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Hours That Float Idly Down

Chapter 2

Notes:

Thank you so much for all your lovely comments and kudos on the last chapter. I promise I am getting around to responding to them all; this chapter took me far longer than I expected to conceptualize and I still worry that it feels too rushed. It was written for the prompt "forced to their feet" from the list of Whumpay prompts on Tumblr.

Enjoy!

Chapter Text

“Geralt! Gods, what’s happened to you?” Dandelion lowered his voice as soon as he spoke, wincing when he realized there might still be a threat lurking about, one that Geralt had not been able to kill before whatever wounds he had acquired had dragged him into unconsciousness. The bard looked about anxiously, but nothing moved. He could hear the wind whistling on the high mountain peaks above, and the gentle lapping of the water at the shore, where the ice was broken and it could breach the surface. There was nothing here but him, Geralt, Roach, and whatever the other shape was, presumably the spirit that Geralt had been contracted to kill.

 

He crept closer to the witcher’s disturbingly still frame, heart pounding. Geralt was pale and surrounded by an ungodly halo of his own blood. The effect left Dandelion unwillingly reminded of a piece of stained-glass art he had once seen in a church in Novigrad; a man ringed by the light of the Holy Fire. As far as the poet could recall, the man in question had eventually been consumed by his blessing, burnt up and turned into the first pyre to which people directed their prayers. He shuddered and banished the thought as quickly as he could. This was blood, not fire. Nature, not religion.

 

“Geralt,” he knelt just outside the circle of frozen blood, and placed a hand on the witcher’s deathly-cold cheek, “My dear witcher, can you hear me?”

 

The pale man gave no response, but his chest was rising and falling slowly, a stuttering staccato beat that Dandelion knew could not be sustained for long. Upon taking in his injuries, the poet immediately realized that their situation was dire.

 

Geralt had been impaled by the flying ice shards from the surface of the lake. It was clear they had begun melting upon encountering his body heat, and then frozen again as he slowly grew colder and colder, leaving him with gaping wounds and frozen stalactites protruding from his chest. There were three main wounds, one dangerously near to his heart and the other two impaling him in a perpendicular fashion above his waist. Blood leaked from all of them, though it was long since frozen to the frost-encrusted leather of Geralt’s armour. The witcher’s lips were blue, and Dandelion knew from that alone that the other man was close to death. Witchers ran hot. It was an advantage when they were tracking creatures that lived in the frozen wastelands of the world. For Geralt to have cooled to look as hypothermic as he did now, he had to be near death.

 

“Ye Gods, I’ll never understand how you’ve survived as long as you have,” Dandelion’s tone was joking, but his tremulous voice betrayed him, “It seems you go looking for death at every turn.”

 

He clasped Geralt’s arm, one of the only parts of him that wasn’t encrusted in ruby-red frozen blood. The limb was cold and damp, but when he squeezed it, Geralt stirred, wincing ever so slightly, and a whispery noise passing through his lips. It might have been a groan, had he possessed the strength. It was a wanting sound, though, and Dandelion carefully pulled the witcher into his lap, wincing as every movement seemed to send Geralt nearly toppling back into unconsciousness. He wasn’t shivering, but he looked miserable and cold.

 

“Hush now. You’ll be well soon enough. We’ve just to get you warmed a bit.”

 

It was paltry comfort, Dandelion knew. Geralt looked beyond uncomfortable, nearly delirious with pain and cold. His eyes kept drifting from the bard’s face to the sky above, starlight reflecting against his gruesomely blown pupils. It gave him a glassy-eyed stare, as though he was already dead. The poet could hardly stand to behold it, tremors wracking through every inch of him as he tried to imagine a way in which this wouldn’t end with Geralt’s death.

 

Unsure of what to do next, Dandelion eased Geralt upright the smallest amount, trying to ignore the way he winced. He whistled for Roach, who had been keeping her distance, shy of the smell of blood and violence. She plodded over, eyes rolling, ears pinned back, and Dandelion placed a hand between her ears and kneaded gently, the way Geralt had taught him. It would calm her, he had said. If only it were so easy to calm his own racing breath. To pretend that he couldn’t feel every flutter of Geralt’s pulse against a half-melted shard of ice that was sitting against his heart.

