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Fuck!
Lambert groans with effort and seethes like some terrible animal as he helplessly kicks to find purchase without any success. The earth he’s clawing at is wet and soft with recent rains, and the sea below him is like a distant beast with an open mouth and ugly rows of rocks and reefs for teeth.
Fucking wyvern!
Lambert’s muscles scream in his shoulders, in his wrists, in his very fingertips, and he is sure all the kicking and groaning and all this stupid effort just to stay alive is just ridiculously futile. He’s going to die here. Perhaps he is already dead but too stubborn to notice the fact. Soon enough, either the earth would give, or his fingertips would give, or both, and he would die here, at this goddess-forsaken, nameless nook of the world.
The wyvern had this great idea to summersault at him, throwing both of them over the cliff - and then it gave this stupid surprised noise as the ground ran out from under them before it fell to its death. Lambert could have laughed at the baffled expression he saw on its ugly mug, but he was busy grabbing onto the cliff’s edge.
So here he is. As in at the very literal edge of his life. His prey has fallen so he wouldn’t get paid anyways. So did his swords and the better part of all his equipment. Damn, those were some fucking expensive brews on his potion belt! And now… now he too will fall, and his brothers won’t ever know what happened to him. (Strangely, this is the first thing that leaps to Lambert’s mind, but he guesses a dying man can’t be picky.) Perhaps it would be better to just accept the fact, and finally let go and get over with the nasty deed.
But Lambert is anything if not stubborn. He always has been. He seethes and groans, and his muscles burn with effort as he clings to the cliff’s very edge and with it - to his life. Damn it, it’s his life! Even if it’s a shitty one, even if it’s a Witcher’s, it’s his, and he will fucking kick and claw and bite and scream as long as he could before the abyss takes him!
“You fucking-” he swears between groans because this might be the last time he could get the world to know how he truly feels. “Mothefucking- ah! Bitch!”
He feels his nails give. They are strong nails, claws more like human nails, but they too have their limit. Even Witcher-strength does, and his fingers are now trembling, the muddy earth under them getting slippery, and there’s no more purchase-
Lambert’s going to fall. He’s going to die right now, right here. And however much he kicks or claws or swears and groans at the fucking gods, it’ll happen, so fuck it all! He lets out the desperate tearless sob he had held all his life ever since the Grasses. He fucking deserves that much before the fall, doesn’t he?
Either the earth gives or his nails, or his fingers - whichever does, it happens. Suddenly he’s slipping and falling, falling, and he has a fleeting moment to think Fucking hell, bet the water’s colder than the Wild Hunt’s ass, when-
His shoulder suddenly screams with pain, and his whole arm feels like it’ll be torn off, but he’s still there! He’s not falling anymore.
A man holds his wrist with both hands, gripping him with a force that’s not entirely human and also very, very familiar, and Lambert’s hard skin sure will bruise blue and purple from it. The man’s face is rather close to Lambert like this. He sees the wide and wild, eerily green glint in his eyes, the sharper-than-human canines as he gasps for air, the messy locks of dark ringlets of his hair escaping his tie - the sudden paleness under his golden brown complexion.
He’s so fucking pretty, Lambert thinks because he has always been an honest man, and if he’s about to die right here, he might as well admit it.
The man lies on the ground, in the mud, holding Lambert with both hands and strength that rivals his own.
“Shit,” he hisses like a cat before he groans and tries to haul Lambert over the edge.
It doesn’t work, but that doesn’t mean Lambert’s not immediately smitten by the stranger. He’s strong and pretty and tries to save Lambert’s sorry ass - what else could a poor Witcher ask for?
“Not that I’m not loving the weight of everything you are,” he grins a desperate, crazy grin as sweat runs down his pretty face. “But you’re fucking heavy, darling.”
Oh! Oh, he’s a charming, insane motherfucker!
Lambert growls like the feral beast he is, just on principle, and the stranger is just crazy enough to laugh a breathless, frantic little thing.
“I’m going to swing you,” says the man, his green eyes gleaming in the dusk. “Just let me, don’t fight it. Trust me.”
And Lambert does. What the fuck is he supposed to do but trust this insane, pretty, charming stranger? Don’t be misled, Lambert’s the most surprised at the turn of events, and the sudden turn of his very heart, but fuck it! A moment ago he was ready to die, and though now that’s still very much on the table - but so is surviving. If the price of his life is to trust this man - who turned up like some hero in an old-wives tale and that inexplicably does things to Lambert’s tar-black Witcher-numb heart… well, he already does so.
He goes limp and trusts his weight to the man - who groans and swears in a southern dialect but doesn’t protest. Then the stranger puts inhuman strength in his arms and gently swings Lambert. He’s limp and forces every muscle in his body to stay so, and doesn’t instinctively grab onto the cliff’s edge, or stray roots, and doesn’t mind the burn in his shoulder and his whole arm.
One swing - he gasps surprised at the weightlessness and the strength of his saviour.
Two swings - Lambert feels like he could fly with those gleaming green wild eyes burning his very soul (or whatever’s left of it), even though his arm feels like it’s being torn out. He would give his arm if the man would look at him like that for a bit longer.
Three swings - and Lambert now flies, actually flies, as the man hauls him back onto the edge, back from the gaping mouth of death! Lambert crashes onto the man's chest, and he holds him now by the hips, and they both fall back from the edge, gasping for air.
“Fuck,” the stranger groans relieved, then he starts snickering. “I wanted to meet you over a drink!” The whole thing sounds and feels just insane enough that Lambert follows suit.
“If you think I’m not going to drink after this, you’re fucking dumb.”
He pushes himself up and gins down at the man. He looks fucking great under him like this, even in the mud, even after almost dying - or perhaps because of that. His long hair is like a dark halo around his face, those green eyes burning right through him like he would take Lambert here and now if only he asked, his hands are still on Lambert’s hips warm, and sure, and there.
“Can I buy you that drink?” The man asks softly, almost like a whisper, his insane grin melting off his face, and his pretty lips are right… right there…
Lambert only nods dumbly, he sure as hell must look dumb and tired and like death just chewed him up and spit him out. But the stranger doesn’t seem like he minds; he grins bright, brighter than the fucking sun, and Lambet’s Witcher-slow heart now picks up.
“Who are you?” Lambert asks because he wants a name. He wants his name on his lips, on his mind, on his heart and to always remember it for the rest of his life. Preferably a bit later, if the man was amenable, he would also gladly howl it.
“Aiden,” the man says, his grin softening a bit, like he too feels how important this moment is to Lambert. Then, almost like he’s ashamed but tries very hard to cover it, says softly, “Aiden of the Cats.”
Batshit insane, pretty as a summer breeze, charming as a prince in a tale, strong as an ox, have just saved Lambert’s hide… and a metaphorical middle finger to everything Witcher schools held as laws for as long as he could remember? It’s already enough for him to bend down slowly, looking for any signs of protest, and when he finds nothing when Aiden only smiles at him softly, he kisses him.
It’s soft and experimental, like how he would slowly introduce a new component to an alchemical brew. Can’t rush that shit, or you end up with an explosion and maybe burn off your eyebrows. But as their lips meet and get familiar, as the moon climbs higher on the night sky and Aiden goes limp with a happy sigh, and his lips are soft and plush and eager under his, Lambert concludes the experiment is a success. He can keep adding this ingredient to their brew. So he does.
Again and again because fuck, it feels good to be alive! Even if his arm feels like it’ll fall off, even if his gear is lost, even if his hunt won’t be paid… kissing Aiden in the mud makes up for all that.