#31 days of decembert

[octinary]

Decembert the Seventh - Winter Springs

Rating: T

Pairing: Lambert & Eskel & Geralt & Vesemir

Work Count: 628

CW: Lambert being a little shit, pranks

“Lambert!” Someone, presumably Eskel based on the voice, pounded on the door to Kaer Morhen’s famous underground hot springs, which was bolted tightly shut.  “Get out of there!”

Lambert did not bother dignifying that demand with a response.  He was warm, finally, and content.  Geralt and Eskel could go fuck themselves.

“Lambert!” Eskel tried again.  “This isn’t fair!”

Lambert disagreed with that assessment as well.  While Geralt may have been the mastermind behind the prank, Eskel had neither warned Lambert nor shown a great deal of sympathy when the avalanche of snow off of the stable roof had cascaded down upon him.  Eskel had made his bed as far as Lambert was concerned.

“Geralt is very sorry!”

“I am not—”

“Shut the fuck up and apologize.”

There was a long period of silence from the other side of the door and one very loud thwack, as if one white haired witcher had perhaps been physically reprimanded by his dark haired brother.  “I am very sorry, Lambert.”

Bullshit, thought Lambert.  Sorry didn’t count for shit when you were just apologizing because you wanted something.  He scooched forward and let himself lean back in the pool until just his face was the only part of him above  the water.  All of the commotion outside sounded muted and far away with his ears covered, but was still, thanks to his augmented hearing, understandable.

“I said I was sorry, so let us in!”

“Geralt—”

“We’re getting frostbite out here!”

Well, that was also just a consequence of their actions which they were going to have to live with.  An awning full of snow Aard-ed onto his head was equivalent to the two chucklefucks who were giggling at him being shoved into the slightly iced over water trough.  It was basic math, really.  Tit for tat.  Besides, there were plenty of hearths in the keep; they could squat themselves down in front of an open fire and shiver the water off.

“I’m going to tell Vesemir!”

Seriously?  What were they, eight years old?  And what did they think Vesemir was going to do?  His voice would sound just as inconsequential from the other side of the door as theirs did.

“Lambert!  You can’t stay in there all winter!”

On the contrary, Lambert smirked to himself, that sounded like the best idea he’d heard all year.  There was, he had to admit, the slight complication that there was nothing to eat in the hot springs, but it may just be worth starving to death to deprive Geralt and Lambert of the gloriously warm water cradling every cell in his body.  They say no witcher ever died in his bed; maybe Lambert could die here.

“Shove over.”

Vesemir’s voice, suddenly beside him, woke Lambert from his daze with an uncomfortable shock.  He sputtered to a sitting position, did a doubletake to make sure the door was still bolted, and then was left staring uncomprehending at his mentor as the old witcher lowered his tired bones down beside him.

“How did you—”

Vesemir just raised a brow.  “You think there’s only one way in here?  Really?”

Lambert tried (and failed) not to pout.  “Do Tweedledee and Tweedledum know about it?”

“Do you see them in here right now?”

“Lambert!” Eskel tried plaintively. “At least let me in!  Geralt’s the one who started it!”

“Traitor!  You’re the one who said—”

There was another load thwack followed by further scuffling.  At least the two of them were finding other ways to keep themselves warm.

“You gonna let them in?”  Lambert asked, eyes narrowed.

“You gonna get them to agree to make dinner for us first?”  Vesemir countered.

That was an easy concession.  “Deal,” he said, and they shook on it.

“Lambert!” Geralt wailed.

“Lambert!” Eskel pleaded.

“But in a minute,” Lambert said, settling back into the water with a satisfied smirk.

[on-a-lucky-tide]

“Thirty-One Days of Decembert” Masterpost

“You’re on my fucking naughty list.”

“It’s colder than a ice troll’s ass in here.”

This is the prompt list with all credit to the original poster. It’s beautiful and secular (and I’m very grateful to @witcher-and-his-bard​ and @eskelent​ for their awesome work on it; please follow their blogs for their own stories).

Full collection on AO3.

Week One: (1) (Kiss Me Under The) Mistletoe; (2) Frosted Windows; (3) Cuddling (In Bed) By The Fire; (4) Ridin’ Home For Solstice; (5) Night-time Snow; (6) Frostbite; (7) Evergreens

Week Two: (8) Tracks in the Snow; (9) Freshly Baked Bread; (10) Lost in a Storm; (11) Favourite Jumper; (12) Snow Fort; (13) Rosy Cheeks; (14) Walking in the Snow

Week Three: (15) Hot Drinks; (16) Snowball Fight; (17) First Frost; (18) Blanket Nest; (19) Hibernation; (20) Black Ice; (21) Icicles 

Week Four: (22) Sleeping In; (23) Chapped Lips; (24) Mittens & (25) Fuck Winter; (26) Never Seen Snow Before; (27) Ice-skating; (28) Ice Sculptures

Last Three Days of 2020: (29) Abominable Snowman; (30) Bundled Up; (31) Quiet

[himbo-half-orc]

The Wonders of Bear Grease

AO3

This is written for the 31 days of Decembert (a few days late, but for the 'tradition' prompt) run by @continentcakeshop, and provides an explanation for the bear grease clearly used by Geralt in the Hexer and Papa V in S2.

Lambert x Aiden (G) - A tradition of the wolf school, Lambert has been using bear grease to tame his wild thick red hair for years, until a chance encounter with another witcher shows him the error of his ways.

.

Vesemir always swore by the stuff, and made sure that when the time came, he taught his young witcher trainees all about the many uses of bear grease, including his favourite; the best way to manage unruly flyaway hair. Lambert had to admit, it did lend an air of refinement to the old man, and Geralt took to using it straight away. Pretty boy always had a jar of the stuff on hand to style his long white locks. Eskel was a little more reluctant to use the stuff. Lambert hated putting it into his thick ginger hair, but had to admit that his scalp always felt better for it - it did wonders for his skin. If only he could do something about the smell.

He’d been using the grease for years by the time he first met another witcher, Aiden, who was a member of the cat school. They had evidently not had the same self-care lessons as the wolves.

“What the fuck is that?” Aiden asked, pointing to Lambert’s head.

“What?”

“Something happened to your hair? It’s all… eww, it’s a fuck ton of grease? Do you ever wash it?”

“Yeah, so? It makes my skin feel nice.” Lambert was offended. It wasn’t that bad, surely? He’d been doing it like this for years. Vesemir even helped him the first few times until he got the hang of it.

“It fucking stinks. How on the Continent do you manage to sneak up on anything unless you make sure you’re downwind? And it’s probably really flammable! With the rate at which you use bombs, I’m surprised you haven’t set fire to your own head before now!”

“Seriously?? For Melitele’s sake, why didn’t anyone tell me! It’s really that bad?” He felt so deflated and a bit panicked. Here was this cute witcher, and he’d been made to look like he couldn’t even take care of basic hygiene! He was a freak! What must he be thinking?

“I’m sure it’ll wash out. Here, let me help you.”

Lambert sighed in relief. At least this guy wasn’t laughing at him. Aiden helped him to a nearby stream, and assisted him in washing out all the grease. It took quite a long time to get it all out. He even had a little soap in his pack, which was nicely scented. He kindly offered to use some to clean Lambert’s hair. Once he’d finished, Lambert could smell the lavender from the soap. He smelled like Aiden. It was nice.

Luckily for Lambert, Aiden stayed around after that incident, and they became fast friends, before things eventually turned more serious. He never forgot the bear grease incident, especially on his yearly trips back to Kear Morhen and seeing the old witcher with his slicked back hair. He couldn’t even be mad - it had brought him and Aiden together. He noticed too that Geralt, who had been such a fan of the grease, had incidentally stopped using it when he started talking about his bard friend. Only Eskel still appeared to be using the stuff, although not in such large quantities as Vesemir.

