#ficletvember

[limerental]

ficletvember 2023 - day 4

In the wake of the events of the Thanned coup, in an attempt not to fall apart, Yennefer falls into Jaskier's arms.

cw for twn canon and mentions of canon injury and assumed gory character death

It had taken only hours for Thanned to be rent to pieces but would take days, maybe weeks to repair the damages. To knit the fragile protective wards back together and force the very foundations of the island not to sink into the sea. To recover magical artifacts from the rubble, praying that none had been made unstable in the desctruction, would not ignite fresh fires and cause more casualties.

It would take several days to bury the dead.

Yennefer pushed on for hours through the trembling of her limbs and aching hunger, her body and mind the wobbly sort of stretched thin that warned of too many incantations used far too close together. Too much more and her very being may rattle apart. Nothing left to give to the veins of power she called on than her own marrow made dust.

It was not some selfless, newly-awakened devotion to her sisters that drove her on. If she did not rest, did not slow, her mind could not return to the myriad of ways she had failed the ones she loved.

If she stopped even more a moment, she could hear only the deafening concussion of Tor Lara.

There was a harsh whistling and buzzing in her ear when she reached for Ciri's presence and found–

Echoing again and again, the telepathic whisper from Triss about the state she had found Geralt's body, all but a corpse, her message interrupted by hysteric weeping, and then silence as they vanished.

Yennefer could not think about those things or she would fray to pieces whether or not she overtaxed herself magically. She would sink into the sea that churned against Thanned's broken cliffs and dissolve.

By the tenth hour, Keira Metz grabbed her by the elbow and swore colorfully in her face, spittle flying, until she sat down and had a cup of tea in an undamaged alcove that still smelled sweet with domestic magic. 

She and Keira had not been friends before this, not really, but they leaned their exhausted bodies together and for a moment, Yennefer's thoughts drifted back to–

She stood abruptly, turned to thank Keira and found her dozing against a column, dusty tear tracks drying on her face. 

If she had not run into Geralt's bard not long after, she may have thrown herself back into the thick of salvage and repair, but she encountered the man in a dingy hallway traipsing about picking up side tables and setting decorative vases back atop them with great care, as though such a thing were as vitally important as dragging their dead from the ruins.

Hours and hours ago, they had embraced in the rubble and she had told him what she knew and tried not to collapse in his warm arms and sob and she had thought he'd be gone by now, returned to Gors Velen with the other minstrels and unfortunate outsiders from the banquet who had been caught up in the deadly affair. 

She watched Jaskier clumsily try to set a fallen chair to rights only to find several of its legs charred to nothing and then flounder over what to do with the thing, and in that moment, Yennefer found him so pleasantly foolish and human and wonderful that her tired limbs at last gave out. 

He caught her, voice pitched high, and then he dragged her up in his arms. Yennefer must have been a babe the last time she was carried in someone's arms. She felt weightless in his iron grip, one arm curled tight under her bent legs and the other around her shoulders. The long spill of her hair swayed. 

He carried her so easily, even while he moaned about the weight. The chatter of his teeth betrayed his fear as he complained casually, lips against her hair, about the roles they were supposed to play in this story. That she was meant to carry him like a bride from the wreckage, not the other way around. 

Yennefer lost track of reality. She thought of Geralt, milk-white hair stained bloodied red even as the tide rose and washed it away. She thought of Ciri. Wondered how they would bury her if the explosion of the portal had reduced her body to a fine mist of viscera lost to the air above the island. Atom by atom?

She woke on a bed in a dark room, buzzing with the acrid burn of healing magic. Jaskier sprawled beside her, their hands clasped tight. 

He woke when she did, eyes catching with a glassy shine in the dark, and he told her she'd apparently nearly unraveled her own cellular structure. He called her an idiot. He pushed back the curtain of her hair.

Yennefer kissed him, full and thorough. 

Maybe she had thought about kissing him before this, had admired the narrow dip of his waist and imagined fitting her hands there, had been struck by the full pout of his lips and wondered how he would taste, but the right time had ever evaded them. 

This was the wrong time. 

The grief crescendoed, as though it was her body that had been splintered and broken and reduced to a cloud of ash.

Jaskier kissed her like he knew what she was thinking. She knew what he was thinking, caught by his feeble human anxieties of feeling like something very small standing in the midst of a hurricane. 

His grief stood in miniature beside hers, his little sigh of an attempt to help fix something, anything, to help hold Yennefer's fracturing pieces in his hands and clutch them tight enough that she did not spill like sand between his fingers. 

When their bodies fit themselves together, rocking sweetly in each other's arms, she felt the sore echo in her thighs of her love-making with Geralt and ached through her whole body with the wish that he were there instead and then ached with the guilt of that thought and clung to Jaskier and held his weeping face in her hands and kissed away the spill of tears.

In the stillness after, she did not weep, but she pressed her cheek against the softness of his chest and imagined that they could have been lovers in another life. 

She, a humble peasant girl and he, a travelling minstrel. Dancing around the bonfires at a village festival, kissing under the stars, eloping at dawn with a new life in mind. No monsters or magic. No blood-stained prophecies. 

He asked what she was thinking, long fingers tiptoeing along her temple, and she asked him to marry her and he laughed a wheeze against her scalp and she held her face to his breast and imagined another life. How ugly their filthy peasant children would look, how they would argue and argue, how she would waste away one day of consumption or dysentary and he would remarry but visit her barrow in the woods and lay down soft sprigs of chamomile.

Yennefer tried her very best and her very hardest not to shake wholly to pieces in his arms.

#my fic #yennskier #witcher fic #ficletvember #yennefer x jaskier #twn

[yennskier-feed-ao3]

pretty on her arm

pretty on her arm

by limerental

Yennefer does not mind annoying, fancy banquets when she has Jaskier on her arm.

Words: 527, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Series: Part 4 of Ficletvember 2021

Fandoms: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types

Rating: Mature

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: F/M

Relationships: Jaskier | Dandelion/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg

Additional Tags: Established Relationship, Gender Role Reversal, Implied Sexual Content, possessive Yennefer

#the witcher #yenskier #yennskier #yennefer #jaskier #yennskier fic feed

[ao3yennaia]

guest lecture

by limerental

“Your Rectoress was called away on pressing business,” said Yennefer at a volume far louder than strictly necessary. “Unfortunately for you, I am the only senior mage presently available to fill in."

Words: 766, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Series: Part 22 of Ficletvember 2021

Fandoms: The Witcher (TV)

Rating: Mature

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: F/F

Relationships: Tissaia de Vries/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg

Additional Tags: Aretuza (The Witcher), Post-Battle of Sodden Hill (The Witcher), Flirting, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Professor Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg

source https://archiveofourown.org/works/45402340

#IFTTT #yennaia

[yennefics]

limerental's yen-centric fics

many of these are split pov but I tried to round up all of my fics that have real deep exploration of yen’s character

the poet’s wish - yennefer/jaskier, canon divergent, soul bond, slow burn, 100k enemies to lovers

lilacs & dandelions - geralt/jaskier/yennefer, yennefer/jaskier focus, post-mountain, fluff, curtain fic, eventual ot3

lay these things bare - yennefer/jaskier, post-canon, crack treated seriously, aging, getting together

wide have i wandered - odin!yennefer

other things i’ll never be - geralt/jaskier/yennefer, trans au, modern au, angst, coming out

ficletvember masterpost - a series of ficlets written november 2020 that all focus on yennefer as a main character

#yennefer #yennfer fanfic #fic rec #yenskier #geraskefer #submitted post #submission #fluff #angst #self rec

[limerental]

ficletvember 2023 - day 24

ciri & her messed up parents modern au ft. yenralt

For the first time in years and with great trepidation, Ciri returns home for a holiday family gathering.

aka I'm pushing my ciri as jenny from thebes agena

Ciri dropped the kickstand of her bike and worked her stiff fingers in and out of fists, regretting her smart-looking fingerless gloves after miles of chilled highway. The driveway and street out front of the little house was full, and somebody had slung lights up on the eaves and chucked a crooked wreath on the door. 

Half the cars she didn't recognize, but then, she hadn't been back for years.

A little tabby hurried up the walk to meet her, tail raised high, and Ciri swung off her bike to drop to meet her. Scratching behind her ears, she tipped up an oversized tag on her collar to read– of course.

Roach nudged at the laces of her boots and purred.

For all the things that did, some things never changed.

When Mama had called to tell her they were doing family Yuletide dinner, Ciri had laughed out loud. Couldn't help it. She couldn't imagine her Mama home-cooking anything without some disaster happening. When she was little, Mama used to peel the label off store-bought jam to give as gifts to her teachers. They’d always gotten takeout on the important holidays. Eaten quiet together washed by the glow of the TV. 

Those were the good holidays. The bad ones were loud.

Daddy home late from a shift he claimed he wouldn't take this year. Mama red-eyed and yelling. She looked like she could call down lightning sometimes when she was real mad, black hair frizzed out and wild, and Daddy usually got that stubborn gleam in his eye and put his foot in his mouth and then–

There were great holidays too, of course. Her years spent with Pops and her uncles in the mountains, bundled up like a marshmallow for hunting trips and coming in out of the cold to a feast laid out by the roaring fire. There'd been times with her cousins from the islands, learning to ice skate and rev a snowmobile.

And there'd been great times with her parents too. Just never together under the same roof. That's when it soured. 

There'd been that year that she and her dad went camping in the middle of fuck-all nowhere. Just them and their bikes and the fog and shitty freeze-dried army rations cooked out of bags. That'd been nice.

And the year Mama took her to the city, bought tickets to a show and let her dress up fancy, a little slutty, and ate takeout in their opulent hotel room after, gossiping and giggling like little girls at a sleepover. That'd been a night she remembered so fondly it ached.

But there'd never been great times in this house. Mama had lived here in Vengerberg forever, and Daddy had lived here in a rotation of years on and off and Ciri had lived here when she wasn't off at school but always done her best to find other places to go. 

