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illyriantremors · 7 years

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Beneath the Stars Chapter 18

Chapter: I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII XIV XV XVI XVII

AO3 Linkage

Summary: Feyre and Rhys confront Tamlin's secret and admit the depth of their feelings for each other. Smut ensues. NSFW.

Chapter 18

“I - wait, what?”

“Sit in the chair.”

“Feyre?”

I grabbed my chair and dragged it closer in front of the canvas facing the opposite direction and pointed again. “Sit. I need to paint you.” Rhys stared at me like I’d gone mad. “Please, Rhys.”

That did it. Whether it was the near-violent please or the desperate way I said his name, that did it. He sat.

I dug through my supply bag looking for the paints I needed and paused when my hand touched on something small and plastic. I pulled out the flash drive Rhys had slipped in my locker “for inspiration” the note had said.

“I forgot about this,” I said. Rhys didn’t say anything. Only stared as I walked over to the workroom computer and loaded the music. A beautiful symphony came through the speakers overhead. It was somber and quiet - fitting for just such an occasion.

“Do you trust me?” I asked, walking back to Rhys while the music played on and built towards something more.

Rhys never broke eye contact with me once as he found my hand, pulled it to his mouth, and kissed me just above where his sister’s ring sat on my finger. “With all my heart.”

I wiped the tears staining my face away as best I could. He wanted to touch me. I could tell. But I dropped his hand and moved to my desk where the paints were and started mixing.

Black - that was obvious. But I’d need other colors too. Rhys wasn’t a bleak and dark storm clouding over the sky. He was the sky itself and that required colors - lots and lots of colors. When my palette was set, I undid the bow tie at his neck and loosened the first two buttons so that the top of his chest was exposed.

“Feyre, what are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing?”

“Trying and failing epically to resist my good lucks and outstanding charm? I told you - if you wanted me naked, all you had-”

“To do was ask, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. Now sit still. I need to concentrate.”

Rhys watched me - not my hands as I lifted the brush to his skin, but my eyes. Watched the way I supposed they narrowed in on every pore, every drop of paint. A cold tickle met his cheek as my brush glossed over him. “Shit,” he said resisting a shudder. “That’s… that’s… kind of nice actually.”

“Such a baby sometimes,” I said and continued to apply the color, matting in the black around his jaw and hairline before adding in a dark, smokey purple the same shade as eggplant as it came in to reach the corners of his eyes. It matched perfectly. “Why didn’t you tell me about Tamlin and your sister?”

“Is that what he wanted to talk to you about?”

“Don’t deflect. This isn’t about him.”

Rhys closed his eyes as my brushed moved further down his face drawing little swirls and wisps from below his chin and jaw. His lip shook with every brush.

“I’m not mad,” I said when he wouldn’t say anything, “if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking that I dated someone who did terrible things to me, who was a crappy boyfriend while I had him, who said the worst things about you and right now I can’t think of one single instance where you returned that animosity - said anything bad about him to me even if I knew you felt it, especially now that I know you had ample reason to trash him, and I... I don’t know what to make of that.”

The tears returned fresh, this time quiet and thirsty to know.

I continued painting him all over his neck and the tops of his chest. I covered his ears so that they blended into the darkness of his hair, nearly disappearing. I stepped back to examine my handiwork and liked what I saw. His face was a study in blacks and greys, clouded with all the weight a heart could carry.

When he opened his eyes and that little pop of violet stood out, I saw the full picture of him against the stark white of the canvas behind his chair. And I knew how to make him look the way I remembered him in my mind every time I fell asleep at night. It had been the same image of him since the night we’d lain beneath the stars together.

I added fresh blues and violets and even a tiny dab of yellow to my palette and went to the canvas. Rhys fidgeted in his seat to get up, but I reached out to his shoulder and held him down firm.

“Sit. I need to paint. Just sit and talk - about anything.”

Rhys nodded and I withdrew looking at my canvas. I shirked off the cape of my gown so it wouldn’t get caught as I moved about. And then - I started painting.

It wasn’t long before Rhys spoke.

“This was her favorite symphony,” he said, his voice dull and lackluster, devoid all the usual bravado that made Rhys Rhys. I honed in on the music, following the haunting melody as it grew and stretched towards an insatiable climax that filled me with a quiet, subtle hope. I could see why Rhys had chosen it.

“She practiced it for hours and hours on the piano and I would yell at her from my room to shut up because I was tired and trying to sleep. Then when she died, I couldn’t stop listening to it. I tracked down every version of it I could find until I had them all. When Mor moved in, she took all my headphones away. Said it was too horrible to watch.”

A light layer of black, sponged on to give a translucency to the canvas that swept out in a great arch. Dark - but not lost.

“Tamlin and I were friends growing up. Nothing like Cassian or Azriel. But good enough. We ran in the same schools and our families knew each other. I shouldn’t have been so surprised when my sister took an interest. I was more surprised when he returned it.”

Veins of gold, small slivers cracking through the clouds here and there. Just enough promise of hope, the kind you feel when new love strikes.

“Was he good to her?” I asked quietly. A sick question, but I needed to know.

“He was. They didn’t date long given, given… what happened. But he was kind once, much kinder than he is now. Sometimes, I wish he hadn’t changed so much, but then I look at myself and how the accident broke me in two and I wonder if I wouldn’t have become the same thing in his shoes.”

I flinched at the horror behind that admittance, at the grief it had to cost him.

“He asked about you. About talking. He’s sorry for what happened and I think that he means it, but I… would be lying if I said he’s not broken anymore.”

Rhys didn’t reply. I chanced a glance at him and found him sitting with his head in one hand, elbow propped up on his knee in sorrow. A dark, fallen prince.

Layers of blue and purple covered the smoke the way the universe filled with galaxies. So much negative space on the surface, distance between wounds and friends and stories, but when you look closely enough, you can see the soul of a person peeking through, see their colors, see their pain. See right through to their very heart.

I smudged that color of Rhysand everywhere that my fingers could manage. Drops fell onto my dress, but I didn’t care. Nesta could yell at me later. By the time my palate was dry, my arms were covered up to my elbows, the sleeves rolled back, like a tattoo made to mark the occasion.

