagey earlier when she mentioned Morrigan, why he dotes on her, practically carrying her up the stairs. For a moment Nesta worries that’s what he’s doing with her, drawn to wounded birds, seeking misplaced absolution.
But isn’t that what she wants herself? To fall over into his strong arms and have him take it all away?
"What happened to you?” she says instead, self-conscious of how lame it sounds in her mouth.
“Rhys beat the shit out of me when he found out, said I should’ve known better.” He thumbs the scar on his eyebrow absentmindedly. “She was so scared, wanted to ruin herself in their eyes, to get out of it. I didn’t know. I didn’t know what would happen, what they’d do to her. I didn’t know that just by being the wrong type of guy, having one moment of jealous weakness, I’d ruin her fucking life.”
“She doesn’t seem like her life is ruined.”
“That’s not…it doesn’t matter.”
“Did she know what would happen?”
“I don’t—yeah, I think so.”
Nesta feels him receding when Cassian picks up the silver case from the coffee table, the mask slipping back into place. It’s almost eerie to think of him in the living room earlier smiling and joking, now knowing all this has been brewing under the surface.
He lights up the half-finished joint and sighs with relief, wiping at his face with the back of a hand. Like a felled tree he teeters backward, head landing on the sofa with a thump.
“So now you know the worst thing about me. I’m not offended if you’d rather sleep up at the house.”
“What are you talking about?” Nesta asks automatically, still trying to put the pieces together. “Why would I be put off?”
“Everyone else is when I bring this shit up. Just give it enough time and I’ll fuck up your life, too.”
Her confusion crystallizes as she peers down at the swirls of tattoos painting his chest, the soft hand returned to her thigh, that this isn't how he sees himself. In his head, he's the center of a radius of destruction. Defective, doomed to contaminate anything he touches because.. why?
If it were herself, Nesta would say it’s because she’s incapable of getting close to anyone without lashing out or running away. But it’s like Cassian can’t see the situation clearly in the cracked mirror of his memories, distorted by time and the absence of anyone else taking accountability. She wonders how many times he’s lashed himself like this in penance, if he knows it’s unearned.
“You can’t keep holding yourself hostage over things that happened ten years ago. It honestly don’t sound like your fault.”
“Who else is to blame then, Nesta?” He spreads his arms wide at their audience of no one. “Who’s going to own up? Mor? Her dad? Fucking Jesus Christ himself?”
“How about all of the above?”
“No,” he growls. There’s an anger building somewhere. Nesta is surprised to find it doesn’t scare her. Surprised when it enlivens her, old parts creaking back to life.
“Yes,” she says with even more venom, satisfied when Cassian’s eyes go a little wide. “Would you have turned her down if you knew they’d hurt her?”
“Yeah, but—”
“And if she’d told you she was in danger, would you have done anything else you could to help her?”
“Yes.”
“Alright then.”
Nesta crosses her arms across her chest, realizes how it closes her off and drops them back by her sides. Cassian looks up at her from his back, eyes hazy. Thinking.
Then he raises a hand to brush his fingertips down his cheek, mouth curving up on one side.
“Is it weird if I say this is making me hungry?"
Nesta tries to be as quiet as possible when she sneaks back into the kitchen for her purse, but Feyre is already padding downstairs in a silk robe, thwarting her plans.
“Oh, hey. I didn’t know you were still here.”
Her sister looks even younger in the kitchen, hair loose about her shoulders. Like a child in their parents’ house, how she could’ve looked if their mom had lived and Niles were less perpetually self-interested. Nesta doesn’t know if it would’ve been any happier.
“Um.”
Feyre is oblivious to Nesta’s thoughts as she pulls a SmartWater from the cabinet-front fridge. “Look. I don’t care what you’re doing, have fun. I just wanted.. Rhys told me you were smoking weed out there earlier which, like, I don’t care, like I said. But. I just want to like make sure you’re okay.”
“I’m fine. It was weird seeing Dad,” Nesta offers when Feyre frowns, heading off the conclusions her sister is about to jump to. “But I had a nice time. Thanks for inviting me.”
Her mind travels down the hill to where she pictures Cassian splashing water on his tear-streaked face, packing up the rest of his stuff.
“Seems like you're about to have an even nicer time.” Feyre waggles her eyebrows and laughs, turning serious when it subsides. “Just don’t hurt him, okay? He’s a good guy.”
The accusation stings. Nesta pauses in her side-stepping toward the front door and put her hands on her hips.
“He’s a grown man, and I’m not a serial killer.”
“I just don’t want you to do what you usually do.”
“What I usually do,” she repeats, unable to help the contempt sneaking through.
Feyre huffs and emerges from the fridge once more, a slice of Elain’s maple pecan pie in one hand. “Come on, Nesta. You know how you are. How you can be with guys.”
“Yes, please enlighten me on your personal analysis of my behavior.”
“You’ll chew him up and spit him out.” Her sister’s words are thick around the pie in her mouth, belying their sharpness. “And then every holiday for the rest of my life I’ll have to worry about it being fucking awkward.”
An Archeron trait, this forked tongue of theirs. Nesta opens her mouth to retort and feels overcome by the tiredness again. She can do everything in her power and it’ll never be enough, forever frozen in time in the eyes of her family. Her mother’s finally gotten what she’s always wanted, a flower under a bell jar, suffocated and stationary.
But her mother is dead, and this is only one narrow strait of the world, and her broken brain has never been good at knowing what’s best for her anyway. She hears footsteps scraping up the path, makes for the front hall before she says something she’ll regret or gets trapped in the whirlpool, a Scylla and Charybdis of her own creation.
"Feyre, I promise, I'm figuring things out.” Her sister looks torn as Nesta digs out her keys, shadows of her lashes long across her cheeks. “I need some space. Please respect that."
“Okay, just don’t…” Feyre trails off. “You’re going to do what you want no matter what I say, aren't you?”
“Yes.” The piney night air stings her nose when Nesta pulls the door open, spots the tall figure leaning against her car. “I am.”
The butter yellow Waffle House sign is the only source of light on the highway, and as Nesta pulls into the parking lot Cassian can’t help but feel like he’s traveling through time. There’s a comfort in going somewhere you’ve been a million times, even if the location and layout are a little different. The familiarity of knowing how to move your body through the space, how to be, what you’re here for.
The black-aproned line cook tilts his chin up in greeting. They slide into a booth in the far corner and Cassian could be nineteen again, napkins pressed against his split eyebrow, Rhys’ bloody knuckles.
Nesta orders just a coffee, not touching the giant rectangular menu. He’s not sure how much stamina she left has for these kinds of conversations tonight, but he wants to be able to take as much as she can give.
Has to. Owes her that much.
“So, the fiance. Take it from the top.”
Nesta sighs, and he wishes they were sitting on the same side of the table so he could wrap an arm around her shoulders. It’s probably for the better. It would probably send her bolting.
“His name was Tomas. Tomas Mandray.”
The waitress swings by and drops a shallow dish of creamers on the table, and Nesta curls further over her mug, cradling it with both hands. Cassian motions for her to continue as he pours two creamers and two sugar packets in his own cup.
“We met in undergrad. I was a sophomore and he was a senior. He was everything I was brought up to want — respected family, from money, engineering major. Decent penis.”
Cassian chokes into his coffee and Nesta gives him an annoyed look, as if to say keep up, idiot.
“There were always rumors, other girls saying he’d been texting them on the side, said they’d gone home with him after a party. I didn’t pay any attention to it because I thought that was how women are. I was in a sorority, I was —this is mortifying— I was on the pageant circuit in my early teens, and so the lying and backstabbing was normal to me.”
“Nesta Archeron, beauty queen. I never would’ve guessed.”
His head is filled with visions of her in sparkly gowns and stiff hairstyles, that perfect scowl under hot stage lights.
“Oh, I was horrible. I couldn’t answer the questions, couldn’t smile, I hated the dresses. I was so awkward. But it was the only way my mom would let me keep taking dance lessons, so I muscled through.”
“Do you still do it?”
“What, pageants?”
“No, dance.”
“I—no, I haven’t for a long time.”
Too quickly their waitress slides a waffle the size of a Frisbee in front of him, and Cassian shoves a forkful in his mouth.
“So you thought those other girls were jealous or whatever,” he says thickly, reaching for the syrup. “Trying to sabotage you.”
“I guess. It’s hard to remember how I felt back then.”
“But you eventually got engaged.”
“Yeah." Nesta hesitates. "We broke up and got back together a couple times. I could always tell Niles was disappointed when we split up. I think he saw us getting married as some kind of meal ticket.”
“He must be thrilled about Feyre and Rhys, then.”
Nesta scoffs. “Oh believe me, he saw dollar signs all over that house. I’d give it a week before he asks to partner in an 'exciting new business endeavor’.”
Cassian catalogs the information, not sure how to broach it with Rhys. “Anyway.”
“Anyway. Tomas proposed, I said yes because there was no good reason to say no, we moved in together. I started planning a wedding. but something was off. He was gone at weird hours, sometimes didn’t answer my texts for a while. Why am I telling you this?”
“Because I want to know. Because it'll make you feel better."
"Do you feel better?"
Cassian is tempted to feel embarrassed until he realizes it's a genuine question, the dart of her stormy eyes between his own. "Yeah, I do."
Nesta signs and rubs at her temples. He wonders if she gets like him, when it feels like his head will burst from the cascade of memories.
"Fine. But you're not allowed to feel bad for me."
"I don't think you have control over that, Nes."
“No. All I want is to not have to make anyone else feel better about what happened to me. To me,” she repeats, and Cassian thinks perhaps it was always supposed to go like this, that every fuck-up and dark-patterned year was leading him here. To her.
It’s a crazy thought, the kind that’s sure to end with him heartbroken, but he’s able to speak in full truth when he says, “I can give you that.”
Wariness is her first reaction, followed by an attempt to smooth her expression back over. He doesn’t falter. This is part of it. She’s allowed to react however she wants. It won’t change his desire to show up for her.
“Whatever you need to throw at me, I can take it. I won’t break.”
“Oh no, I think you mean that.” She looks sad for some reason, not what he's expecting.
“It doesn’t have to be a bad thing,” he jokes, squeezing her hand once more before pulling back. “We can trade. I’ll give you one of mine and you give me one of yours.”
Nesta looks wary but nods her head the slightest bit, neck stiff. Cassian anchors in the gray-blue sea of her eyes, to hold himself fast.
“I’m so sick of being the fucking problem. I’m so tired of feeling like I can’t say I’m struggling without everyone immediately jumping to conclusions or assuming the worst.” The words feel like they’re someone else’s, whoever is hiding inside his head. “I want to be allowed to move forward with my fucking life without having to keep it together all the time.”
He looks at her expectantly, all his guts hanging out. Nesta's fingers twitch around her mug.
“Tomas was cheating on me. I picked up his phone last Thanksgiving to see what time his mom wanted us over, and I saw sexts from another girl. Didn't even try to hide it."
"God, what a scumbag."
Nesta's lips are pressed in a tight line, and he realizes she waiting for him, not ready for whatever comes next.
"I fantasize about having regular people problems. I want to get stressed about what to bring to the work potluck. I want to worry if my neighbors are talking shit about my landscaping."
Nesta huffs a laugh, and Cassian can tell she doesn't want to, but he feels the thrill of victory anyway. It ebbs quickly when she glances over her shoulder, making sure the staff is out of earshot.
"When I confronted him, he attacked me. Tried to rape me. That’s how I got the scars on my back."
Rage explodes in his head, and he can't help gripping his fork so tightly it's liable to bend. She has that challenge in her eye again, expecting him to make this about himself. He takes one of the deep breaths his inpatient counselor taught him, picturing the sunrise over the lake at the family cabin. Nesta waits for him to settle before going on, her clear voice halting.
"I managed to kick him in the balls and got away. And all I could think was: oh my god, I’m a fucking statistic. I’m going to wear this for the rest of my life, be the stupid, weak woman who should’ve known better.”
The look in Nesta’s eyes is challenging, as if daring him to say something to send her running. He doesn’t. Only picks up another piece of himself and offers it to her.
"I'm a product of rape. I've never thought those things about my mom."
It catches her off guard, he can tell, shock reverberating through her tightly-coiled body. For a moment Cassian worries that he's gone too far, but then Nesta takes a steadying sip of her coffee and sets it down nearer to him, their heads closer together.
“I called my dad for reasons I still don’t understand he said, ‘Can’t you hold out for a little bit longer? At least wait until you qualify for alimony’.”
“Jesus fuck.”
Cassian can’t help letting the curse past his teeth, sucker-punched by the audacity. Nesta doesn’t seem to mind, thankfully, a rueful smile pulling at the corner of her lips.
“The irony is I made more money than Tomas at that time, but I’d never tell Niles that. He’d show up on my doorstep with his hand out.” She takes his fork from his fist and cuts a tiny corner of waffle, stares back at him. He licks his lips.
“Is that one or two?”
“One.”
“I want to know what happened after that. How you ended up in the hospital. Why you and your sisters never talked about it.”
It’s cheating but he doesn’t care, so sucked in by wanting to find her, to feel her, to see her. Nesta frowns but obliges, to his surprise.
“After I hung up, I sat at my kitchen table and drank three bottles of wine until I blacked out. I was on my way to get in my car when I fell down the stairs. Could've fucking killed someone.”
“How do you know that?”
“I came to when I was falling. I could hear the keys.”
“You could’ve just been going out for a walk.”
Nesta waves him off, glancing back at the waitress to gesture for a refill. She's so quick to believe the worst of herself. They both stare as black liquid fills her cup, and she sighs, toying with the hair above her ear.
“After that I couldn’t bear to tell anyone why I called off the wedding. I just couldn’t. It was too humiliating. So Tomas told everyone he dumped me because I was mentally unstable and, well.” She makes a face and he has the wild desire to lean across the table and kiss her. “I can’t say I blame anyone for believing him. I’m a fucking mess.”
“Don’t say that,” Cassian says before meaning to. Impulse control of a drunk toddler, he hears Amren mutter when he reaches to grab Nesta’s hand, too. “It’s not—” He can’t find the words, the wave of feeling rushing too fast to catch. “Did you report him?”
“No. It wouldn’t have done any good, he had way more resources on his side and I would’ve been mocked in the town square more than I already was. I had a past, when we met. I wasn’t the blushing, demure virgin when we met. I got around. I was—”
“An imperfect victim.”
“Exactly.”
She's so wrong about herself, he thinks, her image so far off from the fierce, brave, resilient fucking woman he sees in front of him. It kills him to imagine all the moments she's been made to feel like too much, too little, not deserving of the empathy she knows how to give so easily. Feels the soft stroke of her fingers on the back of his neck in the wreckage, the ways she fights to stay open in a world that wants to shut her down.
“Do you think it’s your fault then?”
“Can we finish this in the car?”
Nesta’s eyes begin to water as he nods, as if the sadness is spilling out of her and she wanted to escape before the dam breaks. Cassian hands her the same napkins that once soaked up his blood, now stemming the flow of her tears.
“Let’s get out of here, sweetheart.”
He grabs another handful of napkins and leaves cash on the table, double what they owe, tucks her under his jacket against the chill when they hit the parking lot. Opens her door first before getting in the driver’s seat of her car, cranking the heat, aiming the vents toward her shaking hands.
They’re on the precipice of something wonderful and terrifying, and Cassian suspects he’s already a little bit in love with her. He hears his family’s voices in his head, Captain Save-A-Ho, sentimental sucker, hopeless romantic emphasis on the hopeless.
But he knows what a trauma bond feels like — he’s already got three, for fuck’s sake— and this isn’t that.
Cassian pulls out of the parking lot after figuring out the car’s controls, speeding down the road toward the only place left to go.
Notes:
I wanted to write these two scenes this way on purpose. i wanted to see both of them receive each other love’s while confessing what they think makes them most unlovable. I wanted to be inside the listener so i could connect to the part of me that’s able to have compassion for my own pain, that finds my damaged pieces just as precious as the rest, if not more so.
I also want to point out Cassian’s misuse of the phrase ‘trauma bond’ when describing his relationships with the IC. Trauma bonding is not connecting with other people over difficult things you’ve been through, however healthy or unhealthy that ultimately is. ‘Trauma bond’ is the attachment victims of abuse develop to maintain safety with their abuser. while most people understand this in the context of people who’ve been kidnapped or are in abusive relationships, there is also a version of it in cases of child abuse.
when a child is harmed or not protected from harm by their caregivers, the child’s body has to develop strategies for handling all the stress this puts on the nervous system. sometimes the child has an adaptive reaction to shut down feelings of fear, sadness, anger, and disgust toward their caregiver. attachment is one of our primary drives as a species. so in order to attach to an unsafe caregiver, the child has to disown their emotional self in favor of immediate self-protection in the form of doing whatever it takes to not get abused. it’s why it can be so hard to separate and make boundaries with our abusers because we have a habitual response to not provoke them, or to feel guilty when we assert ourselves so we don’t do it again.
over time, this chronic form of self-abandonment creates a core wound that a child is not important, no one cares about them, and that they are alone. they continue to self-abandon into adulthood as they criticize themselves, run away from their feelings, and hide in relationships, terrified that if they show who they are, everyone will leave.
i say all this not to be depressing, but to point out that because these reactions and behaviors are adaptive, we can CHANGE them. through a combination of creating safety in the environment and the body, relearning attachment with a community of our choosing, and a fuckton of patience we can allow our naturally self-compassionate, loving and loved self to come forward.
this takes time and is HARD. i can tell you as someone smack in the middle of it. in the beginning it feels so hopeless. but i swear, when i got that first glimmer of the me waiting to come out when everything was safe, i knew it was possible.
Chapter 4
Notes:
we've finally reached the second part of the formula
looks like porn's back on the menu boys
cw: for explicit consensual sexual content, reference to drug abuse and addiction.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
I am the son
And the heir
Of a shyness that is criminally vulgar
I am the son and heir
Of nothing in particular
You shut your mouth
How can you say
I go about things the wrong way?
I am human and I need to be loved
Just like everybody else does
There's a club if you'd like to go
You could meet somebody who really loves you
- How Soon is Now, The Smiths
—
"I think my sister is worried about me."
It’s the first thing she’s said since they left Waffle House twenty minutes ago, and Nesta doesn’t know why it’s the loudest thought in her mind right now.
Considering she’s just vomited her disgusting past at his feet, Cassian looks relatively calm where he drives her car one-handed. The other has found a home on her thigh, thumb stroking idly. It grounds her more than she wants to admit to herself.
"Should she be?"
"I don't know. I don't want to care."
His laugh is humorless and knowing. They take an exit off the highway that would lead them back to Velaris, veering west. The radio is scratchy and already playing Christmas music, switching from pop to soaring choirs as they head further into the mountains.
Eventually they pull up to a house tucked away between two lower peaks, and Nesta tries to ignore how Cassian handles the car up the zigzag driveway, not wanting to be the kind of woman impressed by those things.
“Welcome to the cabin,” he says as he pulls keys from his backpack in the back seat, grabs her bag and mounts the stairs two at a time to turn on the porch light before she can open her door.
‘Cabin’ is a misnomer. The house is huge and warm, all wood, the kind of house someone clearly takes care of when no one’s around. But there’s a homeyness to it, too, a lived-in quality in the smattering of ice skates and water shoes by the door, hockey sticks piled like kindling. The creaky floorboards, the smell of a thousand real fires instead of the manufactured approximation in Feyre’s new home.
Photos litter a maplewood credenza in the hall. Nesta scans them while Cassian goes to turn on the heat and hot water, alighting on a familiar head of curly hair, lanky teenage boys strewn across the living room she spies up ahead. One of what must be the four of them on the dock of a lake, Morrigan bright in a cherry red one-piece, arms slung around each other’s shoulders. A dark-skinned woman in an armchair looking pensive, a girl with Band-aid knees climbing over the back to peek at the paperback in her lap. The same girl gleeful as she swings between Cassian and Azriel’s raised arms, the back of Rhysand’s head in the water, hands outstretched ready to catch her.
