#nelipotwrites

The instructors call him a stuck up brat, but he’s nice to me, and he makes me laugh all the time. So when he asked me to go with him to build snowmen even though we were already in bed, and even though we’d already built snowmen in training earlier today, I said okay.

He didn’t answer at first when I asked him why. He just shook my shoulders and said 'Come on Voltehre let’s gooooo, in that way that makes me think the instructors might be onto something, but later, after we built a few, he told me that he used to do this all the time at home. He didn’t like going inside when his father (he always says ‘father’, not ‘da’ like me) was in, so during winter he’d stay outside and build snowmen. His house was big, though, like, he said they had a ballroom as big as the great hall downstairs—a ballroom! Can you believe it? But anyway, it was so big he couldn’t always tell when it was alright to go inside, so he’d end up falling asleep and the cook would have to go get him.

He started looking really sad again, so I asked him if anyone helped him build the snowmen then too. Sometimes he gets distracted if you ask him questions, and he stops being sad, but sometimes he gets angry and walks away. I always tease him that he must be destined to be a Wolf, because he snarls like one. Anyway, he said he built them alone, that the village children used to bully him and say that he had no friends so he had to make them out of snow. He said that he hated them, but that he hated more that they were right, because they were his friends, he gave them names and everything. He still looked sad, so I tried to balance a snowball on my nose. It broke all over my face. That made him laugh, and we did that for a while before we went back to the snowmen. I like it when he laughs, it sounds nice. Looks nice too.

We made like, ten before we got caught, but we didn’t get in trouble though, it was just Geralt and Eskel—you know, the ones that Lambert has a massive crush on? It was so funny, his face went as red as theirs were (I think they’d been drinking, though there were these weird bite marks on their necks, so maybe they weren’t only drinking) when he saw them. I thought he was going to pass out when they walked over and offered to help.

They were good fun though. Most of the Witchers talk down on us if they talk to us at all, but they just asked what we were doing and started doing it too. They’re a lot bigger and stronger than us, so it was easier for them to stack the spheres, so we managed to make a few really big ones. The biggest was Arnaghad, the next biggest was Eskel and the one that looked skinny (for a snowman) was Geralt (Lambert’s idea, of course). They said he was ‘really sweet’ and ruffled his hair. I thought he was going to die.  

Then they said they were really tired, and that we should all go to bed. They didn’t look tired, and I definitely wasn’t but Lambert looked a bit sleepy so we decided to go in, but first we had to get rid of the evidence. Eskel and Geralt said we could just leave them up for training tomorrow, but then Lambert looked sad again. I remembered what he said about them being his friends. I don’t think he wanted us and the other trainees going at them with swords. So we took them apart instead, and scattered the snow, buried the rocks we used to make their faces. Geralt and Eskel gave each other this look like they thought he was mental. I wanted to hit them. But then they carried us on their shoulders to go back to our dorm, and I know that made him really happy, so I guess it’s okay.

He hugged them when they put us down, then ran off to bed before they could say anything about it. I wanted to ask for a hug too, but I was scared he’d laugh at me or something, even if I’m the first person to build snowmen with him. Is it bad that I was a bit happy when he said he’d never had a friend before?

“You were seen, Gascon. The guards were instructed to come find me when they saw a man in a funny hat skulking in like an admonished fox.”

“Am I admonished, then?”

“No, not by me. Nor by Meve, if that’s what troubles you.” If Reynard had to guess by the state of him, the only person doing any admonishing was Gascon himself.

“What makes you say I’m troubled?”

There was his unusually slight frame, his hunched posture, his dishevelled attire, the nervous jiggling of his leg, and, well- “You could have used the front door.”  

Gascon paused, stilled as he considered, then his head cocked to the side, and an amused smile spread across his face as he said, “Hadn’t even occurred to me.”

