Geralt z Rivii (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
gynvael) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
abraxaslogs2021-12-07 11:20 am
gynvael) wrote in abraxaslogs2021-12-07 11:20 am
Entry tags:
- !npc,
- alucard; the hierophant,
- amos burton; the lovers,
- cirilla of cintra; the devil,
- estinien wyrmblood; the hermit,
- father maxwell; the wheel of fortune,
- geralt of rivia; the hanged man,
- hector; the magician,
- himeka sui; the fool,
- jaskier; the sun,
- relena peacecraft; death,
- sam wilson; justice,
- yennefer of vengerberg; the chariot
[ OPEN / CLOSED ] i think i found a way to kill the sun
Who: Geralt + Various
When: December
Where: Cadens, Horizon
What: Some catching up now that he's home
Warnings: Discussion of trauma; nsfw marked
(( placing starters in the comments below. find me at![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
discontinued or at Noa#1979 to plot stuff! ))
When: December
Where: Cadens, Horizon
What: Some catching up now that he's home
Warnings: Discussion of trauma; nsfw marked
(( placing starters in the comments below. find me at
no subject
His gaze shifts. ] I'm not confused about a damn thing, Sam.
[ The bite is unintended, but it slips through. He sighs. It isn't Sam's fault. Sam is, from what he's learned, a soldier. And he's likely used to it: friends, comrades, who have witnessed the carnage of battlefields and untold losses. But that isn't this. He is not struggling to make sense of a tragedy or some horrific scene that occurred that he needs to put to rest. It runs deeper. It's shaped everything he is, everything he's become. There is no letting go. What he wants is to move forward, without the memories lurking every time he closes his eyes as though they happened only yesterday. He wants to be able to say it was a long time ago and mean it again. (He does not want to admit that some of those memories are new, once forgotten, unburied at last and now he can't— )
Fuck it. He can say it, can't he? (Why should he be so fucking afraid of voicing what he's acknowledged happened decades ago?) ]
When people learn we were made, they imagine it takes hours. A night. [ He finally puts the bottle aside, unwilling to pretend he's here to drink. ] But mutations are slow. If you rush it, the body is more likely to give out. A dozen or so boys went into that room and after several bloody days, four crawled out. [ He hesitates, searching for the right words. ] I know what they did to me. I don't spend my days drowning it out or pretending it never happened. I've made my peace. But ever since Thorne, it's as though—
[ As though what? He doesn't pause long, some part of him realizing if he stops now he will not find it in him to finish. ] —as though I've not made any fucking peace at all. Like I'm still five summers old, and it's only been a week since.
no subject
but geralt also isn't wrong. sam hasn't really ever dealt with anything like this before. not like geralt, not like whatever these trials were meant to be, nothing. so he tries not to assume, tries to keep being patient, because that's all he can really do. his brows lift a bit when geralt says people, then fall as his descriptions continue on. the numbers alone make his stomach turn, but the way that geralt says crawled is something else. he doesn't nod, but sam's eyes do turn to the space in front of him, rather than on geralt's face.
it's not his burden to carry, and geralt's not looking for sympathy. he came to this to talk, came here to share what it is he can't stop thinking about, and sam's not the type of person to think he is just going to magically make it all go away.
the frustration is what pulls sam's eyes back over to where geralt is sitting, brow furrowed just the slightest bit. ]
What did you do before? To make your peace. [ a beat, and then- ] And don't tell me you just suffered through enough sleepless nights that it didn't bother you anymore. I can't imagine that kind of shit just stops bothering. Not really.
