#me: oh wow wait i should absolutely do the regency au with PEOPLE BEING POLITICAL

[janiedean]

fic excerpt for regencyfemdom2020: song for orphans (the witcher, geralt/essi daven)

... so, I’m here bringing you the based-around-the-peterloo-massacre-au written for @regencyfemdom2020 starring my witcher het rarepair of doom which got... very long and I couldn’t manage to finish, so I’m posting the excerpt with the first explicit scene on here hoping that I finish this monster in the weekend or early next week. HAVE FUN.

warnings & such: the original fic is nonlinear so this should be standing on his own, but for context: geralt has just run from the aforementioned peterloo march and went to her place to get help, she’s still a singer in taverns, he’s a waterloo vet and works at a blacksmith’s shop and not making great money and that’s all you need to know for context to get this I think /o\ hopefully the whole thing will be up soon!! for this chapter there’s just explicit content without specific kinks but the rest will actually have some /o\

***

“Please,” he had blurted, “can I - can I come in?”

Essi had opened the door at once, that dark blue dress of hers looking the same shade as that pretty sky as she gasped and let him in, asking what in the bloody hell happened to you, and he could just say nothing as he crashed on one of her kitchen seats, and he still hasn’t said nothing since then, just standing still, blood falling from the wound in his arm.

She had disappeared after he sat down, but now she’s back with what looks like a bucket full of warm water, a rag and - needle and thread?

“Off with that shirt,” she says, and he can’t help thinking that he likes that her fingers are rough, with callouses covering the tips all over, even if her fingers are soft and slender. But it’s good. It’s good, and she smells like verbena and not lilacs, and it shouldn’t get to his head to this point because he knows she’s only doing this out of decency and because they’re, well, friendly, they’ve been since Jaskier introduced them that night, and it’s already a miracle she hasn’t turned her head the moment she looked at him as most women tend to do -

“What the hell,” she says, “is this?”

He shrugs.

“I was at the march.”

“I know that. What the hell happened, that’s what I’d like to know,” she says as she cleans blood off his arm, and he wishes he met her before he got shrapnel in his stomach, which she’s most likely going to notice the moment she’s done with that.

“They called the army on us,” he grits through his teeth. “Should’ve figured that out.”

She shakes her head, hair brushing against his skin, feeling so soft Geralt has to shudder.

“That’s -” She shakes her head. “I don’t think I have words. You weren’t even armed!”

“How do you know that?”

“Oh, I’m only friends with Jaskier and you and I am in that tavern most of my time, surely I would not know the plans. Please,” she says, putting thread through the needle and starting to stitch his now cleaned wound.

Her fingertips are rough.

He never wants them to move from his arm.

“This is deep,” she says, shaking her head.

“Got worse in the war,” he shrugs. “Though at least in the war you knew people were after you.”

“Doesn’t make it any better,” Essi goes on, the needle easily fixing the wound up.

“... You’re good at that,” he says as it reaches the end of it.

“My trade is in taverns,” she half-smiles. “All of us have to learn it at some point. Here,” she says, tying the knot on the thread, “it should hold.”

He nods. “Thank you,” he says, “I guess I should -”

“You haven’t seen the bruise on your damned back, Geralt Rivia,” she interrupts him, “you’re not going anywhere and your - father, mentor, whatever he is to you, can handle it for once.”

“He did say I should not come -”

“And I can see you both care for each other, but I think you need to lie down and I have a bed.”

He stops dead in his tracks, looking down at her blue eyes, which are uttermost fucking serious.

“You aren’t - offering me your bed,” he whispers.

“I am,” she says, “and you need it.”

“It’s not proper -” He starts, unable to stop even if being in her bed right now seems to be exactly the one thing he wants, or maybe not the one but certainly very much so.

Essi laughs, sounding almost delighted by that interruption, before she takes his arm and drags him towards the first room in front of the kitchen where she fixed his arm.

“I sing ballads in taverns for a living, Geralt. I also compose them, but that’s not quite the point. Do you think I have given a single effing damn about property since I was old enough to understand this was the life I wanted?”

Put like that, he supposes she’s right. No woman who wants that life and has it actually would care. And yet -

“You shouldn’t,” he says, “it’s your bed, I do not belong -”

All breath leaves his lungs as she shakes her head, puts her hands on his shoulders and just pushes him down on the bed, making sure he sits - now she’s looming over him, in that pretty blue dress, and he’s shirtless and without his shoes on and she can see the shrapnel in his stomach and how thin he has gotten lately and why the jacket didn’t fit him, and then one of her hands is in his hair, running through it so very softly, eyes staring into his as if she doesn’t find the color revolting as most other people do -

“Do you remember,” she says, “that first evening when we met?”

He nods, all speech having left his throat.

“Do you think,” she says, “I hadn’t taken a good look at the entire tavern first?”

“I - suppose you would,” he admits, “but -”

“And do you think that I would have looked straight at you while singing those lines in that song out of no reason?”