It is a family, Nesta realizes, in between all the fighting and pain. These are people whose shared history binds them, whose pasts are written in the same book. It isn’t as simple as walking away for the better. To leave might only create a bigger hole.
She feels arms wrap around her waist from behind and startles, spinning quickly. Cassian looks tired but determined when he takes her hand and leads her up the stairs.
“My room is at the end of the hall, but you can stay in here if you want,” he says, flicking on the light to a bedroom of navy and ivory.
Nesta only raises an eyebrow at him, too aware of the size of his body in the hallway, how warm his hand is where it still holds her own. It’s all so absurd if she steps back and thinks about it.
So instead she steps forward, until their lips connect.
“Nes,” Cassian murmurs into her mouth, but she can feel his need as much as her own, that pulsing desire to find one good feeling. “Fuck.”
Something in her settled on the drive, though she can’t quite place it. Maybe it’s that she doesn’t care anymore about hiding, because he already knows the worst.
They stumble down the hall, never breaking the kiss, words insufficient at this point. Nesta catches a fleeting glimpse of a tower of old CDs before they tumble onto the deep burgundy bedspread, limbs tangling.
She can taste the syrup and coffee, a hint of the American Spirit they shared in the car. Everything is speeding up as she kneels between his legs, hands ripping at buttons and buckles and bra clasps until they’re both naked, until there’s nothing left to do but what they came here for.
“What do you need from me?” he manages between nips on her throat that are surely leaving marks.
It's humiliating, but—
“I can’t handle anyone behind me. It freaks me out.”
Cassian doesn’t question it, only swallows the frightened whimper that escapes her against her will. Says nothing about the way her hands twitch when he lifts them to link behind his neck, bringing their foreheads together, though he draws soothing lines down her arms, the heaving of his chest brushing against hers.
"You?"
“I need to hear you,” he says, deep voice gravelly. “I need to know you want everything I’m about to do to you.”
She hears his sincerity yet can’t help going completely molten at the words, tempted all at once to fall limp in his arms and let him do whatever he wants, this stupidly beautiful fucking man.
As if she’ll be capable of anything else.
Because god, his mouth, his hands, his fucking— Nesta feels her brain go fuzzy when Cassian finds that spot behind her ear again, the pull to disappear into sensation like a hook through her cheek.
But he's asked her for something, and it should scare her, how she's unable to deny him.
It doesn't.
“I want you to touch me. I want you to fuck me.”
It’s a step across a threshold, and she's holding her breath, waiting for the shove out the door. Waiting for him to recoil like she's too much, too intense, too many needs, a black hole of a woman.
Cassian grins, draping his body over top of hers. His broad chest fills her vision, those mesmerizing tattoos that skirt his sides and swirl forward over his hips, and her shame is lost in wanting to taste the trail of them.
“One thing at a time, Nes," he chides when she starts reaching for him, catching her by the wrist. "Can't win the crown before I clear the prelims.” He bends to lavish her breasts with attention, calloused hands dragging down her sides. “Besides, I haven’t even gotten to the talent portion yet, and you’ll definitely want to see that.”
“You’re an ass.”
“Uh huh.”
He darts back up for a kiss, cupping both her cheeks. The smug curve of his lips against hers give her the urge to bite him, but it only earns her a deeper smirk when she follows through, his touch wandering downward.
“Hurry the fuck up,” she hisses, half-wondering if this is all some ruse to catch her out. "Get on with it already."
“So impatient.”
Insufferable. He’s fucking teasing her and he knows it, and if Nesta weren’t so fucking desperate for everything he’s giving, she would take the reins in an instant. Would make him regret the cockiness, take control so he can’t see her neediness, so she doesn’t have to answer for how fucking soaked she is.
But he already knows, and she’s out of reasons to pretend this isn’t exactly what she wants.
“You’re the one who said you wanted to hear me.”
“Oh, I intend to.”
Cassian strokes between her legs at the same moment she yanks at his hair in annoyance, a desperate sound leaving both of them simultaneously.
It’s so intense at first, Nesta doesn’t know how to feel. Doesn't know if she’s in agony or ecstasy, some blessed and cursed combination of both. Feels untamed as she arches up into him, his panting breaths warming her stomach when he glances up at her flushed face.
“Like this?” His fingers are swirling around her clit in perfect circles, and Nesta is forced to release his hair and grasp his shoulders to keep her hold on reality.
“Yes. Fuck.”
Her orgasm is so close it’s almost embarrassing. But there’s no room for shame when his thick middle finger eases past her entrance, seeking. Her moan pours forth unsolicited when he slides it in, curling upward.
Then his mouth is on her, and it's far from the normal perfunctory performance before the main event she's used to. Cassian's whole body relaxes when he tastes her, like he's been waiting for this all night, like he's been holding his breath and can finally exhale. His groan of pleasure reverberates against her and Nesta can't help but feel a little wrecked by it.
No one’s ever taken her body apart like this. Not even the few women she’s slept with, though they were leagues better than most of the men. Cassian is showing her things she doesn't even know she likes, reading cues she didn’t know she was giving.
Heat is growing low in her stomach, his curls so soft against her thighs while he's surely drowning, never coming up for air as he pulls out before adding a second finger.
Her orgasm slams into her out of nowhere, milliseconds of the telltale trembling of her thighs before she's coming apart completely. It's all intensified by the fervor with which he helps her ride it out, as if he's feeling every pulse of pure sensation with her, drawing the pleasure out of her with precision like nectar from a honeysuckle flower.
Panting where she's sprawled across the bedspread, she comes back to earth slowly. Aftershocks shuddering through her while Cassian reaches toward the nightstand, and she finally gets to see all of him.
It's.. a lot.
The gold foil she spied earlier was not false advertising, not like she assumed. Cassian rips the wrapper with his teeth and rolls the magnum condom down a cock that definitely needs it. Nesta is suddenly glad he insisted she come at least once before this part because… damn.
He catches the mystified look on her face and hooks one of her legs over his elbow, reaching for a pillow that he slides under her hips.
“Gotta take you like this, baby,” he murmurs as he bends to kiss her again, pressing her thigh up and back. “Is this okay? Don’t want to hurt you.”
“Please,” is all Nesta can say back, the blunt head of him against her now making her crazy. She grasps his hair and feels like poison ivy twining around him, a Venus fly trap drawing him in.
But it’s with tenderness that Cassian kisses down her jaw, his mouth resting over her pulse, sucking softly. He waits until she settles beneath him, rubs her clit with the pads of two fingers and eases in until Nesta is so full of him she thinks she might die, so inside her own body in a way she hasn’t been for a year.
It’s wicked and torturous and unfair, the languid slide of him, the almost pained groan that vibrates against her throat once he's fully seated. The drag of him back out as his mouth latches back on to her breast, sending electricity through all her veins.
“Nesta, fuck."
His voice is strained with need but he's holding her too carefully. Moving too slow to get the feeling she's craving, that sunburst of sensation. Her annoyance is urgent, because he’s being gentle when he doesn’t need to, not when Nesta's already shown how incapable she is of faking it with him.
“More.”
Cassian pushes harder on the next thrust, making her head fall against the mattress, but she can still feel him holding back. Her anger spikes, unhinged as he’s making her feel, wanting him there too.
“Cassian. More.”
No hiding, no pretending. She doesn't hold back her ferocity when he looks down at her, revels in the way his long lashes flutter, lips swollen and kiss-flushed.
It’s like some final piece of armor drops away then, and he’s on her and in her and everywhere, all around, rising up on his knees to hook her other leg over his elbow. His gaze is glued to her face as he picks up his pace, hazel eyes like embers in the dark night. Shiny and secret, just for her, as he finally gives her what she's wanted since his mouth first parted around her cigarette.
She half-expects the house to come down around them, because how could it withstand whatever powerful thing is happening right now. And maybe it’s the weed or the pain or the dopamine slamming through her brain, but when his thumb drops to the space between them, when Nesta’s second orgasm finally crashes it ceases to matter, and she lets herself feel every delicious bit of it.
Let's herself feel the snarling hunger to give it back just as good, never content to be outdone.
Then he's flat on his back for the third time this evening, only this time no one interrupts, no tears fall save those few she wrings out of him from sheer, overwhelming pleasure.
Cassian’s moans turn into choked laughter at some point, swearing in reverence as he looks up at her, and even though she's not trying to, Nesta feels like the black widow at the center of her web, reeling him in. But she has no desire to eat his heart, to spit his blood on the snow.
Only knows that he’s invited her in from the cold, the door flung wide open now there’s nothing left to lose. And when he grabs her hips and buries himself up into her, swearing and squeezing his eyes shut tight, a part of her is sad she’ll have to go back home in the morning.
Cassian has never been more head-over-heels in his life.
He’s so fucking high on her it almost scares him. Feels almost too good, like his skin finally fits, where for too long it’s been stretched tight over the bones.
The last time everything felt this right was the first time he caved and crushed up one of his pills.
Back then he was alone under the dim fluorescents in the locker room after hours. Now Nesta is here in front of him, warm and asleep under the first comforter he ever got to pick out. And instead of disappearing into oblivion, he wants to keep his eyes wide open.
Her brown hair is spilling across the pillows and he can’t help touching it, needing more of her. Grips a long hank of it around middle so it doesn't pull at her scalp and runs his fingers through the tangles at the ends, the ones he helped create while she wove her web across the empty spaces inside him last night.
She's perfect, real, the most unapologetically alive person he's ever met. And Cassian is fucking terrified.
The problem is that he's definitely in love with her. There's no way to hide it. His pain he can keep behind a door, but the love is loud and thundering and chaotic, and he can't protect her from it even if he wants to. Nesta shifts in her sleep, her scowl smoothed out so he can see how full her lips really are when they’re not pressed against his.
On the brink of doing something stupid like waking her up so he can ask to get his mouth on her pussy again, Cassian slides out of bed as gently as he can.
Snow has fallen overnight, the first of the year. He can smell it in the air when he descends the stairs, clean and metallic, lighting up the front hall in pale gray. The wood is cold under his feet, and he digs in his backpack on one of the stools in the kitchen for a pair of thick socks, pulling them on along with some loose sweatpants.
Mornings have always been his favorite up here, dawn painting the lake in oranges and pinks. He’s used to being the first one up, cherishes these moments when all he can hear is the wind swooping down the chimney, the mourning doves’ four-part hymn in the pines. There’s been peace and pain here, sketching out tattoo ideas on napkins, the huge breakfasts he made for everyone before he got addicted. And then again after he got sober, as if proof of his restored functionality.
The first coffee clears his thoughts enough to realize there’s some damage control to do. With what little motivation he has, Cassian rifles through his backpack once more for the godforsaken rectangle. It’s a shock when he finds it that the air in the kitchen isn’t clogged with smoke, because Mor has been absolutely blowing up his phone.
Twelve missed calls, five voicemails, forty messages. He pulls up their text thread and reads just what he can see without scrolling up.
Today, at 3:28 AM
Queen Mor: Whe tje FUCk are you
Queen Mor: I’m seriousd
Queen Mor: Of you’re our getTing your dick wet with that harpy I’m going to ne do fucking fueious
Today, at 7:49 AM
Queen Mor: So I wake up and your car is here but you’re fucking gone?
Queen Mor: Cass please answer me
Queen Mor: Cassian
Queen Mor: You’re freaking me out, at least let me know you’re okay
Queen Mor: I don’t care who you’re with or what you’re doing, I just want to know you’re fucking alive holy shit
He sighs and opens his voicemail, taps on the one in the middle from an hour ago. Mor’s voice is so loud he can hear it without speakerphone.
“I’m not fucking kidding Cassian, if you’re high right now I swear to God—”
He deletes it, not wanting to hear any more. Skips to the last one.
“Hey, I’m not mad. I know I just left you a bunch of psycho messages that probably make you think otherwise, but I’m just really fucking worried about you. I made Azriel check your location for me and he told me your phone is at the cabin, so I hope you’re there with it. And I hope you just went up to clear your head or something. Just let me know you're alright, if you get this. Also don’t get mad at Az, I literally threatened him with castration."
Cassian can’t help the small smile even though he’s still pissed as hell. It was one of their deals from long ago, that he would share his location with one of them in case of emergencies. Az was deemed the least likely to abuse the privilege.
Traitor.
“Morning.”
Cassian’s brain goes a little haywire when he sees Nesta emerge from the stairwell in his green sweater, the hem brushing the tops of her creamy thighs. He swallows, dropping his phone face up on the counter.
“Yes.”
She gives him a confused quirk of her lips and pops a pod in the espresso machine, starts opening cabinets in search of a mug.
“Here.”
He reaches over her head and pulls down one in the shape of a beehive, one of his favorites, before returning his phone that’s started to buzz again. Types back without reading the messages streaming in, likely because Mor's been waiting with the thread open and has just seen him leave her on read.
I’m fine. I’ll come back for you by noon unless you want to drive my truck back to the city yourself.
Cassian knows she won’t; Mor has barely driven a dozen times in all the years he’s known her. But he wishes today she could pluck up the courage, if only because he’s really not looking forward to the ride home.
“Everything okay?”
Nesta surveys him over the rim of her mug, a tiny dot of foam on her upper lip.
It’s so tempting to lie to her, just to keep this moment when she’s soft and open, blue-gray eyes clear as the laketop out the kitchen window. But that's not how they're doing things, and he doesn't want to start now. Not with her.
“No, Mor is freaking out because I left last night. She thinks I’m off doing something stupid.” Or high, or dead. He should feel more guilty. His phone continues to go vr-vr! on the counter, unending.
“That seems a little extreme,” Nesta says as she nods toward it. “Especially since Feyre knows you’re with me. Unless that’s the something stupid.”
He wonders if Feyre is covering for her sister, or for him. Nesta seems to wonder the same thing when she sets her mug on the counter with a sigh.
“We should probably get back.”
“Do you have to?”
Her brow furrows, suspicious. “What?”
“Do you have to be back yet? It’s the first snow of the year.” He holds the space inside him wide open for her, so she can see in all the corners. “It’s tradition to have a fire and drink your coffee and look out at the lake.”
“Your family’s tradition?”
“No, just mine.” The most beautiful blush stains her cheeks and he wants kiss it, to rub his face against it until it paints his, too. “So if you don’t have to get back, I’d love if you’d stay and join me.”
Nesta gives nothing away as she thinks. Cassian's heart is thundering, and he doesn't know why this feels so important to him, only that it does.
She's beautiful. He's terrified. He's in love with her.
He's fucked.
Nesta picks her mug back up, crossing her arms over her chest.
"Where's your firewood?"
Notes:
............and then?????????????????
Chapter 5
Summary:
Back in the real world
Notes:
Editing is for other times, I’ll come back in 5-10 business days
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.
~ Rumi
Cassian doesn’t know how they end up on the floor, only that they do. He’s a little preoccupied with Nesta sitting astride his face to keep track, her head thrown back where she braces against his hips.
He would like to live here in the A-frame house of her thighs. Would like to move in permanently so he can keep looking at her face like this, at the marks on her throat he left last night. In the snow-pale light of day her skin is exquisite, luminescent.
And Mor could be speeding here now, hugging the center line in his truck, but he doesn’t care. Will endure all the brow-beating and micromanaging just to stay pinned beneath Nesta, her softness muffling the noise, the bullshit.
He snakes a hand under his sweater she’s still wearing, somehow needing more of her. Smirks against her as her legs begin to tremble, as she rocks against his tongue without shame. He’s always loved going down on women but Nesta is something else—she pursues her pleasure like an explorer in the Amazon, bushwhacking her way through without fear or convention.
Cassian laughs at his own joke, the vibrations causing Nesta to grasp his wrist, his hair, her moans transcending into a broken cry before her thighs clamp around his head. And for some reason it makes him think of the first time he rode Space Mountain when he was fifteen, that breathless plunge into darkness, the rush of barreling down the track, terrified but knowing he’ll arrive safely back at the beginning in the end.
He can’t help wearing the stupidest grin when Nesta finally releases him, and she’s charmed by it despite not wanting to be. He can tell by the way she purses her lips when she rolls off him, gaze roving his chest and his own ignored desire when he snags a pillow from the sofa to put beneath her head. Her attentions follows him hotly as Cassian pads into the kitchen to wash his face in the sink.
It’s hopeless, at this point. Any thoughts of this being something casual are long gone, and he’s already ruminating on how to protect her from his family.
Grabbing his phone from the counter, Cassian sets an alarm for eleven fifteen am. That’ll give them enough time to pack up and get out so Mor doesn’t send a fucking SWAT team.
Nesta is stretched out on her side when he returns, staring into the fire as she says over one shoulder, “I’m assuming that wasn’t part of the tradition.”
“No, but I’m hoping it will be now.” He doesn’t stop to second guess how much he’s revealing—there’s time be nervous about his sudden lapse in impulse control later.
She snorts. “I’m sure your family would love that.”
Cassian settles behind her and strokes a trail up her thigh, tries to soften the lump now in his throat. It’s hard not to feel like something cosmic is happening, something even his family won’t be able to deny. But he knows his own penchant for magical thinking too well to do anything more than savor this moment while he can.
Pale skins breaks out in goosebumps when his hands graze over the scars above her hip and he pauses, curiosity burning. She’s offered so much and yet he feels greedy for more, more of this woman whose hypnotic pull scares the shit out of him.
But beyond that, he wants her to know that she can be scarred in front of him. That he wants to see the places she’s been hurt, if only to bear witness.
“Can I?” he asks, toying with the hem.
Nesta stiffens and nods her head down into the pillow, turning slightly so her back is more accessible. Cassian slides the sweater up and tries to contain the landslide of emotion when he reveals the silvery marks.
Four scratches all in a row, about three inches long apiece. He doesn’t know why he assumed they were from her falling on something, perhaps a glass breaking. No object could inflict wounds with such cruel accuracy. There’s a montage of foolish fantasies—finding this ex-fiance and pummeling him to sludge, dropping him in the Sidra with cinderblocks tied to his feet like in The Sopranos. Going back in time somehow and holding Nesta in the hospital, bursting through the door to stop the attack in the first place.
Cassian runs his fingers gentlydown the scratches, lining up from pointer to pinky.
Nesta twitches and he flattens his hand, mortified.
“Sorry. I don’t know why I did that.”
She shifts away and doesn’t say anything. Cassian worries he’s upset her until she’s twining her hands through the hair at the back of his neck and kissing him in that way she does, like she’s trying to crawl inside him.
It’s all he can do not to roll over and smother her with his body. The urge to wrap around her, to protect her, springs forth from his lizard brain, possessive and patronizing and honestly beneath him. But she’s so lovely, and the world has been so cruel to her, that he can’t help wanting to tuck her away and give her everything she wants, to let her spend the rest of her life in the contentment she so deserves.
She bites his lip, as if sensing his thoughts have gone mushy. Tugs on his hair hard, goading him, pressing closer until it feels like she’ll totally consume him.
Euphoria makes him stupid and he takes a handful of her hair, too, tugging back. Nesta’s dreamy-eyed when he pulls her mouth away from his own, the tiniest gasp coming from her parted lips.
Interesting.
“You like that, Nes? When I put you in your place?”
“Yes.”
She flushes all the way down across her perfect breasts, the sweetest pink. Swallows, eyes fluttering.
“I feel like it’s gross to want it, given what happened to me.”
He can empathize, that fear of being judged, knowing the fraught fucking reality of being a six-foot-four man of color who likes it rough. Of the mobs that could run through the streets with pitchforks if he doesn’t read everything just right.
But he doesn’t judge her. Nesta deserves to have what she wants.
“No, he doesn’t get to take that from you. That’s yours.”
She closes her eyes, relaxing back into his palm now cupping her head. His mind cascades through a series of visions when he drags her back to kiss her again, all the things he wants to do with her, to her, and her mouth tastes like coffee and her hands are roaming below his waistband—
The worst noise ever rips through the reverie, screamingly loud, that horrific rapid pinging that ruins his mornings.
“God fucking damn it.”
