Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The job is simple enough as the group of men hiring him put it - a member of the city’s governing body wanting an opponent knocked off and willing to pay handsomely for it- but there’s something else beneath the politician’s shit and raw onion reek, the way his eyes keep darting to the corners of the room as though not aware he’s doing it. 

“Should be easy enough” the leader is saying, chuckling awkwardly “Elyan is barely ever guarded in the bedroom and even if he was I’m sure you’d be able to deal with it…”

He’s lying. 

And Gaetan has had enough of it. 

With a growl he launches himself across the desk, pins the man against it, knife to throat, his own face curled up in an expression he knows from experience makes him look as deranged as he truly is. 

“You’re lying” he sing-songs, all rictus grin “Should know better than to lie to a witcher. Spit it out”

By the way the man hems and haws you’d think Gaetan is asking him to give up the location of the Nilfgaardian crown jewels. He responds by leaning in close and snapping his teeth, predatory, near the politician's stubbled cheek. The man whimpers as though afraid Gaetan is going to eat him which is stupid but incredibly amusing.

“T-they” the man stammers, biting his lip and looking away “theyhiredanotherwitcher” 

Gaetan’s not stupid, he knows what was said but he’s really enjoying watching this puny little gang lord squirm so he elects to draw it all out for a bit longer. 

“What” he growls, hiding his smile, digging the tip of the knife in slightly deeper into the pale skin of the politician's throat just to watch the way the blood runs from the wound “Did you say?” 

“The Magpie Party…Elyan…” The gang boss pants, shaking “He’s hired his own Witcher, as security” 

Pleased with the man’s cooperation, Gaetan leans over and licks away the blood from the wound he’s left with the flat of his tongue. Beneath him the man shivers, wets himself in terror. 

“That wasn’t so hard was it?” he says brightly, pulling back, swallowing his bloody mouthful. The leader of the Half Crown party goes utterly limp and has to hold himself up on the edge of the desk with one hand while the other goes to staunch the flow of blood at the side of his neck. 

“I’ll need twice the original rate then” He goes on, conversationally “What does this other Witcher look like? What School are they?”

“I dunno” the leader croaks. He’s still looking rather pale, peaked, terror rolling off him in waves. Weakling Gaetan thinks almost fondly. 

“One of my men saw ‘em with Elyan down in the market the other day. Big, ugly bastard apparently. Large as a mountain. As for your rate, anything, anything you ask Master Witcher”

Gaetan humms consideringly. There are a few Schools that breed for brawn - Bears, notably and, if Kiyan is to be believed, Mantacores, though he’s never heard of one so far north. There’s that one gigantic scar-faced Wolf that Aiden mentioned meeting once - Eustace or something - but Wolves are all stuck too far up their own asses to get involved in something as human as local politics. He’s drawing blanks now and he doesn’t like it. 

“I’ll need a few days to do reconnaissance” he says, running the flat of his knife against his tongue to clean off the last of the blood, savoring the taste of it “I’m not going in blind. And if I find out you’ve dealt me a losing hand I’ll just say fuck the job and come after you instead. Doesn't bother me none. ‘M sure there are plenty of people who’d pay handsomely for your head.” 

The leader of the Half Crowns nearly stumbles over himself in his gratitude. 

Gaetan tries very hard not to laugh in his face. Poor fool. 

“I’ll be in touch” he says and takes a graceful exit through the window. 

Gaetan takes one of the smaller roads out of the city, kicking rocks along the way and trying to figure out how the fuck he’s going to contend with another Witcher. Unless you count training or the horribly out-matched abuse of his childhood he’s never had to contend with another Witcher in a life or death situation before and he’s not entirely sure how to even begin formulating a plan. It would be easiest, and probably smartest, to cut his losses and be on his way but he’s hard up for coin to the point he hasn’t eaten anything of substance in nearly three weeks and his armor is splitting at the seams and needs to be repaired soon before it fails in an undesirable circumstance and he winds up dead. He’s got no choice but to take the contract, other Witcher be damned. 

Cursing colorfully he veers off from the road and into the woodlands. He’ll camp for the night, see about catching something more nutritious than the rats he’d been subsisting on in the city, and regroup. Hopefully a good night’s sleep away from the stench and noise of the city will help him formulate a plan with a clear head. 

It’s instinct that has him dropping to a crouch, ducking behind the cover of a tangle of underbrush, stiletto blade sliding easily from its sheath against his wrist into his hand before he’s even consciously aware of it. 

There’s somebody else here . 

He can hear it now, can smell it; the crackle of a fire, roasting meat, the road-dust and leather smell of another traveler. From the sound of things it’s just one person, alone.

He chances a glance towards the little clearing, spotting the hunched figure in silhouette. From this distance and against the firelight he can just make out the hunch of a gigantic shoulder, the glitter of armor, the two swords strapped across his back

He grins and steps into the light as easy as you please. Perhaps his luck is turning after all. 

“Oh so you’re the one the Magpies have hired to defend them?” He approaches from behind, steps light in an attempt to throw the other Witcher off his guard. 

He doesn’t even flinch, just continues gnawing on the haunch of venison in his hands. Part of Gaetan is put out by this - that he’d been made so easily - another part of him is intrigued by the utter stillness of the Witcher, the way he doesn’t jump at the threat, the complete steadiness of him, sure of his ability to fight off anything. 

Suddenly Gaetan sees a way to make them both very rich and save him what looks like it would be a world of hurt should they have to go head to head. The man looks like he could crush Gaetan’s skull like an egg in the palm of one hand and he doesn’t much fancy testing the validity of that assumption.  

“How about we make a deal?” It’s a long shot but it’s worth it. 

“What kind of deal?” the Witcher asks after a loaded moment. His voice is low and slick, velvet, gravel, a deep pool of blood, each word deliberate. It makes Gaetan shiver, delicious. 

“The way I see it,” Gaetan says, slinking into the circle of firelight, crossing his arms over his chest in a show of indifference that allows him to surreptitiously grip the throwing knives holstered against his ribs “ I’ve been hired to kill the motherfucker you’ve been hired to protect. If I kill the Magpie leader you don’t get your purse, if I don’t kill the Magpie leader then I don’t get mine. Either way one of us comes out the worse for it and a whole sect of these idiot humans get to laugh all the way to the bank with the resulting spoils. How ‘bout we pull a double blind?” 

 The other Witcher’s eyes follow him - lemon yellow, viciously intelligent - but otherwise he doesn’t move. 

“How’d you propose to do that?” the big man says, ripping off a chunk of meat and chewing and swallowing deliberately. 

It’s not an enthusiastic yes but nor is it  a no, or a get the fuck away from me you disgusting curr; much better than a drawn weapon and a slit throat. He decides to take it.  

Gaetan leaps gracefully up into the lower branches of a nearby tree, close enough to chat but far enough away to be out of reach should things go south. The other Witcher just watches him, not moving from his nearly supernaturally still slump across the fire. From this angle Gaetan gets a clear view of his medallion. A Viper. He can barely believe his luck. 

“I pretend to mangle a break-in, you defend your charge, collect your purse then I kill-em and bring his head to the Full Crowns and collect mine” He bounces on the branch, fiddles with the hilts of his knives, watches the Viper from the corner of his eye. 