He gasps, remembering them at once. They’re etched in his brain, after all, but -

“That was to say,” she smiles, a bit tentatively but still looking down at him, and oh hell she knows who came before her, he told her something, Jaskier certainly told her more but they’re friends, why wouldn’t he, and all he can smell is verbena and it’s clearing out the smell of blood from before, “that if you think you do not belong in my bed - well, you don’t have to belong in it, but you’re wrong. I might quite like that plan, all in all.”

“You wouldn’t,” he breathes, knowing his hands are shaking.

“Oh,” she says, “I would, and I thought I made that clear.”

“Since - since then?” He replies, quite unable to wrap his head around it because there is just no way she saw him and thought -

“Since the moment I laid my eyes on you, I think, and I should like to correct your very much wrong assumption, if -”

Essi never finishes that sentence because he can’t - he reaches up with the hand not attached to a stitched arm and puts it behind her neck and drags it down, and when his lips meet hers he feels like fainting - her mouth is smaller than the last one he kissed, but her tongue is hot and wet as it crashes against his and her fingertips are rough and careful as they run through his dirty hair, undoing the ponytail and letting them fall around her hands as she drags his head forward, her knees going around his thighs as she moves into his lap on the bed, her hands moving back to his face after, almost cradling it as they kiss, and maybe it’s that he can only smell verbena everywhere but he thinks he can taste it in his mouth too and he wants it to fill up his throat until it’s everything he can smell and taste - no blood, no dust, no memories of lilacs, and her breasts are pressing up against his chest as she moans into his mouth and gasps in delight when he grabs her waist and pulls her closer.

“Fuck,” he blurts when they part, “fuck, you - you want this, you want -”

“I guess I should have been a bit more forward,” she breathes against his mouth, “and yes, I do,” and then she’s pushed him down, back on the mattress, hands running over his chest, and it might be too thin and too scarred but she doesn’t seem to mind as she leans down and trails kisses along it, and then she’s moved back up and kissed his mouth as she raises up her skirt and takes off her smallclothes, and she’s smiling as she looks down at him and motions for him to lay back with his head on the pillow, moving forward -

He doesn’t even let a second pass - the moment she leans down, sitting on his face, her cunt right over his mouth, he buries his face inside it, tongue twirling around the soft, wet flesh inside her thighs, the smell overcoming him in the best way as he feels her thighs clench around his face, and suddenly he doesn’t even feel pain in his back anymore nor in his arm, not when she’s running her fingers into his hair and pushing his face in deeper and moaning his name in that pretty, pretty voice of hers as his tongue circles her clit and then moves inside her again for he doesn’t even know how long until she’s sobbing his name as she spills all over his face. He groans, drinking it up, his tongue licking her clean until she stands and moves back, and he groans again as she sits on his chest, smearing it with her spend.

“You - you do want this, don’t you,” she asks then, hand grasping Geralt’s hip, those rough fingertips pressing into his side.

“Yes,” he whines, not caring how it sounds, “but I thought there was no way you would -”

“Oh,” she says, “I would,” and then she’s taking off his old belt and those trousers that really don’t fit him anymore, and her slender, strong fingers are wrapped around his cock and she’s stroking him fast and hard as she moves back up with her head next to his, and he keens when she does, realizing that he hadn’t feel good like this in - in months, fuck, he can’t remember the last time he did, and she’s kissing him again as she keeps on stroking him, and then she grabs his hand and moves it in between her legs and he gasps when he feels how wet she is, and then she’s stopped jerking him off but she’s moved over him and on him and she just sank on his cock and he wants to scream and so maybe he does, not that she tells him to be quiet so why should he -

She’s all warm and wet and tight around him as her legs clench around him and her hand reaches back down and grabs the back of his head and pulls him forward, kissing him again, taking one of his wrist and putting his hand on her breast, and god it fills his palm completely, overflowing a bit, and she moans when he lets his fingers squeeze it a bit, and fuck he’s not -

“I can’t -” he says, “I won’t last -”

“No one said,” she breathes back, “that it was a one time only thing and we can’t do it again,” and - he’s coming inside her at that, unable to keep it in, and fuck he’s - it feels so good he can’t even think, he had thought he had forgotten how it felt and he had given up on feeling it again with someone he actually wanted, and then she goes still and her legs clench closer and she screams his name as she grasps on to his shoulders and he can’t think anymore, he doesn’t even want to, and when she pulls out and swears under her breath and moves over and sits on his face he immediately moans against her cunt again before putting his mouth on it, his tongue licking her clean as she moans and screams his name above him, and he can barely feel any pain at all by now as he presses his head in deeper and lets his tongue run over her cunt hoping that she comes on his face again soon, and when she does not long later, fingers running through his hair and telling him she’s this close just before she peaks, long and hard and right over his face and mouth, he just knows that if she really meant it before, if she wants him to belong in her bed -

Maybe he might really never leave it.

He certainly won’t right now, and he won’t for a very, very long time.