Standing back, a pair of great wings peered out at me through the thick of night I’d painted for Rhys. And when I stepped back even further to move Rhys into the frame, sagging into his hands and knees and all, it was even more magnificent to behold. Triumphant and broken at the same time.

Rhys looked up and I narrowed in on that spec of violet in his eyes, holding onto it like a star sent from Heaven itself to look after me. If I were honest with myself, I’d been staring at those eyes since the moment I’d first met him.

“Stay still,” I whispered. I wiped my hands clean and got a camera out, one of the really nice ones the studio loaned us while we worked, and careful not to get any paint on the lense, I took several pictures of Rhys. The entirety of the backdrop in focus, how the wings changed from different angles not all of them natural, closeups of his face - especially that face.

“You still never answered my question,” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me about Tamlin and your sister? I know you trust me. I don’t doubt that. Knowing wouldn’t have changed anything between you and I, only him. So why didn’t you say anything?”

I watched Rhys’s chest swell beneath his tux and hold for a long, lingering moment before it collapsed again. Somewhere between his first words and his last, I set the camera aside and moved closer to him taking a towel along with me. Close enough to touch him again.

“I didn’t say anything because you’d just broken up with Tamlin,” he said, his voice raw. “And I’m not the sort of guy to just jump all over a woman right after a breakup as if she were nothing more than a relationship status for me to occupy. You’re more than that. And,” he stood up, stepping closer. “You loved him. Even though I felt like there was something between us and I couldn’t stop myself from being near you, from wanting you for every second you would spare for me, I wasn’t going to make an ass out of myself by assuming that love you’d had meant so little to you that you’d suddenly want to be with me, especially when I’d given you no reason to.”

“But you did,” I said, my voice grown thick and I grabbed his wrist on instinct, needing the contact. “You gave me ample reason to want you.”

I reached up, dragged my fingers across the paint and indulged in the feel of it smearing through his hair one last time before I began to clean him up with the rag. The touch almost seemed to pain him.

“How are you so wonderful right now? Feyre…”

A tear fell past his guard streaking the paint on his cheek so that it muddied and greyed.

“Do you remember when I told you there was a hole inside of me and I didn’t think I could see the way out of it anymore?”

“Mhm.”

“Well I was wrong. I thought I couldn’t see a way out, but the truth is that I was so miserable and so twisted inside of myself that I went straight to the way out without even realizing what it was.”

Rhys’s brow creased at me in silent question, begging for my explanation that I was heartbroken to think he couldn’t already see.

“You,” I breathed and I smiled as soon as I said it because I was holding the answer in my hands, and oh how he was beautiful and flawed and unendingly necessary to my life now.

“When Tamlin broke up with me and goodness, Nesta had just rung me out to dry, I broke.” It was an effort to say it aloud, but I pushed out every word through the tears blinding me. “I wanted to give everything up and I had no idea where to turn. I was at the bottom of the hole and all I thought I saw was darkness, but I was wrong. I felt more alone than I ever had, but then I was driving myself to your house - to you. You were the one good thing I could think of that hadn’t turned away on me, the only good feeling left in my heart and I clung to it like glue, followed it until I was on your doorstep and you were holding me.

“Rhys - you were my way out. You were my light in the dark. That’s why I love you. You showed me how to live again.” I grabbed both sides of his face firmly, most of it not clear of paint save for the bits around his hairline and the tops of his chest, and held him to me. “Please don’t ever think that you gave me no reason to love you. You gave me a million. And even if I can’t -”

I never got to finish my statement. Rhys’s lips came crashing down on mine no longer able to resist the temptation. And he tasted - oh how he tasted. Like citrus and sea and life all at once.

His lips were soft, moist as they tenderly felt my own, working in a slow haze that burned with a heat we’d both been holding off on for too long. And that heat quickly grew as my tongue cut through my lips and begged him to open for me. I was met with a groan as his lips parted and our arms collided to wrap around each other, to taste and feel and explore everything we could find as he dragged me down onto his lap.

Though our faces remained clean, I could feel the paint transferring between us as I dragged my fingers through his hair, rubbed my stained dress against his chest and jacket. But I didn’t care, couldn’t care. I wanted all of his touches - dirtied and blemished and perfect as they were.

Those touches swept across my neck and into where Nesta had placed the delicate pins keeping the deep blond strands of my hair in place. He pulled them out one by one, chucking them onto the floor when he was finished with them and my hair fell down in waves for his fingers to swim through.

I snapped when his lips left to travel down my jaw and back, back, back to my ear when he nibbled gently on me. I snatched at his waist trying frantically to yank his shirt free and moaned my victory when my hands succeeded, finding the smooth hard expanse of his abs that I further stained with the blues and purples and golds of my earlier handiwork.

“Feyre,” he said into me - my ear, my skin, my entire person.

“Take me home,” I replied automatically. The kisses along my neck stopped so Rhys could look at me seriously.

“Are you sure?”

My reply was to kiss him enthusiastically without question, without restraint. Rhys laughed and scooped me up into his arms marching for the door. “As milady requests.”

Home - I was going home.

We didn’t tell anyone we were leaving. We simply left, no backwards glances. The dance was winding down as it was, handfuls of students trickling through the galleries towards the doors lingering here and there at paintings that caught their eye.

My heart fluttered when I spotted Cassian’s car in the parking lot and realized we had no way home. And then a jingle met my ears.

Rhys held up his keys. “You’re not seriously suggesting we strand them here?” I asked.

“Mor and I had to come by early to go over last minute set-up with the owners. Cass picked us up when we were done so we could all drive together, which means…”

The headlights of his car flashed as Rhys hit the unlock button on his key set. I grinned wildly and ran.

We sped along towards home and I couldn’t stop touching him. Everywhere my fingers trailed along his thigh, dangerously close to his crotch, or where my lips kissed at his ear forcing him to grip the steering wheel harder so he could concentrate - I wanted more, more, more. I was desperate just to feel him.

