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fic: who knelt before the sword
Aug. 21st, 2024 08:52 amwho knelt before the sword
tags: kaeya alberich/jean gunnhildr, canon divergent, porn without plot/pwp, rule 63, always a different gender/sex, marriage (implied), barebacking, vaginal sex, one shot
status: 2044w, completed, ao3 link
summary:
Her skin isn’t as soft as he thought it’d be. It’s a bizarre thought, made all the more bizarre by the circumstances they’re in — his hands palmed on the dip of her waist, the whole of him buried inside of her — but he can’t stop turning it over in his mind. He’s startlingly aware of the weight of her ankles atop his shoulders, the rapid inhale-exhale of his breathing; the sweat beading on his brow, on the small of his back. The bob of his throat as he looks at her. The shine of her body.
Here in this lighting, he can see her in full color, warm and brown and ruddy in patches. A few faded marks glance across her back and then her shoulders, one spread damningly over her left breast with a sharp, jagged sort of blow. Ashen creases on her thighs stripe conspicuously upon the sides of her hips. Her belly button dips inwards, shadow pooling in the hollow: Jean shifts his weight slightly, and the panes of that stomach contract as Kaeya tilts her head back and squeezes Jean’s forearms hard, pressing pale paler in the shape of her hands.
Her grip pulses once. Twice.
“Don’t move yet,” says Kaeya hoarsely, pressing the side of her head into the pillow. Jean’s throat runs dry; he swallows again, but it doesn’t help. Runs his tongue against the bottom of his canines, pressing the slick muscle to the pointed edges — still, he feels parched. Greedy, wanting: overrun with desire, something that he’d thought was foreign to him all his life before…
His fingers involuntarily flex around Kaeya’s waist. In response Kaeya’s palms slide over his arms, dragging their way to lock themselves around Jean’s wrists loosely like anchors. But he still feels her touch more than he sees her — the writing callouses on her hand across his searing skin, the weight on the bed like the tension suffusing a bow’s string. The swell of her chest as she sucks in a breath. The movement of her back as the sheets rustle. The sense of her overwhelms the grounded sense of her in reality: the world narrows dizzyingly to a singular point.
His throat bobs.
“Alright,” says Jean, thicker than he’d intended.
Softer—
“Alright.”
Kaeya’s grip loosens slightly, left fingers dragging against his wrist bone as she relaxes over him; she pushes his hair off of his shoulder, watching it fall over his shoulderblades as her blood flutters rabbit-quick under Jean’s hold. The ribbon’s somewhere on the nightstand — he’d taken it off, earlier, and stopped uncertainly at the side of the bed, wondering if a glance at Kaeya would have seemed too expectant, as if it were a demand; in the end, it had been Kaeya who had turned around and caught his gaze, instead of the other way around. She’d been looking at the frames on the wall, which the map of Mondstadt had been resting on, right next to the portrait of a falcon on the westward face.
Her clear curiosity made Jean feel off-kilter, like he’d been cleaved through: like he was wearing a crisp new coat, too stiff to grow used to, too essential to shrug off — vulnerable in an odd way, not for fear of being seen, but — like a lion stroked the wrong way. Not afraid, but strange. Watching someone in a place that you’d never seen them before.
We don’t have to do anything, Jean had said into the silence. He’d felt the weight of the metal band underneath his glove like a cold fire and twisted it between his fingers under the leather.
You don’t want to? Kaeya had asked, her voice lilting curiously at the end. He’d heard the good humor in her voice, and with it the underlying expectation that he’d deny it, built on the way that Jean by his own admission could get flustered at the mention of topics that he’d thought were — better kept private. But he hadn’t been thinking about propriety then: he’d been looking at Kaeya, the way she looked in Jean’s bedroom, the evening sunlight casting her shadow onto the floor and over his lap like a weighted cloak. Kaeya’s mirrored ring, visible with a flash of gold that peeked out from slick black patent.
Of course I do, he had said plainly, the words tumbling from his mouth.
He’d been startled by it, unaware that it had been a matter of wanting; Kaeya made it very easy to want her. The want for her had never been in question; it was a truth for which embarrassment was not necessitated. He’d wanted her before; he’d wanted her then.
He wants her now with her laid out before him, the mirrored hah from the bob of Jean’s throat moving in tandem with the sound of her own, the sweat beading on his brow, the small of his back; a want in the shape of arrogance, the thirst to keep her here beside him. Her shadow and his. Him looking, and her looking back. Not a companion, but a certainty.