[ it's a nicer way of saying did you really make peace? seeing as sams not trying to pick a fight. ]
no subject
A huff escapes him. His eyes cut away. Sam's not wrong. That's part of it. Sleepless nights that have never gone away. They do bother him, though. He can't deny that. But it's...the question does make him think. It's a new thing, to dig into himself and explain, and he almost doesn't want to. He does because Sam's giving him his time, is being patient with him. He recognizes that. ]
I went home. [ Not home as in his world. Home, as a far more intimate place. That's the answer, isn't it? He could go home before, where he's reminded he isn't alone, where the world outside can't penetrate. He was raised in those walls with those just like him, those who survived what he had. People who know him. They aren't here. He's got none of them here, no one to talk to the way he could with them. ] We grew up together. We don't all make it back every winter, but—
[ He gives a small shrug. What the fuck else is there to really say? He could tell them anything, and that's a rare feeling for him. And no matter how close to gets to anyone in this place, no matter how much he trusts them or Jaskier or those who are important to him, it can't ever be the same as his bond with the other Witchers. He misses them. He's missed them this entire time, but since Thorne, since the winter months have returned to Cadens, he's felt their absence more deeply than ever. ]
no subject
home, geralt says, and sam understands. not the experiences, not the trauma, not the shadows or memories or fears that chase geralt in his dreams. sam doesn’t understand the specific trauma itself, but he understands home. and more than that, he understands the urge to want to be around others. for geralt, going home meant being around other witchers, other people who did understand.
there’s not a whole lot to explain when they all went through it. not a whole lot of foundation that needs to be built. they get it, they get each other, and now that geralt doesn’t have that support system, yeah. of course he’d feel lost.
part of sam nearly snorts - if only because, while different, the experiences are the same. sam started working at the va to counsel soldiers because he did understand them. the people he used to talk to, the people he could help, they had the same experiences. they were family. and that’s exactly what geralt is describing. the urge to want to go home is universal, is exactly what sam himself does (did) when things got hard.
but he doesn’t. instead, sam shifts a little. watches geralt shrug, try redirect attention, and then turns his eyes back to his drink. ]
What are they like? [ if geralt looks at all confused, if he looks at sam at all really, sam will look back with that same unguarded, curious, patient look. ] Your brothers, I mean.
no subject
A pain in my arse. [ The note of affection is audible; he doesn't hide it. Whether he notices or not, his shoulders are less tense than before. ] Not as much as Vesemir's, though. [ He's only mentioned Vesemir once, and not by name, but he imagines Sam can put it together. He is not, exactly, certain why he's telling Sam this, but he finds it isn't a topic he's reluctant to get into, and so he keeps going. ] It was only ever him with a handful of orphans.
[ He knows what people often think. About how Witchers were raised. About how they were made and trained and moulded. He knows it is easy to assume he holds some deep resentment over what he'd been forced to become. Maybe he had, once. Somewhere in there, somewhere in years long past, he had. But it's a much more complicated thing, how he altogether feels about it. When he told Sam he can't imagine having taken any other path, he meant it. He hadn't asked to be what he is, but he also doesn't wish to be anything else. He doesn't wish to not have the ragtag family he wound up with.
Maybe that's why it bothers him, that the memories have returned with a vengeance to haunt him. It stirs up what he'd learned to put aside—both because he's well aware it will help no one, least of all him, to dwell over what can't be changed, and because he's...he truthfully can't ever consider wanting to be raised any other way. To be without the people who shaped him since he was a boy. ]
no subject
because it is, in the end, all about family. about the family they left at home, and - maybe - the family they're building here, too. if sam really wanted to think about it, it's probably what drew them to each other that first visit to the horizon in the first place. similar feelings, similar ideas, of home. of what it means to come back, to find your footing, to be where you don't have to be anything else. sam has that, in this house he's taken with him here. has that back home, with sarah and the boys. has that, and can only create that for others, because he knows what it takes to build.
geralt's keep is freezing, open to the elements and the years its survived. but sam could see it even there, something like gravity, like a sun in the lives of people like geralt, like his brothers. a pain in my arse geralt says, and sam lets himself laugh. because yeah- that sounds about right. sam's mind flitters through his fellow soldiers, riley and the others in his unit. to steve and nat and wanda and bucky, too. family carries that affection, easy and heavy all at once, and sam takes another drink of his beer to help mediate the physical feeling he has in association with that tone.