 

Roach let her knees buckle; instinct and training served her well now. Steeling himself, Dandelion lifted Geralt’s lifeless body into the saddle. Every inch of the witcher went from too slack to taut and quivering. A weak noise passed through his lips, a sort of strangled whimper which was made all the louder by the stillness of the mountain air. His black-gloved hands clenched and grasped at nothing, and Dandelion had to keep himself from simply putting an end to it all and helping Geralt to lie back down in the snow. But the witcher’s eyes were blinking, trying desperately to focus, and this gave him hope that perhaps Geralt’s fate was not sealed in stone quite yet.

 

“Ah, there you are,” he said gently, trying to pull a watery smile onto his discombobulated features, “We really must stop meeting like this.”

 

It was a weak joke, Dandelion knew, but Geralt’s breath huffed out in what might have been an attempt at a chuckle. He smoothed the hair back from the witcher’s icy, pale face. His eyes were flickering shut again, and he appeared to be lost in the depths of his own mind.

 

“Do you hurt? You aren’t trembling the way you normally do when something is causing you pain and you hope I don’t notice. It certainly looks bad enough, though.”

 

A weak grunt. Dandelion supposed it had been an idiotic question. Of course Geralt was hurting, he had simply lost the strength to tremble, and his body was probably too shocked from the cold to keep on shivering. He sighed, and realized his lips were moving still, a burbling brook of nonsense escaping his mouth and probably driving his usually taciturn companion to near distraction, even as he danced on the edge of consciousness. He snapped his mouth shut before he could do any further damage and pulled himself up behind Geralt on Roach, urging her through the trees on the tracks that they had made in coming to the lake.

 

The trees seemed much nearer from atop Roach. Old man’s beard dragged its ragged fingers across Dandelion’s cheeks, and needle-encrusted branches kept catching in his and Geralt’s hair. He eventually gave up and allowed Geralt to slump forwards onto Roach’s neck; he had wrapped the witcher’s injured midsection in a cloak and hoped for the best, and it seemed that he was more comfortable reclining forwards, despite the pressure it placed on his abdomen. The bleeding seemed to have stopped, and by the time they reached the edge of the eerily quiet forest, the sun was cresting over the mountaintops. Its orange rays of light pierced the darkness of the fir trees, and suddenly it no longer seemed like such a forbidding, frightful place. Lichens gained colour; green moss was made apparent on ancient tree trunks. Even the needles under Roach’s hooves were no longer a carpet of darkness, but a rich, rusty red, interspersed here and there with a pinecone hidden away by an industrious squirrel. It was beautiful, in the dawn. The sight filled Dandelion with hope, and he spurred Roach on a bit faster, eager to return to the village and put the whole frightful night behind them.

 

However, the coming of the dawn also shed a light on Geralt’s truly ghastly condition. In the orange sunrise, his colour seemed to have improved slightly, but the poet knew that this was little more than a trick of the light. He was smeared in his own blood, and his lips moved, mouthing words audible to no one. He had not started up shivering, and his skin was icy to the touch. A thin tendril of blood was working its way out of his nose, and when Dandelion checked his pulse, it was erratic and terribly weak; a caged bird beating its wings against the cage of his ribs. Nothing like the strong, slow, steady beat that the poet had laid his head against sometimes, late at night, when Geralt let his guard down.

 

“We’re nearly there,” he whispered, knowing that Geralt was beyond his reach for the time being but still wanting to offer some sort of comfort, “See the smoke in the distance? There’ll be a nice warm fire waiting for us, and a healer to stitch your wounds, and some bread and broth for when you’re well enough. And I’m sure the villagers will give you a hero’s welcome for having slain their beast.”

 

Dandelion realized he had forgotten to take a trophy off the dead spirit, and kicked himself for it. Hopefully he had read the nature of these people correctly, and was right in assuming they would be tolerant and forgiving, given Geralt’s sorry state. Grimacing and trying to keep his idiocy from the forefront of his mind, he spurred Roach onwards, towards the tendrils of smoke and the warmth that they promised.


Geralt had not expected to wake. His fate had been set in stone from the moment he had been impaled, ice melting away into his veins and chilling him down to his very bones. There were no second chances, not for witchers. Certainly not for him, grievously wounded on a contract that had taken him to damned near the middle of nowhere.