The first chance she could, she was gone. That escape came with its own measure of fucked up nights and bad times, but that was another story. Ciri had clawed her way out of several dark places and had figured she'd keep doing that forever.

She'd never seen her Mama's place with Yule lights on the eaves. Couldn't quite remember why no one had ever decorated. Maybe just to be stubborn and miserable. Any time they'd tried, it became a fight. The same as anything.

Ciri made herself go up the front walk, climbing the stoop and just standing there looking at the crooked greenery on the door. She reached out and straightened it rather than knocking.

She wished she'd brought somebody with her. Someone to stand here with a hand at the small of her back and make the decision to go in for her. She'd been told on the phone she could bring a guest, her Mama's voice dipping in question like she wanted to ask who she was with now but had thought better of it. 

Ciri didn't have anybody. Maybe never had anyone.

She knocked on the door and didn't wait for the answer, just pushed in. Roach leapt past her legs, and the gathering in the front room that rambled out into the dining room all exclaimed with joy when they saw her. Some of the people who clapped her on the back or called a greeting were unfamiliar, but maybe she'd just forgotten or they'd shaved their beard or dyed their hair.

The rooms were hung with garland around the doorways, and music swelled from somewhere. The light was warm, and the space was full.

After being released from the umpteenth bear hug, somebody told her that her parents were in the kitchen finishing up dinner. They laughed over the mock-scared face she pulled, but the way her heartbeat kicked up, it was barely a joke.

The kitchen was too small for much of anything. Daddy always said he'd take out that half wall and give it some breathing room, but there'd been hemming and hawing over details and then a bitterness that it never got done and then a grudge and a stubborn insistence it wasn't necessary anyway to expand a kitchen no one stepped foot in.

Now, every bit of counter space was swathed with foil covered dishes. Enough to feed an army. Ciri felt a little pang of guilt that maybe they'd been waiting for her.

Mama and Daddy were standing at the stove together. Daddy with his white hair tied back, wearing a kiss the cook apron, and Mama looking short as hell in her stocking feet stirring a pot of something on the stove. 

They spoke quiet together, heads bent close. Daddy's hand rested at her waist and when she cut the burner and turned to him, he dropped a kiss into her hair. They swayed together, a vision of opposites. Rising up out of Ciri's muck-stained memories like a mirage. 

Mama short and fat and happy. Daddy stooping a little to rest his chin against her cloud of dark hair. 

It didn't seem wholly fair. That after everything, after all those ruined holidays, everything she fled from, her parents should claw their way to something as peaceful and real as this. Something that felt different.

Ciri hadn't believed it when Mama told her. That something was different this time. But she believed it now, as much as she could believe anything at all. 

The tabby weaved between her legs and meowed after a piece of ham, and her parents looked up and turned her way, faces brimming with wet smiles, and when they opened their arms together, she fell into them and held tight to both, hoping someday she'd look back on this year as one of the great ones. Fighting back the bitterness like a cold and solid wave.

#my fic #ficletvember #yenralt #ciri #aw beans

[limerental]

ficletvember 2023 - day 8

iorveth/roche weird criminals modern au of reason of state or something

Though an elite team of unsavory characters has agreed to work together with the hopes of assassinating the shady CEO of Redanian Industries, that doesn't mean they have to like each other.

content warning for canon-typical violence and a mostly non-explicit blowjob

The intercom crackled.

"Shit, pack it in, lads, our man's long gone."

A moment later, the staccato hum of the helicopter rising from the roof of the factory confirmed the announcement. Radovid had fucking gotten away again.

With their mission failed, animosity predictably reignited among the ragtag crew of would-be assassins. 

"I fuckin' had him. One damn floor away. If you'd kept those heavies off me on that platform–"

"Ah, my mistake, Vernon. I had assumed you preferred your skull attached to your head. You were too close together to take a–”

“Thought you used to be a better fuckin' shot than that. You losin’ your touch? Your eyes goin’ bad, Iorveth? Can you see this?”

A distant middle finger, blurred through the lens of a scope.

“Permission to shoot him, boss?”

“Sorry, denied,” grumbled Dijkstra’s voice through the intercom. “Unfortunately, we need the unpleasant little bastard. Quit bitching and get out of there. All of you.”

There came a chorus of affirmatives from the crew. Geralt, already in the lobby. Isengrim, packing up in the building opposite. Philippa, disappearing easily into the crowded streets.

“Triss,” called Roche. “Law enforcement?”

“Thirty minutes out,” said Triss, her soft voice warped by the distance. Her van was somewhere down on the streets, parked in a discrete location. “I scrambled their comms but–”

“No rush then.”

“Fuckin’ hell–”

"Roche, don't."

“Damn it, someone make sure he doesn’t kill–”

Roche’s intercom clicked off. 

For a few moments, having clicked off his own noisy comms, Iorveth trailed the barrel of his rifle after the figure scurrying across the roof in the unearthly blur of his night vision scope. He considered how much trouble he’d be in if he took a shot after all. Just a few warning shots whizzing near his ankles. Couldn't hurt.

He leaned away with a sigh and rolled his stiff neck and shoulders, beginning to pack away his rifle. A dozen flights of stairs separated this floor from the lower roof below, but the elevator was already pinging.

Iorveth amused himself imagining Roche jogging in place in the little box as it rose.

All that furious energy wasted just for a chance to hit him once or twice before they had to flee as the building was inevitably surrounded.

The door whooshed open just as he clicked the last latch shut on his packed equipment, and the man descended on him, all but vibrating with rage.

Iorveth deflected a punch with his forearm and jabbed with his own hit that Roche twisted easily away from. There was no real sense in hand to hand fighting like this, both of them too well-matched and too familiar. Each strike inspired a fluid counterstrike. They circled the empty room, locked in a stalemate.

There’d been a time when Iorveth would have played dirtier, unafraid to knock the man’s head against a nearby surface in a move that could split his skull in two. Similarly, Roche did not pull the gun from its holster on his thigh and let loose the way he may once have.

Things had been simpler when Roche was special ops and Iorveth part of a now defunct terrorist organization. For now, they were on the same team, and it wouldn’t do to maim or dismember one another before fulfilling their goal. 

After Radovid was dead, no holds barred.

Time ticked by. This building would be buzzing with cops before long.

Roche managed to pin Iorveth with a rough shove against the long span of windows, the city lights glowing on his furrowed brow. 

When their mouths met, the crush of their bodies together was no less furious.

Roche tugged at his braided hair, and Iorveth bit his lip hard. When hands fumbled at his belt, tugging, Iorveth caught them.

“No time for that,” he said. They’d have enough trouble escaping the building as it was. Iorveth could imagine the panicked demands and warnings buzzing from their silenced comms.

Unfortunately, the bastard couldn't resist a challenge. 

“There’s time,” Roche grunted and went hard to his knees. 

Sirens echoed in the distance. Iorveth shoved back the slouch of Roche's beanie to run his palms along his buzzed scalp.

"Hurry up," he said, even the hot pleasure of the mouth stretched around his cock not enough to dull his awareness of how close they were cutting it.

Roche pulled back a moment, breathing in sharp pants.

"You're usually more of a hairpin trigger," he grumbled.

"Maybe you're boring me."

"Fuck you."

The renewed focus and intensity brought him to the edge and over in a few quick breaths, and the warm twitch of his belly had barely waned before Roche was on his feet and had him by the collar.

Roche grunted as his back hit the wall, Iorveth punching the flash of the button to call the elevator even as he sucked a red mark onto the man's stubble-rough throat. When the door pinged and slid open, they fell inside with Iorveth's thigh crooked between Roche's legs. Roche gripped the bar along the wall and rutted up against him as the elevator hummed to life and plunged.

Iorveth watched dark eyelashes flutter as his mouth dropped open, almost pretty.

Later, sprawled out across the dark sheets of their shared high-rise apartment, he'd like to take his time and really watch the way this man's expression lost its stubborn tension momentarily at the cusp of his pleasure. 

The fluorescent lights flickered into the red glow of shutdown just as they crashed into a lobby swarmed with policemen. 

They'd have been wholly fucked had Geralt not appeared suddenly to beckon them down a side corridor. A full-tilt sprint took them through a maintenance hallway and out the other side of the building to crouch together behind a dumpster, listening for the roar of Triss' getaway van. 

"Bastard just had to get a fuckin' punch in," grunted Iorveth as he leaned, breathing hard, against the slump of Roche's shoulder.

"Sure," said Geralt as he eyed Iorveth's undone belt. "We'll go with that."

#my fic #ficletvember #iorveth x roche #rorveth #will i ever write a rorveth fic where they don't punch each other? no #pretend like this is a really fleshed out au idea and not an excuse to write sniper iorveth #imagine he's wearing a cool tactical turtleneck and looks cool as shit and is really cool. and roche has a stupid tactical beanie. #and looks like a loser

[limerental]

ficletvember 2023 - day 11

twn yennefer & radovid, background yennskier and radskier

While attending Vizimir's funeral, Yennefer finds herself approached my Radovid and is surprised when he asks after Jaskier.

cw for my questionable attempts of book/show canon blending. I've chosen to interpret yen's visit to geralt in brokilon as a dream sequence here.

The grueling slog of constant politics in the weeks after the Thanned disaster left Yennefer feeling like a shade of herself, roaming the battered halls of Aretuza like a ghostly apparition.

Most of the superficial damage had been repaired, but magic could not heal all. Her own life felt in utter shambles. She'd been barred from entering Brokilon to sit at Geralt's bedside except in moonlit half-dreams, and for all her frantic attempts at scanning, could not locate Ciri.

Though poorly-suited to diplomatic problem-solving, Yennefer grit her teeth and flitted from problem to problem.

Nilfgaard marched north. Aedirn called for aid. Rivia and Lyria burned. Temeria had closed its borders to refugees and cut a deal with the invaders. Redania's monarch had been slain. 

Yennefer could solve none of those difficulties. Part of her wished she could simply sit back and allow the whole mess to burn. 

Instead, she attended a funeral. 

By the size of the crowd that swelled to fill Tretogor's largest cathedral, King Vizimir had been much-loved by his people, or perhaps Redanians simply loved a spectacle.