[sometimesiwrite]

For the @continentcakeshop 31 Days of Decembert prompt "Shelter" I bring you a second chapter from the With Us universe.

Summary: Essi's plans to travel home for the holidays are thwarted and she seeks shelter in the best place she knows: the company of Lambert, Eskel, and Geralt.

Warnings: Nudity, developing relationships, nonverbal communication, winter storm, winter travel, queerplatonic dynamics

[octinary]

December the Sixth - Evergreens

Rating: T

Pairing: Lambert & Vesemir

Word Count: 2.5k (I don’t know why these keep getting longer...)

CW: Implied/Referenced Child Abuse (pre-fic)

Sitting at his kitchen table with a glass of whiskey and the creeping sensation crawling up his spine that is telling him he’s bitten off more than he can chew, Vesemir wonders sullenly why he’s never been given an easy case.  Guxart keeps getting babies to foster—which are their own brand of trouble, no doubt—but even incoherent screaming at all hours of the night seems vastly preferable to being called out of work to pick Lambert up from school for the third time in as many days for fighting.

Acting out, he reminds himself over and over again like a mantra, is typical for children who have been relocated out of abusive households.  Lambert is only eight and suffering.  Vesemir is the adult in this situation; it is his responsibility to have patience and compassion.  But when they had returned to the apartment and he had tried to ask Lambert what the fight was about, the little shit had told him to go fuck himself, broken the glass of the microwave door by chucking a plate at it, and sent himself to bed without dinner.  Hence whiskey and self-pity.

Vesemir, of course, had not actually allowed Lambert to go to bed without dinner, although he was feeling a little guilty that after cleaning up the broken glass, he’d only had the mental fortitude to make ham sandwiches.  He knocked on Lambert’s door with the peace offering—as promised, not entering without permission unless it was an emergency—but ended up just leaving them on a plate on the floor outside when Lambert had sworn at him again.  Sometime, while he’d been eating his own sandwiches, the plate had disappeared so at least the boy had some fuel in him for his seemingly all consuming rage.

It’s hardly a glowing report to turn into his case worker though: I’ve managed not to kill the child, yet.  Not that Nenneke would be terribly surprised.  Lambert had already proved too much for three other foster placements by the time she had called Vesemir personally to ask him if he wouldn’t consider coming out of retirement to take this one case.  When he’d turned fifty-five, the same year Geralt had left for college, Vesemir had withdrawn his name from the foster care agency.  He was too cantankerous now, too tired and too slow to keep up with children anymore.  He’d reminded Nenneke of all of that when she’d called, he’d asked her honestly and openly why him, but the woman who’d known him for decades, who’d cared for almost as many children as he had over the years, just repeated her initial pitch in the same steady, no nonsense tone she always used: Lambert needed someone.  Although she had also added that Lambert did remind her of a younger Vesemir a bit, which, in retrospect, should have been a major red flag.

Finishing his drink, he stands, sighs and looks at the calendar on the wall.  It’s December 1st tomorrow.  Three weeks.  Lambert has been staying with him for three weeks.  It already feels like three years.  His hands are shaking slightly as he flips the wall calendar over the month; he hasn’t been sleeping well, constantly on edge, weighed down by doubt and stress.  He’s too old to live like this.  He needs to make some headway with the kid soon, some small victory, or he’s going to have to tell Nenneke he can’t handle this and Lambert will have to leave.  He doesn’t want to do it, he knows the stigma that comes with being labelled unplaceable, but too many people in Lambert’s life have already failed him.  If Vesemir can’t help, the only honourable thing to do is admit it before he makes it worse.

“You’ll think of something,” Nenneke had said on their last call.  “He may be a stubborn child, but you’ve had decades to perfect your bullheadedness!”

There was a large red circle looming on the calendar, encircling December 8th twice, marking the date for his one month intake interview.  Seven days.  Only seven days left to see if Nenneke was right.

*

The idea comes to him when Lambert is sprawled out on the living room floor watching cartoons and drawing.  The TV is blaring some obnoxious toy commercial at a volume that could deafen the entire floor and it hits him, a way to perhaps curtail some of Lambert’s more destructive and aggressive behaviour, at least for a little while.  Vesemir immediately discounts it—it’s too underhanded, too manipulative—but he can see Lambert’s eyes tracking the overly colourful action figure on the screen and he’s desperate so Vesemir, with a pang of self-loathing, caves.  Besides, he tries to convince himself, he’s hardly the first adult to ever make use of this tactic.

Trying to keep his tone light, he sets aside his book and asks, “Have you sent Santa your Christmas list yet, Lambert?”

Unexpectedly, Lambert recoils as if struck.  The coloured pencil in his hand snaps and he snarls as he fixes Vesemir with eyes full of fury.  “No.”

Vesemir had been given a very brief primer on Lambert’s family which had clearly specified no religious affiliation, so seems unlikely to be the source of Lambert’s anger (Vesemir had humbly learned his lesson regarding that particular minefield with Gweld).  Is he too old for Santa Claus?  He’s only eight, surely that is still young enough.  Trying to put himself in Lambert’s shoes and coming up with an ingrained need to never ask for help, Vesemir tries, “Do you need an envelope and stamp to mail it?  There are some in my writing desk that you can use.”

“I’m not sending Santa a stupid letter!” Lambert shrieks and springs to his feet, hands balled into fists.

“Why not?”  He should probably try to defuse the situation, leave it alone if it’s upsetting Lambert this much, but Vesemir has never been particularly good at leaving things alone and the sheer level of emotion behind Lambert’s response is perplexing.

“Do you think I’m stupid?  I’m not an idiot!”  Lambert’s bottom lip is starting to tremble a little.

“Ah,” Vesemir sighs, defeated.  So he is too old after all.  “So you already know—”

“Santa doesn’t come to me!”

“What?”

“I’m bad!  I know it!  So Santa doesn’t come!  Ever!” Lambert wails, voice breaking in a way that sounds almost painful, and runs from the room.  Vesemir is still sitting in shock when he hears the door to Lambert’s bedroom slam shut.

Within seconds, shock is replaced with a dark, seething rage.  Vesemir knows that not every family can afford Santa Claus.  He knows it’s a privilege and that it isn’t fair for desperate parents, in the face of the overwhelming capitalist machine, to have to make sorry excuses to their children about why Santa isn’t coming.  But to tell a child it’s because he’s bad?  To make it the child’s fault?  Lambert’s parents are just lucky Vesemir doesn’t know where they live.

He takes a minute to calm himself before knocking softly at Lambert’s door.  “Lambert?  Can I come in?”

“No.”  It’s obvious the boy’s been crying.

“I think,” Vesemir starts.  Part of him knows that a bigger, more complicated lie is probably not the right answer, but he can’t help but just desperately want to do whatever he can to right this great wrong.  “I think there’s been a misunderstanding.  Regarding Santa Claus.”  There is no profanity from the other side of the door, so Vesemir takes it as permission to continue.  “You know how, when you came here, you had to change schools?  And you went to a different doctor?  It’s like… it’s like that.  You’ve got a new… new elf looking over your case now.”  Well that sounds ridiculous.  This is why Vesemir doesn’t usually lie.

Miraculously though, the door cracks open.  Lambert still looks skeptical, but he’s at least listening.  “A new elf?”

“Yes,” Vesemir nods.  “And you remember how the doctor couldn’t find your previous health records?”  In reality, that had been because there were none, apparently Lambert’s birth parents had never gotten him a pediatrician, but the lie came easily.  “Well, the elf couldn’t find your old records either.”