 

However, wake he did. It was unpleasant, and his chest burned and ached. There was someone unfamiliar leaning over him, he could smell it, and he tried to push himself away only to find that his arms were barely stronger than well-dried twigs. Panic flared, a tightness in his chest that left him gasping, and someone placed a hand on his head. It was too hot, too uncomfortable, burning against his aching forehead. He wanted it to stop; it hurt terribly and there was an abrasive, continuing motion that left him feeling raw and vulnerable. But no sound passed through his parted lips, just breathy gasps of air that left his lungs feeling more bereft than they had mere moments ago. He struggled, and the touch receded, a voice replacing it.

 

“Hush, you’re alright. We’re just stitching your wounds, and then I’m afraid we’ll have to warm you up some. Your body’s turned to ice, Geralt. It’s a wonder you’re still alive at all.”

 

That, Geralt could agree with. He didn’t feel like he should be alive. Especially considering that his most recent memories involved preparing for his imminent demise on the banks of a frozen lake. Whatever had happened to bring him here was beyond his comprehension, and he wasn’t sure the intervention was entirely welcome. He had been ready. Death had come to claim him. It felt as though he had cheated, ripped himself from the clutches of an all-too-certain fate at the very last moment. Part of him wanted to go back. It had certainly hurt less to be dying. His skin tugged as sutures were pulled shut and blood was dabbed away from his chest.

 

He couldn’t be sure if he lost time after that. Someone helped him to sit, and bandages were wrapped tightly about his chest, packed with pungent herbs that left him dizzy and reeling. A voice, which he had come to identify as Dandelion’s, whispered in his ear, comforting him, but it did little to assuage the pain of the poet’s burning hot hands on his body. He might have whimpered, puncture wounds throbbing and burning as he sat up. He felt like a block of cheese he had once encountered in an Oxenfurt market, riddled with holes and burning away in the hot summer sun. The thought made him snort, though it came out as more of a wet cough. Dandelion patted his back sympathetically before pulling away as he winced at the shockwaves of pain it sent through his body.

 

“There, the healer’s left. Now, shall we get you into a warm bath? She said to warm you in increments, and that it would likely hurt, but you’ll feel better for it in the end, I promise. You’re colder than the snowbanks outside, and I’ve never seen your lips so blue.”

 

That was curious. If he were truly dying, his body wouldn’t be wasting energy on sending enough blood to his lips for them to be blue or red. Perhaps he was better off than he had assumed. Though the presence of a healer was enough to affirm this. Normally, village wise women did not waste their time on lost causes, and Dandelion would have had almost no coin with which to pay her anyways. Geralt let his head rest back on Dandelion’s shoulder. He was too tired and in too much pain to think. Every breath did nothing to satisfy his burning lungs, and his head was spinning like a weathervane in a gale, unpredictable and wild. He couldn’t even gather himself enough to nod, just let the bard pull him up off the bed.

 

The moment Geralt’s bare feet came into contact with the gritty wooden floor of the inn, one that had probably not been swept in months, his knees buckled and he let out a strangled sound of agony as his chest seemed to implode. He reached for it, trying to claw at the bandages even though the logical part of his brain told him this was unwise, but Dandelion held him back, restraining both of his wrists in one hand and keeping the other firmly about his waist.

 

“Come now, on your feet. I know it hurts, but it’ll hurt more the longer we stay here, and I can’t get you across the room all on my own. My body’s nearly given out after hefting your body about those woods, and I’m still recovering my own strength.”

 

This, if nothing else, forced Geralt into motion. He had forgotten the poet’s erstwhile illness, and he wondered how Dandelion had managed any of this. His last memories of the other man saw him still listless and pale, sleeping far past the sunrise while Geralt prepared for the contract he had taken on to pay off their debts. The bard must be absolutely exhausted. Steeling himself, Geralt got his feet beneath him, knees knocking together and ankles turning inwards. He had no strength, but perhaps he could provide stability while Dandelion forced him to his feet and across the room. He couldn’t even see a bathtub, and his whole body was trembly and icy feeling.

 

“There you are,” Dandelion said, a hint of a smile on his voice even though Geralt couldn’t be bothered to lift his head enough to see the bard’s expression, “Not so hard, is it? Now, let’s get you warm. Holding you is like clinging to an icicle.”

 

Deadly, freezing, and moments away from shattering into a million pieces. The imagery was apt, though Geralt was sure it was not what Dandelion had intended. He focused on his shaky, weak legs instead. Clearly his mind was addled and exhausted.

