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“So,” Geralt begins one day at dinner. Yennefer’s sitting on his right, Marlene on his left, and B.B. directly across from him; all of their eyes snap up at his quiet word. “Would any of you be opposed to adding a few new wings to the house?”
None of them are, so he spends the summer finding contractors and sending them to B.B., getting Yennefer’s opinions on interior design, and hiring a few more household staff - scullery maids, cooks under Marlene, and even a few launderesses.
One night, as the chilly autumn air blows through the open windows while Geralt and Yennefer lay in bed, he speaks up again.
“The new wings,” he begins, before the words stick in his throat.
“For your brothers, I presume?” Yennefer muses, idly drawing shapes on his bare chest with her finger. Runes, he thinks, as one of them coalesces into Yrden in his mind’s eye.
The corner of his lip turns up. “Among others,” he admits.
“Hmm,” Yennefer hums. “I thought as much.”
They lapse into silence again as Geralt’s hand comes up to tangle in Yen’s hair, idly threading through the soft locks.
“Eskel and I,” He starts again. “Eskel and I...”
“Fuck? Are deeply in love? Are two halves of one soul, twined together by Destiny and choice alike?” Yennefer finishes for him as he trails off.
Geralt chuckles. “You’ve been spending too much time with Dandelion. And me.”
“Always,” she purrs, burying her face deeper into his side.
“Does that... Bother you?” He asks. Triss did , he doesn’t say.
The tracing of her finger pauses, and her hand rests gently against his chest, fingers splayed. “It should, shouldn’t it.”
It’s not a question. Geralt chances a glance down, and finds her violet eyes peering directly into his.
Slowly, she sits up so that her face is level with his. The hand on his chest doesn’t leave.
“I thought it might,” she muses, “When I first thought of it. Now that we’re no longer on different Paths, and you needn’t find creature comforts elsewhere.”
“But it doesn’t?”
“Maybe I’ve gone soft. Or maybe they just don’t bother me because they weren’t mine first.”
“So if I...?”
“No, it wouldn’t bother me. As long as you always come back.”
She smiles warmly, eyes twinkling, and leans forward to hold his chin with two fingers, pulling him close. Their lips meet, warm and tasting of lilac and gooseberries and home.
“I will.”
Geralt finds Eskel in the back of a tavern somewhere in Velen, nursing an ale and three broken fingers.
“What’s a nice girl like you doing in a shithole like this?” Geralt asks, swiping the ale.
Eskel doesn’t startle at his sudden entrance, the unscarred side of his face twitching into one of his half-snarl, half-smiles. “Heard there was a noble knight rescuing damsels in distress.”
“Mm,” Geralt hums, taking a sip and sliding the ale back across the table. “Wonder where that guy might be.”
Eskel chuckles. “Damn, it’s good to see you again, Wolf. Thought you’d be holed up with your sorceress in your villa for a few more seasons.”
“Feet started itching.”
“And what do you want me to do about it?”
“Come home with me.”
Eskel does startle at that, mug pausing in its path to his lips. After a moment, he sets it back down on the table, perhaps more carefully than a chipped tavern mug deserves. “Bold,” he says, eyes searching Geralt’s for some sign that this is a joke, or perhaps a doppler.
“You don’t have anywhere else to winter,” Geralt says with a half-shrug.
“I did alright last winter.”
“Sure you did. But I’ll bet you missed the shitty keep and its boring chores regardless.”
Eskel shakes his head, and Geralt can tell he’s made up his mind. After a long moment, he drains his mug and stands. “Missed a lot more than that, Wolf.”
“I’ve got a couple others to find before I can meet you there,” Geralt says, standing as well.
Eskel quirks an eyebrow. “Your sorceress know about this harem you’re building?”
“She sends her love,” Geralt says, setting a heavy hand on Eskel’s shoulder, the most contact two Witchers get with each other on the Path. Eskel’s unspoken question is answered with a light squeeze and an almost imperceptible nod of Geralt’s head. She knows, and you’re still welcome , Geralt says.
“See you in the winter, then.”
“See you,” Geralt says to Eskel’s retreating back, and is rewarded with a lazy wave goodbye.
Lambert is both easier and harder to track down. Harder, because he’s not in his usual haunts, scaring aldermen and leaving a path of beheaded monsters in his wake.