he mentions vessemir next, and sam remembers the conversation. how little sam had known about geralt, about witchers, when it had first been brought up and how he'd called the man a survivor. it seems to fit the image even more, now, even if sam feels something a little more painful as geralt mentions orphans. it's not surprising, he finds, but it's still another piece of information. another little bit of geralt slipping through the cracks. orphans, and yet with that is kaer morhen. his brothers. vesemir. his family, that he so obviously misses, and yet with it that same heaviness he's seen geralt carrying. he can put enough of the pieces together - the memory the mage pulled free, what geralt told him about the mutations, the mentions of home and how something as simple as family can lift some of that tension in geralt's shoulders.
somewhere, in the back of sam's head, are learned expressions. sometimes the people we love the most are also the ones who hurt us the worst and you're allowed to have forgiven the people who have hurt you but sam...chooses to stash them away. maybe for later, maybe for never, because he looks at geralt now and can tell that the other man isn't here for a lesson. not in the textbook sort of way. ]
I bet you miss 'em. [ a beat, and if geralt looks back over to him, sam's going to gesture with the beer bottle up and around the kitchen - where Christmas decorations sit, displayed or tucked or just out. it's hard to tell if the house was this decorated when geralt first showed up, but it is now. ] Christmas- or, you called it Yule? It's during the winter months, when you usually go home, right? [ sam's not assuming this is geralt's first winter away from his family, but he does assume the connection. ]
It sucks. [ a beat, and then he shrugs. ] I know how hard it is when the one thing you want is to go home, and you can't.
no subject
For awhile, he doesn't answer. In part, he's mulling over his thoughts; the other is, he thinks there's no answer he needs to give. They don't celebrate Yule—just a safe return—but Sam isn't far off the mark. He does miss them. He does go home, every winter. It is the one thing he has not missed in his long years. Not only because he wants to return, wants those months behind those walls where he can rest, but because he knows what it says when one of them fails to show. And he wonders if they will count him among the lost this year. If...
It takes some time before Geralt speaks up. When he does, he studies Sam for a long moment, like he's considering something important. Sam's visited that cozy cabin that never existed, he's come by the keep outside its gates. But he's never been inside and Geralt finds himself saying, abruptly, ] Come see it. You've never been in.
[ He isn't sure why he's extending the invitation now. Just seems the thing to do. Like—if Sam sees it, really sees it, it'll say what he wants to say without the need to put it to words. All the things he's sort of told him, anyway, in between what's spoken out loud.
Or perhaps it isn't anything so complicated. Perhaps it's only that, Sam has become someone he wants to share his home with. ]
no subject
for sam, it’s not as regular as geralt. he makes it home for the holidays that he can, for stretches of time when he feels like he’s unraveling, when his parents got sick and grandparents passed away - but he’s also left, just as frequently. years on the run, years where he hadn’t existed at all. years, where he’d been off fighting the world because if no one else was going to change it, he would.
honestly, sam doesn’t expect geralt to respond to it, which is why his attention turns back to his drink, or maybe the decorations up in the rafters, or maybe it’s just the photos they can always make out - either way, sam’s attention is elsewhere, so that when geralt does speak up with his offer, it catches sam a bit off-guard. not in a bad way, not in a negative way. just. in an unexpected way.
come see it and sam’s breath doesn’t catch, necessarily, but he does feel a slow smile tug at his mouth. ] Sure. [ because it’s true - he’s never actually been inside. just to a cabin that isn’t there and the walls around it, when he’d been out of his mind worried, and had to move, somehow. ]
Yeah, no, you’re right. I haven’t been inside- but I’d definitely like to see it.
[ he chooses not to focus, for now, on what that means. geralt, opening his home up to him. geralt, who came here to find him too. that doesn’t mean he won’t later, but for now sam just nods. ]
no subject
The path that winds down the Horizon is the same as ever: domains that rise and sprawl, each interconnected with no rhyme or reason like a mismatched puzzle. His own consists of a snowy mountain trail, much shortened and smoothed out for travellers. The gates and the yard, Sam must've seen before. All the bones buried under the snow. The wolf greets them at the entrance. It's friendlier than it's once been. Less wild, less prone to stalk in the shadows and avoid visitors, though it remains guarded nonetheless with strangers. Sam isn't a stranger, though, so he might get a bump of its wet nose.