She reaches for his face with her right hand, movements lax and slow; Jean tilts his head and takes the jutting thumb into his open mouth, tongue laving over the bone of the knuckle. Kaeya’s eyes shift. Her lashes thicken as her eye narrows, darken. The colors of her iris eclipse in favor of her pupil.
Jean’s teeth glance gently against the ridge on the skin, catch against the fattened curve once more. He bites down, gently, leaving the imprint of his bite before she can pull away. She holds herself wound against Jean’s lips. A strand of hair falls into his eyes, and he dips his head forward to escape it, presses his forehead against hers. He thinks he can feel her heartbeat through this tenuous point of connection, where he’s trapped her into him.
“Jean,” Kaeya says, very soft.
Jean hums in response, then lets Kaeya pull her hand free. A strand of spit pulls — stretches — snaps, a minute drop of wetness hitting his collarbone. Red blooms over his chest, his neck: glossy with sweat, vivid with an enormity of need.
“Trying to eat me, Acting Grandmaster?” says Kaeya. He can hear the smile in her voice, but that isn’t quite what it is: not bright enough, perhaps, or some variation of off. Scraped clean of its layers, swallowed clean from the skeleton. Her voice is a little breathless. It’s painted through with arousal. He’d felt the stutter of it echoed through her body against his jaw, just now, when he’d held her hand in his mouth.
“Maybe,” says Jean honestly. He doesn’t feel entirely himself. The dizzying desire to press her down by the wrists and drive himself sharply into her warmth settles neatly on his shoulders with a clarity that should have been at odds with the way he’s out of his mind. Coexisting.
He can. His hands flex. He feels dizzy with the knowledge that he can.
He says, “I’m…”
Hungry. A sudden surge of self-consciousness makes the word die in his throat before he can finish saying it.
But he is hungry. Jean: half-starved.
“Kaeya,” he says, kisses her; her mouth moving against his, salt and water. He moves. His hand presses her back gently by the shoulder, drags the tips of his fingers against the concave hollow between her neck and collarbone. The sides of his knees press into the bed. A sound escapes Kaeya. Jean tastes it against the fat weight of his tongue, sweet and sour and heady. “Let me—”
She lets him. He pulls the weight of her impossibly closer, shifts her to be more squarely in his lap. She lets him. He wants to say something, but can’t — he doesn’t have the words for it. He drags himself out of her, away from her, rocks minutely forward; her fingers flex involuntarily as if he’s shocked her. Her visible eye widens. A alien flash of something hot and smug flashes inside of Jean. He does it again, deeper; rests more of his weight against hers, anchors himself so he can pull himself out and thrust back in. Kaeya makes a low, ragged noise.
He wonders what it feels like for her. It must be different from what he feels, but he knows her well enough to read parts of it: the way her skin jumps when he hits that part of her, the way she squirms when he drops his hand to above where they connect, rubbing his fingers through her exposed slick. That gets him another noise. He kisses her again, though it’s more wet than skilled — the movement makes it hard to connect. It’s worth it anyway.
“Kaeya,” he says again. Mouths at her jaw. The metal of her earring swings, pushes back at Kaeya’s cheek. He brushes it aside sloppily with the side of his face, noses at her overheated cheek. “Kaeya…”
“It’s—” her fingers twist in the sheets, twist against him. They’re so close he can hardly tell where they separate: the surroundings aren’t defined by the objects around them insofar as they are by what Jean can touch, can see from the vague space surrounding Kaeya’s body. ”I, hah, it’s—“
“Too much?” Jean asks, wonders — in the corner of his mind — if it’s too belated. The bed creaks underneath the two of them. His other pillow — the one that Kaeya’s not on — slips off the side of the bed, knocking something off of his nightstand as it falls.
The effort she’d put into sweeping his hair behind his back feels useless now, with it clinging to his sweat-damp collarbones, his elbows, his shoulderblades. But he can still see Kaeya’s good eye squeezed shut, creasing at the corners with her face ruddy at the edges; Jean wants so badly. Her hands are white-knuckled in the dim light. Her head shakes side-from-side on the pillow, blue hair tangling against the case, lips swollen like she’s been biting back her sounds.
“No,” she rasps. Jean’s palm rubs over her roughly, an unconscious burst of strength, and Kaeya’s body twitches as if she wants to bend over with a keen. She’s wet — wetter, leaking all over his palm. He repeats the motion, and Kaeya gives underneath his touch, shivering as her body rises up to meet him.