“Don’t see why I can’t just kill you outright” the big man says after a moment. His eyes are unsettlingly sharp, little shards of citrine in his craggy face, crows feet at their corners. Gaetan shivers under their regard, sensing the vicious intelligence and knot-curl of violence lurking behind them. It’s heady, terrifying, having the full weight of the Viper’s attention focused on him and only him. 

“Because in the ensuing chaos” Gaetan explains, watching the stone mask of the other’s face for any spark of interest “We rob those motherfuckers blind” 

That earns him a smile, or nearly - a half-tilt of that wide mouth, some kind of grudging respect in his expression. He’ll take it. 

“What do I call you then, kitty?” the Viper asks “If I’m gonna take your offer of a good ol’ fashioned double cross” 

“Gaetan” Gaetan says, settling back against the trunk of the tree, watching the way the firelight plays in the crags of the Viper’s face. 

“Letho” the Viper, Letho, responds inclining his head in greeting “When’s the job?” 

“Tomorrow” Gaetan says, making a split second decision. Opportunity like this doesn’t come every day and he’s not about to waste it by waffling. 

“Best sleep then” Letho says, “You’ve eaten?” 

“Yeah” he lies, unwilling to take food from a stranger no matter how weak the smell of cooking meat is making him feel, no matter how he’d just essentially put his life in said stranger’s hands “I’ll keep watch” 

Letho simply shrugs, licks his fingers, and begins to settle down for the night. He keeps his knives on him, close at hand. Smart man . 

-------

The job goes off without a hitch. 

That night Gaetan goes in through the upstairs window and finds the mark in his bed. He startles, raises the alarm. Gaetan gets a few good hits in -cuts deep enough to bleed and frighten but not kill, yet - before Letho comes barreling into the room and handily 'dispatches' Gaetan with a fist to the side of the head. They wrestle for a moment, just for show, biting and growling and snapping at each other, laying waste to the room as they go. In amid the swirl of shredded paper, the splinters of the bookcase, Letho gives him the signal. He goes down, groaning, thrashes a few times for effect and then goes still. 

The leader of the Half Crowns is rattled enough, still half asleep and unused to violence, that he doesn’t think to check Gaetan’s breathing, doesn’t think to double-tap the kill. He simply falls back into one of the plush armchairs and breathes shallowly, eyes wild and terrified. 

“Well” Letho says, in that low, gravel-toned voice of his “Didn’t think they’d send someone so incompetent” 

The leader of the Magpies simply laughs, a little shaky laugh and wipes blood from his neck where Gaetan had nicked it - close enough to the artery to look credible but not enough to cause any real damage, a fine piece of work if Gaetan says so himself. 

“LaSalle!” the man calls when he finds his breath again “Fetch the purse for the Witcher and good lord get someone in here to clear away the corpse”

There’s the sound of bustling movement outside the door. From where Gaetan is lying and doing his best impression of a cadaver he can’t quite see what happens but he can hear the commotion, the sound of money changing hands, general cries of alarm at the state of the room, the man within it. B lessedly no one thinks to come check on him but he holds his breath anyway, goes limp, just in case. 

when he hears the door close again, the retreating footsteps of, he assumes, a whole mass of servants he cracks open one eye. Letho is standing over his unfortunate employer, dabbing at the wound at his throat with a lace handkerchief. As Gaetan watches the Magpie Leader brushes his hand away and begins counting out the coin. 

“My daring rescuer. I’ve half a mind to put you on my payroll, Witcher” he says, looking slyly up at Letho through his lashes “looks as though my esteemed colleagues are upping their game by trying to beat me at mine. I could use a man I can trust in my corner” 

Letho simply grunts and tucks the purse into an inside pocket of his gambeson. He ignores the fluttering eyelashes, the bitten lip, the reek of human arousal and adrenaline that suddenly spikes in the room. Gaetan, nearly catatonic with boredom by this point, takes that as his cue. 

He rises up from his resting place beneath the overturned bookcase, knife in hand. 

“Wouldn’t be so sure about the trusting him bit” he says, snide, in payback for Letho’s earlier slight to his competence, and plunges the blade of his knife into the back of the man’s neck. 

There’s a moment - when the man flings his hand back and grips futility at Gaetan’s wrist, mouth open on a silent gasp for mercy - that Gaetan feels slightly guilty for depriving the world of, truly, such a beautiful man. The guilt is short lived, however, when he remembers how much money he’s going to make. The man slumps over after a momentary struggle, goes still, pink froth spilling from his parted lips. 

“Alright, Scales?” He says, unable to tear his eyes away from how the blood is pouring from the wound, the way it coats the hilt of his knife, the way it runs. 

“Yup” Letho says and begins removing the dead man’s rings, dropping them into a tidy little pile on the desk. 

Gaetan draws his hunting knife and begins hacking at the corpse’s neck to sever the head.

“Here” Letho says, drawing his sword and severing the head in one fell swoop. 

“Thanks” Gaetan says, catching the head awkwardly and storing it in the burlap sack he’d brought along just for that purpose. 

Between the two of them they ransack the study, the bedroom, and the library beyond for anything even remotely valuable. They take trinkets, jewelry, a pair of very finely spun silk underclothes that Gaetan is absolutely keeping for himself. He would have liked to take on the whole house but he has to admit that it would have taken entirely too long and as they are quite literally walking around with blood on their hands it seems a bit risky. 

They make their exit via the back staircase and the servant’s door, slipping, silent as shadows, into the darkness. The night is quiet enough, albeit only for a moment. Someone raises the alarm and the sounds of screaming can be heard from the open windows of the villa. It’s a high, ringing, awful sound and it makes Gaetan’s ears bleed, makes him grit his teeth. He needs to get the head to his employer and get the fuck out of dodge as quickly as he can. 

“Gotta make a stop off” he says, lifting the sack with the severed head in it by way of explanation 

Letho simply shrugs and follows him. 

It’s unnerving, more than slightly upsetting, that Letho simply follows him without complaint. There’s no attempt at a second double cross, no leaping at the opportunity to club Gaetan over the head and run off with the spoils. He’s grateful even as he doesn’t understand it; if he were in Letho’s place he’d have done it long ago. But, for his part, he makes no move to knock off Letho either and this he does his best not to examine too closely. 

“Stay” he orders Letho as one would an unruly dog, gesturing to an alcove in the wall that surrounds the Half Crown’s villa. “I’m taking the goods as collateral. I’ll be back in a minute”

With that he scales the wall and drops down into the silent garden on the other side. 

He knocks on the door, perhaps a little more loudly than necessary, leaning on the sill just because. 

A harried-looking manservant opens it, half asleep, his hair in disarray. 

“Sir…how can I…”

“Fetch your master,” he says. He’s high on violence and that familiar mania is bubbling somewhere close to the surface of his skin. He has no patience for small talk right now. “I have the completion of his contract”

The servant bows shakily and disappears only to reappear moments later with the leader of the Half Crown party, hastily pulling on a dressing gown and looking incredibly put out by the whole thing. 

“Aah!” he says, magnanimous even clearly having been interrupted mid fuck “Master Witcher! I must say it is rather late at night. Do you have any updates…”

Bored, Gaetan simply replies by dropping the Magpie leader’s severed head onto the cobblestones with a wet and slightly crunchy thump.