Inside is where he really means to show Sam. Geralt pushes open the heavy doors that lead into the main hall. The fire pit and lit torches bring only some warmth to the cold. Much of the wind and snow seeps through the crumbling old walls. Even so, the sense of home permeates the fortress, with ale and food laid out, waiting for those who may not (will not) come. ]
This is Kaer Morhen. Few outsiders see it back home.
[ It isn't real here, so it matters not. He's only built in part, anyway, and its secrecy isn't relevant in this world. ]
no subject
and he follows geralt down the path, through the grasses along the horizon and into the mountainous path. sam catches himself staring after the landscapes, like they were both somehow on some hike through the hills rather than heading in any sort of direction, and before he knew it the snow had started to fall. he has seen the gates, saw the yard from a distance, the pieces of bones sticking out through the white of the snow. the wolf greets them, a wolf sam has left letters with, has taken the time to leave treats and pet every once in a while. for today, he does get a bump of a wet nose, and sam stops for a moment just to rub at his ears and fur. he fits the place, fits geralt, just as the keep around him seems to do the same.
it's inside that sam's focus comes back, eyes immediately on the heavy doors, the large room, and the tree beyond. he sees silver hanging off its branches, and then snow breaking through the crumbling walls, but as if in spite of all of that, there is a warmth. a comforting peace to it all. without realizing he's doing it, sam's shoulders seem to relax. his eyes are still wandering, moving from windows to the arch of the ceiling to the tables and benches and ale and food. ]
You know. [ sam says, in that distracted sort of way that makes it sound like he's more interested in looking than talking, but doesn't want geralt to think he wasn't listening. ] I could see it. You- growing up here. [ he starts to wander inside, eyes still everywhere, like he's trying to take in the entire room all in one go. ]
Guessing the secrecy was intentional because of the whole 'witcher' thing?
no subject
Granting tours is not Geralt's way, so he simply parks himself on a table. He eases himself atop it with his feet planted on the bench below—lets Sam wander or look where he likes. Doesn't need much explanation, he thinks. The state of it, how it's built, the tree that sits in the middle with its dozens of silver medallions. It all says plenty.
He looks up at the snow drifting through a splintered tear in the roof. Yeah. He knows what Sam means. How clearly he's been shaped by these mountains, these woods, these broken stone walls—it shows. ]
I couldn't. [ He's quiet, but it isn't so much an admission as a simple acknowledgment of a history he's only hinted at until now. ] When they first brought me here.
[ They'd told him it was home, whether he liked it or not. He remembers thinking it never would be. Now he can't imagine calling any other place home. Bitter memories and warm ones alike, they make up what this keep has become to him. And the people who are normally in it. What few of them remain. ]
Mm. [ Witcher thing. Something like that. ] Didn't go well when a mob of humans found their way up the mountain.
no subject
( that probably says more than anything, too, but sam's learned to take it as they come - the moments geralt feels like opening up, the times geralt doesn't feel as though he needs to hide it. to brush it off. )
it's geralt's quiet I couldn't that has sam's attention turning back to the witcher, hands in the pockets of his jacket, waiting for anything else. when geralt makes it obvious there won't be any, sam kind of shakes his head, walking over to the table that geralt's settled on top of and settling in the space a little further down. ]
No, they didn't really give you the choice. [ it's all things he's put together, snippets of what geralt has told him and what he's seen for himself. the tension whenever sam would bring up his parents, the comments about how young they were when the trials started. it eats away at the lining of sam's stomach, but knowing how geralt feels about being pitied, sam does his best not to let it show.
instead, he keeps looking. keeps taking it in. the cracks in the walls, the broken ceiling beams, the holes letting in the snow. it's not exactly comforting, and yet somehow even still... ] That what the bones are about? [ a glance to his side, to geralt, with a small smirk before he keeps looking around. ] And here I just thought you liked being super goth. [ it's one of those moments that sam realizes too late that geralt probably has. no idea what he's talking about, so he moves on. ]
How long ago was that? The mob.
no subject
He's learned not to want them, either. To be all right with not wanting and having what can't be changed.