Easier, because Jaskier somehow knows about his presence in Oxenfurt, and even knows the name of his favorite tavern in the city.
“Where’s your sorceress?” Geralt asks, arms folded.
Lambert snorts, taking another swig of Redanian herbal. “Where’s yours,” he retorts.
Geralt raises an eyebrow. “That bad, huh.”
Lambert snorts again, knocking back the last dregs of the herbal and then peering morosely into the bottle.
“Tell you what,” Geralt says, still not sitting down. “Don’t blow up Corvo Bianco and be nice to Yennefer, and you can have all the wine you can drink and also access to the alchemical lab in the wine cellar.”
“Drive a hard bargain,” Lambert mutters, then stands up and sways.
“How about I get you a room for tonight, though,” Geralt says, then watches as Lambert crumples to the floor and begins snoring. “Maybe two nights.”
It ends up being more than two nights, because Lambert doggedly tags along after Geralt announces his intention to find Gaetan and Letho.
The first place Geralt looks is the hideout that Gaetan gave him directions to, a year and a liftetime ago. It is, as expected, empty. The trophies have been taken off the walls, the sacks that previously held supplies emptied. There is, however, a note barely peeking out from under the bare chest.
Wolf, it reads.
Thanks for leaving me the trophies, at least. If you’re still not trying to kill me, find me in Novigrad. If you’ve changed your mind, I’m not there, and also piss off and go fuck yourself.
It’s unsigned. Lambert rolls his eyes after he reads it, thrusting the letter back into Geralt’s hands.
“I’m not going back there,” he snarls, correctly guessing the first place that Geralt intends to look when he gets to Novigrad. “I’ll find Letho.”
Without another word, he swings onto his horse and canters away.
“Huh,” Geralt says in Roach’s general direction, watching Lambert's dust cloud settle. “Didn’t expect him to be so gung-ho about it all.”
Jad Karadin’s house is still in the process of being auctioned, and is therefore completely boarded up and unable to be entered. Geralt eyes the slight scratch marks that scuff up a sapling, over a wall, and ostensibly into the estate, then rolls his eyes and turns around.
“Ewald,” he greets a half-hour later, having unceremoniously shoved a few guards aside and entered the Borsodi auction house.
“Geralt,” Ewald says cautiously, smoothing down the front of his dressing gown.
“Doing well for yourself,” Geralt muses. The auction house’s decor has changed slightly, more modern and less ostentatious but no less expensive.
Ewald shrugs. “War’s good for business. Empty estates popping up all over Novigrad and the like.”
“Speaking of which, I remember you owing me a favor.”
Another turn of the clock, and Geralt’s holding a steaming plate of dumplings in one hand and unlocking the Karadin estate with the other. As he enters, locking the door behind him, he searches the walls for the continuation of the trail that he had previously spotted, and finds it in a flattened bush and a scrap of cloth that stinks of Cat.
He follows the trail, ending at what he presumes is the master bedroom, the door showing signs of having been broken into and then hastily repaired.
He considers unlocking the door with his new key, but instead pockets it and knocks. Inside, he hears a barely-audible intake of breath and a few soft footfalls, and decides to announce himself before he gets stabbed through a door.
“Found your note,” he calls, probably louder than he has to.
The shuffling inside the room pauses. Then, a few loud scrapes of furniture, and the door opens just a crack, Gaetan’s eye slitted suspiciously. “Told you to piss off if you were trying to kill me.”
Geralt hefts the dumplings in reply. After a beat, the door opens wider. Geralt takes a step in and then stops dead.
There’s another Witcher on the bed, gaunt with starvation and missing an eye.
“Well,” Geralt says. “Think Lambert’s been missing you.”
The other Cat’s eye widens, and then he passes out.
Over dumplings, Geralt conducts a polite interrogation. Gaetan doesn’t seem to mind, carefully separating out exactly half of the dumplings and then falling ravenously on his half.
“Aiden, I presume?” Geralt rations out a half-dose of White Rafford’s and a full dose of Swallow.
Aiden nods, eyes bleary from being freshly awoken, then takes the White Raffords, sniffing suspiciously. Geralt waits for him to down it, then hands over the remaining dumplings, waiting for Aiden to finish suspiciously sniffing those as well and plucking one delicately and eating it with much more decorum than Gaetan.