And it made me realize just how horrible devoid of this kind of intimacy I’d been, not just with Tamlin, but with… anyone. My life had been empty for long time, maybe even before mom had left. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt this free, this wild, this much myself - if I’d ever felt like this at all.

“Is your dad home?” I said between kisses. I could feel the muscles in his neck flexing with every touch, trying to keep control.

“He’s… he’s… shit, Feyre - what happened to wanting me to keep my eyes on the road when I drive?.” But the smile that broke over his face said he wanted anything but for me to stop. “He’s out of town on business this weekend. We’ll have the house to ourselves - save for Mor.”

“Mmm,” I purred against his skin. “She sleeps upstairs. That’s okay. I have a feeling she’ll be a while anyway.” My hand ran once up his crotch enjoying the hardness I found there beneath his pants. I licked up the side of Rhys’s neck in response.

“That’s it,” Rhys snapped. The car came to a rough stop in front of his house. He cut the engine and grabbed me. Pounced, was really more like it. He undid both our seat belts and then his body came over me pressing me into the leather seats as he kissed me hungrily, tore his hands my chest to get to the zipper of my dress.

Steam started fogging up the windows in a white sheen we couldn’t see through. It was cold out tonight. Before I wound up with my very own Titanic moment, I pulled Rhys back and urged him, “Inside. Now.”

His lip quivered in amusement. “You do realize what you just -”

“NOW.”

He carried me down the steps to his room - the basement. His room was simpler than I expected, but I would inspect that later. Right now, clothes took precedence over furniture.

“Feyre, Feyre, Feyre,” he murmured at my lips. I grabbed his shirt and pulled and pulled until the buttons had all popped free one by one and I was able to see that glorious chest of his. He was bare save for an intoxicating strip of dark hair on his abdomen that disappeared below his waistline.

“Wait here,” he murmured and disappeared into the adjoining bathroom of his room. I heard the sound of water running and when Rhys came back, his hair was sopping wet, water running down from it over his neck and chest all of which was now completely clean of my paint.

He brought a damp towel with him and gingerly took each of my hands, taking time to clean my skin so that I was in the clear as well. The urgency I’d felt before leaked out of me as Rhys took care of me. I could have stood there forever letting him knead the muscles, taking all of that horrible tension I couldn’t stop carrying out of me.

When he was done, I watched the towel fly back towards its home in the bathroom. And then those violet eyes were on me again.

“Age before beauty,” I teased, beginning to shrug the jacket and then the shirt off him. Rhys grabbed the fabric as I went and tossed it hard to the floor, eyeing me ravenously the entire time.

“If you insist,” he said. He took a step back from me and the shock from losing his touch was enough to make me realize what he was doing - what we were on the brink of doing.

And then... I was left with Rhys standing before me in nothing but his boxers, a beautiful shade of crimson red, with a considerable bulge tenting them in the front.

His body was magnificent, carved out of earth and rock and darkness. His muscles flexed, worked against me as he pulled me into him, his arms wrapping around me until he found that zipper on the back of my dress again and had pulled it down, down, down. I pulled out of my sleeves and the dress fell like a river along my body towards the floor where it pooled into a lake at my feet.

A sharp sensation forced a cry out of me as Rhys’s teeth nipped at my shoulder and I realized his was dragging my bra straps down with them. The heat between our stomachs where we connected sent my body spiraling and I couldn’t wait any longer. I needed all of him, for not a single part of us to no longer be connected for not one second more.

I undid the clasp on my bra and sent it flying heaven knew where. My underwear followed and just as Rhys’s lips parted to say something suggestive, I yanked his boxers down, taking his cock as I did and pushing us back onto the bed where I straddled him.

Rhys cursed as he toppled down and I stroked him. My body rocked over him slightly in time with my motions and Rhys’s eyes trailed over me - the curve of my hips over his own, the fullness of my breasts, the way my neck grew thick with sweat just from watching him writhe on the bed…

My hand gripped him hard, rising slowly up to the head of him where my thumb ran slowly over the tip. I saw Rhys’s back arch off the bed ever so slightly before he shot up. His hands dug into my hair, grabbing a fistful and pulling me towards him fervently, but not so much that it hurt. I moaned into his mouth and that had him flipping me onto my back.

Our bodies pressed flush against one another, heat radiating in all the little pockets where we molded together. The tightness between my legs was becoming unbearable. Rhys felt it as he smuggled between us to dip his finger between me and found a considerable wetness waiting.

“Do it,” I said thinking only of relieving the unbearable heat in my core. “Rhys…” My voice was barely more than a pitiful moan.

He opened the drawer of his bedside table and pulled out a small square package which he ripped open with his teeth, taking care not to damage the condom inside. He sat back on the bed and watched me as I watched him, rolling that condom down his cock slowly, one agonizing inch at a time…

“Feyre,” he said lying back down with me. He took my hand and kissed the inside of my wrist as he positioned himself at my entrance. “Are you ready?”

“Yes, please,” I said greedily, pulling against his chest to nudge his hips further up. He grinned wickedly and then he was sliding inside me with intolerable gentleness. And the thick, immense feel of him that greeted the heat in my core sent me past the boiling point. My lips parted in a silent gasp as my fingernails dug in carefully at his back. Rhys mimed a sharp, silent whistle of approval.

He brought one of my legs up at his side, bent at the knee, and held it there against his hip as he made the first thrust. My toes curled with each new movement and we began singing that song between us, the one as old as the stars.

An electric feel pulsed inside me each time our hips collided. He held me with delicate tenderness, that I felt myself drowning in it as he kissed me, as he touched me, and as I touched him everywhere my fingers could go. My free leg wrapped around his lower back to bring him in closer and it sent Rhys’s pace on me into a fast rhythm I could have lived and died to.

“Rhys,” I said as the burning in me built to a crescendo. He saw me on the edge and pressed his hand into my lower back to help my hips up. The slight shift in angles made me clench around him and the primal, guttural noise that ached out of him sent me spiraling.

I came on him and there wasn’t a cry left in me to communicate how exquisite he made me feel. My voice simply cracked, a sharp needle of sound splitting the night in two while Rhys worked into my climax.