The fall of Kaer Morhen is easier, somehow, to talk of than the Trials. Always has been. He isn't even certain why that is. ]
A century ago. [ Give or take. He understands Sam can likely piece together what that means, knowing how old Geralt is now, only just past a hundred. That he was a child when this place destroyed, and bodies piled up in the snow outside. Though he realizes, too, that it'd be easy to assume most of those skeletons belong to the humans that attacked. They do not. After a second, he finds himself adding, ] Not a lot of hands to help with our dead afterwards. We let nature take its course.
[ Now they're rooted there: in memory, as a warning, as simply a piece of history that can't be separated from the grounds. He no longer gives it much thought, as the years have gone on. It's only here, with people coming by and peering at the bones with a question in their eyes, that he's found himself thinking about it more often. ]
no subject
still, sam is trying to find his place in all of this. to find what is safe to broach, what will shatter whatever bridge they find themselves crossing. sam is trying, sam wants to be here, to hear whatever it is that geralt actually wants to talk about, and if there's a path with less resistence, well. sam will take it. any information about geralt's home is new information at this point.
a century ago and sam shutters a bit over that. he knows geralt is old, over a century himself. but in knowing that, sam also somehow has forgotten. but he does do the math, does piece it together, and geralt can probably see the moment that the puzzle piece falls into place. ]
Christ. [ it sounds a bit like a curse, a bit like a sigh. sam rubs at the back of his neck, aware of just how separate their experiences are. how far apart their childhoods were. there is no sympathy to it, no pity, no weight. just an acknowledgement and then a pushing on. sam looks at geralt again, after that. just for a few more moments. and then his eyes are back on the windows, the breaks in the stone, and the bones beyond in the snow.
he wonders briefly is the reason geralt keeps the bones here is because it's easier to have something to show for the deaths. if it's easier to have a marker, a reminder, compared to what he'd said earlier - about how each winter he goes and each winter he wonders who won't make it back. the thought sits fairly heavy in his chest, flashes of funerals, of unmarked graves.
sam sits back up, like he's pulling his way out of those thoughts. ]
You said you come back here every winter, right? But you grew up here for a while. [ he's not changing the subject, necessarily, but he also doesn't wait for geralt to keep talking. ] What's this place like in the summer?
no subject
The question comes unexpected. Geralt considers it all the same. He sees Kaer Morhen rarely outside winter. Once they're set on the Path, they don't return during the warm months unless it's pressing. Unless something has happened. Only Vesemir stays behind more and more often past the winters, something which none of them talk about. Nostalgia, perhaps. A longing. ]
They call them the Blue Mountains. For how they look from afar. But when you're actually here after the frost, all you see is green. [ He taps a finger idly against the table's surface. ] This place around you is... [ Hm. Not an imitation. He still created it, after all. ] A likeness. You'd be lost in the real thing.
[ Home to him is more than just the keep that sits nestled in the rocks. It's everything around it, too. The sheer cliffs, the thick forests, the frozen lakes that shine the sun back into the sky. A land that will either give you everything you need or swallow you whole at the slightest misstep.
