#ficletober 2022

[limerental]

ficletober 2022 day 25 - it's steddie again ok

content warning for it gets a bit explicit and kinda yucky, otherwise it's just a redneck eddie character study with no context

Eddie's mama is good home Appalachian white trash through and through. Had him too young to know better. Still living with his Nana down in Virginia and sees her at Christmas sometimes, letters and postcards, phone calls on his birthday.

He thinks of her when Dolly comes on, how she'd swing him on her hip in Nana's kitchen with the radio crackling, dancing with a rhythm that rattled all the plates in the cupboards. How Coat of Many Colors made her bawl while she pet his hair.

This time it's 9 to 5, which Eddie never sang with his Mama and has no good reason to relate to given he's never held a lawful, regular position of employment anywhere but he's sure to give his best soulful, full-body performance to it anyhow.

The filaments of spiderwebs waver in the setting sun like cast fishing line, the air in the trailer park alive with little flitting insects you can't see unless the light hits just right. 

It's August and a neighbor with a garden gave him a big bag of pickling cukes he's slicing into thin rounds while the brine comes to a boil, and Eddie's just started loading up the jars when Steve's car rumbles up and he slaps in through through the screen door, pink-cheeked from the sun in a tucked-in polo so bright-white Eddie feels like he'll get little smudged grease stains on him just walking into a place like this. His guilty little thought is that he likes that idea, getting gross oozing smears all over Steve Harrington in ways that last and last.

"Country?" asks Steve like it's a surprise, and Eddie cracks a grin, tapping a mad barefoot rhythm in the cracked linoleum.

"Sure, baby, I'm redneck as anybody," he drawls. "Plus Dolly's like. Genre-defying."

Ten years old when his daddy died in prison and by then he made an easy target in his podunk school. Weirdo. Whore of a mama, daddy who got caught dealing in a stolen car. Only thing worse than having a deadbeat, loser daddy was the pathetic, squint-eyed pity the locals gave him when the guy died. Shaking their heads and talking about what a shame it all was. No wonder that kid turned out like that.

Simpler to ship him off to live with his uncle up in Indiana, where maybe things would be easier for him. Thirteen when he met Uncle Wayne at the bus station, the guy taking one look at him with his daddy's too big acoustic guitar slung over his shoulders, and ruffling his hair, saying he looked damn like his mama, curls and big eyes and all.

Except turns out, something had already sunk in and festered in him, or else he was a born weirdo. Something his mama smoked when he was in the womb, something in his daddy's genes.

Whipsmart back in Coal Country, he's years behind the other students in Hawkins. He practices in the mirror to unlearn his mama's drawl. Things don't add up, compound into failing grades, summer school, teachers who think he's stubborn or an idiot or a class clown. The other kids laugh with him at first, teasing, joking together, and he realizes too late when that swaps into laughing at him. Freak. Weirdo. Easy target. 

Steve steals one of the slices from the cutting board and crunches on it noisily, wrinkles up his nose like it's offended him.

"Eugh, that's a cucumber."

"Steve," says Eddie, wide-eyed and clasping his hands in a devout mockery of prayer against his face. "Steve, please tell me you know where pickles come from. Humor me. Pretend."

"Pickle… trees?" Steve makes a face. "Sensing that's not it, yeah, got it. How should i know? I'm not some kind of botanicalist, I don't–"

"Lord have mercy."

The plates rattle in the cabinets. The trailer's kitchen is glowing orange like fire while the sun tracks to the black edge of the horizon, and Steve can't dance for shit, always gets a little deer in the headlights when Eddie tries to hip chuck him into it. Slow, Steve puts his hands up high on Eddie's waist and tries to move with him, clumsy as shit but earnest, and Jesus Christ, Eddie wants to keep this guy snug in his pocket and feed him kitchen scraps. Get him a collar. Tug.

Eddie croons and tries to bid Steve to sing along, but he shakes his head, purses his lips. With the brine done boiling and the jars full of sliced cukes and fresh dill and coriander seed, Steve tuts over his pouring technique.

"Watch it. Quit wiggling while you do that. That's boiling fucking water."

"Chill out, my dude," he says, slurring extra syllables into every word, but he fills the rest of the jars with only some sloshing and pauses to wail out the last chorus. Kenny Rogers comes on, and Eddie jumps into an about face, gets both hands into Steve's back pockets and sways for the both of them. A jostle of his elbow has Steve lunging for one of the filled jars to grab it steady, brine spilling down his wrist and Eddie's lower back thumping against the sink, hemmed in. 

Eddie licks the brine from the tendons of Steve's wrist, and the guy huffs.

"What now?"

"Figured you'd suck me off."

"No, like–" Steve's bright red in the square of burning light through the window. "With the pickles."

Eddie shrugs. "Let em cool. Pop em in the fridge. Pickles for the next month. Yeehaw."

He pulls on the neck of Steve's white polo, sees he splattered some spots of brine while carelessly pouring. It's just salt water, won't stain, but he drags his thumb along the wet patch above Steve's left pec and leans to taste, just to check.

"Jesus," says Steve, grabbing him by the hair while the flat of his tongue laps the brine, leaving a wet spot of drool behind on the fabric. "Anyone ever told you you're a freak?"

He says it all bubbling up with twitchy affection, fighting a smile. How absurd of the universe to land Eddie with a dude who'd smile all moon-eyed and fond over an impulsive chest lick. Calling him freak like it was something holy and awed.

Eddie's eyebrows disappear up into his fringe, all mock affront and shock, and then he's stretching out Steve's collar to drag him into an open-mouthed kiss. They like to kiss messy and fast, like the world's going to end between now and the moment they part. Maybe it will, someday. 

"Call me a freak some more," says Eddie against Steve's mouth, their teeth a second from clacking, but Steve just licks back in and puts his thumbs in Eddie's belt and tugs and the light is fading enough in the kitchen that both of them are just a smear of black in the grey and they forget the open jars and take a few of them out with a spill even Steve's quick reflexes can't save and the brine slicks in fat drop off the counter and wets Eddie's shirt and hair where he's slumped down to the ground against the dingy cabinets with Steve between his spread thighs.

He cackles high like a coyote, salt and sprigs of dill in his hair, and it's Steve's turn to lick him clean like a mother cat.

He pulls some dill free, sniffs it, and says, "oh. Pickles."

And it's filthy on the kitchen floor, rarely-mopped and dusty, and it's filthy letting Steve lick brine out of the hair on his lower belly, even though he's pretty sure none leaked down that far. And it's not too sexy doing it to a Jimmy Buffet song on the radio, but Steve mouths every word against his crotch and Eddie shakes with silient laughter. 

"If only Mama could see me now," he says.

"Don't talk about your mom while your dick's in my mouth."

"It's not in there right now, is it? See, my mama and I used to dance around barefoot in the kitche–"

He shuts up when Steve sinks back down. Hands and knees on the linoleum. Rumpled. Polo tugged out of his belt and hair a mess. He'll drag Steve down with him happily. He groans and sigh like something's dying in him.  And maybe it is.

[yennskier-feed-ao3]

the haunting of the rivia-vengerberg manor

the haunting of the rivia-vengerberg manor

by limerental

It's the night of the annual Halloween party at the Rivia-Vengerberg manor, and a host of supernatural creatures are about to arrive. Too bad Jaskier, the resident party planner and werewolf, forgot that tonight's a full moon.

Words: 2155, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Series: Part 31 of Ficletober 2022

Fandoms: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types

Rating: Mature

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: M/M

Characters: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Jaskier | Dandelion, Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon, Ihuarraquax (The Witcher), Eskel (The Witcher), Lambert (The Witcher), Triss Merigold, Philippa Eilhart, Fringilla Vigo, Emiel Regis Rohellec Terzieff-Godefroy

Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Jaskier | Dandelion/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Werewolf Jaskier | Dandelion, Witch Yennefer of Vengerberg, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Vampire Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Halloween, Halloween Costumes, Humor

[limerental]

ficletober day 9 - geralt, yennefer & ciri's huge, weird extended family modern au

Worried for their 13y/o daughter, Geralt and Yennefer call a meeting of their strange extended family of choice.

Contains ensemble found family shenanigans, wholesome family moments, and non-binary Mistle/Ciri

"She's hiding something. And acting different."

"Probably several somethings," said Yennefer. "She's a teenaged girl." 

Poor Geralt looked stricken, as though the thought had just occurred to him, despite celebrating Ciri's thirteenth birthday months ago now.

"Now, now, Geralt, it's a perfectly natural phenomenon. She's blossoming into a young woman. She's–"

"Shut it, Jaskier. Who invited him to this meeting anyway?"

"I'm her godfather!"

"Regis is her godfather."

"Right. Well, I'm her fun uncle."

"Naw, sorry, Coen, Eskel, and I have split custody of fun uncle responsibilities," said Lambert.

"Well then I'm… musical accompaniment. Who else would sing her songs by that one popstar she likes?"

"That was years ago," said Yennefer. "These days, she mostly listens to… frankly I wouldn't call it music necessarily."

"Lots of screaming," said Geralt, frowning. "Very angry. That's part of the problem. It's a sign that something isn't right."

Sprawled on the couch, Lambert whistled innocently, as though he was not the most likely subject to have influenced their daughter's unusual music choice. 

"She's a teenaged girl, like you said," said Milva, shrugging. "She'll do worse than have questionable music taste. I sure did."

The other women in the strange ensemble gathered in the front room of the Rivia-Vengerberg household offered their agreement. Triss aborted her agreement when she saw the look on Geralt's face, smiling reassuringly and shaking her head instead.

"Have either of you tried talking to the girl about it?" asked Nenneke as she passed around a platter of cookies. 

Geralt and Yennefer looked at one another.

"Did you?"

"No, I thought–"

"You called the meeting, I assumed that meant–"

"No, I said 'maybe we should call a meeting' and then you called the meeting."

"Did you ask her–"

"No, I thought you did. That's why I–"

Their back and forth devolved into full-blown petty squabbling.

Eskel and Lambert had started discussing their rival sports teams in what they clearly thought were lowered tones. Cahir scrolled through his phone while Regis watched over his shoulder, announcing to the group's bemusement that he too had a Tiktok where he discussed native flora and had quite the following. Jaskier, grown bored and nosy, fumbled the elegant horse statue on the mantle of the fireplace, which Coen leaned to catch at the last moment. Milva pinched the moon-eyed Triss, who had been staring with blatant envy and sentimental longing at the arguing couple. Triss yelped. Vesemir snorted awake in Geralt's recliner.

Said couple showed no signs of slowing down, their accusations growing more pointed and scathing and increasingly irrelevant to the subject at hand.

Suddenly, the front door burst inward, and young Ciri appeared in the midst of the front room. 

She seemed unsurprised to see her entire extended family gathered together, her expression stormy and determined. She held the hand of an individual her own age whose closely-shorn hair was dyed a vibrant pink.

"I don't know why you people have to be so dramatic about everything," Ciri huffed. "This is Mistle. They're my partner. And I don't care if you're disappointed. We'll run away together if you don't like it."

The gathering hushed.

"Disappointed?" asked Geralt.

"Why on earth would we be disappointed?" asked Yennefer.

"Regis said you would be."

All eyes turned to Regis, who smiled innocently.

"Oh yes, I caught these two together last week."

"And you neglected to say anything?"

"And told our daughter we would be disappointed about it?"

"Young Mistle is my neighbor. I often hear that gang of theirs torturing animals in the garage, I'm afraid."

"It's not a gang! It's a band! We're called the Rats."

"Mistle said they might let me join. I can't play an instrument but I'm getting pretty good at screaming."

Jaskier, who had spent many determined hours trying to get young Ciri interested in music, looked aghast. The rest stared in perplexed interest, not saying a word.

"Ciri," said Geralt, shuffling forward to lay a hand on his daughter's shoulder. "We're not disappointed."

"Except maybe disappointed in ourselves," Yennefer corrected as stepped up beside him, "that we made you feel that we would be."

"I only thought… well, Mistle's not a boy, you know."

"Yes," said Yennefer. "And?"

"They're not a girl either."

"And?"

"And they and their friends seem to enjoy torturing rats," said Regis unhelpfully, smiling.

"Mistle," said Yennefer, and the gangly kid holding Ciri's hand tightly straightened up. "You're invited to family dinner tomorrow."

"Mama, neither of you can cook."

"You're invited to family pizza night tomorrow." Yennefer eyed the rest of the family. "None of you are though. This meeting was a disaster. You've been horrendously unhelpful. Especially you, Jaskier."

"What did I do?!"

"You would have done something eventually."

The gathering concluded with a round of hugging and well wishes with Ciri and Mistle at the middle of it all, beaming. 

Ciri felt very lucky to have this many people who gave a shit about her well-being. Mistle had two living parents who didn't give a shit about them, and Ciri was fortunate enough to have a whole ensemble. When she said so later that evening, Yennefer chastised her foul language even as she and Geralt grew teary-eyed. They embraced her together, wiping away her own spill of tears.

Ciri felt far less lucky several weeks later when half the family appeared at her very first informal basement performance of her experimental teenaged grunge band bearing video cameras and wolf-whistling.

That their opening act went viral on Tiktok thanks to Uncle Regis' strange following soothed little of the hopeless mortification.

But later, when Mistle wept in her arms and said they'd never felt that kind of love in their whole damn lives, Ciri could feel nothing but warmth and softness and good fortune.

