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“Well that, was the most fun I have had at a school function since I was an undergraduate,” Shani laughed, wobbling unsteadily on one foot while she pulled her boot off the other.
She was still carefree and happy from the festivities, and had to catch herself on the bed to avoid falling over. Unsuccessful at righting her balance she compromised and sat down with a surprised whoop and a chuckle, brushing her hair out of her eyes as she laughed at herself.
“Feels good to let everything go for a night and act like a teenager again,” she said, smiling as she looked up at Eskel, who was standing by the mirror. His back was to her and he was uncharacteristically somber.
The carefree expression slipped from her face and she slowly got up after toeing off her other boot, concern creasing her brow. “Eskel?” she said softly, coming up behind him and running a hand across his back. He ducked his head a little and turned his face away from her, something that concerned her even more.
“Hey, babe, what’s wrong?” she asked, catching his jaw with a gentle hand and coaxing him to look back toward her. He did, but it was reluctant and it took a long moment for him to meet her eyes. She gripped his arm with concern, studying his face as she stroked over his scars with her thumb.
“Are you okay? Do you feel alright?” Her eyes darted across him in an instinctive search for injury or illness, but aside from the rare sight of him in formal dress with a high collar and sharp lines, she could see nothing amiss.
“I’m fine,” he said at last, taking her hand from his face with a gentle clasp and turning away again. “You have class in the morning, I shouldn’t keep you awake.”
Shani was stunned for a moment when he slipped out of her grasp, again turning his back on her. He never hid from her like that, never denied her anything, especially his honesty and his attention. She was struck with the sudden, unpleasant thought that she’d done something to him, and after almost a year of a frankly blissful relationship with him she refused to let anything mess it up.
“No, you are far more important than any lecture,” she said firmly, stepping forward to catch his hand again and pull him back towards her. He let her turn him around and clasp his other hand, but his amber eyes were still cast to the floor.
“Eskel,” she pressed again. “However I’ve upset you--”
He looked up at that, alarm lighting in his eyes. “No! Shani….” he shook his head, a bone-weary sigh heaving his chest. “No.” He squeezed her hands and then stepped a little closer, hesitantly framing her face with his hands, his much larger body stepping into hers with a familiarity she only realized was there because for a moment she’d feared its absence.
“Then what is it?” she asked, reaching up to rest her hands on his wrists. Her thumbs gently stroked the inside, following the tendons and caressing his pulse in a way she knew calmed him. He closed his eyes at the touch and bowed his head, resting his forehead against hers for a moment.
“I’m sorry,” he said at last. “Old wounds.” He pulled away and looked at her, a sad smile moving his lips but dying in his eyes. She knew he didn’t mean physical.
“Tell me about them, let me help you,” she said softly. “Please, Eskel. I don’t want to see you unhappy.”
“I’m not,” he said, and the tone was completely sincere. “But I worry--I worry that you will be” He pulled away then and Shani instantly missed his heat, a spear of sudden fear that he was getting ready to break up with her making her hands tremble. She closed them so he wouldn’t see. She watched him as he sat wearily on the bed, unbuttoning several clasps on his tunic and loosening his collar like it was making him uncomfortable.
“Eskel,” Shani said, forcing her voice not to tremble. “I’ve loved our time together but if being here--in one place is too much I can, we can go back on the road together. I’ll work on the road there’s plenty of places that need healers who have no access to a real doctor I can--”
“Shani,” Eskel interrupted, his brow furrowed. “Stop.” His eyes were searching her face and she clenched her jaw, feeling self conscious as she waited for the words she really didn’t want to hear. She wanted to ask him not to leave her, to let her come with him if that was the problem, but she didn’t. She hadn’t done that with Geralt and she wouldn’t do it to Eskel.
He was quiet for a few moments, and then a realization came into his expression and he shook his head. “Shani, I’m not leaving you!” he exclaimed, looking a little horrified that he’d lead her to believe he was. “Gods!” he exclaimed, burying his face in his hands and then running his fingers through his hair in a kind of exasperation.
Shani frowned, really confused. “Then I don’t understand,” she confessed, relief making her unsteady. She hadn’t realized how soundly she’d come to rely on Eskel’s companionship until she thought she was losing it, but that was a burden to deal with another time. Right then, she needed to help him with his.
“If you’re not leaving me, but you don’t want to talk about it--” she sighed, moving to sit next to him and taking one of his hands in both of hers. “Eskel, I’m a medic, not a sorceress. That’s your brothers, remember?” she teased lightly. “I can’t read minds.”
He snorted and smiled a little at that, closing his hand around hers. “No, kinda glad you can’t. You read me in all kinds of other ways though. Don’t know how I’ll ever lie to you effectively.”
He meant it as a joke and Shani knew that, but the pain behind it struck her. “What happened tonight? What wound did those people open?” she asked sadly, brushing his cheek and cradling his jaw.