There is a glimmer of hope in Lambert’s eyes, but it fades quickly.  “So?  I haven’t been… I’ve been getting in fights.  And I broke the microwave.”

“That’s true,” Vesemir admits, “but it’s only been three weeks.  And there are still three weeks until Christmas.”  This is a good thing, Vesemir tells himself.  Lambert needs to rein in his behaviour, and he deserves a visit from Santa.  “There’s still time to turn it around, I think.”

Lambert narrows his eyes, looking for the hole in Vesemir’s logic.  He chews the inside of his cheek as he thinks.  It is, Vesemir can’t help but recognize, adorable.  “I want to see him,” he finally says, obviously still skeptical.

“Him?  You mean Santa?”  Rennes usually volunteers to play Santa at the YMCA; Vesemir can text him the details of the situation and get his deception corroborated easily.  “Sure.  That can be arranged.”

As if concluding a business deal, Lambert opens the door and holds his hand out.  In complete sincerity, Vesemir shakes it.

*

“Lambert?” Vesemir calls down the hall.  “Do you want to help me set up the tree?”

In the five days since they went to see Santa, Lambert’s mood has been almost giddily high and he’s shown an immense enthusiasm for all things Christmas related, so Vesemir is somewhat blindsided when he isn’t met with an immediate and resounding, “Yes!”

“Lambert?”  He walks down the hall and stops in Lambert’s open doorway.  The boy is facedown on his bed, obviously upset about something.  “Are you okay?”

Lambert just snorts.

“Do you want to help me set up the tree?”

“Do I have to?”

“No, not if you don’t want to…”  Vesemir is not sure what has brought about this sudden change.  “I just thought you—”

“Fine,” Lambert throws himself off the bed and pushes past Vesemir to the living room.

Vesemir’s already pushed the coffee table out of the way and pulled the pieces of the tree out of their storage box, but he hasn’t assembled it yet.  Lambert seems to have a fascination for how things go together, and Vesemir thought he might like to see how the interlocking mechanisms held the various branches onto the metal stem.  Another box of decorations and a third box of lights sit nearby.  The star that Lambert had made in school out of cardboard and glitter and beads sits carefully on the couch, ready to assume its place of honour.  Lambert stands in the middle of it, an unreadable look on his face.

“Okay,” Vesemir starts tentatively.  “So the first step is to—”

“It’s fake.”

“The tree?  Yes.  It has to be.  We’re not allowed real ones in the apartment building.  I know it doesn’t look like much now, but when it all comes together—”

Lambert’s face twists into a snarl.  “It’s fake.”

Vesemir frowns.  “We can go downtown to see the real tree outside the town centre if you want, but—”

“It’s all fake!  All of it!”  Lambert is shaking with rage now.

“Lambert, what happ—”

“Santa isn’t real!  The kids at school told me!  After they told me I was stupid for believing in it!  But you…”  The betrayal in Lambert’s eyes stabs into Vesemir’s heart like a knife.  “You lied!  You made it seem like it was real, but it’s all fake, isn’t it?  Not even the tree is real!”

“Lambert—”

“I hate you!” he yells, tears welling in his eyes.  “I hate you!  I hate you!”  Vesemir half expects him to run away and hide in his room like he normally does, but instead Lambert just crumples into a ball where he was standing, little hands covering his fake as his body shakes with sobs.

Slowly, carefully, Vesemir grabs something from the box of decorations and then sits beside Lambert, making sure not to touch him.  He sets the candle, evergreen scent, down on the floor in front of them and lights it.  “I started getting these candles years ago, when Geralt, another boy who stayed with me, was about your age.  He didn’t like the fake tree either, he’d always had a real one before, but the smell helped us pretend it was real.”

Lambert sniffles, but otherwise does not respond.

“I wasn’t… I wasn’t entirely honest with you, Lambert, you’re right.  And I’m sorry.  There isn’t… there isn’t a magical man at the North Pole.  There isn’t a sleigh or flying reindeer.  There isn’t an army of omniscient elves watching and judging every child in the world.  But…”  Vesemir stumbles, trying to find the right words.  “But no matter what you do, even if you keep fighting at school and being angry and hate me, there will be presents under this tree on December 25th and they will say, ‘To: Lambert, From: Santa.’  The tree will be artificial, due to the rules of the apartment building which I can’t change, but it will smell like evergreens in here.  And there will be bright lights and cookies and I’ll make a turkey.  Rennes and Guxart and Eskel and Gweld and their partners will come for dinner, and then, once Geralt and Yennefer are finished their trip to the hot springs, they’ll come and stay with us for a while too around New Year’s, like we talked about.  It may not be real...”  Vesemir suddenly finds himself swallowing around a significantly sized lump in his throat.  “It’s not real like you might have expected, or like your classmates have at home, Lambert.  Not real magic, not a real tree, not a real family, but I don’t think it’s entirely fair to call it fake either.  And, Santa or no, I promise: you are good, Lambert.”

“But I…” Lambert sobs, “But I broke the microwave!”

“I know.”  Vesemir shifts so Lambert can sneak in under his arm.  “But I asked for a new one from Santa for Christmas and I’ve been trying to be good.  Hopefully, he’ll bring me one, even if I have lied.”

“You just said Santa isn’t real.”

“Well, don’t tell Guxart I know that.  He’s been filling my stocking for years now and I don’t want him to stop.”

The snuffling noise Lambert makes is halfway between a sob and a laugh.  “Vesemir,” he finally says after a long pause.

“Mmm?”

“The candle does smell nice.”

Vesemir squeezes him.  Lambert is not partial to hugs, but he just can’t help himself.  In a true Christmas miracle, Lambert does not squirm away.  “I know.  Now what do you say we get this tree on its feet?”

[octinary]

Decembert the Fourth - Shelter

Rating: T

Pairing: Lambert/Keira

Word Count: 1.9k

CW: Post The Battle of Kaer Morhen

In the end, Lambert and Keira were the last people to leave Kaer Morhen. Triss and Yennefer, fresh machinations afoot, were gone before Vesemir’s ashes had even had time to cool, and Geralt and Ciri were not far behind them, the grand weave of destiny pulling them ever forward into action. The secondary characters—as Lambert had taken to calling Roche, Ves, Zoltan, Letho, Hjalmar and Mousesack, mostly just because it pissed Roche off immensely and he was hilarious when enraged—departed over the following few days, returning gradually to whatever they did when Geralt was not knocking down their doors with his world ending bullshit.

Eskel left when the September rains started. He took a cart with him when he went, press-ganging Scorpion into service as a carthorse, a position the stallion resented greatly. Lambert watched mutely as his older brother packed—his favourite books and the good stew pot from the kitchen and the collection of furs he’d accumulated over the years and his spare crossbow and the ancient Wolf School armour he kept insisting he would repair one day—and knew that, standing in the shadow of his mentor’s pyre, Eskel hadn’t lied: he wasn’t coming back.

Over the years, they had said a hundred goodbyes before in Kaer Morhen’s cracked courtyard, but the oppressive weight of knowing this would be the last one made the situation uncomfortably awkward. Eskel shuffled his feet as he stood beside his packed cart and small collection of goats, who were bleating softly and helpfully chewing on each other’s tethers. He was obviously at a loss for words. Lambert couldn’t think of a damn thing to say either, so they both just stood there like idiots with the cold autumn rain slowly seeping through their cloaks. Finally, Eskel dropped a massive hand onto Lambert’s shoulder and squeezed tightly. “Take care of yourself. I’ll see you around out there. I promise.”

