every_blossom_blooming | (no subject)

It took nearly ten minutes for him to return to Nina on the beach. He'd dragged himself and the body out to chest-level water, before he spent a few minutes hyper-oxygenating his blood with deep, quick breaths.

His head fell beneath the cool water, and his metabolism responded, slowing down drastically, using less oxygen. He dove deep, to thirty feet. His ears popped. He ignored it, and tangled the chains around a rocky outcropping beneath the water, near a drop-off. He could be sure that the body would stay there, wouldn't float away, and would be eaten that night by the influx of life from the deeper water.

Geralt returned to Nina. The water, at least, had cleaned off any remaining gore that had stuck to his leather armor. He shook off like a dog, nose to tail, before stepping over to Nina, hair still dripping salt water gently.

"You're welcome." He was still sluggish, waiting for his body to raise his heartrate again, to warm up. "This shouldn't follow either of you."

He meant it in two meanings. Inej would stay clean. Inej deserved to stay clean, and Nina as well, by association. There was real evil out in the world, the people who were simply trying to live shouldn't get dragged into it.

Edited 2017-09-18 03:32 (UTC)

Nina stepped closer, all her senses thrown open. SHe didn't know how it was he did what he did - he cited his mutations and she believed him, because he was like no other human that she'd ever met. Only other Heartrenders had the power over bodies - their own and otherwise - the way Geralt did.

Her hand smoothed up over his chest, ignoring the dampness of his armor. Her fingers spread out, encouraging his pulse to quicken, to return to the beat she had long since memorized. She watched his face as she did it, held his gaze. She didn't ask what he'd done with the body; it didn't matter.

"I'm grateful on behalf of both of us."

She leaned up and kissed Geralt's cheek, tasting the saltwater there.

"I think I at least owe you dry clothes and something warm to drink."

Geralt knew that Nina was doing something with her special magic when he felt the warm begin to flush back through him, bringing more pink color back to his face, which had been too chalk-white for a moment in the dark. The veins on his neck and forehead softened and became less prominent.

And then Nina kissed him, on the cheek, with warm lips despite the breeze off the ocean.

She smelled gorgeous. She always did, it clung to her, her soft skin, her thick hair. He was too tired to fight the urge. He leaned down to press his mouth against the corner of hers, tugging at her lower lip, kissing her in a way that was slow and supple and exhausted.

It was not the swim which had taken it out of him, but the emotion, the memory, the sympathy.

The way he kissed her took her breath away in all the best ways. Her hand stayed on his chest and the other slid up, fingers curling in Geralt's wet hair as she pressed closer against him.

Saints but he knew how to kiss.

Her heartbeat jumped and all too soon she felt warm all over, especially all the places their bodies happened to meet. Despite the fact that they had just disposed of a ruined corpse together, the sound of the beach and knowing the moonlight was there made the whole thing unreasonably romantic.

When they finally parted, Nina wet her lips like she might still taste him there. He smelled like the sea and leather and something that was just him.

Geralt parted reluctantly, his eyes on Nina's, dark in the night, and following her as he stepped away and then moved up the beach, slowly and a little roaming, so that she could keep up. She was right, he was wet, the seaside was damp, and they ought to go get a hot drink, and some dry clothes.

"Where's Inej staying? Should we go back to my place?"

He could get a change of clothing there, and while he didn't have a setup nearly as fancy as Nina's, what he did have was some mulled wine, a stovetop, and enough pots and pans to take care of his necessities. Like warm drinks after a horrid night.

Nina was reluctant to leave that spot, as if that was the only place he'd kiss her like that. She knew that was some nonsense, and Geralt really should get into something dry. She didn't know if witchers could get sick, but she didn't want to find out like this.

She stayed close as they walked back up the beach.

"She's with Kaz. I can't think of a better place for her." Maybe Nina had her issues with Kaz, but he looked after Inej, in his way. And if Dirtyhands had softened for anyone, it was for Inej Ghafa. She knew Inej would feel safe with him, and she knew Kaz would only be upset that he hadn't had the chance to kill the man himself.

Nina decided not to think of what he could do to someone that did that to Inej. She already knew what he was capable of when a man merely nearly got her killed.

"Yes," she agreed, curious to see Geralt's apartment. It occurred to her that she had not been there - he always came to her. "I need to see what sort of house you keep."

The answer satisfied Geralt, not that it was any of his business that Inej was alright. He looked over his shoulder at Nina, amusement in the subtle narrowing of his eyes.

"Afraid you'll be bored and disappointed. It's not very interesting." It was mostly bare, actually, which was the way he'd been raised. In a nearly empty ruin at Kaer Morhen.

"It's not far."

It wasn't, either. He did what he could to keep up conversation with Nina. He was accustomed to silence, but if she needed distraction, he was willing to provide it. She'd just had to deal with something deeply unpleasant.

"I'll be the judge of that, thank you." She smiled at him, but as they walk the expression faded into something more thoughtful, more neutral. Nina didn't make any attempt to keep up frivolous conversation; she was content to walk in companionable quiet as she processed everything that had just happened.

