#thegirl | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

duskandstarlight · 1 year

Text

The Girl (Part One)

Notes: All I can do is write modern AU lately, so here is the first part of The Girl (see here for the prologue). Forgive me of any typos - I've glanced over it but I just wanted to get this out. Enjoy!

Part One: Nesta

It can’t be happening. That’s Nesta’s first thought as she sits at the large mahogany dining table at her sister’s birthday dinner and watches a man that’s horribly familiar duck beneath the doorframe. Yet… it’s undeniable. Same broad frame, same leather jacket, same rugged features. Same tattoos peeking over his collar and licking up his neck. Same shoulder-length black hair scraped back into a haphazard knot.

Nesta manages to stop the shock that seizes her, catching it before it ever makes its way onto her expression. But the man isn’t as successful. It’s only a heartbeat, but it’s there as he sits down at the table, looks up as he’s mid-way between tucking in his chair and see’s… her. The girl he fucked on his sofa only two days prior.

Then the shock and recognition is gone as swiftly as it arrived and that questionable beat where Nesta thinks she’s well and truly foiled vanishes.

It seems it’s not only her that wears masks.

They go through the necessary motions. The cordial civility Nesta despises. They pretend they have never met and Nesta tries not to flinch in surprise when he suddenly extends his hand to her over the table.

It’s an offering. It’s a ruse that Nesta is adamant on keeping.

So, she reaches across the table and clasps the same calloused hand that had cupped her ass a few nights before - as if they’re in some Cauldron-damn business meeting.

She tries not to remember that night the moment they touch. The molten heat that had burned between them. The way it had licked up her spine, all consuming.

“Nesta.” The man repeats after her slowly, as if he’s trying her name out on his tongue. Savouring it. His voice is so deep that it’s a delicious scrape across her skin and his eyes are a pool of hazel as he meets her gaze full on, unflinching - an amalgamation of brown, grey, green and gold. “I’ve not heard that name before.”

Nesta resists the urge to snap her hand back into her lap. Instead, she moves with careful deliberation. Tells him with an empty politeness that she hopes conveys that she's not a conversationalist and never will be, “It means fire.”

That, she knows, he believes.

It’s only when Nesta pulls on her coat in the hallway of the house that Feyre shares with her fiancé Rhysand, that Nesta senses that their game of pretence is over.

His footsteps are barely detectable against the hardwood floor but there’s something that tells her that he’s near. A presence that’s carved out its own space in the small hallway, seeping into the woodwork, her pores. A caress at the back of her neck. Against her skin.

And somehow she knows that he’s leaning against the doorframe, waiting, watching. Even so, she makes a point of doing up the buttons of her coat as if she’s none the wiser. Pulls her hair out from under the material and winds a scarf around her neck.

Because never again does she want to be prey.

“We’ve never met,” she announces crisply when she’s finished, cleaving back the control she desperately needs before he tries to wrangle it from her.

She doesn’t turn. Doesn’t give any indication that he’s worth her time. When Nesta started sleeping around she learnt quickly that unapologetic directness was the best approach.

After all, Nesta doesn’t pick her men out at bars with repeat sessions in mind. And, in this case, it’s vital that Nesta sets the scene and lays the foundations.

The man - Cassian - is leaning against the doorframe, larger than life and observing her in a way that is also unapologetic. It’s not leering. It’s not overtly sexual (although Nesta knows that the attraction is there as surely as she knows her heart is beating). But it’s the sort of stare that burrows into you, deeper and deeper, as if it’s trying to get to the core of you and figure you out.

And when Cassian’s eyes glint, Nesta thinks he actually might have done it. Unlocked every iron-barred gate inside of her and found out every horrible truth.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart. I’ll keep our dirty little secret.”

That’s all Nesta needs to hear. She ignores the way his voice has taken an even deeper turn than earlier. That the mere sound of it has stirred something inside of her, something that has long been sleeping.

Instead, she yanks open the front door and steps outside. The cold is like a slap to the face but she’s done here. She needs to go home. Needs a drink.

When Cassian dares to follow her out, Nesta pins him with a glare that should be like a dagger to the chest. But Cassian simply watches her, completely unbothered by the demeanour that usually has others scarpering with their tails between their legs.

She makes a point of raking her eyes from top to toe, scrutinising every wild inch of him, before she snares his gaze. “In case you hadn’t realised, we’re done here.”

Still, he watches her. Studying her, his gaze so astute that Nesta feels vulnerable.

And she hates it, detests it—

“I need to talk to you.”

