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Lambert absolutely, categorically, undeniably cannot cook. He can just barely not fuck up rabbit-on-a-stick, assuming the judge is willing to accept a rabbit which is burned in some spots and raw in others as “not fucked up,” and it’s frankly a good thing that witchers can eat just about anything without dying of unfortunate stomach ailments, because if he’s been out on the Path for a while without being able to afford to buy food in the towns he passes, Lambert basically subsists on half-raw rabbit and wholly-raw roots and berries.
Cooking is frustrating, is the thing. It’s all wishy-washy and fucking improvisational, and things cook at different rates, and often they don’t cook at the same rate as they did the last time you tried, and it’s all just - a mess. Such a mess.
Alchemy, though. Alchemy is different. If you add a gram of drowner brains to three drams of White Gull, the same result happens, every single time. And if you drink it, it tastes the same, and it has the same fucking effects, too. And if you make little bitty changes, and write them down, and test them very carefully, then over time you can make new potions, and those work the same fucking way every time you make them, and it’s very...soothing, actually. It’s something Lambert can control. He can’t control monsters, or humans, or his own damnfool brothers, and he certainly can’t control his own life, but potions...potions make sense, and they do exactly what he wants them to do, every single time.
Well, sometimes they explode, but only when he’s done something wrong. Or, occasionally, very right, if he was trying to cause an explosion.
The winters are long, in Kaer Morhen, and Lambert can only play happy families with Vesemir and Geralt and Eskel for so long before he genuinely wants to stab them, rather than his usual baseline of pretending to want to stab them, so after the first couple of winters he’d taken over the old alchemy lab, and over the years he’s set it up exactly the way he likes it. None of the others ever comes in - even more than his bedroom, the lab is his space, and they respect that - and he can retreat into the lab and close the door and tinker with potions to his heart’s content whenever he starts getting a little too irritable.
And over time, he’s made them better.
It takes a while. The potions witchers use were developed by generations of mages and witchers, by alchemists with the sort of formal training Lambert is having to invent out of whole cloth. Improving them involves trial and error - lots and lots and lots of error - and a few times, Lambert manages to invent things which are too toxic even for witchers. He’s always got a White Honey or eight on hand, but a few times it’s been...closer than he likes to admit.
But he’s managed to create a version of White Raffard’s that isn’t nearly as toxic, and one of Swallow that lasts twice as long, and he’s made half a dozen others that are either far less toxic or much better-tasting. His brothers and Vesemir praise his improvements volubly every time. Lambert pretends he doesn’t care about the praise, but...well, it’s a lie. Knowing that he can do something that oh-so-special Geralt and golden-boy Eskel can’t, that his efforts are appreciated even by the finest scions of the Wolf School...well, it makes him feels sort of warm and cozy inside, and then he has to swear at everyone and go hole up in the lab again for a while until he’s stopped needing to suppress the urge to wag a nonexistent tail.
*
Aiden doesn’t much like brewing potions. He is as fastidious as his School’s namesake, and he hates the smells of the ingredients, the textures of most of the nastier ones, the taste of even the most expertly-brewed mixtures. He’ll do it, because he understands the necessity of having potions on hand, and he’s even decently skilled at it, good enough to get by anyhow, but he hates every last second of the chore.
Cooking, now. Cooking is fun. Aiden gets to take a whole bunch of things that already smell and taste good, and put them together, and then they smell and taste even better. And he can experiment, and nine times out of ten, even if it doesn’t turn out quite how he expected it to, it’s still tasty!
He keeps spices in his saddlebags, and will take his pay in exotic foodstuffs sometimes if it’s offered, and he has on more than one occasion pilfered some interesting looking ingredients from a mark’s kitchens on the way out - it’s not like dead men have much use for food, after all. Cooking over a campfire isn’t always the easiest thing in the world, but it makes a pleasant end to a long and often bloody day, to settle down beside the fire and concoct something that smells and tastes good enough to wash the tang of potions off his tongue.