He wasn’t lying about that either, Lambert knew, but still. Somewhere, sometime, was a hell of a lot vaguer than right here next winter. “Yeah, you too.” he responded lamely.

Eskel nodded, squeezed his shoulder again, and then turned and walked away, leading his reluctant packhorse slowly down the sodden path. Lambert watched him go until he rounded the first large bend and disappeared from sight. He didn’t look back once. Lambert had to respect that.

“So when are we leaving?” Keira asked as soon as Lambert pulled the front door closed behind him. She was curled up in an armchair she had dragged to the front of the large hearth that divided the kitchen from the dining area. She had one of Dandelion’s books of poetry open in her lap; the damn keep was lousy with them.

“Soon,” Lambert grumbled, shaking the worst of the rain off his cloak. “What’s your hurry?” When he went to hang it up by the hearth to dry, he made sure to spatter Keira’s book a little.

Instead of starting a fight though, she just rolled her eyes at him and dabbed at the droplets of water with the blanket she was wrapped in. “Thanks, I was just thinking his prose was a little dry.”

Lambert snickered before he could stop himself. She was good at that, making him laugh. Her wicked sharp sense of humour matched his well, and she wasn’t a bad lay either. Many relationships were built on less. In retrospect, Lambert really shouldn’t have been surprised that Eskel did leave, but rather that he had managed to tolerate third-wheeling the two of them for as long as he had. Seeing her smug smirk, Lambert knew if he said something clever back, Keira would undoubtedly laugh and volley it right back at him, maybe even invite him to snuggle into the chair with her and warm up under her blanket. But Lambert didn’t particularly feel like being cheered right now. Maybe he’d see if there was any of his moonshine left in the cellar.

“Lambert?” Her soft question stopped him before he had finished his retreat.

He didn’t turn back to her. “I haven’t finished sorting what alchemy supplies I want to take yet.”

“I thought you burned everything you didn’t want two nights ago because you were worried about it falling into the wrong hands? I distinctly remember a rather large bang and horrid smell…”

“The pantry’s packed; Vesemir was clearly expecting a packed castle for the winter. It’d be a waste to leave it to rot.”

“We can take it with us. Sorceress, remember? Trust me when I say packing space is not an issue.”

“I still need to weatherproof the armoury, make sure we can shut it up tight. There’s stuff in there that someone might want to come back for someday...”

“Yennefer already spell shielded it before she left when Geralt asked her to.”

He clenched his hands into fists and turned to face her, anger flashing in his eyes. “I took a damn beating from those fucking elves, okay? Can’t a man take a little time to convalesce properly?” It was true that he’d cracked some ribs, but it was also true that they hadn’t been bothering him in days. The uncomfortable feeling in his chest that was squeezing the air out of his lungs and choking the breath out of him was something else entirely. There was no way the sorceress didn’t know that and when she called him on it he didn’t know what he was going to do.

But Keira just blinked at him for a moment, before turning back to her book. “Okay,” she said simply. “Take as long as you need.”

*

The morning they woke up to find a fine coating of snow frosting the courtyard, Lambert knew it was time to go. The threat of spending a long, dark winter at Kaer Morhen by himself was enough to overcome the incomprehensible tether that was compelling him to stay. The change was almost immediate, like something had suddenly snapped within him: if he was going to go, he had to go now. Eight weeks of hesitantly dragging his feet transformed into eight hours of flurried packing. Keira’s magical assistance did end up proving invaluable in that respect, shoving everything he wanted to take into a knapsack that, contrary to the standard laws of physics, never grew any larger or heavier.

She took the frantic change in his mood with surprisingly good humour. She was, in temperament, very unlike the other sorceresses Lambert was passingly familiar with (i.e. Yennefer of Vengerberg and Triss Merigold). While they may not see eye to eye on many matters, Lambert had to concede that Yennefer was, despite her many other flaws, at least sensibly nihilistic. In contrast Merigold was dourly optimistic, but she bore her optimism like a sentence from some otherworldly court. Her faith in other people was the albatross she hung about her own neck, taking a masochistic pleasure in insisting that people were fundamentally good, allowing herself to be vulnerable to them, and then suffering when they inevitably betrayed her. It made it impossible for Lambert to take her remotely seriously.

Keira was also, insanely, an optimist, but the particular flavour of her madness was almost understandable. She believed that people, fundamentally, wanted to be happy and have fun, which, if you allowed for the assumption that some people were happy being sadistic bastards, did not actually directly contradict Lambert’s worldview. As for herself, she knew that one thing which did not make her happy was worrying about things too much, so she didn’t. She sort of just threw herself at life with the expectation that she could figure it out and land on her feet. As a result, she just bore Lambert’s somewhat mercurial moods like a beach bore the battering waves. She teased him when he teased her, sniped at him when he sniped at her, and stormed off when he made it obvious he wanted to be alone. All in all, she was proving to be far more tolerable than he had thought she was going to be. For the most part.

“Oh, are we stalling again?” she asked lightly when Lambert froze at the front door. Before them, the lightly snow covered courtyard was crossed by nothing but a few small animal tracks, and Lambert had been struck with the very visceral realization that, once they left, there would never be anything more than animal tracks at the Keep of the Elder Sea ever again.

“Fuck off,” Lambert spat at her and stomped out into the snow. It was falling softly, in large lazy flakes. No matter how much of a mess he made, it wouldn’t take long for their footsteps to vanish.

Keira had to skip a step or two to catch up with him. “You know there’s nothing wrong with wanting to take some time to say goodbye to a place that has meant so much to you—”

“I said, ‘fuck off.’”

“I know it’s hard, leaving your home—”

“Kaer Morhen wasn’t my home!”

“But it was—”

“You don’t know shit, Keira, so why are you—”

“Well of course I don’t!” she finally snapped, stopping and crossing her arms over her chest. “You told me not to read your mind and you’re not telling me anything! I’ve got literally nothing to work with here!”

He didn’t have to tell her. He didn’t owe her anything. But for some reason, it seemed important to him that she understood. He stopped and turned to face her. “It… it wasn’t home. It’s full of far more horrific memories than happy ones. I hated it here most of the time. I didn’t want to come. I didn’t want to stay. I didn’t want to… to become what I became. But still, despite everything, it was... shelter. It was somewhere safe to lay up for a season. Somewhere to meet my brothers. Somewhere warm in the winter. It… it kept the snow off, you know?”

There was a long moment of silence in which Lambert quickly progressed from regretting that he had spoken, to regretting that he had agreed to travel with Keira, to regretting that he had even been born. Gods above, that sounded so utterly ridiculous and pathetic; it was no wonder Keira was just staring at him like that. But before he could say, “Forget it,” and storm off, Keira jumped him.

He wasn’t entirely surprised; Keira was a very tactile person and he was getting used to her hanging off of him at the slightest provocation. She had a kind of youthful playfulness to her a lot of the time, like the little girl she had been, the one who had been forced to grow up far too quickly, was getting her own back by shining through in stolen moments. She tugged at his cloak and, after a brief wrestling match, managed to steal it from him. She took a step back, laughing and twirling with it in victory.

“Keira…” Lambert warned, shaking his head to dislodge the snowflakes settling in his hair. “What are you doing?”

The sorceress stepped forward and threw the cloak back at him. He raised his arm to catch it, but she sang a few words of magic and it obediently took up a position hovering in the air above his head like a canopy. He was still staring at it stupidly when she joined him beneath it, slipping her hand into his and resting her head on his shoulder.

“Keeping the snow off,” she teased warmly as they walked away together.