[limerental]

ficletober 2022 day twenty - geralt/Regis modern au

On the cusp of Halloween in an idyllic small town, secret monster hunter Geralt is preoccupied by a hunt for a higher vampire but happily makes time for tea with his polite and strange neighbor, Regis.

Aka this has the energy of a typical suburban Halloween movie but stupider

Geralt mumbled an absent word of thanks for the teacup nudged toward him, distracted from the usual pleasantries by the seemingly impossible task ahead of him.

It was nearly Halloween night, his daughter's first solo night trick or treating and thus his first night forced to pretend that he wasn't discretely following behind her gaggle of school friends. He was even more worried about the danger of Ciri potentially spotting him than being assumed a creep stalking pre-teen girls through his idyllic suburban neighborhood.

More pressingly, Geralt had not yet been able to locate the higher vampire responsible for several gorey murders earlier in the week, the culprit having disappeared like smoke. A needle in a damn haystack.

"Careful," said his neighbor from across the street, Regis, who had seen him moping out on the front porch earlier and invited him over for tea. "It's hot."

Geralt promptly burned his lip.

"Oof," he said and, too late, blew steam from the rim of the tea cup.

"I told you so," said Regis, folding his hands over his crossed knees. His kitchen was tidy and charming, decorated as though by an eclectic grandmother. All delicate florals on porcelain and lacy, crocheted doilies and framed embroidery of birds and well-used antique kitchen implements. 

The man himself, though not at all resembling a stooped and matronly grandmother, was weirdly suited to the cozy space. He was an older man of ambiguous age, grey-haired with round spectacles, and his long and slender limbs seemed to have more pointed angles than his joints allowed. Today, he wore an oatmeal sweatervest and cream slacks, his crossed leg revealing the chubby bluebirds that flapped in circles around his slouched socks. It was unfairly endearing.

"Sorry," grumbled Geralt. "A little distracted."

"Distracted by what, may I ask?" Regis said with his usual tight-lipped smile. 

"Nothing really," he said. "Just Halloween." 

Not long ago, Geralt would have taken the man's attitude and manner of speaking as a sign of polite but not genuine interest, but he'd accepted that Regis was just a little strange and not just tolerating him for social propriety's sake. 

Most people in this town barely pretended to be polite, after all. He was the unsocial single dad who lived in the old Cintra mansion raising their granddaughter, and rumors still flew about the disappearance of the poor girl's parents, the untimely deaths of her grandparents, and the unrelated stranger who had become her legal guardian. 

Not to mention the other company he kept. The strange woman in black who often spirited the girl away in her hearse-like sedan. The good for nothing roommate whose music was always far too loud. The hooligan fraternity of tough-looking grown men often spotted wrestling and cavorting like juveniles in the yard.

Though it had been years, attitudes rarely changed around here. 

And all of that was without the knowledge that Geralt was a secret monster hunter, his long-term partner a witch, their adopted daughter the subject of an age-old prophecy involving her as of yet untapped limitless power, and his boyfriend a homosexual.

Regis had been the subject of a fair amount of talk himself, having moved in just this spring, an unmarried bachelor living in a big Victorian house alone who seemed uninterested in mingling with the wider community. 

Though he always had time for mingling with Geralt, for which, ordinarily, he was very grateful. 

Today, he had other concerns.

The man's presence was strangely soothing and his home comfortingly nostalgic, though Geralt had rarely spent time in places like this as a boy. He liked Regis and wished he could warn him about the exact nature of the danger lurking in the shadows of this town. 

"Thanks for the tea," said Geralt. "But I've got to get going. Errands to run."

"Ah yes, your annual shindig," said Regis. "I hear it's quite the event."

Shit. Right. In his preoccupation with his hunt for the vampire, he had forgotten his reason for moping on his front porch earlier. Preparations for their yearly haunted house party were in full swing, and party planner and roommate Jaskier had become simply insufferable to be around. There were only so many faux cobwebs a man could be made to rehang at the angle that "felt more authentic, Geralt, come on" before it all became too much.

With Ciri off trick or treating alone this year and then over to a friend's house for the night, there would inevitably be a more adult atmosphere to the festivities. More booze, louder music, more absurd drinking games. As adult as anything could be with Jaskier and his brothers around. 

"Oh, um," he said awkwardly. "You're invited, of course."

"Thank you for the offer," said Regis, "but I have other plans for the evening."

Geralt dearly hoped he didn't feel slighted that he'd forgotten to invite him before now. Regis was a good man, and Geralt grew more fond of him the more they met like this. He knew intimately how few good men there really were in the world.

They sat in a comfortable silence as they finished their tea. Setting aside his teacup, Geralt stood to go. He had very few leads on his hunt, but there had been some whispers of strange activity near  a local abandoned factory that he should probably investigate.

"Listen Regis," he said. "Be careful out there the next few nights. Those murders recently… it's not safe out there."

Regis smiled a strangely-pinched but genuine smile, without teeth.

"You as well, my dear," he said with a soft lisp. "If I were you, I would be careful."

It would be several nights before he recalled those words, boots slipping on a floor slick with blood, watching his polite neighbor tear out the throat of another higher vampire with his glittering fangs, his off-white cashmere sweater drenched in the blood of the creature's latest victim and its own spurts of black ichor.

But in that moment in the cozy kitchen, Geralt simply thanked the man for his thoughtfulness and wondered if after he found and put to rest the elusive higher vampire, the man would like to go out for brunch sometime with the family. Maybe a proper movie date, just him and Regis, if the man was so inclined.

Did he like Westerns? Geralt mused. Maybe romantic comedies? He wasn't fussy about genre really, just liked the thought of sitting quietly beside the man in the dark of the theater, their knees brushing, a simple and uncomplicated closeness.

Anything but horror, of course, he thought mildly. He endured enough horror in his regular occupation and couldn't stomach the thought of more encroaching into his personal life. 

When he told this to Regis long afterward, the vampire laughed and laughed.

[limerental]

Limerental's Ficletober 2022 Masterpost

This year I challenged myself to write a ficlet a day for a month for the third year in a row, and this year I focused mostly on Witcher book missing scenes and rarepairs. I ended up writing a total of 44.8k words.

The whole collection is already posted together here on ao3.

Day 1 - tumblr - ao3 - proximity - dijkstra/isengrim

Day 2 - tumblr - ao3 - a small and foolish love - ciri & yen, ciri/mistle

Day 3 - tumblr - ao3 - to gather intelligence - dijkstra/philippa

Day 4 - tumblr - ao3 - some other dreams - cahir/geralt

Day 5 - tumblr - ao3 - far above dark water - vilgefortz/geralt

Day 6 - tumblr - ao3 - a mortifying ordeal - frinfran

Day 7 - tumblr - ao3 - the trouble with rumors - geralt&dandelion, dijkstra/isengrim

Day 8 - tumblr - ao3 - an ageless sort of love - rita/tissaia

Day 9 - tumblr - ao3 - a family meeting - yenralt, ciri/mistle & extended weird family

Day 10 - tumblr - ao3 - a unicorn for tea - yenralt & ciri & ihuarraquax

Day 11 - tumblr - ao3 - such lasting sentiment - dijkstra/isengrim, phil & dijkstra, merihart

Day 12 - tumblr - ao3 - of a feather - merihart

Day 13 - tumblr - ao3 - the sea takes what it takes - ciri & pavetta

Day 14 - tumblr - ao3 - the hope was real - milva & fringilla

Day 15 - tumblr - ao3 - rumors fly through new skies - emhyr/vilgefortz

Day 16 - tumblr - ao3 - matches burn after the other - steddie

Day 17 - tumblr - ao3 - from such great heights - yenralt

Day 18 - tumblr - ao3 - too late for us both - isengrim & cahir

Day 19 - tumblr - ao3 - as a wave returned to shore - yenralt

Day 20 - tumblr - ao3 - the usual pleasantries - geralt/regis

Day 21 - tumblr - ao3 - the arrow and the hot sand - ciri & aplegatt

Day 22 - tumblr - ao3 - a bezoar is not a fruit - trissbert ft. yennskier

Day 23 - tumblr - ao3 - degradation for degradation - dijkstra/geralt

Day 24 - tumblr - ao3 - as you taught me long ago - triss & tissaia, tissaia/rita

Day 25 - tumblr - ao3 - but yours has just begun - steddie

Day 26 - tumblr - ao3 - or the last thing i see - yenralt

Day 27 - tumblr - ao3 - the creature in the corn - ciri & geralt

Day 28 - tumblr - ao3 - your picket fence is sharp as knives - yenralt

Day 29 - tumblr - ao3 - ever to watch from the shadows - yengilla ft yenstredd

Day 30 - tumblr - ao3 - a place where the sun doth shine - yenralt

Day 31 - tumblr - ao3 - the haunting of the rivia-vengerberg manor - implied geraskefer & ensemble

[limerental]

ficletvember 2022 - day 27

Living in a farmhouse with her grandparents, Little Ciri grew up to fear the man who wasn't a man who could be lurking in the fields. Waiting to steal her away.

Or a vague Americana cryptid au

They're on the porch one morning when Gramma takes her arm and looks at Ciri real serious and tells her if she's out after dark to not ever wander off the drive into the cornfields and if the crickets and songbirds all hush at once, to run right back to the farmhouse.

And when she runs back if there's somebody waiting on the porch who isn't anybody she knows, then keep running, keep on running.

Gramma looks old then, wrinkled around the mouth and worried, and so Ciri promises her of course she won't wander off into the woods at night. Not even if she hears a hurt animal crying or someone calling for help. 

And Gramma says, even if it's the middle of the day, if she's out there playing and hears something from the woods talk to her in a man's voice, she runs right back here, alright? There's things out there that talk with a man's voice, maybe even look like a man, but there's nothing human about them at all and they'll snatch you away. They'll steal off with you and you'll never come back.

That scares Ciri more deeply than the other warnings, because she loves living here with her Gramma and Grampa in the old farmhouse and because she already knows it can happen, going away and never coming back, because it happened to Mama and Daddy. 

She misses them a whole lot but likes to live here too. Most days, she plays with some kids that live down the road, casting spells with sticks and making potions in her Gramma's old pots. They swim in the pond or ice skate when it freezes and climb every tree that they can and follow every creek back to its start.

She likes Gramma's old dog who lies at her feet on the porch all day, watching the drive, and she likes trying to catch the chickens scratching at the dirt until the mean rooster chases her off and she likes to watch the sunset from the backs of round hay bales and she likes when Gramma tells her stories at night, about monsters and knights and curses and true love.

Then one day, she hears a man's voice in the woods.

"Cirilla," it calls, and she goes very still, dropping her walking stick. "Cirilla, you have to come with me."

She notices it then, that the cicadas have all hushed and the squirrels aren't chittering and there's no bird call, just the sound of wind through the branches.

Ciri turns and runs, but there's nowhere to run back to.

The farmhouse is on fire. 

The eaves billow up with smoke, and orange glows in the eyes of the windows. There's a strange car in the drive.

She skids to a stop and remembers, keep on running. But she doesn't know where to run to, when to stop running.

She flees into the cornfield off the drive. The air smells like a campfire, and Gramma's old dog is baying a warning, on and on.

Ciri doesn't see a thing before the man that isn't a man grabs her, slinging her up in its arms.

"Hush," it says, clamping a hand over her mouth so she won't scream. "Hush."

It's not a man that has her, not at all. Its eyes slick with a weird membrane when it blinks, and its hair is as snow white as its skin, not even a pink flush of exertion on its face from holding her wiggling body still. Its voice is a rough croak of a sound, like it has trouble with the words.

"It's alright," it says. "I'm sorry. Hush now. I wish things could be different. I'm not– hush, we're going somewhere safe. It isn't safe there for you anymore. It's alright."

It holds her firmly to its breast, and she listens to its faltering heartbeat as it takes her away so quick the fields blur and then the forest blurs and it feels like a dream. She tries to wake up in her little attic bedroom, wants to rush down to her Gramma's room and huddle under the covers until morning.

She looks back when they round a hill to see the farmhouse collapse into a roar of fire. The old dog's baying cuts off with a whimper. She clings to the man that is not a man and knows she is never coming back here, not ever.

"I had no choice," the thing is saying against her ear. "Forgive me, Cirilla. I won't harm you. You can't stay there any longer. I left you there as long as I could. Forgive me." 

Later, when Ciri learns the truth, she will recognize the strange warp in its voice as sadness and regret.

It is hard to imagine.

A little boy in his Mama's lap. A stranger on the porch. Nowhere to run.

[limerental]

ficletober day 7 - book! geralt & dandelion, background dijkstra/isengrim

Dandelion is an unapologetic gossip, a terrible secret keeper, and a bit of a perv. Geralt still manages to have a good time anyway.

Ambiguously post-game canon, contains Dandelion-typical suggestive and probably offensive conversation. Mostly this was just driven by my desire to write absurd book!gerlion banter and see if I could emulate the book's humor

"Oh Geralt!" Dandelion exclaimed. "You'll never guess who's sleeping together."

"Dandelion," said Geralt, sighing. "You really have to find a better way of telling me who I'm going to have to persuade not to kill you in a week's time."

Dandelion made a face, the effect ruined by the foamy froth of ale on his upper lip wilting the curl of his mustache. The pair of them sat catching up in a poorly-lit booth at the back of a Novigrad tavern, reunited after a winter spent occupied by their separate lives.