Neither man said anything for a long moment. Reynard only watched, wishing the other man would turn to look at him. Gascon only wrung his hands between his knees, eyes fixed on the entwined, marble stags, one white veined grey, like the fountain’s basin and the bench, the other black veined white.

Reynard had promised that when he saw Gascon again — because the man would come back, of that he’d been certain — Reynard promised himself that he would remain the pinnacle of composure, that he would let Gascon explain, and he would listen. But now, with the man himself so close, seeing him after so long — much longer than Reynard had anticipated, he couldn’t stop from feeling wounded.

“Did you sneak out the back door when you left too?” His voice shook as he spoke, but whether it was from anger or hurt he could not say.

“Reynard-”

“Why did you leave? I thought- especially after- it seemed like-”

“It was only one night, Reynard,” Gascon reminded him, sounding more tired than the older man had ever heard him.

Reynard’s body jerked away, as if slapped. The hurt evident in his voice as he spoke. “It was hardly the only night that mattered.”  

There had been so many nights, as many pints of ale and campfires as there were stars in the skies they slept under, and after, there were the lavish meals in candlelit banquet halls, and strolls through moonlit gardens when it all got too claustrophobic,  and so much laughter through it all. All from Gascon at first, far too pleased whenever he earned  himself  a scowl or a blush from the older man, but then one day, Reynard found he’d started laughing too. Then came the lingering glances, the brushing of hands on arms, on thighs, grazing shoulders and backs, growing firmer, bolder with each pass.

There was the way Gascon smiled at him — gradually less smug as a quality akin to sunlight began to blossom, a light that warmed Reynard’s heart and fluttered in his belly.  Then at last, on one of the older man’s increasingly frequent visits to Gascon’s manor, in a moment of uncommon bravery, Reynard adorned the role of romantic hero, and kissed him. He grabbed Gascon by the face and brought their lips together and in the ensuing fit of ecstasy he almost forgot to panic. Fortunately, the younger man was much better versed in such matters, and so their dance moved at last to Gascon’s bedroom. He was gone by the time Reynard woke up.

“Should have known you’d been the sentimental type,” Gascon half sighed, half groaned.

“Why are you here, Gascon?” Reynard asked — demanded, a steely edge in his voice that at one time amused Gascon greatly, but now cut deeper than any blade ever could.

“I need to tell you something.” Gripping the edge of his seat tightly, he rocked forward as if he were about to be sick, his face suddenly taking on a concerning pallor. If the younger man were being at all honest with himself, he would have confessed a desire to be in bed, perhaps with his face pressed against Reynard’s chest, the older man’s fingers in his hair like they laid that night, warm and glowing, feeling like so much lay before them. Perhaps then it would have been easier to speak.

Perhaps Reynard sensed something of the sort, for his fingers itched to take off Gascon’s stupid hat, and card through his surely sweat damp hair. But he stayed his hand, too wary of being stung again, and waited.

“I- it’s my birthday tomorrow.” Of all the things Gascon could have said, Reynard would never have thought to expect that.

“Okay-?” he prompted when Gascon seemed to have lost courage again.

“I’m not turning eighteen,” the younger man confessed, his voice hoarse, barely above a whisper.

“Aren’t you?” Reynard asked dryly.

“You knew?”

“I had an inkling.” He’d had a well of inklings. Reynard hadn’t once believed that the bandit was a mere boy of seventeen, childlike though he was. But Gascon had his secrets, and Reynard didn’t want to pry. “How old will you be then?” he prompted Gascon again, when he fell into another uncharacteristic silence, leaving Reynard with the tiresome task of being uncharacteristically vocal. He’d do it though, if that’s what Gascon needed from him then, he’d do it a thousand times over.

Gascon’s eyes were nervous now, fraught, and far away where they bored into the ground. “Twenty-eight.” His voice even quieter than it was before. He swallowed dryly.

“Not a bad age. Why hide it?”