 

When they came to a stop, Geralt kept on trying to move forwards for a moment, Dandelion catching him with a curse and a great deal of fumbling as he tried to maintain his grip. Geralt wanted to apologize, but his mouth simply wouldn’t form words, and he was panting too hard for it anyways.

 

“Can you manage lifting your leg? It may aggravate some of the wounds on your hips, but it’ll only be for a moment to step over the rim of the tub, yes?”

 

Geralt couldn’t, wouldn’t have been able to if Dandelion had offered him all the coin in the world, but he found himself unable to articulate this. Instead, he leaned into the bard’s chest, even though the warmth burnt at his frozen skin, hoping that would get the message across. It appeared to, and Dandelion eased his leg into the bathwater instead, muttering to himself as he tried to both keep Geralt upright and get him settled without the whole tenuous operation ending up face-first in the tub. Geralt let himself slump, shaking with the pain of the bathwater the moment it touched his toes. It burned, far worse than Dandelion’s body heat did, as though every nerve ending was being set on fire as it was submerged. The pain raced up his legs and into his torso as he was sat back, and he realized he was shaking so violently that his head was smacking repeatedly against the rim of the bath, arms and legs spasming and splashing water everywhere. He might have whined a bit, breath stuttering in his chest. Instead of getting better, the pain seemed determined to only get worse. Geralt could feel his back arching with the pressure of it, streaks of fire rippling through his whole aching body and aggravating his newly stitched wounds. Dandelion grasped his hand, and Geralt realized he was still talking, the constant monologue he often delivered when he was nervous falling from his tongue like heavy raindrops in springtime.

 

“…you’re alright, you will be in just a moment, you’ve done so well, and I know this must be horrible for you, but it’s to get you better. And oh, I know you’d smack me if you could understand what I was saying to you. You’d tell me to stop coddling. But what’s friendship for if not to look to your comfort and bathe your fevered brow when you’re wounded? Or, in this case, frozen? Goddess, my mind is spinning in circles. Just breathe, ignore me talking, it won’t do you any good to hear my carrying on. You do tell me that all the time. I’m not sure if you say it in jest or not, half the time. I know I must drive you to distraction.”

 

He didn’t. At least, Geralt didn’t think he did. He couldn’t remember who was speaking to him, or why they sounded so shocked and concerned for him. But he didn’t feel irritated, just in a great deal of pain and very much wishing that something could be done to ease his discomfort a bit. Why was he so damned hot? And damp? All while being so frozen he felt like he would simply shatter away? Nothing made any sense except the agony, the way his spine felt it would simply bow and break in two from the pressure of arching against the pain.

 

“There, now, you look like you’re feeling a bit better. Shall I wash some of the blood out of your hair? You made a bloody great mess up on that mountainside. I’m sure the local fauna will be most disappointed I removed you before they had their say.”

 

Hmm. There must have been an accident. Outside. Why did Geralt have blood in his hair? He could feel it with the hypersensitivity brought on by a sudden temperature change, cracking in the skin of his scalp and tickling him where it had peeled away. He shuddered, tried to raise a hand to scratch, only to find himself restrained by his own weakness.

 

There was also the blatantly false comment about his feeling better. He felt awful. His back was still arched in pain and every inch of him was trembling. If his legs were no longer spasming, it was simply because he had lost the strength to do so, not because the water was burning him any less.

 

Something scratched at the back of his scalp. With it came great relief and a burst of fresh agony as Geralt’s sensitive skin prickled and burned under the pressure. He tried to pull away, and the touch gentled a bit to a soft tugging at his hair. The faint smell of lavender wafted about the room, and he remembered being treated with this before. Vaguely, he remembered an explanation of lavender’s supposed pain-relieving properties as well, though he couldn’t connect it to an event. Just that he hadn’t believed it at the time, and didn’t believe it any more now.

 

“Better? Come on, come to bed. The linens are fresh, and they smell of the outdoors.”

 

Geralt wanted to wince until he realized that his approximation of “smelling like the outdoors” (blood, piss, guts, sometimes mixed in with body odour and fir needles) was probably not what the speaker meant. He let himself be manhandled upright, sagging, and hearing a worried sort of clucking noise often made by hens.