"What! No, I've settled down, my friend. I'm an esteemed professor now with a flock of impressionable students. My days of juvenile excitements are well behind me. I've matured into a sensible old fellow." 

"Sure. A sensible, mature professor who spends half his nights in brothels."

"A business venture! I'm investing in the futures of promising young women."

"And this bathhouse we're going to later isn't one of those where you get an eyeful through the steam, is it? 

"No, of course not," said Dandelion. "Unless you'd rather–"

"No," said Geralt. "I've settled down as well."

"Ah, right, that vineyard of yours. Nobly toiling away to ensure the inebriation of wealthy bastards the Continent over."

"I'm investing in the futures of promising young grapes."

Dandelion called for another round of drink. The barkeep laughed when he requested a glass of Corvo Bianco red and brought over two more watered down ales.

"Are you going to guess anytime soon or will I have to tell you?"

"Guess what?" 

Geralt had had some hope that Dandelion would forget about his petty gossip or else remember that Geralt really did not care and never had.

"You know one of them. The other I'm sure you'll know of."

"I'm not going to guess, Dandelion."

"We'll be meeting both this afternoon, I presume. I'm only trying to lessen the shock. You will be shocked, I assure you. Oh don't look like that, you sourpuss. I know you're curious. The more grim your expression, the more I know you're interested." 

"I'm not grim," said Geralt grimly.

Dandelion paused meaningfully, clearly hoping he would play along and start suggesting names. He did no such thing, and after a few moments, Dandelion wiggled in his seat and huffed. 

"Now, I must warn you that this is a matter of utmost secrecy."

"Dandelion, if you get me messed up in another political sex scandal, I swear I–"

"It's Dijkstra," said Dandelion, waggling his fingers over the long-awaited reveal.

Geralt stared flatly, not giving him the satisfaction of any kind of interest in this subject matter. Truthfully, he was curious enough. While he didn't quite care who anyone was having sex with, a covert relationship involving the former Redanian spymaster had a high likelihood of being unusual with far-reaching political ramifications.

It soon became clear that Dandelion would not be continuing unless prompted, his eyebrows raised at Geralt as his fingers continued to waggle. 

"And?" Geralt drawled.

"And the Iron Wolf of the Scoia'tael!"

Shock was not quite the correct word for what Geralt felt about the reveal, but it was unexpected.

"Isengrim Faoiltiarna? I thought he was executed after the Peace of Cintra."

Dandelion appeared gleefully satisfied that he had managed to stump Geralt so thoroughly.

"You never would have guessed. Not in a million years. Admit it."

"Isengrim's in Novigrad?" asked Geralt, lowering his voice. "How do you know all this? You're not still working for Dijkstra, are you? This bathhouse where we're meeting them… if it's to set me up with some job, I'd rather not go."

"No, no, this is purely a social meeting. We've become very close, Dijkstra and I. And Isengrim is... well, I'm certain he's warming to me. He hasn't threatened me with bodily harm in at least a week."

"Right. And Dijkstra introduced you to him? Entrusted you of all people with a secret like that? Nothing good could come out of someone discovering he's alive and in Redania."

"Well... I may have climbed through the window into their bedroom at an inopportune moment. Nothing too scandalous! They were only sleeping, but anyone with eyes could tell that they had been up to more. Did you know Dijkstra wears a frumpy little nightcap to bed? He threw it at me. Nearly fell three stories and broke all my limbs."

"I assume you're not meant to be telling anyone."

"Oh yes, I swore myself to absolute secrecy. I haven't told a soul. I mean. Er…"

Dandelion smiled guiltily.

Geralt sighed.

"I don't care enough to tell anyone," he said.

"My real question," said Dandelion after a long swig of ale, "is how exactly that arrangement works out? You know. Physically."

"Dandelion."

"There's quite a size difference there, you know. Sure, elves may be tall, but they're twiggy. It must take some careful positioning to avoid unfortunate crushing incidents."

"Dandelion, please–"

"And that's not even considering the question of... well, I assume I don't have to educate you on the intricacies of sex between men, Geralt, but generally one catches and one–"

"Spare me the details."

"Well, assuming proportionality of the larger subject, then–"

"Ugh."

"Ah, but if they were to… you know. From behind? If it were the larger man on the bottom and the elf– well, Dijkstra's balding. There's not a thing left to tug. Everyone knows the most satisfying thing about a position like that is tugging on your partner's hair."

"Dandelion."

"Well, I suppose… you know what they say about balding men. That devils displaces all the hair  southward. It's true of Dijkstra, at least, I assure you. Perhaps along the back one could–"

Geralt stood and went for a piss, leaving a protesting Dandelion to ruminate alone, hoping that that was the last he heard on the subject for the rest of his life.

Unfortunately, not an hour later, it happened that he and Dandelion stumbled into the aforementioned bathhouse to discover that they had not, as previously claimed, actually been invited to what was clearly a private affair between the former spymaster and infamous fugitive.

Much to Geralt's regret, several of Dandelion's more explicit theories were immediately confirmed.

Dandelion dodged a bottle of wine which shattered in a messy spill of purple liquid across the stone floor. Geralt hauled him out by the collar with muttered apologies to the men in the bath, trying not to let any of his amusement show on his face.

He nearly succeeded.

"That was a bottle of Corvo Bianco red, you know," said Dandelion as he carefully dabbed a wine spot on his hose. "I saw the label. A terrible waste. And I don't know what'a all that funny. Quit laughing! See if I pay for your ale next time. You owe me several bottles of wine!"

[limerental]

ficletober day 3 - philippa/dijkstra

Busy pulling strings in Redania from the shadows, Philippa Eilhart receives a visit from a promising young spy. content warning for canon-typical Philippa Eilhart and grooming of teenaged boys with referenced/implied underage sex. Takes place ~30 years before the events of the saga with some fudged details about Redanian kings and politics. Given who Philippa is, I like to think it's pretty likely she was the one who originally recruited Dijkstra to the intelligence service and also given who she is, she was probably a little bit yucky about it

The boy planted both his hands on his knees, still huffing and puffing from his less than coordinated clamber up the trellis outside her window. She didn't bother to tell him he could have come in through the servant's door. Things were more amusing this way.

He was a clever lad and tripped over himself to bring her anything she needed, which these days was the comings and goings of the Academy, where one political unrest or another always seemed to be brewing.

But she had some suspicions that he withheld details here and there, simply so he had another reason to visit her the next night.

"You have news then?"

The boy straightened up, his breath finally returned to him. To her surprise, he had managed to hit another growth spurt, towering like a gawky gargoyle before her. He was certainly no looker and never would be. Not yet seventeen and his dark hair had already receded well past his temples.

"The Master Troy has taken a leave of absence. But some say he may not return for the next semester."

"Yes? And?"

"There's word that his retirement may not be wholly his idea."

Philippa sighed. She poured herself another few fingers of dark liquor and watched the boy follow her hands with his pale eyes. He was clearly hopeful that she would pour him a glass as well, ask him to sit in the high-backed chair beside her.

She did neither.

"Of course it's not his idea. He's an ancient old bat who still claims the sun circles around us and that we descended from amphibians. The Academy has wanted him out for years."

"Ahem," said the boy. "I only thought… I thought you might want me to figure out who wants him gone. Like with Vysogota of Corvo. He was officially exiled for religious heresy but less officially–"

"How old were you when he was exiled, boy?"

His cheeks pinked. He hadn't been born yet.

Under the aging rule of King Radovid IV, father to the present King Heribert, some poor sod was exiled once a week to appease one interest group or another.  The winds of the Redanian court had blown to and fro more times than she could count. At the moment, King Heribert was publicly wary and derisive of mages and spies but privately unwilling to dismiss them. 

Her doe-eyed young prince Vizimir showed far more promise. In a few years, Philippa imagined he would grow into a handsome, level-headed young man. Level-headed enough not to forget the rewards of allowing her and her agents influence over him.

"Thank you for the report," said Philippa. "But I'd prefer you leave any speculation to me, boy. You're still only seeing half the picture. Manuscripts and boring old professors can only teach so much. When's your graduation again?"

"This winter."

"Early?"

The boy's grin was full of crooked teeth. 

"Top of my class," he said with arrogance. Philippa did not bother to dissuade it, not yet. If all went well, she knew he would become a terrifying force for the Redanian Secret Service someday, and one needed a certain smug confidence to clash with kings and dissidents and uglier characters than that.

"Come here," said Philippa, and the boy visibly brightened with eagerness. At least, visibly to her, who had learned to read the slightest twitch of a man's face and glean his emotional state. 

Most men were too proud of the piddling things they felt and thought to learn to conceal them. Even a subjugated peasant man was likely to believe that his dopey ruminations meant something and mattered more than the mud and piss he slogged through.

Women, thought Philippa, will inherit all of this some day. And the men will not even wake from smug daydreams of their own importance long enough to realize.

The boy's expression barely shifted, and he did not move too swiftly. Admiring his subtlety, Philippa kicked off her heels and propped her legs up on the arm of the chair beside her. She watched the boy follow the curve of her long legs, limned in bronze light from the fireplace. "Well? Sit. They won't rub themselves."

"Yes, Madam Philippa."

The boy sat and took her feet into his lap, his clever thumbs pressing into the taut ache of her arches. He had nice hands. Big and smooth-palmed and exacting in the pressure they applied.

Perhaps after a bit more to drink, she would teach him a thing or two about using them in other ways.

"Sigismund," she said and touched the crown of his head. His hair there was soft and thin. "Pour yourself a glass. No, not so little. We're celebrating your graduation. And don't stop the rest in the meantime."

Dijkstra ducked his head to hide the burn of his cheeks and managed not to choke on the deep swallows of liquor. His fingers dug with surety into the meat of Philippa's heels.

[limerental]

ficletober 2022 day eighteen - isengrim & cahir post-thanned

After the disaster on Thanned, Isengrim's attempt at a swift escape is hindered by the dead weight of the injured, raving human child, Cahir Mawr Dyffryn aep Ceallach. content warning for vague Time of Contempt spoilers and aftermath of injuries

Isengrim drags the boy up by his collar and grits his teeth against the sheer frustrating stupidity of the situation. It’s the third time in an hour that the kid has fainted into bonelessness, and he’s not even cut all that deeply. Enough blood loss that he’s woozy and can’t keep his feet under him, and he must have hit his head when the tower exploded because his eyes keep crossing and then down he goes.

“Cahir,” Isengrim hisses, shaking him uselessly. Though his diminished company have made it into the comforting cover of the forests, they are still far too close to Thanned to let down their guard. The boy is in full armor and regalia, or Isengrim would sling him onto his shoulders and pack him through the undergrowth like the child he is.

But Isengrim is not a tall elf and his strength is all in the muscle it takes to draw a bow or nimbly and silently climb a tree, not in hefting heavy, bulky idiots and lugging them through rough terrain.

He shakes Cahir some more, caring little if it aggravates his head injury. 

“Cahir, you useless idiot, wake up.” 

“Isengrim, we must go,” whispers Toruviel. The forest is silent, not even the sound of nighttime animals to disturb the quiet. Which is what unnerves them. Isengrim doubts anyone would follow so soon, not with the island still in chaos and the outcome or true source of the skirmish unclear. 

But it’s damn unnerving. Something about that portal going out with a crack and a bang has shifted to lay heavily over the atmosphere of the land around the island. It’s unnatural. It’s only now that Isengrim knows in his bones that he got his fighters in over their heads, selling them into a war that they cannot possibly survive intact, but it’s too late. They’re a part of it now in ways they weren’t before and never should have been.

“Cirilla,” Cahir groans, eyelashes fluttering. “Cirilla…”

Isengrim slaps him. 

Toruviel and the others look at him sharply, the sound of the blow far too loud in the silent forest. Cahir’s eyes roll in his head, and his teeth chatter.

“He’s not well,” whispers Toruviel. “I say you put the Dh'oine out of its misery so that we can continue on.”

“I didn’t drag the bastard off that damn island just to slaughter him,” he hisses. “I would have thrown him overboard the second time he fainted if I’m just meant to kill him now.”

“You should have. Leave him, Isengrim. Put a dagger through his brain, and–”

“You go on,” says Isengrim. “I’ll stay with the boy until he can travel. Go on, and I will meet you.”

Toruviel’s eyes flash, and she swears. “Why should you risk your life for him? What has this whelp done but fail in his mission and bleed on you? What gives him the right to–”

She stills when she sees his dangerous expression and ducks her head.

“Who is the commander here? Go! Go now! That’s an order.”

“Yes, Isengrim. Be safe. Be well.”

His fellows fade into the dark without another word. 

Isengrim curses, dragging the boy into the hollow behind the exposed root system of a massive downed oak. Cahir is trembling, his skin glowing deathly pale in what little light reaches the forest floor. Isengrim shucks off a glove and flattens his palm against his brow. Feverish. The boy may end up dying anyhow.

The summer night is warm, but the boy shakes like he will freeze to death. Isengrim releases the clasp of his woollen cloak and lays it over Cahir’s stiff body. He squats beside him and squints out into the night and considers lighting a fire. 

He is still considering the risk of it some time later when Cahir suddenly lurches up and grasps at him, Isengrim overbalancing and sitting hard on his backside in the dirt as Chair clings to the leg of his trousers.

He’s wild-eyed and unfocused, but when he speaks his voice is clear and far too loud.

“Take me back,” he insists. “I must finish what I started. Take me back to Thanned.”