[octinary]

Decembert the First - Ice Fishing

Rating: T for Lambert’s dirty mouth

Pairing: Aiden/Lambert

Word Count: 1.3k

CW: falling in cold water (but everyone is fine)

Aiden knew he should leave it alone.  Despite his school’s reputation for emotional instability, he was not, in fact, suicidal and the sheer rage boiling off of Lambert was more than enough of a warning to anyone that the wisest course of action was to keep quiet.  It roiled off the Wolf and coiled through the air like… well… like the water currently evaporating off of him in puffs of turbid white.

A similar cloud was shivering its way off of Aiden’s soaked skin as they trudged back from the lake to the clearing in which the caravan had made camp for the night.  It wasn’t that far of a walk and the average land speed of an angry Lambert was generally pretty quick, even hampered by a foot and a half of snow, so unless they wanted to be the butt of every joke from now until New Year’s they had better come up with a damn good story in the next few minutes.

“Lambert—” Aiden tried.

“Leave it.”

The words were as sharp and short as the icicles forming on his eyelashes, but he didn’t even raise his voice.  Too pissed to project—that was a new one.

Aiden tucked his hands into his armpits and tried to stop his jaw from rattling out of its sockets before he tried again.  “What’re we gonna—”

“I said, ‘leave it.’”

“We’ll need something to tell—”

Lambert whirled with a soft tinkling of ice cracking off his clothing and froze the Cat with a cold stare.  “Aiden!”

Ah.  There was the previously missing volume.  With all the patient magnanimity of someone who didn’t particularly want to have a knock down row at the moment and really just wanted to get back to a decent fire before his cock literally froze off, Aiden raised his hands in surrender.  

Lambert narrowed his eyes in suspicion, but when no further lip was forthcoming, snorted and resumed his march.

With a sigh, Aiden followed.  It wasn’t like he didn’t understand why Lambert was so upset.  It was their first winter together, Lambert forgoing the frigid mountain valley of Kaer Morhen to bum with the Dyn Marv for the season, and he was desperately trying to make a good impression.  Aiden had tried to inform him that that feat was impossible; his brothers were, in his expert estimation, shitheads and would give the Wolf no end of trouble no matter what he did, but that didn’t stop Lambert from trying anyway.  So when Gaetan had goaded him, expressing feigned surprise that a northerly Wolf knew less about winter outdoorsmanship that the soft southerly Cats, off Lambert had predictably trekked to prove him wrong.

Ice fishing.  Aiden shivered in his damp boots remembering the, in hindsight, suspicious tone with which Lambert had spit the words as Aiden had scrambled to follow him out of the camp.  It had sounded easy enough.  They had a lake near Kaer Morhen right?  And it must freeze over.  And Lambert bragged about his fishing all the time.  Surely, Aiden had naively thought, he knew what he was doing.

In front of him, the master fisherman sneezed violently, startling a flock of starlings from their roost.  Well, now the whole caravan knew they were coming.  In T-minus eight seconds, a group of Cats was going to saunter into view and Lambert would just have to take another blow to his pride.  Aiden had tried to warn him, tried to help him strategize!  The Dyn Marv wasn’t a wolf pack, with some fixed hierarchy where you had to growl and bite your way to the top.  It was a murky miasma of ever changing loyalties and scheming.  If Lambert wasn’t going to listen, he had no one to blame but himself.  His stupid, trying-too-hard, desperate to please, terrified of being rejected or ever found wanted self.  Aiden should let him hang.

“Aiden?  Lambert?  Is that you two back already?” Joël’s voice rang through the trees.  “Catch anything?”

Damn it, Aiden couldn’t let him hang.  Out of any better options, he gathered his ice encrusted limbs and threw himself bodily at Lambert, tackling the Wolf to the ground.

“Aiden?  What the fuck!”  Lambert sputtered before the Cat shoveled a fist full of snow right down the front of his shirt.  “You motherfucker!”  Never one to not give as good as he got, by the time Joël and Axel found them, Lambert was straddling Aiden’s chest making a decent attempt at force feeding him a snowball.

Axel’s laughter distracted him enough for Aiden to buck him off though.  “You both look frozen!  Have you two just been wrestling like children in the snow this whole time?  Did you even make it to the lake?”

Lambert, panting with exertion and possibly early onset hypothermia, just stared open mouthed at the two new Cats, but Aiden spit out a mouthful of dirty snow and quipped, “Do you see any fish?”

“I knew it!” Joël smirked and shook his head, offering Lambert a hand up.  “You can’t take Aiden anywhere.  He’s got the attention span of a kitten!  He’ll get you into nothing but trouble, that one”

“You’re just lucky we don’t need those fish for dinner!  Cedric sto—uh—found a goat.  We’re making curry.” Axel, who was rapidly becoming Aiden’s favourite person in existence, passed him a flask of white gull and helped him get the worst of the snow out of his hair.  The liquid burned like false fire in his throat and smouldered somewhere just south of his breast bone, giving him an artificial sense of warmth that would keep him going until he got to a real one.

“C’mon,” Joël said, patting Lambert vigorously on the back.  “Let’s get you two back before you turn into snowmen.”

Fifteen minutes and one change of clothes later, Aiden was happily snuggled under a thick blanket in front of a roaring fire, sipping on spiked apple cider and luxuriating in the spicy smell of simmering goat.  He was taking some minor flak for being a flake and failing to produce any fish, but it wasn’t like his goofing off was a new thing, so most of his brothers lost interest in razzing him quickly.  Once Lambert arrived and snuck under the blanket beside him, it was as close to heaven as Aiden figured witchers could get.

“Mmm.”  He snuggled up to the Wolf, letting his head fall onto Lambert’s shoulder.  A second later, he felt Lambert’s arm slip around his waist, pulling him closer, and he grinned to himself.  “Anger melted away then?”

Lambert snorted, but otherwise didn’t respond.  Just when Aiden thought that was going to be the end of it, he heard, muttered softly and sullenly into his still damp curls, “I’m not thanking you for that.”

A ridiculously bright feeling, not entirely unlike the burn of the white gull, blossomed in Aiden’s chest and warmed him inside and out.  It was a relatively new thing that had been happening around Lambert more and more lately, and while Aiden wasn’t entirely sure what it was, he did know he wanted more of it.  Maybe he was a little suicidal after all, to throw himself so whole heartedly and carelessly at that enigmatic conflagration, but damn if it didn’t beat freezing alone.

He sighed in utter contentment, wriggling around so he could whisper the least conventional sweet nothing ever softly into Lambert’s ear.  “Will you at least admit that the bombs were a bad idea?”

[octinary]

Decembert the Fifth - Animal Tracks

Rating: T

Pairing: Lambert & Coën

Word Count: 1.1k

CW: The aftereffects of excessive drinking

“So witcher,” the woman, barely more than a girl really, finishes her story anxiously, “will you take the contract?”

Lambert, slumped over the table across from her, poking listlessly at a plate of eggs and hung-over literally beyond human comprehension—White Gull being infinitely less forgiving than even the strongest vodka—has not been listening.  What he has been doing is trying to get his pickled brain to cough up an answer regarding where the fuck it’s left him.  The last thing he coherently remembers is him and Coën, travelling together on their way back to Kaer Morhen for the winter, bumping into the Caravan just outside of Ard Carraigh and Aiden goading them into having a drink together to celebrate the end of another successful (read: survived) season on the Path.  But this is definitely not Ard Carraigh.

“Sir?” she asks again, wringing her hands.