His other hand slides up her waist to her ribs, catching on the underside of her breast. Her nipples are dark and dusky, pebbled with the evening air. He touches it, presses his thumb against it; circles it, tweaks it between two fingers. Her legs jerk around him; he pushes her knee back down reflexively with the edge of his elbow, steadies her above his thighs. He presses a kiss to the hollow between her collarbones instinctively, the crown of his head glancing against her chin. She makes this sound.
Jean’s not sure he’s been doing much better, though he’s hardly paid attention to what sounds he’s been making; she’s just so hot and wet around him, so impossibly — his nail scrapes against her breast gently, and she clenches around him, causing his head to spin. He bites back an uncharacteristic curse, sensation sparking over his spine.
His movements stutter, grow sloppy. He pushes into her roughly, overcome with the stifling heat, again and again and again, again until he comes in her, spilling, and fucks her through it; Kaeya’s breath punches out of her in staccato punctuated by Jean’s nerves frizzing into oversensitivity, and she comes between them with a wordless cry, shuddering through it. Her nails leave bloodless crescent moons on Jean’s skin.
“I have you,” he murmurs breathlessly, slowing. Says it again, stroking trails of gloss over the insides of Kaeya’s thighs as she twitches underneath him, her hands on his shoulders to draw him closer, to keep him close. “Kaeya. I have you.”
“You have me,” Kaeya echoes, more air than sound. There’s a faint undercurrent of pleasure in her voice, a self-satisfaction. Something that strikes him as content.
She reaches up — Jean pushes his face into her hand, brushes his dry hand over her face to adjust her eyepatch for her. His hair wraps around her fingers like a glove. It tangles around the edges of his ring and clinks against the surface of her own.
"why is the summary literally just the same format as syllogism" WHAT ELSE WOULD I SAY FOR PWP FIC? saying "jean and kaeya have sex" is literally the only possible summary there is because they literally do not do anything else... i don't even think it's particularly gentle or nasty sex or anything so i can't even say "jean and kaeya have [ADJECTIVE] sex" or whatever. it's just sex.
in true pwp fashion though i don't have much to say on this one. there are a lot of deleted scenes (scenes being generous) that i thought about including or just ideas that i thought about wrt this fic that didn't end up making the cut; i feel like the reason why i didn't decide to go with them was i was very concerned about characterization. to ME kj is a ship where they don't have sex, but i do what i must for my beloved mutuals even if i have never thought about writing it before
the first part (like the first 1200 words or so) was the easiest to write for me. i thought about cutting the setup for the fic because i was like this is literally syllogism where i flashback into the exposition, but i feel like, to me, that was the most important part of the story; the conversation they'd had. the flow of the story itself meant that i felt like it wouldn't be very true to their character to be very talkative during sex, and so whatever i wanted to communicate had to come in the before, and i did not want to write an undressing scene like i did in syllogism because i could not write the same fic twice (much less for the same person), so i had to put it in the middle.
generally, i'm fairly satisfied with this. i do think it falls off significantly at the end though where you can tell i ran out of patience wrt writing out sex and made them come, so i do have the intent to go back and rewrite (expound, clean up pacing, etc.) this at a later point in time, but i could not make my poor oomf suffer waiting for her gift for ANOTHER month... anyways, i'll be using she/he pronouns for this post according to their canon pronouns, not their genderswapped pronouns.
personal reference to diluc and kaeya's fight. everyone seems to believe that diluc attacked kaeya's eye and made him wear an eyepatch because of it, but kaeya was already wearing that eyepatch before they fought in the manhua. it's more likely diluc attacked it as a perceived weak point (though he was aware that kaeya wasn't blind there before) unless they retconned it; even more likely he attacked it because the eye has ties to his khaenriah'an heritage and therefore was a visual target for his anger at the time. regardless, i think a blow over the heart is cooler visually. my bad.
falcon of the west (vennessa) as a portrait of a falcon on the westward face? give me the world's most subtle award. i also wanted to echo how the map of mondstadt is also in the knights of favonius office (or a map that i just assume is of mond because it's in the grandmaster's office), where vennessa worked; a sort of setup to their parallel and how it bleeds into jean's personal life, which is so far from personal that her bedroom is her office.
originally, the line was "watching someone in a place that you'd never thought of them in before." this is not to say that jean didn't envision him in her bedroom because she did NOT want to have sex with kaeya. as per the fic, jean very explicitly does want to have sex with kaeya, but simply because she had never envisioned it: kaeya in this space, looking at her childhood bedroom. (and it is her childhood bedroom.) here jean's desire for kaeya is not synonymous with jean's desires FOR kaeya; her wanting him does not necessarily mean that she wants him to have sex with her.
marriage, possession. very intentionally placed when she's drawing him close and bringing him closer, "keeping" him.