“Because! Because I- I wasn’t a child when- when they-”

“When your family was killed?” Reynard finished softly. Any other night, had they been talking about anything else, Reynard had no doubt that Gascon would have found  his tone unforgivably patronising, but now he just nodded slowly, looking at the older man with wide eyes, looking every bit the child he claimed he hadn’t been.

They never talked about it. Reynard first began to suspect just who Gascon was that night he asked to take his leave of them, and Meve followed, his strange demeanour causing her concern. He’d been so quiet when they returned, and Meve so evasive. Reynard knew the area well, knew they were near the Brossard estate. When Meve ordered the family graveyard repaired, the pieces slid into place all too easily; when she returned the land to Gascon’s care outright, there was simply no denying it. But still Gascon never spoke of his family, and Reynard never pried, though now he was beginning to think he should have.

“I should have been there,” Gascon whispered. With his eyes fixed downward at nothing again, it was hard to say if he spoke to Reynard, himself, or the earth below their feet.

“Then you’d be dead.” Reynard answered bluntly.

Suddenly outraged, Gascon whirled around, standing in front of the other man, his arms spread wide as he spoke. “Do you know why I wasn’t there? They’d sent me away. To fucking Cintra. With a friend of my father’s, hoping he’d be able to entice me into being the heir they needed.”

“Gascon-”

“They loved me so much.” His voice, thick with emotion, dropped again, and even in the low light, Reynard could see glistening tears swelling at his eyes. “They did everything for me, gave me everything, they loved me so much-”

“So they would have been relieved  you weren’t there. They would have been happy that you lived.”

“I  failed them.”

“You’d be dead now, if you’d been there. You would have died.”

“So? I was old enough. I should have died for my family.”

“Dying for, and dying with, are not the same, Gascon. And you were only a child.”

“I was a man!”

“You were hardly a man when I met you,” Reynard laughed in spite of himself.

Gascon glared at him reproachfully, pouting in a way that more than proved his point, and dropped to sit on the fountain’s edge, head in his hands. Reynard pushed away from the bench, walking over slowly, his boots crunching deliberately on the gavel. When he stopped in front of the other man, he crouched down, his face level with Gascon’s bowed head. Carefully, he pried those remorseful hands away, leaving Gascon no choice but to look at him.

“So say you died for your family, hm? And then what? Where would that have left us?”

“You would have been fine,” Gascon insisted weekly in answer to Reynard’s unvoiced question.

“Fine, maybe, but fine isn’t living, is it? You taught me that.”

“Reynard-” Gascon moaned. Before he had a chance to hide away again, Reynard was on his feet, cradling his head to his stomach, holding him steady as sniffed wetly, hands fisted in the sides of Reynard's tunic.

“Is that why you left?” he whispered. “The guilt of being there became too much?”

Gascon shook his head, and gasped, “No. Well, yes, but not like that.” As anticipated, finding the words was easier now that he had Reynard against him, touching him, but it still took a moment, quietly nuzzling into Reynard’s stomach, for him to find his voice. “I went back because I thought that I could finally be the man my parents would have been proud of, but after that night-”

Reynard’s stomach turned cold at those words, at that loaded silence. Unconsciously, his grip on Gascon’s hair tightened, but if the other man noticed, he didn’t show it.  In all the months of his absence, it never occurred to Reynard that Gascon might be ashamed of him.

“I just- I thought you deserved to know the truth, to know the man I am, but I- I couldn’t tell you. I only meant to be away a few days, but the longer I was gone, the worse I felt about leaving and I- I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.”

Loosening his grip as the cold fled from his body, Reynard instead took Gascon’s face in his hands and pulled him up, looking him in the eye unyieldingly, almost sternly as spoke. “I know the kind of man you are, Gascon,” he said firmly. “I wouldn’t have you any other way.”

Relief lightened Gascon’s chest as something warmer bloomed where the weight of his guilt had been, spilling over to flood his skin, his eyes watering again. “Fuck- Reynard-”

“May I kiss you now?” Reynard cut in. They weren’t going to unpack everything Gascon was feeling in its entirety in one night, let alone resolve all of it, but certainly they’d done enough to earn a kiss, and Reynard had been left waiting for so long.

