#but if u think abt it it explains SO much abt netflix geralt and all his fun unexplored trauma

[nonbinary-renfri]

After they’re done and Yennefer’s eyes have raked over the expanse of his sweat-dappled skin, her fingers find the raised teeth marks gouged into his thigh. She sits up, tracing along scarred edges. “Ooo, nasty. This one’s new.” Leaning over, she lightly bites on top of the healed wound and drags her teeth over his skin, drawing a twitch and a warning growl from Geralt. With a satisfied smile on her lips, Yennefer slinks back up the length of his body, tweaking the nipple closer to her along her way before settling into the mattress next to him. Geralt rolls into her, playfully catching her earlobe between his teeth in retaliation. He bites gently at her collarbone and presses a kiss to her bare chest just above her sternum. She lets him nuzzle in close to her, tucking his face into her neck, the tip of his nose brushing her jugular. Geralt breathes her in, burrowing past that familiar perfume of lilac and gooseberries to the rich yet earthy scent of cloves and another similar scent with just a hint more salt that takes his mind to both loam and luxury.

He’d looked at her and thought she should smell of sweet plums and rich wine, and instead she smells like the wildest depths of the forest.

“I think I saw my mother recently,” he says into her skin and her hand pauses where she’s playing with a strand of his hair.

She winds the white lock around her finger. “I don’t know what that means, Geralt.”

“She’s a sorceress.” Yennefer pulls sharply on his hair, but he ignores her request for a name, continuing, “I came close to dying, while I was still searching for Ciri, and I think it was her, my mother, who healed me. It seemed like dream, but I’d be dead if it truly was one.” Geralt is quiet for a moment, unsure if the ache in his chest will steal the words from him. “She looked nearly the same as the day she abandoned me on the road outside the witcher’s keep.”

He can hear the rage in the lungs beneath his ear as Yennefer breathes deep, once, twice, before she speaks. “Some people don’t deserve to be mothers,” she says loftily and she means it to sound callous, like there isn’t pain running through every word of that statement, but the fingers stroking through his hair are a little rougher than maybe she means them to be. Geralt does not mind. He is not delicate; the tugging soothes an itch he wouldn’t have known to scratch.

There are moments, where you can tell someone something with a few words and in that instant hand them a huge chunk of who you are. Because not only does it tell them something about how you came to be, it reveals every lie, every excuse, every silence that you have ever used to hide that truth away from them.

Geralt breathes in Yennefer’s skin. Breathes out, “I was… most witchers are children claimed by the Law of Surprise.”

Again, she stills beneath him as she takes in the information, lets it run its course through her mind. He wonders what moments she’s thinking of, what conversations (arguments) might be revealing themselves to her under a new light. Yennefer goes back to picking apart a tangle she’d either found or created in his hair. “That makes a surprising amount of sense.” Her voice is softer than he expected. “No wonder you were terrified of your Child Surprise.”            Her fingernails scratch against his scalp as she cradles him close to her. He has exposed a vulnerability, given her something that can be used against him, and she would not be her if she does not exploit it. Yennefer doesn’t hesitate to put this new tool to the test, a single question all she needs to carve him open and expose his deepest fears with her usual uncanny precision. “Would you kill to stop what happened to you,” to us, “from happening to her?”

“Yes,” he snarls into her throat, bared teeth against her jugular that know the taste of lifeblood, know that biting into a neck just right releases a flood like ripping the cork out of a wine barrel, and all she smells of is satisfaction. The answer comes to him as easy as breathing and he wonders if this feeling in his stomach could be fear. Geralt thinks he may be holding on to her too tight and part of him wants to let go of the body in his arms, to crush the bedsheets in his fists instead as something he does not know how to name shudders through him. But this is Yennefer in their bed and she abhors it when he tries to protect her, even if it’s from himself. So instead he moves to spread rough hands wide over the smooth skin of her back and clutches her closer than he should dare. This is Yennefer, and she will forgive him bruises before any implication that he thinks her weak.

She pulls him from where his nose is buried in her pulse, thumbs nestling in that tender place behind his ears, and her eyes are shards of amethyst. She asks of him, “Would you kill Vesemir?”

He’s staring at her because he doesn’t think he’s ever given her that name, but also because it’s a question he has asked himself in the time since Ciri’s arms wrapped around him in that forest, one he has pondered only on the deepest, darkest nights. Geralt hopes it will never become more than a what-if, because he believes the old man has changed, believes the apologies always buried in his eyes; he does, he believes him, he does… but there’s a shattered little piece of him that used to be an innocent young boy and it can’t trust anything, anymore. And that’s why he knows his answer.

Geralt meets Yennefer’s frigid gaze and begs with golden irises for her to understand, to know what his reply is. He doesn’t want to-

“Say it. Out loud.”

Gods, he’s missed her. Missed this. She’s ruthless, makes him honest where it counts, and her ambition burns into him. She expects him to make hard decisions, to be perfect and unfailing and better than he would be for just himself. It’s ice, and familiar, and Geralt can finally breathe.

“Yes,” he gasps into the air that hangs between their lips.

She nods, satisfied. “Good.” She’s studying him now, a molten softness warming her crystal gaze, one hand sliding forward from the back of his neck to caress his cheek. Geralt feels flayed open and he wants to close his eyes, so he does. Fingertips gently trace along his jawline, the swirled etchings unique to her skin rasping over his stubble. Yennefer’s thumb drags across his bottom lip and Geralt tries to snag it between his teeth, breath catching in a quiet whine as it slips away from him. She guides his face back down to her throat and he takes it for the offering that it is, biting along the line of her collarbone towards her shoulder. As he soothes reddening marks with his tongue, Yennefer hums contentedly under him, her hands twined into his hair.

“Aretuza bought me,” she tells him, because Yennefer of Vengerberg pays her debts and she thinks she owes him something, now. And. It’s a piece of a cypher that makes her up, but it doesn’t reveal her as Geralt’s confession did him. He’s still missing too much to see her clearly, to know how to decipher what he’s looking at; she’s offered him merely a taste of what lays deeper, the tiniest secret sip of her given like she’s daring him to try and steal a mouthful more. She tells him nothing else and Geralt does not have the breath to drown in the past tonight; he is content to drift towards sleep beneath the quiet and her gentle touch.

If Yennefer were someone corny like Jaskier, Geralt might have fallen asleep to a whisper of, you’re important to me. He doesn’t need her to say it, though; her fingertips tracing his features are enough of a full circle for him.

#hello welcome to one of my favorite things i've written #i just. love geralt and yennefer's dynamic sm #explore! their! relationship more!! cowards! #that scene in bed in rare species.... #i am a firm believer that yenralt have most of their emotional conversations as pillow talk #it's simply. their style #also i know it's contested that geralt was a child of surprise #but if u think abt it it explains SO much abt netflix geralt and all his fun unexplored trauma #what is witcher canon anyways i do what i want #yeah but this is part of a whole bunch of wips i have in the show universe w a twist of the books #but it's the most standalone-ish and i reread it while procrastinating last of us au and thot oh i can't keep this one to myself anymore #the witcher #geralt of rivia #geralt #yennefer of vengerberg #yennefer #yenralt #yennefer x geralt #the witcher fic #writing #my writing #mine #btw if ur wondering what else yennefer smells like #it's truffles