“Shut your mouth, you fool,” Isengrim grits through his teeth. The boy does not shut his mouth, but instead claws with the fingers of his free hand against the hastily-wrapped bandages swaddling his injured head.

“Take me back or give me a horse, and I’ll ride back myself. I must–”

“Quiet. There are no horses here, and you’re in no state to ride.”

Isengrim shoves at his chestplate to push the boy backwards, and Cahir fumbles for the sword at his belt. He finds nothing but an empty sheath, the sword nowhere to be seen when Isengrim had found him in the wreckage. The tight bandages around his injured wrist restrict his movement, and he gets his hand to his mouth to tug at them with his teeth. 

“Stop that,” demands Isengrim, grabbing at the boy’s arms. “You’ll reopen the wound and bleed to death.”

“Cirilla…” he moans, fighting ineffectively against the elf’s grip. He manages to cuff Isengrim across the head once or twice despite his weakness and lack of coordination, the impact of his steel vambraces making Isengrim’s head ring. “The Witcher girl… her eyes… she… Cirilla… I have to go back. Imperial orders. If I fail I… I have to…”

Once more, Cahir slumps into stillness. Isengrim drops the boy’s limp arms and catches his breath. When it does not seem likely that Cahir will wake again anytime soon, his breathing evening out into a true sleep, Isengrim squats to adjust his bandages to their former tightness. 

The boy looks impossibly young in sleep, even more than he does awake. Most of Isengrim’s fighters are young by Elven standards, but in human terms, most are old enough to be this boy’s grandsire or even great-grandsire. Isengrim himself is over a dozen times his age.

And even for all his advanced years, he has made the same foolish error this boy did. If Isengrim could, he would return to the moment waiting in the hush of the catacombs for the signal to advance. He would not involve himself and those in his command in the wars of men, thinking that there will be some reward, some outcome that is anything but further suffering and death for his people. 

Covert warfare based in deep forests and the outskirts of society waged against an oppressive force is a very different beast than fighting as an organized brigade under the command of a foreign army. Isengrim knows he will find nothing but death on this path, in the end. 

But there is no way back. He has made his choices and alliances. He can do nothing but follow through and stick to the path that leads ahead. Death waits on either side. Perhaps Isengrim and his people can survive this if he just keeps going and does not waver.

For Cahir, he thinks, death looms up like an inevitability. It would be kinder, as Toruviel suggested, to snuff him out now, before his fatal choices catch up to him.

Isengrim does not reach for his dagger. He squats in the quiet of the forest and dangles his bent arms over his knees and hangs his head in mourning.

“It’s too late,” he says, brushing his fingers through Cahir’s sweat-damp hair. “It is too late to turn back time. It is too late for us both.”

[limerental]

ficletober 2022 day 10 (but late) - philippa pov of dijkstra/isengrim ft. merihart

When someone important to him ends up in hot water, Dijkstra desperately calls in a favor from Philippa.

Takes place ambiguously post-canon, at least 5 years after Philippa unsuccessfully attempts to have Dijkstra assassinated. Contains vague descriptions of burns, near death experiences, and medical treatment. Also Canon typical Philippa eilhart.

Philippa's emergency alert trilled, the one very few people on the Continent had the ability to trigger. She sighed, pausing in the midst of applying her eyeshadow to rummage through her belongings for the damn xenovox.

"I could still kill you, you know," she said as the little box crackled with sound. "I may no longer have leagues of assassins at my immediate disposal, but I could kill you personally."

"Phil," spoke a familiar voice over the xenovox. There was a strange quality to it that had little do with the tinny sound of the device. "I'm not all that in the mood for jokes right now." 

"I don't ever joke. I'm very serious."

Philippa finished dabbing gold shadow along her lids and switched to a silver liner. She had been expected at Sabrina Glevissig's Enchanted Chef party an hour ago and hoped to swan in forty minutes before the end of the event simply to place a very large order of discounted Chaos Cutlery and then leave.

"You know I wouldn't contact you unless it wasn't absolutely necessary. Phil, I need your help. I'd like to call in that favor. You said you owed me one."

She had said no such thing in so many words, but she had contacted the man who now publicly went by Sigi Reuven when she had learned of his return to Redania to tell to him that she regretted the way they had parted. He was more useful to her alive than dead these days, as her true allies dwindled to almost nothing.

"Dijkstra," said Philippa. "I had hoped you wouldn't be brave or stupid enough to take me at my word. I don't owe anybody a single thing. Besides, I have an appointment."

"Damn it, Phil." 

The desperation in the man's voice alarmed her. Ordinarily, he knew better than to take any sort of tone with her. She did not tolerate men who dared to raise their voice in her presence.

But she had never heard that sharpness in his voice. It was curious. Whatever weakness could inspire that tremble of fear in the voice of a man like Dijkstra could prove to be very curious indeed. 

"Say please," said Philippa, rubbing her lips together to smooth her freshly-applied blood-red lipstick. "And know that if you've wasted my time, I will not hesitate to finish the job I started years ago."

Not ten minutes later, Philippa sailed on silent wings through a dark forest, unsure what she would find when she reached the Temerian army encampment up ahead.

Dijkstra had all but begged for her assistance and yet been tight-lipped about the details. It was all very complicated and politically dull as usual. An accomplice of his had failed to appear at a rendezvous. News of a covert impending execution of said accomplice spread. Dijkstra could not intervene himself without compromising fragile alliances, and ordinary foot soldiers would be unlikely to succeed anyhow. Not without significant casualties, and not before the execution could be completed.

The most interesting detail she had managed to uncover was that the doomed man was no man at all but a Scoia'tael fighter. An elf. One who, by the regard with which Dijkstra spoke of him, sounded like quite the interesting character, one the spy did not just respect but considered a trusted friend, perhaps more.

It would be a pity if the elf was killed before Philippa could figure out just how interesting.

The rescue itself proved to be incredibly anticlimactic. 

The soldiers in the encampment were prepared for bowman or calvary, not a lone bird of prey and a swiftly-opened portal. 

The pyre had already been lit when she soared into the clearing. That the elf was not screaming as the fire lapped up the legs of his trousers, she took to mean he was an idiotically brave and stubborn creature or that he had already perished of smoke inhalation.

Her talons dug into his stiff shoulders.

As she shaped the portal around them and tugged him away from death, she saw that he was somehow conscious, his green eyes wild with pain in a horrifically scared face. 

The portal snuffed the flames, a billow of smoke following them as Philippa dropped the body of the elf to the stone floor and rose with a flap of her great wings to stand as a woman before Dijkstra in his study.

But Dijkstra had already fallen to his knees beside the prone body of the elf, tugging at his smoldering cloak to hold him crooked up in his arms. His hands trembled as he touched the frayed edges of charred fabric, hovering above the angry red of burned flesh.

"Get a healer," demanded Dijkstra, as though Philippa had not already paid her debt. 

"I'm fine," croaked the elf, in a voice choked with smoke, but his teeth chattered in the throes of shock and agony.

Dijkstra swept away his sweat-damp hair, and the elf turned his furrowed brow against his big palm. A breath later, he finally slumped into unconsciousness, and Dijkstra's bulk bowed over his body, gripping him in despair.

"Isengrim," he mumbled against the elf's hair. "Don't you croak on me, you old bastard. Not like this."

Philippa grimaced and triggered her xenovox. She was not, after all, as cold and heartless as she would prefer to be.

"Triss," she spoke into the face of the device. "I'm afraid I won't be making it to the party after all. Would you make sure Sabrina places my cutlery order? And then, I would like you to hurry to the location of this device. Bring medical supplies. A burn kit. It's urgent."

Triss Merigold arrived as swiftly as she always did when Philippa called.

After an hour spent tending to the wounds of the prone figure laid out on a futon in Dijkstra's office, Triss sat back and declared that he would live.

"Though he will–" She paused and swallowed, looking at the elf's sleeping face, perhaps realizing that what she had been about to say was rather foolish. "He'll scar."

Dijkstra laughed, his thumb tracing the groove of rippled scar tissue along Isengrim's cheekbone. He had knelt on the floor by the elf's head through the whole procedure, though now when he stood, it was achingly slow, favoring his knees.

From her perch on his disorderly desk, Philippa had watched him carefully as Triss worked. There was something about his distress that felt almost embarrassing to watch. Too earnest and raw. He had to know that this was a vulnerability easily exploited, and that someone like Philippa would not shy away from exploiting it if the need arose. And yet, Dijkstra did nothing to withhold his fretting, as though he could not. 

From time to time, he had leaned to brush his lips against the elf's clammy forehead, to rub soothingly at his arms when he whimpered in pain, to mumble soft words against his hair.

Philippa wondered what would happen if the elf were to succumb to his wounds, if Isengrim Faoiltiarna breathed his last here and Dijsktra had to rise and go on without him.

It would be unpleasant to witness, she decided. Some part of him would remain kneeling on the floor beside the dusty futon for the rest of his days. She had not thought a man like him capable of such lasting sentiment, but she saw its ugly truth now. 

When she had tired of watching Dijkstra, she watched Triss. The girl's soft hands worked deftly, flickering with warm light. Those gentle hands passed with the same care over Philippa's body most nights, as they had for far too many years now, as they likely would until one of them inevitably snuffed out of the world.

Philippa hoped it would be her who perished first, only so that she would not have to know what stranger she became when she left Triss Merigold's body behind.

"Come on, Triss," she said. "You said he'll live, well, that's that then. Debt paid. A life for an attempt on your life."

"Thank you," grunted Dijkstra, the spent adrenaline of the night leaving him pale and wrong-footed. His attention soon returned to the figure on the futon, lifting him swaddled in a woolen blanket to carry to bed. "Good night," he said, distracted, and disappeared through the dark doorway.

In the silence of the study, Philippa allowed her hand to rest for a long moment on the crown of Triss' head.

[limerental]

ficletober day 16 - steddie future fic

(but finished late and it's already on ao3 here and it's for a fandom i'm not in for a media i haven't really watched i was possessed ok i'm normal) It's ten years later. Steve's a hospice nurse. Eddie's got the virus. It's kind of weird and sad and strange and inevitable. Or something. And not as sad as it sounds. we interrupt our regular programming for whatever the hell this is. content warning for hospitals and death but no MCD beyond ruminating about it. also, disordered eating, illness, yuckiness, and grossness. explicit blowjobs and glow in the dark condoms. etc

One of Steve Harrington's patients dies on a Wednesday morning.

Which isn't unexpected, given he's a nurse at a hospice facility, you know, they're all bound to croak at some point. His job's about making it a little easier, a little quieter. Not saving anybody or saving the world, just easing the pain. It's not like he's head over heels for the job, but it beats his other options. College flunkee who doesn't dare give his rich asshole father the time of day, no matter what job opportunities making nice with him could buy.

Would rather change catheters and wipe old people's diarrhea his whole life than resort to that.

It's hospice. They don't get better. Sometimes they go home a while and come back, but they all die. Losing patients is a breath of relief. Their suffering finally over. His job– making dying seem easy –complete.

So, its not unexpected when he walks in on Wednesday and reads the night shift's notes. That the Turner kid's probably on his way out.

It's not a surprise at all. The guy's been lingering for a week now, barely conscious. He's an AIDs patient, riding the last wave of compounding infections and failed drug cocktails.

Palliative care is a strange sort of thing, like compassionate neglect. It's not a kindness to pump a failing body full of fluids as their organs shutter out one by one. Fluids restricted, no feeding tube, nothing but pain meds and the hush of the ward. Let them die of dehydration instead of drowning.

What's unexpected is walking into Turner's room and finding Eddie fucking Munson sitting in there with him, gripping Turner's hand.

"Munson?" Steve blurts. It's been years. It's been a damn decade, but the guy looks almost the same. Steve's living and working a few towns over from Hawkins and most anyone who meant anything to him there has moved away anyhow, so he's out of the loop in a way that feels nice but also means he's lost track of a lot of people. It's just weird that Munson's still kicking around here when Steve had pegged him for one of those who'd ditch the whole state the second he could.

His hair's a bit different, more mullet than shag and he's got something of a mustache going, but he looks the damn same. A touch of grey at his temples maybe. A wrinkle at the corners of his mouth.

"Jesus," says Munson, looking at him all bug-eyed. "Is that Steve fucking Harrington? In baby blue scrubs? In a hospice ward? In bumfuck Indiana? With a buzzcut?"

"Colonel Mustard in the ballroom with a candlestick," jokes Steve, and Munson keeps gaping at him. Maybe because he just made a dumb joke at his friend's deathbed.

"Geez, I never thought– you a doctor?"

"Nurse."

"Geez," he says again. "You're a sight for sore eyes. I can be here, can't I? They told me he's… you know."

"Yeah, sometimes it takes a while though," Steve says, but by the looks of things as he flips through the chart, scribbling down vitals, it's any time now.

What happens next is what always happens. Not that everybody's death here is the same, but that every patient he's ever had does it eventually.

Die.

Sometimes in a huddle of family, sometimes alone, but usually quietly, slowly, and suddenly. The dying man breathes and breathes and then doesn't.

None of it takes very long in this case.

Munson is sitting with both hands held over one of the Turner kid's when it happen, watching him die with all the somber sort of silence moments like this demand from anyone. He's sitting there more still than Steve ever remembers him being, but then again, it's been a decade. Maybe his theatrics have mellowed out. Maybe he has some normal, adult job now like. In finances.

