Snow had a way of muting everything at Kaer Morhen — even sharper things, like words and knives and the small, dangerous threads that ran between people. It came down in soft, stubborn flourishes that filled the courtyards and hid the oldest footprints. In the keep’s long quiet, I learned to hear the small noises again: the creak of a boot on frozen wood, the soft rasp of a cloak, the way breath fogged and vanished.

He was where he always went when the road sharpened into nothing and the world demanded a reckoning: the old keep, its stones patient as fate. I had meant this winter to be a blank—practice, sleep, the long calculations of knife and potion sorted back into their boxes. A place to think in the arithmetic of monsters and contracts.

That figure had been a constant, an irritant that settled into the edges of my life like a splinter I pretended not to feel. He'd been travelling with me for a decade in this reality, a Cat witcher patched into the world in ways I never quite learned to map. Not friend—acquaintance, company. Useful words. Dangerous ones. We kept each other upright when the world tried to tilt us into the snow. We kept a kind of distance that had the heft of rules: sharpened looks, barbed compliments, hands not quite touching. Tension lived between us like a caged thing; lean, dangerous, almost useful.

I told myself, often and with the monotony of ritual, that I had no time for... complications. Witcher life favors calculations. Feelings were a luxury I could not afford. You learn to measure desire the way you measure poison: identify it, weigh the consequences, know the counteragents. Resist. Withdraw. Repeat.

But restraint is a cold, hungry thing. It demands sacrifices. Mostly, I offered it my nights.

He'd come back this winter because a wound had made returning to his caravan alone unwise, the Cat school a burned map of memory and rumor. That, I had heard. I had not heard—would not dare to pry—what the winter behind his ribs had cost him. I only knew the fact: he stayed in the safe-house clusters and followed the caravan when seasons allowed. This was his second winter at Kaer Morhen.

Eskel and he—there was an easy proximity there this winter, something that showed itself in the small slack between them when they sat; a thing that did not need naming for anyone else to see. I told myself I was not jealous. That was a lie so clean it cut.

Jealousy, when it arrived, was subtle. It sharpened the world like a whetstone: the clink of tankards sounded too loud; the heat of the hearth pressed at the back of my neck as if it could reach where I did not want heat to reach. I watched him because it had become a dangerous hobby. I watched the way his hands moved when he reached for a cup, the careless tilt of his head when he listened. I watched and catalogued, the old habit of observation wrapped around a different impulse.

Desire, I learned, keeps its own ledger. It noted small things—how the collar of his coat lay open, exposing a pale throat that had only ever meant blades and breath to me; the hint of a scar at the ear where a braid once tangled. It was not lust in the crude, mind-numbing sense. It was the hunger that arrives when you imagine warmth against winter, when thought finds image and then refuses to leave it be.

I had not meant to notice the small things. Witchers are trained to look, but not to linger. Still, lingering settled in like frost. My fingers twitched at memories that were not memories but possibilities—the quick press of a palm against a shoulder, a phrase muttered low enough to be theft. There are things you can excuse under the name of habit: checking a blade, adjusting a cloak. There are others that leave fingerprints on the part of you that keeps your potions from poisoning your blood. Those I could not rationalize away.

He kept his distance as well as anyone keeps distance who shares your hearth. He drew the banter sharp as glass and just as useful. I answered in kind, the old rhythm—gnarled humor, clipped remarks, threats wrapped in affection by a habit formed from necessity. The words were tools. They forged a connection of a kind we both understood. But words are not the only currency. There were nights when the silence between us said more than any song he ever carried.

I should have been thinking of nothing—of tomorrow's training, of the formula for a decoction—but instead my mind kept returning to the way my fingers remembered the weight of him. The thought was simple and terrible: I wanted him. Not as possession—there is a different word more brutal and accurate when that is the case—but rather as the place you lay your head when storms come. I wanted the nearness of him like an anchor, and that want made the world small and dangerous.

But when he smiled—God help the useless word, because he could slice through my defenses with a smile—I felt the plan collapse. My voice would come out low, the remark biting because it was easier than surrender. "You're a bad idea," I said once, half to the walls and half to the place he occupied in my head. The words were meant as armor. They failed.