Nesta laughs into his chest, eyes bright. The sound seems to bounce across the ice outside, high and silver and lovely, and the hole in his chest is a snow globe where a pair of skaters whirl round and round.
Let me take you to dinner.
The message sits unopened for days as Nesta gets swallowed by work.
Remotely she admires his restraint, resisting the impulse to double text. She can’t tell if she’s testing him or not, waiting to see where he’ll land on the spectrum of pushy to detached. But with his single text, Cassian remains an annoying mystery, the silence speaking of confidence or indifference, and she hates that she can’t tell which.
He's not what she's looking for. She’s not really looking for anything, especially not someone so connected to her family.
But god, the sex. Even now, a week later, Nesta still feels the tug of his hands in her hair, the lushness of his mouth at her neck.
She’s feeling exposed, if she’s honest with herself. Cassian found in the span of hours things no one has searched for in years. There’s a part of her that’s terrified, another that’s has never felt more calm, and she can’t tell which is her head and which is her heart.
Her friends too are split on ‘Waffle House guy’ when they gather for Thursday night reality TV roundup.
“Knows what he wants,” Gwyn says through a mouthful of pretzels. “Put it out there, but isn’t going to beg. I respect that.”
Emerie frowns. “You don’t think he should work for it a little more? I mean, look at Nesta.”
“No, I think he knows that’ll put her off. This is exactly how I’d do it if I were trying to date you.”
Nesta flops back onto the pillows, already exhausted. “Gwyn, do you just need a project?”
“Of course I do, I’m bored out of my mind since volleyball season ended.”
Gwyn’s grad school intramurals are as varied as they are necessary. For while Nesta is content curling up with a book in between plugging away at her dissertation, she can tell their winter break is making her friend restless already.
“You don’t have to do anything, you know,” Emerie interjects. “If you’re not into it or not..”
Ready is the word Nesta hears as her friend trails off. It’s still odd that Cassian is the third person to know what happened last year, the other two with her in the room right now. It’s also odd that they weren’t phased by her late-night confession, as if foreseeing a day she couldn’t, when the secret would slip its lead.
“It’s your call, Nesta. You know better than anyone else what’s best for you,”Emerie finishes, brown eyes soft and knowing. That annoying power of her friend's to say the thing that needs to be said even though it makes the heart swell with too much feeling.
Shame threatens to anesthetize her, the slow-creeping coldness before a deep freeze. It would be easy to not respond. To let Thanksgiving be the product of holiday family angst and leave it at that, a turkey carcass picked clean of anything worthwhile.
But it’s the way he understood her need to get away without question, that kindred pull of being the family fuck up. How ready he was to accept the ugly parts of her with kindness, however undeserved. The way he knew how to stay close while still giving her space.
Let me take you to dinner.
“Hand me my phone.”
Gwyn whoops in victory and Emerie gives a broad smile, grasping Nesta’s hand briefly before they squish together in the corner of the sectional.
The peripheral clues are of middling help. His social media only has a few updates in the last year, mostly photos with friends, hiking, the occasional hockey thirst trap.
But his stories are chaos.
There’s a whole saga with a possum who keeps eating his trash, experiments to find out what kind of trash it likes best, analyzing prints in the snow. Then there’s the ones where he reviews chicken parm sandwiches, more than anyone should consume in a lifetime. Gym selfies. Hockey selfies. Shirtless post-shower selfies. Gravelly streams-of-consciousness from his fucking bed.
“He should narrate audio porn.”
“Gwyn, that's not helpful.”
“No she’s right, he could make bank.”
“You two are animals.”
Nesta wrestles her phone away from where Emerie is now trying to zoom in on the tattoos on his chest. Her thumb presses down a little too hard on the story, one from 23 hours ago, a heart drifting across the screen.
“Oh fuck. Shit. Fuck!”
Nesta tries to undo it but the bits having already whizzed away through the WiFi. Her phone dings almost immediately, the banner displaying an unknown number and the message:
You know the view is much better in person ;)
Sevenda’s is in the warehouse district of Velaris, a tiny restaurant tucked in between a laundromat and a bakery. Huge vents waft warm air scented with cinnamon and sugar, and it feels charmed when Cassian sees Nesta turn the corner, something out of a rom-com. Her cheeks are wind-bitten, that same pink he’s slowly becoming obsessed with, the gray of her coat billowing behind her in the cupcake wind.
Cassian thought he remembered how beautiful she is, but is bowled over at the inaccuracy of his own memory, all the things he’s forgotten. The high arch of her eyebrows, skeptical even at rest. The lone freckle below one eye. The little crinkle at the corner of her lips.
“Well,” she says by way of greeting. “Do your worst.”
He holds open the door and pulls out her chair, thinking of Mom. The torturous hours spent learning to behave like nice young men. Maneuvers that before have had the undercurrent of proving something about himself, being someone he's not, but that now seem natural, necessary.
The server pushes a few ridiculous cocktails on them that sit mostly undrunk, though Cassian loves watching the giant basil sprig dance in the breeze of Nesta’s laughter. They order a few things between them, and he’s delighted to find that she’s a sharer, proud of himself that his territorialness around food is a thing of the past. Nesta steals a pillowy ravioli off his plate during mains, smug as a cat as she chews her prize.
“Mm. I’m surprised you have good taste,” she says, gesturing around them. “From your stories I half-expected you to take me on a chicken parm tour of the Rainbow.”
“Stalker.”
“As if you didn’t ask Feyre everything I like.”
Damn sister confidentiality code. Cassian throws his hands up, caught.
“I confess, I had some help. In my defense, our first date was a hard act to follow.”
He sees the moment she gets it, can almost smell the syrup and coffee his memory of that night is so bright. Her blue eyes flash in the candlelight.
“Maybe try not to make me cry this time, okay?”
Nesta tells him about her studies—library science—and he listens to the up and down notes of her voice, his worries about fucking this up floating by like leaves on a stream.
It feels like he keeps bumping into these moments when pointless work of the past decade becomes essential, a door open where once there’d been a wall.
It still scares Cassian, how high she makes him feel, how much he craves her. How the more he learns the more he wants to know, that each mouthful of her only makes him hungrier.
“I hope you didn’t get too much grief when I dropped you off.”
She doesn’t want to push, he can tell, but they’ve danced around the topic long enough. He can't fault her for being curious, not when he's cataloging every one of her expressions, naming the current one “Tell Me Without Making Me Make You Tell Me”.
“The ride home was an ordeal, but I made it in one piece. Mor mostly worries about me relapsing.”
“Have you?” Nesta asks before setting her fork down sharply. “I’m sorry, you don’t have to answer that.”
He shrugs, making sure their waiter is out of earshot. “It’s okay. I have. It’s been a few years, but the risk is always there I guess. Does it scare you?”
“Scare me, no. But it's not really my business. Does it scare you?”
He wants it to be her business, Cassian realizes. Wants her to know this part of him, though he's terrified of sending her running.
“Not anymore, not like it used to. I’m not a million percent. I definitely have wobbles. I have to be mindful.” The word feels hollow, empty therapy speak. “I mean I have to do things that keep me honest about how I’m feeling.”
Nesta hums, nodding. “That seems like an uphill battle considering the fallout when you are.”
“Yeah my family is tricky. But I have my sober friends, and I see my counselor once a month for maintenance. He's good at calling me on my shit.”
Cassian’s grateful he had the foresight to schedule for this past week. He and Dan definitely had a lot to talk about. Mostly how no woman can solve all his problems, but that he's allowed to be excited, that he doesn’t have to be perfect to be worthy of love.
Nesta gives a wry grin as if she can see the thoughts scrolling across his forehead, the low lights burnishing her hair.
“My friends do that for me. It’s annoying sometimes, but we’ve found a balance. I can’t imagine how hard it is with everyone second-guessing you all the time.”
And he's floored all over again, how she’s able to receive him. How she can meet him in the dark cave of his past completely undaunted, pointing in interest at the stalactites grown over the years.
Cassian can't help reaching for her thigh under the table, finding it warm and waiting near his own.
“So how do you feel about dessert at my place?”
Nesta’s gaze turns smoky, a new expression he doesn’t have a name for yet.
Cassian’s apartment is definitely lived in by a man, in that the furniture is dark and sparse, the kitchen is purely utilitarian, and there’s nowhere to put your shoes when you walk in the door. He has actual art in frames though, and some very alive potted plants which shouldn’t be impressive but the bar is at tripping height, after all.
The only oddity is the stacks of Tupperware on his counter, each filled with a different kind of cookie or baked something, paper cupcake liners in seasonal prints. Notes litter the front of the fridge, signed with hearts and names like Mary, Carol, Dorothy, Judith.
“Cassian, Friday was lovely, let’s do it again sometime but just the two of us,” she reads. “Darling, no one can make me work up a sweat like you. Dear Cassian, you’re my favorite even though my knees still hurt. God, how many girlfriends do you have?”
“Hopefully one, after tonight.”
Nesta crosses her arms, unamused as Cassian grins and starts popping the lids off tubs, lining them up on the island. “I’m the in-house trainer over at Evergreen Grove.”
“The old folks home?”
“Assisted living and retirement community,” he corrects, offering her a Christmas tree-shaped fudge. “But yes. The PT’s are too busy to see people every day for workouts so I do some classes, make the rounds.”
Neata can picture it so easily, the swarm of old ladies rocking up on their walkers and canes, dying through rounds of modified squats just to get a wink and a compliment from that nice young man.
“I bet those grandmas eat you up.”
“I love my girls, they fucking make me laugh,” Cassian says before stuffing a huge piece of peanut brittle in his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. “And some are just lonely, I think. I might be the only person who’s not an aide they talk to all day.” He shrugs. “I know it’s not flashy, and I have no idea what I’m doing next, but the hours are regular and the benefits are good: cookies.”
Neata can’t deny that - everything is amazing.
“And the sweater I was wearing on Thanksgiving. Probably won’t tell Gladys what we were doing when you wore it on Friday, though.”
Cassian’s smile is indecent where he leans against the counter. Nesta starts to get that crazed feeling again, just like she did that night, desiring him in a way that defies all her better judgment. The intense craving, thirst in a desert, wanting and wanting and wanting.
It’s too much, too far. He can’t want everything that comes with her, even if he thinks he does. Even if she does, too.
“What are we doing?”
The question comes out harsher than she means it to, and Nesta sees Cassian’s confusion at the sudden turn.
“Eating peanut brittle?”
“No I mean..” Nesta hates that she’s here again. Doesn’t want to feel so insecure, to need so much. “What are your intentions with me? This isn’t—it’s not simple, given my sister is.. Never mind. Forget I said anything.”
Her body half turns to make for the door. Cassian lurches forward but stops himself, bracing against the counter.
“What are you saying?”
“What I’m saying is that if you’re just looking for sex, that’s fine. You don’t need to do all this.” She gestures toward the Tupperware, the disturbingly lovestruck look on his face. “In fact I’d prefer you didn’t. We don’t need to complicate things, we’re both adults.”
“You’re right. I don’t need to do all this if I’m just looking for sex.”
They stare at each other across the kitchen with only the sound of the fridge whirring, the thunk of ice being spat into the tray. Cassian clears his throat.
“Fine, cards on the table. I really like you. A lot. And I know shit with my family is kinda fucked,” he says, and Nesta must make some face because he adds, “Okay it’s really fucked. But that’s a bad excuse to avoid what I’m feeling, in my opinion. If you don’t feel the same, that’s fine, obviously. But it’d be a mistake for me not to tell you that I can’t stop thinking about you. That when I’m around you I don’t feel like I have to hide. Like I can finally just breathe and be myself.”
When she was five years old, Nesta fell out of a treehouse, plummeted backwards after missing a rung. And there was a delicious moment when she felt weightless, stunningly alive, a fraction of a second before a great thud and blackness.
She sometimes wonders if she felt that way falling down the stairs last year, if there was a moment of true liberty before her life came tumbling down.
“I like you, too.”
Nesta feels that beautiful terror as she says it, as Cassian crosses the kitchen in two strides and kisses her, pressing her body against the counter. When his arms wrap around her and she waits for the savage crunch of her bones against the inevitable.
Instead she finds only more air, sweet and bracing, like she’s been dropped into the great blue bowl of the sky.
Notes:
I want to come back to my note from a couple chapters ago about attachment. There’s a super interesting body of research around addiction as a misplaced attachment.
Cassian’s fear here is normal - being around Nesta feels good, the only others things that’s felt this good is drugs, oh no this is bad, shame shame shame I don’t deserve this i’m a piece of shit.
it’s precisely the fact that it feels like drugs that means it’s good.
Drugs for so many people fill a void. The void is healthy attachment. In lieu of a safe person to attach to, people will attach to a substance (or a behavior like sex or gambling, though this is a little less straightforward). The feeling they get from drugs is an approximation of what they ideally want from other people.
wanting connection and relief is not bad. needing other people to hold you isn’t selfish. it’s natural, probably the most human thing about us.
I’ve noticed here and in choiceless hope this accidental theme of self-reclamation. In my own life i’m struggling with feeling like my body and mind don’t belong to me because of things that have happened and the ways other people have taken advantage of and dehumanized me. It’s hard to feel ownership of myself when I react to things in ways that confuse me, or when the past invades my present. I hate that sensation like someone else is still able to torture me all this time later, and even though it’s not my fault it’s so easy to fall into the trap of feeling ashamed. I don’t have the answers yet. It gives me some peace to remember these reactions are my body trying to protect me, that there's always been a part of me that will protect me fiercely no matter the cost, even if its only tool is shame. I’m trying to be gentle. It’s painful. But I believe it will get better if I keep going, because this piece of me isn’t malicious, it’s just misguided. And the adult part of me is capable of helping it see the truth over time: that I can keep myself safe, my body and mind belong to me, that I know what good love feels like. That I deserve to be held kindly even when I’m not well, maybe especially then. That when I hurt im allowed to be injured on the outside without shame. There are still ways it all feels really dangerous and makes me panic. But if I do trust in anything it's that I will fight for myself. Maybe im just learning to fight better.
Chapter 6
Summary:
The Christmas episode, part 1
Notes:
hi :) did you think these sweet fools were gone? i love them too much. i originally meant to have this chapter for christmas but truly february fits the vibe more so we'll pretend that was on purpose
CW: past drug use, past physical and verbal abuse, general sibling dysfunction.
Also please never take Ambien after you’ve been drinking thx
Chapter Text
And so without pomp nor circumstance—without much thought at all—they fall together.
It’s gravitational, really. As if for so long they’ve been vaulted into the ether and can finally land where they’re meant to be.
They’re both tentative at times, like newborn fawns, skittish when they sense the other is drifting elsewhere. He tells her about the woman and the girl in the picture, the drunk driver whose final act stole their lives. She tells him about Mom, Grandmama. About the thin years when Niles was determined to be an abject failure, self-interested in every moment.
It’s nice, to feel held. To be seen. Even when it’s hard.
An argument with his family makes him angry one night. He slams his fist on the counter in a way that has her seeing stars, and it takes a few very confused minutes of crying to explain what’s going on. His devastation is immediate and unnecessary, so determined he is now to not set her off, not if he can help it.
It’s too new to want anyone else’s opinion, though he’s met her friends. Annoyingly they’re obsessed with him, giving her those looks she knows mean Don’t let this one go. Nesta only recognizes then that no one gave her the same about Tomas.
“We like him,” Emerie whispers when Cassian gets up to refresh the cheeseboard in the kitchen, top off drinks. “But if you say you’re over it, then he’s dead to us.”
“No, Nesta likes him, too, I can tell.” Gwyn giggles, her freckled cheeks flushed from prosecco.
So, it’s definitely happening.
They drive separately to the cabin for Christmas, despite both leaving from her apartment. Her to pick up Elain and him to chauffeur Azriel and his cat Shadow, who his brother is apparently very attached to despite her being, in Cassian’s words, a demon.
Amren and Varian—whose name Nesta finally knows—are in Havana. Niles is on an all-expenses-paid cruise Rhysand sent him on, and she suspects it was at Feyre’s request, though for whose sake it’s hard to say.
Nesta learns all this pressed to the back of the bedroom door where they first crashed together, greedy hands roaming under her shirt. Elain is downstairs with the stand mixer on high, the rest having gone to the store.
“Things you should know,” Cassian manages between kisses. “Don’t let Mor refill your drink, or she’ll never stop. Rhys picks fake lint off his shirt when he’s trying to distract you, don’t fall for it...” He trails off, preoccupied by the soft spot behind her ear until Nesta digs her nails into his shoulders. “Don’t mention Azriel’s weird sleep schedule. And don’t talk to him about buying something from Amazon or a targeted ad. Or say that your phone is ‘listening to you’. Or Elon Musk. Or TikTok. Or politics.”
Nesta huffs a laugh before Cassian captures her mouth again, a low groan in his throat. That last one won’t be easy, especially with Graysen, Elain’s fiance, arriving soon. He has.. opinions.
“Sounds like I should try not to talk to him at all.”
“That’s.. not a bad idea. And don’t try to pet Shadow’s belly, no matter how cute she is. It’s a trap.”
A trap is what this whole trip feels like, if Nesta’s the one reading the signs. She’s shocked Feyre even wants her here, shocked Rhysand is allowing it after Thanksgiving. But there’s something in the air she can’t quite place, conversations happening behind the scenes she can only guess at.
There’s no point, not when Cassian is kissing down her neck in the way that has driven her three-days-off-Lexapro crazy these last few weeks. She doesn’t want to think about it too hard, doesn’t want to jinx it. But she can’t deny that he’s very much here, that something is very much happening, even as a girl in her head screams and screams and screams.
Her bra is on the floor when they hear chatter downstairs, the others returning from the store. Nesta darts back to her room, just managing to don her shirt before footsteps sound on the stairs, catching Azriel slouching down the hallway through the crack in her door.
The next twenty minutes pass in a flurry of greeting and unpacking groceries and Rhysand and Cassian trekking into the cold to cut down a tree. Tradition, apparently, though it seems more an excuse to stuff snow down each others’ coats as they tumble into the yard.
It’s hard not to think about the last time she was here as Nesta tries to settle in, her eyes wanting to linger on that stupid plush rug before the fire.
“Do you want to wash your hands so you can help us, Nesta?" Elain asks as she rolls out a long sheet of dough on the quartz counter top. Feyre is already jabbing at it with a snowflake-shaped cookie cutter, mangling the edges when she pulls away too fast.
Outside the boys have devolved into throwing snowballs at each other. Nesta pretends her grunt of annoyance is meant for them when she move to the sink to wash her hands. She hates this shit. She doesn’t even like sugar cookies.
“This is fun!” Feyre gushes as Elain reattaches one tine on her snowflake. “It feels like Winter House.”
“More like The Real Housewives of Hell,” Nesta scoffs.
Feyre frowns but Elain laughs, to her surprise. Nesta tries to let herself take it in, to not let the voices in her head drown out reality. To see this moment for what it is: nice.
“When is Graysen getting here?”
“Not until dinner.” Her sister’s eyes dart to the dish on the windowsill where her solitaire diamond flashes. “He had to work this afternoon and didn’t want to get stuck in rush hour.”
Nesta nods without pushing further. Elain isn’t aware of her feelings toward her fiance, and elbow-deep in sugar cookie dough doesn’t seem like the right moment to start that.
Graysen is, well.. he’s a bigot. There’s no nice way to say it. The man collects -isms like they’re Beanie Babies in 1995, a proud sexist, racist, homophobe. Nesta remembers their conversation at the engagement party, his casual cruelty about ‘illegals’ and ‘taking back the country’.
Elain seems fine to overlook it and Nesta doesn’t want to ruin her sister’s chance at happiness, but she’d be lying if she said it wasn’t a red fucking flag.
She has a creeping feeling she should warn someone, warn Cassian. Feyre catches her eye, the same blue-gray connecting in wordless agreement.
When Elain goes upstairs to charge her phone, Nesta leans in closer across the counter, flour pluming with the movement.
“Did you tell Rhysand about Graysen?”
“Yeah. He said it’s fine, nothing they aren’t used to. Though if Graysen starts acting up I don’t think it’ll go well for him.”