Quite agreeing that they’d lost enough time, Gascon simply grabbed Reynard by the waist and pulled their bodies flush, so that nearly every inch of them from their chests to their feet were touching. Tilting his head so his silly hat wouldn’t get in the way, he brought their lips together with barely tempered desperation, eager to treat the man in his arms right. Reynard’s lips were thin and soft, naturally turned down in a dour expression that Gascon teased him for relentlessly. All it had taken was one night with those lips on him for Gascon to spend the better part of a year missing them dearly.  

Reynard had promised himself that when they at last kissed again — because this moment had been inevitable, he was certain of it — he would not get carried away; it would be slow, and tender, and almost chaste. And it was, for a while. He pressed softly against Gascon’s wind-chapped lips, his tongue poking out just enough to lick a little, and, thankfully, Gascon was content to follow his lead this time, grateful for his attention. But before Reynard knew it, his hands slipped to cradle the back of Gascon’s head, thumbs pressed into  the hinges of his jaw as he tilted the younger man back, nipping, then biting on his lower lip, seeking to deepen the kiss. And Gascon was parting his reddened lips, and licking inside his mouth to invite the same. Happily, Reynard obliged, moaning into Gascon’s mouth with all the airs of a sailor’s wife at last seeing her husband returned to shore.

“God’s I missed you,” Gascon breathed when he was at last allowed to come up for air, and it was the easiest breath he’d taken since they last saw each other.

As much as Gascon would have liked to stay in the garden, in that night, lost in Reynard’s kiss forever, Reynard did eventually convince him of the delights and virtues of a good bed. Late as it was, neither could in good conscious call for a bath, so they made do with a bucket of well water and a couple of washcloths, Reynard helping scrub Gascon to get him in bed all the faster. He’d waited far too long to sleep in Gascon’s arms again, and been denied the joy of waking up in them even longer.

Face to face, Gascon snoring lightly into his neck, his arm around his waist, holding him tightly, it should have been easy to fall asleep. Perhaps it would have been, if Reynard had not been quite so eager to watch him, feel him, make sure that he was really there after so many months of missing him, and not some vision conjured by the heat of a midsummer’s night.

His worries were quickly dispelled when Meve snuck into his room, sliding the false wall shut behind her, as he usually did when he made the journey in reverse.  

“I hear you got your puppy back.” She said quietly, padding  around  to sit on the farther side of the bed, so that she could see Reynard’s face as they spoke.

It had been well over a year since their relationship transformed into something more… intimate, and yet still Reynard fought the urge to at the very least sit up in deference to her presence. However, being shirtless, he supposed that would be rather more indecorous, and besides, he didn’t want to risk stirring the man sound asleep in his arms. He was so tired.

“You see him too, then?” He asked, unable to keep a smile from his lips.

“I do. I take it  he explained himself?”

“He did.”

“To your satisfaction?”

“To my satisfaction, yes.” He sounded almost reproachful. “You needn’t worry, Meve.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” She only watched them for a moment, taking in the sight of what she knew her lover had so longed for. They were pretty together, she had to give them that, and there was something delightful in the very idea of Reynard being softer on the bandit than she was. Tentatively, she reached out to stroke Gascon’s dark hair, and the back of Reynard’s hand where he held the younger man’s head.

“It’s his birthday tomorrow.” Reynard said softly, absently, but with a sense of wonder in his voice, like he found it truly marvellous that Gascon’s birthday was tomorrow.

“Oh? How old will he be?”

“Twenty-eight.”

She mulled that over silently, quickly puzzling out why the young man had lied in the first place,  letting the weight of Reynard’s knowing — of Gascon’s telling him the truth, sink in. So, it appeared, the puppy was finally ready to live a little more honestly. “I should have a special breakfast brought up to you then.”

