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geskelwhumpweek · 2 years

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Daddy??? 👉👈🥺 can I get hug prompt 33 with Geskel meeting up on the path.

Outside POV please?

33. the hug from that one person who is allowed to hug you

Of course my dear!! please enjoy some happy hugging between the boys! I love them! Can be read as slash or platonic <3

On Ao3 Hug prompt collection

Jeremia chews on his straw slowly and squints at the sinking sun. It’s bad luck to have a witcher around this time of year, even worse luck when it’s for three days.

It would have been fine as Jeremia is usually not the superstitious type, but Nana keeps nagging at him that he should chase him away.

She is freaked out about the scars, he knows, but Jeremia doesn’t mind. The witcher is staying in the barn with his horse, a magnificent steed, and is out of the way mostly. Even hunts his own food.

But three days?

Even Jeremia is starting to feel a bit tense about it. And the witcher doesn’t even want to shake his hand or allow a pat on his arm! He is starting to think that witchers are freaks of nature after all.

Hoofbeats interrupts his solemn musings and his eyes turn to the road.

A man with white hair and two swords strapped to his saddle rides down the dirt road. He is wearing armor, thick gloves, and his eyes dart back and forth as if he is looking for someone.

Their eyes meet, and Jeremia feels himself startle. Blasted beets.

Another witcher?

The man steers his horse towards the fence, smiling slightly as he approaches. Jeremia does not like that smile, but he stiffly returns the smiles. His mama taught him to be polite after all.

“Good afternoon, friend,” the stranger greets. “How fares the harvest?”

Jeremia isn’t sure why the witcher cares at all, but he plucks the straw from his mouth and straightens from where he's leaning on his hoe.

“It’s coming along. I’m borrowing my neighbour’s boy for the heavy lifting, but if the weather stays this nice, we will be all set. What brings you this way, witcher? We have no work for even the one of you.”

That makes the stranger's smile grow and turn hopeful. Aye, he has a prettier smile than the other, this one. But that scar over his eyes gets a funny shape when he does.

“I was looking for another of my kind, as it is. Eskel, tall and broad as a beast, with a scar over his lip.”

Jeremia nods and thinks of the witcher in the barn. His name could be Eskel, that does sound familiar.

“There should be one such as that around here. He has been staying in my barn for now, but went to the woods an hour ago to hunt.”

The white-haired one nods his understanding.

“Might I wait for him here? To let my mare graze by the side of the road?”

“Ain't nothing I can do to stop ya.” Jeremia sighs, scratching his forehead. “Just don’t let Nana catch you ruining her weeds.”

The witcher nods again and climbs down from his horse, movements smooth like a cat. He loosens the girth of the saddle slightly, removes the tack, and plops down on the grass.

Witchers be strange creatures.

Jeremia has no more time to spare on thoughts of mutants, however. From the house he can hear the wailing of his youngest and Nana’s hoarse voice singing.

Back still aching, he returns to his small field.

Some time later, it's clear the white-haired witcher only moves to save Nana’s weeds from his horse. J

eremia watches him talk to the mare like it’s a person, scolding her and shoving at her to go to the other side of him. And she does, interestingly enough, with a gentle smack on her hindquarters and a flick of her tail.

Then the white-haired witcher looks up, looking towards the woods.

Jeremia turns to look too, but almost one full minute passes before he sees that other witcher, Esther or something, emerge.

In one hand he carries a crossbow, two hares and some greens in the other.

Esther something walks straight up to Jeremia and presses one of the hares and the greens into his arms.

“For the family. Feed the goat the herbs, she is expecting.”

Jeremia blinks, his hoe falling forgotten to the dirt.

Then Esther-something turns, and his entire demeanor changes. That scar on his lip stretches hideously when he smiles, but his eyes soften.

“Geralt!” the witcher says, dropping the dead hare carelessly to the ground. Geralt is quickly on his feet, too quickly, and the two of them collide into each other in a big hug.

Jeremia watches them, feeling fairly confused about the hair and mutant hugs.

He thought the man couldn’t stand touch?

And there he is, burying his head in the crook of the other’s neck, arms so far around him he is almost touching his own shoulders.