From a back pew, Yennefer clenched her fists in her lap as Philippa Eilhart gave a rousing speech about her dead king's many achievements. Most were likely false, as was the tale of his untimely passing. Sigismind Dijkstra loomed beside her with arms folded, grim face revealing nothing.

Nought could be done to challenge Philippa for her involvement that night on Thanned or the suspicious death of her king. Yennefer could only watch and project her anger, hoping Philippa would feel her grief even in the throng of mourners.

Did you even shed a tear when you learned of her passing? You are as culpable as I am in that loss.

Redania's future monarch looked like no more than a boy and also seemed a breath from weeping as he offered his own curt eulogy. Radovid rubbed at his reddened nose and spoke candidly that though his brother had had his flaws, he would grieve the man for the rest of his days. They were the first honest words that had been spoken at the funeral.

If she concentrated, Yennefer could pretend that a crowd this massive had gathered for her own small losses. No ordinary merchant or nobleman had wept for Tissaia de Vreis. Geralt, when he inevitably succumbed, would be buried by the dryads in some sacred grove that only they would remember. Ciri's body may never be found.

By chance, Radovid looked through the crowd and met Yennefer's eyes. They had never met, but he seemed to recognize her and find her presence there very interesting. His distracted gaze kept leaping back to her through the rest of the ceremony.

She blended poorly with the mourners adorned in Redanian red. He found her easily afterward, though she had made little attempt to hide from him, stealing into an empty corridor where perhaps they would not be interrupted.

When he grabbed her by the arm, she stared pointedly at it until he sheepishly released her.

“Radovid,” he introduced needlessly. 

“Yes I've heard of you,” Yennefer drawled. The boy blushed pink. She could not decide how old he was, his fair curls and expressive features making him appear almost child-like. 

“You're Yennefer of Vengerberg,” Radovid said.

"The very same."

She expected some petition or praise fed to him by Philippa to follow, some acknowledgement of her new position in the ruins of the Brotherhood. This man was only a puppet compelled by the sharp of Philippa's talon. She did not expect the words that followed. 

“You are close with Jaskier. Can you tell me where is? Is he alright? There's no word since that night and I– well, I tried to send letters but as it happens, one needs an address to send them to. I fear I have thrown several from the castle windows and hoped they find him somehow, but that seems to have been rather ineffecfive.”

Ah, thought Yennefer. Redania's rising monarch was an imbecile. 

“What do you want with him?” she asked. 

Though Yennefer had warned the bard that Brokilon was closed to outsiders, that he was more likely to take an arrow to the throat than convince the dryads to allow him entry, she had seen Jaskier off with the help of a portal that would drop him nearer the forest. That had been a week ago now. 

She had not heard word of his untimely death at least. No word of Geralt either.

Radovid looked at her with glassy eyes, his mouth warped down into a mournful pout.

“I simply wanted to tell him… that circumstances have prevented me from going after him as I wished. That if I could be freed of my royal duties, I would have... well, I would follow him anywhere, but I–”

“Ah, fuck,” said Yennefer, dumbfounded. When had the little jester found time to fuck Redanian royalty? She could wring his neck. If he wasn't already dead. “You know I cannot tell you anything.”

“I thought so. He spoke highly of your devotion, Yennefer. That you could be trusted. I'd only hoped… well.”

Yennefer refused to go warm at the thought of Jaskier's praise. Radovid's words were likely empty attempts to suss out the location of anyone loyal to the witcher in the hopes that the girl would be with them.

“You, I cannot trust, and I doubt he had reason to either,” she said with more bite than intended. Radovid's pitiful flinch and blinking, wet eyes almost made her feel a pang of guilt. 

Perhaps he was just an unfortunate victim of circumstance.

“Will you tell him… if you meet him could you tell him. Well. That I love him.” Radovid's voice shook. If he was nothing but Philippa's thrall, he was a wretchedly convincing actor. “I know it was only the one night but I- oh God, you're his lover too aren't you? I…”

The witless confession of the would-be monarch should have made her shake with mirth. If she did not know Jaskier, she would say it was laughablely unrealistic that he could so thoroughly woo a prince in only one night. That it must be some ploy.

But Radovid had guessed right. In the wake of Thanned, she had slept each night in the foolish man's arms, both taking solace in the other. She knew how quickly and how deeply sentiment for the man could grow.

She tried to imagine how it had happened, prince and bard, and thought that they must have looked good together, intertwined in secret.

But it may still be a ploy. And anyway, she truly knew not much more than Radovid. Her little, hopeful glimpse of family had been rent apart, perhaps forever.

She could not weep as freely as Radovid seemed able to. Her last tears had dried that first night in Jaskier's arms, unmoored by grief but drifting together. 

Alone again, she had no time for weeping. She could only pray that Jaskier had found their witcher and could offer the same comfort he had given her.

And pray that their daughter would find her way to them again.

She had that small hope to cling to at least.

Radovid, if he were not lying through his teeth, must feel horribly alone.

She could offer him some comfort, at least.

“Write me here,” she said, summoning a scrap of paper into his hands. “I will respond if I can with what word I am able. At least to let you know he is alive."

She touched his arm a moment and then turned aside. She had business to see to with Philippa, though the thought of that duplicitous conversation to come made her feel a looming sour disdain. 

“He was right about you,” said Radovid after her. “You are far kinder than you appear.”

His voice was earnest. Far too earnest to survive long in the ugly, putrid heart of Redania. Poor boy. For his sake, Yennefer hoped he was more clever than he seemed. Philippa would eat him alive and peck at his entrails for every last morsel.

“Be careful about spreading rumors like that,” she said, smiling her perfect politician's smile back at him. “I have a reputation to uphold, you know.”

#my fic #ficletvember #radskier

[limerental]

ficletvember 2023 - day 26

twn jaskier pov of lotl ft. yennskier

After everything, Jaskier knows there are some stories that evade being written into song.

content warning for lotl spoilers so. mcd.

The ethereal fog hushed the sound of his footfalls. Distantly, he recalled admiring how the heels of his new boots had clacked on the uneven cobbles as he strode into town, but now, Jaskier heard nothing. Not even the wind.

When he bent, the creak of his knees surely echoed in the silence, but the little crowd huddled on the street did not seem to hear. 

He was getting old. He'd had a lot of time lately to be glad for that and a similar measure of guilt that so many had died so young. The recent war's list of the dead went on for pages and pages of yellowed parchment and those names were only the conscripted soldiers, not the slaughtered peasant men or farmer's wives or scores of non-humans in towns like this one. 

Or the small number dead in a battle whose outcome had had no consequence in a fortress that no longer existed, forgotten.

Jaskier had not yet written that story into song and may never. He would hate to hear his own verse warbled by some drunk in a tavern who could never know the little details that evaded preservation. Milva's wheezing laugh. Cahir's snoring at night. The clove scent of the vampire. The girl's colorful curse words. 

He hated his part in that story. That his being alive to tell the tale meant his cowardice had prevailed, and he had let them go on without him. 

Jaskier knew he would not write the story of what had happened here for a very long time. 

For a moment, he crouched on the quiet street and reached to brush the fall of dark hair out of the pale face. He tried hard not to look at the blood-stained cobbles. He almost wept then, once would have been a weepy, useless mess from the start, but there would be time for weeping later. 

He could do this now at least. This small thing. He stooped further to crook his arms under legs and shoulders, lifting past the strain of his back.

He was getting old. 

Jaskier had foolishly feared that those he loved would outlive him. That he would retire as an aging poet to the coast somewhere, and the little family would visit from time to time and reminisce together. 

And maybe that they would be there when he finally croaked, his weathered hands cupping their soft faces. Older, yes, not immortal, but long-lived enough to have a lifetime without him. Maybe to think of him fondly in quiet moments and remember those nights fumbling together and visit to lay flowers on his grave.

She felt small in his arms. Impossibly light. It seemed terribly wrong, that weightlessness. 

To him, the very thought of her was the heaviest thing in the world.

He lay his lips against her brow and held there. He whispered the things he had never told her. How those few nights they had spent lying in one another's arms, even knowing that neither was destined wholly for the other, had meant more than he could ever shape into poetry. 

If all of those details vanished into forgotten history, unsung, then so be it. Only he would remember the fond derision of her affectionate mockery, the softness of her wild hair, his thrill when her voice whispered low to speak with hushed sincerity against his skin. 

Even when this song was sung, he would let who they were together be lost to history. 

His role in the story had only ever been outside of it. 

Drawing a shuddering breath that was loud in the quiet, Jaskier hitched the body higher in his arms and carried Yennefer to the water.

#my fic #ficletvember #haha aw ouchy #yennskier

[limerental]

ficletvember 2023 - day 3

After leaving Stygga behind, Geralt takes a quiet moment to appreciate Ciri's black mare.

vague about spoilers but does take place toward the end of lady of the lake

The mare was one of the finest animals Geralt had ever put his hands on. Black and sleek. Racing bred, he guessed, by the depth of her barrel, the fine bones of her face.

He had almost asked the girl where she had come from. But could not stomach the thought of the likely answer.

A cold drizzle rattled against the roof of the stable. Their three mounts had to share space with a pair of dull-eyed oxen, but there was ample hay and clean water, this land untouched by the northern war.

He felt down each leg, sturdy yet slender, and could find no fault in them, besides the odd nicks and scrapes of wounds he would have to treat with salve.

The mare pinned her ears when he tried to lift a hoof.

"Let me," said the girl, who had not gone off to bed with Yennefer. He'd expected she wouldn't want to linger after a long day in the saddle, not with the promise of a hot meal offered by the innkeeper's wife and a straw mattress of her own.

Not with how weary she looked, as though any sleep she had had in recent memory had been the fitful, paranoid half-doze of one with no one to watch their back.

Geralt had slept like that most of his life. He would sleep like that tonight, though not for his sake.

The girl snuck close to the black mare, quiet as a shadow, and when she bent, the mare lifted a hoof at the slightest cluck of a tongue.