“Shh.  M’thinking,” Lambert slurs.  About a half an hour ago, the nervous lady currently sitting across from him had pried him out of the haystack he’d been passed out in and lured him to this tavern with the promise of breakfast and work.  On that short trek, Lambert had gotten a good look at pretty much the entire town: about two dozen houses, a trading post and a tavern… nothing terribly distinctive.  At least the place is surrounded by the familiar evergreens of the Blue Mountain foothills, so he can’t be that far off course.  But while he has his swords, he is noticeably missing his pack and his coin purse (not to mention Coën) and showing up at Kaer Morhen with nothing but steel, silver and the shirt on his back is a good way to ensure Vesemir never lets him hear the end of it.  Maybe he should have been listening more closely to her contract after all.

“Sorry,” he mumbles as he manhandles a rubbery egg into his mouth and chews, “one more time, from the top.”

“We were beset by a horrible monster last night!”

Lambert winces as her voice spikes in pitch.  “Horrible monster.  Right.  You seen it?”

She shakes her head fervently.  “No, thank the Goddess, but we heard it!  A horrible sound!  A wailing, bestial thing!  And breaking our fences!”

Well, that doesn’t narrow it down too much.  “When did this start?”

“Just yesterday, the day after the full moon.”

The day after the full moon?  That can’t be right… they’d bumped into Aiden when the moon was still waxing on the sixth… unless… “What day is it?”

She blinks in confusion, but answers, “Today?  The fourteenth of November.”

Eight fucking days.  He’d lost eight fucking days.  He was going to murder Aiden.  “Anything gone missing?  Sheep?  Chickens?”  <i>Children?</i> he doesn’t ask aloud.

“Pies!”

Lambert stares at her for a second, waiting for her to admit that this is all a joke and she is just having him on, but the stress lines wrinkling her forehead and the tension in her jaw tell him that she is deadly serious.  “Pies?” he finally asks incredulously.

She nods.  “Yes.  And some other foodstuffs from the barn.  But it was the pie that scared mama the worst!  Right off the windowsill!  To think!  It was that close!”

“Lady,” Lambert groans.  “Broken fences and nicked food at this time of the year mean bear, not monster.  They’re all stupid with trying to put on their winter weight.  Just—”

“I’ve lived in Lundy my whole life”—Lundy!  He was right; he was only slightly off course!—“and I’ve never seen a bear that leaves tracks like these!”

Lambert sighs and pushes himself up from the table.  Annoyingly, the floor sways slightly before settling.  “Okay, okay, let’s go look at the animal tracks.”

The walk is mercifully short, Lundy isn’t big enough for anything to be far, and soon Lambert is crouching in the slightly frozen mud beneath the infamous windowsill, trying to get his uncooperative eyes to focus.  Immediately, and somewhat resentfully, he has to admit that the woman is correct: these are not bear tracks.  They look humanoid, but no sane man would be walking barefoot in the below freezing weather.  A large nekker?  A small ogre?  He follows the tracks away from the house and towards a small shed in the backyard with a small plume of smoke rising from the chimney.

“What’s in there?” he asks, nodding a head toward the shed.  “Food?”

“No,” she shakes her head.  “The charcoal kiln.”

The tracks unerringly lead to the shed, and, as he can get closer, he is sure he can hear something moving in there.  Whatever it is was probably just looking for a warm place to sleep, but it’s awake now and it knows he’s out here.  He slowly reaches back for his silver sword, making sure he keeps himself between the door and his employer.  Maybe, with any luck, it’s not hostile and he can just spook it—  A single, perfectly clear footstep preserved in the frozen mud catches Lambert’s attention and he suddenly has to try very hard not to break into a grin.  A right foot missing the two smallest toes and with a crooked first metatarsal from a poorly healed break: he knows exactly what he’s hunting now.

Leaving his sword where it is, he clears his throat and turns with affected solemnity.  “Miss, I’m going to have to ask you to clear the area.”

She clutches the amulet at her neck.  “Is it dangerous?”

“It can be,” Lambert begrudgingly admits, “but I don’t think it’ll cause me any trouble if I go in alone.”

“What is it?”

Lambert has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing.  “A Griffin.”

“A griffin?!?”

“But just a small one, don’t worry.  I’ll chase it off.”

Lambert waits until she has fled to the safety of her house before throwing the door open and drawling, “Morning, Coën.  How’re you feeling this fine day?”

The Griffin witcher looks up at him pathetically, bloodshot yellow-green eyes the only part of him not black with soot.  “Lambert!” he hisses despondently, “I don’t know where any of my clothes are!”

“C’mon,” Lambert pulls him to his unsteady feet.  “I know a nice haystack you can hide in while I collect your bounty and buy you some pants.”

“My what?”

“And if you squawked a bit while we walked, that’d really help my case.”

The indignant sputtering noises Coën makes at that suggestion hardly sound anything like an actual griffin, but, luckily for Lambert, the lady from Lundy doesn’t know the difference.

[octinary]

Decembert the Second - Snowmen

Rating: G

Pairing: Lambert & Voltehre, Lambert & Ciri

Word Count: 1.7k

CW: Lambert’s TW3 backstory (non-explicit), bittersweet ending

“Lambert!  Hey, Lambert!”  Voltehre skidded around the corner of the hallway with great speed in his worn indoor shoes and careened into Lambert.  For a split second, Lambert thought they were both going to go ass over teakettle down the stairs, but he managed to deflect the other boy’s momentum at the last moment so they spun in place instead.  Red cheeked from his run and laughing, Voltehre just beamed up at Lambert as if utterly unaware of how much it hurt to break an arm.  “C’mon!  Grab your coat!”

Heart rate still pounding from the scare, Lambert snarled and shook him off.  “Why?”

“We got the afternoon off ‘cause of the snow!”

If anything, that seemed to Lambert like a reason not to get his coat.  He’d been at Kaer Morhen for about eight weeks now and it had been snowing sporadically for about half of them.  Before making the trek up the mountain, Lambert had never encountered the stuff; it took exactly one experience for him to determine he didn’t like it.  It was cold, it was hard to walk through, it made everything slippery, and it snuck down your collar, over your boot tops and up your sleeves to puddle icily against bare skin.  Why, when they had mercifully been exempted from suffering it, anyone would want to voluntarily inflict it upon themselves was beyond him.

Unfortunately, while eight weeks was not long enough for Lambert to acclimatize to the frigid northern weather yet, it did prove more than long enough for Voltehre to acclimatize to Lambert’s openly hostile skepticism.  He tugged insistently on Lambert’s arm.  “C’mon!  We can go play.”

“In the snow?” Lambert asked as he was manhandled toward their dormitory.  Maybe Voltehre wasn’t crazy.  Maybe he’d found something interesting in one of the cellars or something.

“Yep!”

Nope, the kid had lost his mind.  A pity, really, since he was one of the few tolerable people in Lambert’s cohort.  “Why?”

“What do you mean, why?”

“It’s just snow!  You’ve never wanted to go play in it before!”

“It was the wrong kind of snow before.”

“Wrong kind of snow?”

“Mm-hmm,” Voltehre nodded, a mischievous twinkle in his eyes.  “This is packing snow.”

Lambert had no idea what that meant, but he kept his mouth shut.  They had made it to the dormitory, and a decent number of their classmates had apparently come to the same conclusion as Voltehre since despite the free afternoon that they could have all spent warm inside, they were inexplicably in the process of bundling themselves up.  The last thing Lambert needed to do was ask a stupid question where Filip or Borys could hear him.  He might not know a lot about snow, but he knew more than enough about bullies.