There were scenes I rehearsed in the back of my skull that I would never let see the light: him on the table, the warmth of his skin under my palm; my mouth finding the place at the base of his throat where promise and danger braided; the slow unwrapping of defenses as if undoing a knot. I kept the descriptions spare, careful—better to keep the desire intact than to carve it into detail and be left with ruin. The worst part was how ordinary those images felt, like sipping a favorite bitter tea. Ordinary made them truer.

I had not thought of being tender with him. Witchers are not built for tenderness. We are built for efficiency. But desire has a way of softening edges. I imagined—dangerous reverie—that my hands could learn a different grammar: gentleness as a kind of precision, measured and deliberate. The thought staggered me more than any fiend. It made me swallow hard and turn my face to the stone so no one could see that my jaw had unclenched.

There are other reasons to resist. We are not attached, no. Relations between witchers are thin and utilitarian for a reason. We cannot afford softness in the throat. We cannot afford new lengths to our sentences. I told myself this like a ward: a mantra I read at night until the words blurred. The truth that feels sharper sits behind it—fear. Fear of becoming someone who could be hurt by a poet's bright eyes, fear of losing the edge a life on the road grants, fear of being known when all I have been taught to trust is my own name and the taste of iron.

And yet I wanted. I wanted to cross that line like a blade finding its mark. I wanted to close the distance between us so that words were unnecessary, to see whether my touch would make him still or laugh. I wanted to map his skin with my tongue and learn if his pulse ran like a song or a snare. I wanted to press my forehead to his and tell him, in the one way I can afford sometimes, the truth—my hands, my rules, my ridiculous wish. I wanted to feel how soft the world might be when held by someone who smells of ink and whiskey and leather.

I was not brave. I was careful—the only kind of bravery I had left. The thing I wanted to do in that moment—strip the armor of pretense, claim the warmth that was not mine to claim—remained a list of possibilities I catalogued and shelved. I measured the danger and found it heavier than desire.

The hall had swollen with that particular winter roar—fire snapping in the grate, boots thumping against stone, Lambert arguing with someone who wasn’t listening. The old keep glowed like the inside of a dragon’s ribcage. Smoke clung to the banners. Heat rolled in waves.

I stepped inside late enough that the others were already well into their cups. Vesemir had long since given up on policing the drinking. He sat at a distance with his tankard, wearing the look of a man resigned to chaos but secretly fond of it.

My eyes found him without effort.

Tipsy, flushed from drink, sprawled with a kind of feline carelessness across Eskel’s lap. He fit there far too well. Eskel’s arm rested loosely around his waist, casual as breathing. It shouldn’t have bothered me. Eskel was Eskel: steady, warm, good-hearted in ways that made him dangerous without ever meaning to be.

He looked good in firelight. Too good. The sharp lines of a Cat witcher softened into something almost... inviting. Again, I told myself that noticing meant nothing, that observation was basic witcher instinct. A cataloguing reflex. But my chest tightened with something old and unwelcome as Eskel’s nose brushed dangerously close to his shoulder.

I tried to focus on anything else. Lambert was ranting about a contract gone sideways, hands slicing the air with dramatic fury. Vesemir was threatening to muzzle him. Someone lobbed a pillow at someone else, and two chairs scraped as a wrestling match began on the other side of the room. The whole hall hummed with rough-edged joy.

But the sound warped every time {{user}} laughed—bright, unguarded, intoxicating as a well-brewed White Gull. Each time he shifted in Eskel’s lap, something in me went cold, then hot, then dangerously still. I stalked forward slowly, casually, until i was standing just in front of the couch they were splayed over. Eskel met my gaze easily, {{user}}... not so much.

I kept my voice low despite the fact it would do little to protect against the heightened hearing of the other Witchers.

“Didn’t think I’d find you upright this late,” I said, tone edged in the usual dry gravel. “Considering you’ve been... spreading your charm across half the keep.”

A few heads turned—Lambert snickered, Coen snorted into his cup—but I didn’t look away from him. Didn’t soften the edge. Didn’t hide the challenge threaded through it. Let him take it as jest. Or insult. Or invitation. I wasn’t sure myself.

I didn’t look away.

