[ CLOSED ] tooth and nail, tooth and nail

[gynvael]

Who: Geralt + Various
When: December
Where: Cadens; Horizon; Nocwich
What: Catch-all for December
Warnings: General Witcher stuff, will add more as needed.



(( starters in the comments below. find me at discontinued or at Noa#1979 to plot stuff! ))

Comments

[cryptsleeper]

[Alucard is very relieved that Geralt doesn't ask. He doesn't need anyone finding out that they're fucking around with dhampir blood and the properties thereof.

The dhampir lets out a little snort, conceding the point.]

Agreed. And yet, somehow the most stable relationship of any sort I've had in my entire life. Hardly what I expected looking at him from the other side of a prison cell.

[gynvael]

[ He is drinking slower now, though he's still reaching for the whisky. His preference will always be for strong liquor if it isn't ale.

For a moment, he's quiet. ] I used to assume he'd leave. When he started following me, I thought—a flighty bard, with all his silk and perfumes. He'd tire of the blood and shit that lines a Witcher's path.

[ That he'd tire of the Witcher. It's too intimate a confession. Geralt does not say it. He isn't sure, precisely, when it happened. All he knows is that at some point, he no longer told himself it mattered none if Jaskier didn't show, and started allowing himself to expect Jaskier to be there come spring. ]

After a decade passed, I stopped trying to understand it.

[cryptsleeper]

And here it only took a year and change. [Alucard shakes his head, fond and aware that even if the whisky isn't real, it's going to his head.]

Maybe because I'm younger. Or my baggage is messily packed, such as it is. [Or needier, especially at the beginning.] You're right, best not to question it. Not when it's a good thing.

[That much Alucard can't doubt. But Geralt asked him a fair and probing question. Turnabout should be fair play.] And how are you with the world these days?

[gynvael]

[ Maybe. It is probably more apt to say Geralt is too old, too...whatever he is. He's not unaware most don't spend years upon years in solitude.

There's less of that these days. Solitude, that is. More and more, that's by choice. ]

Mm. [ Good question. ] Not dissatisfied. Could do with fewer problems.

[ Has there been some shit? Sure. What else is new? His baseline for a sort of contentment is, perhaps, more skewed than other people's. Everyone he cares for is safe, home is in one piece. He's not sleeping easy, but he isn't plagued by nightmares. Hell, even Rinwell has returned. For him, that's enough. He doesn't know how to want more from the world. It's rarely given more than this. ]

[cryptsleeper]

What, there's more besides having to have a miniature lesson in another world's religion?

[The question is dry and it comes with lifted eyebrows.]

I did apologize to Ciri for calling her blood extremely gross to taste.