> title
already explained in the previous author's note on ao3, but the title is a reference to the knighting ritual (a knight on one knee, the sword placed on their shoulders), and proposal (to drive in the implied marriage background behind the fic). originally, the title was who knelt before the naked blade, with "naked" alluding to the fact that it's pwp, but i ultimately decided it was too much and changed it.
> background
post-diluc return. set in a world where there's no aether/lumine and anything that necessitates them. kaeya is still cavalry captain, jean is still acting grandmaster. in my drafts, before jean had asked kaeya to marry her, she'd thought about asking him to do something for her, so she'd owe him and the other way around, so going in he wouldn't feel obligated to say yes. and then she'd put it aside, because it hadn't felt honest, and asking him to do more for her for this seemed inane, and she asked him when they were alone, leaving her office, and they had left a little late because they had to wait for the rain to stop even when they'd finished their work for the day because jean had given her umbrella to someone else who'd forgotten theirs, and kaeya hadn't brought one because it hadn't been rainy weather, and they weren't in the knights of favonious hq anymore, but still close enough that it wasn't so far that she had lost her nerve.
> personal grievances
kaeya characterization is so fucking hard you guys. what the hell WOULD he be like during sex
tags: kaeya alberich/jean gunnhildr, canon divergent, porn without plot/pwp, rule 63, always a different gender/sex, marriage (implied), barebacking, vaginal sex, one shot
status: 2044w, completed, ao3 link
summary:
But he hadn’t been thinking about propriety then: he’d been looking at Kaeya, the way she looked in Jean’s bedroom, the evening sunlight casting her shadow onto the floor and over his lap like a weighted cloak. Kaeya’s mirrored ring, visible with a flash of gold that peeked out from slick black patent.Jean and Kaeya have sex.
who knelt before the sword
Her skin isn’t as soft as he thought it’d be. It’s a bizarre thought, made all the more bizarre by the circumstances they’re in — his hands palmed on the dip of her waist, the whole of him buried inside of her — but he can’t stop turning it over in his mind. He’s startlingly aware of the weight of her ankles atop his shoulders, the rapid inhale-exhale of his breathing; the sweat beading on his brow, on the small of his back. The bob of his throat as he looks at her. The shine of her body.
Here in this lighting, he can see her in full color, warm and brown and ruddy in patches. A few faded marks glance across her back and then her shoulders, one spread damningly over her left breast with a sharp, jagged sort of blow. Ashen creases on her thighs stripe conspicuously upon the sides of her hips. Her belly button dips inwards, shadow pooling in the hollow: Jean shifts his weight slightly, and the panes of that stomach contract as Kaeya tilts her head back and squeezes Jean’s forearms hard, pressing pale paler in the shape of her hands.
Her grip pulses once. Twice.
“Don’t move yet,” says Kaeya hoarsely, pressing the side of her head into the pillow. Jean’s throat runs dry; he swallows again, but it doesn’t help. Runs his tongue against the bottom of his canines, pressing the slick muscle to the pointed edges — still, he feels parched. Greedy, wanting: overrun with desire, something that he’d thought was foreign to him all his life before…
His fingers involuntarily flex around Kaeya’s waist. In response Kaeya’s palms slide over his arms, dragging their way to lock themselves around Jean’s wrists loosely like anchors. But he still feels her touch more than he sees her — the writing callouses on her hand across his searing skin, the weight on the bed like the tension suffusing a bow’s string. The swell of her chest as she sucks in a breath. The movement of her back as the sheets rustle. The sense of her overwhelms the grounded sense of her in reality: the world narrows dizzyingly to a singular point.
His throat bobs.
“Alright,” says Jean, thicker than he’d intended.
Softer—
“Alright.”