 

“Your blood is still soaking through these bandages. They’ll need changed soon, I’m sure, so try to get some rest when you can.”

 

Geralt hummed tiredly as his legs buckled underneath him. The person who had been speaking eased a button-up cotton shirt, not one of his own, around his shoulders. It was terribly soft, and smelled of rosin and sweat. He sighed contentedly as the buttons were done up for him, the gentle tugging almost lulling him into a sort of meditative trance. The wounds that he couldn’t remember getting were throbbing and sore, and each heartbeat tugged at his new stitches. Even the thick bandages and lavender couldn’t hide that sort of pain. But he felt a bit less exposed, and much less cold, with something to cover his chest.

 

The shirt was lifted briefly, as the bandages underneath were inspected. He hissed when the person pushed on them lightly, and a litany of apologies fell from somewhere above him and to his left. Then, the blankets were pulled up to his shoulders and he was left to drift, in too much pain to sleep and having lost too much blood to stay awake.


The next day found Geralt much more lucid, and in a great deal more pain. He was exhausted, but once he had woken for the morning, he simply couldn’t get back to sleep. He was too cold, shaking and shivering so hard that his teeth clattered. Even Dandelion, pressed up against him and fast asleep, did very little to assuage the aching chill that seemed to penetrate right down to his veins. He clenched at the blankets helplessly, trying to ride out each fit of shivers as best he could, though he could feel blood trickling down his side, soiling his bandages worse than they already were.

 

It must have been the noisy clicking of his teeth that finally woke the bard. Dandelion sat up, rubbing at his eyes sleepily with both fists, and looking very muzzy and confused. He yawned and stretched, as though this were simply another morning on the path, before looking over at Geralt, as though wondering why the early-rising witcher was still abed. His bright blue eyes widened and he cursed viciously, hands bracing Geralt’s shoulders and trying to keep his shaking under control.

 

“Goddess, Geralt, how many times must I tell you that you can just wake me if you’re wounded and in pain? I don’t want a repeat of Belhaven, do you?”

 

Geralt, lucid enough to access his memories today, shuddered at the thought. They had been in Belhaven for the witcher to serve as a guard to a local nobleman having some problems with a succubus. Only, the succubus had not been a succubus and the nobleman had not been a nobleman and the whole affair had ended with Geralt nearly having his fingers severed and limping back to their inn on a broken ankle, trying to sew together the bone-deep cuts by firelight. Unfortunately, his blood loss had been severe, and Dandelion had woken to find a nearly dead witcher slumped in a pool of his own blood next to the hearth the next morning. The bard had been traumatized and horrified that Geralt had done all that out of a simple refusal to wake him from a well-deserved sleep. He had made Geralt promise to never do such a thing again. Which he had, begrudgingly.

 

“Wasn’t…bleedin’ out.” The effect was rather ruined by the sleepy slurring of his words. Dandelion looked like he wasn’t sure whether he should laugh or go find a healer.

 

“Just because you’re not actively in the process of dying doesn’t mean you don’t need help. Besides,” here Dandelion reached over and pulled up Geralt’s shirt, ignoring the way the witcher glared at the violation, “It seems you are in the process of bleeding. Not bleeding out quite yet, but with you it’s always a near thing. Come on, onto your back. I need to check your stitches.”

 

Geralt complied. There was a certain fiery heat radiating off the bard that only occurred in moments of passion or extreme anger, and Geralt was feeling far too weak to deal with either. His limbs felt limp and hot, even though he was shivering. His hands were red and swollen, his body’s desperate attempt to return blood flow and heat to his overwrought limbs. If he wasn’t careful, he would be feverish by nightfall. Leaning back, he recalled a time when he had been caught in a bad snowstorm and nursed back to health by some kindly villagers who had found him half-frozen by the side of the road. They had given him ice chips to suck on once he had been well enough to begin overheating. Filing the information away, he resolved to ask Dandelion to bring him a bowl of snow when he was feeling a bit more up to the task of eating it. Currently, his stomach was rolling like a ship at high tide.

 

Dandelion muttered and cursed to himself as he pulled back the heavy layer of bandages to reveal the skin beneath. Geralt propped himself up, craning his neck to see the damage and wincing when he got a good look.