There are few enough joys in a witcher’s life; Aiden clings to the ones he can. A good bath, a pleasing bedmate, and decent food - they’re little enough, in the grand scheme of things, but they’re enough all the same.
And then he meets Lambert.
Lambert slicks his lovely hair back with bear grease, and seems perfectly willing to eat half-raw rabbit charred over a fire without any spices at all, and swears in five languages, and is fascinating. Aiden wants to dunk him in a bath and feed him eight different kinds of dinner and then just curl around him and purr.
He doesn’t, of course, because Lambert is a stab-happy fucker at the best of times, and Aiden knows something about making friends with particularly prickly people. It takes six months and eight meetings before Lambert can even share a table with him without looking like he’s about to bolt; it takes three years before Lambert agrees to share a campsite with him. That’s alright. They’re witchers, they have time. And when they finally do spend a night in the same place, it goes...surprisingly well, really.
Well enough to give Aiden some hope that he’ll get to do this again.
Lambert seems thoroughly baffled when Aiden pulls his spices out of his saddlebags, but he cedes the cooking to Aiden without any argument - with a certain air of relief, in fact - and turns his hand to the other camp chores, gathering firewood and digging a latrine and tending Aiden’s horse. Lambert does not have a horse of his own, for reasons Aiden has not yet teased out of him, but he’s good with them all the same.
He also goes through both of their saddlebags to make sure they’re ready for the upcoming contract they’ve agreed to share - a particularly large nest of drowners, with what sure sounds like a couple of water hags and possibly some other interesting annoyances thrown in - and Aiden lets him do so, paying far more attention to the duck he’s carefully roasting, until Lambert holds up one of Aiden’s potions and says, “So this is shit.”
“Hey,” Aiden says, mildly.
“I mean, I guess it’s as good as I could expect from a Cat,” Lambert allows. “But we’re using mine tomorrow.”
“And yours are better?” Aiden asks lightly.
Lambert tucks Aiden’s potion back into his saddlebag and comes over to sit by the fire, gesturing at the duck, which is currently smelling amazing. “You know how you’re a lot fucking better at cooking than I am?”
“Lambert, my darling, eight-year-old children are better cooks than you are.”
Lambert makes an obscene gesture, pretty much on reflex as far as Aiden can tell. “Yeah, well, I’m that much better than you at brewing.”
Aiden considers that for a moment. “Guess I’ll have to let you make all my potions from now on,” he says at last, controlling his own heartbeat and breathing so he won’t let on how much it means to him, to suggest he and Lambert might end up spending that much time together.
“...Guess I’d better,” Lambert allows, after a pause that’s far too long for Aiden’s peace of mind. “Since yours are shit. But you’re doing all the cooking, then.”
“Deal,” Aiden says instantly.
*
Lambert isn’t sure what’s possessed him, to agree to make all the potions his unlikely Cat...companion (friend is too fraught a word, and Lambert sure as hell isn’t ready to even think anything heavier than that) might happen to need. But Aiden’s potions are shit, honestly, and Lambert can do better. And if Aiden’s willing to do the cooking, then Lambert won’t have to, and also his food will actually taste good for a change.
And if that means he has to spend more time around the frustratingly interesting, far-too-good-looking, genuinely compelling Cat…
Well, that’s a price Lambert is willing to pay.
Huh. He’ll need to stock up on some things before he heads for Kaer Morhen this fall, if he’s going to be making enough potions for five witchers instead of just four. And Aiden uses more Bindweed and Golden Oriole than most of the Wolves do, so Lambert can maybe spend this winter working on improving those a bit more. And…
He’s distracted from his planning by a plate full of roasted duck with stewed berries, which is, frankly, a better distraction than he’s used to; and Aiden looks very pleased when Lambert hums in pleasure at the taste of the food.
Lambert lets himself grin back. Yeah, this’ll work. This’ll work just fine.