Chapter Text
Each slow pulse of his heart beat like the drums of war behind his eyes. The page in front of him swam with words, and yet he’d reread the same line more than thrice, barely getting past the initial paragraph about some Lord of somewhere whom demanded something or other of the Warlord and his forces.
With every waver of the letters before him, his stomach churned and wobbled as if he’d overindulged in White Gull instead of the cold dark tea that sat mostly untouched in his mug.
Something had to be wrong with him, and it was was beyond stupid.
Witchers couldn’t get sick; it was all but a rule. Maybe a law. Not that they didn’t get sick- they couldn’t. Well, not naturally, anyway. On top of having their gag reflexes trained out of them to ensure they could swallow their potions, they were immune to every disease and sickness known to man, and some even unknown ones.
Sure, they could get hungover, or even suffer the consequences of toxicity from too many potions. On more than one occasion, he’d gotten so drunk with his brother’s that he’d woken up in a pile of sick, mouth grainy as if he’d eaten sand, and feeling a bit like a kikimora was trying to claw it’s way out of his guts. Hell, Eskel had even dealt with potion toxicity and the acidic sludge he’d thrown up had made him wish he couldn’t taste a damn thing.
This wasn’t quite the same.
It was a deep, slow thing, building up over hours since he’d woken that morning. Breakfast hadn’t helped, a now cool mug of tea hadn’t helped- he frankly dreaded breaking for lunch. Like most Witchers, he had a hearty appetite to feed the mutations that powered his freakish body; he should be growing hungry by now. Instead, he felt like every shift had his stomach sloshing, and he hadn’t had a solid meal in many hours.
After reading the same line again, he huffed and lifted his gaze from the mess in front of him. Pillowing one stubble laden cheek in an upturned palm, Eskel hunched over his desk and watched his company.
In front of him, quietly seated at the desk that had been brought into his office, his lover worked silently at organizing the pile of correspondence they’d been wading through since the taking of Temeria.
There was a smudge of ink across one of her ample breasts, smearing a little constellation pattern between her many freckles, having dripped from the quill she’d stuck behind her ear. It blended in with the freckles across her pale skin. He’d helped her tame her wild mess of ginger curls into something like a braid, and that dangled in a thick rope over the other shoulder. Already, errant curls were escaping, tangling and grasping at the gray linen of her gown and grasping at the plume of the quill behind her ear.
Her brows furrowed, and he watched her shift her weight, cycling a deep breath in through her nose and out through her plump lips. She shifted as if she were uncomfortable, and it was possible she was.
The chair they’d managed to source her was simple wood, and with the mess of scar tissue on her lower back, she struggled with hard surfaces after a while. He needed to get a cushion stuffed for her, eventually.
As she licked her lips, Eskel found his tongue echoing hers and flicking across his own. His saliva was sour in his mouth, cloyingly thick across the back of his tongue. Eugh.
Whilst cold now, the tea at least chased the taste away. Amber eyes settling at half mast, he set down the mug and quirked a brow at her as she finally looked up at the soft clinking noise.
He got the delightful experience of her lovely blue eyes rounding out like a cat, slit pupils blowing wide with affection. He was sure his own mirrored it right back at her.
Her frown deepened though, keen eyes studying him.
“Sunshine, you look like you feel like shit.” Her nose twitched, and she made a face. “Smell like it, too.”
“I’m fine, Sam.” He lied, leaning back in his seat and stretching his arms above his head in the way he knew usually distracted her.
While her keen eyes did follow the way his tunic pulled tight across his chest, an appreciative hum bubbling in her chest, it didn’t distract her from pouting at him. “Don’t you lie to me, Eskel.”
“Ah, fuck.” Perhaps he may have pulled a card from Geralt’s Gwent deck, but he merely grunted at both her and his failed attempt at distraction before slumping back onto his desk with a huff. “I’m fine, Starlight, I promise.”
A soft swish of skirts announced her pushing herself upright, along with the little noise of the quill going back into the inkwell. Training with Aiden had paid off- Eskel actually had to listen for the sound of her steps as she crossed the office and rounded his desk. The sharp points of her nails were a relief as they carded gently through his hair.