It wasn't the first corpse she'd seen. It wasn't the first body she had witnessed being disposed. But this body had attempted to hurt Inej in ways that had driven her friend to nearly mindless panic, and she hated that.

Geralt said a few things that drew her out of herself. He was easy to talk to, at least.

"Alright, moment of truth," she said when they reached his building. "Are you still living out in the woods, too?"

"Yes. But less often. There's something going on out there. Subtle, but something. And I don't trust it, for whatever reason."

The birds had been quiet, the deer skittish.

Geralt entered the building, holding the door for Nina, and took to the stairwell to make his way up to his apartment. He was still mildly untrusting of the elevators, and they tended to give him a weird sense of claustrophobia that he didn't get, somehow, from crawling through caves or hiding in cupboards.

He let them in to the apartment, flicking on the lights for Nina. It was a human gesture, one he made with only conscious thought. Geralt never turned the lights on in the apartment on his own, when he was there. He had no need. His eyes would adjust, and at times the electric lights could be too sudden and too artificial for Geralt. The buzzing of the wires, distracting.

It was, as he'd said, almost entirely empty, with only the furnishings provided. But there were notably a great deal of pillows and throws on the sofa, and a pile of reading material thick on the coffee table where he'd been studying.

It smelled clean inside, and masculine. There was an herbal edge, because he'd been gathering and drying plants, and on the kitchen stove sat a pot of White Honey that still looked threatening and hours away from drinkability, even for a witcher.

Nina's frown flickered back for a moment. SHe didn't want to think about what might be out there that could disturb someone like Geralt enough that he had taken to spend time in his apartment.

She peered around him as they entered the apartment and she slid the shawl off her shoulders. She had another weather-appropriate long dress, flowing and comfortable and one that cinched neatly at her waist.

"Well, it's rather bare but I suppose that shouldn't surprise me, knowing you. What are we drinking?"

"Not the shit on the stove," he warned. "Don't, under any circumstances, get that anywhere near your face. It's a witcher decoction."

And it was poisonous to a normal human.

Geralt opened his refrigerator, which was mostly empty, and pulled out another copper pot. This one was filled with wine, cinnamon, cloves, whole anise and orange peel. It was a recipe Dandelion had taught him, and it was a stand-by for the autumn and winter.

"Hope mulled wine is fine. Are you hungry?"

He should peel himself out of his clothing. The shirt, wet, was chafing his armpits. But he could get the wine warming first.

Geralt popped it on the front burner, and turned it on low.

Nina wrinkled her nose and eyed the pot in question dubiously. She sort of wanted to peek into it now but she would endeavor to leave it alone. The last thing she needed was her face burned by fumes or something.

"No, not right now anyway. Ask me again later. Go get changed, Geralt... or at least get out of the wet clothes."

Once the wine was on the stove, Nina tried to push and cajole Geralt out of the kitchen and toward the bedroom. "If you get sick or something on my watch I'll never live it down."

Edited 2017-09-18 06:09 (UTC)

"Don't worry," Geralt said, as he allowed himself to be cajoled toward the bedroom. His voice held a hint of humor, and a bit of exasperation. Nina was a bit of a force.

"Completely immune to pathogens. They can't survive in a witcher's body. Not going to get the sniffles from a night at the beach."

He disappeared into the bedroom, already unbuckling and unbuttoning, pulling ties loose so that he could get the leather jerkin and mail off and toss it to into the corner to dry.

Hearing that actually helped her to relax a little. "Well," she said as Geralt headed down the short hall. "I can't imagine it's comfortable."

She peered into the bedroom a bit and the moment she saw bare, scarred skin, a blush rushed into her face and heat through the rest of her. Right. Nina bit her lip and retreated back to the kitchen before she saw more than she'd been invited to see.

And she tried not to think of the occasion or two when Geralt had worn just a towel around her apartment. The apartment smelled faintly of him and she was entirely sure that was not helping her state of mind.

So she tried to be useful and kept an eye on the wine as it warmed, finding a spoon to stir it with so it wouldn't develop a film or anything. The mulling spices smelled wonderful.

Geralt knew the smell of arousal, but kept silent about it, though his breathing deepened. They needed to have a talk, he knew that. It was the responsible thing to do, and Geralt was a responsible man, to the point that Dandelion often thought of him as a moralist.

He worked on getting his codpiece and trousers off, his boots, which his feet were still fairly sloshing in. He left everything in its corner to dry, before putting on a dry white blouse, and a pair of black sleep pants.

He leaned on the kitchen doorway, feeling warm and comfortable and boneless, and stared at Nina. His face had gotten what little color it had back, and his eyes had once again returned to feline slits, under the kitchen lights.

"Hey," he said.

Nina gave Geralt a little smile when he reappeared.

"Much better than the low tide look," she said. She was glad to see his color had returned, even if his witcher mutations lent him all kinds of resilience. "Hi. I'm sorry I-- I suppose I get bossy when I'm worried. Or when I've been worried about something else."

She couldn't pour that onto Inej anymore so she'd foisted it on Geralt. She knew it wasn't one of her finer qualities.