“Should we..?”
Nesta doesn’t know where the sentence ends. Should they tell him not to come? Make an excuse, tell Elain the truth that he’s horrible? Nesta can’t tell if she wishes someone had done the same for her. If it would’ve changed anything, in the end.
God, these family gatherings are great at bringing up shit she doesn’t want to think about. Feyre sighs.
“Honestly, I feel like it’s not our job to protect her from her own choices. She’s an adult.”
“Who’s an adult?” Rhysand asks as he stamps snowy boots on the mat before the back door, arms full of firewood.
“Elain. What we talked about earlier.”
“Ah. Our patriotic brother-in-law to be.”
“Cause I’m proud to be an Amurrican!” Cassian bellows in a twangy accent where he follows his brother inside. He drags a huge fir tree into the living room like it’s weightless, leaning it against the wall. “So what’s the over/under on who he pisses off first?”
“My money is on Mor,” Feyre says, a streak of flour left behind when she wipes at her face. “But I think it’ll depend on how much wine she has.”
Cassian laughs, digging through a cupboard flanking the fire. “You all bought enough for a month-long sea voyage.” He emerges with an ancient metal tree stand as Feyre snorts.
“So, definitely her.”
“It could be you Feyre, darling.” Rhysand brushes at his wife’s cheek, frowning at the flour now on his hand. “You can get fearsome when it comes to your sisters.”
There’s an awkward moment in which Rhysand seems to realize Nesta is still in the room, but Cassian pops the bubble by grabbing a huge wad of cookie dough and shoving it into his mouth as he passes by. Feyre swats at him with her rolling pin before he thunders up the stairs.
“That is fully raw, you fucking caveman.”
“Can’t get salmonella if you don’t know how to spell it! Az, come work your magic with the tree stand!”
Rhysand watches Cassian go with a fond expression on his face, though it’s tinted at the edges with worry.
“Dark horse contestant, I think,” he muses, more to himself than anyone else. “Best keep him away from anything blunt and swing-able, shall we?”
He picks a piece of lint off his shirt and gives Nesta a significant look before going to start the fire, one she’s not quite sure how to interpret.
Mor is on his bed when Cassian walks into his room, plucking things from his disheveled suitcase between pinched fingers.
“You need new clothes. How old is this?” She holds up a sleep shirt with a faded logo on it, some beer he hasn’t drunk in years.
“I don’t like to spend money I don’t have to.”
“Fine, then let me spend money on you. That doesn’t count, right?”
He hears Nesta’s door open and close across the hall.
“Get out of my shit.” Cassian peels off his wet socks, throwing them at Mor for emphasis.
“Jeez, touchy. Anyway, Kier is being a dick and making me give our financial guy and itemized list of my trust fund withdrawals. God, I can’t wait to be thirty. Oh, and Garrett came back from the dead and I have to decide whether I want to open that whole thing again.”
He’s used to this, her therapy-style monologues that start as if they’ve been talking for hours. It strikes him how similar Mor and Nesta’s pasts are as he pulls on a dry pair of socks, hearing her dad’s name.
In another life they could be friends. Fuck, maybe in this one. The holiday has his optimism overactive already.
Optimism that crashes like drunk Santa into a roof when Cassian remembers Mor’s reaction to his last girlfriend. Poor Tanwyn. He can still hear the sound of her scrubbing red wine stains out of her white sweater, muttering under her breath about that Cersei Lannister-ass bitch.
Mor has always liked being the only woman in his life. Everyone thought they were together when she came to visit him in rehab, and Cassian gets it, he really does. It’s hard not to have a soft spot for her, with everything they’ve been through.
A wrecked apartment flashes in his memory, the yellow legal pad shaking in her hand.
Cassian, your addiction has negatively affected my life in the following ways.
Mor in the present is still kicking at his carry-on with a pointy toed shoe. She’ll keep digging through his clothes if he doesn’t keep her entertained, and Nesta’s bra is definitely still in there somewhere.
“Is he the one who fell asleep while you were hooking up?” Cassian asks, and Mor drops the ragged basketball shorts she was scrutinizing, leaning back on her hands.
“And he asked to go Dutch on dinner. The greater crime.”
One: making me worry about where you are at all hours of the night.
The distraction doesn’t work the way he hoped it would, and she dips forward again to examine an old henley. So close to utter disaster—he can see a black bra strap peeking out beneath a pair of socks from where he shoved it an hour ago.
A part of him wants her to find it. Wants her to realize there’s another woman in his life, one he might choose over her. It’s a weird thought, one that hurts sharply and leaves him cold at the same time, like being stabbed with an icicle.
“C'mon, I said get out of my shit.”
Two: you missed the fifth anniversary of my assault, when you promised you were going to be there for me.
She pauses, something passing between them. But then Mor rifles deeper, a look of growing suspicion and determination on her face and the peeling rubber band of tension inside him snaps.
“Jesus, Mor. Enough already.”
His voice is loud, louder than it should be. She snatches her hand back as if scalded, narrowly avoiding where he slams the suitcase shut.
“Sorry,” Cassian says immediately, mortified at his emotions getting away from him. He rubs his hands over his face and takes a slow breath, as if through a straw. “I’m stressed. You know holidays are weird for me.”
“Me too. I love Feyre, but all this change is making my head spin.” Mor flops backward onto the bed, her many bracelets clinking against each other.
“That’s probably the chardonnay.”
“Oh you shut up,” she grouses, but her glare has more smoke than real heat. “Mr. Sobriety on his high horse again.”
Three: I feel like our friendship now is just based around partying, and we never actually talk about real things anymore.
Cassian tried once, years ago, to confront Mor about her drinking. It used to trigger the fuck out of him, but the intervening time has allowed him some distance, some perspective. He’ll notice each glass of wine she’ll down tonight, but the pool of guilt it’ll leave in his stomach won’t be deep enough to drown in, not anymore. It’s not his job to save her, even though a part of him will always feel responsible.
It’s this thought that has him sitting next to her on the bed. That has him tugging on a tendril of her hair when she too sits up, forever a middle-schooler around her.
“It was always going to change, Goldilocks. It was never meant to just be the four of us forever.”
Mor wrinkles her nose at the nickname, though her brown eyes alight with fondness, and something more anxious. “Unfortunately. You know, it’s funny. I never thought Rhys would be the first of us to fall.”
“Then who?” Cassian asks.
“Honestly? I always thought it’d be you, Mama Bear.”
And he’s not sure what to make of it as Mor swishes from the room and closes the door with an adolescent flourish, oblivious to the black lace just beneath her nose.
“Oh, hey,” he hears her say in the hallway a moment later, that voice she gets when talking to one of her many frenemies. Graysen must have finally made it. “The bathroom is the other way.”
Alone at last, Cassian pops open the window, ignoring the chill as he makes a quick sweep of the empty backyard. Everyone is inside, but he doesn’t want to chance it as he draws from his vape pen, relief sweeping through his blood.
It’s hard to suppress a cough when Nesta slips through the door, closing it softly behind her.
“What was that about?” There’s a demand in it, in the way she stands with her back braced against the door. Like he’s not getting out until he answers.
“Nothing. I’m fine.”
Cassian blows another cloud out the window. Nesta’s gaze burns into the side of his head, her laser-powered lie-detector. It’s so tempting to let his face fall into an easy smile , but that’s against the rules.
No hiding. No pretending. That’s what he promised her—promised himself—that night of their first date. When they stayed up until the streetlights winked out, the frozen dawn emerging.
Cassian sighs.
“I don’t know how I’m doing.” He pauses, rolling the pen between his hands. “I’m tempted to say I’m spiraling but I don’t actually think that’s true. I’m still making good decisions. I’m not hurting anyone. I’m still taking care of myself. I’m just not coping perfectly and I feel really guilty about it.”
He doesn’t know she’s moved until she’s standing right before him. Nesta’s fingers are cool where they brush the hair back from his forehead. “Only seventy-two hours to go.”
It’s like the walking breaks when he tries to rededicate himself to running, both relief and reminder of how fucking tired he is.
“How many minutes is that?”
She laughs, and the sound joins the THC to tingle through his frayed nerve endings. “Too many. Now where the hell is my bra? You’re lucky I brought another.”
Graysen actually arrives not long after, when Feyre is drunkenly massacring the tree with flaky tinsel, the ancient kind that comes in individual pieces instead of a long strand. Elain whisks him away at once, cheeks pink. Likely embarrassed by the idea that everyone knows they’re sharing a room, which is asinine considering the noises Rhys and Feyre will be making later.
And maybe Nesta, too, Cassian himself. He’ll have to remember to cover her mouth. He wonders if being loud in bed is an Archeron trait. God bless Az, if so.
Shadow darts by in his periphery, ready to take up her post under the sofa until everyone goes to sleep
Dinner is a giant pot of spaghetti, tradition for the first night. Cassian switches to his glasses once Mor starts peering at his eyes too closely, thankful for the steam that clouds them. Tries not to remember the year he passed out while the water was boiling, leaving nothing but mush.
“Merry Christmas everyone!” Feyre says with her glass raised once the long oval table is set. “Thank you so much for being here. It means so much to be able to gather as a family, especially for the first time like this, and I hope we can all look forward to many more.”
Cassian catches Nesta’s eye roll and can’t help but hope for that, too.
It doesn’t take long for Graysen Nolan to prove himself as loud as he is stupid. Before the garlic bread has time to cool, Elain’s fiance manages to declare that DEI initiatives caused a plane crash, the government can manipulate hurricanes, and that women should lose the right to vote.
“Look at the divorce rates. So-called women’s rights have led to nothing but the degradation of our society. It’s clear if you do your own research.”
Beside him, Mor is clutching her wine glass so hard Cassian is surprised it doesn’t shatter. Rhys shoots daggers at her with his eyes, imploring her not to.. well, to be herself, Cassian supposes. He loops an arm over the back of her chair.
“And should women be allowed to do this research, too?” Nesta asks innocently from the far end of the table. It’s the first time she’s spoken since they all sat down, and Cassian recognizes that expression, the deceptive calm he’s started to call her anglerfish look. “Seems like it might overwhelm them. ”
Graysen leans back in his chair, legs spread wide. “Well you see, our brains are different. We have more capacity for logical thinking.”
“Yes, you all are paragons of logic,” Mor mutters. Feyre has a hand on her forehead, shielding her eyes.
“There’s a biological difference here,” he continues to Nesta, his gestures going pointy. “No matter what the he-she-they-attack helicopters say. And frankly it’s dangerous to pretend there’s not.”
“Sweetie, maybe—”
“Don’t interrupt me, Elain, I’m talking.”
Cassian sees Nesta’s eyes flash. The poor oblivious bastard barrels onward.
“The reality is that women are simply less equipped to be in charge, and we’d all be better off accepting that.”
“Then I look forward to moving in with you after your wedding.”
No one speaks. Nesta’s smile is as straight and white as the man she stares down.
“That’s how it used to work, isn’t it?” she says mildly. “Before the Married Women’s Property Act of 1839. If women have no legal standing, we become the property of male family members, who are responsible to care for us. Unless you don’t think you’re capable of earning enough to support me.”
Graysen splutters, his face going splotchy. “Well, that would only count if you don’t end up marrying anyone.”
Nesta gives him an arch look, one that breaks Cassian’s heart a little as she says, “I’m not sure how likely that is, given I’ve already ruined my mind with research. What proper man do you think would have me?”
It has the intended effect, Graysen’s mouth opening and closing like a dazed PetSmart betta fish. But it’s more than Cassian can take, the exchanged glances, the raised eyebrows around the table. That no one refutes it, that he can’t do so himself without giving them away.
Hates how Nesta will offer herself up as the sacrificial lamb. It isn’t even the right holiday for that.
Cassian nearly swallows his tongue before Rhys smoothly transitions the conversation elsewhere.
Elain and Graysen disappear upstairs not long after dinner, lying about tiredness though everyone is relieved anyway. Mor and Feyre recruit Cassian and Rhys for what turns into a cutthroat game of Phase 10, Rhys tapping out once his wife destroys his run with relish for the fourth time. in a row. It’s nice, even with Mor’s voice getting louder with each glass of wine, all of them together, their resident introverts tucked into armchairs near the window.
Once the women devolve into Graysen shit-talk, Cassian allows himself to watch Nesta and Azriel for a while, quietly sipping their drinks and reading their respective books. She seems to have taken his advice to heart, making a brief comment about his brother’s worn Brian Sanderson paperback before lapsing back into silence.
Cassian’s fingers itch to feel her silky hair between them—they’ve been so inseparable these last few weeks, it feels strange to go this long without touching her.
The feeling of being watched creeps up the back of his neck, and Cassian turns to find Rhys regarding him near the fire. It’s like Sauron’s disembodied eye in Two Towers, and Cassian feels caught, unsure if there’s a question not being asked or a punishment about to be meted out. It’s hard to tell which, but it’s similar to the look his brother gave him right before he cocked his fist ten years ago.
Cassian doesn’t get a chance to figure it out. Rhys throws back the rest of his Manhattan and leads Feyre upstairs with a perfunctory round of good nights.
“Well, that’s my cue to Ambien myself into oblivion,” Mor says once they hear the door to their bedroom close. “Anyone need earplugs? I brought twenty.”
Cassian feels eyes on him again, and this time when he looks up it’s gray-blue that greets him. Nesta quirks up the corner of her lips, and he wonders if she’s remembering the same thing he is, when last week his downstairs neighbor banged a broom against the ceiling while they were going at it. It was worth it for the pink that stained her cheeks, and as Mor stumbles off to bed, Cassian hopes he’ll get to see it again soon.
Nesta can finally relax once they’ve escaped to the basement, hoping to put a full floor between themselves and their indiscreet hosts. Cassian digs through a cabinet full of DVDs, and she tries not to stare at the pack of muscle shifting at his shoulder.
Azriel joins them, his bedtime not until at least 4am. The pair always watch Die Hard on Christmas Eve, apparently, and it’s weird all over again to encounter people who actually enjoy traditions.
Nesta tries to hide her surprise when Azriel reaches for the silver case on the coffee table, even more when he offers the joint to her before taking a hit himself. They pass it between themselves as Cassian wrestles with the ancient DVD player.
It’s nice. Normal, like someone else’s family. Her own now too, she guesses.
Cassian’s arm slings over the back of the couch where he sits between them and Nesta wants to lean back into it so badly, her whole body tense.
John McClane is plucking broken glass out of his feet when Cassian dares a trip upstairs for snacks. In her periphery, Nesta sees Azriel readjust, his shadow shifting against the far wall.
“You don’t have to hide right now. I know you and Cass are seeing each other,” he offers unprompted.
It takes her a moment to register what he’s just said. She’s spent so much effort this evening dancing around the truth, and it feels both alarming and like a huge relief to have it out in the open.
“How do you know that?”
Cassian must’ve told him, the dumb handsome doormat. That, or they haven’t been as careful as she thought. Nesta tries to keep the surface of herself calm while her mind whirs through possibilities.
“I have his location.” Azriel shakes his phone. “Feyre said one time that you live on Stone Street.”
So, completely out of her control. Maybe it was stupid to have him at her place, but this revelation makes keeping the secret feel sort of futile.
“Busybody.”
Azriel shrugs, blowing the hair out of his eyes. “Habit. I check it every night.”
That weight settles over her again, the worry. The glances Rhysand has shot her all evening, the way Morrigan practically fell in Cassian’s lap every time she laughed during their card game.
“Are you going to tell me to leave him alone, too?”
“No. I just want to know why you’re hiding it.”
Nesta sighs, tired of this high school shit. “Why don’t you ask him yourself?”
Azriel gives her a wry look, as if to say: And how do you think that would go?
“Your family seems lukewarm about me at best, I’m sure they’d back you up if you want to run me off.”
“We’re protective of each other. Been through a lot of shit together,” he says vaguely, examining the strings of his hoodie.
Feyre’s words from earlier echo in her mind. That Elain is an adult, that they should let her make her own mistakes. It’s the Archeron way, to be so hands-off, or else to be hands-on to the point of bruising.
She’s envious, Nesta realizes. Cassian has people in his life who will show up for him unquestioned, who feel protective of him. And as overbearing as it is, a part of her wishes her sisters could watch out for her like that, too. That she wouldn’t always be left alone with her mistakes, her regret.
“But he seems happy,” Azriel continues, having found whatever he was searching for in his hoodie strings. “Happier than I’ve seen him in a long time.”
“Then why the scrutiny?”
“Feyre thinks you cheated on your fiance, and that’s why the engagement ended.”
It’s like the choke of a seat belt when she slams on the breaks. Blood red rage, pain, flooding all through her.
“What would’ve given her that idea?” Nesta manages, her thigh muscles twitching like they want to run run run, anxiety and anger skipping down her arms, out her trembling fingertips.
“Dunno.” Azriel shrugs before burying himself back into the corner of the sofa. “Said you have a habit of sabotaging relationships. That’s why she’s worried. Why Mor and Rhys keep pissing on his leg.”
Cassian’s thundering steps sound on the stairs and Nesta stares straight forward, not quite sure what’s just happened.
“See? You know the basement,” he’s saying to the ball of black fuzz amidst the bag of pretzels and tin of cookies in his arms. He sets Shadow on the carpet and the cat flops onto her side, presenting her belly for petting. “That’s a very good girl. So brave.”
Nesta doesn’t absorb the rest of the movie, jolting back to the present only as the credits start to roll. Cassian’s arm is warm where it’s draped over her shoulder fully now, but she barely feels it, barely registers as Azriel splits off, as Cassian presses her back to her bedroom door and kisses her goodnight.
The bed is more comfortable than it has any right to be, but despite the weed and the late hour, Nesta can’t settle. She feels like she’s in a trance, hypnotized with no one to tell her to wake up. Azriel’s words play in her head ad nauseam.
What hurts the most is that she isn’t surprised. Feyre likes to think of Nesta as their mother’s copy, but her youngest sister undoubtedly inherited Alma Archeron’s ability to see the worst in people. It’s a jagged wound, one Nesta has never gotten used to, no matter how she’s tried.
Mom was always convinced of her willfulness, her bad intentions. Read her hesitance as defiance, her fear as disrespect. After a certain point, Nesta decided she might as well get the fun parts of being bad if she as going to wear the label anyway.
So she let herself indulge. The boys, the drinking. Holding court in the queendom of a beat-up backseat, a hot-boxed basement. Feeling powerful, if only for a moment.
And then the nights when Mom would scream at her and take the door off her room were replaced by thick silence. Nesta still doesn’t know which she hated more.
She should just fucking leave. Elain can ride home with Graysen. But Nesta knows that if she runs away in the middle of the night it’ll become more fodder for calling her crazy. One more tick in the column that says selfish, unstable, over-dramatic Nesta will never change.
She should tell Cassian.
She’s fucking angry.
The text is typing itself before her better judgment can turn on airplane mode.
I was made aware tonight that there is a lot of speculation about what happened with my engagement that I want to clear up. I did not cheat on Tomas. I did not sabotage the relationship. I would appreciate in the future if you would refrain from jumping to conclusions and spreading those assumptions to other people before even asking me what’s going on. I am willing to stay and put on a good face for the rest of this trip, but I need you to know that this is not okay with me.
Nesta’s finger hovers over the little upward arrow. She reads the message again, again. Searches for inroads to discredit her, to say she’s being overly emotional.
But instead it sounds like the emails she writes when she really wants to ream out her advisor for being sloppy and lazy and absent. Sterile, impotent.
Nesta reads it again. Presses down. Shoves her phone into the bottom of her suitcase.
Rises and slips on a pair of socks to mask her footsteps in the hallway.
His bed is warm when she sneaks in, trying not to wake him when she slides under the covers. It’s a fool’s errand, for the moment she touches the mattress Cassian is dragging her back to his chest, strong arms banded around her middle.
“Sorry,” he mumbles, kissing the back of her neck. “Do you need to turn over?”
“No, I just need to..” She doesn’t know where the sentence ends, but it hardly matters. Cassian is already asleep once more, his gentle snores drowned out by the sleet pelting the windowpanes.
