Work Text:
Uggggggh.
Why.
Why is it that he can fight a godsdamn forktail and come away with only minor scratches and some mild soreness…
…only to wake up the next day with a searing pain in his neck?
He tries to turn his head experimentally; he can look to the right well enough, but the left—ughhh.
Geralt grunts.
“What is it?”
Regis’s voice is distant, behind Geralt and off to his left. His feet crunch dry dirt and pebbles as he moves to Geralt, crouching at his side.
Geralt tries to look over to him instinctively—and immediately regrets it, sucking in a pained breath, face contorting in pain.
“Neck,” he ekes out, eyes still closed.
A hand hovers just over the afflicted area, then; Regis makes a small noise of sympathy.
“Not an injury?”
Geralt remembers not to shake his head in response. “Just slept funny. I think.”
Regis moves down to stand next to Geralt’s knees so the witcher can see his face. He bends at the waist, hands on his knees, peering down at his patient.
“It does happen from time to time,” he allows, “after one accumulates a certain number of decades. Or centuries.”
Geralt’s eyes narrow to slits. “Are you calling me old?"
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Regis drawls placatingly with a smirk that indicates he is doing that very thing.
He bites his lip, surveying Geralt’s predicament one more time.
“All right. Sit up, if you can. Armor off,” Regis tells him in a tone that brooks no discussion, at the same time making a light shooing gesture, hands fluttering like moths’ wings.
Geralt shrugs very carefully with his right shoulder, eyes flashing.
“Okay. If that’s what you want. But you’re going to have to do all the work.” He levers himself up, weight resting on his right elbow, keeping his left side as immobilized as possible. He braces for the pain and pulls himself the rest of the way to sitting at once. “Could probably have your way with my mouth—“
“No,” Regis admonishes him, mildly horrified. “I obviously didn’t mean—“ He sighs, cutting himself off, knowing he’s being baited.
He kneels in front of the witcher, his clever, nimble fingers making short work of the buckles and laces holding the pauldrons in place. He’s had enough practice that he's almost faster at removing them than Geralt now, even when Geralt isn’t partially disabled.
It’s… been a pleasant trip so far.
“I’ve told you shouldn’t sleep in this, anyway,” Regis scolds him, pulling off the leather chest piece. “I’m surprised your back isn’t in worse shape.”
“Old habits,” Geralt says. Traveling alone, he’d have to be prepared for any possibility, ready to fight off an attack at a moment’s notice. Even letting himself lie down fully on a bed roll is a new and strange part of their emerging routine.
All in all, Regis is probably right—not that Geralt will tell him so, of course, the smug bastard—but if Geralt’s going to wear the armor, he should probably stick to a kneeling meditative posture. If he lies prone without stripping down, he’s liable to wake up like this again.
“I’m not used to having a bodyguard,” he quips as Regis moves to settle behind him.
“It’s a body worth guarding,” Regis tells him. “And I do have this habit of looking after frail things…”
There’s a tiny stab of pain at the place where Geralt’s neck meets his shoulder when he laughs.
He shifts slightly; joking aside, his body is having something of an automatic reaction at Regis’s positioning himself at Geralt’s back, and the vampire’s breath on his neck.
They can’t. Not in a clearing in broad daylight, with Geralt half unable to move.
(Still, it’s nice to think about.)
“Which is the direction it hurts to turn?”
Geralt starts to turn left and groans.
Regis puts a hand on his back immediately. “Don’t do it,” he chokes out, exasperated, huffing a breath through his nostrils. “Just tell me."
“Left,” Geralt confirms, stopping the movement.
Fingers skim over the twisted cords of muscle, reading the grain of the tension, sussing out the angry knots snarling just beneath the skin.
Left hand curled over the top of Geralt's shoulder for leverage, Regis shoves a thumb hard—inhumanly hard—into the meat of Geralt’s trapezius, and holds the pressure steady.
“This might not be entirely pleasant, but… look to your right. Slowly."
Geralt complies, and it’s… not painful, exactly. The muscle releases fractionally, if grudgingly, a sliver of tension leeching out.
“Good. And now back,” Regis advises him.
Geralt repeats the motion at Regis’s direction a little over a dozen times. Finally Regis removes his thumb from Geralt’s back. Geralt slides a hand over the pain point gently.
“Any better?” Regis sounds hopeful.
Geralt turns very slowly left; he makes it halfway through his range of motion before the pain sets in, and even then it’s not nearly so bad as before.
“Yeah,” he smiles. “Yeah, not… completely better, but… a big improvement. Thanks.”
“Good,” Regis tells him, sounding pleased. Lips press against the back of Geralt’s head before he hears and feels Regis stand up behind him. “One moment.”
Geralt can actually swivel his head enough to see now that Regis had started a small fire prior to his awakening. A familiar kettle, a tin mug and a glass cylinder filled with dark liquid sit next to it. Regis refills the mug and returns momentarily.
Sitting again, this time beside Geralt, he setting the bottom curve of the mug into the sore spot on Geralt’s neck, allowing the warmth to permeate the strained tissue.
“Mmmmph.” He leans into the feeling and lets his eyes fall shut a moment.
The dark coffea aroma reaches Geralt’s nose. Well, at least that stuff is good for something.
“You make an admirable table,” Regis says happily, relaxing against him.
“That’s about all I’ll be good for, for a minute, anyway.”
There are healing elixirs that could speed along relief of his aches and pains, but there’s always a price for the use of them, and it’s not as though they are in any kind of a hurry.
“I think we can spare the morning,” Regis assures him, apparently on a similar line of thought.
It’s been a long time since he was so entirely without aim. Maybe since—gods, the world is different now—before Duny and Pavetta.
Not even finding work is much of a driving obligation; the coin from Anna Henrietta will last them for quite a while, he suspects.
It’s as odd as it ever was, having no goal, simply wandering the countryside, taking each new day as it comes.
Regis breathes against him, and takes a sip of coffea, then rests the mug back down on the witcher’s shoulder, and makes a tiny noise of contentment.
The company, Geralt decides, is much better this time around.