“I love you,” I said, gripping him fiercely. His body constricted, clinging to me everywhere, and all I could hear him manage to get out as he came inside me was the fractured, “I love… I love… I love…” of a ruined, ravished man.

His head collapsed onto my chest when we decided at last we were finished. We let our bodies lay there for some time in a shaking, quivering mess before tucking ourselves underneath the sheets.

“I see what you mean,” I said as I snuggled into him.

“About what?”

“If I had known this what you meant would happen if you’d started kissing me - when you said you’d never stop? I’d have kissed you all the way back at Lucien’s party.”

The deep roar of laughter in Rhys’s chest as my head lay over him was music to my ears.

#myfic #beneath the stars #beneath the stars: a feysand fic #bts #feysand #feysand fanfiction #feyre #rhysand #acomaf #acomaf fanfiction

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illyriantremors · 7 years

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Beneath the Stars Chapter 16

Chapter: I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII XIV XV

AO3 Linkage

Summary: It's finally the night before Starfall and Feyre is still a storm of paint about her room when Nesta drops by to confront the issues between them and leaves a little extra surprise behind for Feyre to use at the dance. Sister feels happens.

Chapter 16

I spent the next three and a half weeks living in a daze. Rhys and I continued to dance circles around each other enjoying the thrill of no longer ‘if’ but ‘when’ and I couldn’t stop smiling. Classes felt easier, juggling work and school wasn’t quite the chore I had once feared, and I was painting almost non-stop in every spare bit of downtime I had.

Rhys liked to tease me that it was all his doing - ‘your muse’ he’d coined himself for me. I typically responded with a thick smear of paint under his nose in the fashion of a terribly unkept mustache a sick shade of green.

I felt happy.

Happy enough that I’d even opened a few college applications to art schools in the state to at least consider applying to. The deadlines were looming, but I wasn’t quite so petrified at the thought of just applying as I was when my counselors first handed me the packet now sitting open on my desk.

And it would sit there for at least one more night because tomorrow was Starfall and regardless of Morrigan’s pleas to sleep over and have a girl’s night, I had my own way of prepping.

With paint.

My room had become a galaxy of color since coming back from the camping trip. I hadn’t left a single nook or cranny untouched, save for the ceiling. The gallery had rented me some ladders to climb towards the tops of my room where I couldn’t reach on my own. With the way the ceiling slanted to gather in a point, painting it was tricky, but I was determined to get the stars up there exactly the way they’d been when I’d fallen asleep underneath them with Rhys.

“Knock knock - holy shit.”

The faint rapping on my door startled me, not enough to take a nosedive off the ladder, but turning around to find Nesta gaping at my room nearly did.

“You’ve been... busy,” she said.

“Yeah, well, when the mood strikes.” I offered a weak chuckle and stepped off the ladder.

Nesta’s hair, a slightly darker shade of blonde than my own, was pulled back into a braid, the shaved side starting to grow out. Her lips weren’t quite so dark as she normally colored them, but her black suede booties kept her sharp. She had a decent sized square box in her hands. I nodded at it.

“What’s in the box?”

As though the words were too physically painful to say, Nesta grimaced and held the box out to me.

“What, for me?”

“Don’t open it now, okay? Just - here.” She set it in the corner of the room, well away from the paints, and then took a seat on my bed. I’d positioned it smack in the middle of the room right under the ceiling light so that I could have my choice of skies to look at when I fell asleep.

Nesta gave me a hard once over cutting into my clothes, my demeanor - everything. “You’ve changed,” she said. There was nothing judgmental about the statement. Just noticing pure, simple fact.

“I suppose so. You’re different too somehow - I think.”

“You didn’t come for Thanksgiving.”

That took me back a step.

“Well, no. I didn’t.”

“Elain said you had called. She was hoping maybe you’d changed your mind about not coming, but she couldn’t get a hold of you the next day.”

My cell reception at the campgrounds had been horrible. It was no wonder she couldn’t get a hold of me.

“Funny, I had been sort of hoping the same thing about you.”

I counted my breaths waiting for her to snap at me that what I did was mean, that I had no right to dare imagine she and Elain might choose dad over mom for once; that I should have considered mom and her feelings more, shown up. But it didn’t happen. Instead she sort of softened, her shoulders slumping at her side.

“I thought you might have. I guess that’s why you ran off. Dad said you went camping?”

“Well... yeah.” Surprised she was being so reasonable, I took the seat next to her on my bed curling one foot up and tucking it below my knee. “I was actually going to call you both and let you know I’d decided to come. Or, I was trying to decide that. But dad started drinking and look, I know what you’re going to say so you don’t have to waste your time. I figured out that you guys were right. He’s not okay.”

Nesta’s face ran in a hard considering line. Her lips pursed to one side as she puzzled over me. “I’m sorry.”

Almost immediately, not quite sure that I’d heard her right, I twitched. “You’re what?”

“I’m sorry,” she said again, shaking her head this time. “I’m supposed to be your older sister and look out for you, and instead I wrote you off and then blew up in your face for it and left you here with dad anyway. And I’m sorry.”

“Oh my - shit, Nesta, no. I’m sorry. I should have listened to you - and Elain. You were right about dad… I can’t take care of him on my own. And I’m sorry I let my anger get in the way of seeing it.”

She looked up at my handiwork on the ceiling, the progress I’d made so far, and sighed. Her hands rested limply in her lap, palms up and open, exposed. She could have been praying at the altar - the gods forgive us both.

“Maybe we can both be sorry. We each chose a parent when we should have been taking care of ourselves. We’re sisters.” She paused until she was looking back at me, her normally cold stare dissipated into remorse - grief. “Maybe from now on, we can choose each other?”

And in the sweet aching relief I had always yearned to feel, I found myself softly smiling back. “I’d like that. I’d like that a lot.”

Nesta explained how she’d felt when I didn’t turn up to see mom and consequently, how mom had felt. She still thought I was being unfair, but she understood the severity of what must have happened that night she left if it meant I’d made my choice in dad for good.