Kaeya’s grip loosens slightly, left fingers dragging against his wrist bone as she relaxes over him; she pushes his hair off of his shoulder, watching it fall over his shoulderblades as her blood flutters rabbit-quick under Jean’s hold. The ribbon’s somewhere on the nightstand — he’d taken it off, earlier, and stopped uncertainly at the side of the bed, wondering if a glance at Kaeya would have seemed too expectant, as if it were a demand; in the end, it had been Kaeya who had turned around and caught his gaze, instead of the other way around. She’d been looking at the frames on the wall, which the map of Mondstadt had been resting on, right next to the portrait of a falcon on the westward face.
Her clear curiosity made Jean feel off-kilter, like he’d been cleaved through: like he was wearing a crisp new coat, too stiff to grow used to, too essential to shrug off — vulnerable in an odd way, not for fear of being seen, but — like a lion stroked the wrong way. Not afraid, but strange. Watching someone in a place that you’d never seen them before.
We don’t have to do anything, Jean had said into the silence. He’d felt the weight of the metal band underneath his glove like a cold fire and twisted it between his fingers under the leather.
You don’t want to? Kaeya had asked, her voice lilting curiously at the end. He’d heard the good humor in her voice, and with it the underlying expectation that he’d deny it, built on the way that Jean by his own admission could get flustered at the mention of topics that he’d thought were — better kept private. But he hadn’t been thinking about propriety then: he’d been looking at Kaeya, the way she looked in Jean’s bedroom, the evening sunlight casting her shadow onto the floor and over his lap like a weighted cloak. Kaeya’s mirrored ring, visible with a flash of gold that peeked out from slick black patent.
Of course I do, he had said plainly, the words tumbling from his mouth.
He’d been startled by it, unaware that it had been a matter of wanting; Kaeya made it very easy to want her. The want for her had never been in question; it was a truth for which embarrassment was not necessitated. He’d wanted her before; he’d wanted her then.
He wants her now with her laid out before him, the mirrored hah from the bob of Jean’s throat moving in tandem with the sound of her own, the sweat beading on his brow, the small of his back; a want in the shape of arrogance, the thirst to keep her here beside him. Her shadow and his. Him looking, and her looking back. Not a companion, but a certainty.
She reaches for his face with her right hand, movements lax and slow; Jean tilts his head and takes the jutting thumb into his open mouth, tongue laving over the bone of the knuckle. Kaeya’s eyes shift. Her lashes thicken as her eye narrows, darken. The colors of her iris eclipse in favor of her pupil.
Jean’s teeth glance gently against the ridge on the skin, catch against the fattened curve once more. He bites down, gently, leaving the imprint of his bite before she can pull away. She holds herself wound against Jean’s lips. A strand of hair falls into his eyes, and he dips his head forward to escape it, presses his forehead against hers. He thinks he can feel her heartbeat through this tenuous point of connection, where he’s trapped her into him.
“Jean,” Kaeya says, very soft.
Jean hums in response, then lets Kaeya pull her hand free. A strand of spit pulls — stretches — snaps, a minute drop of wetness hitting his collarbone. Red blooms over his chest, his neck: glossy with sweat, vivid with an enormity of need.
“Trying to eat me, Acting Grandmaster?” says Kaeya. He can hear the smile in her voice, but that isn’t quite what it is: not bright enough, perhaps, or some variation of off. Scraped clean of its layers, swallowed clean from the skeleton. Her voice is a little breathless. It’s painted through with arousal. He’d felt the stutter of it echoed through her body against his jaw, just now, when he’d held her hand in his mouth.
“Maybe,” says Jean honestly. He doesn’t feel entirely himself. The dizzying desire to press her down by the wrists and drive himself sharply into her warmth settles neatly on his shoulders with a clarity that should have been at odds with the way he’s out of his mind. Coexisting.
He can. His hands flex. He feels dizzy with the knowledge that he can.
He says, “I’m…”
Hungry. A sudden surge of self-consciousness makes the word die in his throat before he can finish saying it.
But he is hungry. Jean: half-starved.
“Kaeya,” he says, kisses her; her mouth moving against his, salt and water. He moves. His hand presses her back gently by the shoulder, drags the tips of his fingers against the concave hollow between her neck and collarbone. The sides of his knees press into the bed. A sound escapes Kaeya. Jean tastes it against the fat weight of his tongue, sweet and sour and heady. “Let me—”
She lets him. He pulls the weight of her impossibly closer, shifts her to be more squarely in his lap. She lets him. He wants to say something, but can’t — he doesn’t have the words for it. He drags himself out of her, away from her, rocks minutely forward; her fingers flex involuntarily as if he’s shocked her. Her visible eye widens. A alien flash of something hot and smug flashes inside of Jean. He does it again, deeper; rests more of his weight against hers, anchors himself so he can pull himself out and thrust back in. Kaeya makes a low, ragged noise.