He can hear the witchers murmur, but can’t make out the words. One of them is laughing, and when they part, the white-haired one keeps one hand on the other’s back.

“Thank you, farmer, for your generosity. I will take my leave now. You can find more herbs like that by the creek running through the forest. It should make her milk richer, and probably help your little one’s tummy ache.”

Jeremia can only blink again, and frown. He looks down at the herb, smelling it. It looks vaguely familiar, like something mama could have told him about in his youth.

He probably shouldn’t tell Nana the witcher gave it to him though.

“Where is Scorpion?” the white-haired one asks, and the other one shakes his head.

“Lost a bet to Lambert. He should be at the keep soon.”

As soon as they fetch the things in the barn, they are back out on the road.

Eskel turns and waves towards Jeremia, and Jeremia finds himself waving back.

Witchers are a strange lot.

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geskelwhumpweek · 2 years

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45 + Geralt/Eskel or Roche/Iorveth? :D

Happy to oblige!

I know you sent me this for the angst possibility but it turned out soft? Somehow? At least by my standards? I think that is the first time I’ve ever NOT made something needlessly painful. This is also a Christmas fic, but like in the way that Die Hard is a Christmas movie i.e not very and mostly as a framing device.

It’s also set in the VDL-verse because I physically can’t help myself.

Prompt 45 "you took a bullet for me" Geralt/Eskel

Content Warnings: Violence, gore, PG-13 sex, smoking, poorly translated Finnish, and general feelings.

Words: 3-5k

Vienna, December 24th 1955.

Vienna is freezing, the cloud cover low and muffling and the air carries the bitter tang of snow. From all around the buildings stare down with dark windows like sightless eyes onto the darkened snow-filled square. It’s silent, Christmas eve, everyone at mass or warm at home, the streets empty save for the occasional passing car.

Geralt, briefcase in hand, bounces on the balls of his feet in the slush and watches his breath plume in the still air. He's bundled enough to keep his face mainly in shadow, his telltale hair covered with a knit hat, but the cold still burns at the ends of his fingers and the tip of his nose.

There's the low whisper of a car pulling up into the alley that leads into the square, the quiet hiss of tires in snow and then the sounds of two car doors opening, closing again. Two figures stride into the square, resolving themselves out of the snow like visions. Basil, the mark, and a taller, broader figure at his right hand.

It’s been a year since he saw Eskel last and Geralt can’t help the way his heart leaps at the sight of him; those broad shoulders, those strong legs, regal in his black duster coat and snow-crusted homburg. He’s wearing the patch in deference to the cold - claiming that the scars seize up in the wind and make the glass eye sit strangely in the warped socket - and the black satin of it against his winter-pale skin gives him a rakish bent. He has snowflakes gathering on the sooty lashes of his one visible eye and Geralt finds himself momentarily entranced by the rainbow glitter of them beneath the halogen glow of the street lamp.

Eskel takes up his spot beside Basil, hands behind his back, the picture of perfect ease and predatory grace; a body guard bored of the proceedings.

“Well” Says Basil - he’s mid-level boss in a Finnish arms dealing ring; all receding hairline and glasses with lenses so thick he appears to be looking out of a pair of fishbowls - “Do you have the money”

Geralt does his best to stumble through it for a moment, the picture of the unsure first-time buyer of illegal arms; tonight he’s an oddball of an heir with too much money and not enough sense seeking to outfit a private army. Over Basil’s shoulder he sees Eskel bury the beginnings of a smile into his scarf.

He slings the briefcase onto the bench and flicks it open with shaking fingers. It’s a false-bottom case, lined with blocks of pound notes done up in string, all fake of course. He takes one out and hands it to Eskel who thumbs through the notes consideringly.

“Se on hyvä” He says in confirmation of their authenticity, passing the stack of bills over to Basil who doesn’t so much as glance at them before shoving it in his pocket. Geralt almost snorts at the amateurness of it.

“Good!” Basil says, beaming “Good! Mikhail, the crate if you please”

Eskel disappears for a moment into the swirling snow only to reappear again a moment later with a rough-hewn crate of tommy guns and bullets. He opens it on ceremony for Geralt’s inspection, letting his gloved pinky finger run along the outside of Geralt’s hand as they pass. The touch is electric, dangerous, hidden by the snow.