“I’m a Witcher, Shani,” he said, and the way he said it was so tired Shani wanted to cry for him. “An ugly one at that,” he added, gesturing to his face. “You might not care.what I am...or even about the scars but--” he sighed, pulling his hand out of hers and rubbing his knuckles against each other as he stared at the floor. “I don’t care what people think of me. I am at peace with what I am. But the things I heard about you tonight, because you’re with me Shani, I--”
She’d put a finger to his lips right as he’d looked up to meet her eyes. “Eskel, I have never, and will never care what people think about me. Especially when it’s coming from small-minded academics who want to spew prejudice about the man I’m choosing, very happily by the way, to be with.”
His expression was still sad, so she took his hand again, her heart suddenly racing nervously as she felt the next words line up all on their own.
“I…” she took a deep breath and squeezed his hand for support. “I love you, Eskel. I think I’m in love with you and the only reason I would ever, ever give that up is because you asked me to. And if you did, I would still love you. Just...too much to keep you if you wanted to be free.” The admission formed a lump in her throat.
Eskel blinked, real surprise lighting his eyes. “You--really?”
Shani gave a huff that turned into a nervous laugh, and for a moment she had to look away. “Yes, Eskel. I said it. I love you. Please just--if you can’t say it back don’t... but say something? I’m...dying a little here.” She was trying to make light of it but she was really starting to feel queasy, afraid she’d once again overestimated a witcher’s feelings for her.
Her heart skipped at least two beats when Eskel’s hand closed firmly on hers and he pulled her in for a long kiss. “I love you too,” he murmured, pressing a gentler kiss to the corner of her mouth.
Her lips actually tingled and already she felt the thrill of those words as a hum through her entire body. She was smiling, grinning in fact, and she couldn’t help it. It only made her all the happier to see some of the melancholy lifted from Eskel’s expression. She trailed her hand up his arm and then wound her arms around his neck, bending her head for another kiss before she pulled back to look at him and card her fingers through his hair.
Suddenly something he’d said came striking back to her mind and she froze, staring at him. His expression faltered and he looked a little uncertain.
“What?”
“You called yourself ugly.”
He shrugged a little, his scars creasing with the quirk of agreement in his expression. “I’m not blind, Shani. Pretty far from it actually.”
“I’m going to disagree with you, emphatically,” she said, actually incredulous. He raised a dubious eyebrow.
“Oh yeah, the half of my face not clawed beyond human reason is the redeeming side.”
“Eskel, you are...beautiful,” she said, flabbergasted. “You really don’t know that?”
His self deprecating humor paused and he looked at her curiously. “I’m not upset about it--it’s just the way I look…you really mean that.” He said it like he couldn’t believe her. “Beautiful how?”
She actually snorted and pulled away further, looking him up and down for dramatic emphasis. “Where would you like me to start?”
“I’m serious, Shani.”
“So am I.”
Warm, amber eyes sought her in a genuine stab at understanding, and Shani sighed, slipping out of his grasp and standing up. “Okay, come on. Guess I’m doing a lecture today after all.” She gestured at him. “Get up.”
Bemused, he quirked an eyebrow but he obeyed, watching her curiously as she picked up one of his hands and smoothed her fingers along it, turning it palm up in her own. For a long moment she just observed, mapping out the tendons and bones, the veins with her fingers. She traced each finger, pressing lightly on the tendons and following them back to their roots in his forearm. As she explored, he moved his hand ever so subtly and she felt the smooth glide of the muscles that caused the motion.
“Your hands,” she spoke at last, and though she was still looking down she felt his eyes on her. “Warm. Such a...concentrated strength. The split tendon here…” she said, tracing down the center of his hand where she’d discovered a while back that he had much greater dexterity due to a mutated tendon. “The amount of things you can do with these hands is literally uncountable.”
She moved up his forearm, then thought better of it and worked at the buttons on his shirt. He didn’t resist her disrobing him to the waist, and as she slipped the soft fabric down his arms she let her fingers brush along them as well. She felt him continue to watch her, all his focus on seeing what she was still going to show him.
She settled her hands on his left shoulder, tracing the lines of muscle, then vein. He was responsive to her touch, turning his forearm to expose the soft place inside his elbow when she prompted. She brushed her thumb along the artery there and then traced it back along his bicep and along the invisible path it marked deep into his chest.
“Ever since I was a little girl,” she murmured, skimming her fingers across his chest, visualizing the branching arteries as she traced them “I’ve thought the living human body is the most beautiful art that has ever existed or will ever exist. Just the mere, deceptively simple fact that you are alive...Eskel.” She shook her head. “There is so much that happened, so much that has to keep happening for that to be reality.”
She flattened her hand for a moment and watched in a silent reverence as his ribs pushed against it. He was so lean she could feel the muscle that controlled such a fluid, vital motion and she basked in the quiet power of it.