Steve looks again at Munson, tattooed up his whole neck and wearing a jacket held together by safety pins.

Ok. Maybe a normal, adult job at a biker bar.

"Were you two close?" Steve asks in the quiet as he turns off the noise of the machines.

"No, he– I didn't know him. But there's this support group I'm in, and one of us tries to be there when– well. It was my turn. Or not my turn, my turn, you know, not like it was his turn but it will be. Someday."

"You–" It's like something big and cumbersome gums up inside his chest.

"Yeah," says Munson, shrugging. "Me."

"Shit, man," says Steve, because he's great with handling the dying and increasingly worse with the living, let alone the living dead.

"Yeah, very sad. Woe is me. You wanna swing by my place after your shift and drink some beer about it?"

And they aren't friends exactly, really never were, but Steve figures it's kinda just polite to accept an invitation from somebody you used to know who just roundabout confessed to being riddled with deadly disease. Or something.

And there's a part of him that remembers being eighteen and studying Eddie Munson like an unsolvable puzzle, thinking about him and his knobby weird wrists and long tangle of hair and the ridge of his Adam's apple and his tar-black eyes, sometimes at times he shouldn't have, at times he really really shouldn't have, and then burying all that and doing nothing about it and then a whole decade passing in a blur.

His teenaged self feels very, very far away, and now he knows intimately what happens to people who don't take that leap and be brave and cling to the shit that matters while they still can.

They die alone. Or with strangers sitting next to them, measuring their last vitals.

"Yeah, sure," says Steve.

Can't hurt, he thinks.

Famous last words.

Munson still lives in Hawkins in the same trailer park, but he's prettied his uncle's old trailer up some, a strangely grandma kitsch aesthetic for a man who has several visible gory skull tattoos, one with curled goat horns stamped high on his throat.

He's got a mosquito plant growing in an old sherbert container and a listing aloe. There's tomatoes and jalapenos in buckets and kitty litter containers. A half dozen bamboo windchimes and dangling bells cluster in the rafters of the old porch, and a painted rocking chair sits beside a six foot cactus, its reaching branches segmented into flat, spineless pads hung with leftover tinsel from Christmas, its pot used as a heaping ashtray.

"This is Henry," says Munson. "He's my roommate."

"The cactus?"

"Yeah, man, he's decent company. "

He pats the plant a bit too hard, and a piece falls off. Without comment, he fishes it off the porch and shoves it into a yogurt cup of dirt sitting beside a dozen others.

"I give these suckers away like candy," he says. "Everybody and their grandma loves a free cactus."

"Sure," says Steve, who is fairly certain even a cactus would die a miserable death in his care if he looked at it wrong.

There's a white plastic chair fallen on its side in the overgrown yard, greyed with mildew spots, and Munson tugs it up from the grip of the grass growing through the spokes of its backrest and plops it down beside the rocker on the porch. He swipes off the spider webs and dirt and gestures with spread arms to the shitty chair, bowing like it's a throne.

It's over the top. It's weirdly familiar. Everything else has marched on, has changed, has aged or whatever, but Munson's the same fucking weirdo he was ten years ago.

"Sit down, buddy, stay a while. Though I can't say I'm the greatest host. Don't get paid until Friday, so it's just cheez whiz keeping me goin' mostly. Hell, half of this place might be held together by cheez whiz."

Steve thinks it's probably a joke, that all he's eating is processed cheese, but he wouldn't be surprised. Munson looks sallow and skinny. Not a lick of muscle on him, and he's wearing a pit-stained wifebeater and little denim shorts. Anywhere his skin's not sickly green with fading tattoos, he's so pale it's almost blinding and purple-veined under his red-rimmed eyes, and Steve's not stupid. He does this for a living, watching people hollow down to nothing and then snuff out, and he can see pretty clearly when someone's one foot in the grave. It's not even the virus that does it usually, it's the compounding trauma of it all, the drugs, the loss, the slow starvation both literal and spiritual.

He doesn't even like Munson much, doesn't know him too well and barely did back then, but it's--it's sad. It's heart-breaking.

He wonders if one of Munson's support group is already lined up to sit beside him at the end.

Steve's looking at him rocking in the rocker beside Henry the six foot cactus, little tinsel pieces blowing cheerily in the breeze, and can't even fucking think about it.

"Sit, Harrington, sit, sit," he insists when the silence stretches, and Steve's still standing on the stairs. "You're giving me the willies just staring at me all puppy-dog eyed. I'm not going to keel over tonight. Sit down! Sit!"

Steve sits. The plastic chair groans ominously.

"You've got a lot of plants," he says for want of something to say.

"This? Naw, this ain't anyhing. You should see what I have growing over the ridge in that cornfield."

He's high right now, Steve notices, hard to tell how wide his pupils are with eyes that dark, but he's got this molasses slurred energy to his movement that is unmistakable. Steve gets drug tested too often at work to smoke much these days, and it feels a little desperate to do alone anyway, like an admission that his life's shit enough to need to get high to escape. He thinks like, what do people do when they hang out anymore? What do people say?

"I like your… bell things," says Steve.

"Ah, they're handmade."

"Cool, cool. How's um… life?"

Munson laughs at him. More like cackles, rocking back and forth in the chair slapping his knees.

"I live in my dead uncle's falling down trailer," he wheezes. "I'm thirty whole years old and work washing dishes and have two bucks to my name. I sell coke to high schoolers out of a van. My best friend is a cactus. I'm dying of the virus one day at a time. You know man, it's peachy. How's your life, then? Successful, I bet, Mr. Bigshot. Fancy medical career. Cute little family. Picket fence."

It's Steve's turn to laugh, feeling the surreality of how off base Munson is.

"Naw man," he says shaking his head. "None of that. Life's just…" He shakes his head some more, runs his hand along his buzzed scalp. It still feels weird to skim his hands along soft peachfuzz. "It's lonely, I guess."

Munson makes a face, watching his hands.

"Why'd you buzz it?" he asks, and Steve grins, knowing he'll get a kick out if it.

"Started going bald."

"No shit!"

"Yeah, no shit."

Not too badly yet, but it had felt a little pathetic, watching his hair thin in the mirror and clinging to it as some kind of. Immutable piece of his identity. Some kind of symbol. What it symbolized, he's got no clue, but it's in the past now, it's over and done.

"Your mullet is really showing me up, Munson," Steve says and gets an eyebrow waggle and a dramatic shake of his hair in return.

"Read it and weep, Baldy."

Munson waves at a neighbor walking her dog, and she waves back cheerily. There's a mockingbird yelling out repeating bird calls from somewhere nearby, a pair of wasps flitting about in the eaves of the trailer, and a big, ugly thunderhead cruising the summer sky. The air smells like ozone and cut grass and the tar cooking in the asphalt, and Steve's realizing he doesn't really know how to talk to someone who's dying but not actively.

Not that it's always a death sentence. The virus.

There's plenty of treatments now, experimental and otherwise. No cure yet but maybe soon. Steve's seen it enough times to know the virus doesn't really discriminate either. It takes gay and straight the same way in the end.

He wonders about Munson. Is he–? But then, it's none of his business really. Still, he remembers being eighteen and thinking he'd like to bite down on the white pudge of Eddie Munson's inner thigh and chew on the taut tendon there like a chicken wing. And yeah, he thinks that's still as messed up as it was then. And he still wants to, probably.

"You heard from the kids lately?" Munson asks. It surprises him.

"Hardly kids anymore," says Steve. "You haven't?"

"Not really," he says, nabbing a Zippo from one of Henry's branches to light a cigarette. "Not in a while."

It surprises him. He figured, out of all of them, Munson had the biggest chance of keeping up with at least some of them. Half because he always acted like he'd stay a kid forever himself. Peter Pan to their lost boys.

"They're OK, I think," he says. "Moved on. It's been a while for me too."

Munson looks at him, and his big eyes are all sad and wet. Or he's just really high.

Steve doesn't know what he's doing here, not really. It feels like a fragment of another life. One where he's Eddie Munson's old buddy, catching up after years apart, and it's a Wednesdsy in July with evening creeping in and he's got most of his shit together and knows what he's doing with his life.

"You want me to go pick us up some food?" Steve asks, clearing his throat, and doesn't ask you been eating, man?

"If you're paying, I'll pick it up."

"You're trashed."

"Driven worse," Munson shrugs, and he's up, keys slinging around his fingers before Steve can protest. "I'll go to Skeeter's down the road. Gimme your wallet."

He makes grabby hands, and Steve, the idiot, slaps his worn wallet into his waiting palm.

"Just as easy as that?" he says, guffawing. "Give the broke, ailing druggie trailer trash your credit card?"

Steve just kinda figures Munson's decent. It's been a while, but he can't have changed too drastically and he seemed decent back then too. Steve thinks of Munson sitting quietly beside a dying stranger this morning and thinks maybe that's not something someone would do if they were a bad person, but hell, he could be wrong.

Maybe stealing someone's credit card when you're flat broke with some very expensive drugs the only thing keeping you alive has nothing to do with being a good or bad person. Maybe Steve's just kind of an idiot.

"Get a lava cake too," he says. "My treat."

"You're a decent guy, Nurse Harrington," says Munson. "Not too bright, but you're decent."

"I could be waiting to rob you blind."

"Oh," he coos like one would at a pig-tailed toddler. He taps with a long finger against Steve's forehead. "Lights are all on but no one's home. Good luck scrounging anything up in there. Like I said. Cheese whiz."

The beat up van squeals away into the settling evening.

The mosquitos have stormed out in force as dusk sets in, Munson's scrawny little plant not quite enough to hold back the hordes, so Steve lets himself into the trailer, hoping maybe because Munson said that stuff about scrounging around that he's not overstepping a boundary.

Munson wasn't lying about the cheese whiz.

Not that it's being used like glue to hold together bits of crumbling infrastructure or caulked along the baseboards or whatever but that a siingular can of the stuff, plus some assorted condiments and a weirdly fuzzy pickle floating in a half empty jar of brine, are the only things in the fridge. Plus, a handful of Budweisers in the door.

The trailer otherwise is atrociously cluttered, a loose spill of eclectic detritus. Dirty laundry and crusty dishes and a whole lot of loose cassette tapes and dog-eared books with wizards and unicorns on the covers. Prayer flags strung across the ceiling and posters slathered on the walls. A privacy bead curtain to the back bedroom. Some illicit drug paraphernalia intermingling with pill bottles.

He picks one up to read the label and recognizes it, then starts picking out all the little bottles from the clutter and setting them together on top of the magazines on the coffee table.

He's got most of the full ones arranged together when Munson busts through the door with a doggy bag.

"If you want some real fun drugs, I've got some in the back," he says. "Those aren't really any good to snort."

"Sorry, sorry," says Steve, pulling his hands away.

"No, you're fine. I do have a system but it's a bit. Chaotic. Probably would make a good little nurse like you cringe."

"Some of these are expired," says Steve. "Are you taking them? What's your viral load?"

"Buy a fella a drink first, golly!" Munson presses his hand to his chest in mock offense. "You don't have to mother hen me. I'm a big boy. I've had this thing for years, and it hasn't got me yet."

"Sorry," Steve says again.

They go back out onto the porch with dinner and some cold beers. Two dozen wings and a thing of large fries. Munson plugs in an electric bug zapper, immediately glowing and crackling with vanquished mosquitoes and moths and craneflies.

Skeeter's is a dive bar, but their wings are still as damn good as Steve remembers. Eating wings is messy as shit, and Munson forgot napkins but drags out some bandanas from some musty drawer in his trailer. After a while, they both get tired of playing polite and wipe their mouths with the back of their hands and gnaw shamelessly on the gristle of spent bones they drop to the weathered porch.

It's full night and it's summer and it doesn't quite feel like real life. Munson lights a cigarette, and the ember of it hovers like a glowing eye in the crook of his fingers, pulsating.

The flickering orange of the streetlight doesn't quite reach onto the shadow of the porch, and Steve looks at Munson leaning in the rocker with his legs sprawled out and thinks about his unrealized boyhood fantasy. Of slumping on his knees between the guy's legs and–

It's not hard to imagine that maybe it's still '86, and Steve's burning up with energy that has nowhere to go, untethered from whoever he used to be with no real way forward. Still pretty sure there is a way forward, a tomorrow, a next chapter where something good happens. Something not awful at least. No more monsters, no more bloodshed, just– a life. Love. Something fulfilling and peaceful enough and–

He slips down off the shitty chair and onto his knees on the porch. It hurts like a punch up through his joints. He's not even thirty, and he's old as shit and not even happy and well-adjusted. He wants to whine about it, scream about it. Munson's thirty, and he might not make thirty-five. He wants to scream. He wants to–

"Munson," he says, because the guy's got his head tipped sideways with the cigarette dangling on his lips, looking at him like he's insane. "Muns– Eddie," he says. "Eddie, is it chill if I– I don't know. I've always wanted to– Can I– you got condoms?"

"Steve," says Eddie and touches his buzzed head with his fingertips like he's checking if he's real. "Steve, did you really just ask if it's chill to suck my dick?"

"Yeah. I guess."

It's weird. It's like a dream. Eddie gets a condom and shimmies his shorts down his bony, weird legs and drops back in the rocking chair. Steve's been sitting there on his heels the whole time he scrounged through his trailer. Like a pet, waiting.

"Are you even gay?" Eddie asks.