“All seems to be in order” Geralt says, voice shaking as much from Eskel’s touch as his character’s feigned nervousness “I’ll just…”

“Geralt!” Eskel shouts.

Suddenly there are arms around his waist and the world tilts just as the sound of a sniper shot rings out, rending the silence of the night with a crack that seems to hang in the cold air for longer than it should.

They hit the snowy cobblestones with a force that knocks the breath from his lungs. They roll; him in one direction Eskel in another, his revolver sliding out of his sleeve and into his hand in the space between one breath and the next. He’s got snow in his hair, dirt in the spaces between his teeth and he grins ferally as he brings his revolver up.

Crack, the bullet flies, burying itself in Basil’s kneecap, sending the man screeching to the pavement as Geralt rolls with the recoil. From behind him he hears Eskel’s gun fire, the gurgling cry of the sniper and then the solid thud of a body hitting the ground from a great height.

“Are there more?” he growls, pressing the nose of his revolver to Basil’s head “More snipers. Are there?”

“No!” the man gasps “no!”

There’s blood on the snow, steaming in the cold air and Basil is making the horrible choking sounds of a man unused to pain.

“Pathetic,” Eskel laughs, stalking over and taking the rope from his pocket.

"Mikhail" Basil croaks "what…?

"Keep up old man" Eskel growls, roughly tying Basil's hands behind his back "You're the lynch pin here… pull you out and the whole thing comes down. We're gonna leave you here for the police with your irrefutable evidence and be on our merry way"

Basil seems to have several other things to say to that but Eskel shoves the gag in his mouth before he can get them out and he spits and thrashes instead, muffled.

Geralt pulls the evidence folder from the false bottom of the briefcase and leaves it on top of the open crate, a lovely little Christmas gift for the Viennese police. From the street comes the sound of wailing sirens, growing closer.

"Ready?" He asks Eskel who is kneeling in the snow finishing the hogtie of a tear streaked and terrified Basil.

"After you" Eskel gestures.

They race across the square to the dead-end wall where Geralt had strung up a rope. Their footprints will be visible, their angle of escape clear across the empty square but they're hopeful that the snow is falling fast enough to confuse by the time someone has the presence of mind to actually check.

They scramble up the wall and land gracefully on the other side, pulling the rope up after them and coiling it neatly.They run for a few more blocks, ducking in and out of alleyways and blind lanes as the wail of police sirens fades and wobbles past them before slowing to a stroll along the banks of the Danube, hands in pockets, a couple of gentlemen out for a late night walk in the snow. The lighted windows of the churches they pass send geometric refractions of multicolored light dancing over the snow; every now and then a choir begins a hymn and the quiet night is filled with the ghostly lilt of their singing, the sound of human voices hanging in the still air like a physical thing.

“Where are you staying?” Eskel asks, then stumbles over his own feet. He’s pale, wan in the moonlight. Geralt goes to catch him round the waist and his hand comes away slick with blood.

“You’re hit”

He tries not to let himself panic, tries not to let his heartbeat rise. This should be easier by now, should be something he’s used to.

Eskel just groans in reply, clutching at his left side right below his ribs. In the darkness of the night and against the monochrome blackness of Eskel’s clothes Geralt hadn’t been able to make out the red-run of blood, the wide-open gash, but he feels it now beneath his hand. It makes his stomach lurch.

"Not far from here" he says in answer to the question, pulling Eskel against his side, hand clenched to put pressure on the gasping wound.

They stumble-step their way up the rickety stairs to Geralt’s attic flat. The shock and adrenaline has worn off and Eskel is little more than deadweight against his shoulder, skin ash-pale from the blood loss and the cold.

“You’re fucking heavy” Geralt grouses to keep the fear at bay, hoisting Eskel closer so he can get the key in the lock of the front door “At least they fed you well in Helsinki”

Eskel groans out a half-laugh, which means he’s still conscious enough to understand humor which means he’s not dead yet, which means the racing animal of Geralt’s fear backs off for a moment.