He wonders what it feels like for her. It must be different from what he feels, but he knows her well enough to read parts of it: the way her skin jumps when he hits that part of her, the way she squirms when he drops his hand to above where they connect, rubbing his fingers through her exposed slick. That gets him another noise. He kisses her again, though it’s more wet than skilled — the movement makes it hard to connect. It’s worth it anyway.
“Kaeya,” he says again. Mouths at her jaw. The metal of her earring swings, pushes back at Kaeya’s cheek. He brushes it aside sloppily with the side of his face, noses at her overheated cheek. “Kaeya…”
“It’s—” her fingers twist in the sheets, twist against him. They’re so close he can hardly tell where they separate: the surroundings aren’t defined by the objects around them insofar as they are by what Jean can touch, can see from the vague space surrounding Kaeya’s body. ”I, hah, it’s—“
“Too much?” Jean asks, wonders — in the corner of his mind — if it’s too belated. The bed creaks underneath the two of them. His other pillow — the one that Kaeya’s not on — slips off the side of the bed, knocking something off of his nightstand as it falls.
The effort she’d put into sweeping his hair behind his back feels useless now, with it clinging to his sweat-damp collarbones, his elbows, his shoulderblades. But he can still see Kaeya’s good eye squeezed shut, creasing at the corners with her face ruddy at the edges; Jean wants so badly. Her hands are white-knuckled in the dim light. Her head shakes side-from-side on the pillow, blue hair tangling against the case, lips swollen like she’s been biting back her sounds.
“No,” she rasps. Jean’s palm rubs over her roughly, an unconscious burst of strength, and Kaeya’s body twitches as if she wants to bend over with a keen. She’s wet — wetter, leaking all over his palm. He repeats the motion, and Kaeya gives underneath his touch, shivering as her body rises up to meet him.
His other hand slides up her waist to her ribs, catching on the underside of her breast. Her nipples are dark and dusky, pebbled with the evening air. He touches it, presses his thumb against it; circles it, tweaks it between two fingers. Her legs jerk around him; he pushes her knee back down reflexively with the edge of his elbow, steadies her above his thighs. He presses a kiss to the hollow between her collarbones instinctively, the crown of his head glancing against her chin. She makes this sound.
Jean’s not sure he’s been doing much better, though he’s hardly paid attention to what sounds he’s been making; she’s just so hot and wet around him, so impossibly — his nail scrapes against her breast gently, and she clenches around him, causing his head to spin. He bites back an uncharacteristic curse, sensation sparking over his spine.
His movements stutter, grow sloppy. He pushes into her roughly, overcome with the stifling heat, again and again and again, again until he comes in her, spilling, and fucks her through it; Kaeya’s breath punches out of her in staccato punctuated by Jean’s nerves frizzing into oversensitivity, and she comes between them with a wordless cry, shuddering through it. Her nails leave bloodless crescent moons on Jean’s skin.
“I have you,” he murmurs breathlessly, slowing. Says it again, stroking trails of gloss over the insides of Kaeya’s thighs as she twitches underneath him, her hands on his shoulders to draw him closer, to keep him close. “Kaeya. I have you.”
“You have me,” Kaeya echoes, more air than sound. There’s a faint undercurrent of pleasure in her voice, a self-satisfaction. Something that strikes him as content.
She reaches up — Jean pushes his face into her hand, brushes his dry hand over her face to adjust her eyepatch for her. His hair wraps around her fingers like a glove. It tangles around the edges of his ring and clinks against the surface of her own.
author's notes
"why is the summary literally just the same format as syllogism" WHAT ELSE WOULD I SAY FOR PWP FIC? saying "jean and kaeya have sex" is literally the only possible summary there is because they literally do not do anything else... i don't even think it's particularly gentle or nasty sex or anything so i can't even say "jean and kaeya have [ADJECTIVE] sex" or whatever. it's just sex.