 

There were three main wounds, all stitches together with heavy black thread; two that sat directly above the crest of his hips and a third directly adjacent to his heart. The aching pain suggested that the stitches were not only on the surface, but that whoever had sewn him together had been forced to repair his insides as well. It would be a long while before he was well enough to sit up, let alone take contracts. And with Dandelion still recovering, they would have no way to pay their room and board. Geralt took a shuddering breath, trying not to let the anxiety and desperation of their situation overtake him. He had been a right fool for allowing himself to become wounded when he was the sole provider of their already limited income.

 

“’M sorry…”

 

Dandelion looked up sharply, a dark eyebrow raised in askance.

 

“Whatever for?”

 

“No coin…they won’t let us stay.”

 

“My dear witcher,” Geralt tried to ignore the way the bard’s voice was quivering with exhaustion and worry, “The villagers paid you most handsomely for eradicating the spirit, and offered the both of us room and board until you were well enough to move on. You’ve restored their only source of drinking water. They owe you a great debt.”

 

“Owing and paying…rarely the same thing.”

 

“And yet, here we are.”

 

Geralt was cut off when Dandelion ripped back his bandages with a bit more force than was strictly necessary, making him groan and clench his hands in the rough, handmade quilt that covered him. The bard apologized, but he seemed distracted, running his long musician’s fingers over the raised and reddened tissue of the stitched wounds.

 

“You’re lucky we’ve been offered a place to stay here. You won’t be able to sit up for days yet, not with this sort of damage so close to your waist. And they feel hot. Are you feverish?”

 

A palm was slapped against Geralt’s forehead, and he tried to brush it away before lowering his hand, realizing he was much too weak to lift it.

 

“No. Warming up. You’ll need…t’keep me from getting too warm.”

 

“Yes, the healer did mention something about that. I’ve got some ice water here, and some ice from the innkeeper’s cellar for when you might feel up to it. I’m afraid you’re looking a bit nauseated at the moment.”

 

Geralt couldn’t deny the logic of this. He certainly felt nauseated. Nauseated, and like an ice pick had bored a hole straight through his middle, leaving him hollow and cold and in so much pain. He supposed it wasn’t that far off from the truth. Wincing, he leaned back, revelling in the grounding sensation of the stitches pulling, skin adjusting to being a little tauter, a little more swollen, a little more broken. It was familiar and kept him from getting lost inside his own head; baseline pain meant that he had lived, had beaten the odds one more time. And surely, that was enough to celebrate for one day.

 

“Dandelion?”

 

“Hmm?”

 

The bard had been leaning against Geralt’s trembling leg, his cheek pressed into the witcher’s skin, the coarse hair leaving reddened marks on Dandelion’s cheek. He looked dishevelled, still more asleep than awake, and so very worried.

 

“How did you find me?” Geralt needed something, anything to distract him from the burning pain tearing through his insides.  His breath and heart rate were picking up, and he hoped his discomfort would escape the bard’s notice, allow him to drift back off to sleep. He was still recovering from his own illness, and the dark circles under his eyes belied how much he still needed to rest. Guilt panged in Geralt’s chest, in tandem with the aches from his physical injuries.

 

“Geography, my dear. One most commonly finds a lake in the bottom of a dip between three peaks, such as the one where you went. I also assumed that the villagers were so eager to get rid of the spirit because the lake is this town’s only water supply, so there couldn’t have been another lake nearby. It was quite the hike, but it seems it was more than worth it. And nothing that I’m not used to, of course.”

 

Geralt felt something like pride spring forth in his chest. The way of identifying the location of a lake based on topography was his strategy, one he had imparted on Dandelion when he had been fairly sure the bard hadn’t been listening. It made him feel a bit better to know that he had been.

 

“Hmm. Smart.”

 

“It was rather clever, wasn’t it? Of course, I would have found you some other way if that hadn’t worked. I certainly wasn’t going to leave you in that frozen wasteland to die.”

 

There was no point in elucidating that it had been a very near thing. That if Dandelion hadn’t followed the most direct route, or if he had chosen to track the river instead of traversing through the forest, Geralt would likely have been dead by the time he had arrived. There was no point in dwelling on the pain. Besides, Geralt had a feeling that Dandelion already knew, the tremor in his voice and forced lightness in his words betraying him.

 

Geralt fell asleep to those thoughts, and the feeling of the bard’s hand stroking idly up and down his too-sensitive thigh.