Edited 2017-09-18 06:44 (UTC)

"I like bossy," he said, which was true. Near everyone he knew was bossy, aside from perhaps Zoltan, and Regis, who was simply long-winded. Geralt pressed himself off of the doorway and moved over toward her, ready to help finish with the wine. He pulled two squat wine glasses out of one of the cupboards. He only owned two of them.

"How are you feeling? Up for a talk?"

His tone suggested she was free to say no. It had been a far harder night for Nina than him.

The affirmation got another little smile from her. Nina pushed her hair back, let her fingers slide through it and remain tangled for a moment as she watched Geralt get glasses down.

"Yeah," she answered. "We can talk."

It wasn't the first thing on her mind, but she supposed there would have been some kind of a talk sooner or later. Besides, she had a feeling they weren't about to discuss the body that had been left to rot on the continental shelf, and anything other than that would be a welcome distraction.

Geralt filled the glasses, and passed one to Nina with the cinnamon stick floating in it. It had been made with a sweet wine, because Geralt tended to over-drink dry, but it would hopefully suit Nina's tastes more than his own.

"Do you want a physical relationship?' It seemed like she did, but she was also young, far younger than he was, and she was far from naive but Geralt knew that a witcher lived a life different than a young woman, Heartrender or otherwise. What to him seemed casual, natural, simply to follow their natural attraction, might be another matter entirely for Nina.

Where Geralt had come from, especially, it was still seen by many, by the religious, by the commonfolk, as immoral to have pre-marital sex.

Nina accepted the wine and she laughed, startled, when Geralt just popped out with it. "Sorry I-- I have no idea why I thought you would take longer to say that."

She glanced around the small kitchen and found herself a seat at the little table tucked against the wall. She definitely needed to sit or she would start fidgeting somehow, she was sure.

"Yes," she answered as easily as he'd asked. Then she took a sip of her wine; she sighed. "Yes, and--" But she wasn't sure what to say so she gestured a bit, wide and helpless, and then dropped her hand and looked at Geralt.

"What do you want?"

"Witcher," he answered. "Things are a little ... different between us. Relationships work differently. Partly because of the mutations, partly because of the codex, but largely because we're typically considered outside of the definition of human. And therefore, outside of human morality and tradition."

There was also the outstanding fact that Geralt was, whether he understood or not, fundamentally decent.

He didn't sit. He stood plainly, and tall, in his kitchen, watching her with curiosity and veiled want.

"I'd like to be with you. But I'd also like you to know I don't-- can't-- "

He trailed off, before finding the correct words, or at least closest to. "I'm your friend, Nina, and whether or not we end up in a bed together, that won't change. I don't know how to make it."

Yennefer was still out there, somewhere. And he would only ever think of her, would only ever love her that way, romantically, deeply passionately, forever, as a single soul.

But there were wants, and needs, powerful ones, and there was not a single reason not to enjoy them with Nina, who wanted him.

"I think we've already established that I don't see you outside the definition of human," she said, lifting an eyebrow. She had lived with that label long enough that she wasn't going to enforce it on someone else. Especially not someone like Geralt, who hadn't even been born that way.

Nina studied him after Geralt affirmed that he was her friend, and it took her a moment to understand. Her shoulders lowered and she leaned against the back of the chair.

"Someone else at home?" she guessed quietly. It wasn't necessarily resignation on her voice, but maybe some kind of understanding.

Geralt gave a reserved, quiet, soft nod.

"Yenn and I ... it's complicated. It's not always happy, and it's not always healthy, but it is what it is. There was a wish once, magic, that kept us drawn together. There's fate there. Tangled together."

He lowered his eyes, thoughtful and filled with consternation. His relationship with Yenn was just that, but she was also fiercely jealous. And yet, she was there and seemed as if she always would be. They were the same age, and they would live far into the future. Yenn had used it before, as a threat. That Geralt was not normally mortal. That he would live to see any mortal lovers and friends grow old and die, leaving him alone.

Edited 2017-09-18 07:25 (UTC)

"I understand complicated. The man I loved for a long time had fantasies that involved killing me as often as they involved kissing me." Nina shrugged. The difference was that Matthias was here, and he had moved on. She was happy for him, even if it had taken her some time to get there.

Nina tucked her hair back and as her arm dropped she let it cross beneath her breasts. She propped her other elbow on it and sipped her wine, keeping her eyes on Geralt.

"I like you, Geralt. You wouldn't have been able to kiss me so much if I wasn't interested."

Her smile reappeared, more confident and maybe a little sly.

"Then be my friend. Don't lie to me, don't hide things from me, don't--" She wet her lips and took a deeper breath. "Don't act like I'm something revolting."

Her smile brought one to his face, honest as it was fleeting, gentle and small.

"I could never. I would never." He knew how to be a friend, It was difficult to admit, he knew, because of the way that he was raised, the way all witchers were brought up. But Geralt knew how to be a friend, and he was a good man.

"You're beautiful. Everything about you is warm and beautiful. I couldn't ask to have met a better person. I certainly don't deserve it."