The scent of concern spiked, threading a queer note through the cedar and lavender that was Sam. “You don’t smell fine.” She murmured, fingers untangling one of his own errant curls. Her other hand smoothed down his back, a warm, comforting weight. “You’re sweating. Eskel, are you sick?”
“Witchers don’t get sick.” Another boorish grunt had him sitting up again, swallowing thickly at the knot in his throat. The up and down was not helping the sloshy, sickly feeling in his gut. It felt like he was going through a portal over and over again.
Pushing his chair back, he tugged her into his lap and buried his face into her neck. Whilst his stubble tickled a giggle out of her, she did little more than wiggle a bit as she got settled in his lap. Try as he might, he couldn’t stop the little appreciative groan from escaping his throat as he wound his arms around the softness of her body and inhaled her scent.
Under the concern and affection, there was something else in her scent- something different. But the soothing pull of lavender settling the pounding in his head was much more important.
“Uhuh.” She hummed, clearly not believing him. Her hand raised to his forehead, brushing his hair out of his face. She made a little displeased noise- it was near impossible to tell if a Witcher had a fever through traditional methods, especially given how hot they ran. “And yet you’re curling into me like my sisters used to do when they didn’t feel good.”
“Okay, fine.” He sighed, rubbing his cheek on her like a cat. “I’ve got a headache.”
Not necessarily a lie- it was pounding behind his eyes in time with each unpleasant feeling in his stomach. He did have a headache- it just wasn’t the only thing.
“See? That wasn’t so hard to admit, was it?” Her fingers changed course from his forehead to his temple, tips massaging gently while her thumb and palm cradled his cheek as she abandoned her attempts to seek a temperature that wasn’t there. Sam dropped her other hand down to rest on his own, fingers linking across her ribs where his own palm eclipsed her torso. “You’ve helped me with mine- why wouldn’t I help you with yours?”
“You get yours for a reason.” He mouthed against her neck. “No reason for mine. It’ll fuck off eventually, I’m sure.” He inhaled again for that sweet, sweet lavender smell.
The smell of burnt wood ash and ammonia flooded his nose instead, and he instinctively jerked his head away from her with a cough. She startled off his lap as if he’d poked her with a needle, hip catching on the edge of his desk as she whirled to face him.
Eskel coughed, curling in on himself as his hand raised to pinch his nose shut.
Her hand rubbed her hip as she gave him a baffled look. “Eskel, what the fuck?”
He sent an equally baffled look right at her, brows furrowing heavily as he watched her hand. Now that he’d smelled it, he couldn’t un-smell it, and it was making his head ring. “What the hell is on your hand?”
Sam spread her fingers to show him, her weird look growing as she watched his face.
Ink, dried and stained, clung to her fingers where she’d smeared it sometime earlier in the day. Which he’d been surrounded by since he’d sat in his office, and had tuned it out into a background smell like any other day.
Sour saliva flooded his mouth, and he made the mistake of swallowing it down.
“Fuck- the bin-”
While he was a little rusty at having a hangover, Eskel had been on enough drunken escapades to know when his lack of gag reflex was not going to mean a lack of vomiting.
There was no privy near his office, nor chamberpot kept within, but he did have a small wooden bin used to store junk paper to be thrown into one of the many hearths around Kaer Morhen. It would serve another purpose now, which made him glad it was carved and not nailed together in such a way as to leak.
Sam got it into his hands as he hunched over, nearly smacking his head on his desk as he did, knees parting as he rested his elbows on his legs. He kept a loose grip on the bin, breathing low and slow as his stomach squeezed in warning.
He breathed over the bin, eyes tightly closed, swallowing mouthful after mouthful of sour, bitter saliva.
For a long moment, nothing happened. And then he gagged, a hard thing that cramped his abdomen immediately, and produced absolutely nothing but misery. The next retch was equally as unsuccessful.
“Oh what the fuck.” He groaned, voice thick, raising one hand up to drop his throbbing head into his palm. His fingers curled into his sweat dampened hair. “What the fuuuuuuck.”
