#LIKE A TOTEY SMIDGE

[moiraineswife]

Just something for your consideration because I have just thought of this and think it's adorable... Elain, giving Lucien flowers

It IS adorable aier;toienoac okay okay have some more thoughts in return that this Spawned: (listen i’m fully aware that u were probably just ‘wouldn’t it be nice if Elain handed Lucien a little bunch of flowers one day, that’d be sweet, but like GO BIG OR GO HOME MEABHD. and u sent this to me i honestly don’t know what else u were expecting...) 

Elain says at the end of ACOWAR that she wants to fill the world with more gardens. No doubt she makes the one she’s started in Velaris spread and enthusiastically throws herself into it after the war. It’s a place that she’s comfortable and a place that’s hers so Lucien, being tactful and polite, probably chooses to court her there more often. 

He lets her talk endlessly about the flowers that she’s growing there, all the different seeds, the things that will grow in Prythian that she’d never even heard of in the mortal realms (she scolds his people for that because dammit, if I’d known about this before I’d have come here much sooner. And Lucien offers her a very grave apology on behalf of all fae-dom which makes her giggle) 

Lucien literally lived in the Court of Flowers for the past 300 years or something, right, and he spent an inordinate amount of time riding the rails, on border patrol, etc, etc. The boy knows his plants, okay. And he’s probably delighted to have someone as enthusiastic as he is to share that with. (Listen, Lucien spent his free time in the Autumn Court camping out miles away from his home and learning how to catch trout with his bare hands - he loves the outdoors just as much as Elain, who spent all her time wherever they were carving out a garden, does. Elain spreads life wherever she goes and Lucien basks in it. This is a beautiful point of bonding for them). 

Lucien tells her all about the Spring Court. It was toxic and unhealthy for him in Tamlin’s court and Elain gets very grumpy about the abuse that he suffered at Tamlin’s hands (and starts to encourage Lucien to look and think about Tamlin’s treatment of him too) but the court itself was beautiful. He tells her about the deep forests. About the plants that would bloom all year round. The gardens of the manor and the wild, untamed beauty found in the heart of the court. 

Partly he talks to share this wonder with Elain the only way he knows how. He would take her there but with his relationship with Tamlin being what it is that isn’t possible...But he knows that he needs to tell her everything he can about it. Elain laps it all up and so he starts sharing things from the Autumn Court as well, diving into memories he thought he’d long forgotten because that court, too, had its beauty. 

As he talks Elain starts to realise that this is for her benefit that he’s sharing these things, to see her smile and light up in wonder imagining all of the things he’s telling her about...But she also starts to sense a pang of longing and nostalgia in him and she realises that a part of him is homesick for these parts of those courts he once called home. 

Elain hatches a cunning plan. 

Using that sweet, diplomatic charm she cultivated in human high society she charms merchants and vendors from other courts into getting her what she needs and sets to work. 

There’s a corner of her garden that she keeps fenced off and made such ferocious threats to Cassian when he tried to peek inside that he swears of all the Archeron sisters, he fears Elain the most. No-one is allowed to go to the part of the garden but especially not Lucien, it’s kept so secret from him that he doesn’t even know it exists. 

Not until Elain comes to him one day, bursting with excitement and glowing so brightly people start questioning which one of them, exactly, is the heir to Day. She takes Lucien by the hand and quite firmly ignores his baffled babbling as she ties a blindfold over his eyes and leads him outside. She just tells him to trust her and Lucien shuts his mouth and obeys and that’s that. 

She leads him out into the garden (Lucien stumbling a few times because, well, Elain is very excited and enthusiastic and that tends to dull her noticing things like loose stones and protruding roots, all of which poor Lucien trips over) but they manage to make it to this special little corner relatively intact. 

Quivering with anticipation Elain takes off Lucien’s blindfold (standing on her toes and having him bend down a little while she curses him for being so damn tall) and waits with baited breath for his reaction as she stares around at what she’s created for. A little part of her garden is a miniature Spring Court, with a small section of Autumn too, both of them filled with all of Lucien’s favourite plants and flowers, that she spent a great deal of time researching to make sure she got it just right. 

Lucien steps forwards on slightly trembling legs and moves deeper into the garden. It feels like he’s home, at last, like this strange, alien court that spent so long as the subject of his most twisted nightmares, could some day be his. Elain tentatively follows him and murmurs that she knew he was missing home and she thought this might help but if he doesn’t like it...

Never in all his many, many years of life has Lucien ever been this lost for words. After a very long moment and several tries, instinct and training kick in at last and he’s finally able to wheeze that he loves it, he loves it and that no-one...No-one has ever done anything like this for him before.

 That little line he’s learning to love creases between Elain’s brows at that and she says that they should have done...Then she softens and smiles and murmurs quietly that she supposes she just has a lot of making up to do, in that case. 

Lucien walks towards her and pulls her to him and tells her that he would very, very much like to kiss her right now, if that would be agreeable to her. Elain giggles and informs him that she didn’t very well go to all this effort for the simple pleasure of watching him gape at her like a fish, she thinks he should most definitely kiss her, after all her hard work. 

Lucien doesn’t need to be told twice. He laughs at her boldness, even as she blushes for him, and wonders if this woman, this soft heart who just might be the strongest person he’s ever known, will ever stop surprising him. 

He concludes, as she, impatient with his overly-polite dilly-dallying, takes his face firmly between her hands and draws him down to kiss her, that she most certainly will not. And he’s absolutely fine with that. 

Once he’s spent a good long time properly appreciating Elain and all her hard work and their lips are red and swollen from said appreciation, he lets her lead him around the garden. 

She shows him every single plant she’s brought here and lets him talk, tell her silly little facts about them, how that one is good to put on burns and that one should absolutely not, under any circumstances and no matter how much gold she’s offered, ever be drunk as a tea. 

She tells him how much trouble she had getting hold of that and he tells her he’s not surprised, that it almost died out a few decades ago and he can’t believe she managed to get it to grow at all. Elain swells with pride and Lucien appreciates her some more. 

He laughs and laughs and laughs over a small, insignificant looking little plant and tells her about the memories that it brings back from Spring, when things were better, a lifetime ago. Then he asks about her favourites, of the new ones that she’s found here and they bond and Lucien appreciates her a great deal. 

Lucien, ever the graceful courtier, plucks up a delicate blue rose and tucks it into her hair. And then nothing will do but that Elain has to weave an entire bouquet into Lucien’s hair. They lie in the shade of a tree while she does this, Elain’s legs folded into a (highly unladylike, as Lucien teasingly comments and gets a swat on the arm in return) basket, Lucien’s head in her lap. As she works she confesses, giggling and blushing, that she’s been wanting to play with his hair for a very long time. Lucien smiles and tells her she’s welcome to do this as often as she wishes. Elain leans down and kisses him upside down. 

Lucien refuses to take off his flower crown and proudly wears it to the family dinner the Circle have that night at the House of Wind. During which, Feyre smiles knowingly at them and just smiles some more when Elain sidles over to thank her for helping her find out what flowers Lucien likes.