Similarly, I told her about dad and what he’d said and why it was the only thing that kept me from going. Without mentioning Rhys by name, I told her I’d realized I shouldn’t be so quick to take mom for granted. Who knew how long she’d be around? I’d already missed out on so much with her in little more than half a year.

We both agreed for the first time possibly ever and decided we’d each make an effort to be more present in each other’s lives. Nesta was staying the night so she could see me off to the dance the next day, something dad had called and asked her to do, and I told her to tell mom she could expect me to visit over Christmas now that we were going on break the day after the dance.

Unfortunately because of the flooding and short time notice, we’d had to push the dance back by a week so that it fell squarely on the winter solstice just after semester finals had ended in order to secure the venue I’d suggested to Rhys and Mor. But as long as we got our Starfall, we didn’t care how many students complained about it being so close to Christmas.

I bid Nesta goodnight and left her in my room for the safety of a long, hot shower where I gratefully scrubbed the bits of dried paint off my skin. I looked like a Christmas tree standing in the mirror.

When I came back to my room, Nesta was gone, but she’d moved the box she had deposited in the corner when she’d first come in and set it on my bed. It was ordinary, white with black lines around the edges, no noticeable label or markings. I took the lid off and found a small note resting atop a pile of tissue paper.

Despite what you think, mom and dad don’t pay all of our bills. Some of us work for a living while we go to school. Elain and I would be forever disgraced if we let our stupid baby sister show up looking anything less than perfect at her senior dance. I hope it fits.

The note toppled out of my hands floating with a flourish to the floor as I read over the last four words. Not ready to dare imagine this was what I thought it was, I slowly unfolded the wrappings and jumped back with a loud cry, my hands covering my mouth.

The dress was - nothing short of magical.

I ran down the stairs nearly falling out of the towel I’d wrapped around me and burst into Nesta’s room without preamble. “What the hell, Feyre?!” she shouted. I responded by jumping on her bed and attacking her in an all-encompassing embrace worthy of Morrigan.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you, I love it!”

“Get off me,” she said huffy, but as I pulled away, I caught the small smile tugging at her lips. I kissed her atop the head.

“I love you, Ness.”

“I love you too, brat. Now get out - fuck.”

I wasn’t even angry as I left the room cackling like a mad woman.

#myfic #beneath the stars #beneath the stars: a feysand fic #bts #feysand #feysand fanfiction #feyre #rhysand #acomaf #acomaf fanfiction

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illyriantremors · 7 years

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Beneath the Stars Chapter 12

Chapter: I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI

AO3 Linkage

Summary: Morrigan takes Feyre out dress shopping for the dance where the girls have a little heart to heart about the men in their lives. The conversation leaves Feyre wondering about Rhys, but when she takes things a tad too far at the school Karaoke night, things between them do not go well.

Chapter 12

I stared at the pasty creams and pinks and wanted to gag. The desire increased when I flipped the price tags over and nearly fainted from the sticker shock.

“You don’t have to look like a pastry, you know.” Mor grabbed my shoulders and steered me away from the racks I’d been stuck in front of staring off into miles of crinoline and lace for far too long. “You can try something a little sexier. No one expects you turn up looking like a wedding cake. Makes it very difficult to dance.”

“Morrigan,” I said between my teeth as we stopped before a rack of silks and satins that looked like pillowcases made to dress a pencil.

“Oh stop. This should be fun!” She settled down for a moment, giving me her sympathetic puppy eyes. “You are having fun, right?”

Goodness I felt awful.

“Yes, this is just a little out of my element. Fashion was always more Nesta and Elain’s thing. I mostly live in… paint.”

“Well don’t worry. I’ll have you fixed up in no time for the dance. My cousin won’t know what hit him.” She bit her lip and made suggestive faces at me. Morrigan could be a real fox when she wanted to, which was half the time anyway.

“Your - wait, what?”

She had disappeared into the dressing room with a mountain of options piled onto the crook of her arm before I could catch her. “Tell me which ones look good, okay!”

“You know you’re going to look good in everything, right?” I said standing outside the stall while the dressing room attendant, clearly bored with the slow day, tried not to look like she was eavesdropping.

Mor peeked her head out from behind the door and grinned. “Well alright then, help me figure out which one is gonna get me the hottest date!”

“No one’s asked you yet?”

“Well, there have been a few inquiries. Just a couple of guys on the football team trailing me and some of the other girls on cheer after the games, but…”

But not the right football player.

“You ever think of asking someone out? Someone you feel more suited to saying yes to.”

Mor snorted and I faintly heard her whisper, “As if he’d say yes…” I didn’t think I was meant to hear it. “I’m coming out now. Guard your eyes lest you decide to ask me!”

She was a vision in red. Her hair and makeup weren’t even done. The dress clung effortlessly to her curves and wound its way up her chest and neck like a snake caressing its prey before stealing the final few breaths. How on earth could anyone be so effortlessly flawless?

The dressing room attendant whistled and Mor scrunched her nose up playfully at her. “Thanks.” She asked already beaming at me as she did a little spin and I caught the back view. “Well?”

“I think it’s safe to say you could land any guy you wanted in a dress like that.”

She popped off the little pedestal and thrust a dress from her changing room at me. “Try one on, just for me. Please?”

The dress was midnight blue and felt like water over my hands. It was sure to be horrifying on me as I was nowhere near as well endowed as Mor, but it was so supple and if anyone could make me feel like gold in a dress like this it’d be Mor.

“Fine, just one.”

Mor clapped her hands together briskly and I grabbed a room.

“What about you? Any suitors?” she called one stall over. “You’re bound to be Miss Popular now that you’re on the ballot for court.”

“Ha, fat chance.”

I took my oversized sweater and leggings off, cringing at the paint stains sat next to the elegant garment I was meant to put on.

“Really, no one’s asked you yet?”

“No, why?”

“Hmpf,” was my only reply.

“Mor?”

“Yeah?”

“What is it?”

I heard her door click open. Nervously, I opened my own and stepped out into the light where I was met with a squeal. “OOH! It’s perfect!”

“Hardly,” I said, glancing over my shoulder into the mirror where my butt was practically visible via the deep drop of the open back. This was never making it past dress code. The chaperones at the dance would have my neck. “And don’t distract. Answer my question.”