Chapter 7
Summary:
the christmas episode, part II
Notes:
welcome back to the psychosexual horror show
i overthought this one too muchcass and nes are extra introspective today lolcw: brief violence, addiction, discussion of drug use, sexual assault, & domestic abuse, and adults getting consensually nasty
because nothing says christmas like fellatio
bonus points if you can find all the interrobangs
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Cassian rouses to fingers massaging gentle circles along his thigh. Then a warm, wet tongue traces the line of his hipbone and he’s roused in a very different kind of way.
Pulling up the comforter, he sees a golden head hovering over his belly button.
“Morning,” Nesta says mildly, as if she’s not about to transport him to Mars.
He doesn’t remember her climbing into his bed, just a vague impression of warmth and contentment. But it’s clear she’s been here a while, her vanilla smell all through his sheets.
“Good morning to you.”
“I couldn’t think of what to get you for a present,” Nesta confesses as she resumes nosing along his lower stomach. “You don’t seem to want much beyond Chex Mix and seltzer water.”
The last holdover vices from the early sobriety days. His chest warms, that she knows him so well already.
“I’ll be happy for anything you give me,” Cassian says, and means it. Nesta looks a little more skeptical, eyes narrowing.
“Is that true?”
Her lips bridge the border between his skin and the waistband of his boxer briefs. Cassian can’t help threading a hand in her hair, groaning in appreciation.
“Quiet,” Nesta admonishes, blue-gray bladelike. “They’re on to us.”
He tries to heed her warning, he really does. But when Nesta finally eases him out and wraps a hand around him, Cassian has to clap his own over his mouth to muffle the sound that escapes his chest.
Nesta pauses without speaking, glares at him again before resuming, but the message is clear. Strike one. He’s desperate not to make it to three.
That she’s figured out every way to push his buttons in a month will rank up there with the other great mysteries of his life.
Why did Rhys ask Mom to take him in after taking a sucker punch to the gut? What would’ve happened if Az wasn’t out the game he tore his ACL? Who was supposed to feed Mor’s hamster that summer when she went to camp?
And how does Nesta Archeron know just how to boss him around so that his brain goes all staticky?
Another moan escapes before he can catch it. Another glare. Strike two.
He’s an idiot. Her mouth is perfect. This was a horrible idea. Nesta’s Cheshire Cat smile gleams, as if she's known it from the jump.
Cassian whimpers, swearing.
“You just can’t follow directions, can you?” Her eyes are shimmery, shrouded in shadow beneath the comforter. “Do I need to shut you up myself?”
Before he can register what she’s said, a very unclothed Nesta swings around and throws one leg over his face, and Cassian is suddenly transported to his favorite place.
His house, he’s taken to calling it, where Nesta is the roof and the walls, his own heart thumping beneath the floorboards. He wishes his house had a window so he could still see what she’s doing, but she’s smarter than him. Another moan rips from his throat and Nesta smothers it with her pussy, wiggling her hips as if to tell him get to work.
Cassian wraps an arm around her waist and does just that.
A blessing, really, because he’d be embarrassing himself right now if he didn’t have something to focus on. But he’s nothing if not dedicated to his profession. And though he’s the master of sprinting ahead of himself, Cassian knows this will never get old.
Because it’s bliss, tasting her. Like stepping in a shower when he’s sweaty and exhausted, collapsing into bed after a long day. Everything makes sense to him between Nesta’s legs, as if they’re somewhere lush and peaceful instead of the middle of a familial minefield.
His mind touches the void and Nesta's humming around him and moving her hips in those little circles that mean she’s close. Cassian gives it his all even as he’s about to die when he feels her lips graze the hair at the base of his cock.
Soon trembling thighs rattle his thoughts like dice in a cup, tipping to scatter him as he comes hard down her throat. Nesta’s own cry comes a moment later, muffled where her thighs clamp around his head.
The need to breathe is a distant memory by the time Nesta slumps off him.
“For the record, you can wake me up like this any time.”
“Don’t be greedy,” she shoots back, pursing her lips, though her words are still breathy in the afterglow.
“Don’t underestimate me sweetheart. I didn’t show up empty-handed.” Cassian rolls over and digs in his backpack, finding the envelope tucked in a front pocket.
Tries to look nonchalant as she cleaves it open with a gray-polished nail and pulls out the pair of tickets, her eyes going wide.
They’re good seats, he knows that much. Practically begged the tickets off Thesan, who still has his side gig at the theater, promising the next pair of Velaris Raptors tickets that come his way.
“The ballet?”
“New Year’s Eve.” His grin gives too much away, but he can’t help himself. “I know you don’t have plans.”
Cassian makes a mental note to send Gwyn Berdara flowers when Nesta flushes, fighting a smile.
“That’s.. very thoughtful of you.”
“Well don’t look so surprised.”
“No, it’s.. Thank you.” Her hand trembles where she props up on his chest. “I’m.. not sure what to say.”
"You don't have to say anything. Merry Christmas."
It hurts him, how hard this is for her. How she has to fight not to feel afraid.
Cassian tries to say too much when he kisses her, one hand coaxing through the tangles in her hair. Nesta’s eyes are clearer when he pulls her head back, searching.
“I actually did get you something,” she teases, “but we’ll have to be alone before I can wear it.”
Another mystery: what he’s done to deserve this fucking woman.
Cassian rolls over her, his cock half-hard again already, eager to repay the favor twofold. He has to be quick—breakfast is expected, followed by the annual three-way hockey face-off. But Nesta is warm and eager, long legs already hooking around his hips.
God, she’s everything. Makes all the rest of this bullshit fade away, the pressure, the scrutiny. The weight of the past still dredging him downward. It’s easy, as he tastes the flush gathering on her chest, to forget the layers of house below him, of people, of time.
He’s so focused on how soft the underside of her breast is that he doesn’t hear the knock, the creak on the landing.
“Hey Cass, have you seen oh my god.”
Nesta scrambles away from him, alarm flashing as Cassian whips around to see a mortified Feyre in the doorway.
“Oh my god. Okay. I’m leaving.” She throws a tattooed hand in front of her face, gropes for the doorknob. “Fuck. Nesta, I want to talk to you. Merry Christmas. Oh my god.”
And just like that, the cold water of reality douses his fantasies.
Cassian jolts back to the present where Nesta is rummaging about the bed for her clothes.
“Shit. Are you okay?” he asks.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Really?”
“No. I don’t—” Nesta pauses and drops a head into her hand, massaging her forehead. “I’m not ready to talk about it. I will, I promise.”
It’s a weird line they’re walking, because he wants to push. Knows she knows he wants to push. But something about the way she’s lost all the sated ease of a moment ago makes him back off.
She sighs.
“I’m so sick of being trapped by other people’s image of me.”
There’s nothing good to say, other than what he does, which is, “Yeah.”
Cassian is beginning to hate these moments when she feels so far away from him, beyond the reach of his outstretched hand. He wants to tie a rope around both their waists like cave divers, so they don’t lose each other in the darkness.
But he doesn’t have a rope. Only a lifetime of mistakes and maybes, lessons learned from hiding in plain sight.
“You stay here a minute. I’ll keep everyone who’s awake occupied. And be careful on the stairs.”
Nesta brushes a kiss against his lips when he leans down over her, before burrowing back into the comforter.
With dozens of eggs still to crack, Cassian dons a thick sweater along with his glasses, and remembers to keep a wary eye where Shadow is perched on the bannister as he makes his way downstairs.
Nesta doesn’t want to go downstairs.
Doesn’t want to get out of Cassian’s bed, doesn’t want to go anywhere near her room or her phone or her family or really anyone ever again.
So Feyre knows. Feyre knows, but Feyre already knew, so it really shouldn’t be surprising. Shouldn’t feel like she’s been caught doing something wrong, like the punishment is about to come.
The wood is cold under her feet when Nesta drags on her socks, skin prickling. Cassian is a fucking furnace, the bed still warm, and while it’s great now it probably won’t be come summer.
As she collects the rest of her pajamas, girlish fantasies do a sugar-plum dance in her head. Of the two of them splayed out before the big A/C unit in his apartment, hitting up the taco truck by her place after midnight. Escaping Velaris to come up here, washing away the city grime in the lake.
She doesn’t know what’s weirder: imagining him still in her life, or her in his.
It’s this thought that has her up at last, peeking out the door before creeping to her room, immediately zipping open her suitcase.
Nesta grasps her phone in a sweaty hand and puts her thumb on the lock. Knowing where Feyre has landed on all this is worth swallowing the anxious lump rising in her throat, so she can prepare herself.
But of course it’s dead.
She scrambles for a power cord as footsteps sound in the hall. Glares at the stupid lighting bolt that flashes on the blank screen as she throws on some inoffensive athleisure, waiting, waiting, and the doorknob clicks.
“Hey.”
Mercifully, it’s only Elain.
Less mercifully, she has her arms crossed over her chest, the same way she used to when they were little. When she'd wait on the doorstep for Mom and Nesta to get home from the extracurricular du jour, her round face scrunched up in indignance.
For years, Nesta tried to explain that the lessons were torturous, but Elain never cared because it wasn't fair. Because what if she wanted to go to Latin or Tennis or Piano, only no one had bothered to ask?
It didn’t help that Mom always breezed past like her middle daughter was just another perfectly manicured boxwood.
Nesta holds in her sigh as Elain leans in the doorway.
“Graysen is sorry. He knows he was out of line last night.”
Rude little shit. There’s no way it’s true, though the fact her sister is covering for him somehow stings more.
“Then he should apologize to me himself,” Nesta forces through gritted teeth. Elain twirls a vague hand in the air.
“You know how he is. And you did antagonize him.”
Her over-enthused tutor sounds in her head: marcet sine adversario virtus.
Valor becomes feeble without an opponent.
“I don’t like how he talks to you.”
“Please, Nesta? Please.” Elain tugs down the hem of her Lululemon top. “I just need us to get through this.”
Nesta wishes her own words could hurt less when they’re thrown back in her face. She asked exactly the same of Feyre last night. Put on a brave face. Suffer through. Don’t point out the festering wound at the center of the family, and for God’s sake at least put on some mascara.
“Fine. Bygones and all that. But if he acts up again, I’m not holding my tongue.”
She and Elain play the same duet, they have for years. While Feyre doesn’t ask because she’s confident she knows the truth, Elain doesn’t ask because she doesn't want to know.
“I wouldn’t expect any less from you.”
Nesta can’t tell if the comment is hit backhand or forehand. Doesn’t have time to decide as her phone finally lights up, searching for a signal. As Elain takes her hand and tugs her toward the door.
“Come on, everyone is waiting for us.”
"Sure. Fine." Don't be Princess Nesta, demanding things again, sucking up all the oxygen.
Nesta doesn’t want to but she can only juggle one sister fight at a time. And if she does get into it with Elain, she wants to save it for a moment that will really count.
Ad quod damnum. To whatever damage.
There’s a ruckus on the stairs as Morrigan shrieks, the sound of scrabbling against wood.
“Jesus, Shadow! It’s Christmas, you evil little fucker! I should make you into earmuffs.”
The kitchen is packed and busy when they emerge, having dodged the swipes of Shadow’s vengeful claws where she’s perched on the bannister. Queasiness sweeps through Nesta, everything a little too loud, chaotic. People are cheersing and hugging and piling food on plates from a giant spread on the counter, a fire crackling in the hearth.
Feyre is a rock in a river where she stands in the middle of it, blue eyes showing the whites all around.
Nesta ignores her. She gets what food she’ll be able to stomach, tucking into her armchair from the night before.
Cassian bumps her knee when he passes by, but she can’t look him in the eye either. Maybe if she forces a yawn they’ll all just assume she’s still half-asleep.
They eat a liesurely breakfast over the next hour, and Nesta forces her face into her most benign expression, the one she learned to avoid her grandmother’s hawkish gaze. They don't do presents until the afternoon but Feyre and Rhysand give her a rare book anyway—quite a nice one, actually. Nesta conjurs her semi-succesful pageant interview smile as she tries to seem grateful.
And she kind of is. But the unspoken words wind through her blood like poison, taking over.
When the boys have suited up to play hockey, when Morrigan has Elain trapped in some monologue about always wanting to open a bakery, Nesta finally lets her eyes connect with Feyre’s. She juts her chin toward the kitchen before standing and making her way there, to the glass-walled sun porch beyond.
Somehow it’s just as warm in here as the rest of the house. God, these people are rich.
It’s only when she hears the door click shut that Nesta allows herself to look up. Tension knots her arms tightly in front of her. Her sister stands there looking just as uncomfortable where she shifts foot to foot.
“So you’ve been saying some things behind my back.”
“I have. But you—”
“If the next words out of your mouth aren’t I’m sorry, then I don’t have anything else to say to you.”
“I’m sorry. You’re right. I’m sorry.” Feyre tucks a long lock of hair behind her bejewled ear, fiddles with the puffs on her cream-colored sweater. “I’ve been worried about you. And I didn’t feel like I could bring it up with you. I know things were never great between us, but after Mom.. and with Dad being, you know, who he is.. I just want us to be close. I just want things to be nice between us. And this last year I can barely get you to answer my texts.”
“Feyre, I am here. What more do you want from me?”
It’s never enough, she thinks. She’s never enough, never just right, always half a step off her mark.
It’s all so bullshit and unfair and Nesta feels like she’ll drown in the whirl of it, the endless cycle.
“I want you to care about me, about being in my life. About getting to know the people I care about.”
“Why do I have to perform for your happiness?”
“Because you and Elain are my sisters and I don’t get any others. And that means something to me.”
And here’s where Feyre always loses her. Her sister would rather look like a family than be one, doesn’t want all the messy realities of knowing, supporting. She freaks out every time someone needs something, seeing it as a personal failure. It strikes Nesta that her sister and Rhysand are similar in that way, through where her husband is calculated and controlling, Feyre throws up her hands and declares the whole thing ridiculous.
Throws up her hands in the present, too, exasperated. “So you have nothing to say to that!?”
“It means something to me, too. It does.” Nesta pinches the bridge of her nose. It feels like there’s a tight band around her skull and how did this all get so turned around? “This year has been very complicated and I don’t always want to talk about it when we see each other, let alone with people I barely know. It’s hard enough to live it every day.”
“So then tell me,” Feyre begs. "I'm so worried about you."
“No.”
“Nesta.”
“Why is it always me having to cut myself open? Why do I have to prove to you that I care by ripping out my guts and showing them to you? ”
The anger is boiling when it finally escapes, one of those geysers that kills a dozen dumb, overconfident tourists every year.
“Do you want to know what actually happened, Feyre? T—Tomas assaulted me.” Out loud, the words sound like a lie, someone else’s voice. “And while you were running around talking shit behind my back—not even bothering to ask why I ended up in the fucking hospital with fucking alcohol poisoning—that’s what I was dealing with. So don’t tell me I don’t open up, because if you actually wanted to know, if you were actually worried, you could’ve tried to talk to me about it at any time in the last thirteen months. But you didn’t. You haven’t. And you only want to talk now because I caught you.”
When Feyre covers her mouth, looking horrified, Nesta remembers why she stays away. Why fucking Cassian was such a bad idea in the first place. Because it’s way beyond fucking now, and there’s no going back. She’s here, part of this family for better or worse, in sickness and in health, in pleasure and in pain. The truth sinks in like poison.
Amor et melle et felle est fecundissimus. Love is rich in both honey and venom.
Shouting sounds far-off, a cacophony where it rebounds off the ice. Nesta swipes aside a parlor palm and spies a tangle of bodies on the frozen lake top, a splash of red staining the surface.
And the game was going so well.
It’s an unhelpful thought as Cassian feels his elbow connect with Graysen’s nose. Does nothing to douse the rage that prompted his arm to swing. Though it does make him smug to know the prick is going down while he and Rhys are losing four to one, which shouldn’t matter but Cassian’s always been a petty bitch on the ice.
Graysen may be shit at hockey, but he’s a grade-A shit talker.
Cassian can tolerate the taunts, the dick-measuring. Can even look past the weirdo alpha-bro posturing with which he forced his way into their game.
What he won’t tolerate is the homophobic slur Graysen drops as they wrestle over the puck. Not in defense of his own sexuality (about two standard deviations from the middle), but because it’s exactly the kind of shit Graysen thinks he can get away with around the guys. And anyway, he’s a fucking alt-right edgelord who deserves to have his nose broken for crimes both known and unknown.
Thus, the elbow.
There's a crunch as Cassian follows through. Graysen staggers back, clutching his nose.
“What the fuck, dude!?”
“My bad,” Cassian says with no remorse. Rhys shoots him a dark look as he skates from the other end of their makeshift rink. Az hovers nearby, too, and they’ve stood in a triangle like this so many times, in so many parking lots and under bridges and that time they pissed off a biker gang when they were dumb and drunk and twenty one. Ready to back each other up or break it up.
Cassian has a temper but Azriel has a tendency to snap. There are many ways this can go. Or they can all just walk away.
The air seems to crackle with cold and something more turbulent, a chill wind rattling the sleet-encased branches. Graysen spits blood onto the ice. His breath comes out in huge clouds when he snarls, “You fucking people always try to cheat.”
The tension splinters. Rhys goes for the wrong brother. Az remains still, and they both watch in horror as Cassian charges forward.
Graysen makes a pathetic scrabbling motion, stumbling over his skates, but he’s not fast enough to escape being tackled to the ice.
“‘You people' who, you fucking worm,” Cassian growls, gripping tight to the collar of the borrowed jersey and his knee is killing him—the bad one, the one that started it all—where it pins down Graysen’s bucking torso. He’s drawing back his fist to make sure the nose is broken when two pairs of arms wrap around him, dragging him back.
Graysen only stares at the sky, blinking rapidly, blood pooling in his mouth once more.
“You broke his nose!?” Mor shrieks when they finally hobble inside. Graysen is useless with an arm slung over Rhys’ shoulder, but it’s clear Azriel doesn’t want to let him go yet.
“It was an accident,” Cassian grouses. He shakes off Az’s grip, retreating to the kitchen. The others hover around, and he just wants to find Nesta, but he doesn’t actually because he doesn’t know how she’ll feel about this.
Hot shame flares across his cheeks. His fucking knee hurts.
“Someone get the first aid kit from the hall closet,” Rhys calls out and Cassian splashes cold water on his face, trying to come back to Earth. Opens his eyes to see Elain rush to where Graysen’s been deposited in a chair, tittering nervously.
Mor rounds the island, not done pressing him. “How do you accidentally break someone’s nose!?”
“Hockey is a contact sport, you know.”
“You’ll want to take him to the ER,” Rhys tells Elain, who by this point has turned white as cake flour. Graysen groans, laying the bag of frozen french fries Feyre retrieved over his face.
They all wait for her to move but it's clear Elain is too beside herself to drive. No one else wants to offer—it ripples through them awkwardly, shifty gazes avoiding each other.
Rhys sighs.
“Let me get my coat.”
“Get mine, too!” Feyre calls after him, bolting up. "Christmas in the ER! Sounds like the title of a Hallmark movie." She gives a weird smile and dashes off after her husband.
Cassian summons the courage to search for Nesta, expecting to find her gorgeous, skeptical eyebrows kissing her hairline. But instead he finds her staring at the stool her sister’s just vacated, looking hollow. Sad.
He wants to get her alone but Mor ushers him toward the hall bathroom, scoops up the abandoned first aid kit while the others fumble with coats and boots. “You’re limping, can we go look at your knee?”
He’s too exhausted to fight her and Rhys scowls at him on his way out the door, contempt plain. Cassian registers the basement door closing, likely Az escaping below.
And Nesta.. where is Nesta?
“Can you roll up your pants leg or do you need to take them off?”
“Mor, let up, I’m fine," he protests even as he sits on the toilet seat lid, trying to stretch in the tiny space.
“You don’t want to risk having surgery again,” Mor scolds. “Especially having to do it without—you know.”
She kneels down and reaches for his pant leg. He jerks it away, knee screaming.