Nesta actually snorts. The huff of breath comes out like steam, like she’s a dragon breathing a fire the colour of ice. “We fucked once. A five minute fumble does not requires us to talk.”

She starts walking. Her feet crunch on the gravel drive and for a moment all she feels is how cold she is. But then fingers are closing around her wrist and she’s not yanked backwards, exactly, but she’s forced to stop.

And that’s when her instincts kick in. There is no mask, no control of her expression or her body language as she jolts away from him like a mare that refuses to be reigned in.

When she’s free, she whirls on him. And despite the freezing wind biting into her limbs, Nesta is burning so fiercely she could kill. “Do not touch me,” she hisses.

It amazes her how quickly he backs off, the surprise clear on his face. And then, in his eyes, something knowing. As if he understands.

It makes Nesta want to run so badly but it’s too late. It’s happening: the constricted breath, the lump in her throat that’s clamped over her airways. The thing that has been happening so frequently recently that Nesta often finds it hard to leave the house.

He must see the sudden panic in her eyes, because he takes another deliberate step away from her, granting her space - air - so she can breathe.

It takes too long for her lungs to kick back into action. For her heart to start thudding again. Her breath shudders in, in, in, until her chest has so much oxygen her skin wants to crack.

Nesta isn’t sure how long they stand there, her desperately trying to control her breath in a way that appears inconspicuous whilst he stands by, knowing.

If Nesta was alone, she would sink to the floor and bury her head between her legs, curling in on herself, turning inwards until all she is is breath. But Nesta is not alone. So, she just tries to focus on the oxygen coming into her lungs, tries to make it measured and slow, all the while she wants to scream at him to disappear. It takes everything she’s got to try and insert venom into her voice, but it just comes out weak - like a betrayal. “You’re still here.”

“On the couch,” he says quietly, slowly, as if she’s an animal in the underbrush about to scarper from a predator. “We didn’t use anything.”

Nesta knows she needs to claw back some control. She needs to say something cutting, but she still can’t think of anything besides getting air in her lungs in a way that doesn’t make it obvious that she’s struggling to breathe. “I take birth control.”

“Ok.”

She meets his eyes. “There won’t be a repeat.”

Cassian’s scar-slashed eyebrow cocks upwards and Nesta has the distinct impression he would be amused if it isn’t for the way that he’s studying her, concern tight across his brow. “There won’t?”

“There won’t,” she confirms.

The breathing gets easier, slowly, painfully. It’s no longer desperate to shudder in and out. Nesta is so busy focussing on her breath that she almost forgets where she is, until Cassian asks, “And does that extend beyond the couch to other locations, too?”

Nesta feels her eyes ignite into silver blue flames and suddenly she’s not thinking about breathing at all. “It does.”

“That’s a pity.”

Nesta actually snorts again. “For you, it is,” she says, as if the sex hadn’t been good for her.

Lies, all lies.

Nesta turns, walks away.

Does not turn back, even when Cassian calls after her, his voice somehow both rough and soft - and a little bit broken. “See you around, Nesta.”

***

They see each other around more than Nesta would have liked.

Yet, for the first time in years, Nesta continues to try with her sisters. She tries, even as on the inside she drowns in oily waters she can’t share with anyone. Because how do you admit to your former estranged sisters that they were right all along when you can’t even admit it out loud to yourself? But Nesta knows. She knows that she’s so broken she doesn’t know how to move forward any more. Sometimes, Nesta sits in her apartment on her beat up sofa and stares at a wall for hours with nothing going through her brain. Just this dead emptiness, this numbness that she can’t control.

More often than not, Nesta does not write. She ignores her agents calls. She ignores her deadlines. Because there’s nothing there. Nothing in her head apart from a depthless void that she doesn’t want to get rid of. Because when it disappears, unbidden and without warning, the cyclone of her thoughts, the intense, aching sadness she wakes up with every morning is all too much all too quickly.

Drinking helps keep the void.

And that’s how Nesta finds herself at the same bar that she’d first met Cassian. Rita’s, it turns out, is the brothers local. And on Friday evenings there’s an open invitation.

The air is sticky with sweat when Nesta arrives and the scent of sugar, tequila, wood and hops turns her stomach. She’s already a bottle of wine down but she has no plans to stop. The last week has been particularly rough. Tonight’s shower was the equivalent of climbing a mountain, getting dressed even more so, but she’s here and she’s got that pleasant tingling numb that fills her with a spiky personality that usually takes far too much effort to conjure.

