I made a mistake in the formatting of this when I edited on Christmas eve, and only discovered/fixed it a couple of days ago! Woe. So, if you read it earlier, I'm so sorry there were no section breaks! It did have them originally, I just fail at html. *face palm*

Anyway, this was for destina. Whose prompt was: I'm going to be honest with you, Yuletide writer: what I want here is some lovely and emotional Damen/Laurent porn. Porn, porn, porn. Preferably set at some future point, after their first night together in Book 2. This is why I was so gleeful when I got my assignment!

So there's lot of porn, but you have to read the plot to get there!

Many, many thanks to the wonderful girl_wonder who read my draft outline and first and second drafts, and whose betaing was a HUGE help!

Two Princes (16507 words) by Signe
Chapters: 3/3
Fandom: Captive Prince - S. U. Pacat
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Damen/Laurent (Captive Prince)
Characters: Damen (Captive Prince), Laurent (Captive Prince), Nikandros, Jord (Captive Prince)
Additional Tags: Canon Compliant
Summary: Their rendezvous was at noon.

(Only on AO3 as I'm too lazy to make it fit LJ.)

A few notes on the story (spoilers for the story).

Obviously, given the prompt, porn was the aim! Lots of porn!! I wanted to set the sex scenes as soon as possible after book 2, for the maximum emotional impact (given that Damen's identity is now out*), and so that there could be an emotional arc during the sex itself, not just sex for the sake of it. So I had to find a way to get them to their rendezvous on time, in a position of some strength so that they weren't busy fleeing from the Regent which would have made any porn feel out of place (sort of 'we're running for our lives, but no worries, we can stop for a couple of hours of sex'). So Laurent had riden off with 120 men, and I kept coming up against the idea of how he could actually achieve anything with so few men. I had to assume from the end of book 2 that he was going to Fortaine - if I remember correctly, it's not stated, but implied - but that he was extremely unlikely to turn Guion to his side. So the best he could hope for with so few men, going up against a fort full of reinforcements for the Regent, would be to beseige it. I spent about a week going 'argh, how the hell does anyone hold a seige, let alone take a heavily fortified castle, with so few men?'

So I read all the references I could find on medieval warfare, and bits of The Art of War (anyone familiar with it will spot a strategy at the end of the battle of Charcy). Anyway, I liked to think that there were still some parts of Vere loyal to him, if only for the sake of his brother, so I thought men from the Marches could have arrived by sea, especially given Laurent's forward planning. So that could make the seige more plausible, which in turn would keep the reinforcements from the Regent, and make the battle at Charcy easier, especially given that the Regent would be relying on his reinforcements, and not expecting Laurent instead. But how to take Fortaine? I had to think like Laurent, and so I went sneaky: bribery! And canon tells us they're not averse to using drugs, so I added that to the mix. Which got both Damen and Laurent inside Fortaine, and in a position to talk. Which was all I needed - porn could now ensue! Mission accomplished.

Other plots I mulled over kept involving them losing the battle, and either one or both of them fleeing south - I liked the ideas, but only had two months to write the story, and one of my plots involved Damen and Laurent being apart for far too long for any sexy times, so they were out! But I did enjoy trying to work out how book 3 could go, and it's just made me all the more eager to find out where freece is going to take them - I'm sure it's going to be amazing, and far better and twistier than anything I could devise.

* Laurent's response is my head-canon with regard to that: I'm convinced he knew who Damen was the moment he saw him.