“Crossbow bolt to the eye’s a bad one,” Geralt says, fiddling with the cap on the Swallow.
Aiden nods again, still wordlessly eating the dumpling. His eye strays over to Gaetan, but snaps back to Geralt as he sighs, drawing a silver dagger.
“Relax, Aidey-cat,” Gaetan manages around a mouthful, ignoring Geralt’s surprised snort. “He’d have offed us a long time ago if he wanted to.”
“So what’s the dagger for,” Aiden rasps. His voice sounds like it might have been nice, an attempted murder and a few months of starvation ago.
“Know a doppler with a missing eye,” Geralt says. “Even happens to be on the same side as yours.”
Aiden leans forward and carefully puts his fingers on the silver blade, then withdraws quickly.
“Not Dudu, then,” Geralt says, sheathing the dagger.
“I was going to come find him,” Aiden says desperately, like the words are being ripped out of him. Gaetan pauses, flicks his eyes over to Geralt’s impassive ones, then stuffs his last dumpling in his mouth, hopping off the bed and gliding almost silently out the door.
“Looks more to me like you were planning on helping Jad finish the job,” Geralt eyes the ribs still visible through Aiden’s thin sleep shirt, and the gnarled knot of scar tissue where his eye once was, still red and angry around the edges.
Aiden flushes, turning his head away. He takes a deep, fortifying breath. “I don’t- I don’t know how much you know about the Cat mutations.” He starts.
“You don’t owe me any secrets from your School,” Geralt interrupts gently. Aiden looks like he’s physically fighting something deep inside, and Geralt knows how much it pains him to be spilling even the most obvious of secrets to a Wolf.
“No,” Aiden closes his eyes - eye - and shudders. “But I do owe Lambert, and you might as well be a trial run.”
Geralt cocks his head, and waits for Aiden to crack his eye back open and look at him. When he does, Geralt dips his head once and settles deeper into the armchair he’s occupying.
Aiden visibly gathers himself. When he speaks, his voice is robotic and stilted, nothing like the affable gentleman Lambert mourned over several bottles of White Gull. “The Cat mutations make us... volatile. When I woke up, washed up somewhere in Velen, I was all but feral. For a few months, all I did was eat squirrels and avoid humans. And then, one day, I heard a caravan in the distance. I didn’t know, then, that Dyn Marv had fallen, and just... gravitated towards it.”
He takes a deep lungful, shaking his head in such a cat-like gesture that Geralt has to put effort into stifling his smile. “Instead of Gaetan, or Joel, or any of my other brothers... I smelled Jad. And then, all I could think to do was track him back here. It was slow, because squirrels aren’t great fuel, but luckily, Jad’s caravan was big, and he’s a pretentious whoreson that uses some kind of expensive perfume you won’t find anywhere else in Velen.”
At this, Geralt does chuckle a little. Aiden doesn’t meet his eyes, but the unscarred side of his face curls into a little smile, then drops again.
“Eventually, I tracked him here, only to find Jad’s family packing up and shipping out. I lurked around in the sewers for a while, but Jad never came back, and then Gaetan showed up, and then...” Aiden trails off, gesturing around limply.
Geralt watches Aiden pick up another dumpling, then calls over his shoulder, “You can come back in, Gaetan.”
Gaetan slinks back in a moment later, not even slightly embarrassed to have been caught eavesdropping.
Geralt tosses the vial of Swallow into Aiden’s lap, then frees the ring of keys from his pocket and tosses it over his shoulder to Gaetan. Based on his breath of surprise and the lack of key-hitting-the-floor sounds, Gaetan manages to catch it.
“Any friend of my brother’s is a friend of mine,” Geralt says, finally tearing his eyes from Aiden to glance at Gaetan, who’s still staring at the key ring in shock. “Auctioneer of this dump owed me a favor, so the place is yours for as long as you want it, and probably worth a tidy sum once you don’t.”
Gaetan looks up from the keys, throat working soundlessly.
“No thanks needed,” Geralt says with a wry smile. “But once you’re both recovered and back on the Path, come to Toussaint. Ask around for the Corvo Bianco vineyard. Maybe stay the winter.”
As the door closes behind him, he hears Aiden’s voice, pitched so that a normal witcher wouldn’t be able to hear: “What the fuck , Gae.”
And Gaetan’s voice, wryly amused, “Yeah, that’s about the normal reaction to him.”