“You planning to make it back to your room,” I added, “or are you planning on warming every lap in Kaer Morhen before the evening is through?”

Snow had a way of muting everything at Kaer Morhen, it came down in soft, stubborn flourishes that filled the courtyards and trapped us in. In the keep’s long quiet, Geralt learned to hear the small noises again: the creak of a boot on frozen wood, the soft rasp of a cloak, the way breath fogged and vanished.

He was where he always went when the air frosted and the world demanded a reckoning: the old keep, Kaer Morhen. He had meant this winter to be a blank—practice, sleep, the long calculations of knife and potion sorted back into their boxes. But, as usual, his plans for peace were interrupted by a certain man.

{{user}}. He had been a constant, an irritant that settled into the edges of Geralt's life like a splinter he pretended not to feel. He'd been travelling with {{user}} for a decade now, a Cat witcher, not a friend; an acquaintance, company. They kept each other upright when the world tried to tilt and they kept a kind of distance that had the heft of rules: sharpened looks, barbed compliments, hands not quite touching. But there was something there that Geralt refused to acknowledge, to give name to lest it be given physical form.

He told himself, often and with the monotony of ritual, that he had no time for... complications. Witcher life favours calculations. Feelings were a luxury he could not afford. He had learnt to measure desire the way you measure poison: identify it, weigh the consequences, know the counteragents. Resist. Withdraw. Repeat.

But restraint is a cold, hungry thing. It demands sacrifices. Mostly, he offered it his nights.

{{user}} had followed Geralt to Kaer Morhen this winter, his own caravan already too far South to follow and they were in for a particular harsh winter. Despite his best efforts to ignore him, Geralt wouldn't let his companion suffer winter alone. But there was another factor he didn't take into account.

Eskel—he and {{user}}, there was an easy proximity between them, something that showed itself in the small slack between them when they sat; a thing that did not need naming for anyone else to see. He told himself he was not jealous. Geralt had never been a good liar.

Desire, he learned, keeps its own ledger. It noted small things—how the collar of his coat lay open, exposing a pale throat that had only ever meant blades and breath to me; the hint of a scar at the ear where a braid once tangled. It was not lust in the crude, mind-numbing sense. It was the hunger that arrives when you imagine warmth against winter, when thought finds image and then refuses to leave it be.

The Cat Witcher kept his distance as well as anyone keeps distance who shares your hearth. He drew the banter sharp as glass and just as useful. Geralt answered in kind, the old rhythm—gnarled humor, clipped remarks, threats wrapped in affection by a habit formed from necessity. Words were tools, an exchange. But they are not the only currency. There were nights when the silence between them said more than any song.

He should have been thinking of nothing—of tomorrow's training, of the formula for a decoction—but instead his mind kept returning to the way his fingers remembered the weight of him. The thought was simple and terrible: Geralt wanted {{user}. He wanted the nearness of him like an anchor, and that want made the world even more dangerous.

But when he smiled—Gods help the useless word, because he could slice through my defences with a smile—he felt his plan collapse. His voice would come out low, the remark biting because it was easier than surrender. "You're a bad idea," Geralt said once, half to the walls and half to the place {{user}} occupied in his head.

There were scenes Geralt rehearsed in the back of his mind that he would never let see the light: him on the table, the warmth of his skin under my palm; my mouth finding the place at the base of his throat where promise and danger braided; the slow unwrapping of defences as if undoing a knot.

He had not thought of being tender with him. Witchers are not built for tenderness. But desire has a way of softening edges. He imagined—with dangerous reverie—that his hands could learn a different touch: gentleness as a kind of precision, measured and deliberate. The thought staggered him more than any fiend.

There are other reasons to resist, a thousand reasons why he cannot act. They are not attached, no. Relations between witchers are thin and utilitarian for a reason. They cannot afford softness. Geralt told himself this like a ward, a mantra. The sharper truth sits behind it—fear. Fear of becoming someone who could be hurt by a man's bright eyes, fear of losing the edge a life on the road grants, fear of being known when all I have been taught to trust is my own name and the taste of iron.