It probably won’t make sense for years why this is the moment Cassian decides she’s gone too far. Maybe it’s that a past version of him would’ve let her undress him in this bathroom, even if he didn’t want it, just to keep her happy. It makes him feel nauseous now, the way he abandons his agency in pursuit of peace.
“Cass—”
“Get OUT, Mor.”
He stands abruptly, knocking her off balance. Closes the door in her face and locks it. Turns on the fan and yanks both taps all the way on, drowning out the sound of his own heaving breath.
In his haste, Cassian knocks the first aid kit off the counter. A strange skittering sound pulls his attention and his eye mega-zooms in like a cartoon and the world slows to a near-crawl and everything goes silent.
Because there it is, in the corner by the tub.
A pill.
A gleam of wanting pierces through him like a sunbeam, his shoulders relaxing as they haven’t in years.
This is bad. It could be just an aspirin. But he already knows it’s not. This is bad. This is so fucking bad.
Cassian creeps closer, hands gripped behind his back.
The lone little circle stares up at him, the color of a robin’s egg. The M printed in the center stands for mistake, because that’s what this is. Transfixed, he picks up the pill, already knowing the exact weight. How easy it would be to crush up using the toothbrush holder, how it would feel going up through his nose, sparkling through his brain.
This is bad. This is bad. He should flush it. Drop it right into the sink drain and listen until he hears it hit the other side of the world. Fuck, but there are so many molecules between him and the next right thing.
Would one hurt? It’s not like he has any more. He doesn’t, does he? A scan of the bathroom floor proves he does not. A thorough rifle through the first aid kit confirms it.
So, just one. This can’t spiral without his making several other choices, ones he’d easily get caught for. And he doesn’t want to, anyway, but that’s such a fucking lie because he does, he does, he wants to so badly he can taste the powder in the back of his throat.
He really wishes he could smoke it, but Mor would get suspicious if he ventured back to the kitchen for a straw and a few square inches of tin foil. And even if he did manage, he’s lost all his tolerance and this is a big boy pill, the kind people get their teeth kicked in for, the kind you ruin your life trying to chase.
He’ll get way too fucking high and Mor will be able to tell right away. Maybe he can sneak out somehow, invent a grocery thing they need. Pretend that he had to drive around forever to find a store that was open. Az won’t question him, and Nesta..
And Nesta.
Something’s going on with Nesta.
Cassian sets the pill on the counter. Picks it back up. Puts it in his pocket.
Avoids his own eyes in the mirror.
Goes to find Nesta.
Notes:
A note:
Part of this story is Nesta grappling with her identity as a victim of sexual and domestic violence. Her perception of what happened to her is colored by the shame she carries from earlier childhood trauma. her resistance to labeling what Tomas did to her as assault is a reflection of where she is in the healing process, and not a comment on the legitimacy of any kind of assault.
It’s natural that in the messy, painful, complicated process of moving forward that a person will doubt themselves, their experience, and their claim to victimhood/survivorship. This is really normal and is NOT evidence that you are making it up or blowing it out of proportion. it’s actually a sign of a brain trying to protect itself.
If you believe you were assaulted, I believe you, too. If identifying as a victim is disempowering for you, it’s not necessary for healing and moving on. You are allowed to do this at your own pace, and to identify however you want. No one else gets to place rules or judgment on YOUR process.
Chapter 8
Summary:
a respite from the rest
Notes:
i want to say a huge THANK YOU to everyone who has commented and engaged. not only does it feel good and encourage me to keep writing, but y’all are legit helping me work out real life shit!! and I feel like you trust me to do right by these characters, which feels really nice. mwah. i’m kneeling at your feet offering up this chapter on a platter.
cw: discussions of addiction, overdose, and drug use
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
It makes her feel like shit to admit, but it’s nice not to be the problem for once.
Not that she’s happy it’s at Cassian’s expense, but it was a relief to not be the one all eyes in a tense room slid to, the one fending off under-breath grumbles and patronizing criticism veiled as concern. It's the first time in twenty-four hours she hasn't felt observed, and the soggy-blanket weight lifted from her shoulders at last.
It didn't hurt seeing Graysen whimper like a little dweeb, either.
Morrigan, finding only Nesta and herself left, has parked herself on the sofa with a fat glass of white wine and a rerun of the millionth season of The Bachelor. Nesta’s planning to sneak to her car for a cigarette when she feels a large hand graze the curve of her waist.
“Hey.”
There’s a weird air about him as Cassian sidles up behind her, something tight about his mouth. He’s changed his clothes, too.
“I need a favor,” he murmurs close to her ear. “Can you drop me off somewhere?”
His voice has just a hint of roughness, the fine gravel at the bottom of fishtanks.
“You’re leaving?”
“Just for a bit, I’ll Uber back.”
Nesta isn’t following, and it’s weird to have no idea what’s going on with him, not when he’s always been so open. “Can’t you drive yourself?”
“No, I just—I can’t. Not right now.” Cassian pleads with those big hazel puppy eyes, the ones that make her want to believe everything he’s saying. “I’ll explain when we get there.”
“Sure, okay.” Nesta shuffles toward the stairs. “Let me get my keys. Are you okay?”
She doesn’t mean to ask it, and she can tell he’s just as surprised as she is. Like he’s just heard the question for the first time.
“Yeah. I don’t know. Actually, no.” He drags a hand through unruly hair. “Can we go? I want to get there by noon.”
Nesta feels his edginess begin to seep into her, a nervous tingling down the backs of her thighs. “You’re freaking me out.”
Guilt makes a home on Cassian’s face. “You’ll understand when—you’ll get it. Please trust me.”
This is a shit feeling, knowing he’s struggling, being on the outside. Knowing he needs the space but wanting to dig into his thick head and drag it out anyway, even if it's just to ease herself.
But he respected her this morning, and she's determined not to be a hypocrite. At least whatever it is will get her out of this house. Preferably for a while, so she can go back to avoiding Feyre as she should've in the first place.
Cassian smokes two American Spirits in the car, the second lit off the end of the first. He’s silent, massive shoulders hunched to fit in her Civic, but he fiddles with the radio enough that it puts Nesta more at ease. Whatever’s going on, it’s not so emergent that he’ll tolerate twenty minutes of children’s gospel choirs.
His phone directs her past stands of snowy firs, windy roads leading down to the gingerbread town below.
It makes her think of Christmases long past, of frothy, laced-trimmed dresses, her mother’s automobile benedictions. Don’t touch anything. Don’t speak unless spoken to. Whatever your Grandmamma wants, you say yes ma’am. Niles in the passenger seat, silent.
Gravel crunches as they pull into a small parking lot.
The carriage house behind the church glows golden under an overcast sky, a haven amongst the gray. People are milling about in front, smoking and clutching steaming styrofoam cups, and there’s an air of camaraderie, though Nesta has no idea what they’re all here for.
A church service? She doesn’t think he’s mentioned any kind of religiosity. Maybe it’s a volunteer thing, though in her experience you can’t just drop in on those kinds of things.
An older man claps Cassian on the shoulder when he limps inside.
“Do you know that guy?” Nesta whispers. They shuffle toward the back of a crowded cluster of folding chairs, all pointed toward the middle of the room.
“Never seen him in my life.” Cassian winces when he sits in the farthest row, but he already seems more relaxed, his color returning. “Must look like I need to be here. Can you get me a coffee? And whatever over there looks most sugary.”
Festive baked goods are nestled between stacks of pamphlets on the folding table, a huge coffee carafe, and a Maxwell House canister filled with ones and fives. There’s a white box, too, labeled CHIPS: 1-90 days.
Oh.
Snagging a doughnut decorated like a reindeer, Nesta pours two sugars and creamers each into a coffee, leaving her own black.
It’s a bit like going back in time, circles of chairs in rundown rooms, peeling linoleum beneath shoes with no laces. Back then, the facility she haunted was bleak and barren, but this feels warmer somehow.
A warmth she might be intruding upon.
“Are we..?” She’s not quite sure how to ask it as she slides into the chair beside him. “Am I allowed to be here?”
“Of course, Nes,” Cassian assures her as he takes his coffee with both hands. “It’s an open meeting. No one cares. Unless you’d rather leave.”
Hazel eyes light up anxiously as the smokers come in to take their seats. A kind-looking woman with gray-seeded hair stands as the general chatter diminishes around them. She reminds Nesta of Clotho, her favorite librarian at the university circulation desk.
“Lisa, addict. December 25th: Detachment,” Not-Clotho reads from a small book. "Addiction is a family disease, but we could only change ourselves.
“Many of us come from severely damaged families. At times, the insanity that reigns among our relatives feels overwhelming. Sometimes we feel like packing our bags and moving far, far away.”
Nesta swallows. Her nails leave crescent moons in the Styrofoam. The woman passes the book with a smile to the youngish Black man beside her.
“Kevin, addict. We pray that our family members will join us in recovery but,” he reads, “to our great sadness, this does not always happen. Sometimes, despite our best efforts to carry the message, we find that we cannot help those we hold most dear. Our group experience has taught us that, frequently, we are too close to our relatives to help them. We learn it is better to leave them in our Higher Power's care.”
Another pass, a middle-aged Boomer Dad with white-white sneakers, cellphone clip on his belt.
“Craig, addict-alcoholic. We have found that when we stop trying to settle the problems of family members, we give them the room they need to work things out in their own lives. By reminding them that we are not able to solve their problems for them, we give ourselves the freedom to live our own lives. We have faith that God will help our relatives. Often, the best thing we can give our loved ones is the example of our own ongoing recovery. For the sake of our family's sanity and our own, we must let our relatives find their own ways to recover.”
Nesta hears Cassian let out a slow breath beside her as the man sits down. Feels the warmth of his arm when it loops over the back of her chair, pulling her the tiniest bit closer. She’s not sure if it’s serendipity or the authors knew what the fuck they were doing, but either way the passage hits home, sickly sweet home.
Feyre swirls through her mind, her sister’s high-pitched everything’s fine! voice pinging between her thoughts. Nesta almost feels sad for a moment, knowing that pressure. Unsure if Feyre’s even aware how much she still follows Mom’s orders despite that stubborn, rebellious streak. The Archeron way, to put on the brave face, and automatic as breathing.
But as the problem child, stuffed too full of everyone else’s pain, Nesta began to suffocate. Grew claws to survive, learned to search for the pinpricks of light in the deep blackness. The curse and gift of being the scapegoat, when exhaustion sets you free.
There's nothing for her to do. There's no one way she can be, that will make them all better. Whatever she has, whatever she might do, it won't be enough.
The meeting goes on around them—someone stands to share a story, then another, reflections on how hard it is to stay clean on Christmas. Resonance with what was read, difficulties with their families, both close and estranged. Past regrets. Tentative promises.
It sends her back to last Thanksgiving.
The attending was convinced she was trying to kill herself. Couldn’t fathom that she drank that much not intending to die. Thought the tumble down the stairs was the point, that she failed somehow in her main aim.
In truth, Nesta doesn’t know what she was thinking that night. The last lucidity available to her was hanging up on Niles. Then the sharp thrashing of her heart, full of too much, the jingling of keys, and pain, and pain, and pain.
Then nothing.
She woke up feeling sorry, but not knowing to whom. Guilty, but unsure what for.
A part of her wants to stand, to confess it all to the room. Seeking absolution, perhaps punishment, atonement—Nesta isn’t sure. Families stream into the church across the snowy lawn, little girls with shiny buckle shoes and ruffly socks, Christmas dresses of plaid and velvet and tulle. Bows like festive shackles about their waists and necks and heads.
It shouldn’t startle Nesta when Cassian stands, but it does. He towers above the seated congregants like a lonely redwood.
“Cassian, addict.”
“Hi, Cassian,” the assembled respond.
He takes a deep breath, bracing on the back of the empty chair in front of him.
“Recently I’ve been struggling with feeling like my family won’t let me move on. Like they want to hold my addiction over my head forever. And I get really frustrated because there are these moments when I think: do you want me to go back to using? Because when I’m sober, I can’t be blamed for everyone’s problems and they have to look at their own shit. And they do not like that.”
A knowing chuckle goes around the room.
“But I know I’m responsible for myself and my actions. And I know they have a right to be worried, or to expect the worst. I put them through a lot. That sits on my soul.”
Nesta can’t help shifting in her chair, uncrossing and re-crossing her legs. He hasn’t talked much about those dark days. This confession feels like something she shouldn’t be privy to, sacred ground she shouldn’t tread on.
“I keep waiting for the day when it doesn’t,” Cassian goes on. She can hear the fatigue in his voice, see it in the sloped line of his shoulders. “When I don't feel like I have to prove myself to them. The day I don’t want to get high anymore. But I’m starting to wonder if that ever comes. Maybe I just have to accept there will always be a part of me that wants to go back. But I know it’s not worth it. And that everything good in my life now has come from being in recovery. I was really challenged today, and I needed to remember that.”
When Cassian returns to his chair, his whole body seems to have relaxed, though he fiddles with something in his pocket throughout.
The chapel doors yawn wide and welcoming, promising happiness, safety. Protection. But only if you obey, if your buckle shoes can toe the line. If you’re a good girl.
What a scam.
Nesta looks at Cassian beside her. He catches the motion and smiles, resting a large hand over hers. Traces the scar below her thumb, sending a rush of something delicious through her, dark and velvety as the spaces between the stars.
And it settles, and it settles. The wild panic, Feyre’s accusations. Elain’s squeamishness. Niles’ abdication.
Her own wounded heart, beating as quietly as possible, now seeking to be heard above the organ music drifting on chill air.
Nesta threads their fingers together.
Nitimur in vetitum.
We strive for the forbidden.
They’re shivering waiting for the car to heat up when Nesta finally speaks.
“That was really lovely, what you shared.”
While he’s definitely walked himself off the ledge, it’s with renewed sheepishness that Cassian says, “Ah, I was just yappin’. Stuff to get off my mind.”
More than anything, he’s grateful there was a meeting close enough in distance and time. But the could-have-beens are still playing in the back of his head, the pill heavy as a fucking kettle bell in his jeans pocket.
“Don’t downplay yourself,” Nesta scolds, and he loves it so much that he can almost take her advice. “It takes a lot of work to get to that kind of understanding. You certainly have more clarity than I do.”
“Thanks for coming with me.”
Instead of responding, she leans in to kiss him, catching him by surprise. Her cheeks are his favorite wind-bitten pink still, and Cassian wants her this close to his face always when Nesta pulls away slightly, looking uncertain.
“Of course. If that’s what you want.”
He’s been so wrapped up in what’s going on in her head that it’s only now he realizes how fucking crunched his legs are.
“God, you’re short,” he teases, straining to stretch. Nesta’s perfect frown makes a cameo.
“I’m five-foot-eight.”
“Exactly.” Cassian pulls the seat lever to find it’s already as far back as it’ll go. He digs in his coat pocket for his phone once Nesta pulls out of the lot.
Queen Mor: why are you at a church
Queen Mor: did saint nesta make you go repent for your sins
Cassian swipes to his settings and does what he should’ve years ago. His fingers tremble when he thumbs out a reply.
Stop stalking me.
Three bubbles pop up immediately.
Queen Mor: did you just turn off your location???
Picturing her hovering over Az’s shoulder in the basement, Cassian scrubs his hands down his face before searching the roadside up ahead. Itchy, itchy urges niggle his brain, make his empty spaces buzz.
“Pull off here,” he says, pointing.
Nesta raises an eyebrow without looking at him. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I just have to take care of something.”
Wind bites at his face when he extricates himself from the car, awkward as he accommodates his knee. The weather has turned nastier, and if he hadn’t seen Nesta drive this matchbox in the snow before he’d insist on taking over the wheel for the rest of the drive. So Cassian is surprised when she gets out with him, arms knotted tightly about her front.
“What a lovely patch of nothing,” she remarks flatly. “What are we doing?”
Mortified, he reaches into his pocket in answer, heart pounding as he opens his hand. The pill sits inert in his palm, like a sapphire gone stale, and he marvels at how something so ruinous could seem so innocent.
Nesta blinks rapidly. A shiver runs through her that he suspects has little to do with the cold.
“Where did you get that?”
“Found it,” Cassian confesses. He was ruminating over the same question at the meeting, connecting the pale blue dots. “It’s probably been there a while, I’m not sure the last time anyone used that first aid kit. Must’ve stashed it as an insurance policy. Or just forgot about it. Must’ve been early enough that no one would’ve clocked it.”
His first (and so far, only) relapse was prompted by a similar squirrelly tactic. Three pills secreted away in the corner seam of his gym bag, just inside the lining. But he didn’t need the Narcan the EMTs gave him, nor the months of family surveillance after.
“Is that why..?” Nesta trails off, looking back down the road in the direction they’d come.
“Yeah.”
Before she can say anything else, Cassian cocks his arm back and lobs the pill deep into the woods. Hates that he tracks the trajectory of it, a past version of himself tearing off through the trees to dig it out of the snow.
Back in the car he cranks up the heat, not wanting to look at Nesta. Not ready for the interrogation that’s sure to come. His shame is a hot lightbulb swinging overhead, like he’s some skeevy perp on Law & Order SVU.
“Are you pissed?” he asks pathetically, desperate to get this over with.
Nesta clears her throat, and he braces for the thrashing.
“I don’t think so. I wish you’d told me. But I get why you didn’t.”
“Really?”
Confused doesn’t begin to cover it, how Cassian feels when her sad eyes take in all of him. But there’s none of the accusation he’s expecting, the bitterness.
“Cassian.” The gentle admonishment in her tone is an ice pack on his bruised self-esteem. “You don’t have to justify needing my help.”
“It feels like I do.”
“I know. Trust me, I do.” A little laugh, one that belies how exhausted she looks. “It was nice to get out, anyway. I needed to hear some of those things, too.”
And for some reason it reminds him of the time Mor came to visit him at college a month before her assault. The strange twist to her lips, the heaviness that made all her gestures take more effort.
“I don’t want to pry, Nes, I just.. Can you tell me?”
Maybe he’s deflecting. It wouldn’t be his first time. But in his gut it’s like Thanksgiving all over, trading tragedies. Cassian feels just as naked as he did then.
Nesta seems to agree as she gives a little nod. Better to be out and out about it.
“I found out last night that Feyre has been telling people my engagement ended because I..because I cheated on Tomas.”
He wants to slam his fist on the dashboard, to relieve the tense line of muscle up his forearm. Instead Cassian runs shaky hands down his thighs.
“I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have to defend yourself like this.”
“It’s textbook Feyre,” Nesta says breezily, warming her fingers in front of the vent. “In everyone’s business and then scuttles away when you call her on it.”
“Do you want to leave?”
He can’t imagine her wanting to stay. Almost can’t believe she made it the night. He’s sort of hurt in a twisty, tender part of himself that she didn’t wake him up.
Nesta rubs her hands together, brows skeptical. “I don’t know. Just walking out, it’s like giving everyone a loaded gun to use against me.”
“No one wants to hurt you,” Cassian assures her.
“Are you sure about that?”
And suddenly he’s not at all sure, thinking of the fight, the pill. The ways he’s made her vulnerable just today.
Cassian sighs, tries to shift so that his knee stops throbbing. “Fair. I just mean, Feyre loves you. However much that counts.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll be at the hospital the rest of the day.”
Nesta’s peering at the looming clouds ahead when his phone buzzes. Bemoaning Mor, he scrambles to turn it on airplane mode, but precipitously it’s Feyre’s name that appears below the clock.
Feyrita: God this is taking foreverrrr
Feyrita: Graysen is fine btw. He’s pissed they didn’t take him back right away. Apparently when your in labor you get to jump the line lol
Feyrita: But ya we’ll prob head home soon, xmas in the ER is less romantic and more anticeptic you know
“Looks like they’re headed back, too.” Cassian winces, tucking a strand of hair behind Nesta’s ear as he goes on to say, “I can fall on that sword if you need an excuse. Dump me in the driveway, I’ll bring your stuff back to the city.”
Nesta laughs without humor. “I’m sure that would go over well.”