Eskel and Yennefer are having a somewhat tense dinner, sitting opposite each other but studiously avoiding eye contact, when Geralt finally arrives back at Corvo Bianco, as the last of the autumn leaves fall from the trees and the land prepares to turn over to winter.
“Geralt,” Yennefer says, coming over to cup his face with both hands and planting a possessive, wet kiss on his lips.
Geralt grins as they separate and she looks into his eyes searchingly. Yeah, I found them. And I came home to you.
Yennefer’s face melts into one of her tiny smiles, and she strokes one hand down the side of his face before turning back to her meal.
Eskel made an abortive attempt to stand when the door opened, but is now eating intently, avoiding both Geralt and Yennefer’s eyes.
Geralt makes his way over, stopping entirely too close and waiting for Eskel to look up. When he does, Geralt grabs his shoulder and roughly hauls him into a crushing embrace. “You came,” he breathes into Eskel’s ear.
Eskel’s stiff shoulders relax as Yennefer continues to eat and pointedly does not comment on the hug. “You asked,” he breathes back, just barely a whisper of sound.
Geralt lets his eyes slip closed, basking in Eskel’s solid warmth for just a moment longer, before releasing him and taking a seat in between the two. Marlene bustles in from the kitchen, placing a full plate in front of him and ruffling a fond hand in Geralt’s hair, and Geralt grumbles, more to stoke Eskel and Yennefer’s laughter than out of any real annoyance.
Lambert and Letho arrive as Eskel and Geralt are wrapping up a morning sparring session in the front courtyard, Yennefer sipping a chilled wine in the shade and shouting cheerfully lewd remarks whenever the sun glints the right way off of one of their bare chests.
Lambert grins and leads his horse to the newly expanded stable, while Letho stops dead and stares.
Geralt disarms Eskel with an unnecessary flourish, then barks out a laugh and Eskel ducks under his sword and full-body tackles him, sending them both crashing onto the sun-warmed stone.
A few moments of tussling later, Geralt grins up at Letho, effectively pinned under Eskel’s bulk.
“You two are fuckin’ weird,” Letho rasps, shaking his head.
Geralt shoves Eskel off him, shaking dirt and dust out of his hair. “B.B.!” He calls, taking the reins of Letho’s horse and stroking her nose affectionately.
B.B. materializes out of thin air at his back, along with a stablehand that unloads and hefts Letho’s saddlebag without a word.
“Thanks, Giles,” Geralt says, ruffling the lad’s curly hair. Giles grins and trots off.
Letho continues to stare, probably wondering at the ease with which the stableboy has apparently stolen his things. Geralt nudges him with a shoulder. “Follow B.B., he’ll show you to your room.”
Letho stares for just a little bit longer. “You guys are so fucking weird,” he finally decides, turning to follow B.B.
“Lambert!” Geralt calls, parking Letho’s horse in the stall next to Lambert’s and handing off the reins to Giles, who has joined them after dropping Letho’s things off at his room.
“What,” Lambert deadpans, picking up his pack.
Geralt slings an arm over Lamber’s shoulder, stealing the pack to sling it over his own shoulder and ignoring Lambert’s half-hearted wiggling. “I’ve got your stuff,” he says.
“I can see that,” Lambert grouses, shoving Geralt’s arm off. This time, Geralt allows it.
“Go find Eskel,” Geralt says, unphased. “Got a surprise for you.”
Lambert eyes him suspiciously, then shrugs. He deftly unbuckles his chest piece and shoves it into Geralt’s arms, leaving him in a thin undershirt. “Don’t mess with my shit,” he grumbles, then shoulders his way out of the stables.
Geralt waits a beat, then wanders out himself, catching a glimpse of Eskel and Lambert disappearing into the house. A moment later, and a furious yowl and several strings of extremely vulgar profanities escape the house, followed closely by Eskel, Gaetan hot on his heels.
Geralt grins, dumping the armor into Eskel’s hands and nudging Gaetan off-balance as he rushes past. Gaetan grumbles and glares without heat, then disappears into the wine cellar.
Eskel shifts the armor over into one hand, slinging his free arm over Geralt’s shoulders and giving them a squeeze as a late autumn breeze rustles the leaves in the vineyard.
“It’s gonna be a good winter, Wolf.”