She’s only there a total of five minutes when Cassian approaches her at the bar. Nesta knows it’s him immediately. Not just because of the hands that rest against the sticky wooden counter, but because she can smell him: pine and fresh air and musk. A pleasant distraction from the general odour of the place.

For the most part, Nesta ignores Cassian when they see one another.

But sometimes, she can’t.

“Hello, Nes.” The sound of his voice has something sitting up inside of her. Something that scarcely makes an appearance these days - an interest, a feeling that doesn’t feel terrifying but exciting.

Mastering her voice, Nesta feigns indifference. “Hello brute.”

It’s pure instinct that tells Nesta that Cassian is studying her in that surprisingly quiet way he’s prone to. Nesta ignored it. Pretends to study the wine in the fridge behind the bar.

“You’re looking as devastating as ever.”

Slowly, Nesta turns her head.

Cassian is propped up against the bar on one elbow, but he still towers above her: all dark and dangerous with the cocky grin that’s only for her. Today, his hair is tousled half up and it makes her want to do things to him. She’s never felt this attraction to someone before, this delicious and devastating pull.

She tucks away the sensation, pushing it down, down, down, and pretends that she didn’t choose this particular outfit with the pure intention of flooring him. “Didn’t find it in yourself to brush your hair?”

Cassian’s slow-spreading grin is wolfish and delighted. It didn’t take Nesta long to realise that whilst others found her thorny and disagreeable, Cassian relishes what she throws into the ring.

He understands that it’s more play than spite.

Cassian doesn't lean forward, doesn't move into her space at all, yet when he speaks it's as if he’s imparting with a secret. “Admit you like it this way, Nesta.”

She does like it this way, but Nesta only wrinkles her nose. “I like my men well-groomed.”

“No,” Cassian says, tapping the table to the beat of the music with one tan finger as if he’s distracted, “you don’t.”

Boldened by the alcohol buzzing through her veins, Nesta asks, “Are you here to buy me a drink?”

But he throws her question back at her. “Are you buying me one?”

“That depends,” Nesta replies, cocking her head so her long hair falls over her shoulder, “on whether you plan on leaving me alone afterwards.”

Cassian does leave her alone afterwards, and the relief that floods her is mixed with regret.

Nesta spends the majority of her evening on the dance floor with Elain whilst Feyre hangs out with the dark-haired men in the corner. She drinks too much, until she doesn’t feel anything anymore and everything is numb - just the way she likes it.

When she’s like this, men don’t scare her.

When she’s like this, she feels powerful.

Unstoppable.

When Nesta’s will finally breaks and she allows herself to glance Cassian’s way, she finds him leaning against the metal bar that partitions off the dance floor, talking to a long-legged girl with long braids that swing in time with her hips.

Nesta makes a point of leaving with someone else. As she exits the club, a well-groomed man trotting after her like some lovesick puppy, she feels Cassian’s dark eyes razor sharp on her back.

This time, she doesn’t bother taking the man home. She makes him take her against the wall in a dirty alleyway, her stomach turning at the soft fingers, the smooth shaven face, the overpowering scent of aftershave. He moans and praises but he doesn’t know how to please her and Nesta can’t find it in herself to take what she needs.

So, she lets the pebbledash of the wall bite and scratch at her back until she’s sure she’s bleeding with it.

Holds onto that pain as she turns her head away from him, closes her eyes and waits for it to be over.

Tags (let me know if you want to be added/removed): @arinbelle @superspiritfestival @sayosdreams @perseusannabeth @mylittlebigplanet @biggestwingspan-az @bellsqueen @ekaterinakostrova @bookstantrash @prophecyerised @rainbowcheetah512 @awesomelena555 @wannawriteyouabook @lovelynesta @melphss @laylaameer01 @a-trifling-matter @fanboy7794 @thalia-2-rose @champanheandluxxury @swankii-art-teacher @lavendergoomsltd @princessofmerchants-reads @jeakat @imwritingthesewords @nestable @inejbrekkxr @silvernesta @amelie775 @helen-the-weirdo @pizzaneverdisappoints @wishfulimaginings @trash-for-nessian @my-fan-side @sophilightwood @valkyriesupremacy @vidalinav @onceupona-chaos @inardour @thesunremembersyourface @teagoddess99 @misswonderflower @nessiantrashh @miamorganvel18 @kawaiteacup @nestaa-stan @castielspelvis

#nessian #nessian fanfic #nessian fic #nesta archeron #cassian #nesta x cassian #acotar #acotar fic #thegirl #duskandstarlightwrites #nessianfic #acotar fanfic

167 notes · View notes