She would need reshod soon, Geralt noted.

Without being told, the girl picked each hoof free of dirt and loose stones and pressed her thumbs into the soles to check for the flinch of bruising. She cracked open the tin of offered salve and treated each tiny scab, feeling with her fingertips for the slightest mark.

In another lifetime, he recalled stooping to teach her in the watery, winter light of Kaer Morhen's shedrows. Her nose had been red with the cold, sniffling as she ran her hands down the shaggy, blonde fetlocks of Vesemir's nag. The dust motes had spun over her frizzed scalp. 

She had bemoaned the boring nature of the lesson and complained that the old beast would keel over any day now, whether or not she oiled up its bumps and bruises with salve, and he had hid the twist of a smile against the horse's withers and breathed in the warmth of its scent and knew that he would remember all his life how it had felt to press their chilled fingers up under the shaggy mane together, shoulder to shoulder.

The black mare curled her neck to rub her lips against the girl's back and was not swatted away despite her small nips and tugs at her shirt.

Geralt ran his hand along her high withers and the length of her spine. She would be unpleasant to ride without a saddle and may sway through the back as she aged. Though a witcher's mare rarely lived long enough to sway.

"Wouldn't want to ride this one bareback," he said. The muscles of her back twitched under his touch, as though his fingers were nipping flies to be dislodged.

"Her gaits are smooth," said the girl. "It's not bad at all."

Her voice was flat and strange. It had been so since leaving Stygga behind, travelling the dusty road through Ebbing.

Or perhaps he only found it strange. 

Each time, before she spoke, he imagined the cadence of a child and was startled again and again to hear a woman speak. 

Not quite a woman's voice, he corrected himself.

But a voice stripped of all naivety, each word calculated in how much it revealed. 

"Can she jump any?" he asked, and the girl's laugh was bitter and sudden, loud in the hush of the stable.

He had clung to the memory of her laughter, bright and uninhibited, interrupted by occasional snorting and breathless wheezes. Though she stood beside him now, their elbows brushing, he realized he may never hear that sound again. 

The wind groaned along the roof as the light dimmed with approaching dusk. It was not yet so dark that Geralt could not admire the black mare's keen eye and strong jaw as he crossed to her head. He scratched below her sleek forelock and she rubbed her face into the touch.

No markings, not even a fleck of white. There was a whorl of hair at the center of her forehead, and he thumbed at it.

"They say a whorl here means a sound mind," said Geralt. 

"They can say whatever they like," said the girl bitterly. "Kelpie's the soundest there is. I've had enough of what they say."

Enough for several lifetimes, Geralt agreed.

He looked into the brown eyes of the black mare, feeling her whiskers tickle his hand. 

It was easier to look at the black mare than to meet the girl's eye. To look at her at all.

If he looked, he would see the ruin of her scarred cheek. He would see the hollowed shadow of her eyes. He would see a stranger. 

He feared to look too closely and lose the memory of a little girl's round cheeks, her petulant frown, her wide and trusting gaze. To see cold blame in that flinty expression. To see how fully he had failed her.

"She's a damn fine animal," said Geralt and wanted to say something more. He wanted to cup the black mare's face in his hands and lay his forehead against her brow and weep silently. He wanted to whisper with a broken hush of sound againat her thin mane.

You carried her to safety when I could not. I may never carry her again.

"She's finest in the world," said the girl. "Maybe in any world."

Geralt watched the black mare's muzzle puff white fog against his fingers and wished he had the tart swell of an apple or a nub of carrot to offer. Some small show of thanks for an animal who deserved every possible reward.

If he had looked then, he would have seen the wobble of the girl's chin and the streak of a tear. If he had known that the girl would recall that quiet night in the stable standing beside him for years and years after, dredging up the sight of his gentle hands and the sound of his gruff voice and the rain on the roof, he would have looked at her for a long, long while and would have reached to hold her in his arms. 

He could not look. 

In the dark, Geralt passed a steady hand down the sharp bones of the black mare's nose.

#my fic #ficletvember #witcher fic #wahhhh #wahhhhh #kelpie loving hours #weeping about ciri and geralt hours

[limerental]

ficletvember 2023 - day 18

calanthe/meve (implied meve/reynard)

During a Cintran banquet, Meve and Calanthe reminisce on their time together as girls. this is a twn & book canon-blended calanthe because i love her show versions voice and poise but not her whole genocide thing. with that shaved off, the character's fairly similar.

The Cintran banquet hall was as loud with song and laughter as it ever was for royal visits. Though perhaps there were some monarchs who earned a more lavish welcome. Meve had some suspicions that the kings of the North would have not been welcomed with such excess and excitement.

The Queen of Rivia and Lyria visited Cintra once per year at Calanthe's invitation, just as she had visited as a girl. 

Much had changed since the first time young Meve had arrived by humble carriage accompanied only by her elderly handmaiden. Her figure had still been boyish and her hair a tousled mess, endlessly paining her poor handmaiden by tugging her neat plaits free the moment she was out of sight. 

These days, she refused to travel meekly in carriages but rode at the front of her retinue on her favourite grey stallion, wearing ceremonial armour in brilliant gold and waving to huddles of peasants stopped to watch the procession, occasionally breaking ranks to leave the march and kiss the crowns of offered babes.

She and Calanthe had changed a great deal since their girlhood days running through the castle's hallways hand in hand and up to trouble, but that spark of mischief still gleamed in Cali's eyes.

“Do you remember the time we stole those cavalry horses?” asked Calanthe beside her at the head table, nudging their shoulders together. 

“How could I forget? My handmaiden threatened to paddle me raw,” said Meve into her goblet of wine, mindful of being overheard.

“Not even for the theft!” Calanthe laughed, far less mindful. “But for–”

“Riding astride,” Meve finished.

She remembered the day fondly despite its end. She and Calanthe had dressed as stableboys to tack their horses, wearing caps over their hair and almost giving themselves away with their breathless giggling. They had ridden from the stables without being caught, their mounts frothing at the bit for a gallop.

In late summer fields sweet with the scent of fresh-cut hay, the girls had leaned over the sweating necks of the horses to race headlong beside one another, their caps blown off by the brilliant speed, laughing.

The girls would have been in far more trouble than they were when they returned by evening, had anyone known what they got up to together when dismounting to bathe in a sunlit pool. 

Though crow's feet now wrinkled at the corners of her eyes, Cali's smile was the same as it had been then, a secret thing for Meve alone. It seemed far too bold to look at her in ways that warmed through Meve's body in full view of the entire banquet hall. 

Not a soul seemed to notice or care.

No one had noticed back then either, or if they had, their girlhood dalliances had been dismissed as nothing but a trifling distraction, unimportant as long as they respected their betrothals to their kings. 

There had certainly been moments of private disrespect leading up to their wedding days. Cali amused herself greatly with a recurring jest where she mixed up which of their future husbands was king of where and who was marrying who. 

There had been frequent disrespect after their marriages as well. Her tumbles with her oldest friend continued as they always had, Reginald and Roegner none the wiser.

“I would have married you instead,” Cali had said once, her lips moving against the skin of Meve's belly. “If I had a cock, we'd sire an heir ourselves.”

Meve had burnt pink and said, “if you had a cock, you'd have too many bastards to determine the line of succession.”

Meve shifted in her seat, wishing she had waited to recall that memory when there weren't still hours left of feasting before she and Calanthe would be alone together.

A commotion in the crowd of revellers below served as a suitable distraction.

“Young Cirilla's spent some time of late on Skellige I see,” said Meve.

The young princess, ten summers and every inch the duplicate of Calanthe, had seemingly been involved in a conflict with several boys twice her size. Though her guard had stopped the girl from clambering over the top of the table to scrap with them, she still brandished a fork in a raised arm like a Skelligen raider would have a spear.

Calanthe snorted in amusement.

“Poor lads. I dread the terror she'll be to manage once she's of age and discovers how much every young boy fawns over her,” said Calanthe. “She detests them now but…”

“Simple retribution for the stress you caused your late mother,” Meve said. Together, they watched the protesting princess escorted from the hall for bed.

“Pity she wasn't a son,” Calanthe sighed. 

“Would be no guarantee to solve your troubles. I fear my own sons won't be fit for the crown.” 

Villem had just aged thirteen but was as soft and meek as a maiden, and Anseis had inherited his father's dull mind along with her temper.

“At least you're free to rule as you please in their stead,” grumbled Calanthe, followed by a few choice vulgar words under her breath about Cintran lawmakers and where they could shove their decrees.

“I always wanted a daughter,” Meve confessed. During her first pregnancy, she had been convinced by every old wive's tale she knew that the babe she carried was a girl. Perhaps that had been some premonition of Villem's nature.

“There's still time, isn't there? Remarry.”

Meve laughed. “No man would agree to a marriage unless I conceded the throne.”

“Then don't remarry. Every northern king's sired a dozen bastards apiece. Why should a queen be any different?”

“I fear I have few prospects for such a venture,” Meve said with a sigh. As if she would ever consider planning something so improper. Though she could not deny the appeal of finding a man to bed. There were some days and especially some nights when she found herself recalling even the uninspired sameness of Reginald's dull love-making with nostalgic yearning.  “There are few men these days who I would trust to bare my ankle before, let alone to…”

Meve set down her goblet. It was becoming apparent that she'd imbibed too much already.

“Hmmmm I can think of one suitable prospect,” said Calanthe, leering. “If you don't, I will.”

Meve followed Calanthe's eyes to where General Odo stood at stiff attention at the end of the table, arms clasped behind his back.

Trustworthy described Reynard well. Reginald's former adviser took very seriously his late king's deathbed request to extend his devotion to Meve. 

And Meve could not deny that he was handsome. Would be more handsome still if he were not perpetually frowning.

But no, the general's interactions with her had only ever been courteous and withdrawn. Given Meve had never heard a single bit of gossip in regards to Reynard and courtship,  she was beginning to wonder if he did not prefer the company of women at all.

“He's been looking your way all evening,” Calanthe murmured suggestively.