The other man goes pale, then green, then, with a great heave, throws up all over Gaetan’s boots and the severed head. 

“Well!” Gaetan says cheerily “Violence doesn’t agree with everyone I suppose. Here” he hands the vomiting politician one of the silk handkerchiefs he’d purloined from the Magpie leader’s bedroom and stuck up his sleeve “now, about my payment…”

The man takes the handkerchief gratefully, begins mopping at his lips before he catches sight of the head again and has to drop it in order to dry heave some more. 

"Payment?" Gaetan snaps. The theatrics had been amusing for a moment but he's getting bored now. 

With a shaking hand the man takes a heavy purse from the pocket of his robe and passes it off to Gaetan.

“Thanks much” he says, saluting him with the purse “I’ll be on my way then. Oh, also…”

It’s the work of a split second to sink the blade of his stiletto into the side of the man’s neck. He hadn’t really meant to but it just sort of happened and now it’s too late. The man falls to the ground, sputtering blood, clutching bloody handprints - as though praying for mercy - onto Gaetan’s thighs, his calves, as he sinks to his knees, falls, twitches once and then goes still.  

Oops Gaetan thinks to himself, resigned, and a bit regretful even as he nudges the limp body with the toe of his boot, even as he licks the blood clean from the blade of his knife like a child on a festival day with a sweet. Guess this is another town I'll never be able to come back to.

With that he takes a graceful leap and spider crawls his way up the wall and out of sight. 

Surprisingly, Letho is just where he left him, leaning, cross-armed behind a stack of crates. He's smiling, a small curl of his wide-lipped mouth, and when Gaetan catches his eye it turns into a grin, the corners of his eyes crinkling. 

“I’ll give them two weeks” Letho says, conversationally, listening to the alarm bells of the city begin to ring. 

“Three days” Gaetan replies. 

They shake on it, the blood on Gaetan’s hands leaving rusty streaks against Letho’s skin. Neither of them will be around to know the outcome of their wager - nor, more to the point, do they know what it is exactly they're wagering - but it seems like the right thing to do in the moment. Letho's skin is warm and dry and Gaetan squeezes perhaps a bit more strongly than he would otherwise, just to test if Letho would pull away. He doesn't.

"Back home then?" He continues, stomping in a puddle to get the worst of the vomit off his boots. 

"Lead on" Letho says, and follows. 

Back at their camp he counts and re-counts the take, dividing the spoils into completely equal piles. He’s a thief and a murderer but he’s honest and he promised Letho an even split and meant it. 

When he’s done counting he pushes Letho’s half towards him and sits back on his heels, taking a big swig from the bottle of very good Toussaintois brandy he’d found in a cabinet. 

“Could buy myself a duchy with this take” he says, tossing a silver and nacre snuffbox into the air and catching it again “You ever fancy bein’ a lord, Scales?” 

Letho just grunts in reply, shoveling his half of the take into his bag. 

“We make a good team” Gaetan says “maybe you’ll consider sticking around” 

It’s a spur of the moment thing originally but as soon as he says it he sees that it’s smart. He could use some muscle at his back, someone a little stupid who he can lead around by the dick who can smash heads when he doesn’t feel like getting his knives dirty (which isn’t often but the fact remains).

“What’s in it for me?” Letho asks, head-tilt, half-smile. 

They’re flirting and Gaetan grits his teeth and goes with it. 

“Dunno” Gaetan says, trying to look like he’s actually giving this any kind of thought, as though he doesn’t know what men are like and that he hasn’t had Letho’s number from day one “I’ve been told I’m great at sucking cock”

He plays for coy, looks up from beneath his lashes, bites at his lip. 

“Oh yeah?” 

A spike of interest, a whiff of lust. Gaetan tries not to grin - gotcha . 

It’s the work of a moment to flip himself up onto his knees and shuffle between Letho’s tree-trunk thighs. They spread easily at the gentlest of touches and it’s heady, almost, having such a massive body yield for him like this. Usually he’s the one doing the yielding. 

He doesn’t have time to wonder at it though, simply starts unbuckling Letho’s leathers and fishing his prick out through the button-front of them. Letho is still soft but it only takes a few pumps of his hand to have him twitching to half-mast beneath the attention. It is a lovely prick - fat almost, ruddy -  and he thinks if this was anything more than a means to an end he might have really liked to have it inside him. His hand barely fits around it completely and even half-hard it’s one of the longest dicks he’s ever seen. Under any other circumstances he’d be afraid but he’s in control here, he’s in control. 

He starts with kitten licks around the head, flat of his tongue pressed to the pulsing vein on the underside. It’s gratifying to feel Letho twitch to life against his lips, in his hands. Letho groans, deep in his chest, and Gaetan tries to swallow down the bile that threatens at the sound. One of Letho’s large hands comes around to cradle the back of Gaetan’s head, thick fingers rasping against the stubble of his scalp, hips rocking gently feeding his cock deeper into Gaetan’s mouth by degrees. 

From there it’s easy enough to just slip inside his head, go elsewhere. 

It’s mechanical, the rhythm of it; down and up again, throat relaxed, occasional flutter of tongue, letting the spit gather in his mouth to slick the way. He closes his eyes and recites potion ingredients, mentally restocks his ration bag (he’s nearly out of jerky), decides that he’s going to buy himself a new set of throwing stars after he fences his share of the trinkets - it’s been a while since he last had a set and he misses them…

“Hey, hey” Letho is saying, bringing him back to earth abruptly. His cock’s gone soft Gaetan realizes and he tries to redouble his efforts only to be held back by Letho’s hand; broad palm gentle but insistent against his cheek. 

“Where’d you go, Kitty? Mmm?” 

He looks, of all things, concerned, the furrow deepening between his brows and it makes rage boil up black and hot at the back of Gaetan’s throat. 

“I’m right here” he snaps, dropping his mouth open and sticking out his tongue to try and get Letho back on board with the whole blow job thing “C’mon big guy, fuck my face”

Letho’s frown only deepens. He brushes his thumb against the thin skin beneath Gaetan’s eye with a gentleness that makes him want to bite Letho’s dick off. 

“Nah” Letho rumbles, tucking himself back into his trousers “Not into it if you’re not. Get some sleep, Kitty” 

With that the Viper stands and crosses the clearing to his bedroll where he promptly lays down and goes to sleep. Gaetan is left kneeling in the dirt feeling as though the entire core of the world has fallen out beneath him. The storm of emotions is unbearable - rage, guilt, terror - all in a swirl in his stomach, each breath pulling it up into his throat and making it hard to breathe. No one has ever turned him down before, no one has ever gone soft while fucking him before; there must be something wrong with him. No, there must be something wrong with Letho.

It doesn’t matter, ultimately, who’s wrong. If Letho won’t fuck him he’s helpless, he doesn’t have a barganing chip anymore. If he can’t control Letho then Letho could do anything; if Letho won’t act like he wants him to then everything falls apart. Letho might… he might… or worse maybe he won’t and Gaetan will have to face the fact that he doesn’t have control over this. That he's never had control over anything at all.

That’s impossible. 

That can’t happen. 

He has control. 