in true pwp fashion though i don't have much to say on this one. there are a lot of deleted scenes (scenes being generous) that i thought about including or just ideas that i thought about wrt this fic that didn't end up making the cut; i feel like the reason why i didn't decide to go with them was i was very concerned about characterization. to ME kj is a ship where they don't have sex, but i do what i must for my beloved mutuals even if i have never thought about writing it before
the first part (like the first 1200 words or so) was the easiest to write for me. i thought about cutting the setup for the fic because i was like this is literally syllogism where i flashback into the exposition, but i feel like, to me, that was the most important part of the story; the conversation they'd had. the flow of the story itself meant that i felt like it wouldn't be very true to their character to be very talkative during sex, and so whatever i wanted to communicate had to come in the before, and i did not want to write an undressing scene like i did in syllogism because i could not write the same fic twice (much less for the same person), so i had to put it in the middle.
generally, i'm fairly satisfied with this. i do think it falls off significantly at the end though where you can tell i ran out of patience wrt writing out sex and made them come, so i do have the intent to go back and rewrite (expound, clean up pacing, etc.) this at a later point in time, but i could not make my poor oomf suffer waiting for her gift for ANOTHER month... anyways, i'll be using she/he pronouns for this post according to their canon pronouns, not their genderswapped pronouns.
one spread damningly over her left breast with a sharp, jagged sort of blow
personal reference to diluc and kaeya's fight. everyone seems to believe that diluc attacked kaeya's eye and made him wear an eyepatch because of it, but kaeya was already wearing that eyepatch before they fought in the manhua. it's more likely diluc attacked it as a perceived weak point (though he was aware that kaeya wasn't blind there before) unless they retconned it; even more likely he attacked it because the eye has ties to his khaenriah'an heritage and therefore was a visual target for his anger at the time. regardless, i think a blow over the heart is cooler visually. my bad.
She’d been looking at the frames on the wall, which the map of Mondstadt had been resting on, right next to the portrait of a falcon on the westward face.
falcon of the west (vennessa) as a portrait of a falcon on the westward face? give me the world's most subtle award. i also wanted to echo how the map of mondstadt is also in the knights of favonius office (or a map that i just assume is of mond because it's in the grandmaster's office), where vennessa worked; a sort of setup to their parallel and how it bleeds into jean's personal life, which is so far from personal that her bedroom is her office.
Her clear curiosity made Jean feel off-kilter, like he’d been cleaved through: like he was wearing a crisp new coat, too stiff to grow used to, too essential to shrug off — vulnerable in an odd way, not for fear of being seen, but — like a lion stroked the wrong way. Not afraid, but strange. Watching someone in a place that you’d never seen them before.
originally, the line was "watching someone in a place that you'd never thought of them in before." this is not to say that jean didn't envision him in her bedroom because she did NOT want to have sex with kaeya. as per the fic, jean very explicitly does want to have sex with kaeya, but simply because she had never envisioned it: kaeya in this space, looking at her childhood bedroom. (and it is her childhood bedroom.) here jean's desire for kaeya is not synonymous with jean's desires FOR kaeya; her wanting him does not necessarily mean that she wants him to have sex with her.
“I have you,” he murmurs breathlessly, slowing. Says it again, stroking trails of gloss over the insides of Kaeya’s thighs as she twitches underneath him, her hands on his shoulders to draw him closer, to keep him close. “Kaeya. I have you.”
marriage, possession. very intentionally placed when she's drawing him close and bringing him closer, "keeping" him.
miscellaneous
> title
already explained in the previous author's note on ao3, but the title is a reference to the knighting ritual (a knight on one knee, the sword placed on their shoulders), and proposal (to drive in the implied marriage background behind the fic). originally, the title was who knelt before the naked blade, with "naked" alluding to the fact that it's pwp, but i ultimately decided it was too much and changed it.
> background
post-diluc return. set in a world where there's no aether/lumine and anything that necessitates them. kaeya is still cavalry captain, jean is still acting grandmaster. in my drafts, before jean had asked kaeya to marry her, she'd thought about asking him to do something for her, so she'd owe him and the other way around, so going in he wouldn't feel obligated to say yes. and then she'd put it aside, because it hadn't felt honest, and asking him to do more for her for this seemed inane, and she asked him when they were alone, leaving her office, and they had left a little late because they had to wait for the rain to stop even when they'd finished their work for the day because jean had given her umbrella to someone else who'd forgotten theirs, and kaeya hadn't brought one because it hadn't been rainy weather, and they weren't in the knights of favonious hq anymore, but still close enough that it wasn't so far that she had lost her nerve.
> personal grievances
kaeya characterization is so fucking hard you guys. what the hell WOULD he be like during sex