“Hush,” said Meve. 

General Odo did not look her way and largely looked like he'd rather be in bed than amongst the drunken crowd. She knew he would not retire until she did, distrustful of the sobriety of Calanthe's guards.

The hour was late. Soon, the minstrels would pluck their last notes and the masses would begin to stumble off.

Though ordinarily Calanthe prided herself in outlasting most of her cavorting subjects and remaining in the hall well into the night, that evening, she leaned close to Meve and whispered in her ear.

“You have no need of a man tonight,” she said, her voice barely a breath. 

Meve and Calanthe retired together arm in arm, giggling like girls once they'd reached the secluded passageway that led to the royal chambers.

The mattress was as soft as air, and Calanthe’s touch was firm and focused.

In another life, perhaps the marriage bed she had shared with her late husband would have been happier, had Meve never known from Cali the heights of pleasure a woman could reach.

Bare and sated, they caught their breath against sweat-warm skin and kissed long and sweet.

“Come with me to the islands this summer,” Calanthe said against her lips. “Eist and I have an arrangement, you know. We may share him, if you’d like.”

Meve went pink at the thought. It would be nice to allow herself a moment of rest. Perhaps Cirilla and her sons would get along. 

“Summer,” she agreed. 

“We’ll be horse thieves for old time’s sake. Gallop across the sand,” said Calanthe. Her eyes closed as she spoke, trailing fingers along Meve’s flank. “We’ll strip down and leap into the water. Like we did then. I’ll kiss you like the first time.”

Calanthe kissed her in a swell of breath, as thought to demonstrate.

Before the summer, Cintra burned.

#my fic #ficletvember #actually this hurted #meve x calanthe #witcher fic #also i didn't proofread this amen #if i fucked the spelling anywhere no i didn't i'm still being weird about writing in british english for no reason

[limerental]

ficletvember 2023 - day 23

isengrim/dijkstra pwp ft. bottom dijkstra

On a rainy winter day, Isengrim and Dijkstra indulge together in bed.

Winters in Novigrad were a dreary slog, the streets slick with chilled rain and the sky dismal grey. Most days, the sun barely eked through the cover of clouds.

Fortunately, the top floor of the townhouse shared by a former spymaster and wanted fugitive boasted a cozy hearth and truly enormous canopied bed swathed in furs and quilts and pillows. Through the winter, only the most pressing of affairs could coax Sigismund Dijkstra out of bed. Or even into clothing. 

“Makes you miss Zerrikania,” he said, sprawled on his side to watch the rain track down the windows. On clear summer days, one could see across rooftops to the blue shimmer of the sea. Presently, the afternoon sank into fog. “Perhaps we should winter there from now on.”

“If we wintered in Zerrikania,” said Isengrim Faoiltiarna as he returned to bed, “you would complain of the heat and sun. And the sand. And the little creatures that crawled into your bed.” 

Dijkstra grumbled and rolled to him, nearly displacing a silver tray of assorted meats and cheeses which Isengrim managed to steady even as the large man tugged him close and drew him in for a lingering kiss.

“You’re one of the creatures that crawled into my bed,” he mumbled against Isengrim’s throat. “Not complaining there.”

He hissed a curse when the elf pressed cold toes against his shins.

“Was that a complaint I heard?”

"A minor one. If you’d quit slipping out of bed, maybe you’d warm up.”

“Someone has to feed the fire,” said Isengrim. “Otherwise, someone else will moan about a chill.”

“Fire’s high enough.”

The elf’s reflexes once more spared the food tray, safely settled on the bedside table as Dijkstra palmed his narrow hips and rolled them. Beneath the fur-lined coverlet and the press of Dijkstra’s body as his mouth trailed down his throat, Isengrim soon began to warm.

The warmth came at the cost of breathing as the man’s full weight settled. 

It was a pity that Isengrim could not forgo breath for the feeling of being wholly surrounded by him, pinned and held still in a way that would have heightened a flurry of anxiety in any other circumstance. 

He tugged at Dijkstra’s ear.

“If you smother me to death, you’ll have to fetch your own wine,” Isengrim whispered against it, kissing the abused lobe in apology.

Dijkstra mumbled and rolled them once more, the cocoon of the covers falling away as Isengrim sat across his thighs. In the firelight, the shadow of tattoos across his slender torso seemed to stretch and contort as he breathed, and the scar that disfigured his face swallowed every feature but the gleam of his eyes and the twitch of a crooked smirk.

“What’s that look for?” asked Dijkstra, both thumbs trailing back and forth along the muscled dip of Isengrim’s stomach. Hips swallowed by large hands, his fingers nearly brushed. He knew exactly what the elf liked. To be smothered and dwarfed to smallness, to be insignificant for a little while, held and consumed and overpowered. 

An easy feat for a man so large, though any other man would find a dagger in his gut for trying.

Isengrim knew also what the human beneath him liked.

He trailed a hand up Dijkstra’s ticklish flank to cup his ample chest and squeeze. 

“I like looking at you,” said Isengrim, and the man’s gaze darkened.

Not ordinarily one for insecurity or for vanity, there was something different in the sound of praise from the elf’s lips. It was not simple flattery or admiration of his body but a deeper sentiment that evaded words. Something like the ways I feel when I look at you still surprise me. How unlikely all of this is. Sharing a life with someone like you. Of all possible lives.

In return, Dijkstra’s hands smoothed up Isengrim’s ribcage, looking his fill with just as much pleasure. 

Their bodies were a perfect contrast. Isengrim gristle and hard lines, scarred and marked with ink, and Dijkstra soft and fat, belly and chest heavy with silvering hair.

Isengrim trailed his long fingers up through that hair from sternum to throat and hummed in contemplation.

“What’re you planning, Wolf?” Dijkstra asked, voice low with desire. Their hips rocked subtly together, equally aroused.

“I was thinking I’d like to fuck you,” said Isengrim. 

“How d’you want me?” 

The human’s pale eyes were washed brighter by the firelight. Isengrim wanted him to the exclusion of all else.

“Like this,” he said as he coaxed the man’s legs to spread and settled between them. “Lift that thigh. Shift up. There. How’s this?”

“Not bad,” Dijkstra hummed. “Now you can do all the work.”

Isengrim pinched the meat of his thigh and avoided a kick by ducking away for the jar of oil on the side table. He quieted Dijkstra’s griping with the searching press of slender fingers. 

They did not often switch their roles like this. Isengrim had little preference between the receptive or penetrative sexual positions, but Dijkstra had never allowed himself to be in such a vulnerable position before Isengrim asked it of him the first time.

Most of his past bedpartners had not entertained the thought, far too interested in his physical endowment. Not even Philippa had suggested it, who was both uninterested in his sizeable manhood and renowned for her skill with a wooden cock and leather harness.

Mindful of this act’s infrequency, Isengrim kept his preparations slow and measured. Of course, the pace was not to Dijkstra’s liking.

“You think I’ll break or something?” he grunted, though a flush creeping up from his chest betrayed his body’s response to the crook of the elf’s fingers.

“As you know, you dh’oine are quite fragile,” said Isengrim. Truthfully, the human’s muscles had already gone suitably lax enough to proceed, but he liked this feeling, to see the little signs of Dijkstra’s interest, to fully possess this powerful man in ways he would never allow any other.

A similar feeling could be achieved with Isengrim’s legs stretched across the human’s lap, muscles quivering as he bore down on the girth of Dijkstra’s cock to ride him with an unerring rhythm.

Maybe later tonight.

For now, Isengrim withdrew his fingers and hitched a heavy thigh in the crook of his arm, shuffling close enough to tease with the firm nudge of his erection. 

“Might be overestimating my flexibility,” huffed Dijkstra as he drew his leg further up to accommodate the elf. “Definitely overestimating my patience.”

“The fire’s looking awfully low,” Isengrim drawled, feigning as though to slip from bed.

“Don’t you dare.” 

The curl of Dijkstra’s leg around his body drew him closer, as though he could not easily wriggle free if he truly wanted to. A heel nudged insistently at the small of the elf’s back, and relenting, Isengrim adjusted the grip of his hand behind Dijkstra’s knee and shifted his hips to sink deep into the warmth of the man’s body.

Dijkstra clenched instinctively for half a moment and then breathed out a shuddering exhale. The laxness returned. Isengrim nudged their hips flush together. He was nowhere near so well-endowed as the human and bottomed out easily. His slick fingers felt where they joined, teasing there as he held still.

“You tired already, Grim?”

“Yes, Sigi, you exhaust me.”

Isengrim tipped his cheek against Dijkstra's raised knee and held a kiss there. He shifted, drew back, and began to drive down with steady thrusts, not sparing any measure of his strength. 

Urged on by fervent curses and taunts, their bodies rocked together. Sweat slicked Isengrim's grasp, settling to brace his shoulder under the raised knee. Dijkstra grunted at the change in angle, and Isengrim rested a sharp grin against his calf.

“Good?” he asked, smug, and the human swore more colorfully.

“Better if you kept at it, you lazy fuckin–”

Isengrim quieted him with an athletic show of muscle honed by years of desperate combat, now devoted wholly to this, the blunt-edged softness of this unlikely retirement. 

The position prevented them from leaning together to kiss deeply the way they wished to. The rain lashed the windows, and the fire burnt high.

When Isengrim's release crested over him in a sudden wave, he searched with a clumsy fumble for Dijkstra's cock pressed between their bellies. He knew exactly the pressure and speed needed in the curl of his fingers to swiftly draw out his climax in a messy spill between them.

Both groaned as Dijkstra's stiff leg dropped off Isengrim's equally stiff shoulder. The elf sat back on his heels a moment, both hands petting up and down the human's soft thighs.

“C'mere,” grunted Dijkstra, gesturing, and despite the mess and sweat of their bodies, Isengrim lay down atop him. Resting their foreheads together, they breathed into a slow kiss.

After a long moment with no sound but their steadying breath and the patter of the rain, Isengrim said, “you stink, Sigi.”

A laugh rumbled up through Dijkstra's chest. 

“I'll draw a bath if you get the wine from the cellar.”