He growls, digs his numb fingers into the hard packed dirt beneath him until he feels his nails split; hot blood spilling. His skin feels too tight, a buzzing beneath it, and hollowness beneath that that begs to be filled. He’s stuck, startled, on the backfoot and he hates Letho with an intensity that’s as sudden as it is blinding. 

He wants to kill him, wants to stab him in the neck and lick the blood from the blade. It's the only way - the little voice in the back of his head tells him - the only way to keep yourself safe. The violence shivers through him, makes his teeth ache. He stares daggers at the Viper’s still back and thinks about how easy it would be…

He doesn’t sleep, doesn’t even move from where he’s crouched; simply stares into the darkness at the boulderous outline of Letho’s back and hates himself.

--------

In the morning Gaetan is packing up his bedroll - un slept in - when a pair of large, scarred hands drop two objects in front of him. A wooden bowl of kasha and an angular corked bottle of dark liquid. 

“The fuck?” he asks, glaring up at the Viper who has moved away and taken up his own bowl of breakfast. He’s feeling grayed out and spread thin and absolutely not in the mood to entertain some stupid riddle.

Why is a potion like a writing desk?  

Ha ha ha.

“White Raffards” Says Letho, “and breakfast. Know you didn’t fucking sleep last night and from the looks of things you haven’t eaten anything more substantial than hardtack and gull in well over a month” 

Gaetan wrinkles his nose and crosses his arms self consciously - he’s not about to be fucking grateful, no matter how hungry he is. Letho gives him a patient but loaded look.

He takes the potion.  

He eats the kasha. 

Letho hums contentedly but doesn’t say anything further, just settles back onto the same stump he’d occupied the night before and digs into his own breakfast. 

In one of his typical fits of volatility, Gaetan is feeling positively sunny by the time they set out and he can’t help but follow Letho in the trees, leaping from branch to branch as silently as he can manage, fencing with his shadow. Letho keeps up a steady pace through the forest beneath him. He’s steady, stolid, all hunched shoulders and boulderous muscles, and if it weren’t for the nearly silent way he seems to glide across the forest floor Gaetan might have simply mistaken him for some village's lost idiot. They don’t speak all morning and Gaetan plays games with Letho; darting in and out of his shadow, up and over his head, silent, always and Letho doesn’t so much as twitch at his proximity. Every now and then he wonders if Letho even remembers he’s there but before he can do something to test it the Viper will look up and catch his eye, always knowing exactly where he is no matter how stealthy he’s being, no matter how well hidden. It frustrates him, it intrigues him, he wants to poke the big man further just to see when he’ll snap. 

They stop and rest around sundown, refilling their waterskins in a little trickling stream and washing the sweat and dirt from the backs of their necks. After, they sit on the bank, too far apart to be considered companionable, and Gaetan practices knife tricks on the trunk of a tree, always keeping one eye on Letho.

“I was thinking we could fence the trinkets in Vizima, or at least some of them” thunk goes a knife into the tree trunk “I know a dwarf there who’s got decent contacts. What?” 

Letho is shaking his head. 

“Can’t go to Vizima. Nowhere in Temeria really” 

“Why not?” Thunk goes another knife, thrown from behind his back and beneath his armpit - a trick shot that Letho doesn’t seem to appreciate. Uncultured bastard.  

“Killed their king” 

That shocks him to fumbling. The blade of his next knife sinks muscle-deep into the meat of his thumb and he curses, sets to sucking the blood out of the wound while trying to reconcile this new piece of information. He’s heard about the kingslayer of course, everyone has, but Letho…? Surely not. 

“Pull the other one, it’s got bells” he says, licking the dark blood off his hand and wrist with broad swipes, relishing the way the taste sparks at the feral thing at the base of his brain. 

Letho humms, eyes tracing the movement of his tongue with an expression Gaetan can’t read “‘m not joking” 

He’s not. 

“Fuck” Gaetan says, caught between admiration and fear. He’s killed his fair share of people - more than his fair share if moralists are to be believed - men and women both, had enjoyed most of the deaths, but he’s never considered killing a king. He’d be lying if the thought of Letho being so dangerous, of him having single handedly thrown the Continent into war for - presumably - selfish reasons doesn’t turn him on, just a bit.

They don’t go to Vizima. 

Traveling with Letho leads to several significant changes in Gaetan’s life. The food is one thing. Over the years Gaetan had taken to playing a bit of a game with himself, eating nothing for as long as he could just to see how long he could go without and stay upright. It had started as an answer to hardship and become somewhat of a point of pride. He’s always been small, wiry despite his musculature, but the emaciation felt like taking charge of his body beyond what the mutagens had made him into. Now, for the first time, there’s food in his bowl and easy conversation around the fire to keep his mind off the whole thing. For the first time eating isn’t a chore to be choked on. 

The second thing is the traveling itself. 

It’s odd, at first, to have someone else near him. If he’s being honest it’s been nearly thirty years since he last had someone in his space for any length of time and it takes some getting used to. The first few nights he lies awake, frustrated to the point of tears by the sound of Letho breathing in the dark, the low-timbre echo of his heartbeat. But slowly, so slowly, he begins to get used to it, to expect it even and he realizes just how fucked he is.

About two months into their traveling together Letho goes off on an overnight hunt and that night when Gaetan tries to sleep he finds somehow he can’t manage it. The night is too quiet, too lonely without the sound of another’s breathing, of another mutagen-slow heartbeat. He doesn’t sleep that night and when Letho inexplicably rejoins his path the next day Gaetan can’t help the way his heart leaps when the larger man suddenly appears, silent as a shadow, at his side and they continue on as though nothing has happened. 

They avoid cities and skirt the majority of larger settlements or else Gaetan will take a several day detour for supplies and meet back up with Letho somewhere along the way. It frustrates him at first, both Letho’s unwillingness to set foot in larger-than-backwater human habitation and his own unwillingness to leave Letho and go by himself. He could be living like a king off the profits of the double cross job - fine wine, feather beds, hot baths whenever he likes, at least for a while - but the kingslayer is too valuable of a bodyguard to leave behind. So he puts up with bedrolls and the weather and whatever bathtub swill he manages to steal from the tiny towns they pass through to resupply.

He feels safe with Letho, and wary of that safety. The man hasn’t been anything but decent to him, hasn’t so much as touched him beyond that first night. In fact Letho is horribly, terribly, sickeningly kind and Gaetan can’t understand it. He’s never met a man who didn’t want to overpower him, to hurt him, to prove something by having his face between their legs. It frustrates Gaetan, terrifies him. If Letho would just throw him down and fuck him he’d know where they stood, he’d be back on solid ground. The Viper could overpower him in a heartbeat. 

And yet, somehow, he doesn’t. 

He almost seems to refuse to.

Letho, and Gaetan’s subsequent feelings about him, are a mystery that he occupies his time by picking at like a particularly stubborn knot. It refuses to come undone though, refuses to make any sense, so he starts testing the tensile strength of it by pulling away, by hacking at it with his knives, his fists, his teeth, and waiting for it to snap. He flings his whole weight against it, the full whiplash of his moods. He lets Letho see the full force of the mute stupors that swing up into the wild violence that makes him laugh until his lips split and he chokes on his own blood, lets him witness the horrifying swing back down into the depths of the dry-eyed waking nightmare of depression. He lets Letho see the sharp-toothed horror of him. He pushes and pushes and pushes and he waits. He waits for Letho’s seemingly endless patience to run out, for the gentleness to give way to violence, for all of this to start making sense.