For a few minutes, he's caught up in his thoughts. After a time, he leans back on his hands. ] I did get lost running the trail once. A year into our training. Fell right through that door two days after. Vesemir took one look at me, and told me I was late.
no subject
and a part of him assumed as much - about kaer morhen, about the summer months. it's a bit like returning to your childhood home after you graduate college (or, for sam, after he enlisted. after he came home from a tour). it's home, it will always be home, but outside of the specific time you're used to being there - holidays, weekends, brief stints in between - it still would feel. odd.
he looks back over to geralt, curious. ] What- like this place is bigger? Or do you have some kinda spell on it so not-Witchers can't get in? [ he quirks a smile, like it's a shared sort of joke between them. sam's used to being the "non" insert qualifier here. non-super soldier, no spy, non-super powered human, non-witcher. it's a familiar place, and therefore sam holds no real issue with it. his attention turns to the cups on the table, then, around to the various items that geralt's created in the space, and lets geralt simply be in his thoughts.
there's no rush. never has been. and sam's content to simply look around until geralt continues, and when he does sam doesn't bother hiding the way he snorts a laugh at that. ] Yeah? [ and then he laughs again, shaking his head a little. ] You know, the more I hear about Vesemir the more he sounds like a guy I would have liked to know. [ it is said casually, said easily, because while sam is very aware he doesn't know the start of who vesemir is, but the way that geralt describes him has a fond quality about it. familiar. it feels warm and familial and sam is always drawn to that. just like now. ]
And what about your brothers? I can imagine they got up to some shit.
no subject
Nothing like that. The trail protects itself. If you know your way, you know your way. If you don't. [ He shrugs. Then you don't. He learned to navigate it since he was a child. If he were to be asked, he truthfully can't recall the last time he was ever lost anywhere. It is, more than his ability to wield a blade, what he leans on the most. Finding his way no matter where he is. Weapons can be stolen or broken, horses can falter, but his knowledge of the forests and the land can't ever be taken from him.
He looks a bit contemplative, as Sam says that. I'd have liked to know. They have a long history. It's a complicated one, but few people deeply rooted in his life are not so in some form. All he knows is that Vesemir did what he could, with the best of intentions, and he thinks in a world as shit as theirs, that's as much as you can ever hope for. It's difficult to know if that's something Sam can understand, on an intimate level. Their lives are...different. To say the least. He leaves the matter untouched. ]
Like lure a hatchling wyvern as a pet? Nearly lost a finger. [ There's a sense that Geralt was as involved in that incident as the rest of them. ] After the keep fell, we were let out to roam for once. [ Hard to contain four boys running loose after all that time trapped in a cellar. ] I imagine he considered locking us back up several times.
no subject
Oh so the trail has a magical defenses. Got it. [ it's said with a sort of look, like come on now geralt. really. but then the conversation keeps moving, and sam feels a sort of warm smile creep across his face. the mention of brothers, of family, of a father figure doing his best. he can picture it, with or without all the swords and this huge castle and mentions of wyverns, and it's not a bad. it's all, in its own way, familiar.
sam lifts a brow, grin escaping. ] Locking you back up? Where would he even be able to keep you? Cause I'm pretty sure I was locked out a time or do for the shit I tried to pull. [ mama wilson got tired of sam's crazy teenage years plenty. but it was never anything to worry about. ] But wait- wyverns. Those are what- tiny dragons? You tried to keep a tiny dragon as a pet?
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Geralt raises an eyebrow in return. What does he mean, where? There's a blink before he says, almost too casually, ] They brought dozens of unwilling boys to Kaer Morhen, Sam.
[ Like always, Geralt moves past it without lingering. He makes a noise, as if this isn't near the first time he's had to explain the difference between a dragon and a wyvern. ] Wyverns are wyverns. They don't breathe fire. Twice as common. Half as dangerous. [ Still capable of chewing through a grown man, though. The smallest glimmer of amusement flickers over his expression. ] Don't tell Ciri. She'll never let me forget it.
[ They've moved far from what Geralt originally came to Sam to talk about, but he realizes, too, that maybe they haven't moved all that far. That maybe he hadn't needed to talk about anything in particular. Maybe he'd simply needed to talk about something, something that did not involve Thorne or Yennefer or how fucked in the head he still feels. He isn't sure. He isn't sure, either, if Sam understood this from the moment Geralt showed up in his house, or if he'd merely gone along without question or expectation of what Geralt was looking for. Both, perhaps. ]
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I don't know, man. This is my first time here. I'm still waiting for the full tour. [ and, just like geralt does, sam move without lingering. the laughter lingers, though, because now he's thinking about geralt as a kid and trying to keep some tiny dragon as a pet, and for whatever reason it's that image that has sam's hand on his own chest, laughter easy in the air. ]
Oh no, I think she needs to know this. How big was it? Are we talking like- dog-sized? Or something tiny and scary? Actually- don't tell me. I'm picturing tiny and scary and I like that image way too much.