By the time they were out of earshot of the others again, Lambert didn’t really need an answer to the question anyway; it was pretty self-evident when Voltehre knelt, smushed two handfuls worth of the horrid stuff together, smoothed it into a ball and then handed it to Lambert.  Over the last few weeks, he’d seen the other boys, and some of the grown witchers too, tossing snow at each other on occasion and had always thought it was particularly dumb thing to try to do.  It just flaked apart to mist in the air.  But this, this snowball held its shape.  You could probably actually do some damage with something like this.  When he looked up, Voltehre was already holding another one and grinning.

Inside Lambert, a small part of him that had sworn to itself time and time and time again that it would never trust anyone, nevertheless felt betrayed.  “So now what?” he sneered.  “We pelt each other with them?  Try to hurt each other?  Is this just another kind of training?”

“What?”  Voltehre was unfairly good at looking innocent.  He wrinkled his nose and frowned.  “I mean, I guess we could, if you want.  It’s probably what Filip and Borys and them are going to do.  But I figured we could make a snowman, if you wanted to.”

“A what?”

“I’ll show you!”  The other boy crouched down and started to roll his ball across the freshly fallen snow.  As it moved, it quickly collected more mass.  In just a few paces it was more than doubled in size, and Voltehre turned back to Lambert expectantly.  “You roll yours too!  We’ll need three balls: a big one for the butt, a middle one for the body and a small one for the head.  Then we can get sticks and coal and stuff to decorate it.  Oh!  If we make it big enough we can steal Master Varin’s ugly sweater for it!”

Lambert looked back down at the snowball in his hand.  Somewhere on the other side of the courtyard, someone screamed and Lambert, embarrassingly, flinched.  Evidently, the predicted battle had begun.  Lambert wasn’t sure why they even bothered.  Henryk and Lukasz and Pawel and all of them would rage and regardless of whatever they tried, Borys, biggest of them all, would pummel them into submission, just like he always did.  At Kaer Morhen, as in the rest of the world, it was the privilege of the strong to terrorize the weak.  All of a sudden angry and not entirely sure why, Lambert threw the snowball to the ground, shattering it with a thoroughly unsatisfying wet flumph.  “What for?”

Voltehre, who was already back at work, snorted.  “What do you mean what for?  Because it’s fun.”

“So?  What does that have to do with anything?”  Lambert wrapped his arms around himself as if that could do anything to relieve the uncomfortable squeezing his chest.  “We’re not here to have fun.  We’re here to become witchers.  Well, some of us.  The strong ones, the ones who want to hur—to fight.”  Infuriatingly, Voltehre just kept rolling, his snowball slowly but steadily gaining size.  It made Lambert want to say something mean enough to get his attention.  “We’ll probably just die, you know, you and me.  Like Borys always says we will.”

“I was gonna die if I didn’t come to Kaer Morhen anyway.”  Voltehre spoke softly and still didn’t look up from his work, but the words took the wind out of Lambert’s sails just the same.

“What?”

“I was gonna die anyway.”

Stunned, Lambert couldn’t do anything but listen.

Voltehre sniffled a little, but without being able to see his face Lambert couldn’t tell if it was due to the cold or something else.  “Everyone in my village got sick.  My mama, my gramma, my papa, my brothers, Uncle Anatol, Auntie Anna, Mr. Jakub and Miss Karolina, everyone.  Even Dr. Jacek got sick.  And then they all started dying.  Except me.  I dunno why.  But when Master Vesemir saw that I was the only one who wasn’t sick, he asked my mama if he could take me away and she said yes.”  Apparently satisfied with the size of the snowball—snow bolder now, really—he stood, dusting his gloves off on his pants.  “I asked Master Vesemir about it the next year, and he said the whole village was gone.  So people die everywhere.  It can be awful anywhere.  But it was—it was a lot of fun right up until…”  As if he had seen a small imperfection in his masterpiece, Voltehre reached forward to pat the massive snowball pensively for a second.  “I just don’t see why we can’t have fun here first too.”

“That’s dumb,” Lambert insisted, although he wasn’t sure why.  He didn’t like knowing that the world was an awful place, that there were people in it capable of incomparable darkness, but for some reason the thought that there was goodness in it too was somehow more frightening.

“You’re dumb,” Voltehre shot back.  “You’re just lucky I need you for this.”

Lambert bit his bottom lip to stop it from trembling.  “What do you need me for?”

Voltehre rubbed his face and then turned back to Lambert, grinning almost aggressively widely.  “Do you see the size of this butt I made?  It’s the biggest butt ever!  I’m gonna need you to help me lift the body on!”

The conversation after that focussed mostly on logistics and planning.  It wasn’t until the snowman was complete and smiling serenely down at them that Lambert found the courage to tentatively ask, “Do you really think there could be more fun than awful here?”

But Voltehre just shrugged.  “I guess we’ll figure it out when we’re older.”

*

“Lambert,” Ciri whined.  “I thought Uncle Vesemir said I didn’t have to do training this afternoon because of the snow!”

“Did I say we were training, princess?”

“You said we were doing something important!”

“And we are.  Very important.  Especially for young witchers.”

Suspicious, Ciri narrowed her eyes.  She clearly suspected he was having her on, but the temptation of participating in anything remotely witchery was too great.  “What?”

Aware that he had her, Lambert grinned.  “The largest snowman ever constructed at Kaer Morhen was made almost fifty years ago in this very spot and stood about six feet high,” he lied.  In truth, he had no idea how tall the snowman actually was—they hadn’t had anything to measure it with—but Varin’s stolen sweater had actually ended up fitting it pretty well, and Varin had stood at 6’2”, so it probably wasn’t a bad guess.  

“This afternoon,” Lambert continued in a suitably theatrical voice, “that record will be broken.  We have the time, we have a courtyard full of perfect packing snow and we have the unrelenting passion for victory.”

Ciri giggled brightly.  “Truly?  This is important?”

He nodded with exaggerated gravitas.  “Incredibly.  So important, in fact, I’m not letting you in for dinner until ours is at least nine feet tall.”

“Nine feet?”  Despite her exclamation, she dropped to her knees and started to roll.  Inch by inch, foot by foot, the snowball began to grow.  “How will we get the head on?”

“Don’t worry, Ciri,” Lambert promised.  “I can lift you up so you can reach.”

[octinary]

Decembert the Third - Ugly Sweater

Rating: T

Pairing: Geralt/Yennefer, unrequited Lambert -> Geralt

Word Count: 1.7k

CW: Unhappy ending for Lambert

When he hears that Geralt has retired to Toussaint, and that Yennefer has joined him, Lambert gives them eight months to ruin it on their own before he makes his move. They’ve gone longer as lovers without a fight, true, but previous to this, the longest they had ever actually cohabitated was six months. That had even been in Vengerberg, giving Yennefer the home court advantage, and she had still been the one to break it off, fucking some guy named Isidore of the Ice or something. Geralt had been a bit intoxicated while morosely relating the tale and Lambert had been far too distracted trying to figure out why anyone who had had Geralt in their grasp would ever let him go to bother remembering the name of the sorceress’ side piece. On some old ramshackle farmstead in a Nilfgaardian vassal state, far from the beating pulse of Northern politics, Lambert figures Yennefer won’t last a week. Still, he gives them eight months, as a courtesy.

That will be more than enough time for Yennefer to fuck off, as she always does, and for Geralt to get in a few good rebound lays before Lambert makes his move. Lambert’s been waiting almost fifty years for this chance, fifty years of second-guessing himself and talking himself out of it and aching to see Geralt hand his heart over, again and again, to people who inevitably let him down. It’s been fifty years, and Geralt has raised a daughter, impacted the outcome of wars, died, resurrected as an amnesiac, regained his memories, interfered with more wars and then possibly helped save the world? He was a little fuzzy on those details. Anyway, there’s been enough bullshit; Lambert is ready to make his move. He’s in love with Geralt, has been for decades, and Geralt is finally going to hear about it.