“You go,” said Isengrim, rolling to pull the cover of a quilt around him, blinking coyly from beneath it. “Fetch me when the water's warm.”

Dijkstra's grumbles and groans as he tugged on a silk robe to rise from bed were all for show.

He could never deny Isengrim a thing.

#my fic #ficletvember #yes i DID write the tail end of this post turkey dinner and am editing it on my phone in bed i am SO sleepy #i did it though phew whew. wanksgiving here you are

[limerental]

ficletvember 2023 - day 14

dijkstra/philippa

After years of kneeling at Philippa's feet, Dijkstra finally dares to ask for more. content warning for dear god, this is horny and a smidge messed up, as is typical of these two. explicit d/s vibes, oral sex, several yucky fantasies, also footjobs for some reason. philippa is explicitly a lesbian here, don't worry.

There had once been a time, as the political chatter dwindled and the wine flowed, when more nights than not, Dijsktra had found himself waiting with controlled anticipation for the inevitable quirk of Philippa Eilhart’s brow. 

It was an unspoken command to kneel at her feet.

She’d trained him well through his Academy days and after, mentoring more than just his intelligence career.

He was a cocksure young spy, quick on his feet despite his lumbering height and clever enough to pretend to be as oafish as he looked. Never quite handsome but unerringly confident even so.

In Philippa’s study each night, that same young man folded his hands into his lap and bowed his head, the picture of meek obedience. He waited as patiently as he could for her small, soft hand to trail through the thinning hair along his crown. 

If he was lucky, she would let him touch her. 

Some nights, it was nothing but kneeling.

Philippa would continue their chatter about politics or history or aimless gossip, all while Dijkstra’s legs grew numb beneath him, her hand toying sometimes with the sparse hair at his temples.

He waited with less and less patience, his whole body tight with tension, for her to ask more of him, but he was bound to her whims. Her faint, teasing touches and the heat of her body a whisper away was an endless torture.

When she inevitably dismissed him, he’d stumble up on legs as wobbly as a newborn calf. He bore the brunt of her amusement in toying with him if only for the promise that some nights went very differently and the hope that someday she would allow even more.

Other nights, she bid him to employ his big hands to dig into the meat of her heels and up the curve of her calves. He’d watch his thumbs slide up the ridge of her shin, parting the soft, dark hair, and sometimes, as he stroked down again to work his fingers into the bones of her ankle, she would press a bare sole between his legs where he desperately needed to be touched.

If he was very lucky, she would hold her weight there and urge him on.

“Do what you must, Sigismund,” she would say in a voice lofty and dark with the slur of wine. “One day, you’ll have kings rutting against your heel like mutts in heat. Shameful. How little control men truly have. Put them under just a bit of pressure, and they fall into your lap.”

The humiliation burned, but he bore the heat of shame and friction to shiver apart beneath her feet.

He should have guessed her proclivities then. She had never been shy about her disdain for men. Her private preference had always been for women, the men she seduced only ever used as a means to an end. 

Foolishly, though she gave him no reason to think so, Dijkstra had thought himself an exception.

Some glorious nights, she let him taste her.

She rarely wore anything beneath her gowns, a twitch of skirts as she hooked a leg over her armchair leaving her exposed and glistening.

While her legs were never shaved hairless as some northern ladies favoured, the hair left between her legs varied based on her whims. Sometimes pruned into a tidy pattern or decorated with jewels. Dijkstra didn’t much care either way how she styled her damn cunt. He cared about very little at all when she finally beckoned him forward and allowed him to put his mouth to her.

He wasn’t some poet. The taste of her wasn’t dripping nectar, sweet as honey. Her cunt tasted the same as any other, of salt and sweat with a coppery-tang as her wetness met the swirl of his tongue. It wasn’t the taste or the sight or the smell that made Dijkstra’s blood rush in his ears like nothing else. It was Philippa's murmurs of praise and direction, the touch of her hand on his head, the faint tremble that began in her thighs, and then, the little noises rising in pitch as her pleasure heightened.

Even sitting obedient on his knees, even knowing that his aching urge to sheath himself within her would never be sated, that he would leave this room with his cock untouched, ever wholly satisfied, Dijkstra had never felt more powerful than in those moments.

He had no way of knowing how much of that power was as much an illusion as any part of Philippa Eilhart was.

Dijkstra had learned quickly that Philippa grew bored of perfect obedience. She grew bored with all of her toys after a time. He had thought, foolishly, that he would always be clever enough and useful enough to hold her interest.

She was planning something. In the wake of the Brotherhood’s triumph and great loss at Sodden, she had begun to quietly scheme. It was the things she didn’t say that tipped him off, going quiet as she sipped at her wine, eyes glinting. He knew she’d share the details soon enough, as many details as he needed to know for his inevitable part in it.

It had been years since their nightly talks had regularly ended with him on his knees, a distance having crept in, but his body still knew the heightened sensory awareness of anticipation. The hair at the back of his neck stood on end as she watched him, knowing she could read his clear thoughts if she wished. Hoping this time she would look deep and laugh a little over his shameless want, his blatant desire. Hoping that she would allow him close once more.

As the talk dwindled, he waited to be dismissed or to be beckoned, hardly tasting his own wine.

Philippa's dark eyebrow quirked upward. He once would have rushed immediately to his knees at that simple signal. He was older now and wiser. He'd grown tired of leaping to heel when she called. 

He'd still leap, of course. Just hoped she didn't expect him not to gripe about how high.

“My knees aren't what they used to be,” Dijkstra grunted, and Philippa snorted a laugh.

“Would you like a cushion? A word of sympathy?”

“I'd like to take you to bed,” he said in a voice low with desire. 

He’d never been so bold. He knew had she allowed him to have her like that when he was young, he would have embarrassed himself in his eager yearning to be inside her, to be that close to her. Now, though he’d only gotten fatter and uglier with age, he knew he had the experience and prowess to make it worthwhile for her. If she let him.

Philippa hummed, her finger teasing the edge of her goblet.

“Kneel here a moment,” she said, gesturing to her feet, “and I’ll think on that, Sigismund.”

She clapped her hands, and a plush cushion appeared. It quivered with the insubstantial half-transparency of illusion, but when he kneeled, his creaking knees sank into plush softness.

Philippa lay her hand on the crown of his bald head. Some wisps of hair still tried to grow along his scalp, enough that he had watched them go silver, but he shaved them close to his skull just as he shaved his patchy beard. He’d once wondered if he were a more classic beauty, rather than an acquired taste, if she would have allowed more between them. 

He recalled the height of her laughter when once she had read in his thoughts <i>if I’d only been born the fairer sex</i>.

“There'd be nothing fair about you either way, Sigismund,” she had laughed, easing the slight with a caress down his throat. 

He had pleased her with that desperate thought. Knowing that if it were possible, he would remake himself into someone that would be allowed closer to her, enough her equal that he could dominate her in turn.

In his fantasies now, he loomed above her, he fit his big hands around her throat, he watched in delight as she begged at his feet and slipped her small fingers around the girth of his cock. Dangerous, talons sharp and gaze gleaming, even as he sank with a smear of red lipstick past her parted lips and down her throat. 

Never forgetting that she may bite.

Philippa hummed and scratched in a gentle drag along his scalp with her lacquered nails.

She was peering into his thoughts, he knew. She could see his every desire. The ache to claim her and be claimed by her. Leashed to one another. Equally bound. He didn't wish for her to be subservient. No more than he thought she wished that of him.

He offered up another fantasy. Philippa, bearing the jut of a conjured cock between her legs, one that shimmered with magical sensation. Dijkstra, bowed forward on his hands and knees, open and waiting for her. 

“You have quite the imagination,” said Philippa, her fingernails ghosting lightly across his skin. 

“What d’you think?” Dijkstra asked, voice rougher than expected. 

He was painfully aroused, heartbeat pounding in the taut weight of his erection that strained the front of his trousers. If he’d been younger, it would have taken only a gentle brush of Philippa’s heel or even a word to set him off.

Philippa stood with a predatory slowness that brought her hips to the height of his head. If she’d had a cock, he would not have had to lean much closer to touch his mouth to the very tip. So close, he imagined that he could feel the heat of her arousal, could almost smell the warmth of her sex.

“I think,” she said as he looked up at her, his every desperate desire written clearly in his thoughts and his expression, “I think it’s best that we don’t do this again, Sigismund.”

In a breath, before he could fully digest her words, she was away from him. A breath later, there came the near-silent flutter of wings as she soared from the open window.

A cold shudder went down Dijkstra's spine. The exhale he released was ragged and sudden. The coiled tension in his body snapped, wholly unsated, and he snatched at his laces to free himself, stripping his cock with rough strokes that were barely pleasurable but brought him to his peak in a quick punch through his gut.

He remembered only as pulsing streaks of ejaculate fell across the cushion she had given him to kneel on that it was only an illusion. He watched the dark stain dissipate along with the cushion itself as Philippa’s proximity stretched far enough away that the magic broke.

The cold of the bared floorboards ached up through Dijkstra’s old knees.

#my fic #ficletvember #philippa eilhart x sigismund dijkstra #this is SO yucky i swear to god i can't write smut like this unless it's dijkstra. truly i become possessed #i love so much that big fat ugly guy idk

[limerental]

ficletvember 2023 - day 29

twn triss/istredd, background merihart

After her confession that she never snuck about Aretuza at night as a girl, Istredd urges Triss to do so with him.

Triss shivers, regretting her bare legs as she tugs her cloak tighter around herself, feeling silly and naked and like she should turn herself right around and go back to bed. The summer air does not sink deep enough to warm the caverns below Thanned, but the rock itself seems to hum with its own heat. 

She shivers, even so.

Aretuza’s curfew does not technically extend to instructors, but part of her still feels like a girl. Will always feel like a girl here, watched and measured, desperate to please. 

She should turn back. Who’s to say the recent disappearances will stay limited to novices? That the sinister happenings on the island will not sink its teeth into her as well?