But it doesn’t. 

Letho just rides it out with him. He goes hunting and brings back meat, makes sure Gaetan eats it. He sits as a steadying presence on the other side of the fire while Gaetan thrashes around inside himself and leaves fresh bandages by his bedroll after the nights the whirlwind has to be tempered with blood. 

It’s confusing. It’s awful. Gaetan doesn’t know what to do with it. 

--------

“How old are you?” Letho asks one night after dinner.

It’s just past Lammas and they’re both sort of drifting with nowhere to go but the thought of winter, of home is hanging heavy over everything. Gaetan can feel it and it makes him want to claw out his own eyes. 

“Fifty-two” Gaetan says, prickly, feeling like he’s being judged for something he can’t control. 

“Young’un” Letho says fondly, lying back and crossing his arms beneath his head and looking at Gaetan sidelong, the frown lines between his brows deepening “You don’t remember Stygga then?”

“No. They’d been on the road for about forty years before I was even born”

“You ever go back? To the Dyn Marv?” Letho asks and the question sticks him in the gut as ready as a sword, running him through.

“How old are you then?” he asks instead, electing to ignore the question. 

“Nearly triple your age” 

Letho says it almost regretfully, the weight of the years pressing down. 

“So you remember Gothur Gvaed?” 

“Aye. Not fondly, really,  but I do” 

They lapse into silence after that, just the crackle of the fire keeping them company for a long while. 

“I heard there were others” Gaetan says, he’s pulled his knees up to his chest and is poking in the dirt with a stick. He knows he’s treading a knife's edge here, that he has to be careful “that there were three Kingslayers”

Letho sighs, and it sounds like a deathblow. 

“There were” he says at last, eyes screwed up as though in pain “my little brothers”

Gaetan has never seen Letho vulnerable like this, so expressive. It’s as though something fundamental has been stripped away, has been peeled back leaving bare the raw flesh beneath. Gaetan can’t help but poke at it even as something in his own chest twists painfully at the sight. He doesn’t want Letho to be in pain and that realization is staggering. 

“Their names were Serrit and Auckes” Letho goes on with the clench-toothed agony of someone performing surgery on himself “Twins. No one could tell them apart when they were young, but I could. They were terrors, good Witchers, had this uncanny ability to read each others thoughts - dunno if it was just a twin thing or if the mutagens did something funny - could get creepy at times” Letho snorts, a half laugh, a low rumble of fondness amid it all “I didn’t want to kill Foltest, had no quarrel with him, really. I did it for them”

A log breaks in the fire and Gaetan jumps in his skin; sparks flying like stars into the sky. 

“Why?” Gaetan asks, trying to wrap his head around it. He’d never go to those kinds of lengths for anyone. Not even Aiden - even if that realization nearly makes him sick with self-hatred.

“They promised us Gothur Gvaed. They promised us a home again. I wanted to give them that - I’d do anything to give them that and Nilfgaard knew it and they exploited it. And then they killed them. And I ran .”

He doesn’t sound bitter, just sort of resigned and incalculably sad , and it strikes at something deep and vulnerable within Gaetan that he doesn’t want to look at too closely.

“Fucked up, that” he says at last, a knot in his throat; in pain from the sight of Letho’s suffering. 

Letho shrugs, a wave-like roll of those boulderous shoulders, and stares up into the trees

He’s closed off again, the briefly opened door onto his vulnerability and guilt closed and shuttered tightly. Gaetan paces back and forth in front of it, tries to feel his way inside again. 

He can’t think of anything to say so he simply does what Aiden used to do to comfort him when he was younger; he sidles close and lays his head on the Viper’s shoulder. It’s not a big touch - just his temple rolled very slightly against the curve of Letho’s bicep - but by the way Letho shudders Gaetan may as well have struck him. 

They both tense, barely breathing, though neither of them make a move to pull away. The night which before had been mostly quiet, introspective, is now alive with electricity, both of them tight as bombs ready to blow. After a long moment Letho's hand twitches, fingers entwining with his in the gap between their bodies. Just a pinky at first, just the barest touch as though afraid Gaetan is going to startle and run. His skin is dry and warm, fingers callous rough and scar soft by equal turns and Gaetan shivers at the feeling of it. 

They just lie there for a moment and Gaetan tries to ignore the way his heart is pounding in his ears, the way the touch of Letho’s skin sets him alight. It doesn’t hurt the closeness, but there’s something massive about it, something that feels with the drawn out ache of a tense muscle stretched beyond what it's used to. Time was this would have had him pulling away, would send him darting out of the spotlight of the fire to bite himself to the bone in the dark. But something is different now. For the first time in his life he’s completely still inside himself; there's no screaming, no howling, no horror, no low-buzz of violence and pain at the back of his mind. For the first time in his life he's not afraid.

He doesn’t move away, doesn't flinch from the touch. He simply curls closer and lets it ache.

Chapter Text

Several weeks pass and the nights get steadily colder, the days shorter and tinged with the distant snap of threatening snow. They head southwards, vaguely, following the coast, taking contracts on their way. They don’t really need to work - the proceeds from the double-cross job have them more than stable - but it gives them something to do, provides a break from the unrelenting monotony of the Path. No one has so much as suggested that they part ways even though they probably should and the why of that is a mystery Gaetan doesn't want to solve. 

Gaetan throws himself into his work with a fervor he’s never possessed before, taking contract after contract with a drive that lacks the familiar pang of a death wish. His motivations, while never pure in the strictest sense, have taken on a new dimension.

He finds, oddly, that he likes the idea of being a provider, preens, privately, every time he can bring back food for Letho or purchase him a new set of knives. Seeing the Viper relaxed and well-fed after a good meal or sleeping soundly under Gaetan’s watch makes the warmth of pride echo through him. It’s a shocking development, but somehow it doesn’t bother him as it should. Something had shifted over the past months of their traveling together, something fundamental, and though Gaetan can’t be fucked to figure out what, exactly, it is he welcomes the development. He’s clear-headed for the first time in his life, and for the first time, the clarity doesn’t scare him.

Letho’s admission of homesickness, however, is never far from his mind. He thinks on it, worries at it with his teeth. The concept of home is alien to him, much less a home that one would kill to get back. He doesn't understand it but it seems to bother Letho, to weigh heavily on his soul like a millstone slung around his neck. It bothers Gaetan to see the big Viper so unhappy, so lost, and he makes up his mind to do something about it. What that something is he's not entirely sure but he doesn't doubt that a plan will present itself at some point, it usually does. 

They clear a nest of sirens out of the harbor of one of the smaller cities along the Cintran coast and Gaetan goes to collect their payment, leaving Letho to find a place to camp. It’s one of those horrible coastal autumn days, the kind with the cold that just sinks its teeth into your bones and pricks at the skin like a thousand tiny little needles. Gaetan is exhausted, every muscle aching after hours of fighting the riptide and the sirens and the weight of his own waterlogged armor. When to add insult to injury, it begins to rain, the warmth of the crowded tavern presents a welcome respite, a break out of the wind and cold. He knows he looks a mess - sodden, trailing water, with mer-guts smeared all over his face -- but no one pays him much mind as he slinks in to take a table in a shadowed corner and attempts to surreptitiously wring the water out of his clothes. He orders a steak pie and a pint of ale then, thinking of Letho out in the weather somewhere, orders a second pie. Not for the first time, he curses the Viper’s unwillingness to linger in human habitation; he’d be fed and clean and dry to boot if only he’d let Gaetan buy them a room at the inn. It’s not such a hardship sharing a space with him, or at least he hopes it’s not. 