“Your lungs,” she continued, mapping out the expanse of lung tissue all along his left side as she looked up and met his eyes. “These, incredible structures with tissue softer than down and tunnels so delicate you need special lenses to find them all-- do this enormous task of diffusing oxygen to your blood. That simple, beautiful process depends on so much. The strength in every muscle strand that can move your ribs, the diaphragm beneath them, the frankly astounding reality that your ribs are stronger than most swords and yet lighter than any equivalent metal. And they self repair--Eskel, you heal from damage automatically.”
She touched a particularly nasty claw scar crossing into his right side. “This was an open wound. Were it not for your body’s ability to contain, purify, and then repair damage you wouldn’t have made it much past your first breath. These marks introduced all manner of threats to your blood. The wrong thing gets missed by your immune system and everything you have, everything you are, a hundred years of memories and training is gone with the simple cessation of your heartbeat.” She paused there for a moment, looking up at his face and touching it for the briefest second because she needed the assurance.
“But you didn’t die,” she continued softly, laying her hand against his cheek. “You continued to breathe through the pain and your body cleaned itself out, stopped its own bleeding, and knit everything back together with little more than a mark to show for it.”
He listened quietly as she spoke, his eyes intense as they followed her. She couldn't read his expression but it didn't really trouble her: he tended to look withdrawn when he was listening, as though reserving judgement.
“Eskel, the human measure of beauty is so stunted and I rejected it years ago. If you understood how much must happen, how many perfect structures and organs and signals have to harmonize for us to even have this conversation…” she shook her head, lacing their fingers together. “Even waking up is a miracle. Your brain has to synchronize everything just so--raise your temperature, stoke your heart, tell you to take a deeper breath. Gods, even the process of breathing, of one single cardiac cycle. Especially in a Witcher.”
She shook her head. “The more I learn, the more incredible life seems to me. It's so, so complex. And you, being a Witcher, it's more than your mutations that awe me. Being trained so carefully in something so physical and precise has developed your body in a stunning way--a way no other profession approaches.” She ran her palm along the muscle of his arm and into his chest, fascinated by the heat and texture of it as he twitched and then relaxed under her touch. There was a density and a finesse to the way he'd been built that was so deep she could actually feel a contrast to normal muscle.
“Surviving the kind of tearing down and healing you did in the trials simply shouldn't be possible,” she whispered, pain furrowing her expression as she thought of him as a child, of the others who didn't make it.
“Your body is incredibly beautiful,” she said softly, looking again at his face, stroking his hair back by his temple, tracing the vein throbbing softly. He leaned into her caress and she brought her other hand up, resting it against the side of his neck. For a moment, a lump formed in her throat as she felt the pulse move through his. She trailed her fingers along that pulse, following it from the shell of his ear down into his chest where his clavicle concealed it. Swallowing thickly she lay her hand against his heart.
“The...privilege I feel, have felt, that you not only let me touch you this way but sleep in my presence and hold me close when you're at your most unguarded cannot be understated.”
She looked from his chest back into his eyes, and when she blinked, a tear she hadn't been conscious of trailed down her cheek. Eskel raised a rough hand and gently stroked it away.
“Your spirit, your honest, gentle, fierce, spirit couldn't have a more fitting home,” Shani said, reaching up both hands to frame his face, willing him to believe her. “And I'm grateful and still so happy every day you choose to spend as mine.”
Eskel gazed back for a long time, one hand resting on her hip, the other stroking a thumb gently back and forth on her forearm.
“I would choose to spend the rest of them as yours,” he said at last, and when her mouth fell open in shock he smiled softly, brushing her cheek with an affectionate knuckle. There was no space between them anymore.
“Eskel was that...did you just...propose?”
“No, but would you like me to?”
Shani felt herself blush hard and she gave a startled little laugh. “I mean...I...yes. Yes I would like that. Very much. Are you serious?” She felt breathless all of the sudden, and her heart was pounding. His, she noted, was still steady. That look of amused mischief was in his eyes though, and she was almost afraid he was joking.
“Alright,” Eskel said, his eyes laughing. He bent and scooped her up without warning and she gave a startled little sound as she locked her arms around his neck for support. She stared at him, unable to believe this was happening.
“Shani,” he began. “I like being yours. You've shown me what I can do with these hands and this body that goes far beyond what I learned at Kaer Morhen. I never resented being a Witcher. I like it. But knowing I can heal, teach, learn something new rather than just hunt until my days run their course is something I never imagined before you. You're incredible. You brought me back from a dark place when I lost Vesimir. You gave me the first taste of family I've had beyond my brothers, and I want to stay with you until that heart you love so much gets tired. Which….will probably be a while.”
She laughed at that through the steady tears she hadn't been able to help. “It had better be,” she said, wiping at her tears and smiling. She couldn't seem to stop.
“So...and I feel like I should remind you that Witchers even half as smart as Lambert tend to live a while so this isn't a short agreement...will you marry me?”
Shani's grin couldn't get any wider so instead she shook her head and pulled herself even closer for a long kiss.
That time, his heart was pounding too.
