take a walk
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written for the 2023 @stonerwitcher event :)
no one likes to come home for thanksgiving, especially when the person who raised you was someone like vesemir.
thankfully, the brothers had each other. and some other ways to deal.
eskel & geralt & lambert, brief geralt/jaskier/yennefer, brief aiden/lambert
cw: past child abuse, brief homophobia, recreational drug use
They arrived together. It wasn’t a spoken decision, but an assumed one. Without words, they knew that Geralt would pick Eskel up first from his school, once his last class of the day let out, and then wait for Lambert to weasel his way out of his office job, probably skip a late afternoon meeting, before they made the journey back home.
Well. Home was a subjective term. Sure, it was where they had all been taken in, and raised, but Geralt doubted that any of them would actually consider the place to be home. Hell, the shitty dorm that Geralt and Eskel shared their freshman year of college was more home to him.
But, regardless of their feelings of it, they were making the trip back to the house. Back to Vesemir. It was Thanksgiving, and it was understood that the three of them would go to visit him.
Lambert was struggling with his clothes in the backseat, trying to fight his way out of his button up shirt, complaining about how the collar had been choking him. Eskel, in the passenger seat, was watching this fight with a piece of clothing through the rearview mirror with mild interest. Geralt was content to have all of his focus on the road.
“They let you have hair like that, in cubicle-land?” Eskel goaded. The hair in question, was wild as always, poofed up from Lambert yanking his half-unbuttoned shirt over his head, was bright red, and sticking out in every direction. Lambert scowled, grabbing a wrinkled t-shirt from his backpack and yanking it over his head.
“They think I’m fucking adorable there. Janice in HR keeps dropping hints that I’m going to get a promotion, since I’m such a handsome young man.”
“No shit?” Eskel asked, twisting in his seat. “Congrats, if you do.” Lambert shrugged, already brushing it off.
“It’s hell, it’s boring, but it pays the bills. Plus, Aiden likes to see me dressed up like a fucking businessman.” He grinned wickedly as both Eskel and Geralt made retching noises. “Who knows. Maybe it will make the old man proud.”
For a moment, the only sound in the car was the turn signal clicking. Geralt flexed his hands around the wheel as he got onto the highway. He flicked the turn signal off.
Lambert sighed heavily and obnoxiously, cutting through the sudden tension. “He’ll probably ask if I’m still gay, huh?”
“Probably,” Eskel replied, leaning forward to fiddle with the radio. “I think you could be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company and he’d only want to know if you’re dating a nice girl.” Both Geralt and Lambert made small noises of laughter and agreement. “How is Aiden doing?”
“He’s great. The kids adore him, he’s about to win the teacher of the year, and it’s only his first year.” Lambert bragged. He leaned forward, knocking Geralt on the shoulder. “How are your lovers? Jaskier’s been sending me Breaking Bad memes.”
“He’s good.” Geralt said, his grip on the wheel loosening. “Yen’s good too. Both kicking ass. Yen’s been asked to speak at a college for an intersectional feminism panel.”
“She’ll probably raise the IQ level of the family just by association.” Lambert joked. Geralt huffed, the corner of his mouth kicking up. “Did ya get rid of the old Roach-mobile?”
Lambert was referring to the shitty old van that Geralt had bought when he was seventeen. It was disgusting, and old as dirt back then, but Geralt loved that van, and had taken care of it until it ran smoothly.
“No. This is Yen’s car.” Geralt was almost offended at the assumption that he would ever get rid of Roach. He had poured not only years into that van, but also thousands of dollars. Last year, Yennefer had taken him to a used car lot to get something that, in her words “wasn’t an assault on every sense”, but they had left empty handed.
“I was wondering why it was so clean,” Eskel commented, running a finger along the dash. “I was also wondering how you would ever be caught dead in a Prius.”
“Love makes you do crazy things,” Lambert crooned.
“Put your seatbelt on.” Geralt told his younger brother. Lambert rolled his eyes, but complied.
Eskel finally found a radio channel that they all could agree with, and put it on at a low volume.
It took a little over an hour to reach their hometown. Geralt couldn’t help but check on Lambert through the mirror. After their small talk had died down, Eskel had pulled out a small paperback book out of his own bag, and was flipping through, his head leaning against the window. Lambert was alternating between fidgeting in his seat, kicking the back of Eskel’s seat, or messing around on his phone.
None of them were excited to go back to Vesemir’s house. Though they had all grown up to be somewhat decent men, they hadn’t left behind the kindest household.
All of them had different relationships with not only the house, but with the man who lived within it. Vesemir had taken them in, when they were completely unwanted, so Geralt felt as though he was owed some credit at the very least. But Vesemir was a cruel man, when he wanted to be.
It wasn’t until after Geralt started to see both Jaskier and Yen that he ever went to therapy. It was a group effort, championed by both of his partners, but he found it useful, against all of his expectations. It gave him the courage to set boundaries with his adoptive father, and to encourage his brothers to do the same.
That was why they rarely saw Vesemir anymore. Thanksgiving was the one compromise.
Eskel had escaped first. But Geralt was right on his heels, and they lived in the same dorm room for the first year of college. When Geralt dropped out in their second year, they moved into a tiny apartment off campus, with a pull-out couch for Lambert to crash on during the weekends. By the time that Lambert had graduated high school, he had all but moved into the apartment. Geralt set up a folding screen in the living room, and it acted as Lambert’s bedroom for another six months.
It was freedom, for all of them. Though they were strapped for money most of the time, and Lambert would invite his high school boyfriend Aiden over almost every night, and Geralt would wake Lambert up every time he went to his 6am shift at a nearby repair garage, and Eskel was drowning in homework more often than not, they were free.
By the time that Geralt had secured a job with an automobile repair shop with better hours, and better pay, Lambert was getting ready to move in with Aiden (who was getting his teacher’s certificate), and Eskel was almost done with his bachelor’s degree.
Geralt moved in with Yennefer and Jaskier, in a slightly nicer place a few blocks away. Lambert got an office job downtown and started to climb the ranks, while looking into night classes.
Vesemir never came to visit them. One could claim it was because he was old, and didn’t want to travel from the suburbs into a college town, but the brothers knew that Vesemir couldn’t have cared less. Vesemir had a bone to pick with every one of his kids, and he made sure to drill it into them from a young age that it was the boys who were at fault, not him.
So as they grew older, the expected winter break and holiday visits lessened, until the only one that remained was Thanksgiving.
None of the brothers complained about that.
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