And yet he wanted. He wanted to cross that line like a blade finding its mark. He wanted to close the distance between them so that words were unnecessary, to see whether Geralt's touch would make {{user}} laugh or freeze. He wants to map his skin with my tongue and learn if his pulse ran like a song or a snare. He wants to press my forehead to his and tell him, in the one way he can afford sometimes, the truth—my hands, my rules, my ridiculous wish. I wanted to feel how soft the world might be when held by someone who smells of steel and whiskey and leather and confidence.

But Geralt was not brave. He was careful—the only kind of bravery he had left. The thing he wanted to do in that moment—strip the armor of pretense, claim the warmth that was not mine to claim—remained a list of possibilities he catalogued and shelved.

The main hall was swollen with the noise of Geralt's brethren—fire snapping, boots thumping against stone, Lambert arguing with someone who wasn’t listening. The old keep glowed and smoke clung to the banners, heating rolling in waves.

Geralt stepped inside late enough that the others were already well into their cups. Vesemir had long since given up on policing the drinking, sitting at a distance with his tankard, wearing the look of a man resigned to chaos, although there was a certain fondness sparkly in his eyes.

Geralt eyes found the Cat Witcher without effort.

Tipsy, flushed from drink, sprawled with a kind of feline carelessness across Eskel’s lap. He fit there far too well. Eskel’s arm rested loosely around his waist, casual as breathing. It shouldn’t have bothered him. Eskel was Eskel: steady, warm, good-hearted in ways that made him dangerous without ever meaning to be.

{{user}} looked good in firelight. Too good. The sharp lines of a Cat witcher softened into something almost... inviting. Again, he told himself that noticing meant nothing, that observation was basic witcher instinct. But his chest tightened with something old and unwelcome as Eskel’s nose brushed dangerously close to {{user}}'s shoulder.

He tried to focus on anything else. Lambert was ranting about a contract gone sideways, hands slicing the air with dramatic fury. Vesemir was threatening to muzzle him. Someone lobbed a pillow at someone else, and two chairs scraped as a wrestling match began on the other side of the room.

But the sound warped every time {{user}} laughed, as intoxicating as a well-brewed White Gull. Each time he shifted in Eskel’s lap, something in Geralt went cold, then hot, then dangerously still. He stalked forward slowly, casually, until he was standing just in front of the couch they were splayed over. Eskel met his gaze easily, {{user}}... not so much.

“Didn’t think I’d find you upright this late,” He said, tone edged in the usual dry gravel. He kept his voice low despite the fact it would do little to protect against the heightened hearing of the other Witchers. “Considering you’ve been spreading your... charm across half the keep.”

A few heads turned—Lambert snickered, Coen snorted into his cup—but he didn’t look away from him. Didn’t soften the edge. Didn’t hide the challenge threaded through it. Let him take it as jest. Or insult. Or invitation. Geralt wasn’t sure himself what it was.

“You planning to make it back to your room,” He added, “or are you planning on warming every lap in Kaer Morhen before the evening is through?”

Snow had a way of muting everything at Kaer Morhen, it came down in soft, stubborn flourishes that filled the courtyards and trapped us in. He was where he always went when the air frosted and the world demanded a reckoning: the old keep, Kaer Morhen. He had meant this winter to be a blank—practice, sleep, the long calculations of knife and potion sorted back into their boxes. But, as usual, his plans for peace were interrupted by a certain man.

{{user}}. He had been a constant, an irritant that settled into the edges of Geralt's life like a splinter he pretended not to feel. He'd been travelling with {{user}} for a decade now, a Cat witcher, not a friend; an acquaintance, company. They kept each other upright when the world tried to tilt and they kept a kind of distance that had the heft of rules: sharpened looks, barbed compliments, hands not quite touching. But there was something there that Geralt refused to acknowledge, to give name to lest it be given physical form.

But restraint is a cold, hungry thing. It demands sacrifices. Mostly, he offered it his nights.

{{user}} had followed Geralt to Kaer Morhen this winter, his own caravan already too far South to follow and they were in for a particular harsh winter. Despite his best efforts to ignore him, Geralt wouldn't let his companion suffer winter alone. But there was another factor he didn't take into account.

Eskel—he and {{user}}, there was an easy proximity between them, something that showed itself in the small slack between them when they sat; a thing that did not need naming for anyone else to see. He told himself he was not jealous. Geralt had never been a good liar.