The pies and pint arrive and he digs in without much thought. The food is decent; buttery crust and savory filling that doesn’t smack of grease, and the beer is strong and without the tang of human spit that so often taints every cup he drinks from. He simply lets himself enjoy for a moment; he’s always been a city person at heart, enjoying the bustle of other people, the anonymity afforded by existing among others. He drifts for a moment, relishing the warmth of the fire that is slowly drying his clothes, enjoying the low hum of conversation that wraps him in from all sides like a warm blanket. 

“...Whole safe full of diamonds, apparently,” someone says “not guarded either ‘s far as I know. Senile old man”

If Gaetan had ears on the top of his head they would have perked up and begun to swivel; as it is he pulls his steak pie closer to his chest and casts his perception out to the very edges of the room before reeling it back in again nice and slow, sifting through the hum of conversation like panning for gold in the silt of a streambed. 

“...Zerrikanian?” a low whistle “those’re the rarest of ‘em all” 

Bingo . 

“Zerrikanian white diamonds,” Says the first speaker again, voice pitched low but not low enough “Could live like royalty on a take like that but it wouldn’t matter cause the old bastard lives alone - can just take the house too while we’re at it. Have a whole castle to ourselves”

Someone else chimes in with a protest that is quickly overruled and surreptitiously Gaetan takes a peek out from beneath his hood to try and catch sight of these mystery idiots. 

The conversation is being held by a quartet of ne'er do wells seated in the shadows at the far corner of the bar. They’re hardened yeggs, going by the amount of concealed weapons they’re wearing, but they clearly missed the lesson on secrecy and not blabbing about a job where anyone could be listening. They could probably stand a reminder. 

Gaetan wraps the second meat pie in a cloth and tucks it into his pocket before slipping quietly into the street. He ducks into the alleyway behind the inn and, using the relative cover of the shadow of the neighboring structure, climbs the wall and takes up a perch on the inn’s roof. There are two exits and from here he can watch both at once. He relaxes into the familiarity of the pose; hood up, hunched and ready to move at a moment’s notice, attention spread thin on the lookout for the specifics. He waits for hours, shadow-still, until the moon is high in the sky (clear, now, the rain having passed on) and something triggers the mental tripwire of his trap. 

He follows the four thieves - drunk and stumbling - through the maze of back-alley ghettos that wind like intestines through the city. He leaps from rooftop to rooftop, not so much as slipping on the rain-slick slate beneath his boots. Eventually, the thieves duck into a side alley for a piss, holding each other up, cursing, and Gaetan sweeps in for the kill. The first two go down without complaint - just the gurgle of slit throats, the arc of the blood inscribing twin rainbows in the darkness. The third puts up more of a fight even drunk as a skunk, coming for Gaetan’s head with a wild haymaker that he repels by opening up the man’s forearm along the vein and neatly ducking away to kick him in the back. He goes down groaning and, with a hearty stomp to the back of his head, dies choking on his own blood. It’s the leader he’s after, the others are just collateral. 

He finds the leader - a bald man with the general demeanor of a milk cow - cowering at the dead-end of the little alleyway, glazed-eyed and traumatized. He makes a horrified sound at Gaetan’s approach, holds up his hands as though in pacification. 

“Button ‘em up then,” Gaetan says, gesturing with the blade of his knife to the man’s undone trousers, his dick still hanging in the breeze. “I don’t make a habit of interrogating men when they have their trousers down”

The thief nearly trips himself up in his haste to comply. 

As soon as all of his bits are carefully stowed, Gaetan pounces. He pins the man to the wall with a forearm over his throat, the point of his knife pricking into the front of his trousers. 

“Now,” he says, conversational, still riding the high of his previous kills, blood in his nose, in his mouth “I couldn’t help but overhear you and your dear departed companions talking about a job you’ve got in the works. I’d like to hear everything about it”

“You’re a Witcher” the thief sputters, eyes rolling in his head with the strength of his terror. 

“And you’re an idiot talking about big hauls where anyone can hear you. Now, the job. Tell me everything”

The man hems and haws for a moment longer before Gaetan gets bored and takes his knife up to bury it into the man’s chest, right in the nice little tender spot where collarbone gives way to ribcage. He shrieks, muffled by Gaetan’s gloved palm, and tries to writhe away, hands coming up to try and push him back. Gaetan bats his hands away as though they’re flies, barely worth his time.

“Tell me” he hisses, tired of this “The Zerrikanian diamonds. The house. Tell me”

"'Not a proper job, wasn't hired by no one just overheard.." he trails off on a groan as Gaetan leans a little more of his weight on the knife still lodged in his chest "Old man lives in a manor house up the coast a ways… I thought we'd go in and take the place I thought…"

“That’s my job” Gaetan growls, twisting the knife in the meat of the man’s shoulder. 

He groans, pisses himself. 

“Alright alright, your job, okay” he’s whining, catching air through his teeth and spitting it out again in terrible wet bursts, eyes rolling in his skull. The blood on his shirt is thick and dark and everywhere and Gaetan gets momentarily distracted by it, by the bird-wing beat of the man’s pulse and the way it makes the blood gush. 

“Now tell me everything” he growls, redoubling the pressure on the blade, digging the tip where it’s protruded through the soft tissue beneath the shoulder blade, into the wood at his back, pinning him in place like a butterfly on a corkboard “Tell me everything and I’ll let you live”

He tells him everything. 

Gaetan kills him anyway. 

"Trouble?" Letho asks when he returns to camp. 

The big man had been waiting up for him, clearly, sat propped against the trunk of a tree whittling at a stick with one of his smaller knives. Gaetan can't help the way his heart leaps at the sight of him, the wide grin that spreads across his face born from actual happiness instead of mania. He tries to stop and finds that he cant. It makes his cheeks hurt.

"Nah, no trouble," he says, despite the fact that Letho can probably smell the blood on him "brought you dinner." 

He tosses the cloth-wrapped pie to Letho who catches it deftly and begins to dig in. He waits until Letho is licking the last remains of the gravy from his fingers before going on. 

"Found us another job" 

One raised eyebrow, the knife stilling, one pale curl of wood half-severed.

"Old robber baron up the coast a ways, lives alone in an old manor house on the cliffs. Legend has it he's got a house full of goodies and a safe full of Zerrikanian white diamonds" 

Letho whistles, long and low. 

"Who's offering the contract?" 

"Me" He replies simply, unbuckling his armor in readiness for bed "what, you never have a little fun for yourself in all your long years?" 

Letho just grunts in acknowledgment. 

