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He wakes up with his head between her knees, her face directly above his. He smiles before he has even registered how heavily she’s breathing and how strained her face looks.
“Are you okay?” she asks, quiet and shaky. Noticing the fear behind the question, he frowns, trying to take quick stock of his own body, realizing that he’s lying flat on the ground, that he’s sore but not really in all that much pain, that exhaustion is sitting heavy on his chest—there was a griffin, he remembers then. Or rather, there was supposed to be one, and he found two.
“Fine,” he says, because he is, and he has more important concerns right now. He rolls over, spots the dead bodies testifying that at least the job is done, pushes himself up to take a look at Yennefer. All his joints feel rusty as he straightens himself, his limbs re heavier than they should be and there’s a metallic taste in the back of his mouth, but he can sit, so he’ll count that as a win.
Yennefer seems to be alright. She’s kneeling in the dirt, hands on her thighs, taking in big gulps of air like she just ran a marathon. And she’s glaring at him.
“What happened?” he asks, against his better judgement.
“What happened,” she hisses, her glaring somehow growing even angrier. “Is that you got cocky and that griffin snapped your back in half like a fucking twig, you idiot.”
Yeah, he has a vague memory of that, though it’s mostly a blur of white hot pain. He grimaces. “You saved me, I presume?”
“Do you see anyone else here to look after your sorry ass?”
Fair enough.
“Well, thank you, then.” He smiles at her, genuine and affectionate, and though she’s still giving him the stink eye he can see the fondness seeping through, quieting some of her anger.
“You’ll make it up to me,” she counters, though it’s an empty threat: she would help him even if he refused to ever see her again, but there isn’t much that he would refuse her anyway, debt or not.
He snorts, giving a brief nod and scooting over to sit next to her: she looks unsteady, likely because saving him took a lot out of her. She isn’t going to ask, but she probably needs to sit for at least another few minutes, to catch her breath. The least he can do is positioning himself next to her, letting her lean against him as she recovers.
She slides her arm around his waist, closes her fingers around one of the straps of his armour, and doesn’t let go.