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Geralt lifted his aching body out of the wooden tub with a low grunt and splash as his foot slipped on the cold brick floor. Water ran in lukewarm rivulets down his back and chest, dripped from the ends of his loose hair.
The potion had done its work. The gaping wound was reduced to a discolored spot that felt tender under his prodding fingertips. The surrounding muscles were tense and hard, their pull a dull twinge whenever Geralt moved his arm. The fresh scar stood out, a puckered and pale line.
But what was one more?
In the time it took him to pad across the room the persistent steam had dissipated, leaving behind a moist sheen on the ground and walls. The single window was fogged-up, hiding the snow that fell and piled outside. The wind was howling, a continuous whistling, lashing bare trees.
The road to Kaer Morhen had been blocked for a week now, leaving him stranded in this gods forsaken hamlet. Risky contract, gone horribly wrong, but worth the coin - and it came with certain benefits.
This was him looking on the bright side, just as Dandelion would advise.
Geralt snatched up the rough towel a young servant girl had brought him, eyes wide with fear and round cheeks full of freckles. Roche looming behind him, armed, grim and eternally suspicious of everybody's motives, hadn't helped to put her at ease.
With a glance towards the bed, Geralt dried himself off. Moving to the fireplace he basked in the warmth, watching as the logs blackened and bark burst in a shower of sparks.
"Done?" Roche's voice was husky. He sat up in a tangle of blankets and furs and shifted to the edge of the bed, reaching for ointment and salve. "Then come here."
"Wanted to let you sleep."
Roche having his hands full with the clay jars, Geralt used the opportunity to pull him close. Palm cupping his neck he swallowed Vernon's noise of protest and inhaled his next breath, licked into his mouth. The taste was familiar, with only the faintest trace of their plain evening meal. Geralt relaxed into it, the sliding of their tongues, hot and wet whenever they met between the warning edge of teeth.
He recoiled with a hiss that instantly morphed into a dead-pan, "Ow."
"Consider it a warning." Vernon opened the first jar. The scents of gooseberries, lemon, and honey rose into the air. "Sit."
Geralt obeyed and settled cross-legged on the straw-filled mattress. Vernon would easily be able to reach the scars on his front, the marks left by talons, teeth, a pitchfork, swords and arrows. Some were pale lines, patches free of hair, others puckered and jagged, or sunken starbursts.
Vernon scooped up a dab, just enough to cover his fingertip. Geralt closed his eye, anticipating the soft touch on his brow, the downward swipe and gentle rubbing. The ointment felt cool as it seeped into hardened tissue.
"Hm," Geralt hummed, drawing out the throaty vibration in a lazy fashion. "Feels like this will take hours."
"I take it you approve?" Roche sounded amused. "We have time."
And so Roche went from scar to scar, front and back, ordering him to turn this way and that, with infinite patience. The same he poured into an interrogation, except he already knew where to find every chink and weakness.
The same cold that made his joints and bones ache despite blazing fires rendered the tissue more sensitive. Soon, heat pooled deep in Geralt's guts, rushed along his spine in lightning sparks that made him struggle to keep still.
It went on and on, Roche never once touching unharmed and smooth skin, until Geralt's toes curled and nails bit into his own palms, hands fisted into the sheet. His breaths came in quick pants, eyes half-lidded and glowing a shade brighter.
He swallowed a groan as his cock twitched and throbbed, smearing clear liquid all over his stomach - and Vernon's fingers, busy just a little lower, massaging ointment into the puckered line where a crazed zealot had done his best to try and castrate the evil abomination that was a witcher.
"Vernon, please --!"
Never let it be said that Vernon Roche has no capacity for mercy, Geralt thought inanely, as the sweet torture ended with a single firm stroke and the salty tang of spurting semen. Like a felled tree, Geralt toppled to the side with a soft sigh, lax and loose and perfectly content to curl and twist on the bed like a cat that got its fill of cream.
"How very considerate and attentive," Roche commented with a snort, cleaning his hands on a rag. It ended up on the floor, not far from the trail of their shed clothes. "No wonder Lady Yennefer is as likely to invite you to her bed as dump you into the next lake."
"You're the reason I had to take a bath in the first place," Geralt reminded him. He cracked one eye open. "Doesn't look like you're up for round three yet."
"You mistake my meaning." Roche pulled the blanket up to cover them both. "I was not complaining, merely stating fact."
"Mhm. Sure." Geralt rolled over to use Vernon's chest as a pillow, then doused the candles with a snap of his fingers and a tiny push of power. "I'll make you eat those words."
"Always with the empty threats."
Geralt had a lot to say to that. But then his jaw cracked with a mighty yawn, and Roche started to hum in the darkness, a little off-key. A soldier's mourning and longing for home, turned into a lullaby.
That man knew him too damn well. It was a fond thought. The death of children... it left a mark; always will. No amount of coin or self-invented Witcher's code would ever change that.
So Geralt kept his peace in favor of a dreamless sleep, curled up together, braving the first unforgiving night of winter.