[ and sure, maybe they've moved from what the original conversation had meant to be. but as all conversations for sam tend to go, he's not upset about it. not worried about it. there is something lighter and more geralt-like in the slant of the other mn's shoulders that sam had noticed when they first arrived here, something that almost looks like relaxing. almost looks like calming down. and sam - sam fits where he thinks he's needed. whether that's a tense, complicated conversation that neither of them can solve, or it's just. talking about stupid things they did as kids.
there is more that they should talk about, but sam wilson has always been the type to recognize that sometimes the lighter things are just as important of topics. ]
Please tell me you named it. Please.
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Either way, the noise Geralt gives in return is both exasperated and amused. Like he knows Sam's giving him shit, but he's putting up with it, anyway. ]
Later. [ Possibly. He can see it, that he might actually show Sam some more. Take him through the grounds. But not now. There's a place beneath the keep that he isn't sure what to do with, that he isn't ready to face and fix and clean up. And there's a lot he's told Sam already, but this—this, he doesn't want to get into.
He'd rather talk about the idiotic shit he got into as a boy. After, even. When he was grown but still much too young. When he'd thought he had already lost all he could and didn't realize there was yet more he could lose. ]
Hatchlings are no bigger than a chicken. [ He holds out his hands to indicate the size of the wyvern they'd tried to claim. ] Buy me a drink some time. You might convince me to tell you what I name it.
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sam's not his therapist. sam doesn't want to be. but he does want to be the sort of friend that geralt shows off his home and tells dumb stories to and one where they can sit in this home and laugh. ]
I'll hold you to that. Even if you already owe me drinks. I might as well start making the shit myself with how many empty bottles I have at the apartment.
[ it's a casual statement, comfortable and joking, despite the nature behind it. despite the fact the only reason sam's even going through that much alcohol had been what they'd all gone through. jaskier, first - then geralt. then ciri finding out about alina. sam was not a huge drinker, not unless the social situation called for it, but lately...well. let's just say the bottles of liquor had been drank. and used. and drank again.
sam pauses for a moment, thinking about that. about how geralt had found a spot for himself in that room, even after he'd healed. how easily the two of them had fallen into step together. how nice the last few weeks (weeks? months? god, sam's gotta get better at keeping up with time) had felt. now sam just holds onto the smile, shakes his head a little. ]
And how big do they get? If you'd actually kept it.
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They aren't entirely alone, though. It's worth something. To know he's got someone he can rely on. Even if all he's looking for is to take his mind off things for a time. ]
Big. If you're that keen on them, I'll bring one to your house next time.
[ He's teasing, even as his expression suggests he's contemplating the image of it. Sam, faced with a wyvern looming on his doorstep.
Either way, he says next time, and his feet are already lifting off the bench beneath. He's careful as he eases himself up. He didn't come intending to bring Sam to Kaer Morhen. Can't say he minds that it turned out this way, though. ]
no subject
sam hasn't talked about his demons. hasn't brought up his grief. there are complications on complications back home that sam could get into, if he wasn't, but he hasn't. doesn't. maybe there will be a time later. maybe not. becoming captain america doesn't exactly seem comparative, to everything happening around them here.
sam laughs. it's light, and easy, but it does not ignore the rest of it. does not turn away from the piece of geralt he's opened up for him here. ]
Yeah, I'm gonna pass. Pretty sure Magpie would have a heart attack.
[ and then he's standing, too. whether they'd intended to be here or not, sam is glad for it. appreciative. in more ways than he probably realizes. he takes another look around the large room, just because he can, before sliding his hands into his pockets. turning back to geralt. smiling. where to next? ]