Sam’s palms were warm as they dropped hesitantly onto his back, fingers kneading little circles across his shoulders. When he didn’t jerk from her touch again, she ventured to rub her hands lower, tracing the line of tense muscles down his spine.
“Witchers don’t get sick, huh?” Her tone was off, though Eskel wasn’t quite focused enough to parse through it.
Had she been one of his brothers and not his lover, he might have thrown her a very rude middle finger. As it was, he just grunted and tried to breathe. Which… May have not been the best idea, given the bitter stench of the ink in his office flooded his nose again.
With another heave, the tea he’d sipped slopped down over the junk paper in the bin. Another warning gurgle in his stomach brought up the bitter remains of breakfast, Marlene’s lovely cooking not quite so lovely on the way back up.
By the time the painful twisting of his stomach ebbed, Eskel had nothing else to throw up. Although the nausea wasn’t entirely gone, he did feel a little bit better.
“Think you’re done?” The warm weight of Sam’s hand rested on the back of his neck, rubbing soothing circles with her thumb.
Breathing through his mouth instead of his nose, Eskel took stock of his body. His entire abdomen hurt, which wasn’t that uncommon after the forceful evacuation of nearly everything he’d consumed that day. His headache was perhaps a bit worse, and he wasn’t entirely sure if the nausea wouldn’t surge back up.
But for the moment, he was pretty sure he was done.
“Yeah.” He grunted, pushing himself upright with a few shallow breaths. Eskel groaned, closing his eyes and dropping his arm over them.
“Good.” Sam nudged the bin out of his hands, not moving it too far, just in case, before her slim hands were pulling at his bicep. “Up.”
“Meliteles tits-” he sighed. “Just let me sit a minute.”
There was a terse little growl from his sweet little lover, and the tugging on his bicep grew more insistent. “No, you’re getting your arse up while you’re not throwing up.”
“And why am I getting up?”
“Because Witchers don’t get sick, but you just did- and if you’ve caught some kind of sickness, there’s a chance you can give it to others. We need to go to Triss.”
That warranted dropping his arm and giving her a look.
Triss and Sam got along nicely when they encountered each other in the hall or at meals. Whilst Sam didn’t intentionally seek out any of the mages at Kaer Morhen, Triss was perhaps the only one she was most comfortable around. Yet, it was still like pulling teeth out of a Drowned Dead to get her to willingly go anywhere near Triss’ clinic, or the lab she shared with Lambert.
Given how she’d been made, no one under Geralt’s rule was inclined to push her out of her comfort zone, Eskel least of all.
However, given how ashy her face was when he looked at her, Eskel found himself inclined to agree. Reflected in the clarity of her eyes, he could almost see his own face- he didn’t look much better than she did.
That odd smell in her scent clicked; nausea. Her back wasn’t hurting- she’d been nauseated too.
Maybe they were actually sick- they spent enough time together and they were the first to open any correspondence, it was plausible that a foreign King had a mage cook up something to target Witchers.
The argument was yanked from him before it could really even begin.
“Bring the bin.” He sighed. “Might need it again.”
Sam never made use of the bin, although she certainly looked like she needed to, but Eskel did. About three halls from Triss’ clinic, he’d doubled over again, and gagged up spit and the sip of tea he’d used to clear his mouth from the taste of bile.
When they arrived, Triss was in the middle of talking with Lambert. They’d both stopped mid conversation, taking in the sight of the two of them standing in the doorway.
“You look more like shit than usual.” Lambert blurted, brows furrowing. “What the fuck?”
Eskel had no qualms about throwing his brother his middle finger, and did so heartily even as he linked his other hand with Sam’s. She toted the bin, white knuckled grip keeping it steady despite her growing anxiety.
“We’re not sure what’s wrong.” Eskel grunted. “It’s why we’re here. Something’s wrong- I’ve thrown up, and Sam’s queasy too.”
They took the two cots in the closest corner, Sam sitting across from Eskel. She set the bin within easy reach of both of them, before swinging her legs up and getting as comfortable as she dared. “He’s also got a headache.” She tattled shamelessly.
