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“Geralt? Love, are you home?” Yennefer peered around the corner, a puzzled line between her brows. Geralt had been gone for a few days on a contract, and Yennefer had passed those day so busy with the vineyard she’d hardly had time to worry about him. All the same, seeing Roach back in her stall had sent Yennefer running excited back to the house, only to find their bedroom door closed tight and Geralt nowhere else in the house.
She was standing in front of their door now, concern replacing her puzzlement as she heard a grunt and soft swearing.
“Geralt?” she asked, leaning against the door before trying the handle. She felt a spark of anger flare amdist her growing worry when she found it to be locked. “Geralt, open the door this instant.”
“Not Ciri, don’t have to scold me,” he retorted, his voice muffled by the door and by clenched teeth.
“You’ve deserved scolding far more often than she ever has, Geralt, now open this door before I melt it down.”
“....Don’t you dare.”
Yennefer’s eyes flashed and she closed her hand tightly on the handle, magic surging through the lock and quickly ruining the mechanism. The smell of hot metal and singed wood permeated the air and Yennefer tried again to yank the door open.
It didn’t budge.
“Geralt,” she snapped. “I know you’re holding the door shut. Let. Me. In.”
“....No.”
“You’re testing me, Witcher.”
“And I’ll only get it worse if I let go.”
“You’re injured, I can hear that much. Let me in so I can help you. Unless you prefer to bleed out and die in solitude?”
“Not gonna die, it’s not that bad,” he said, his voice almost petulant. “Just didn’t want you to see it and lose your mind.”
“Oh and locking yourself in our bedroom away from me was the logical solution to that problem?” she retorted, giving another tug on the door so sharp that for a moment it did budge only to slam shut again with a sharp sound.
“You were supposed to be out until I had this taken care of!”
“Geralt you’re an ass, and you’re getting only this last warning. Let go of the door.”
“Just let me handle this, Yen.”
Yennefer’s expression went steely and she really yanked on the door that time, pulling so hard it slipped out of Geralt’s grasp and almost made her lose her balance. She recovered quickly, striding into the room where Geralt was standing stiffly, blood trickling down his armor.
Three arrow shafts were already on the floor and four more still protruded out of him--one in his side, two behind his right shoulder, and one stuck worryingly mid-left gut. He was panting, sweaty, and tacky with blood and dirt.
“Told you, I could handle it,” he grunted, yanking the arrow out of his side and throwing it away with disgust. Yennefer grabbed his wrist and shot him an angry look, her entire demeanor changing.
“And why did you insist on handling this alone?” she demanded, striding around him with one hand firmly on his arm whenever possible as if she was daring him to move away. “You have two arrows lodged in your back, you fool. How were you to reach them without tearing a great deal more tissue on the way?”
“They’re just stuck in my armor, mostly,” Geralt defended, his voice still growly with pain. “It’s just the one in my gut I’m worried about,” he admitted, looking down at the shaft. It was shifting worryingly with each breath, and the fresh sweat drawing tracks in the dirt on his face was sour with pain.
“You should be worried,” Yennefer said, her voice stiff with anger as she verified Geralt’s theory about the arrows in his back with a burst of magic before yanking them out simultaneously herself. Geralt gasped and dropped to one knee, his eyes rolling as the arrow in his stomach shifted dangerously. Yennefer quickly grabbed at him, slapping his face to startle him back into the adrenaline keeping him up.
“No. No. Witcher, you are not permitted to faint.”
Geralt swallowed several times like he was trying not to be sick and his expression was vacant for a few moments, but eventually his eyes found hers and he managed to stand again.
He was beyond ashen.
“Lie down on the bed before you make that worse,” Yennefer said, helping him even though what she really wanted to do was strangle him. Geralt didn’t protest that time. It seemed all his energy was focused on breathing.
He wheezed out a painful sounding breath as he lay back, his fingers clenching claw-like near the wound. Yennefer grasped his hand with more calm than she felt, moving it away so she could press her glowing fingers to the injury site and assess the damage.
“Well, the good news is that you somehow haven’t punctured your bowel so risk of serious infection is unlikely,” she reported after a little while, pulling her hands away and clenching them to stop them wanting to shake.
“Pull it out?” Geralt grunted, his fingers clenched on the sheets.
“Yes, we should be safe to remove it but--”
Geralt didn’t wait for the but. He just grabbed the last shaft and yanked.
His cry of pain was so loud it drew an alarmed worker right to their bedroom door, but Yennefer quickly dismissed her, irritated at Geralt and irritated at everyone who wanted to interfere in her treating him.
“I hope you’re happy,” Yennefer said harshly, working until then in silence on getting his armor free. “You would have been in a lot less pain had you just talked to me first."
“Didn’t know where you were, and wanted to handle things myself,” Geralt defended, the effect somewhat dampened by the recent success of his work.
“You're not some lone hunter any longer,” she said angrily, peeling away his sodden armor so she could clean the blood and inspect the puncture. “There is no reason for this kind of idiocy.”
She tutted, shaking her head at the damage. He hissed and tensed, digging his head into the bed as she probed at the edges.
She didn't bother warning him before pressing the heel of her hand into the wound and fusing the worst of the damage shut. He yelped, his vision greying out for a moment before the pain started to fade enough for him to think again.
He swore loudly and gasped a deep breath, closing his eyes as his chest heaved while she wiped away the worst of the gore with a wet cloth.
“I could have been gentler, remember that in future,” she said icily, getting up and pulling fresh clothes for him out of the wardrobe. She tossed them at him and stormed out of the room, leaving him to sit gingerly up and inspect the damage.
It was hours later that he was clean and dressed and fed, but by the time he managed to gulp down some dinner he was too tired to go after Yennefer. She still hadn't returned to the house and he was aching and exhausted so he crawled into their bed and fell asleep on his stomach, hugging a pillow.
He was woken some time later by a soft touch along his spine.
“I know that was no contract,” she was saying softly, a warm magic soaking into his muscles from her fingers. “Drowners do not use bandit's arrows.”
He grunted and then groaned as she dug into a knot beneath his shoulder blade, working around the area now bruising from the shock of the arrows.
“Knights asked for help, still got paid for it. Monsters are monsters,” he said in a sleepy mumble, clenching on the pillow and burying his head as she dug deeper before finally gentling her touch. A fresh throbbing accompanied the rush of blood back into his shoulder but once the ache started to subside he could feel some of the stiffness gone already.
“I don't care what you do, Geralt,” she said tiredly, her hands gliding up his back, massaging between each vertebrae. “I care that you still attempt to keep things from me. You lost a great deal more blood than I'm comfortable with and the arrow in your gut could very well have done fatal damage if you had tried to handle it all yourself. I know you've been trained since you were a boy to accept the ending of a cruel death, but Geralt?” She paused, her hand warm between his shoulders until he opened a sleepy eye to glance back at her.
“I will not accept that kind of thinking any longer. You are to do everything you can to grow old and senile at my side, do you understand me? There will be no more of this.”
Geralt heaved a huge sigh and nodded, re burying his head with a hum as she stroked up the back of his neck and scratched gently at the nape.
“Sorry, old habits harder to kick than I thought,” he murmured. “Won't happen again.”
She leaned down and pressed a kiss to his head. “It had better not.”