“You’re out of bed, novice,” says a stern voice from the shadows, touching her arm, and she startles so hard that little shocks of static leap from her and sting the looming figure’s hand. She regrets it at once, recognizing his voice. 

“Oh! Istredd, I didn’t– I’m sorr–”

Istredd laughs, shaking out his stung hand. 

“I hope you wouldn’t have cast that as a girl,” he says. “You’d have been expelled. Or just mocked for how weak that little spell was. I’m alright. Don’t fuss.”

“I wouldn’t have cast anything like that as a girl,” says Triss, “because I would be in bed. Where we both belong.” She realizes the innuendo of her words a moment too late, glad for the dim light to hide her pink cheeks. 

“Yes, that’s the whole point of this, isn’t it?” Istredd asks. His voice is barely a whisper. “You’re out past curfew, Merigold.”

It’s snuck up on her out of nowhere. This flirtation with him. She’s known him for years and never had the thought pass her mind, but his eyes soften when he looks at her and he is handsome and clever and has aged out of his boyhood ego and she thinks maybe– 

Well she’s always fallen for people horrifically out of her reach who barely look her way. Maybe it was her girlhood yearning for Yennefer, dulled now to a painful sort of nostalgia, that blinded her to his appeal. 

Istredd looks good in the faint magical glow that seems to rise from the walls themselves, just bright enough that the corridors are not the full darkness of a true cave system. He smiles at her and dares to step close again, fingers ghosting along her arm. 

“Well, we’ve snuck out,” she says, arms folded as she resists further shivering under his heavy gaze. “I can say I’ve done that now. What next?”

“Follow me,” he says and is off down the corridor, his touch never quite leaving her. She imagines herself as a novice, following a boy into the dark and knows she would have been a nervous, useless wreck. She still feels a touch of that, but the nerves take on a different shape. 

Something terrible will happen soon, she feels. Something brewing here that will lead to suffering far beyond the horrors she saw at Sodden Hill. Something like the distorted, ominous visions she saw in poor Ciri’s head.

She shivers. She can never seem to get warm these days, feeling the cold up through her scarred breast. As though the fire that marred her has left her forever chilled in its wake.

Istredd puts an arm around her shoulders as they walk. That helps barely at all.

The corridor he leads her down opens to a pool rippling with a warm glow. He must have snuck down here before them, because a tray of food and wine is laid out beside the pool, candles hovering among the rocks. It’s beautiful. 

She’s bathed in pools like this beneath the island with her fellow sorceresses but not for years and never with a man. Especially not since the fire sank deep and changed her. 

In Kaer Morhen, she had had some brief hope that being allowed to ease some of Geralt’s pain, to kiss his scars, would soothe her own. That she could give the world some small comfort. Heal something broken and then maybe, her own brokenness would feel lessened.

“Oh, Istredd, I– It’s lovely,” Triss says. She wants to cry. Istredd is sweet and charming and kind, and it’s all too much. He rubs at her shoulders and whispers in her ear. 

“We don’t have to go in,” he soothes, seeming to notice her doubt and well of emotion. “Come and sit.”

She sits beside him on the ledge of the pool, and together, they slip their bare legs into the water and sip at the wine and eat from the tray. The water froths up with sweet-smelling bubbles, and Triss smiles at Istredd, thinking how nice it would be if she could love a man like this. 

It would be nice if everything was simple and she had simple worries. She could slip into the water with Istredd and be impossibly happy for a moment.

She lays her head against his shoulder and sighs. 

“I’m sorry,” Triss says and doesn’t say what for. 

“I understand,” says Istredd, though she hardly understands herself. 

Tomorrow, the conclave. 

Triss does not know how to explain herself to him, fearful that some warble of her voice would give everything away.

She wonders as she sits there, feeling chilled deep despite the warmth of the pool, if she would have let Istredd take her by the hand and lead her deep into the water had she not laid close to Philippa only that morning, hushed secrets and plots whispered against her skin.

Probably not, she thinks, seeing how sweetly he smiles at her.

Triss has only ever felt the sort of love that hurts.

#my fic #trissssssssss you messy babygirl #ficletvember #triss x istredd #sort of #twn

[limerental]

ficletvember 2023 - day 10

isengrim/dijkstra fuck or die

In the wilds of Zerrikania, Wolf Isengrim and Sigi Reuven stumble on a refreshing oasis that isn't all that it seems. cw for gross tender explicit sex that is dubcon but ultimately very consensual. and it's dijkstra so of course there's size kink obviously.

It was sheer foolishness that had driven them not to the question the surreal glisten of the oasis, marveling at the blue water that beckoned among the rocks.

More foolish still, it was not thirst that drove the wanderers into the pool. Once they had left the hostile Elskerdeg Pass behind, the Zerrikanian road they had trudged down the past month boasted stone wells at regular intervals for watering merchant caravans and livestock. Refilling their waterskins was rarely an issue.

As summer crested with rising heat, the road grew barren and dusty, and there had been no opportunity to bathe since leaving the North behind for good. 

For the elf, infrequent bathing had been the way of things for years now, and he at least should have had the sense to be wary. There were pools like this in the wilder parts of the Northern forests. He had lived most of his life in the Blue Mountains, said to be the oldest mountain range in the world, and the hills there were full of trickery, requiring careful navigation in forests and valleys that seemed to turn travellers around in a maze and beckon them deep into the bellies of caverns.

But Isengrim Faoiltiarna had been nothing but wary for ages and ages, and something about the strange human that stepped to the edge of the blue pool beside him had slowly stripped him of all his careful defenses over their months of travel and left him with a rather large blind spot.

He had never seen the man calling himself Sigi Reuven naked and very much wanted to.

The man was broad in every sense, down to the cheeky grin he wore as he caught Isengrim watching him undress. It was not some graceful, coy tease worthy of a seedy Novigradian bathhouse, and the very thought of the immense man engaging in such flirtations was deeply humorous. 

But it sent an unexplainable thrill through Isengrim's body to watch thick fingers loosen the buttons straining across his torso and drop to press aside the meat of his stomach to unbuckle his belt and shove down his trousers. Beneath, he wore frumpy, sweat-stained underclothes. Far from sensual. But the promise of the expanse of skin soon to be revealed sent Isengrim's pulse into his throat.

Something about this man stirred up long-dead desires in him. The ache to be close, to touch, to be touched in return. He could not in his memory recall desiring a dh'oine at all, let alone with such sharp intensity.

As they would soon come to find out, something about this blue oasis had plenty to do with stirring desire as well.

"Go on, Grim," said Reuven, voice dropped low, thumbs in the waistband of his smallclothes. "You're a tad overdressed."

Isengrim should have balked at the foolish-sounding shortening of his name, but instead, he shrugged fully nude without pause, eyes not leaving Reuven's until the man's gaze trailed down his revealed body and stopped on the clear display of his arousal standing rigid between his legs.

Though Isengrim's body was ribby and scarred and ugly, Reuven hummed in appreciation, and the noise seemed to go right to the base of his spine. The feeling only deepened when the man shucked out of his last layers of clothing and revealed how proportional he was. Large in the breadth of his shoulders, his towering height, his gut that sat across heavy thighs, and of course, the reddened cock Reuven brazenly took in hand. The size of those hands and the fat his manhood nestled in should have made it appear smaller, but that was not so.

With his curiosity over the man's body slated, fervent new desires rose in Isengrim's mind.

When they slipped into the water, pleasantly cool and hemmed with rocks to rest against, those desires rose tenfold. 

Waist-deep, Isengrim waded close enough to touch, and if he were in his right mind, he may have hesitated, may have asked whether Reuven felt the same perplexing fondness that he did. Not just arousal but respect and trust and good humor. 

The human was the tallest he had ever stood before, tall enough that even Isengrim had to tip his neck back to look him in the eye. 

As the water rippled against their bare waists, arousal won out over any other sentiment, and they fell into one another's arms.

Isengrim's heart thundered as Reuven's palms dwarfed his ribcage, and the desperate, first kiss they shared drove them both to breathlessness. 

The heat of the man's body surrounded him, and the water itself seemed to boil.

Neither spared any thought for caution or patience. They had waited long enough, had felt the building warmth of desire since that first unexpected night around a campfire as strangers in the wilderness. 

They were far from strangers now, Isengrim's thighs strained to straddle Reuven's waist as he lay back against the rocks, wasting little time in hastening their amorous touches toward a common goal.

It should not have been so easy for the human's thick fingers to press inside his willing entrance, muscles lax and open. Had Isengrim paused to think, he may have questioned the slickness and the ease of the movement, but he had lost all thoughts but those most primal. 

To have this man wholly and to be had by him, to know every inch of him in fullness, was his only remaining impulse. 

Perhaps if they had had less long-withheld emotion for one another, the pool may have snared some other hapless travellers. Isengrim would ponder that much later while tucked in the quiet of his lover's arms at night. If things had happened differently, would their unlikely connection have been just as inevitable?

In the present, any remaining thought Isengrim had was driven from him in the first shallow thrusts of the formidable cock inside him. With less slowness than was sensible, Isengrim pressed down to meet him, spread thighs quivering with strain as Reuven's thumbs found the divots of his hipbones..

"Sigi," he gasped, and with surprising tenderness, the man drew him close to press his forehead to Isengrim's throat, as though he too were overwhelmed. Sigi held his mouth in a kiss against the line of the elf's collarbone as he deepened his upward thrusts.

If it weren't for Boreas Mun's quick-thinking intervention, that amorous embrace may have spelled the end of the pair locked together in the pool. Their travelling companion didn't know a thing about what manner beast or deity may control such a place, but he did have the common sense to know the swirl of mists and strange glow that swirled around his intertwined comrades could not be anything but hostile. 

"Wouldn't have interrupted you fellows otherwise, of course!" he repeated with annoying regularity for the rest of their day of travel and several days afterward, seemingly ignorant of the disgruntled ire directed his way by his companions.

Though both were grateful to have avoided a grisly fate wasting away in some cursed pool, as soon as night fell, they resumed their interrupted activities. 

