Chapter Text
“Good morning, Cahir.”
Cahir bristled with a yelp, startled and trying to hide his sudden agitation.
Preparing to venture downstairs to breakfast, he was in the midst of dressing. Thankfully, he had already put his braies on, and was only now just adjusting the ends of his hosiery.
He sighed, shaking his head, not bothering to turn around. Since, after all, it was a familiar voice.
“Hi, Regis.”
In Beauclair Palace, on the west wing of the fourth floor, Emiel Regis and Cahir shared a room. In all truth, it was not their choice.
Upon their arrival in Beauclair, the bedchambers which Geralt’s company took up—not including those of Dandelion, who slept nowhere else but with the Duchess [sic]—were segregated by gender.
The company had been cleft in two, between male and female, placing Cahir and Regis in one room on the west wing of the palace, on the fourth floor, and Milva and Angoulême in another on the east, on the third.
It was a mildly inconvenient and yet entirely common practice, which they really should not have at all been surprised by, but remained so all the same.
Room assignment by gender was the standard arrangement across all human nobility or those otherwise distinguished by their wealth, who could afford to host separate lodgings for men and women. Even in Nilfgaard, which, although it was slowly coming to enjoy a more egalitarian reputation and had officially degreed that multiple public spaces, including its academy dormitories and prison cells, must be co-ed, one would still find separate rooms and floors in manors and castles segregated between the genders.
Despite this undeniably ancient human institution, it was not accepted with ease by the company.
During their journey through Brugge, Angren, Transriver, the Slopes and the Nevi Valley, they had been corralled into sleeping side-by-side with one another every night, sometimes in separate bedrolls and sometimes under the same blanket—for once in Transriver, after they had departed Meve’s camp, Dandelion forgot to take a bedroll and had to share with the rest; rotating with all of them except for Milva who refused the proposition in some choice terms—her reasoning being that bedroll or not, he was still Dandelion, after all.
Other than that, they shared their sleep. So they had become accustomed to in their travels.
Thus, upon arrival in Beauclair, the forced separation of the company had been felt.
It may surprise one that they would have preferred to be assigned four to a chamber, instead of two to two smaller ones; for, wouldn’t that have meant more privacy, and thus, more peace? Not so, at least with this company. For they had found that their temperaments, their inclinations, their varied mores, balanced each other out—and when divided, they fell into disarray.
The lesser of the troubles was with the men.
Or rather, with the vague males, for Regis was in fact not at all a man, but a vampire, so human distinctions of gender could not be accurately applied to him. He was in fact somewhat piqued by the matter, for it was really a very interesting topic which had instead been confined to a single decision lacking any nuance. But Regis could not get an opportunity to hold that conversation with the chamberlain, for he would have had to admit his vampirish identity to do so. Nevertheless, though it would have no bearing on the situation of the bedroom assignments, Regis spun the conversation at breakfast with the rest of the company, eventually leading them to utter confusion in search of a comprehensive, cross-species definition of gender.
It was not so bad for the men to share a room. Regis and Cahir did not get on each other’s nerves so much; owing to this rooming, they actually had the opportunity to have many interesting talks, and Regis got the sense that the young man appreciated having a listening ear to his troubles from time to time.
It was only certain stubborn mannerisms of the vampire which proved themselves entirely unable to be rid of which at times agitated the young nobleman. He would never get used to some of these habits, such as that Regis was fond of waking in the middle of the night to stretch and go through all of his shirts and mantles, at once beginning to organize them haphazardly and without reason.
For Cahir, Regis’ most unbearable rooming habit by far was his inclination to appear suddenly from thin air without forewarning, which Cahir could not predict nor prevent himself from being startled by. Such behavior was entirely normal and unremarkable for Regis, so he could not ask him to stop, could not scold and implore him to enter the room like a normal human being. Firstly, Regis was his elder, and thus Cahir was unable to scold him. Secondly… well. Rules about normal human beings could not apply here. Yet it sent Cahir’s heartbeat into staccato each time he did it.
The worst time was by far when he had been admiring the view off the balcony during a particularly clear night in the valley, leaning against the rail. Regis appeared—though this time, not from thin air, but in actuality climbing up the side of the palace—and Cahir almost tumbled from the fourth floor in sheer faint and shock. In retrospect, it was not too big of an event, since Regis would have caught him anyway had he fallen, but sensing Cahir’s jarred composure, he had promised not to do that anymore. At least, while Cahir was awake.
The girls, meanwhile, well, what could be said about them. Their constant contesting made Regis and Cahir look like diplomats of such expertise and skill that they could have put immediate end to the war raging in the north.
From the very beginning, when the gendered separation of chambers came to light, exceptional protest was heard from by Milva, who momentarily managed to break out of her depressive spell to kick up a fuss and commotion with the chamberlain Sebastian Le Goff, the charge of their lodgings. She, who had been brought to Beauclair before the rest of the company as she recuperated from her broken ribs, had been under the assumption that her room was hers and entirely private. So when Angoulême showed up with a fluffy eiderdown and broad, impish grin, she was immediately filled with dread and rage.