He half-drags, half carries Eskel through the main room of the flat and through the door to the little mold and tile bathroom just as the city seems to heave a great gasp and every churchbell begins ringing at once. It’s a ghostly sound, a cacophony of overlapping notes that form into some discordant sea of brassy hollowness that shakes the windows and rattles Geralt’s teeth.

“Christmas day” Eskel says, delirious, slipping against the slick tile of the bathroom “I didn’t get you a present”

"You took a bullet for me" Geralt says, depositing Eskel none too gently against the side of the tub and tearing his shirt off his shoulders to get at the open wound in his side. The older man bumps off the edge, tries to catch himself on the porcelain lip and leaves a streak of red behind “I’d say that’s a wonderful gift”

"Merry Christmas then, I guess" Eskel says, wincing as Geralt prods gently at the wound in his side. It’s deep, straight below the ribs, and had blown out the side leaving tatters of flesh behind; more of a crater than a tunnel. There’s no shrapnel on first glance, thank god, no debris. There’s nothing for it but to get it stitched before he loses any more blood.

"Thought you were Jewish" Geralt snarks and abruptly begins flushing the wound with antiseptic, using Eskel’s distraction with the conversation against him. It's cruel but necessary - if he's alert to what's coming he's liable to bite through his tongue. As it is Eskel makes a horrible gurgling choking noise of surprise but he doesn't move, body too well trained to balk at a little extra pain.There's blood running through Geralt’s fingers as he tries to keep pressure on the wound and he can feel the pulse and suck of it as Eskel breathes, the wound open to the cavity of Eskel’s body, to all of those things that shouldn’t see the light of day. Geralt tries not to panic, tries not to feel, tries to take every emotion and bury it deep as he’d been taught even as his hands shake and his eyes burn somewhere at the back of the sockets as though he’s about to cry.

"Warn a guy next time would ya? Please?" Eskel gasps once he finds his breath again, face ashen with the pain, hands curled into claws against the red-streaked lip of the bathtub "fuck!"

Geralt doesn't make any promises, just starts stitching up the wound with as much businesslike detachment as he can muster. The blood wells black around his fingers and the sick slip of it makes keeping hold of the needle near impossible, causing him to pause every couple of seconds and wipe his hands on his trousers.

Eskel seems to retreat from himself after a while, to dissociate for the pain. His hand falls from his mouth to hang limply and he breathes hard, regal head thrown back, his barrel of a chest rising and falling furiously like a bellows before the forge. It’s blessed quiet, the threat of a death-rattle near but unheard.

“Almost done” Geralt says, grim, tying off and cutting the last of the stitches in the line. Fifteen in all, not his best work. He smooths it over with ointment, wraps it carefully in the roll of bandages he keeps near at hand, then falls back, exhausted.

For a long while after they just sit in silence; a boneless lean against each other, only the steady drip of blood from Geralt’s hands audible in the snow-blue darkness of the bathroom.

Like a sleeper waking, Eskel comes back to himself, shakes his head and gestures for his coat. Geralt wipes his hands on his trousers - a futile gesture - and takes the pack of cigarettes and box of matches from the pocket and hands them to Eskel. The blood on his fingers leaves sticky streaks of red on the white carton.

Eskel lights one and hands it to Geralt before lighting the second, taking a long drag and letting his head drop against the side of the tub with a thud. Geralt takes a drag of his own. He feels bled out and hollow, as though his muscles are fraying beneath his skin, lips numb. The blood on his fingers stains the filter of the cigarette pink, makes each inhale taste of gore. He pretends his hands are shaking from the cold, only the cold.

“Missed you” Eskel says after a long moment, smoke issuing from his nostrils, rolling his head so he's looking at Geralt sidelong from beneath the lashes of his eye “Missed you a hell of a lot”

Geralt wants to say it back, wants to explain in words how horrible the missing had been, the year of radio silence as Eskel settled in to deep cover, the anxiety of not knowing causing him to wake, screaming, from nightmares of Eskel disappearing to a place he couldn’t go. But he can’t, somehow. So he leans over and kisses him instead.