“And you’ll eat with us?” Reynard inquired hopefully.

“If you wish it.”

He rolled his eyes with an exasperated sigh. It was a game she’d been playing, trying to get him to express his wishes to her. “I’d be grateful if you did.”

“Well, how could I deny you now?” Neither spoke for a moment, both their eyes cast tenderly upon the man sleeping between them. Then she laughed, snorted. “‘Seventeen’ my arse.”

In spite of himself, Reynard laughed too.

Meve stayed long enough for him to fall asleep, his arms still wrapped tightly around Gascon, Gascon’s hair kissing his lips in a way she knew the older man found inexpressibly gratifying.  She kissed one man on the temple, and then the other, and existed once more through the concealed sliding door. She never spent the night, not since she and Reynard first fell into bed together, the day the paperwork had been signed on their victory. True, there was no small amount of relief that the deep, abiding affection they held for each other had finally spilled over into something outwardly passionate, and with any luck it would continue to do so for years to come, but Meve also knew they couldn’t work together in a way that suited them both.

First, she had long felt that Reynard would make someone the perfect husband one day, told him as much for years, but she’d already been married, and had no inclination to being so again, even to a man like Reynard. Second, though she would never tell him this, Meve suspected that her chief advisor would never be able to fully remove her from the pedestal he’d set her upon for so many years. So she kissed one many on the temple, and the other, and slipped back through the sliding door to her own room, and into her own bed, assured in the knowledge that they — the two men who were perhaps her best friends — would wake up in each other’s arms feeling as close to complete as humanly possible, and alone in her room, so would she.

It went like that every year; despite Lambert staying in or close to Kaedwen, Eskel always got back at Kaer Morhen first, and he’d be up and waiting by the time Lambert arrived. Every winter he fell asleep faster, easier, sooner, until one year he passed out right there in the courtyard, trusting that those same, strong hands would catch him before his knees hit the ground.

That year was full of firsts.

Eskel was sitting in an armchair, a few feet away from the foot of the bed when he woke up. Though it was his room, Lambert always thought of it as Esekl’s chair, for the older witcher was the sole reason for its presence. His scent was always infused into the soft leather after his week-long vigil; suffused into the fleece that was then draped over the back of the chair; the fleece he slept under at night, unwilling to leave Lambert’s bedside.

Every winter he and Eskel got closer and closer, (Eskel was an easy man to love, once you’d shown you weren’t horrified by his scars he was all bright smiles and easy touches) and Lambert spent more and more time curled in that chair, burrowing his face into that fleece. It started with a cursory sniff, then a deep inhale; he became increasingly addicted to that smell until, the winter before, he spent every second of every day in the desperate pursuit of more.

That year he slid from his bed and sauntered over to Eskel’s chair on legs rendered coltish by disuse. It was night, and he was still swimming through the thick, almost liquid fog of sleep, and his head felt as light and as empty as his stomach. Thusly dazed, he thought nothing of allowing himself onto the other man’s lap, and hooking his arms around his neck. “Hey,” he said, as though it were every other winter.

If Eskel was startled, he did a bloody good job of hiding it. His hands had come up to hold Lambert’s hips, to keep him steady more than anything else, but the younger man relished the touch anyway. “Hi.”

“Why?” Lambert blurted out, apropos of nothing.

A frown deepened the crease between Eskel’s eyebrows. “Why what?”

“Every winter you — why?” Eskel’s hands hadn’t moved, wouldn’t, Lambert knew, but he wished they would.

The older witcher’s eyes were cast down, examining the spot where Lambert’s body met his as he considered his answer. “I worried,” he said eventually. “It was your first year, you’re the only one left of your class, there are so few of us left at all, so I worried.”

Something deflated in Lambert’s chest then, but he still had enough air in him, enough hope, to ask — “And now?”