Regis, Geralt, Cahir, and the chamberlain attempted to come to some agreement which would suit everyone, and both Cahir and Regis offered to room with either Milva or Angoulême, in order to pacify the situation. It was a decent idea, as both of them were actually closer with the girls than they were with each other. However, upon hearing such an offer, Le Goff had flushed, paled, and flushed again, like the tide rushing in and out of the shoals. The chamberlain was obviously appalled by the proposal, insisting that to put any of the ladies with any of the gentlemen would be a horrible protocolary scandal and doubtless to become the epicenter of myriad rumors and gossip. Cahir blushed fervently when explained the situation, and rescinded his offer. Regis likewise, though he was not at all scandalized, merely rolling his eyes.
With no solution in sight, Milva threatened to leave and ride into the Caroberta Forest, where she planned to sleep. She had already managed to saddle a horse and strap her feathered pillow atop its haunches when Geralt intercepted her, pleading with her to have some propriety and not cause a scandal which would draw attention to their group. They were staying in Beauclair under the guise of being incognito nobility, after all.
So came the long series of arbitration which resulted in the creation of a long document, for which they roped Dandelion, pulling him from the Duchess’ bedchambers, into scribing with a long-feathered pen. All in all, it was seemingly going well, as Milva and Angoulême both brought their concerns to the round table, and Geralt and Regis adjudicated fair divisions and manners. The document proved to be less useful, though, when it turned out that Dandelion had written it in thirteen-syllable verse, framing it in metaphor as an epic, infinite cat-and-mouse game, a war drawing out over centuries between a bold gryphon and wily basilisk.
So, with their agreement or not, Milva and Angoulême were confined to a room together.
The arrangement brought to mind a wooden cage which barely held a mountain lion and a lynx. Angoulême enjoyed pestering and provoking Milva, verily so, for the archer’s reactions were always so delightfully volatile. The rest of the company tried to discourage her from such behavior, but it only redirected her pestering towards Regis and Cahir—who could also only take so much themselves. For this reason, she often hung out in their room, or ran around the palace looking for gossip. At these times she left Milva, fortunately, in peace.
For at least a while.
It shouldn’t have been to say, though, that this meant her company—or perhaps, her interruptions—went unwelcomed by the vampire and the young nobleman. Though at times, Cahir became annoyed with her, he never allowed his annoyance to boil over, as he was familiar with the concept of co-existing with siblings, having come from a family with three sisters and two brothers: some older, some younger. Some pensive, and some full of mischief as was Angoulême. Her interruptions and declensions were very mundane to him. Regis, on the other hand, found the girl entirely curious, probably in part because he hadn’t really ever known an adolescent human prior to their meeting, and she had a tendency of expressing her opinions vividly and without let up.
Really, he learned so much from her.
Perched in their chambers, Angoulême was busy regaling to Regis the story of how it had gone down in the mines at the end of September, when she, Geralt, and Cahir had found the half-elf brigand Schirrú—or when he had found them. Nevertheless, she focused on the beginning, during which it had gone well and before Cahir’s scalp had been torn apart by a stray axe.
“Ha, you should have seen the look on their faces!” she exclaimed, gesturing with her hands and leaning forward. “I walked down there with these two behind me, pummeled black and blue, looking like scoundrels,” she jibed, turning her attention to Cahir.
“Really, you and the witcher fucked each other up good during that little spat!”
Cahir groaned, rubbing his cheek where Geralt had hit him then.
“And it was a good thing, too, for owing to that, no one gave us any trouble. They thought I’d come back—hah, even from the stake—with two bruisers in tow, some real brutes.”
Cahir groaned again.
“We do not see others for how they are,” Regis said philosophically, “but how they appear to us. Some brutes they really were—I recall, Cahir, that you and the witcher returned from that misadventure penitent and morose, dealing with fever that made your teeth chatter. And entirely apologetic to one another. As I expected it would turn out.”
“Anyways,” Angoulême interrupted, “Drosdeck, the foreman of the mine, happened to give us a little trouble, when we asked about that half-elf. Well, being a past acquaintance of mine, he began to rag me about some debts I had fallen into with him… or something, or rather. I told him to teach his grandmother to suck eggs,” she sneered, “while the witcher got impatient and pounced…”
“What a charmingly colorful expression.”
Cahir snorted.
“Don’t you think so, Cahir?”
Regis was genuine in his observations. He found the various curses and insults invented by humans to be of great interest, for they illustrated the human consciousness in a clear and pure light: drawing to focus the convictions from which they were inseparable, yet still held entirely unconsciously.
“You could have expressed your displeasure with him in many other ways. You could have not have said anything at all. I’m assuming this expression was selected from of myriad others for its strength which it enhanced your argument, your rebuking of him. For such an expression serves as an effective and fascinating demonstration for multiple sociological attitudes held by humans,” he instructed.
Cahir looked doubtful. Angoulême stared blankly.
“The veneration of old age, and the enormous value placed upon the chasteness of women: Both are subverted by the statement. More than that, it speaks to the natural human anxieties and repulsion towards incest and sexual relations with one’s elders. As well as the aversion to oral sex,” he added thoughtfully. “The eggs, of course, symbolizing the testicles.”
Cahir was frowning. Angoulême giggled. Regis presumed their discomfort was owing to that he had brought such unconscious human worries to the light of discussion.
“Sure,” Angoulême chimed. “I could’ve just told him to fuck off, but I wanted to stick it to him, y’know?”
“I believe I do.”