awooga

He reminds himself that this is just a fantasy in which he is meant to play his part, like a puppet in a show. The prince may not have taken his body, Geralt had fallen asleep. Asleep, but he is still just a bit player for the people who get to be real humans.

This is a fantasy. Not a quick fuck of a fantasy, but a fantasy nonetheless. This young man is a romantic, that much is clear. He is drunk on plays and ballads where the beauty falls in the love with the beast. Where star crossed lovers kill themselves in impulsive acts of idiocy. A doomed love affair between a prince and a slave is just the thing for a man like that. He will visit Geralt until he can convince himself that Geralt loves him. And then he will take Geralt. 

He will call it love.

Then he will be gone. 

There is no other way that this fantasy can end.

Geralt gathers every last bit of spite and anger that he can into his heart. He buckles it around him like armor. Then he moves through his day, trying to deny the feeling of eagerness that leaps into his throat whenever he hears the gates open. It is just fun. He just needs something other than chamber pots and entrails in his life. That is it. He will not let the man in any farther. He will not feel anything for him.

He is worked into a tension that feels almost frantic by the time the sun began to lower itself in the sky.  His leg jiggles. His palms sweat. He snaps at Zoltan during training. 

By the time the gates opened and the prince sweeps in, Geralt is worked into knots. Yet the moment he sees the prince’s handsome face and unbridled smile, the knots unspool.

Geralt gathers himself before he steps up to grapple, hoping that he seems inhospitable. Closed off. He believes that he does. But the prince still has soft eyes and a soft smile and it makes Geralt feel violent. 

The guards are still watching intently, but are not so tense or combative. 

Geralt forgets about them. He focuses in on the beautiful man who insists on delivering himself to Geralt like the day’s catch wrapped in brown paper.

He wants a fantasy? Geralt will give him one, and he will indulge his own.

They grapple again, and just like the day before, Geralt does not hold back. Now that he understands the effect he has on the man, it is even more enjoyable. There is something darkly satisfying about having the doe eyed prince fall apart underneath him when he presses to his backside and whispers in his ear.

He is a royal, and Geralt is a slave. Gladiators may be glorified slaves. But they are slaves nonetheless. Yet when the Witcher wraps his waist in a hold and whispers good lad, he can literally feel the prince’s knees buckle.

Geralt lets him wiggle away just a little. Just to make him think he is learning something. He lets the prince think that he is free, only to sweep his legs out from under him. The young man makes an undignified noise when his sudden fall is only broken by Geralt’s arms.

Geralt finally sees fear in his eyes when he gets the prince in a snug hold. And first Geralt thinks he is finally afraid of him, and something bitter and disappointed curls in his gut. But then man yanks back his pelvis and Geralt understands. The prince noticed that he was pressing the hard line of his cock into Geralt’s thigh. He clearly thought that until that moment, he was hiding his desire. That he was hiding the lust rattling him so hard that the hinges were about fall from his tenuously contained self control. 

Geralt chuckles darkly and whispers a warning for him to be careful about what he may unleash. Again his lust surges. It is deeply amusing. Even if Geralt could not scent lust, even if it didn’t emanate from him like steam, it would have been clear. After all, there is a reason he is so fascinated by Geralt. There is a reason he is weaving this turgid romance about rescuing him. The romance he will forget the very instant the princess smiles his way, with her dowry and her beauty, and her inherited power.

Geralt feels something crinkle in his tunic and he realizes that while he was brooding, the prince slipped him something. He manages not to react or tip off the guard.

At the end of the session, the prince slips away again, red as a beet, having obviously enjoyed himself as much as Geralt had.

Geralt does not touch the parchment until it is late at night and everyone else is asleep. The guards never sleep, obviously. But they do leave them alone, checking once per hour that they are still in their cells with a cursory glance. 

The parchment is thick and luxurious and smells lightly of the kind of soap that the prince uses. His cock twitches involuntarily from sensory memory.

Dearest White Wolf,

Since we have already slept in the same bed, and wrestled one another in a decidedly homoerotic manner, I am hoping it isn’t terribly presumptuous to now write to you. If I have breached any gladiator etiquette, do let me know. 

Geralt snorts. But his eyes trace eagerly.

The quality of this letter shall be constrained by the fact that I do not know what your interests are or what entertains you, and unfortunately you cannot write me back to enlighten me. However, I am already something of an expert on witchers. So I shall attempt to entertain you with a tale of a mighty witcher.

What follows is an absurd, outlandish tale. The protagonist is a witcher, if he were being imagined by someone blasted on fisstech. Wherever he goes, grateful citizens laud him. They pay him handsomely, and feed him his favorite meal, which is wild boar that has been slain in a fair fight. He derives his magic from some kind of mystical rainbow colored slug.

It only gets more ludicrous from there. Geralt scoffs and snorts his way through it. By the end he is chuckling.

Underneath the story is a sketch of a witcher (meant to be him due to the white hair) fighting some creature that is labeled a dragon.

The letter ends with…

I shall see you in training tomorrow, at which time I shall attempt to prove myself worthy of actual instruction, rather than a never ending display of my athletic inferiority. Do not misunderstand me. It does not harm my ego. I am rather enjoying it. But I hope you will see that I am sincere, and that I can be taught.

Yours,

Julian (though my friends call me Jaskier, and I hope someday that life offers us an opportunity for you to see me as such)

Geralt swears to himself in the dark of the tiny cell. He spits every curse he can remember, in every language he has ever heard.

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Author Note: I think I can share a few more of these drafts without messing up the larger story, so keep your eye out. But a full fic is still coming. I have a thirty chapter outline and twelve of those chapters are filled out with a summary/draft (like this one). So today I'm going to start fully fleshing out the chapters. They'll be like this one, only with more detail, more physical environment, and more supporting characters and subplots so I can fill out an entire story.

I will update the master list and tag people soon so they can catch up, in case they want to read it at this beginning stage.

Since I'm not posting yet on AO3 I miss getting comments on chapters so let me know what you think so far in the replies or reblogs. Though, I will start posting on AO3, probably in a few weeks, depending on my progress. I want it mostly done before I do that, so I don't stress about what to write next or how long it takes me.