"Are you?"

"I've got the virus, Steve-o."

"So? Lots of people do. It's not a gay disease. It's not the act of a vengeful God. There's nothing wrong with being gay. There's nothing wrong with either of us."

He kisses Eddie on the inside of his thigh just past his knee when he says it and the skin is so soft under the firm touch of his lips that he regrets how bad his fresh shave is going to burn.

"That's very sweet, Steve. Real cute. But you're sucking some random guy's dick in a trailer park, and I'm high enough that I'm feeling kinda nervous with Henry watching. There are a few things wrong with us."

"Don't be nervous," Steve says and smooths both palms down his bare legs.

"Sweet as sugar, I'm telling you."

The hair on his legs is fine, barely there, but Eddie's pubic hair is coarse and thick and Steve's not too sure he's showered recently. Which should be gross really, should be a lot of things, but it mostly makes Steve want to pick him up by the scruff of his neck like a kitten and wash him off under the trickle of the kitchen sink.

He hasn't really sucked a dick before, just thought about it a lot and he's watched a few pornos. It seems straight-forward enough. Eddie's penis is right there and not really that hard yet, nestled snug against his balls in coarse hair. He's uncut, a little shine of fluid hanging at the blunt tip pushing beneath the hood of his foreskin, and it seems like it would fit pretty decent against the roof of his mouth. It's cute even. A little tough to see in the faint light, so Steve plants his palms on Eddie's knees and spreads him wider to look.

He bends close enough that Eddie must feel his breath. In his old fantasies, he lapped at him in slow licks like a dog, savoring the taste.

Eddie flicks him in the center of the forehead.

"Condom, you ding-dong."

"Right, yeah, right."

Munson pulls at himself, a harsh, weird tugging in a way that hardens him up fast. Steve skirts his fingers along the back of Eddie's knuckles as he does it. It's fast enough that the condom goes on smooth in no time, and then Steve's fingers curl to take his place. Latex shifts under his grip, dulls the heat but not the weight of it, and Eddie sighs and shifts up and the rocker tips back.

Steve puts his mouth over his covered erection and tastes rubber, mostly. It doesn't fit as nice in his mouth as it would have flaccid, but he rubs the head back and forth against the ridge behind his teeth and a little further. Real careful.

"What's gotten into you anyway? Jesus."

Maybe Munson's sobering up. Steve looks up at him through his lashes, and Eddie swears a colorful string of really made up cursewords and then bites his own fingers to keep quiet.

It's barely 10PM. There's kids living nearby probably. Little old ladies. Or maybe there's worse stuff someone could hear past dark in a neighborhood like this one.

Steve takes Eddie's dick most of the way down his throat.

"You into death, Harrington?" Eddie gasps. "You into like. Dying people. You never looked once at me before. You into finishing the job? Because you are literally killing me right now."

Steve pulls off.

"It's not like that," he says. "I looked at you all the time. Before this. I wanted to do all kinds of stuff."

"Oh," says Eddie. "Like what stuff?"

"Like this."

Steve leans past his stiff dick into the shadow of his gaunt pelvis and presses his mouth against the crook of his thigh. It's as doughy and soft as he imagined, probably fish-belly white too beyond the wiry hair, and Steve opens his mouth and bites. Eddie rocks up, the tendon in his teeth flexing into a taut cord and his cock jumps hard against Steve's cheek.

"Holy Christ, you're a fucking weirdo," Eddie chokes out.

It makes Steve feel a little dizzy, like he's seeing double vision. His decade old fantasy of biting at some vital, thrumming, secret part of wild-eyed, crazy-haired, full of life Eddie Munson blurring with the Eddie who's cast in shadow on a warped porch, pantsless, bare ass on his rocker, sauce-stained wife beater shrugged up his little pudge of a belly, bright yellow condom glowing in the dark.

"I don't know why I wanted to do that so bad," Steve says, muffled as he kisses up Eddie's twitching belly. He twists his fingers around the base of his dick and rubs up and down a few times just to watch Munson arch his back against the chair. "Hey, the condom glows in the dark."

"You just noticed?"

"Looks a little radioactive."

"That's only how it looks in movies."

"You sure?"

"This place is not a place of honor," Eddie gasps, rolling his hips up against Steve's hand.

"Huh?"

"It's… nevermind. You're a weirdo, Steve Harrington. You're a real weirdo."

"Is this what dirty talk for losers is like?"

Eddie skims his buzzed hair with both hands. He holds them there and tugs his head up, looking. The orange streetlight glow catches in his black eyes and hides the dark bags under them, accentuates the groove of wrinkles at the frown of his lips. He's damn pretty. Steve wants to lap him clean and chew on him some more.

"Guys like me are shunned for a reason, you know. I'm worse than a freak now. I'm a ticking time bomb. I could take anyone who gets close enough to love me down with them."

"Oh I love you now?" Steve jokes, and Eddie doesn't laugh. He's sober.

"It's dangerous, Steve. You should stop."

"Are you telling me to stop?"

"No. I'm saying you should want to."

"I don't want to."

He wraps his lips back around Eddie's dick.

With his eyes open, he can blurrily watch the bright yellow glow of the condom dim and brighten as he moves. The light looks sickly against Eddie's soft belly and thighs. Steve thinks danger.

He wants to ask if he knows who gave it to him, but knows that's rude and also not very sexy. They're probably dead now. It's not a very sexy thought at all, but Steve pushes the heel of his hand against the front of his jeans and rocks into it. He's not sure what comes next in his old fantasy. Suckle at Eddie Munson's inner thigh and then– And then, he–

Like all his dreams, they evaporate into thin air before the end. He still doesn't know what he wants to do with his life. He still can't get a handle on what he even likes. Does he like nursing people through the very end of their lives? Is it just a thing he fell into by chance and keeps doing because he doesn't have any clue what else there is?

If he'd been braver ten years ago and actually got to sucking Eddie's dick when his knees still worked perfectly and nobody was sick, what would have happened? Would it have been just once, a quickie, a satisfying good time but that's it, that's that? Would they have have had some gross whirlwind romance, caught up in each other, acting like lovebirds, overflowing, sticky-sweet and disgusting? Would they have been lovers, calling each other baby and sweetheart and pookie, standing against a world that goddamn hated them like nothing else, but all of it a little more tolerable and meaningful together, maybe? Would they have crashed and burned, Steve too indecisive and scattered, Eddie too wild child and unstable and hungry for the whole world, for fame and sex and drugs and all of it boiling up and ending quick and bright and permanent?

None of that would have passed his mind back then. He'd only seen people die blood and messy and sudden, not slow and inevitable with a little breath of relief.

"Steve," sighs Eddie, fingers digging into his scalp like he's trying to grip at his hair. "Steve, Steve, Steve."

Steve hollows his cheeks and tries to make it good for him. He really hopes it's good for him even it never happens again. Not like. For truly morbid reasons, but he supposes that's always possible too. That Eddie just dies. That he conks out and snuffs it.

It sucks. It makes him pull harder with suction at the dick in his mouth, moving his tongue with more determined purpose, laving along the latex-covered condom. He imagines the yellow glow staining his cheeks and tongue and hands. He wants it to. It's silly.

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," swears Eddie and bucks his hips and goes taut, riding out the wave of an orgasm. Steve feels it as a warm weight pulsing against the skin of the condom held against his tongue. It's weird not to taste it, feel it. He rubs his palm against his own cock trapped in his jeans, and it only takes a second before he's coming off too. Maybe it's been a while. He leans his forehead against Eddie's bare thigh and gasps his way through it.

Eddie pushes him back and pinches the condom off and ties it, flinging it away somewhere out into the grass. Steve wonders how safe or sanitary that is but doesn't comment. He doesn't think wandering stray dogs or raccoons can get HIV. Probably. It's maybe just as gross as anything else about Eddie's life.

"You good?" Eddie asks and cradles his head in his hand. His dick's gone limp and small and spent against his pale thigh.

"Lava cake," says Steve. His lips feel dry from the latex and the lava cake is still sitting at the bottom of the doggy bag and the porch is covered in scattered chicken bones and Steve's knees hurt something awful.

"It'll be cold. Just a big brownie."

"Still chocolate," he says. "I don't care."

"You're really weird," says Eddie. "If I haven't said it before."

"Life's weird," he says. Eddie Munson's eyes shine.

"Yeah," says Eddie, fishing the bag of lava cake off the porch, still pantsless and sweaty. "Yeah, you're damn right about that.

They eat chocolate cake together with the bugzapper zinging overhead and a dog barking somewhere over the horizon and the streetlight glow haloing their bent heads. They lick chocolate from their fingers and then each other's fingers.

It's July. It's past midnight in a nowhere trailer park in bumfuck Indiana. It's ten years ago and it's the future.

Maybe five years on, Steve's holding Eddie Munson's hand while he finally dies after weeks, months, years of wasting away to nothing.

Or maybe not.

Or maybe not.

[limerental]

ficletober 2022 day 24 (but late)

In the wake of the events on Thanned, Triss receives a final letter from someone dear to her.

content warning for a canonical character death involving suicide, big spoilers for time of contempt. also i fudged some sorceress details in ways that may minorly contradict canon but frankly I dont think canon even knows. I'm cutting this very early in case who dies is too spoilery for anyone

The note arrived in Tretogor tied to the leg of a soft, white pigeon with a plume of feathers along its crown.

Triss knew at once who had sent the bird, as a girl had cared for ones of the same breeding in the personal rookery of the former Rectoress of Aretuza.

She unrolled the note from the bird's offered foreleg and stared at the neat scrawl. Wave by wave, a chill sank through her, as though she were slowly being lowered into a vat of icy water.

If you are reading these words, Triss Merigold, I have been successful in my last act.

Her hands began to tremble as she read on, and as she reached its conclusion, she dropped it to the desk as though it had scalded her, wounded fingers pressed against her mouth.

"Oh," she moaned, shaking her head, and the bird watching her from the sill echoed the movement, plumage rustling. "Oh no, no."

I send this to note to you, so that you may be the one to tell her. So that you may be there for her. You are gentle and kind at heart, Triss, for all your mistakes. I hope you will rethink your associations before it is too late. As it is for me.

Triss felt ill. She pressed her fingers harder against her mouth to still the impulse to hurl. It couldn't be true, what she had read. If it were true, then she… 

Be brave, Triss. Be gentle. Do not blame yourself. Do not forget yourself.

It had been not yet a week since the dreadful events on Thanned, and Triss had had little time to reflect on them.

After fleeing to Brokilon with a mortally wounded Geralt, all her thoughts had been occupied by fretting for him, desperately fearful that he would die of shock or else be permanently crippled, horribly grateful when at last he stabilized and Eithne demanded that she go. She had found herself expelled from King Foltest's service and barred from entering Temeria and had had no choice but to join Philippa and the others in Tretogor. 

She was sharing Philippa's accommodations within the Redanian royal palace with Keira Metz, who had been ousted from Temeria along with Triss, and Margarita Laux-Antille, who had sent all those living at Aretuza, novices and instructors, to the remote stronghold of Ban Ard while repairs and investigations were underway on Thanned Island. 

Thankfully Tor Lara seemed to have stabilized, and the integrity of the island had not been irreparably damaged by its combustion. Whether other damages could be repaired, it was yet to be seen.

Especially now, the words of the note fallen to the desk echoing in the silence.

"Oh," sighed Triss, holding back a sob.  "Oh, how am I to tell her? How can I… oh."

If Triss had not stood in collusion with Philippa… if she had remained neutral… if she had spoken out, told someone, done something different…

Perhaps Tissaia de Vries would still be alive.

Her face crumpled as she held her head in her hands. She felt like wailing with grief, tearing at her hair, slumping to sob against the cold tile floor, but she restrained herself. 

She could hear Margarita and Keira having a light-hearted argument in the main room of Philippa's apartments. Keira had eaten one of the pears that Margarita bought at the market yesterday but swore with less and less credibility that she hadn't. Margarita's voice sounded fondly exasperated.

She and Keira had graduated the same year, Philippa a few years before them, Triss a good decade after. For all the strain and weight of the past week, the three of them got along well, Philippa getting on with all of them as well as she did anyone. Their stay had been somewhat reminiscent of a girlhood dormitory, at least late in the evenings when they tired of political conversation and discussing harrowing current events. 

The three of them talked late into the night, expressing their fears and doubts and hopes. The little tragedies and triumphs of their lives and worry over what would happen next.

"We had planned to vacation in Cidaris this week," Margarita had said. "Tissaia and I. I'll have to get a refund for the house. It was a beautiful place. Right on the water."

"Is it serious between you?" Keira had asked. It had been a surprise to all of them to learn that the two women shared a much closer bond than they allowed the world to see. 

"Yes. We see other people, of course. Our lives are too busy and too long to be everything to one another. But when I am with her… she is all I see. When I am away from her, she is the home I long to return to."

Triss had sighed and cooed at the romantic words, and Keira had made kissy faces and laughed away Margarita's embarrassed swats with a pillow.

She felt sickeningly cold as she recalled those words now.

Tissaia was dead. Triss had to be the one to…

It was too much. If only she had...

But it was too late now.

She sniffed once and rubbed away an escaped tear. Dropped her hands from her face and clasped them before her to quell their shaking. Straightened her shoulders and forced her facial expression stony and controlled, only a small wobble of her lower lip betraying her grief.

Just as Tissaia had taught her, long ago.