She crossed her arms looking positively exquisite in dress number two, a strappy white little number that was sure to have a certain running back’s blood running. I hoped she’d pick that one regardless of what else she might try on.

“It’s just, I was so sure Rhys was going to ask you.”

“Rhys - oh.”

“Come on, you may yell at him half the time for being an awful little flirt, but you flirt right back.”

I scowled, but I couldn’t exactly deny it. The attraction was there right between the violet eyes, the cat-like smirks, and the way he moved so fluidly as he walked, the lean muscles of his body working with every step.

But most of all, Rhys was kind. He pushed, but never overstepped. He laughed, but never destroyed. He listened. He was everything I wasn’t, which was one heaping big mess still, all because of Tamlin.

“Rhys wouldn’t be interested.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Trust me, he wouldn’t. He’s like Cassian. All flirtation, no actual intention for anything serious.” She rolled her eyes not believing a word out of my mouth. “And besides, Tamlin-”

“Is ancient history,” Mor cut in very flat. This wasn’t her opinion - it was cold hard fact. “You haven’t even talked to him since you broke up, which you did - I’ll remind you - because he was a lying sack of scum who was cheating on you. Something Rhys would never do.”

“You date him if you’re so sold on him. Or if you won’t give poor Az a break, at least give Cass a chance.”

The fit of giggles that erupted out of her was worse than a Caribbean hurricane mid-summer. “Me and Cassian - please!” I swiveled around and made back for my room when Mor calmed herself down and went on. “He and I are a disaster waiting to happen.”

“Why’s that?” I asked changing back into my clothes. I’d only promised one dress. Mor had plenty more scratching along the rack in her stall.

“He and I slept together once. It didn’t end well.”

“You what?”

“Yeah, yeah, shut your face woman. I know all about what you’re thinking. But he and I are history. I was so excited when my uncle convinced my parents to let me stay out here with him and Rhys that I jumped on the first guy I could find to celebrate.” There was a pause and she was suddenly much less flippant about it all. “It was awkward afterwards and I felt like I’d made things unnecessarily weird between Rhys and I, not that he cared if his friends dated, but… I’d only just arrived and it was better not getting too involved.”

I laced up my shoes and strode back out to wait outside her door. “But it’s been two years now. Surely enough time has passed.”

“Yeah and surely Cassian has well and truly moved on. Besides, you don’t actually want him and I together, do you? Golly, it’d be miserable for everyone. We’d never stop fighting!”

“Yeah, well, Cass isn’t exactly who I’d been talking about.”

Silence. Then, a cleared throat.

“I’m coming back out now,” Mor called and the door clicked open. Dress number three was a canary yellow cocktail number that should have clashed horribly with her hair, but naturally it complimented her in every way. “Well? How’s this one?”

“Perfect on you, of course.” I forced myself to barely look at her and she took the bait.

Mor groaned. At her sides, her fingers fidgeted uncomfortably with the sides of her dress. “What, Feyre?”

“I’ll make you a deal. You think about what I said, asking someone - anyone,” I added at the redness I saw turning over her cheeks, “and I’ll consider the possibility of going with, um, Rhys.”

“Oh, would you?!”

“I’m not making any promises! I just said I’ll think about it, which is all I’m asking of you. I’m telling you, he won’t want to go with me.”

“I highly doubt that, Feyre. I highly doubt that.” It was funny how much she looked like Rhys herself in that moment. It wasn’t in the physicality of their bodies so much as the way they moved. They carried the same glow about themselves, the same happy energy that was contagious if you got too close.

“Yeah, well, just don’t forget to keep up your end of the deal.”

Mor darted forward and pecked a quick kiss on my cheek. “I won’t - promise!”

She tried on no less than twenty dresses that day.

Tamlin.

Rhysand.

Tamlin.

Rhysand.

Was I even interested in Rhys? I didn’t think I’d be thinking about him so much if Mor hadn’t insisted on beating the idea into me.

I hadn’t spoken to Tamlin for weeks since the breakup. I occasionally still saw him at school. It was inevitable that we would run into each other and every time it was a horrible dagger straight to my chest.

He had tried the first day to talk to me, but only after a chance encounter at lunch. He didn’t seek me out. He didn’t try to call. But the moment I magically got in his way in a chance encounter while changing classes, he was a slew of words and apologies I didn’t have time to hear.

And that was simply that.

Lucien had avoided me too. The few times we saw each other across the cafeteria for lunch we sent a slew of icy glares back and forth, and that was pretty much it. Each time one of us broke eye contact, a horrible knot would ache in my side, my body trying to get me to acknowledge Lucien and the fights between him and Tamlin before the breakup. But I didn’t want to see it. Not yet.

Rhys never mentioned Tamlin and I had a feeling it wasn’t just for my benefit. But I liked that he didn’t pressure me about him or tear him apart for what he’d done. It was nice to feel respected and leave it at that.

Going out with Rhys was another matter entirely - a laughing one. I hated to admit even to myself how huge a hole Tamlin left inside my heart. It wasn’t exactly him that was the issue, just the fact that there used to be someone there for the longest time by my side and now there wasn’t and suddenly my mess of a life was an even bigger mess.

With Rhys, I could pretend it wasn’t. He made me feel somewhat normal again, if normal was even an obtainable thing. But that only worked while we were friends. I knew that under the surface, I was still cracking barely holding on. If he dug a little deeper, got his long delicate fingers underneath my skin, he would unhinge me completely and that was something I really, really didn’t want him to see again.

Better to keep my distance from him in the daylight so I could go on pretending all was well, rather than continue throwing my family and demons at him in the night, especially when he had chased enough of them away already. The guilt of burdening him further even as I lied about how I was doing could destroy what tenuous friendship we already had.

Not that that stopped me from noticing him from time to time…

Like now as we drove to the Karaoke Night at the cafe a few blocks down the road from school.

Rhys had picked me up. It was the first time outside of school that I’d seen him since my dress shopping extravaganza with Mor and he looked, ah, handsome.