Eskel tastes like cigarettes and blood, the tang of his wind-chapped lips familiar. He gasps into the kiss, slides closer, starving for it suddenly after a year apart. Eskel melts against him with a groan, cigarette dropped to burn out at the bottom of the tub as he brings his hand around to cradle Geralt’s jaw in his broad palm. It turns hungry quickly and against Geralt’s better judgement; hot breath and the soft, vulnerable, skin of Eskel’s lips, the smooth glide of scar tissue against his tongue. Eskel lifts him, nudges him with his strong hands, until Geralt is straddling his lap, dress shoes sliding against the slick film of snowmelt and blood that coats the tiled floor as he tries to grind down, to lean closer, to get as much of Eskel against him as he can.

“I think…” Geralt says, pulling back just as Eskel rumbles “You’ll have to carry me to bed”

The overlap of their voices is loud in the darkness, startling.

“No” Geralt says, pointedly ignoring the arousal and need that thrums beneath his skin, the wild animal in him that wants to prove Eskel’s reality with a good hard fuck “You’re injured and I…”

“Please” Eskel says, dark eye glittering and opalescent in the dimness, that same animal fire there “please”

Geralt is helpless but to obey him.

In the lamplight of the bedroom Eskel is a vision. Theres blood drying flaky and black against his skin and Geralt licks it away with the flat of his tongue, listens to Eskel gasp, feels his hands come up to drag him in for a kiss; tasting the blood on his tongue. There’s a new pale scar over his right pectoral that Geralt takes a moment to worry at it with his teeth causing Eskel to groan and buck beneath him.

“If you tear your stitches I’ll kill you myself” Geralt hisses against his breastbone. He feels rather than hears Eskel’s responding chuckle, the low-timbre vibration of it beneath his lips. They’re both wild with it, the need to touch each other after a year apart like a physical ache felt in a sudden raw pang. Geralt loses himself to it; Eskel’s fingers in his hair, his hands spread wide and warm over every part of Geralt they can reach as he does his best to relearn the angles and contours of his oldest love with his lips and tongue and wandering fingertips. They’re too tired to do much but rut against each other, careful of Eskel’s injury but when Eskel gasps and spills himself, hot, over the bare skin of Geralt’s thigh it sends Geralt tumbling into a high so visceral he tears through the sheets. It’s a reassurance of life, of reality; they’re back here together, for now, and the most must be made of it.

--------

“We need to stop doing this” Eskel says finally, once they’re done. He has his head pillowed on Geralt’s chest, the smaller man running scarred fingers through his hair.

“Which part?” Geralt asks, dread in his lungs like water. He extricates himself from the bed and goes over to the tiny peaked window, looks out at the falling snow and pretends he’s not spiralling somewhere dark and cold inside his head.

“The whole jumping in front of bullets for each other part” Eskel says. He groans as he rolls over, levers himself up onto one elbow. Like this Geralt can just make out his reflection in the windowpane - the sharp-angled edge of it, the deep-sunken eyes as though he’s staring at Geralt from the back of his skull. It’s unnerving, this flickering ghost of him, and Geralt does his best to look past him at the snow instead.

"Someday someone is actually gonna take it serious" Eskel continues, as casually as though he's discussing the weather "one of us is gonna wind up dead"

It's true and they both know it. The fact they've made it as far as they have is a testament to their training but they both know it can't last, that sooner or later one of them will die, that sooner or later this will ruin them both.

"Better me than you" Geralt says, thinking about a life without Eskel in it and having to clench his teeth against the horror of it.

"No" Eskel says, simply, surely, steadfast in the value judgement he'd made of his life in favor of Geralt's own.

“What’s the score now?” he asks, when he feels like he can speak without cracking, watching snowflakes - soft and white as goose down - land and settle on the surrounding rooftops, muffling them in white sugar.

“I stopped keeping it a while ago” Eskel says and they both know it’s a lie. They both know that the score is 20-28 with Eskel in the lead. That Eskel will always be in the lead because without Eskel Geralt wouldn't have a life at all and that's a debt that can never be repaid.

“Come back to bed” Eskel orders, wincing as he moves his arm to take a swig from the bottle of wine Geralt had left on the bedside table the night before, coughing comically at the dust and vinegar reek of it “I’m going to freeze my balls off”

“Well” Geralt replies, turning at last “that would be an awful shame”

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