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Aiden is grinning up at Lambert, laughing. His green eyes sparkle like emeralds, his brown hair tinged in gold by the bright sunlight. There’s some road dust on his cheek, a wayward leaf tangled in his hair, and he’s –
Fuck, he’s beautiful.
Lambert is kneeling over him, holding him down. Their swords from their sparring match lie discarded to the side.
“Gotcha,” Lambert says.
A terrible softness settles over Aiden’s features, like the dawn over the world, and Lambert feels something in his stomach curl tightly.
“Lambert,” the Cat replies, the oddest tilt in his voice, and –
Unexpectedly, he leans upwards, one hand snaking around Lambert’s neck to pull him down, and before the Wolf Witcher can quite comprehend what’s happening, Aiden’s lips have claimed his. And then, Aiden is kissing him.
He’s kissing him like Lambert has never been kissed before, ferocious and full of intent. He’s kissing him like he had something to prove, like a touch said more than a thousand words and Lambert could hear them all.
Instantly, unequivocally, Lambert knows that he’s in love with this man, head over heels. This tightness in his chest echoed by the frantic beating in his heart. He feels hot and cold all at once, shivery, desperate, like he would die this instant if Aiden ever let go.
And Aiden, he’s kissing him like – fuck, like maybe he feels the same.
“Darling,” Aiden mumbles into his mouth.
Lambert replies by pressing kisses from the corner of Aiden’s mouth to his jaw and down his throat. Feeling the thrum of his exposed jugular, he presses another kiss there, causing Aiden to jump – in a good way.
“Lambert,” Aiden says, pulling a little helplessly at the other man’s collar, his neck, his hair, until Lambert obeys and moves up to devour his mouth.
“Aiden,” Lambert breathes. And in that moment, he knows that he never wants this to end; he will never get his fill of kissing Aiden –
“Lambert!” –
Lambert snaps awake from one breath to the next. His eyes snap open, and he almost reaches for his swords, almost comes up in a battle crouch, except that Aiden’s voice hadn't been scared, or alarmed, or even angry. None of his senses warn him of any danger.
When he looks over, he finds the Cat Witcher still deeply asleep, heartbeat regular and slow.
Yet, his own breathing is a little too fast, his whole body strumming with energy.
Blinking at the sleeping man, he tries to make sense of the situation, of the memor-… not, not a memory. A dream that has his prick painfully hard in his trousers.
Godsdamnit, Lambert, he curses himself. Why was his subconscious doing this to him?
He told Geralt he wouldn’t screw up the newly formed Cat-Wolf alliance, and he has a feeling that fucking Aiden would – well, at least complicate things. And when it ends –
Because it always ends, always. Lambert always screws things up, pushes people away with his coarseness and generally prickliness.
So when it ends, it might make things worse for Geralt. Convincing all the schools to work together is harder than it looks, and that the Cats are on board is largely due to Aiden and Guxart.
So if he – no, when he manages to get Aiden to hate him…
“Ah, fuck,” he groans, rubbing a tired hand over his face, turning onto his back to stare at the starry sky.
As though in response, he hears Aiden hum. A deep sound, a contented sound – a purr almost, if he were to indulge in cat metaphors. He's never heard Aiden make that sound before.
“Darling,” Aiden whispers, slurred, still asleep.
He’s heard his friend speak in his sleep before, but never like this. It’s usually nightmares that push Aiden over the edge of his control and cause him to speak in his sleep. Yet, Aiden doesn’t smell terrified. He smells… like cinnamon and desire.
Lambert feels the weirdest sensation overwhelm him, a shiver of awareness. He feels like he’s witness to something forbidden, something he’s not supposed to hear or see, a truth Aiden gave away without meaning to. The urge to turn and look over at Aiden is so strong he has to clench his fingers into fists to fight it because he knows that if he were to turn his head, Aiden would lie there all vulnerable, throat bared, and it would break something in Lambert he doesn't know how to fix.
Luckily, before he can wonder if he should wake Aiden or not, the other Witcher startles awake with a gasp. He doesn’t bolt upright or anything, but even without looking, Lambert can tell the new tenseness in his body that comes with awareness.
“You alright?” Lambert asks, knowing it’s the most useless thing he’s ever asked. They both know he can hear Aiden’s too fast heart, can smell the musk of lust.
“Did I- Did I wake you?” Aiden asks huskily, ignoring his question.
“Hm,” Lambert replies noncommittally.
“Oh.”
The conversation fades into nothingness, and Lambert doesn’t remember the nightly forest being this oppressively quiet before. There’s not even a fucking nightingale calling the sun to the horizon; no predator sneaking through the shadows. Even the wind has died down, as though to punish Lambert with silence.
It’s a hollow, echoing quiet that stretches out between them like poison gas, clogging Lambert’s lungs, making him feel sick to his stomach.
“I dreamt about you,” Aiden says without warning, whispers it into the darkness between their bedrolls.
“Fucked up dream that must've been,” Lambert grunts, feeling too hot, too aware of his own body, of the rush of his breath, the drum of his heart.
“No. No, it wasn't,” Aiden replies after a moment, a strange quality to his quiet voice, a distant sadness. “It was a good dream.”