He had on a solid black shirt that was pressed and crisp as was his usual standard, but the lack of buttons and tailor made cuffs he had swapped out for 100% cotton fabric was heart-palpitating to say the least. There was less gel than usual in his hair so that the ends stuck out a smidge from where he’d placed it. One little tendril curled just over the top of his right ear looking very much like it might tickle him. My hand flinched on impulse to touch it.

“You know, if you wanted to sit and undress me all day long with your eyes, you need only have asked. I would have gotten to your house much sooner.”

Rhysand tilted his head back, an exaggerated way of knowingly looking at me as he drove. It caused the muscles in his neck to stretch and strain and - oh boil and bake me, Morrigan, you wicked witch. This was all her fault.

He laughed as I stammered and continued to gawk awkwardly at him, and resumed his driving. I sat in my seat glad that he only thought the flirtation a mere joke. It was just a joke, to me at least. I didn’t actually like Rhys, he was just attractive.

That was all.

I was nervous about this Karaoke Night. Cassian had threatened to make me sing and I had absolutely no desire whatsoever to acquiesce to that demand. Especially when he suggested that I sing my heart out to some Backstreet Boys hit I’d forgotten had existed. (Cassian knew every word.)

Morrigan was even more insistent that I choose something, but Az was the one who whispered in my ear that with a senior class of over one thousand students, even if only a small fraction of them showed up for this, I could easily get away with not singing.

“Iced tea for the lady,” Rhys said coming over from the cafe counter and handing me a clear plastic cup full of ice and heaven.

“I like other drinks too, you know,” I said before amending to, “and that you don’t have to get me anything.”

Rhys gave a shrug contained entirely to the downward slope of his lips and sat down silently next to me. Instantly, I wanted to take back what I’d said so I could earn his smile instead - the same one he’d flashed me in the car.

Cassian, ever the showoff, took over MC duties with gusto. I chewed on my straw as the first person went up to sing some cheesy version of My Heart Will Go On. Typical karaoke fodder.

“You seem tense,” Mor said on my right. With Rhys close on my other side, I couldn’t exactly answer her honestly. He was so close and I felt… a little hot in the face.

Did I like him? Was this all because Mor said something or was there… was there something there?

I tried to shrug it off like it was nothing, but my body cut it off halfway with a shudder I didn’t quite understand, sort of like when you want to say one word but accidentally start to say another at the last second and get them jumbled.

This wasn’t happening. I wasn’t going to let this happen. I couldn’t like him. I would not like him. He was my friend and he was helping me work through enough already without adding feelings to the mix that he wouldn’t return.

Well, probably almost most definitely maybe wouldn’t return.

Depending on how much I trusted Mor.

And Tamlin. Goodness Tamlin was -

Here.

My stomach clenched uncomfortably as I scanned the cafe trying to look anywhere but Rhys or Mor, who still hadn’t stopped smirking at me even as Az sat next to her trying to keep from looking at the free hand she held open in her lap - filthy hypocrite.

And then there was Tamlin walking in with Lucien and… and…

Her.

Rhys noticed the shift in me right away and looked up, exchanging a look of annoyance with Cassian up on the mock stage when he realized who I was watching. Cassian kept the line of karaoke go-ers moving while Tamlin kept his distance at the cafe bar.

He gave me one single look, his mouth opening a fraction of an inch as if he might say something to me across the room, and then Lucien was stepping in front of him blocking his view with his back to me.

“Feyre, hey,” Rhys said softly next to me. His knuckles brushed over my thigh and I withdrew into myself, mesmerized by the touch. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

I swallowed hard. I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t look at Tamlin anymore either.

“Feyre, you’re shaking.”

“What?” I hadn’t even noticed.

“Do you want me to go tell him to leave?”

“No,” I shook my head quickly. Interfering with Tamlin was the last thing I wanted. “No, just… stay with me, please. Distract me.”

His knuckles moved a little higher on my thigh in a way that was supposed to be reassuring, comforting, but… “What do you want me to-” he started to say at the same time my chest hitched from the contact on my leg.

Rhys’s hand froze. And Tamlin started to disappear as I thought more and more about that hand on me.

“Feyre…” Rhys rasped. Just that sound. That simple change in his voice. It did something to me I couldn’t quite explain. A small little window inside of me cracked open the tiniest bit.

Time to test Mor’s theory.

Nervous to the point of shaking, I slid the hand closest to Rhys down my thigh to meet his letting my fingers brush over his palm. His fingers curled and I could practically feel the goosebumps rising on his skin as if they were my own.

I dragged ever so slightly higher towards his wrist and his hand snapped mine down in a jerk he made sure no one else could see, but I certainly felt. Had he shivered? I think he might have shivered. My heart pounded out of my chest as he snaked his far hand over him to run up my arm, tickling in the crook of my elbow so that my body felt alive with the electricity of the touch.

Let’s see how you like it, his fingers said.

A small gasping breath rattled out of me. And I wanted more.

Below our chairs, I slipped my foot out of my sandal and wrapped it around his leg. I pushed the hem of his pants up with my toes and gently rubbed over his ankle. When my foot got past his sock and met his bare skin, I felt his calf clench where my leg was twisted around him.

But his fingers - damn his long delicate fingers kept stroking up and down my arm and it was all I could do not to squirm in my seat and draw the attention of the entire room.

Oh shit - the room. I’d forgotten where we even were in less than a minute of Rhys distracting me, exactly as I’d asked him to. But all I felt was him. And all I heard was this pounding of music as someone sang on the microphone some heady love ballad with a building melody…

Rhys’s knuckles ran a new pilgrimage from my wrist up my arm, but did not stop this time until they met my shoulder and then up, up, up my neck to where my ear was and - ugh… My head rolled onto his shoulder to cut the touch off and save myself from whimpering aloud. Rhys’s only response was to lean down, his nose brushing over my hair, and I felt a hot breath on me as he murmured one word.

Just one word.

One name.

My name.

“Feyre…”

“Ah,” Mor’s sharp voice remarked quietly next to me. My head snapped up and she cleared her throat, inclining her head in the direction of the bar. Tamlin was glaring at me - at Rhys - as he pounded a drink far too hot to be gulped down the way he was. Ianthe did not seem too bothered to notice or else she didn’t care.