Lovely face crinkling in concern, Triss ushered Lambert out of her way and swept between the two of them in a whirl of skirts. She hesitated to touch Sam first, as the woman eyed her with a wariness born out of experience and a lifted lip that showed her Witcher sharp teeth, but she had no qualms about Eskel.
Her fingers touched his forehead, and Eskel all but slumped into her touch as his medallion buzzed. When Triss used her chaos, it swept through him like a cool mountain breeze. A taste like fresh mint tingled across his tongue, the pain in his head abating and the twisting in his stomach mellowing out into something more tolerable.
“Melitele bless you,” He grunted as he leaned back where he sat, “you brilliant woman. What was it?”
“Absolutely nothing with you.” Triss looked appalled at him, before peering down into the soiled bin. “Which of you made this?”
“Just Eskel.” Sam frowned, before blanching and covering her mouth. She looked away, eyes flinching closed.
Triss had knelt down and begun to sort through the bin with clinical efficiency.
Lambert approached the other side of Sam’s bed, and offered out dried curl of ginger. “Here- chew this. It should help a bit, until you’re ready for Triss to see to you.”
The smell of ginger was intense, even for Eskel, and it certainly made Sam’s eyes water at the potency in her mouth. But, it did the job it was meant to do. As she chewed idly on it, she managed to peer back over at Eskel and raise a brow.
Her gaze flicked from him to Triss, before her brows bunched nervously.
Ever the clever man, Eskel hefted himself up and side stepped Triss, moving to drop himself onto the cot behind her. He guided her back to lean against him, though she was careful to keep her hands down and away from his face after what happened in his office.
“You know she won’t hurt you.” He murmured, pressing a kiss to her temple. A bit of sweat had gathered there, sticking her curls to her forehead.
“I know.” If not for the root sticking out of her mouth, she’d likely have been worrying at her bottom lip. As it was, her fingers wrung themselves together, sharp nails picking idly at her cuticles. “It’s just… Hard.”
“I know.” He wrested her fingers away from themselves, and settled his free hand into her lap for her to worry at.
With little hesitation, she did just that.
“Well, there’s absolutely nothing in here that should have made you sick.” His medallion sang again as Triss stood up, twisting her hands through the air and banishing the whole mess from existence. With another wave of her hand, the clinic filled with a fresh minty smell, and the lingering stink of bile and sick was gone.
Lambert dropped his hands on his hips and huffed. “Well what the fuck happened then?”
“I don’t know. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with Eskel that I can detect.” Triss eyed the two of them, before kneeling down in front of them. “I do need to examine you, Sam. I know you don’t like it- but I can make you feel better, too.”
A tiny grimace curled at her face, but there was little fight in her. She held out a hand obediently, looking away from Triss and closing her eyes. The other hand held onto Eskel with an iron clad grip that he’d be hard pressed to escape without breaking something.
She smiled softly, taking Sam’s hand gently into her own. “Thank you, sweet girl.”
The chaos that rose again had Eskel’s medallion dancing as he both watched and felt Sam relax further into his body. The little furrow between her brows eased away, and the underlying current of queasiness that had clung to her scent like a cloud was mitigated too.
When Triss was done with her scan, she rocked back onto her heels and looked concerned.
“What’s wrong?” Eskel blurted, massaging Sam’s hand when she tensed automatically.
“I need to look deeper.” An apologetic look was passed between them, although Triss was firm. It needed to happen. “Please lay down.”
Apprehension grew in her scent, but Sam didn’t argue. With some shuffling on both of their parts, she soon lay on the cot with her head pillowed on one of his muscular thighs. She folded her hands gently over her ribs, and kept those blue eyes trained up on him while her teeth worked at the root.
He smoothed his sword calloused palms down her cheeks, and watched Triss from under his lashes.
Triss shuffled forth, unbothered by her position. Her fingers were gentle as they hovered over Sam’s gown, dancing to and fro before finally pressing gently into her lower belly.
“She makes my mouth taste like mint.” Sam mused, eyes settling at half mast as she peered up at Eskel. Her pupils were narrow slits, belaying the truth behind her facade of calm. “Did she do that to you?”
“Little bit like mint and a mountain breeze.” He agreed, tone light, eyes flicking between his lover and their best healing mage.