With a last long look at the tufted feathers of the bird settling down to nap on her windowsill, Triss turned on her heel and went to break the news.

[limerental]

ficletober 2022 day 14

Rejected by Geralt in Toussaint and immediately failing at the Lodge's plan, Fringilla encounters a drunk and emotional Milva in Beauclair's wine cellar.

This is twn!Fringilla meets book content again so spoilers for the end of Time of Contempt and takes place mid-Lady of the Lake. Contains references to miscarriage and child loss.

"It's certainly not difficult. You should have seen the way he looked at me at that banquet. Send me instead, I say."

"Men are simple. Even simple people like Sabrina can appeal to them sometimes."

"You can't go, Sabrina. For one, you just admitted the Witcher knows you and–"

"I doubt he looked at her face the whole night. Just make her wear a high neckline."

"-- the Duchess is Fringilla's cousin. The Vigos are a well-respected Toussaintois family. Artorious Vigo–"

"Artorious is dead. When was the last time Fringilla even set foot in Toussaint? Who's to say Anna Henrietta thinks of her fondly at all?"

"Knowing her Lady Duchess, that won't matter. She's so air-headed that she's likely to blow away on breeze."

"That's settled then. It's simple. Fringilla goes to Toussaint and follows the plan we put forth."

"Are we certain that this is the most judicious plan? Seduction?"

"Make use of our assets, I say.

"Politics is all seduction either way."

"May I suggest that we ask Fringilla what she thinks of the plan?"

Fringilla, who had been sitting stiffly with her hands folded before her as the Lodge debated, looked up to meet Francesca's questioning gaze. For all that these meetings were louder and more colorful than Brotherhood assemblies of old, she found their content and conclusions the same as ever.

In any case, Fringilla Vigo always pulled the short straw.

"What do you say, Fringilla? If you agree, it's best you head to Toussaint at once. The mundane way, of course, so as not to arouse suspicion."

"So my task is to infiltrate Beauclair Palace and compel Geralt the Witcher into bed with me in order to retain he and his company in Toussaint, while we continue our work."

"Well it doesn't have to be a bed."

"No, any surface will do."

"Or no surface at all, really, if he's the adventurous sort. There's a popular suspension charm that allows a couple to safely hover several hundred feet above the earth for the duration of coitus."

"What happens post-coitus?"

"Pray you're over a body of water."

"Ahem, that's enough, ladies."

"Fringilla, you're in agreement, then? The plan?"

Fringilla, who had become distracted and quietly flustered by calculating the physics and logistics of mid-air sex, smiled a smile that she hoped looked self-assured and not simply awkward. Truth be told, not only had she never seduced anyone in her life, but she had never participated in any kind of consensual sexual activity, drastically adventurous or not.

She could have said so when the suggestion was first presented, but it felt like a pathetic thing to admit in any context, especially seated before a group of exquisite and worldly sorceresses.

"Of course," she said, focusing on the confident inflection of her voice. "As you all have said, it's no difficult task. I will not fail."

*

Fringilla failed almost at once.

Francesca had been kind enough to offer some advice, though she had likely never intentionally seduced anyone before, given that she was so devastating beautiful that she seduced the world with only a simple sigh or smile.

Getting the Witcher into position had been easy enough.

She'd been occupying her free time in Toussaint cataloguing the library and lured Geralt in with the possibility of research. Sabrina had assured her that the library, despite the utterly boring amount of dry tomes, was a highly erotic location. It was private and hushed and the shadows among the shelves lent a sense of mystery.

While she had taken offense to the dismissal of dry tomes, Fringilla had to agree that her most erotic experiences so far had occured cloistered away in libraries. She had had a particularly enlightening experience as a girl at Aretuza with Master Aquinas' Sums, Figures, and Mathematical Equations.

And yet, Fringilla had barely lowered her lashes or whispered a single word before Geralt politely and vocally declined her advances.

"The fault's not in you," he'd grunted, eyes downcast. "But in me."

And he had bid her goodnight and left her alone surrounded by dusty books.

Fringilla knew better. She not only did not have the charisma of his beloved Yennefer but had all the sex appeal of an old dishrag.

She knew that she should report her failure to the Lodge at once, but she already knew what they would say. She would simply have to try a different technique. Maybe he had been in a bad mood or had a touch of indigestion. She could try again tomorrow.

Fringilla didn't wish to endure chastisement from the Lodge as she burned with shame over her failure. Not tonight.

So she did the only logical thing and headed to the kitchens to steal a bottle of wine.

Unfortunately, when she entered the wine storage, she found it already occupied.

Fringilla recognized the flaxen-haired woman slumped amidst the racks of wine as one of the Witcher's company. The dryad girl. Known for her heroic feats in the conveying of elves to safe havens. Said to have exquisite grace and form with a bow.

She displayed none of that grace now, captured in the throes of drunken hiccups.

"Maria," said Fringilla. "You're Maria Barring, yes?

"It's Milva," said the drunk woman. "You're that Vigo woman."

"It's Fringilla."

"Hullo, Fringilla," she slurred, waving with her bottle of wine. "D'you like to hear a damn sad story?"

"No," said Fringilla.

"You know what's sad? My life. Whole damn life."

"Oh I see."

"See, t'was bad enough that my Pa died young and my Ma's new husband hated my guts, you know?"

"Ah, that's unfortunate."

"But then I run away from home and starved half to death in the forest. Squatted on some lord's land poaching squirrels."

"Oh my."

"And on account of that, I owed my life to Eithne when she took me in, 'a course and so I risked my fuckin neck for years and for what? For fuck all. Ain't that sad?"

"Quite sad, of course."

"Well listen, that's hardly the saddest part."

"It isn't?"

"No, see, it didn't mean anything. That night. I didn't feel anything, and I still can't feel anything. I'm all hollowed out, you know?"

"Sorry to hear that," said Fringilla, sorry mostly that she was trapped here with a raving mad woman with no polite way of escaping.

"And Geralt…" Milva sighed. "I was a fool to think following after him would bring me anything but misery."

"He rejected you as well?'

"Hmm? No! Worse, he accepted the whole thing and then accepted the blame. Out of guilt, maybe. Out of regret. He won't even look me in the eye any longer. Not after…"

Quite lost, Fringilla reached delicately for the open bottle of wine in Milva's hand and took a swig.

"You and the Witcher?" she asked.

"What!! No, of course not!! Me and– by golly, no way. But if anything, Geralt is an honest, good father. If anything, he's that."

"Hasn't his daughter gone missing? With no clues as to where and no real hope of locating her?"

"Well sure," said Milva hiccuping. "But he's here, isn't he? He would have been… well. I had hoped he would be… Before the bridge. Before the rest. Before I…" To Fringillla's horror, she began to cry, rubbing the tears away from her pinking cheeks as they came. "Shouldn't be fuckin telling you any of this. I shouldn't–"

"There, there," said Fringilla, handing her back the bottle. "It's alright."

"It's foolish, is what it is. Foolish and… none of it makes any sense. That I would feel like this. Even after… it's not as if I wanted the kid. It's not as if…"

"Oh," said Fringilla, suddenly understanding. She thought of the impossible Elven child swaddled in her arms. The warmth of her, the relief of her cries. She sobered. "I'm truly sorry," she said and meant it.

Milva shook her head.

"It wasn't– I mean, don't be. It wasn't as if it was even real yet. Not far in, I mean. And the father wasn't… was just some Scoia'tael fighter or another. They're probably dead as a doornail. None of it was real. Before it ended."

"It was real," said Fringilla. She again thought of Francesca's babe, who had lived three days before being snuffed out. How Francesca's smile was that much different now. "It was real if you feel it was. It's alright to mourn."

Milva seemed to think about that, really think, looking at her with startled, wide eyes, and then she dropped her head forward against her bent knees and began to cry in earnest.

Fringilla knelt carefully, mindful of dirtying her skirts, and lay a hand between Milva's trembling shoulderblades. She no longer felt much like drinking away her failure. It felt like not much of a disappointment at all. Not in the wake of what Milva had lost, of what the Witcher still sought, of a hundred similar tragedies the Continent over.

The two women knelt in the wine cellar for a good long while after that.

[limerental]

ficletober 2022 day thirteen

This melancholy girl with downcast eye constantly watched me and my intentions. Just before leaving she smuggled our daughter back to the mainland.

Contains spoilers for important plot details revealed in Lady of the Lake but tbh, s2 basically spoiled this already

The mist hushes the harbor, thin skeins unfurling over the lapping water as the ship strains at its mooring. It will lift by mid-morning, the sailors say, and the day will be bright and clear and good for sailing. By afternoon, the port of Cintra will greet them without delay or incident. 

Pavetta knows better.

It is an easy thing, while the men chatter and debate above deck, to slip below and follow the curve of the hull to their quarters. The ship rocks gently under her feet, not so much that she stumbles as she would on open sea, but enough that a tremble of nausea rises up in her belly. 

She has never had sea legs and has had little interest in developing them. Her time spent with Skellige wives and mothers has taught her how each one without exception has lost a father, a brother, a husband, or son to the waves. 

It is an inevitability. The sea takes what it takes. 

She finds the royal quarters dimly-lit and hears the hummed lullaby of the nursemaid before she sees her. The child is cocooned on a bunk, asleep. 

For a moment held by the cool mists on the upper deck, she had feared that she would find nothing but rats in the belly of the ship, but no, the girl rests, her ashen hair tangled on the pillows. Pavetta breathes a shaky exhale and startles the nursemaid sitting at the child's bedside into silence.

"Oh, Your Grace," whispers the maid, her hand pressed to her breast. "She's only just settled. Her rest is fitful, as it was all the past night."

"I know," says Pavetta. "Mine as well."

"What did you need, Your Grace? Are you well?" asks the nurse maid, and she thinks of telling her the truth.

Last night, I dreamed of terrible things, things beyond speech, and woke beside my husband in the dark and feared him desperately. Feared him as I have never feared anything else.

"Come," she tells the nursemaid. "Bring the girl. Try not to wake her."

The maid is only a girl herself, big-eyed with thin wisps of hair escaping her cowl. She does as she is asked without question, and Pavetta thinks to ask whether the maid remembers the last time her own mother sang her that hummed melody.

It has been years since Pavetta rocked her own daughter to sleep, rather than handing her off to the nursemaids.

The nursemaid gathers the sleeping child in her arms without question. Held against the maid's hip in a swaddle of blankets, it seems that she has grown bigger than Pavetta remembers, her long legs dangling and chubby hand clutching at the maid's cowl. She wakes a moment, squinting and fussing and is shushed with a rhythmic swaying of the maid's body, helped by the movement of the sea. 

My child, thinks Pavetta, a strange foreboding slipping through her. My child, you have never been mine.

They take the servant stairs at the bow and rise from the dark to find the dinghy waiting as Pavetta had instructed. The muffling quality of the mists has allowed the little vessel to creep up without detection. Though to her the dip of the oars sounds far too loud, the fog carries sound for miles. The men on deck will assume a fisherman is out pulling his traps.

The nursemaid stares, her small hand pressed flat against the child's shoulders, but she asks nothing as the dinghy grows close. A ladder sails up from the small craft, and Pavetta fumbles to grasp and secure it. She has never tied a maritime knot before, but it only need hold a moment. Long enough for the nursemaid to slip down it into the waiting arms of the Jarl's men and for the child to be passed down to her.

Pavetta does not speak but gestures down, and the maid swallows and nods. She must be no more than seventeen years, barely a year older than Pavetta was at the child's birth. A soft breeze has loosened her cowl, and strands of dark hair fall loose across her forehead.

The fog will lift soon. She prays that if the dinghy is discovered that the maid is spared.

Carefully, the maid passes the child into her arms and grips the ladder to descend. Pavetta is surprised to find the little girl so weightless for all her impossible weight, and for a desperate moment, blinking sudden tears, she cannot imagine passing Cirilla down the ladder to her fate.

Not when she knows what darkness awaits her. Not when she knows–

My child, my child, thinks Pavetta in a swell of feeling as she rocks her in her arms, gripping tight. She holds her lips against her ashen hair and hums with only a slight tremble of sound. Then, hands reach up, and she bends low over the railing to hand the child down.

The oars sink and rise, and the dinghy is away.

Pavetta watches, then listens when the fog takes them. Soon, she will return to the royal quarters and lie down on the child's bed and feel the sea humming against the hull, the waves swelling as the ship sets out from the harbor.

When she is woken later by her husband in the grip of the maelstorm, she will tell him the child was never yours. Will never be yours. 

For a moment, Pavetta tastes the salt of the wave that will kill her. The sea rolls quietly. There is the soft sound of the dinghy reaching shore. 

She wipes her tears from her cheeks and goes down into the dark and curls her body up to fit on the narrow bunk.

She is only a child herself.

Pavetta sleeps.

[limerental]

I'm challenging myself to write a ficlet a day for a moment again this year, this time in October and focused (mostly) on The Witcher book canon rarepairs. happy October!

ficletober day 1 - dijkstra/isengrim hurt/comfort

Dijkstra returns home to find a wounded Isengrim in his study. Takes place 4 or 5 years post the end of the saga, ignoring game canon. content warnings for wound care and stitching, malnourishment

One dreary, autumn evening when Dijkstra returns to his Novigrad townhouse from business in the city, there is a wanted fugitive in his study. 

"So that's what all those alarms were about," he says as he sets aside his leather case of documents, resigned to filing them later. 