Lambert winces at the tone of his voice, at the honesty Aiden throws at him. He’s giving him an opening, a possibility to ask, to roll over and do exactly what Lambert dreamt about. And he can’t. He can’t.
“Did you finally beat me in a match?” he attempts to joke.
Aiden breathes a ghost of a laugh, so quietly only a Witcher could pick it out. Lambert hears clothes rustle as the other man moves, but he doesn't turn to look at him, keeps staring at the dark velvet of the sky and the dancing branches above – because he knows, he knows that if he did, he might never be able to look away again.
“No,” the Cat replies, and there it is again, a slight break in his voice, so at odds with his laugh.
“No, you didn't beat me, or no, you didn't dream about that?” Lambert asks, trying to bring some levity into the conversation, but it comes out too serious, with a gravity he didn't mean to put there. As though he's asking for something else, something beyond his words.
What did you dream about?, he means.
Were our dreams the same?, he wonders.
Aiden doesn't reply.
The pause between them stretches so long that Lambert can't help to turn his head and look for his friend, fearing he might have silently vanished, as cats are sometimes wont to do.
It's too dark to actually make out Aiden's eyes, just the gleam of his sclera, the darker shadow underneath his cheekbone shaping his face. He’s lying on his side, cheek pillowed on his hand. The moonlight catches the crown of his head, turning the wavy ink of his hair a rich brown. He’s looking back at Lambert, and when their gazes meet, Aiden exhales a sharp breath.
“Lambert.”
He says it like a plea, like a prayer, like a question.
Lambert is frozen by the tone of his voice. It’s the same way Aiden said his name in his dream, just before he kissed him.
The distance between them seems endless, vast, like an entire universe compressed into a single space, the cold embers of the campfire like roaring flames. Lambert wants nothing more than to bridge it, to reach out and take Aiden’s hand, to answer that question in the only way he knows how to.
But his muscles refuse to obey, his fingers don’t move. He’s caught like the deer in front of the kikimora. His heart is beating twice as fast, so loud Aiden must notice, and he feels helpless and dizzy.
Could this-… could this mean that Aiden really, actually wants them to be… more?
But he can’t- he shouldn’t- it’s not a good idea –
Aiden’s breath hitches on the next inhale. “Right,” he says, as though Lambert just gave him the reply he's been expecting when Lambert didn't do anything at all.
Lambert makes a low noise at the back of his throat, not quite a sound, a bit more than a swallow, and searches his mind desperately for something to say.
“Good night, darling,” Aiden says, and turns around, his back to Lambert, blanket pulled up to his chin.
It's not the miserable hunch of Aiden’s shoulder or the sad softness of his voice that does it. It's the little choke around the familiar nickname, the one nobody but Aiden may use.
“I dreamt of you, too,” Lambert blurts out, mostly by accident, because he doesn’t know what else to do. How else to fix this.
Because for some godsforsaken reason, he can’t let Aiden believe that he doesn’t- that he resents him now, or… or anything that might rumble around in that crazy cat brain of his.
Aiden doesn't turn back around, but the line of his shoulders softens.
“Some fucked up dream that must’ve been,” he replies because – because he’s an utter bastard, alright.
Lambert’s throat is too dry, too tight, and he swallows against the feeling.
“It was,” he rasps, admitting something he maybe shouldn’t. “But it was a good dream.”
“Huh?” Aiden hums questioningly, more than idle curiosity in his voice.
Praying that this won’t blow up into his face, Lambert slowly climbs to his feet, cold night air biting into sleep warm skin, and drags his bedroll and blankets over to Aiden. He plops down on it, facing his friend.
Aiden’s eyes are wide, the colour too dark to be called green, a forest at dawn.
“Darlin'?” he whispers, something like shock in his scent.
“Fuck,” Lambert replies because he can’t help himself, and if something deserves cursing, then it’s this situation.
Following an instinct, he finally reaches out to grasp Aiden’s hand. He lifts Aiden’s arm and rolls over and underneath it in one smooth motion, pressing his back to Aiden chest and tugging that arm over his own ribcage.
Instantly Aiden stiffens, the line of his body so tense Lambert would break his fingers by punching him. He even seems to have stopped breathing.
“That alright?” the Wolf Witcher asks.
Maybe he misread things? Maybe this wasn't at all what Aiden meant, what Aiden wanted? Maybe he overstepped and –
“Yes, perfectly alright,” Aiden replies in a rush, body relaxing. He inches a little closer to eliminate even the last bit of space between them, nose tugged into the nape of Lambert's neck.
The Wolf Witcher can feel Aiden’s breath ghost over his sensitive skin, and goosebumps travel all the way down to his toes. Aiden’s body is warm at his back, and while Lambert hates being confined, this position doesn't bother him at all. He feels safe, kept.
Something deep in his heart hopes that Aiden will never let go.
Lambert doesn’t sleep for the rest of the night. Because this – this feeling, this joy, Aiden’s warmth and closeness – is better than any dream.
A thought sparks in his mind, and it fills him up like a light within him, and he holds onto it, puts all his faith into it –
Maybe I won’t screw this up, after all.
Because Aiden is the best thing that has ever happened to him, and Lambert will fight tooth and nail before he loses him.