“I’m not an idiot, Nes, I’ll be incognito about it.”
“There’s no point. Everyone already knows we’re together.”
“How do you know that?”
“Didn’t you hear me?” Nesta hisses. “Feyre’s been telling people. As in, your family. As in, all of them know.”
It’s too much to make sense of, so Cassian nosedives into the classic explanation for all misery in his life.
“Fuck, this is all my fault. And I’ve been so wrapped up in my own shit that I had no idea. I just keep making your life harder, don’t I?”
Nesta pinches the bridge of her nose. “Cassian, shut up.”
“I’m serious. I’m.. a liability. I could’ve easily relapsed today.”
The skitter of the pill will soundtrack his dreams tonight.
“But you didn’t.”
“But I could’ve,” he insists, not wanting her grace. “If not today, then tomorrow. Six months from now. T-ten years.” He shoves away the visions of her in white, radiant as a star. “And then you’d be stuck shackled to some ex-ex-junkie. I don’t want that for you.”
“You don’t get to decide that.”
“Nesta, I can’t risk hurting you. I can’t. I won’t be another person who lets you down.”
He can’t let her get lost in the labyrinth of his empty spaces, though he covets her on a Goblin King level.
Blue-gray pins him in place, her words a scalpel to dissect his coward’s heart.
“You’re doing it right now.”
And he’s bloated with too many feelings and they shouldn’t all fit inside him, spilling out like blood, like the hot tears that want to streak down his cheeks.
Nesta grips the steering wheel, staring into the trees. “If you want to break up with me, just say so.”
“NO. No. I don’t want that.”
“Then what the fuck?” she demands. Hair falling in mesmerizing spirals around her face, Cassian can’t tell her anything but the truth.
“You’re so beautiful. And I’m..” Broken. Defective. Empty. Unworthy. “All I bring is chaos. You deserve everything. You deserve someone who isn’t going to drag all this heavy shit into your life. Someone clean. Undamaged.”
“Because I’m the damaged one.”
“No. God." She's pissed and his knee hurts and this is going so fucking sideways. "That’s not what I mean.”
“Then what do you mean?”
“You deserve someone who makes your life simpler. Who brings you peace," he tries to explain. "You deserve to be happy, Nes. More than anyone I know. And I don’t trust myself to be that, for you.”
“You reeled me in, Cassian. Or did you forget that?” Nesta snaps. “You wanted to take this further. And now suddenly it’s not working? Just admit it’s because you don’t want to deal with my mess.”
It’s like catching the pouring rain in his hands, trying to dodge the stain of his insecurities. Unhinging the rusty storm doors that protect her from his worst parts, his most selfish desires.
“I want to more than anything, Nesta,” Cassian blurts out. “So fucking badly. I live for whatever it is you call your mess. I’m fucking addicted to making you smile, making your shoulders relax. It’s all I think about.” Hope drips from every word. But his ruinous, ruinous heart knows he can’t be that for her, for anyone with self-respect. “I wish so badly that I was worthy of you.”
Words that taste of chalk, dry in his throat. Her car is his confession booth, and though the church is miles behind them he can’t help feeling like he’ll burst into flames.
“How do you know you’re not already?”
Nesta’s voice is quiet, nervous. As if she’s never considered it before. Cassian swallows around the razor blade in his throat.
How cruel he’s been, to trick her into thinking he’s someone else, as if he can protect her from the cold wind that blows through him. Tricked himself, too, until the past body-slammed him into the ice.
“This last month with you, it’s been one of the best of my life. But I don’t think I can keep it up. Sometimes, how I get–I can barely take care of myself. I don’t want to fail you when you need me the most. And I think I just did.”
When he works up the guts to look at her, Nesta is staring at him with the same expression she wore that night at Waffle House. That challenge, daring him to rise to the occasion, defiance that’s as provocative as it is comforting, honest.
And maybe it is.
The breath she draws in is shaky, but deep.
“Don’t–” Nesta starts, but she bites her lower lip, grip tightening on the steering wheel. “You can’t blame yourself for what you don’t know. I didn’t ask for your help. But when you do.. This.” She gestures at his guilt-wrecked face, him in general. “It makes me feel like.. Like you’re saying I’m too much.”
Cassian is already whipping his head back and forth before she can finish. “It’s me, Nes. It’s my mess. The shit in my head.” And then, the question he least wants to ask. “Do you want to break up?”
“No. But how do two people struggle at the same time?”
“The best they can, I guess. That’s enough.”
He means it, though he’s not sure why, but there’s always been something unshakable in how Cassian feels about Nesta. He trusts her. The revelation settles in the bottom of his mind like a stone, cool and still.
“No hiding?” she asks, almost as if hoping he’ll disagree.
“No pretending.”
Nesta takes another one of those deep breaths, shifting so her hips are angled toward him despite the tense set of her shoulders. “My mind won’t stop telling me that you’re tricking me. That the next thing I do or say or need is going to make you realize I’m not worth it.”
“I think I’ve been looking for you all along,” Cassian says. Fights that laugh that wants to bubble up at the absurdity of her words. “I just didn’t know it until I saw you. And now I’m terrified to fuck it up. I’m sorry that my shit gets in the way of that. My family’s shit. But I’m here. I’m in, as long as you want me to be.”
Nesta’s lip trembles. “I’m not good at this.”
“Bullshit. You’re right here, sweetheart. What more could I want from you?”
“Someone normal. Someone kind.”
“Nesta. I saw how you were at the meeting.” Her warm eyes, the gentle thread of her fingers in his. “You helped me without making me prove I needed it, without interrogating me. You trusted me. I haven’t felt that in a long fucking time. It’s everything to me.”
“I’d do that for anyone,” she dismisses, though the thickness in her voice belies the emotion beneath.
Cassian tries to drag all his own feelings to the surface of his face, into the hand that comes up to cup her cheek. “I know. I know you would.”
“Stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?” Grinning, he meets the shield of her fear undaunted.
“Like you see something good in me.”
It’s the stuff of a million soft-boy indie songs when he kisses her, tender and sad and sweet. As if by proximity he can show her just how precious she is, how he wants to pull her into his head so she can see herself through his eyes.
“I didn’t think something like this existed in real life,” Nesta confesses once she pulls away, their foreheads still touching. “I thought it was only in fiction.”
“Who knows? Maybe we are two people in a story.”
She scoffs, eyes rolling skyward. “Condolences to whoever’s reading my unhinged inner monologue, then.”
“No, sweetheart, they’d love you,” he insists. “Of course they’d love you.”
How could they not? How could anyone look at her and feel anything less than utter devotion? Cassian tries to pause but it’s escaping him, this wild heart he’s kept locked away in a maze of guilt.
The one she’s set free.
“I love you,” Nesta whispers before he can form his own mouth around the words. So instead Cassian pulls her over the cupholders into his lap, dusting snow-soft kisses over her face and neck.
Notes:
the reading at the meeting is a real reading from Just For Today, a daily recovery reflection book. i have been to so many twelve step meetings, and while they are no longer a part of my life i hold such a warm place for the fellowship. and i love that in almost every town across america, there is a group of people ready to welcome you and give you a word of kindness or a reality check or a cigarette or a shitty coffee or just a safe place to be for an hour. it makes me feel good about humanity. we really do want to be better, i think.
Chapter 9
Summary:
christmas crisis
Notes:
it's the most
traumaticwonderful time of the yearCW: violence, racism
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.”
―
--
“Dad? Can you hear me?”
“Your sister wants to know why you’re not here yet.”
Ragged lungs draw breath. Everything hurts.
“Dad, something’s happened. I—I need help.”
Cobblestone crumbles beneath her heels, to the foundations of the earth.
“Well, you just get here and I’m sure Feyre will take care of it.”
A clatter of ice cubes—two, maybe three. Bourbon. The cold feels like it’s freezing the tears on her face and her coat is sticking to her back.
“I need your help, I—Tomas. He hurt me. Dad? Papa?”
There’s a long silence on the other end, a life’s age. Nesta is surprised they’re both still alive when Niles sighs down the line.
“Look Nessie, your mother and I had our problems, too. You just have to work these things out.”
“But I’m bleeding.”
Another sigh. More ice.
“Do what you have to do. You know better than me. Your mother would tell you to wait the two years, if you can.”
Two years. After which Nesta would be entitled to alimony. A fact she knows her father knows well, because it was a month before that deadline Mom got pregnant. Child support has a funny way of wiping out alimony.
It burned him up, even after all this time. The ultimate hustler fucked by fatherhood, the greatest scam of all.
“So when should I tell your sister you’ll be here?”
What tether lingers between them desiccates, turns to dust. Nesta imagines it floating into the sludge of the Sidra, turning radioactive.
“I hate you, Dad. I fucking hate you.”
She hangs up.
Rhysand is turning up his collar against the chill when they pull into the driveway just after the others. Nesta wants to tell Cassian to throw the car in reverse and get the fuck out of here, but he’s already opening the door, making a beeline for his brother.
Fuck.
“Hey—”
Nesta fumbles with the keys before she hears him ask about some irrelevant thing he needs help with in the kitchen, some cover for where they’ve been.
They decided in the car—they’re leaving. It’s near-blinding, the shame, but Nesta knows it’s the right choice. Pretending they don’t know what’s happening isn’t possible. Nothing changes if nothing changes.
Still, it feels nuclear. Mutually-assured destruction. Nesta’s heart gallops as she watches Cassian in conference with Rhysand over the island. Feyre’s bopping about in the background with Morrigan, chattering, oblivious. Cassian takes a big breath and Nesta braces herself, knowing what’s coming.
“Presents!” Feyre shouts before the truth can pass his lips. “Let’s do presents before.. well, it’s time to do presents. Where’s Azriel?”
“Here,” he says, ascending the basement stairs. Shadow hops from his shoulders, slinking back toward the second floor.
Nesta hovers awkwardly in the living room while Morrigan extracts a bright red envelope from amongst the pile of presents beneath the tree.
“I’ll start. This is for you, Cass.”
Cassian looks at Rhys for a moment too long, long enough the latter darts a glance back at Nesta. But Morrigan is burrowing up under his arm and holding the envelope right in front of his face and Nesta can almost feel how his skin crawls when he pulls out the contents.
“It’s.. paper.”
“It’s what’s on the paper dumbass. Read it.”
“A table at Rita’s.”
“New Year’s. You and me, baby.”
Nesta coughs like an idiot, like the shock is too much for her body to keep inside. Thankfully it’s mostly covered by Feyre going “Ooo, wait what is that?
No one tells her that it’s one step up from a sex club. Half-burlesque show and half-erotic playground. Rita’s is famous for encouraging its patrons to forget their propriety.
The smirk Morrigan gives her then is the stuff of 80s teen movies, the popular girl frosted with malice. Cassian withdraws his arm from around her shoulders.
“Uh. Wow. That’s—thanks.” He’s not going to say it. She can see the wheels turning in his head and he’s torn between the instinct to push back and wanting to respect her privacy—their privacy. “I wish you’d asked, though. I already have plans.”
Morrigan makes a sour face. “Cancel them.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Because you’re doing something with her?” she asks, flicking her fingers at Nesta.
“Mor.” Rhys cuts his cousin a look. Cassian scrubs his hands down his face, taking a deep breath.
“I have a life outside of you, Mor. I don’t exist to wait around on you.”
“The fuck—”
“Maybe we should—” Feyre cuts in, reaching for another present. But it’s her phone she retrieves instead with a little noise of surprise, her faux smile football-stadium bright as she answers. “Hey, Dad!”
Stunned terror lights up Nesta’s body. It’s like the first time she saw the girl come out of the TV in The Ring, remote horror thrust into reality. Her hands sweat and her legs start to shake, wanting to run.
“I’ll tell him,” Feyre is saying when the static in Nesta’s head finally clears. Somewhere Morrigan is still protesting but it doesn’t matter, none of it’s real. “Yes, I’ll tell him. No, I don’t know if the drinks package has an upper limit. Anyway, Merry Christmas! Here’s Nesta.”
The phone dangles from her sister’s thumb and pointer finger like a bathtub hair clog and Nesta doesn’t want to crunch down the space between herself and Niles’ voice. It’s too much, too dense for them to slam into each other at high speed like this. The time and the weight and the bullshit are supermassive and it’ll collapse the whole house if he even breathes his atoms down the line.
“Nesta,” Feyre repeats, impatient. “Take it.”
Nesta doesn’t move. Gravity sucks in the conversation around them and this is horrible and everyone is watching.
But her sister tries again, arm stretching. “Just say hi to Dad, okay? It’s not that bad. Thirty seconds.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Take the phone.” Frustration colors a circle high on Feyre’s cheeks when Nesta still doesn’t comply.
“No.”
"Come on."
"No."
“Goddamn it, Nesta, take the fucking phone!”
“Feyre.”
It’s Cassian’s hand that closes around it at last. Nesta takes a deep breath. She didn’t hear him move beside her, but his arm is a guardrail now between her and catastrophe.
“Leave your sister alone. She doesn’t have to talk to him.”
Nesta can’t make herself look up, but Feyre’s voice sounds tight when she says, “I love you, Cass, but you need to get your nose out of my family’s business.”
“I love you too, Feyre, but I could say the same to you. Hang up the phone.”
Her sister pulls the phone from his grip, and Nesta’s relieved to find their father’s already done them the favor.
“The fuck does that mean?”
“The shit you’ve been talking,” Cassian says, and she can see it spill out, the frustration. Only some of it Feyre’s earned. “Warning my family about your sister with shit that you made up.”
“Okay, I—I did. I did do that.” Behind her, Nesta sees Rhysand step closer. “But she shouldn’t have told you—”
Cassian visibly reacts, his body going limp and then taut. “Yes she should! You love to say we’re friends, but do you actually treat me that way?”
“Watch how you speak to my fucking wife.”
“Or what, Rhys? You’re gonna make it my fault, to feel better about yourself? It worked last time, didn’t it? Why not make it a matching set?” Cassian goads, pointing at his scarless eyebrow.
Morrigan throws up her hands, exasperated. “God, don’t be so dramatic, Cassian. Why are you so aggro today?”
“I’m being aggressive, when you’re the one fucking surveilling me. Thanks for that, by the way.” He points to where Azriel is edging toward the basement once more. “Glad to know you can’t go two hours without channeling 1984. How did you get Az to play along, huh? What did you dangle in front of him this time?”
“Okay but where the fuck were you?” Morrigan interjects, and Nesta wants to sink into the floor when smoldering brown eyes fix on where she’s still frozen before the fire. “Off getting loaded with your new fucking gal pal, probably.”
“Test me. Give me a test right now.” Cassian thumps a fist against his chest. “Fucking breathalyze me. I’ll pass. Will you?”
Her sister reaches a calming hand toward his arm. “Cassian, no one is accusing you of anything.”
“Feyre, stay out of it,” Nesta warns.
“So you’ll jump in for him but not me?”
“For once this is not about you.”
“Your sister is a goddamn saint for putting up with you,” Rhysand snaps, coming to stand behind his wife. Nesta makes herself look him in the eye, if only to feel less like a scolded child, but it’s Cassian who explodes beside her.
“The fuck did you just say?!”
Then there’s angry gestures and curses and more shouting, so much that for a moment Nesta goes blank inside, retreating into the place where no one can find her. The place she used to escape to in Grandmama's plastic-protected living room. She returns to Feyre standing on the coffee table, waving her arms above her head.
“OH MY GOD STOP. Stop! Everyone stop.” She takes command with militant efficiency, those years of ROTC finally paying off. “Us Archerons—upstairs. You.. all. Downstairs. We settle this,” she snarls. “It’s fucking Christmas.”
Rhysand looks like he wants to argue, but he runs a frustrated hand through his hair instead, turning it puffy. They all look at each other, Cassian and Morrigan both breathing hard, and despite a remote awareness that she's triggered as fuck, Nesta wants to stay. Not to avoid speaking with Feyre upstairs—there’s nothing left to say—but because he’s been so close to breaking today already.
Cassian must see the shape of her thoughts because he reaches down to squeeze her hand, muttering, “I’ll be fine. We’ll leave soon. There’s just some things I need to say.”
And so on leaden legs Nesta climbs the stairs, is halfway inside her room when Feyre hits the landing.
“Nesta, I—”
“We can wait in our rooms until they’re done. I don’t really have anything to say to you.”
Somehow, her sister interprets this as an invitation to continue. She leans against the chair rail, hands behind her back. “You’re angry, I know. You have a right to be. I was.. I was wrong.”
A convenient position considering she’s just been called out. It seems they’re having it out in the hallway, then. “If you thought it was true, then why did you invite me?”
“Because you’re my sister,” Feyre says rotely. In her mind Nesta sees herself pouncing, ripping her hair from the roots.
“No really, why did you want me here? So your minions could agree with you about how horrible I am? None of them like me, thanks to you.” Well, Azriel possibly, but Feyre doesn’t need to know that. It’s irrelevant.
“Maybe if you were a little friendlier, a little warmer, they could’ve—”
“See!” Nesta shouts. There's a fire drill in her head only it's not a drill, it's consuming the whole house. “You don’t even like me! Yet you insist on trotting me out so you feel better about yourself. So you can trash me behind my back. What the fuck, Feyre?”
Her sister gropes for the words, anything. “It’s not like that.”
“Then what is it like? What is it like?”
“I just thought if you tried to get along with them—”
“You ruined any chance of that before I walked in the door. Before they even met me. You love to make things harder for me. You love to punish me.”
Feyre’s lip curls. “You sound like Mom right now.”
“Fuck you, Feyre,” Nesta spits, pointing straight in her sister’s face. “Fuck you and your arrogant fucking husband and your stupid giant houses. Having money and a fake-ass family doesn’t make you better than me.”
“I can’t change the past! I’m sorry! How many times do I have to say it?” Feyre asks, exasperated. “I can’t do it over. All I can do is move forward.”
“You can be sorry. You can pretend you feel remorse for ruining any future I might’ve had with—” A fragile hope, unspoken, unthought until now. “You’re determined to think the worst of me. And to make sure other people feel the same.”
“It doesn’t help when you show up with a shitty attitude.”
“When?” Nesta crosses her arms tightly, a straightjacket, to keep her from slapping her sister across the face. “Tell me when, Feyre. Give me an example.”
“Like just now, with Dad!”
“Niles is a parasite and an alcoholic.”
Nesta knows it. Feyre knows it. Even Niles himself knows it.
Or he should, anyway.
He looked rich when they married, apparently. That’s why Mom didn’t worry if he was after her trust fund, no smooth talker looking for handouts. A true blue entrepreneur, who started his own direct-to-consumer marketing company selling luxury knife sets and other kitchenware.
But not only was he leveraged to the tits; the so-called company had a vaguely pyramid shape to it. At least, that’s what the FTC thought, as well as several class-action lawsuits. Restitution from the settlements nearly wiped them out.
“You never liked him,” Feyre accuses, cheeks going blotchy. “You blamed him. You wish he’d died instead of Mom.”
Tears sting in her nose, her throat.
“He let her die, Feyre.”
They could’ve afforded better treatment, if he wasn't a grifter. Could've had friends to help them. If he got another goddamn job after that. But he built their life on a foundation of bullshit. So Mom decomposed from the inside out in a shitty state hospital, shrieking, thrashing. Then far-eyed and limp. Then gone.
She didn’t deserve that. She wasn’t a good person, but she didn’t deserve that.
“Let’s talk about this calmly,” Mor says in her Psych minor voice, perching in the middle of the sofa. “Everyone here cares about you.”
Most of Cassian does not want to do this, still reeling from Feyre and the phone call, the heartbreaking terror on Nesta’s face. But a small part of him is ready to get this over with, to be put out of his misery once and for all.
“Fine. Whatever.”
The rest of them settle, unspoken politics to who sits where. Rhys on the sofa. Az in an armchair. Cassian takes the far end of the loveseat, closest to the fire, his stomach buzzing.
They’ve sat like this once before, only back then there were yellow legal pads and he only heard about sixty percent of it. All he can think of now is Minos’ labyrinth, the maze of denial he’s been sacrificed to, doomed to get lost in it over and over.
