Mages lived long lives. Perhaps longer than witchers, though she wasn’t sure. Definitely her witcher, who seemed so determined to throw himself headlong into any disaster he found, all the while giving Destiny the finger. Melitele only knew if he’d even make it to two hundred, but no matter. They were both young, and would be for a while longer, despite the fevered pace of time. It erased so much, flowed on and took everything with it.
Well, most everything.
Eighty years and change Yennefer'd walked the Continent, and still, she woke with a start and a curse, digging her nails into whatever she’d latched onto in sleep.
“Hmm?” questioned the warm body she’d assailed. “...Yenna, you’kay?”
Carefully, she loosened her grip, relaxing her whole body and opening her eyes. “Sorry, Geralt,” she murmured.
“Hmm.” He turned his hand over and twined his fingers with hers, swallowing her whole hand in his wide, calloused palm. “G’back to sleep, ‘s early.”
It’s not, she could have said. I have work to do. I can already hear Ciri in the kitchen. The chickens need to be fed. The world will not wait.
Geralt purred long and low and content and, with the way he was wound around her like a turtle’s shell, she felt every note of it.
“Big cat,” she told him, and he huffed, rubbing his cheek against her hair and purring louder.
For as long as she could remember, Yennefer had always run cold. She was fairly tolerant of most weather, yes, but always, there was this underlying chill, a bone-deep ache that sapped her energy and left her wanting. Geralt ran fever-warm, especially in sleep, and their heavy woolen blankets trapped it all in the bed, holding her down and keeping her drowsy.
Yennefer had always slept with a pillow between her knees and another under her elbow. It was the only way to keep her back, shoulders, and hips from screaming bloody murder at the meer idea of lying on her side. She still slept with the elbow pillow, but Geralt’d long since learned how to put his knee between hers and roll her back just a bit, opening her hips and keeping her comfortable enough to sleep through a lazy morning.
At some point, she’d snapped at Geralt, told him she didn’t need to be babied over some perceived defect and that, if he was going to treat her like glass, she was going to leave. Geralt had taken it and then said, “Why do you warn me when you come up to me from behind?” There wasn’t much she could say in return.
Out in the kitchen, there was a clatter and the hushed sounds of Ciri cursing, followed shortly afterward by the door opening and closing and the clucking of hungry chickens.
Yennefer sighed, curling backwards into Geralt’s chest and closing her eyes. It was still early, after all.