Eskel’s silence this time was not in search of the right words, rather, they were right there in his mouth, eager to burst forth heedless of any wisdom. Eventually, they proved too strong, too true to keep in. “I worry because I miss you.”

Lambert lunged forward, closing the scant few inches between them until their lips were pressed together. It was an artless, graceless mashing of soft flesh against soft flesh that only got more urgent as Eskel’s hands roved under his shirt, exploring his body with equal parts passion and reverence.

Despite his best efforts, Eskel refused to give Lambert everything that night. “We have time,” he insisted, the words breathed against the soft skin of Lambert’s neck, “and I want to do this right.”

It was days of gentle touches and careful fingers before Eskel deemed him ready, and Lambert knew on that first slide in, when felt that first flood of glowing, liquid fire settle deep in his gut, that he would go through all seven realms of hell, and square off with the Eternal Flame itself, if only to get back to this man.

Alright, so it was a little dramatic, and it’s not like he didn’t love the guy before, but that was the first time he let himself feel it, and felt loved in return.  

That was decades ago. You’d think, by now, the intensity of their couplings would have tempered somewhat, and they did, sort of. At least, it would slow down, weeks into winter they’d start to get lazy, idly nipping, petting, tugging, their writhing and thrusting just the right side of sloppy as they smiled at each other, occasionally dissolving into breathless chuckles.

But the first time? Every first time of every winter was a revelation. This one was no different; Lambert woke up, and Eskel pounced on him, pinning his hands above his head, taking an ear between his teeth before moving down with open mouthed kisses. His hands slid down Lambert’s body, grabbing and massaging his lover’s firm, lean muscles as he sucked a trail of love bites down Lambert’s neck. Those hands slid down his legs, between them, ravenous, as if needing the assurance of touching every part of him to make sure he was all there, that he was real, that he had survived another treacherous year and come back to him.

And Lambert’s hands did the same; checking for new scars and relishing in the old ones; in the feel of familiarity; of the dips and curves unique to the bear of a man he had made his home.

They both gasped when that first, slow glide ended with the meeting of their hips, and Eskel dropped forward to drape himself over his lover, so much more slender than himself. Neither of them moved as they basked in the heat of each other’s skin, inhaled the scent of their combined musks through their mouths so as to taste it.

When Eskel did move, it was with all the grace of a rolling tide; his body rippling over Lambert’s like a large cat prowling the verdant jungles beyond the Zerrikanian desert. Each slide and thrust was like a burst of warm, deep pink light carved into the shape of a hundreds of thousands of glimmering butterfly wings, set to clockwork and fluttering through Lambert’s body, escaping his parted lips in soft moans and gasps that kissed Eskel’s cheeks.

Eskel dipped his head and their lips slotted together — more practiced than that first time, but no less hungry. His tongue delicately swiped Lambert’s skin, and he took his plush lower lip between his teeth, tugging lightly in silent request before diving in. He swallowed all those little, breathless sounds like a man starved because in many respects he was; Lambert had always been content with his own hand, but Eskel was — had been, used to more. It’s fine Lambert had insisted when they parted that first year. But Eskel wasn’t so sure, and he soon discovered that being with anyone else could only be described as akin to having ash in his mouth.

So he drank Lambert in like fresh water, like fine wine, like milk and honey; he was alive, he was intoxicated, he was nourished by the all consuming presence of  Lambert; his heat, his softness, his spice, his sweat, the way his body held on to Eskel, tethering him to this world and even as he pulled him higher. There was no telling who reached their peak first, each one seemingly spurring on the other as they shuddered in ecstasy, trembling as though the light of the gods sprinted through their veins.

And then they were falling, tumbling through the air as they held onto each other, plunging into the cool depths of heavenly bliss. The world around them became somehow muted, as though they floated in the velvet night, cradled by the liquid dark and golden firelight.“I love you,” Lambert said, whispered as he panted, catching his breath. Eskel still could not speak, but he pressed his lips to Lambert’s forehead, and held him firmly to his chest.