Mor sighs.
“We know you she was smoking weed on Thanksgiving. We’re just trying to look out for you.”
“Yeah Mor, you were really looking out for me when you tried to take my fucking clothes off in the bathroom,” he snaps, anger cracking like a whip.
Rhys jerks his head toward Mor, and Cassian senses Azriel shift in his chair. It’s like an image of the beast flashes the center for a moment, like they can all see it, before Mor obscures it once more with a sneer.
“That’s disgusting. Don’t deflect.”
“So we can all pick apart my life, but your shit is off-limits. Got it.”
“We don’t want you falling into something you can’t get out of,” Rhys says carefully.
Cassian looks to Azriel for support, but his brother is deeply absorbed in the carpet.
“Oh my fucking god. The weed was mine, alright?” There’s too much buzzing in his body and he has to stand, has to pace before the fire. “It was mine. Nesta had nothing to do with it.”
Rhys frowns, perturbed. “How long has this been going on?”
“Longer than you’ve been talking shit about my girlfriend.”
Mor’s laugh grates at him. “Your girl—”
“She took the fall for you,” Rhys interjects.
“Yes, Rhys, she covered for me. I know it might be hard for you to imagine, someone having my back. But some people actually do.”
It’s mean but he doesn’t care, his hands raking in his hair, his thoughts careening around sharp corners.
“We’ve had your back more that anyone else and you know it,” Mor snaps.
“Then why do I feel like shit about myself around you?”
Light, small and warm, flickers in the hole in his chest. It’s the most honest he’s ever been with them.
But the wind comes screaming through his empty spaces when Mor rolls her eyes and says, “I don’t know, Cass. Talk to your fucking therapist about it.”
“There—there it is.” Cassian points frantically at the carpet and it’s here in front of them, their monster. A chimera of trauma and pain and bullshit that none of them want to find, want to help him lop the head off of. “None of you can handle it when I have problems.”
“All we do is handle your problems.”
“No, you pretend that I’m the only one who has them. But when I actually need your help, when I ask you to show up for me, you can’t. Do you have nothing to say?” he snaps at Azriel. His brother stammers for a moment before clearing his throat.
“I like Nesta.”
“But you didn’t trust me enough to tell them to fuck off.”
Az pull his sleeves down over his hands. “I—it’s not—”
“We trust you, Cass,” Mor cuts in. “We don’t trust her. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
“Rhys knew Feyre six weeks before they moved in together.”
“But Feyre isn’t..”
“Isn’t what? Isn’t what, Mor?”
“Feyre’s doesn’t have a reputation for running through guys.”
“And she hasn’t been to rehab for alcohol abuse,” Rhys adds. Cassian can barely breathe fast enough and the minotaur is inside him, wanting to charge.
“Don’t talk about shit you know nothing about.”
“You can’t deny our concerns have merit.”
“Not because of some bullshit rumor Feyre—Rhys, let me fucking finish—some suspicion Feyre had that was based on nothing. And you all ran with it.”
“Because you’re hiding shit and sneaking around!” Mor protests.
“Can you blame me?!” Cassian shouts, too loud, too angry. “Look at your reaction!”
“We’re trying to protect you from going down a bad path again!”
“You think I’m too stupid to know what’s good for me." Her stares down at her, her wine-stained lips. "That I can’t run my own life. I can’t make choices for myself. Right?”
“Of course not but—”
“Then don’t make me choose.”
“Cass. Cassian.” Mor stands, tries to take his face between her palms. “Don’t do this. You’ve known her a month.”
“No, I mean myself. Don’t make me choose between you all and.. and myself.”
He has to escape. It's all he could think about on the drive up the mountain. Cassian is pissed at himself in way he might never forgive for not realizing it sooner. So he’ll take what he can, affix his wings with wax, and pray he doesn’t fall into the sea.
“You want to know where I was this afternoon?” he presses, shaking Mor off. Taking flight. “Nesta took me to a meeting. Because you all stress me out so fucking much that I want to get high enough that I forget who you are. Not Nesta. You. You follow me. You micromanage me. You gossip about me. You check my pupils and search my suitcase. You judge me. And now you think you get to decide who I love.”
“We love you, Cass. We’re your family,” Mor pleads as Rhys snarls, “You know why we do that.”
“Tell me, Rhys. Tell me why you’re allowed to control me and call it family. Call it love.”
Rhys explodes off the couch, his face purple. “Because we don’t want you to fucking die!”
Icarus had the luxury of dying from his own failures, seeking his own kind of high. Cassian feels like his wings have been clipped before he's even left the ground. Mor breaks down into sobs and the room can’t contain her and it’s too much, it’s too much.
He wants to say more. To comfort her, or to get so fucked up he can’t hear her anymore, something.
But someone’s at the front door.
When she gasps to draw breath, Nesta hears the raised voices below have gone silent. Then there's noise in the downstairs hallway, the front door opening. Boots stamping on a mat.
Without speaking, she and Feyre dart toward the stairs, competing for real estate on the landing. They arrive in time to see Elain already on her way up. Her head stays bowed but Nesta could swear her eyes are puffy.
“Nesta, please don’t be mad,” she half-whispers. “We’re leaving.”
“O-okay,” Nesta stammers, one eye still on where Graysen and Cassian are now staring each other down in the foyer. Feyre looks offended, though Nesta isn’t sure if it’s the news or the fact Elain addressed it only to her. She’s vaguely aware of Elain brushing past her, the scamper of cat feet, the sound of a suitcase sliding from underneath a bed.
“Well? Do you have anything to say to me?”
Graysen’s voice is thickened by the bandage over his nose. Nesta could swear Cassian is shaking, but hears no trace of it when he says, “Yeah, I do. How does it feel to get your bitch ass beat by someone outside the master race?”
“Cass, don’t antagonize him,” warns Feyre beside her. Graysen takes off his coat, balls it up and tosses it toward the baseboards.
“I could get you fucking arrested for this. I’m sure a thug like you has a rap sheet.”
“And you’re choosing to threaten that person?” Cassian crosses his arms, muscles straining against his shirt. “Interesting strategy.”
“Guys, calm the fuck down.” Descending the stairs, Feyre moves to step between them.
Panic and memory grip her and Nesta follows her sister, grabs her by the arm. No fucking way she’s getting in the middle of those two, not for all the shit-talking in the world. Graysen pulls his lip back so all his front teeth are showing and Nesta knows it’s going to be vile, whatever comes out of his mouth next.
“Rhysand, shut your cunt wife up.”
Noise splinters the cabin, Feyre’s derisive laughter, Morrigan’s indignant shriek. Rhysand curses, lurching toward Graysen but Azriel grabs him, arms banded around his chest. Neither seem to have accounted for Cassian, who’s reaching for the closest hockey stick before Nesta manages to snag the back of his collar, holding both him and Feyre at once.
And the movies get one thing right because it all happens in slow-motion.
Graysen grabs the stick Cassian was going for. Rears back and swings hard for Cassian’s knee, the bad one, and Rhysand and Azriel are charging forward and Morrigan is coughing and running to the sink and Feyre is shouting and Elain is frozen at the top of the stairs and Nesta can only watch as a black shape launches past her, vaulting off the banister.
Shadow digs all ten of her claws into Graysen’s scalp, drawing a shriek that rattles the picture frames. He staggers, and the blow glances off Cassian’s thigh and he’s collapsing but Rhysand is right there to catch him, Azriel pinning Graysen’s arms behind his back until the cat leaps away, streaking under the sofa.
“Motherfuckers,” Graysen snarls, bucking against his hold. “Ganging up on me? You’re all going to hear from my fucking lawyer.
“Get the fuck out of my house,” Rhysand spits. He yanks open the front door and throws Graysen’s coat into the snow. Azriel wrestles his captive over the threshold.
“Don’t hurt him!” Elain calls weakly, and Nesta can see how pale her skin is against her black puffer coat. “We’re leaving, we’re going!”
No one listens to her as Azriel tosses her fiance face-down in the gravel. The three men stand over him, the wind stealing whatever they say that makes his mouth go slack like that.
Graysen scrambles for his coat, staggers toward his Volvo. The sisters bottleneck at the front door, Morrigan still retching in the kitchen.
“Elain, you can’t go with him,” Nesta insists, turning to block the door with her arms. Feyre slips beneath her left one, down the porch stairs, rushes to her husband’s side. Elain falters in the doorway, fumbling with both carry-ons.
“Leave me alone, Nesta, god. I’m so sick of you trying to tell me what to do.”
But it can all happen so fast, she wants to say. It can go so wrong in a single breath. And then you'll be like me.
As Elain nudges her aside like a stubborn screen door, Nesta wonders if this is why her family hates her. If she’s too glaring a reminder of how life can be shredded, how a human can be twisted and broken and rent. She’s the living ghost of the past that haunts them, the future they try to stay one step ahead of.
“I’ll keep my phone on,” Nesta says despite the bitterness on her tongue, stale as forgotten tea. “Loud. Call me.”
But Elain doesn’t look up when she hefts both bags into the trunk. Doesn’t turn around as she takes the driver’s seat, tires spitting gravel across the yard.
When he takes stock once the Volvo finally disappears, Cassian’s still reeling from the last twenty minutes. It feels like hours, like days, like they were all born here and are now at the twilight of their lives.
He needs to find Nesta.
She’s on the porch looking lost.
Knee groaning, he limps up the stairs to her. Rhys tries to help him but he shakes his brother off, the railing slick under his bare hand. The others follow, seeking shelter from the snow.
They never show this part in movies, what happens right after. The fight, the big dramatic speech—it always cuts to black. The myth ends, the lesson learned. But Cassian doesn’t know what he’s supposed to learn as they all stare at each other, what to say now that he’s told his family he wants to walk away.
“I think we should call it,” Rhys announces to everyone and no one. Stuffs his hands in his pockets. “No point in suffering anymore, is there? Feyre, darling, I’ll pack our things.”
He looks up at the low-hanging clouds, and Cassian knows he’s thinking of Mom. Of Violet. His real family, for whom they’re all feeble replacements. It leaves a sour taste in the back of his throat as Rhys goes inside, as sharp-eyed Feyre lingers.
“Nesta—”
“Feyre, leave it.” The flicker of fear in Nesta’s eyes is reason enough to stick his neck out. “Rhys is right. There’s no point right now.”
“I’m sorry,” Feyre offers, her arms open for a hug that no one wants to give.
Nesta nearly falls into him the moment the door closes. Cassian wraps himself around as much of her as he can, his lips pressed to her hair, her hands gripping the back of his shirt. He can feel how badly she wants to break down, how she’s holding herself back. So he isn’t surprised when she pushes him away, straightening her clothes.
“Well. That went poorly,” she says vacantly. He goes to tuck some hair behind her ear but she flinches a bit, oversensitive to everything. It reminds him of how much his fucking leg hurts.
“I don’t think I should get behind the wheel with my knee. Are you okay to drive, sweetheart? I can manage if not.”
“I can take your truck,” Az cuts in, “if you want. I don’t think I’ll be able to get Shadow out from under the couch without the lacrosse stick, and I don’t want to scare the shit out of her. Besides, someone needs to stay with Mor.”
Cassian would wager she’s camped out in the downstairs bathroom by now. How did she drink that much today already? It’s not even three o’clock. Unless his threat activated her gag reflex.
Nesta nods gratefully.
“Thanks. I’ll go pack.”
He feels that lizard brain feeling again, watching her disappear into the house. The same from their first morning here together, of wanting to engulf her with his body.
“You good with staying?” he asks, turning back to Azriel. His brother loops an arm around his waist without asking, helping him to Nesta’s car. The snow-muffled woods feel eerie, too silent after so much noise.
“I’ll manage. And, Cass,” Az says when he grabs the passenger door handle. “Don’t worry about Graysen.”
“Why, you gonna perjure yourself for me again?”
His brother smirks. “No. But I’ll send this to his boss. And his mom. And the FBI.”
His phone lights up with an image—the proudest boy in black tactical gear, baton aloft on the very recognizable steps of a government building.
“…Shit.”
“Also hasn’t paid his taxes in the last six years,” Azriel adds when he takes his phone back, scrolling idly. "And then there’s the mud porn.”
Cassian can’t help but laugh. It feels creaky in his lungs, the cold locking him up. He snags Nesta’s sweatshirt from the backseat and rolls it up, propping it under his knee.
“Good luck with Goldilocks, then.”
Azriel's mouth twists, pained. They used to call her that when she drank too much in undergrad, due to her penchant for passing out in their beds. Now the nickname feels too prophetic.
“I’ll see you Sunday?” Az asks, fiddling with his hoodie strings. The gesture looks so anxious on him that Cassian almost agrees, almost forgets his brother’s complicity.
“I don’t know, man.”
“Okay.” Azriel drops the strings. “Let me know. I love you.”
The front door opens and shuts. Azriel glances up, moves to help Nesta with their bags, but Cassian grabs his forearm.
“I love you, too, Az. I just need some time. Some space.”
A ripple of relief passes across his face.
“I get it. Hope to see you on the other side.”
There are too many words in his head, all jumbled up in his empty spaces, fighting for validation. The sky is threatening to open up full force again. In the rearview mirror, he sees Nesta and Azriel hug briefly before snow blurs the back windshield.
Ten miles down the road, Nesta starts to cry.
“I’m sorry you saw that.” Cassian’s been quiet in the passenger seat, and he offers up his hand on the center console. “I wondered if the violence.. if it upset you.”
Nesta shakes her head. She's emotional, sure, but at the same time she feels.. calm. It's like her tears are flowing from somewhere deep, untapped before now. But they don’t wrench any sound from her, don’t screw her face shut tight.
“No. I mean, the whole thing was upsetting, but it wasn’t that.” She sniffs. “I'm crying because no one's ever stood up for me like that before. And it seems so basic now that I’m sad I didn't realize it sooner.”
Cassian grips the oh-shit handle on his side, and she’d bet money his knuckles are white when he says, “Nesta, I’d stand in front of a train for you.”
“Let’s not be dramatic. It would never come to that.”
And it won’t.
But he would. He laughs, but she knows he would.
“I’ve always thought that what happened to me, how I am—it makes me difficult to love,” Nesta confesses. It feels like the road leads up into the infinite, a cosmic highway, headlights and snowflakes their moons and stars.
“You are so rewarding to love, sweetheart. The best gift I could ask for.”
She lets one hand drift from the wheel, to rest on his forearm between them. The engine whirs all the way down the mountain, though the piling snow, puffs of exhaust like smoke signals in the night.
Notes:
Wishcamper lore: there was this experimental theatre group when I lived in NYC that had this tradition where any time the title of a movie was said in the movie, you were supposed to clap. Idk why. But my husband and I do it now too and I did it a bunch of times while editing this chapter bc honest to god I couldn’t resist!
inspo notes, mostly to myself and for posterity:
my family is.. a family. i’ve had this fear that, because of what happened to me and how i handled it as a child (through no fault nor choice of my own), it somehow made me more difficult to love. like my efforts to protect myself kept me distant or distorted, and that otherwise well-meaning parents couldn’t find me because i was hidden in order to stay safe. that i feel like shit about myself around them because i feel the gap between us and attribute it to me being a damaged person, because i can’t figure out how to bridge that gap.
this is, of course, bullshit. and yet another way i’ve internalized blame that what happened to me, and what has happened to me since, is my fault. but the truth is that my family would have treated me this way if i had been abused or not. it still would have hurt. the gap would have been there anyway. i have to remember that feelings of self-hatred are internalized deprivation. that i had to believe myself bad in order to survive. that i don’t have to anymore.
Pages Navigation
heylu on Chapter 1 Tue 26 Nov 2024 03:25AM UTC
Comment Actions
wishcamper on Chapter 1 Wed 27 Nov 2024 03:35PM UTC
Comment Actions
TheTeaQueen on Chapter 1 Tue 26 Nov 2024 03:39AM UTC
Comment Actions
wishcamper on Chapter 1 Wed 27 Nov 2024 03:35PM UTC
Comment Actions
dustjackets on Chapter 1 Tue 26 Nov 2024 03:45AM UTC
Comment Actions
wishcamper on Chapter 1 Wed 27 Nov 2024 03:36PM UTC
Comment Actions
skye13333 on Chapter 1 Tue 26 Nov 2024 03:53AM UTC
Comment Actions
wishcamper on Chapter 1 Wed 27 Nov 2024 03:36PM UTC
Comment Actions
xxValkyriesxx on Chapter 1 Tue 26 Nov 2024 04:22AM UTC
Comment Actions
wishcamper on Chapter 1 Wed 27 Nov 2024 03:37PM UTC
Comment Actions
xxValkyriesxx on Chapter 1 Tue 10 Dec 2024 05:07PM UTC
Comment Actions
hideeho on Chapter 1 Tue 26 Nov 2024 04:33AM UTC
Comment Actions
wishcamper on Chapter 1 Wed 27 Nov 2024 03:37PM UTC
Comment Actions
soshedoes on Chapter 1 Tue 26 Nov 2024 05:03AM UTC
Comment Actions
wishcamper on Chapter 1 Wed 27 Nov 2024 03:38PM UTC
Comment Actions
nezed on Chapter 1 Tue 26 Nov 2024 05:33AM UTC
Comment Actions
wishcamper on Chapter 1 Wed 27 Nov 2024 03:38PM UTC
Comment Actions
Sunstar0624 on Chapter 1 Tue 26 Nov 2024 01:11PM UTC
Comment Actions
wishcamper on Chapter 1 Wed 27 Nov 2024 03:38PM UTC
Comment Actions
Scarlettrose80 on Chapter 1 Tue 26 Nov 2024 01:38PM UTC
Comment Actions
wishcamper on Chapter 1 Wed 27 Nov 2024 03:39PM UTC
Comment Actions
Lissamz on Chapter 1 Tue 26 Nov 2024 01:57PM UTC
Comment Actions
wishcamper on Chapter 1 Wed 27 Nov 2024 03:39PM UTC
Comment Actions
Hastings1066 on Chapter 1 Tue 26 Nov 2024 02:17PM UTC
Comment Actions
wishcamper on Chapter 1 Wed 27 Nov 2024 03:39PM UTC
Comment Actions
Phoenix_Queen on Chapter 2 Wed 27 Nov 2024 04:14AM UTC
Comment Actions
wishcamper on Chapter 2 Wed 27 Nov 2024 03:40PM UTC
Comment Actions
This_Immortal_Hope on Chapter 2 Wed 27 Nov 2024 05:47AM UTC
Comment Actions
wishcamper on Chapter 2 Wed 27 Nov 2024 03:41PM UTC
Comment Actions
camwolfe on Chapter 2 Wed 27 Nov 2024 05:49AM UTC
Comment Actions
wishcamper on Chapter 2 Wed 27 Nov 2024 03:41PM UTC
Comment Actions
silentvoicescryingout on Chapter 2 Wed 27 Nov 2024 06:50AM UTC
Comment Actions
wishcamper on Chapter 2 Wed 27 Nov 2024 03:42PM UTC
Comment Actions
Maddiedot on Chapter 2 Wed 27 Nov 2024 09:32AM UTC
Comment Actions
wishcamper on Chapter 2 Wed 27 Nov 2024 03:43PM UTC
Comment Actions
hideeho on Chapter 2 Wed 27 Nov 2024 01:25PM UTC
Comment Actions
wishcamper on Chapter 2 Wed 27 Nov 2024 03:43PM UTC
Comment Actions
dustjackets on Chapter 2 Wed 27 Nov 2024 02:24PM UTC
Comment Actions
wishcamper on Chapter 2 Wed 27 Nov 2024 03:45PM UTC
Comment Actions
heylu on Chapter 2 Wed 27 Nov 2024 03:26PM UTC
Last Edited Wed 27 Nov 2024 03:26PM UTC
Comment Actions
wishcamper on Chapter 2 Wed 27 Nov 2024 03:45PM UTC
Comment Actions
heylu on Chapter 2 Wed 27 Nov 2024 05:27PM UTC
Comment Actions
Pages Navigation