Whether he meant to or not, Rhys’s arm went around the back of my chair refraining from touching me, but the message was clear. Mor crossed her arms and legs with a look to kill and Azriel - Azriel stared outright, his scarred hands running over one another as if he were sharpening a sword. I’d never seen him so open about this part of himself he normally tucked away so carefully.

I looked at my friends - my little inner circle and it gave me the confidence I needed to look Tamlin in the eye and I glared with every ounce of self-respect I had in me. Fearless as the wolves, I wasn’t going to let him take anything else from me. Not ever again.

Lucien said something to Tamlin. Ianthe looked bored. Five seconds later, they had all left. And I felt smug and satisfied.

Until I looked at Rhys.

His face was clenched tightly. I realized he was no longer touching any part of me. He looked… he looked dejected.

“Rhys-”

“I’ll be back,” he said and shot out of his seat. Cassian stumbled with the transitions between songs and cracked a random bawdy joke to cover it up, but I knew he’d seen the whole exchange.

Azriel politely averted his attention from me. And Mor, well, she was about to say something, but stopped short. Because there was nothing to say. I’d blown it.

With Tamlin in the clear, I followed after Rhys. He pushed outside the cafe and I momentarily held my breath waiting to see if Tamlin would still be lingering outside, but there was no trace of him.

Rhys leaned against the window of the building, his hands in his pockets. He took one look at me and I watched the corners of his eyes tighten miserably as he shirked himself from me.

“Hey,” I said gently, trying to figure out how to fix this. “What’s wrong? What did I-”

“I’m sorry,” he blurted, interrupting me. I gaped at him confused.

“Sorry? What the hell for?”

“What for? What for?” He pushed off the window, but maintained a careful distance from me. “Shit, Feyre.”

“What? What is it?” I tried to step closer, but he recoiled and that hurt worst of all. “What did I do?”

Instantly, he moved and within seconds he was cradling my face in his hands. “Stop it,” he choked. “Stop comparing.” He stared right into me with those violet eyes of his and the world started slipping away again.

“I don’t understa-”

“Damnit, Feyre - I’m not Tamlin! This isn’t your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong. Just because I’m… it doesn’t mean that you’re… that you did something...”

His eyes circled around mine resting momentarily on my lips and I thought he might lean down and kiss me, but I was so distracted by what had just happened, what he was saying, that I asked, “Just because you’re what?”

His fingers brushed further back across my face, clenching into my hair before he dropped them and released me entirely.

“What I did back there-”

“What we did, you mean. Don’t think I’m not a part of this.”

“Stop. Please stop. Will you listen to yourself for two seconds?” He ran a hand through his hair. Without it being styled nicely like he normally did, the gesture ruffled it out of place completely. “Feyre, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have touched you like that. It was inappropriate and spiteful and you deserve better than that.”

I opened my mouth to argue and then promptly closed it again as I glared at him. He seriously was going to do this to me? Now?

My heart fluttered uncomfortably. Was it all a joke to him then? The flirting. The witty retorts. The bedroom eyes he was constantly sending. Or had I just gotten too high on Mor’s insistent chatter in my ears and overlooked the obvious fact that Rhys was just as big a flirt with everyone as Cassian was?

I wasn’t sure where the anger was suddenly coming from, but it was there, hot underneath my skin. “I don’t get it. I asked for you to help me. What you did - Rhys. Fuck, I needed your help. And you think you let me down?”

“Of course I did,” he snapped. “I let you down. I let myself down.”

There it was. The simple truth.

I took a risk. I put myself out there. He gave himself a taste of what it might be like and realized I wasn’t what he wanted after all. A letdown.

And I’d fallen for it. Those horrible few seconds where I’d let myself dare think maybe he might feel something for me were a huge, nasty mistake.

“Feyre, I-”

“Don’t,” I said. And the scene felt all too familiar to another guy I’d had to cut off from defending himself for his actions. All too painfully familiar. “You know what, Rhys. Forget it. I don’t know what your problem is. You shove yourself into my life and you say and you do all of these things and you make me think that, that… I don’t even know what I think anymore. But we can just pretend none of this ever happened because clearly, you’re too big of a mess yourself to deal with any of my shit.”

Rhys flinched. My anger dissipated on the spot. The full weight of what I’d just told him hitting me as I watched his face, his spirit - that beautiful lively spirit that was animating me back to life more and more each day - sink lower, lower, and lower.

Tentatively, I reached out my hand, but he backed away.

“I’m driving you home.”

“No, please - I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.” The words turned to ash in my mouth. I hadn’t let him apologize. Why would he let me?

“In the car now, or you can ride with Mor.”

He waited only long enough for me to realize that the offer wouldn’t last forever. Though I was scared out of my mind that I’d just made a horrible mistake, I chose to go with Rhys. I would choose to go with him every time, I vaguely thought. I was in way deeper than I realized.

And it would give me a chance to apologize on the ride home, but Rhys never quite let me get there. Every time I tried to say something, one look from him and the words died in my throat.

So there we were. I’d ruined it all between us maybe not just romantically, but as friends too. He’d taken care of me when I needed someone and I threw it back in his face.

He dropped me off at home and left without another word. I trudged up to my room glad that it was Thanksgiving break and I didn’t have to think about school in the morning. I didn’t even have work at the gallery this week.

Dad wasn’t around anywhere that I could tell, though I noticed his bedroom door was closed again. Accepting my solitary confinement for the remainder of the evening, I dug out my phone and texted Mor to let her know we’d left.

Oh my gosh, Feyre - what the hell happened??

I sighed staring up at the still blank ceiling of my bedroom. The skylight wouldn’t even show me the stars when night fell later on - not with all the clouds covering the expanse up.

Where did I even begin to explain?

You were wrong Mor. Wrong about everything.

#myfic #beneath the stars #beneath the stars: a feysand fic #bts #feysand #feyre #rhysand #feysand fanfiction #acomaf #acomaf fanfiction

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