Outside in the dark past the rain-streaked glass, alarm bells toll, and there is the distant shouting of the riled city guard. The commotion seems muffled in the silent room, and the firelight casts long, shifting shadows across the towering shelves of books and the great, mahogany desk.

Perched on the desk,a bedraggled, rain-drenched elf is trying to make use of a glass lens contraption and a candle, ordinarily used for late night reading, to assess the state of an ugly wound in his side.

"Didn't think you'd be stupid enough to hang around Novigrad," says Dijkstra, knowing any other human would have his tongue cut out for the insult. He has not seen Isengrim since they parted in Zerrikania a year or two past, but there has been word of him here and there, enough to know he still lived. "Not after that royal decree."

King Radovid V, the impetuous little cunt of a barely-fledged princeling, has been busy making a good many royal decrees in the wake of his coronation, most of which call for the capture or death of one swathe of individuals or another. The most recent condemned Isengrim Faoiltiarna by name and less than flattering but fully accurate description, declaring that he be captured alive to enact a highly specific, needlessly elaborate execution detailed laboriously in the decree.

The wanted fugitive oozing on his desk does not seem perturbed by Dijkstra's presence or by the clanging of alarm bells out in the streets. The noise is beginning to fade as the rabble heads off in the wrong direction. 

"Hello, Sigi," says Isengrim, his voice a low rasp. "Do you have a sewing kit, by chance?"

Dijkstra retrieves a wooden box from a drawer, its hinges creaking open to reveal a stash of medical supplies. He knows there are very few men who could approach the wounded commander as easily as he does, without fear of being lashed at or bitten. He sets the box close for the elf to rifle through and resists the urge to inspect the wound himself.

"You're bleeding on my intelligence reports."

Isengrim examines one of the stained scraps of parchment he has disturbed from Dijkstra's desk, squinting at the messy scrawl.

"Frankly, Sigi, there's not much intelligence in these reports." He picks up another. "This one's in iambic pentameter."

"What are you doing here, Isengrim?"

"Narrowly escaping the city guard," he says as he ties the needle and thread with his teeth, hitching up his ruined tunic to reveal the lean cut of his protruding ribs and the wound curved along them.

"In Novigrad at all."

"Business." The elf's smile stretches into a snarl along the pull of his scarred cheek. "And now, pleasure. Visiting an old friend."

"I can't say I'm pleased to see you," says Dijkstra. "Radovid will make you into an example if he captures you. No pardons, no mercy. I'd rather you left Redania behind. Left the north entirely."

"How sweet," says Isengrim with a flash of his teeth. "Do you care for me so much, Dh'oine?"

There are very few I care for at all, Dijkstra does not say. And you are all of them.

Isengrim splashes a swig of alcohol onto the ragged wound in his side and wipes it clean, grinning to hide the grit of his teeth. It's a deep wound, a cutting slash from a blade, and the candlelight catches on the groove of it. It is high enough on his ribs that he must rely on feel more than sight to tend to the wound, pressing the needle deep to close its weeping edges.

"Oh let me, you stubborn bastard," grunts Dijkstra and beckons for the needle, expecting refusal. Isengrim relents. He leans back, elbows braced against the desk, to give Dijkstra better access.

He presses aside the chill of rain-damp clothing and lays a hand on Isengrim's flank. His body is silk over steel, quivering along the ridge of sunken ribs as Dijkstra works the needle and thread.

"When's the last time you ate?"

"Everyone knows the Scoia'tael feast nightly on stolen human children," he drawls flatly.

"Don't go fucking off right away, Wolf. A night, at least. A decent meal in the morning." 

Stay with me.

"Don't be foolish. If they find me here, you'll hang beside me."

"As if we'd only hang," says Dijkstra. "As if they'd ever find something I didn't want them to."

"I won't risk it."

"How sweet. Do you care for me so much, Wolf?" he echoes, and Isengrim rolls his eyes.

With a last tug of the needle, he ties and cuts the thread. He only knows how to tend and stitch a wound at all thanks to Isengrim's instruction in the wilderness of the Elskerdeg Pass and the dangerous eastern lands beyond.

Dijkstra unwinds a skein of bandages along the jut of Isengrim's torso, passing hand over hand to secure it as best he can around his body. He does not hurry, careful that the bandage lies flat, smoothing it with his fingers. He looms into the elf's space and lingers in the touches as long as he is allowed.

Isengrim allows it far longer than expected. Perhaps the blood loss and hunger is catching up to him. He leans against Dijkstra's soft chest as he rights himself, gripping at his shoulder and using the proximity to hide the wince over the strained wound. 

Isengrim's palm is cold against his bare neck, but the breath they share is warm.

"Only a night," whispers Isengrim. Exhaustion warps his voice into more roughness than usual.

No other man would be allowed to hoist the commander into his arms, cradled like an infant, unless that man carried a corpse. 

Isengrim's breathing evens out before they even cross the threshold of the study. It is likely he wavered on the knife edge of losing consciousness long before Dijkstra discovered him.

Hidden in the silence of the darkened hallway, Dijkstra indulges in a press of lips against his hair.

[limerental]

ficletober 2022 day 29 - yengilla & yenstredd

Attempting to be rebellious for once, Fringilla sneaks out of their room at Aretuza to follow Yennefer. She sees more than she bargained for when she encounters Istredd and Yennefer together.

Contains some explicit underage sex (~16ish), voyeurism, and masturbation.

Breaking curfew to sneak out of an Aretuza dormitory was said to be no small feat, but Yennefer was fairly certain the girls that came before her, whether they were scared or stupid or less tenacious, had simply not tried very hard.

"Yenna," her roommate hissed under her breath, gripping her bedcovers, "you're not going to–"

"I am," said Yennefer as she laced her boots and tugged on her cloak, sweeping her unruly hair into a tie away from her face and checking herself for blemishes in the cracked mirror above the washbasin. The candle on her desk flickered, a risk she had deemed necessary to make sure she didn't have any grievous issues with her appearance.

Ordinarily, she wouldn't bother, but tonight, she had an appointment.

"You'll get us both in trouble," said her roommate, and Yennefer rolled her eyes. "They'll think we were conspiring."

"You and me?" She smiled a mean and crooked grin. "Never in a million years would anyone believe that. You've never done a rebellious thing in your life."

Yennefer twitched the hood of her cloak over her head, whispered several spells forbidden to novices to conceal herself, and doused the candle.

Unable to watch her go in the sudden darkness that enveloped the room, Fringilla Vigo could only flop back against her bed and groan as Yennefer disappeared and silence fell.

"I hate her," said Fringilla to the ceiling. "I really hate Yennefer of Vengerberg."

She was still muttering about it as she slipped from bed, donned her cloak, repeated the words her roommate had spoken to conceal herself, and snuck from the room.

*

Yennefer was not incredibly difficult to find, especially because Fringilla was exceptionally good at discovery charms, even though this was a gross misuse of her knowledge. The charm worked best by scent, enhancing and focusing the caster's senses, and fortunately, Yennefer had taken a liking to a particularly strong lilac perfume.

Yes, she knew what Yennefer smelled like, and yes, this was not the first time she had followed her by it. No, that wasn't pathetic or embarrassing at all.

She had never done this before though, risking expulsion or worse over a silly challenge Yennefer probably didn't even know she had issued.

Fringilla didn't understand how Yennefer could be so lackadaisical about breaking rules here, especially given the way she talked about her life before. If Aretuza decided she was more trouble than she was worth, she would be back to living as a peasant in a pigsty, her magic externally contained and memory erased.

If Fringilla were expelled, her parents would likely force her into some obscure and mundane profession, maybe marrying her off to a husband who could overlook her tainted witch blood.

The thought terrified her, hands clammy and limbs wobbly, and she thought of turning back and lying in bed in the dark trying to sleep but truthfully waiting for her roommate to sneak back in.

No, she couldn't go back. It was too late now.

The corridors slowly transitioned from ancient brick to the hewn rock wall of the cave system beneath Thanned Island. The walls were rough and damp with slicks of underground water, and noises echoed strangely. It was said that the caves extended under the sea, and that there were secret, protected tunnels onto the mainland and into Gors Velen.

She hoped that Yennefer had not snuck out into the city. This late at night, the streets would be dangerous and wild with cavorting hooligans and beckoning whores.

Not that she had ever been to Gors Velen well after dark, but she imagined it must be like that.

But no, Fringilla could hear Yennefer in one of the corridors up ahead, whispering, and she could smell the sweetness of her perfume. The spell she had used to cloak her presence was amateurish, easy to worm through with the right counterspell, especially having clearly heard her mutter the whole thing.

In her haste to smugly declare herself a true rebel equal to her awful, arrogant roommate, she forgot that her perception extended only to Yennefer and not to anyone else that could be with her.

Fringilla rounded the corner and was immediately struck numb by the sight before her.

Yennefer was wholly nude, her skin glowing in the light of a magical orb hovering above her and her partner's heads. Istredd, a Ban Ard boy a year before them, stood equally nude behind her, and he was–

Yennefer faced the wall, arms braced against it, and Istredd's hands trailed up and down the slope of her shoulders, his mouth brushing the hitch of her curved spine. His belly was flush to her backside, and as Fringilla watched, he leaned back a little and dropped one hand to stroke his very erect penis.

Fringilla stared at it, wide-eyed, feeling a strange mix of revulsion and excitement, and suddenly realized, she was standing in plain sight in the middle of the corridor and shrank back against the wall.

She should go. Quickly. She should run back to bed.

Fringilla stayed, watching.

Yennefer muttered something and looked back over her shoulder, then wiggled her hips and spread her legs, back arching in a come on that proved as inticing to Istredd as it was to Fringilla, whose breath caught. He held the bulbous head of his penis steady and pressed it slowly inside of Yennefer's body. By the drawn out moan she breathed against the wall of the cave, it felt good.

Fringilla bit at her knuckles, feeling like she may melt into a puddle on the floor. She scarcely dared to breathe as she watched Istredd's hands touch the dip of Yennefer's waist and his hips begin to undulate.

He moved slowly at first, his mouth moving against Yennefer's back. Fringilla realized he must be speaking, but she could not hear through his more advanced silencing spell. She could only hear Yennefer's gasps and sighs and muttered encouragement and found she preferred it that way. Istredd sank away, leaving only Yennefer, her body a warm curve in the magical light, her breasts brushing the wall, her pretty mouth open and gasping, her belly quivering as she dropped her own hand between her legs to rub at herself.

As if reminded of her own body's needs by the act, without hesitation, Fringilla quickly shucked up her skirts and shoved her hand to press against herself. Her heartbeat beat loudly between her own legs, and she felt dizzy, flushed, exhilarated in ways she didnt think possible.

She'd never seen the appeal of sex, squinting at the erotic drawings the other girls giggled over, not quite understanding the appeal of being penetrated by a bulging, veined organ of that girth and heft, perplexed by the way the girls sighed over muscle bound heroes and mountainous barbarians.

But now, she looked at Yennefer feigning coyness, fluttering her lashes and biting her lip as she urged Istredd to fuck her properly, and Fringilla wanted nothing but to be the one pressed close behind her, touching her soft skin, fucking into her.

She'd touched herself like this before, hushed and embarrassed in the quiet of her bed but had never crashed so swiftly toward her peak, hurtling into a thrumming, nearly painful seize of pleasure.

Yennefer crested as she did, letting herself shout and wail through her orgasm. As Fringilla watched, her trembling fingers still crooked between her legs, Yennefer shoved Istredd back and free of her before he could finish, turning in his arms to kiss him, cheekily teasing her fingers over his insistent erection.

He said something, soundless to Fringilla's ears, and Yennefer laughed and shoved him until he flopped down on the floor and she straddled him, grabbing at his cock to position it where she wanted and sinking down in a slow drag that inspired a pleased grin on her flushed face.

She gripped Istredd's wrists in both hands and dropped forward to pin them, rutting her hips down at a wild pace while demanding he not finish before she said. Istredd had his face screwed up in pleasure, and Yennefer was resplendent, beautiful, moving with a sinuous flex of muscles that left Fringilla awed and too warm and envious of the hands that smoothed down her hips and back, allowed to touch.

Istredd's hips jerked, and his mouth opened and Yennefer laughed brightly, a little breathless, pleased by how intently he was fighting his finish, and then she lowered her mouth against his tensed throat and nipped him once, twice, his whole body going taut.

"Come on then," she said, and it was as though she had whispered it straight into Fringilla's ear, because her body obeyed, giving to another powerful orgasm.

All three of them caught their breath in the aftermath, Fringilla allowing her skirt's to fall and Yennefer slumping forward against Istredd's chest.

When he made to pull out, she held him still with her thighs.

"A moment more," Yennefer said and the tenderness in her voice betrayed her smug, satisfied expression. "If I could keep you inside me forever, I would."

Istredd cupped her face in his hands and kissed her with a softness that made Fringilla squirm, and she turned away, not wanting to see more. She turned and fled, heart pounding, chest aching and reached her room without incident, quivering all over as she tugged her bedcovers over her head and allowed herself to weep.

Not an hour later, Yennefer snuck back into the room, smelling sweetly of lilac, and Fringilla lay awake, barely daring to breathe, until the other girl had climbed into bed and settled.

She did not dare follow Yennefer again but very often long afterward recalled how she had looked in the glowing light, her warm skin and open shows of pleasure, and she ached and ached and ached.