"Don't seem like you need me none," Letho says after a moment "seeing as he lives alone" 

"Don't be silly, Scales" Gaetan replies, turning away so he doesn't have to face how stupid this all sounds, how weak "We're partners. 50/50 split. 'Sides, wouldn't be any fun without you" 

He lets the admission hang in the air for a moment, bites his tongue just to taste the blood. Letho, the bastard, doesn't respond but Gaetan can feel the weight of his gaze boring into his back and shivers at the sensation. 

They don’t sleep near each other that night and Gaetan feels the lack acutely though he tries not to. He lies awake in the darkness trying not to shiver and simply thinks . 

--------

The next day at sunset they head up to the manor house. 

They approach from the wooded side, hugging close to the treeline like wolves trailing after a wounded deer. Standing on a little ridge they’re able to get a clear glimpse of the compound from the relative cover of the treeline. It’s an old sprawling thing, clearly an old structure that had been expanded on over the years without any particular plan or direction. It’s an eclectic mix of styles - here a thatched roof, there a crenelated tower - but the incongruity adds to the charm.  Crumbling walls surround gardens that look as though they haven’t seen the kind touch of a gardener in well over a lifetime. Down below the estate, they can hear the wild rush of the sea as it beats itself against the cliffs; the crash and recede of it nearly like breathing. The only signs of life are the smoke issuing from the central chimneys, and a light on in an upstairs room, otherwise the place looks deserted. 

“You said he lives alone?” Letho asks. He’s standing behind Gaetan, over one shoulder and, time was Gaetan would have balked at having the Viper behind him as close as he is but now he enjoys the proximity, has to keep himself from leaning closer to it. 

“That’s what I was told,” he says, pulling off one of his gloves to run his fingertips over the pock-marked stone of the wall. 

Beyond the house, the sun is setting, catching in the low clouds and turning them to gold, to blood. Gaetan thinks about some old rhyme he’d heard once about red sky at night being a sailor’s delight. He’s not a sailor but he hopes a thieves' delight isn't much different in principle. 

“Should wait until true night” Letho says, taking one of his long knives from its sheath against his chest and testing the hone of the blade against the pad of his thumb. 

They wait. 

True night comes slowly, cat-footed, with the darkness enclosing them slowly like a lover’s arms. Gaetan takes up a watch position in one of the large puffy-barked redwoods that encircle the property and keeps an eye on the house, or tries to. Letho’s presence is endlessly distracting, forever at the periphery of his awareness; he sits still, at the base of the tree, unmoving, nearly luminous in the dimness. Gaetan watches Letho as the Viper begins whittling again, the rasp of his knife in the wood methodical, his full attention focused on the task. 

For a while, Gaetan simply sits and watches before he becomes aware of the odd riot his own heart is staging. It feels as though he is too full for his chest to contain, some kind of overcrowded tangle taking on water and swelling until his ribcage threatens to break beneath the onslaught. It makes him want to scream, to fling himself from his perch and into the sea, into Letho’s arms. It’s awful, the feeling and the knowledge that if he should fall that Letho would catch him, would dive into the sea after him to fish him from the breakers. Because he would and Gaetan has never felt so sure of anything before in his life. 

If asked, later, Gaetan will deny that he was ever so distracted, will maintain until his dying breath that everything happened absolutely according to plan. As it is the arrow that sinks itself into the trunk of the tree nearly takes his ear off, only the split-second impulse of his training sending him a hair's-breadth out of the way. 

“Letho” he hisses, spinning wildly on his perch in search of any view of the attacking party. 

Below him, Letho has stood and drawn his swords and is peering sightlessly into the black forest around them. 

Gaetan sees the spark of a sword stroke in the darkness, aimed for Letho’s neck, and before he has time to react he’s lept from the tree and onto the back of their would-be attacker, sending them both tumbling to the ground. 

They scramble in the dirt for a moment; Gaetan gets a fist to the face, feels his nose buckle beneath the onslaught, his momentary shock at the pain enough for their attacker to flip him over onto his front. He thrashes out with his own fists, his stilettos falling into his hands from their wrist sheaths as easy as breathing. He lashes out, gets a good hit to the soft gap between a pair of ribs, hears a masculine groan of pain and the wet gush of blood against his hand. 

From somewhere in the darkness to his left he can hear Letho fighting what sounds like two opponents; the clash and clang of blades in the darkness audible but only half-seen as flashes in the dimness. 

He manages to flip the man off him and rolls into a crouch, not having enough time to even look his attacker in the eyes before he’s barrelling into him, launching them back into the dirt in a flurry of fists and short blades and bloody teeth. 

He barely has time to breathe between his opponent’s death rattle and the sudden grasp of hands around his throat.

He launches himself up and backwards, using the corpse beneath him as a sort of springboard to flip himself around and onto the back of the person behind him. He slits the man’s throat on his way down, follows the corpse to the ground, and gives him another several stab wounds for good measure before rolling to his feet. 

He needs to find Letho. 

Letho makes his presence known with a flash of fire in the darkness, the sound of a bomb going off. 

Blinded by the brightness, by the ringing in his own head, Gaetan makes his way through the sparse underbrush towards the sound of the struggle. He finds Letho locked into an eight-to-one battle with a group of thugs. They’re human, clearly, but well trained. Friends of the yeggs from last night like as not. Among the fray, Gaetan catches sight of the woman with the crossbow who’d shot at him before and he thinks he’s going to make a particular point of her death; he likes his ears where they are thank you.

It seems as though their attackers had made the very poor judgment of thinking of Letho as the most dangerous of the two of them and had split off into teams in order to take them down individually with the larger faction going towards Letho. This is a mistake that will cost them their lives if Gaetan has anything to do with it. 

He catches at a low-hanging branch and flings himself across the clearing; digging one of his blades into a ready spinal column before dropping into a crouch and hamstringing the bastard for good measure. In the momentary confusion, he rolls to take up a position at Letho’s back, pressing tight up against him just because. 

“Alright, Kitten?” Letho asks out of the side of his mouth. He’s barely winded from the fight as though this is simply a walk in the park to him and that easy show of physical prowess sends a bolt of heat down Gaetan's spine.

“Fine” he replies, letting loose one of his hard-won throwing stars into a throat. The bastard goes down gurgling. 

Eight humans, no matter how well trained, are barely a match for one Witcher, let alone two, and it’s a matter of moments before the clearing is quiet once again, just Letho and Gaetan left standing amid a pile of corpses. 

“Well,” he says, wiping the blood beneath his nose with the back of his hand and licking it away just to taste it. 

Letho responds with a rib-shaking huff. 

Gaetan begins going through their victims’ pockets. The take is nothing substantial but nor had he expected it to be -- a few rings that are worth something, a solid two crowns worth of coin, and a gold tooth that he extracts with his switchblade and a lever made from a rock.

“So no trouble you said,” Letho says after a long moment of simply standing on the sidelines in silence, watching him, arms crossed across his broad chest.

Gaetan, glancing up from where he’s been picking through the purse of the poor crossbow-wielding woman and finding nothing but a lot of lint, makes a face. 

He’s prepared for a reprimand, braces for it unconsciously, but the expression on the Viper’s face when he turns is nothing but quietly amused. 

“As though this qualifies as trouble” he responds, rolling to his feet and crossing the clearing to Letho, stopping just short of being close enough to touch. 

They simply stand for a moment, staring at each other. There’s a weightiness to the silence, blood-soaked, and Gaetan fears the tension even as he leans into it. 