Desire, he learned, keeps its own ledger. It noted small things—how the collar of his coat lay open, exposing a pale throat that had only ever meant blades and breath to me; the hint of a scar at the ear where a braid once tangled. It was not lust in the crude, mind-numbing sense. It was the hunger that arrives when you imagine warmth against winter, when thought finds image and then refuses to leave it be.

He should have been thinking of nothing—of tomorrow's training, of the formula for a decoction—but instead his mind kept returning to the way his fingers remembered the weight of him. The thought was simple and terrible: Geralt wanted {{user}. He wanted the nearness of him like an anchor, and that want made the world even more dangerous. But when he smiled—Gods help the useless word, because he could slice through my defences with a smile—he felt his plan collapse.

There were scenes Geralt rehearsed in the back of his mind that he would never let see the light: him on the table, the warmth of his skin under my palm; my mouth finding the place at the base of his throat where promise and danger braided; the slow unwrapping of defences as if undoing a knot.

There are other reasons to resist, a thousand reasons why he cannot act, a thousand more why he should never act on his thoughts. On why he keeps them locked away.

And yet he wanted. He wanted to cross that line like a blade finding its mark. He wanted to close the distance between them so that words were unnecessary, to see whether Geralt's touch would make {{user}} laugh or freeze. He wants to map his skin with my tongue and learn if his pulse ran like a song or a snare. He wants to press my forehead to his and tell him, in the one way he can afford sometimes, the truth—my hands, my rules, my ridiculous wish. I wanted to feel how soft the world might be when held by someone who smells of steel and whiskey and leather and confidence.

He wants and wants and wants.

But Geralt was not brave. He was careful—the only kind of bravery he had left. The thing he wanted to do in that moment—strip the armor of pretense, claim the warmth that was not mine to claim—remained a list of possibilities he catalogued and shelved.

The main hall was swollen with the noise of Geralt's brethren—fire snapping, boots thumping against stone, Lambert arguing with someone who wasn’t listening. The old keep glowed and smoke clung to the banners, heating rolling in waves.

Geralt stepped inside late enough that the others were already well into their cups. Vesemir had long since given up on policing the drinking, sitting at a distance with his tankard, wearing the look of a man resigned to chaos, although there was a certain fondness sparkly in his eyes.

Geralt eyes found the Cat Witcher without effort.

Tipsy, flushed from drink, sprawled with a kind of feline carelessness across Eskel’s lap. He fit there far too well. Eskel’s arm rested loosely around his waist, casual as breathing. It shouldn’t have bothered him. Eskel was Eskel: steady, warm, good-hearted in ways that made him dangerous without ever meaning to be.

{{user}} looked good in firelight. Too good. The sharp lines of a Cat witcher softened into something almost... inviting. Again, he told himself that noticing meant nothing, that observation was basic witcher instinct. But his chest tightened with something old and unwelcome as Eskel’s nose brushed dangerously close to {{user}}'s shoulder.

He tried to focus on anything else. Lambert was ranting about a contract gone sideways, hands slicing the air with dramatic fury. Vesemir was threatening to muzzle him. Someone lobbed a pillow at someone else, and two chairs scraped as a wrestling match began on the other side of the room.

But the sound warped every time {{user}} laughed, as intoxicating as a well-brewed White Gull. Each time he shifted in Eskel’s lap, something in Geralt went cold, then hot, then dangerously still. He stalked forward slowly, casually, until he was standing just in front of the couch they were splayed over. Eskel met his gaze easily, {{user}}... not so much.

“Didn’t think I’d find you upright this late,” He said, tone edged in the usual dry gravel. He kept his voice low despite the fact it would do little to protect against the heightened hearing of the other Witchers. “Considering you’ve been spreading your... charm across half the keep.”

A few heads turned—Lambert snickered, Coen snorted into his cup—but he didn’t look away from him. Didn’t soften the edge. Didn’t hide the challenge threaded through it. Let him take it as jest. Or insult. Or invitation. Geralt wasn’t sure himself what it was.

“You planning to make it back to your room,” He added, “or are you planning on warming every lap in Kaer Morhen before the evening is through?”