“Do you know when your last blood cycle was?” Triss queried lightly.
Rolling the root to the other side of her mouth, Sam wobbled her hand lightly in the air. “Kinda? They don’t come often enough for me to have an actual cycle to track. Once a year, twice a year, sometimes three times- it’s not often. My last one was… I dunno, a while before I escaped that mage?”
“Hm.” Mouth flattening into a line, Triss turned her attention back down to her work.
“The other lady Witchers still have theirs, don’t they?” Blue eyes blinked slowly up at him.
“Eh, yeah? Mind you, I wasn’t raised with women in my school, and I’m pretty sure if one of us asked Dragonfly about it, she’d be of the mind to do some stabbing.” Brows furrowing, Eskel thought back. “There’s usually a shift of smell with them every three to four months.”
“Most humans it’s monthly, if they’re healthy.” Triss added. “Witchers, unlike mages, don’t lose their organs when they’re mutated. They just become infertile; between regular potions and the rigorous training, their cycles aren’t regular, either.”
“And yours are irregular because of the fucked up shit that Celyse cunt did to you.” Lambert drawled, before pausing. “She is okay though, right Triss?”
Lambert’s concern wasn’t unwarranted. After the fiasco where they’d feared her botched mutagens may eventually destabilize, and the subsequent relief when it was found that she was indeed oddly stable, Lambert had spent nearly every waking moment studying the notes left behind and running tests and experiments on the blood samples he’d taken from Sam.
It still made Eskel bubble with rage to think about it.
A pinch to his thigh stopped that train of thought though, and he playfully pinched her cheek right back, a smile tugging the scarred corner of his mouth up when she playfully wiggled her ginger root at him.
“Pardon my frankness in asking this, but is Eskel the only man you’ve been with?”
Sam glanced down at Triss, puzzled as Eskel was. “Yes?” She blinked back up at him, no hint of a lie in her scent. “I don’t think I’d dare lay with a man who wasn’t a Witcher now that I know I feed off of their energy. Eskel is more than enough for me.”
He tried not to preen at that. Based on the snort Lambert let off, Eskel hadn’t done very well at hiding it.
“Well, that makes things interesting, then.” Triss sat back with a queer look on her face, before peering over at Lambert. “Do you know what Couvade Syndrome is?”
He gave her a perplexed look in response. “Uh, no? The fuck is that?”
She just laughed softly under her breath, before looking over at Eskel. She reached out and gave him a sympathetic pat on the knee. “You love Sam very, very much.”
His brows twitched, and if not for the bemused and perhaps slightly awed smell growing under Triss’ naturally herbal scent, he may have begun panicking. “Yes? Was that not clear before?”
“It’s mutual, for what it’s worth.” Sam chimed, equally as mystified.
“Couvade Syndrome is something most mages, pellars and woodswitches know about, but is not officially recognized by the physicians trained at Oxenfurt.” Pushing to her feet, Triss stretched her legs a moment, before striding smoothly for a desk full of jars. “It effects up to seventy percent of men, albeit mostly the common folk, as those usually seem to be the ones who actually love their women. And, given Sam’s… Rather unique origins, we’ve got another piece added to the puzzle.”
A complicated look crossed Lambert’s face, before he blanched a shocking shade of white and bolted back to his work desk.
Concerned, Sam sat up. They both watched him flip through the notes he’d taken on the mage’s experiments, and watched his frantic energy grow.
“Triss, can you speak plainly please?” The plea was soft, but decidedly there as Sam turned her gaze to the mage. “What’s going on?”
Triss returned to the both of them with a little glass jar full of loose herbs and hardy ginger roots. It was pressed into Sam’s hands, alongside a gentle smile. “It means, dear, you’ll both need these. Whatever the mage did to you, it works, but not just on you. It appears our very own Dragon of Kaer Morhen has managed to get you pregnant- and Eskel, dear? You love her enough that your body has linked with hers; you’re sharing the symptoms with her.”
They both gaped at her, the jar nearly tumbling from Sam’s slackened fingers.
Triss, rather glibly, patted her hand against Eskel’s cheek. “You may want to get used to the taste of ginger. It helps the morning sickness.”