He’s gone over every possible scenario, rehearsed how he is going to answer Geralt’s every question and concern, so it is with a brash confidence, bolstered by a shot of Gull, that he saunters up to the front door of the main house at Corvo Bianco and knocks. He has bathed and had a haircut and a shave in Toussaint. He’s wearing the rust coloured tunic that Dandelion picked out for him and a pair of exceptionally well fitted (read: tight) black leather pants. He’s got a bottle of wine and a ready made excuse for why he’s in town. He’s ready for anything. Anything, of course, except for Yennefer of fucking Vengerberg to open the damned door.

“Wha—” he stammers eloquently.

“Lambert!” Her violet eyes widen slightly as she takes in his ensemble. “You’re looking well.”

“You’re not.” Okay, so it’s petty, but it’s true. Lambert’s seen the sorceress in suboptimal form before—after the Wild Hunt tried to extricate Ciri from Kaer Morhen comes to mind as an example—but he’s never seen her looking so frumpy. She’s wearing a simple grey woolen dress that hangs off her poorly, her black curls are tucked up into a messy bun and there is something off about her face.

The unimpressed look she shoots him is nothing but familiar though. “Charming as ever.” She takes a step back, clearing the entrance for him. “Well, come in. Geralt’s napping in the back garden, but I’ll wake him. He’ll be pleased to see you.”

She exits as Lambert enters. He finds himself standing awkwardly in what he presumes is the dining room. The place doesn’t seem to be that big; from his position he can see into the master bedroom and the tiny kitchen tucked just off to the side. Rustic, is the first word that comes to mind, but cozy and lived in are close seconds. If there was any doubt that the place was Geralt’s, the beautifully restored witcher armour and swords that make up the bulk of the decor would alleviate it.

Lambert’s admiring a gorgeous silver sword—Viper school, if he had to guess, and clearly masterwork—when the door bangs open and Geralt enters. He’s only got a second to turn around before he’s enveloped in a bone crushing hug which he returns with a gusto. Unlike Yennefer, Geralt looks, as always, amazing even if he is only in some homespun trousers and a ridiculously ugly sweater. There’s colour in his cheeks and meat on his bones though, and he’s grinning like the sun bursting through the clouds on a winter morning, and Lambert is smitten all over again.

“Lambert!” Geralt eventually breaks the hug, holding him by the shoulders at arms’ length so he can get a good look at him. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Uh—” Lambert scrambles for the ends of the carefully crafted story he can feel unravelling by the minute. He can’t very well say he was worried Geralt was lonely and needed some company when the damned witch is standing right there.

For her part, Yennefer seems to have made an attempt to put herself together. She’s let her hair down and finger combed it into loose waves, and she has also located a belt which does fastly improve the shape of the dress. She still hasn’t fixed her face though.

Makeup, Lambert realizes dumbly. She’s not wearing any makeup.

She bristles under his scrutiny. There’s a flash of a sneer on her face, like she wants to snap at him, but instead she just crosses her arms and nods toward the bottle he’s still holding. “Dressed like that and bearing gifts, I presume you have a paramour in the area?”

“Naw,” Lambert drawls, inwardly seething at her perception. “Just heard my boy here gave up the noble profession of witchering to make wine, and thought I’d come by, see how he was doing.”

“You heard he was running a vineyard, so you brought wine?” she asks pointedly.

Which, yes, was maybe not the most solid aspect of his plan in hindsight. Lambert could have gleefully thrown her out a window. Her being her, and her lack of open hostility, is throwing him off, so he predictably finds himself taking shelter in insults and barbs. “Well, knowing how old Geralt here always was with his potions, I figured the whole wine thing was probably a bust.” He pulls at a loose end on the unevenly and erratically knit sweater Geralt’s wearing. “Seems like my guess was spot on, given how you’ve been reduced to wearing tat like this.”

Geralt just chuckles low and smooths the loose thread back into place. “You don’t think it’s fetching? I’ve been told green suits me.”

“It’s not the colour I was disparaging.” Green does, in fact, look amazing on Geralt. Whoever picked that particular shade of dark forest clearly knew it would bring out the gold in his eyes and set off nicely against the silver in his hair. Lambert doesn’t have any complaints in that department. Other than the colour though, the sweater doesn’t really have anything going for it. “It’s ugly, and it looks like it’s about to fall apart. Only someone destitute and desperate would wear something like that.”

But instead of being insulted, Geralt just looks incredibly fond. “Yen made it for me.”

“Yennefer of Vengerberg knits?” Lambert asks incredulously at the same time that the sorceress snaps, “Geralt!”

In response to both of them, Geralt just smiles and shrugs.

“I’m not making him wear it!” Yennefer’s voice is still raised, and when Lambert looks at her she is turning an entirely unattractive shade of red. “I told him not to wear the damned thing! I told him to burn it! I’ll make something better… eventually. I’m already getting better and—ugh!” She cuts herself off in frustration. Lambert’s never seen her blush so strongly before. He wonders if the makeup usually mutes it.

Lambert regains his composure first and claps Geralt on the shoulder. “Geralt, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but she’s only making you wear that to make you look like an idiot. Let’s go to Beauclair, I know a guy—” If he could just get Geralt away from Yennefer for a bit, maybe he could still—

“I like it,” Geralt insists quietly, rubbing a hand over the loose, amateurish stitches on his sleeves. “So I wear it. That’s that. Doesn’t get as cold as up north down here, but still chilly enough for a sweater.”

She’s trying, Lambert realizes. She’s really trying. She’s trying to make a space here, with Geralt. She’s trying to love him to the very extent of her capabilities. She’s trying hard enough to fail, to let herself be embarrassed, to admit to the world that she is less than perfect. And Geralt’s trying too. Between the armour and swords papering the place, there are poorly made bookshelves hanging precariously off the walls holding serious looking leather-bound volumes. On the table, half repaired horse tack shares space with a half disassembled megascope. In the master bedroom, he’d seen her vanity, all her brushes and paints and powders, but there had also been a Gwent trophy sitting on it in a place of honour. They’d learned, the years had taught them, sexual chemistry and affection were not enough—you still needed to actually put the effort in to make it work—and so here they were, trying.

It was enough to make him weep.

“You should stay for a spell,” Geralt continued, blissfully unaware of Lambert’s inner turmoil. “We’ve got a spare room we can set up for you. It’s no bother.”

“That’s okay.” Lambert shook his head. “Like I said, I was just checking up on you. Can’t stay long. Got places to go, people to see.”

When Geralt looked slightly crestfallen at this news, Yennefer was the one to add, “We can leave it set up for you. If you’re on your way to some business in the area, you can stop by again on your way back. Maybe stay a bit longer.”

Gods, she was even trying to be nice to him, for Geralt’s sake. But of course, Lambert thought vindictively, she could afford to be gracious: she’s won. “Maybe.”

Maybe in a bit of time, after he had the opportunity to grieve, Lambert could come and visit, give Yennefer a fair shake, enjoy Geralt’s company as the loving brother and dear friend he still is, even if he’ll never be anymore than that. But right now, what he really needed to do was get blind drunk and sob inconsolably into some whore’s performatively sympathetic embrace.

Sometime, in the last fifty years, there had been a chance. And Lambert had missed it.

[on-a-lucky-tide]

December tomorrow, chaps. Here's the battle plan.

31 Days of Decembert and the 12 Days of Mountain Subversion.

Time to put the content out I wanna see: Game Lambert getting love, and Geralt of Rivia not being villainised for having trauma.

Let's gooooo.