Being overheard by the snoozing Boreas on the other side of the dwindling campfire scarcely crossed their mind.

The feeling was not so different, they discovered. 

Even without the magical impulse that had inspired them to act so rashly, Isengrim met Sigi with the same unexpected depth of desire in each kiss and touch.

The stars shone above the human's head as he leaned to cover the elf with his body, driving away the chill of the Zerrikanian night. The weight of him was settling rather than smothering. Half a year before had any told him he would enjoy such a thing so fully, lying beneath a human, Isengrim would have either laughed or drawn his sword.

In Sigi's arms, he could almost weep.

Sparse tears did escape the corners of his eyes at the cusp of it.

Unaided by the magic of the oasis, Isengrim felt the achey stretch as he willed his muscles to give. With shuddering breath, clutching at Sigi's broad shoulders, he rallied and the ache deepened into pleasure.

The strange tenderness of their joined bodies and the depth of their desire had not been a trick of the pool. 

And as Isengrim and Dijkstra would learn in the long years after, their connection and fondness were also not a trick of the lonely wilderness and the warm nights under the stars. 

#my fic #ficletvember #isengrim x dijkstra #sigismund dijkstra #isengrim faoiltiarna #witcher fic

[limerental]

ficletvember 2023 - day 28

foltest/roche

King Foltest finds himself deeply-pleased with the boy he discovered in a brothel in the slums. content warning for a measure of dubcon I suppose, an explicit blowjob, referenced sex work, and canonical incest sisterfuckery (it's foltest man idk)

The king returned from his morning paces to find that his orders from the night before had been followed perfectly and the boy from the brothel waited for him in his chambers, scrubbed pink from a fresh bath.

He was glad to see that the boy had agreed to the invitation, in part because Foltest had forgone the use of his usual squire in removing his armor. He was still breathing hard, fight-drunk and pleasantly sweaty, and his good mood was only improved by the prospect of someone undoing those hard to reach clasps who was also a treat to look at and did not reek of garlic.

“Come here, boy,” Foltest said and startled the poor thing from his perusal of the front room’s many bookshelves. The king wondered if he could read. How fortunate, if so. Foltest, you lucky dog, he thought, his mood bolstered further, what jewel have you dredged out of the slums this time? He had visited the brothel hoping to find this season’s bedwarmer but may have found far more than that. “Come help me with my armor.”

The boy crossed the room on bare feet to stand before him. He was young, his facial hair no more than a faint tickle along his jaw, and his body was lean and pleasing to the eye. He hadn’t been dirty the night before by any means, but now his ears were scrubbed pink, his muddy-brown hair still curling damp at the nape of his neck. His mouth was sweet and full, and his eyes dark and doe-soft.

“Your Majesty,” he said with a dip of his head. He seemed uncertain where to start, so the king lifted an arm and gestured. The boy’s fingers were clumsy, but he would learn.

“How old are you?” Foltest asked. “Can you read?”

“I’m twenty summers,” said the boy, his voice measured as he lifted pieces of armor and set them aside. “I can read some. My mother taught me.”

“Are they teaching letters to whores now?” Foltest laughed, and the boy’s fingers stalled, a muscle in his jaw jumping as he tensed. The king laughed over that show of displeasure as well. The meek thing had some fight in him. Ah, that reminded him. “The madam said you took out a man’s eye with a feather quill?”

“He was rude,” the boy said simply. “Tried to press for more than what was on offer.”

He’d regained his flat tone, carefully-controlled. The king would have to teach him that he preferred that little spark of defiance he'd seen in him. Some would say he was predictable. Searching always for any bedpartner who could compare to Adda’s sharp tongue and quick temper.

None truly could. 

“But a quill?” the king asked.

“It was all I had,” he said.

Most men did not have an easy knack for violence. Had to be taught how to plunge a weapon deep enough to maim without hesitation. The boy didn’t appear to have much muscle, likely no formal training, and yet he had struck true when under threat.

It interested him deeply to see what further potential lurked beneath the surface.

Foltest rubbed at the tendons of his aching sword arm as his greaves were unclasped and removed, stripped down at last to his gambeson. The boy paused, and the king nodded for him to continue, watching the pale hands with their bony wrists work to undo the clasps from throat to belly and push the padded clothing free of his shoulders. 

The king’s body was still sweat-warm beneath, thin tunic clinging damp to his muscled torso. His excitement from the adrenaline of the morning’s training had not waned, had only deepened in the presence of his latest interest.

“The codpiece as well,” he said, voice low. “On your knees to do it.”

The boy barely hesitated before obeying. The brush of his fingers tickled Foltest’s thighs, and then all that separated the sigh of breath from his aroused manhood was the thin linen of his underclothes. 

The king did not have to ask. 

That mouth pressed just as sweetly as it had the night before against the hot weight of his cock, nosing at the fabric. With a hand pressing into the boy’s soft hair, he urged him on, waistband slipping low and lips parting over the head and down.

The king sheathed himself deep, pleased by the little tells of proper brothel training. The guarded teeth and lax throat. He had little care that his toys came to him used, if this was the result.

“What’s your name, boy?” asked Foltest as he drew himself free, and he delighted in watching the dark eyelashes flutter open. Long, like a girl’s, like his sister’s had been. In the right light and with a bit of drink in him, the boy would look almost– 

“Vernon,” he said.

“Hmmm,” the king hummed and sank deep again, feeling the stretch of the boy’s soft cheeks with a stroke of both thumbs. “I think we’re going to get along very well, Vernon.”

Foltest still had much to teach him, but he had a feeling the boy would learn.

#my fic #ficletvember #foltest x roche #uh oh!!! it's a little yucky #i'm always like. how much do i really have to warn for here. anyone who wants to read this already knows. they already get it #this draws a little from some of my headcanons from other roche fics i've written but i feel like i write roche different every time

[limerental]

ficletvember 2023 - day 6

twn cahir/emhyr

Pledging Cahir's loyalty anew does not end with a kiss to the Emperor's knuckles. content warning for past underage sex and grooming (12y/o cahir) and present dubcon explicit blowjob and canon-typical yuckiness ft. reference to underage incest

When beckoned to, Cahir goes to his knees. 

The marble of the conquered Cintran throne room is a dull chill through his threadbare trousers. He knows he is staining the cool white with dried earth from his humble rags, and he bows his head against the shame of it, allows the tumble of his filthy hair to obscure his sight.

When the White Flame sinks his hand back through the fallen curls, Cahir almost forgets himself and protests.

Not as a plea to stop, to refrain from a painful tug, but as a worry that the oily stain of him will besmirch the Emperor’s brightness. The kiss he pressed against unblemished knuckles had felt enough like an inkblot, like a smear of blood on pale linen.

Which is a horrifically foolish worry. This man has more blood on his hands than any on the Continent. 

But to Cahir, the White Flame is not a man, he is–

The hand in his hair does not tighten harshly but curls against his skull and bids his head to tip back instead. He feels limp as a babe too new to hold up its own neck. 

Above him, the Emperor glows like a figure stepped down from a frescoed ceiling. He is gold and black and alight with fire, and Cahir knows he would crawl on his belly across sun-scorched earth merely to reach out and touch the hem of his cape.

Some moments, he has suspicions that the White Flame can peer impassively into his thoughts.

Not as a sorcerer does but as a god. 

When his hair is released, Cahir fights the sudden slack give of his muscles, and by the time he’s recovered, the Emperor has crossed the room to occupy his stolen throne. He beckons with a curl of his fingers but frowns when Cahir makes to rise. His eyes are coal-black, lit like a smoldering cinder.

Cahir crawls.

When he finds an armored boot with hands shambling before him, he bends low to kiss it. His breath fogs the burnished surface, and he thinks how the weight of a kick from these boots could shatter a jaw.

The boot moves aside, and he thinks again that his mind has been cracked open for this being to peruse each thought as though leafing with disinterest through a book.

But the boot does not strike, only moving aside to widen the span between his spread legs. A clear invitation for Cahir to fit himself between them.

To kneel here feeling the heat of the Emporer’s thighs against his shoulders returns him to boyhood. To a body slender and small enough to fit here without brushing either thigh. Dwarfed to further smallness by the looming presence of his master’s eyes on him. 

It had filled him with elated terror. 

The thought of his Emperor’s attention wholly fixed on him, a grubby orphan boy, for even a moment. 

Twelve winters, he’d been. Voice not yet dropped and trembling even higher with fear. The voice that soothed him and offered instruction had been deep and cool as running water.

The throne room is silent.

Cahir can hear the spoken demands even so, echoing back across the years. His fingers do not tremble as they had then. It is muscle memory. Finding the ties to loosen the decorative codpiece. The linen beneath soft and skin-warmed and the skin beneath the linen hot as a brand fresh from a fire. 

Fingers pet through Cahir’s limp hair, and he bows forward in quiet deference, opening his mouth around the familiar weight of his master’s erection. It confounds him as it always does that the taste is simple sweat and salt and not honey-warm ambrosia. 

He recalls that first taste as a boy, how the fullness of his mouth had felt as though it brimmed thorugh his whole body. White light piercing his limbs and his belly and his mind. 

It is harder now to sink into that bright and simple devotion. He is old now and tired. He can no longer fit so easily into the White Flame’s lap, held there and cherished. He is stained with disloyalty. 

And if he listens closely as his lips work over the crown held just so in his mouth, suckling, he can hear the masculine groans and sighs of a man, only a man, and for a moment, Emhyr var Emreis is not gilded in light and holy. 

He is the stain, not Cahir. He is the blackness that marred a young boy's entire being and burned out any thought but the ones that yearn toward him.

He is no mind reader, no god. He can predict each of Cahir's movements so perfectly only because the clutch of bloodied claws had hollowed a young orphan to a vessel easily filled by him. 

Now filled too full of him, overflowing, or grown worn with age like a thinning wineskin, soon to burst.

Soon to be replaced, he knows, feeling the truth spill down his throat like a fatal poison, with the daughter they seek so fervently. 

#twn #this one's yucky!!! #cahir x emhyr #my fic #ficletvember