“You were hurt,” the Viper says, eyes locked with his, and it’s just a simple statement of fact but it sounds so truthfully vulnerable that Gaetan has to turn his head away. 

“Just my schnoz,” he says “and it’s already healing” He punctuates this point by reaching up and wiggling the offending appendage just to feel the half-healed cartilage click. 

Letho just grunts. 

“Should probably head inside if this is something we’re doing” the Viper says, looking at him as though a take like this is one that he’ll ever refuse “If there were any guards to begin with they’re definitely aware of us now”

Gaetan agrees. 

They go in through the side door into the kitchen, not bothering with undue stealth. The hinges of the door are well oiled and don’t protest as they make their way inside; boots shadow-quiet on the flagged floor. The moon had risen while they had been otherwise occupied and the thin milky light of it bathes the kitchen in its austere silvery glow. The cooking fire has long gone cold and if Gaetan didn’t know better he’d have said that the place had been long abandoned; It doesn’t look as though anyone has used the kitchen hearth in years. 

He raises an eyebrow at Letho who replies by drawing one of his knives and ducking through the darkened doorway into the rest of the house.

The interior is just as eclectic as the exterior, with plush rugs and slightly sagging furniture gathered around a low table. A sideboard beneath the window holds an array of fine liquor that Gaetan is absolutely having a date with later and the walls are hung with incredible works of art that Gaetan finds himself itching to get a better look at. Every surface seems to be chock full of priceless artifacts of one variety or another; here a gem-encrusted goblet, there a finely wrought sculpture of a griffin done in ivory, shelves bending beneath the weight of books so rare their price beggars belief.  The moonlight is thin and silvery and catches in the film of dust that covers everything with a uniformity too absolute to be natural. The house is still, silent as a grave but alive somehow, expectant. The back of Gaetan’s neck prickles in the way that means they’re being watched. From the way Letho glances towards him, he feels it too.

“Maybe the old bastard is dead,” Letho says, half hopefully, with a tone that implies he doesn’t believe it himself, running one finger through the dust on one of the bookshelves.

They climb the spiral staircase to the second floor, weapons drawn, peering into dark corners as though the owner of the house is going to appear and cause them grief. The stairs drop them at the beginning of a short hallway. One door leads to a study - empty - while the other…

With an impossible snapping sound, all the air in the hallway ignites. 

“He’s a mage!” Letho shouts, ducking out of the line of fire and pulling Gaetan with him. The inferno blazes past them, so close that Gaetan feels the hair on his arms singe. The air smells of sulfur and burning dust. Beneath the roar of the inferno, Gaetan can just barely make out the wild beehive humming of his and Letho’s medallions going crazy against their chests. 

“Toss me!” Gaetan growls, spotting a gap between the wall of energy and the ceiling “I can get past it”

Letho looks as though he’s about to protest, the habitual frown between his eyebrows deepening. Before he has the chance to say another word Gaetan has lept onto Letho’s shoulders, scrambling up him as he would a boulder, giving the Viper no choice but to comply with his request. 

Letho is absurdly gentle as he gathers Gaetan into readiness for a basket toss. His hand cupped beneath the ball of Gaetan’s foot, the heft of a launch, then weightlessness. He spirals through the air, pulling his knives into his hands on the updraft. He casts a shaky quen around himself just before he reaches the wall of flames and lands, unscathed, in a crouch on the other side. 

The incredibly startled mage looks practically geriatric but moves with a fluidity that betrays his aged looks. The others can be forgiven for thinking him naught but a harmless old man. He’s wearing some kind of fur cloak, regal, glossy, that Gaetan immediately wants to see around Letho’s shoulders. 

“Hullo!” Gaetan says, brightly, bringing one of his knives around in an attempt to stab the mage in the neck. 

He’s not expecting the attack to land, but even still the shock of defensive power sends him rocketing halfway across the room, cracking his head against the edge of a table. 

The distraction serves its purpose though and the mage lets down his guard; drawing back from the hallway to direct his full attention onto Gaetan who in turn draws his steel sword and begins the offensive. 

The fight isn’t fair, not by a long shot. Gaetan has never been particularly adept at signcasting and his defensive quen crumbles into nothing with a mere brush of the mage’s hand each time he tries to use it. He settles for using his acrobatic skills instead; launching himself off of furniture and hanging by his knees from the chandelier thumbing his nose. His job is to be a distraction and he’s always had a bit of an exhibitionist streak. 

Swift and silent as a shadow Letho materializes from around the doorway. He’s feral in the dimness, soot-smudged, his lips pulled back to bare his teeth in a vicious nearly joyous smile. He hefts his sword, twirls it once for show, and with a surgeon's precision, decapitates the mage at the join of his c4 and c5 vertebrae.

The mage staggers, clutching at his throat, eyes going wide. There’s a moment of incredible stillness during which they all just sort of stand there before the mage’s head falls from his neck with a meaty sort of squelching sound and thuds to the floor with a splat. Moments later the body follows, tumbling to the ground and lying there, twitching. The blood rushes out with an almost oceanic gurgle, the scent of iron and meat overwhelming suddenly as the puddle widens blackly, steaming in the chill. 

From behind him, Letho lets out a sigh, wiping the blade of his sword against his thigh to get the worst of the blood off. 

The diamonds are barely hidden; kept in a dwarven-made safe hidden behind a painting of a woman transforming into a swan. It takes him all of twenty-five seconds to crack it, going, as he is somewhat leisurely, distracted by Letho’s quiet presence at his back. 

With a click, the door to the safe swings open, and Gaetan’s breath catches in his throat.

“Oh” he breathes “aren’t you just gorgeous”

From behind him, Letho lets out a quiet sigh. 

They’re beautiful. Little chips of icy iridescence glittering like stars in the darkness of the safe. They’re uncut, unrefined, but something about the roughness only serves to emphasize the profundity of their beauty. He picks up a handful and lets it sieve back into the safe just to hear the glitter of the stones hitting one another. It is, without a doubt, the most money he’s ever held in his hands in his life and he thrills at the prospect. 

Something like a plan begins to take shape in his mind and it makes him shiver, makes him grin privately to himself. 

“Hold this,” he tells Letho and pushes half the safe’s worth of diamonds into his hands before directing Letho towards one of the plush armchairs.

Letho doesn’t reply, simply lets himself be pushed until he’s seated, looking up at Gaetan with an expression that is a cross between amused and baffled that is so dear to him suddenly he has to turn away before something very important inside of him crumbles.

With a flourish, Gaetan reaches down and pulls the fur cape from the dead man’s shoulders to wrap it around Letho. It barely fits, too narrow to fully envelop the bulk of him, but the fur softens the hard angles of his face giving him a regal air. It’s such an enticing image that Gaetan can’t help but take the silver crown from the bust in the corner and settle it atop Letho’s head as well. It’s comically small but the effect is worth it.

“There,” he says, stepping back and forming his hands into a sort of frame for him to gaze at Letho through “King Snake. Grandmaster”

"What is this, Kitty?" Letho asks softly, fingers running through the plush fur of the cloak, smearing the blood around and not seeming to mind. The diamonds in his lap catch and reflect the light, casting icy rainbows over the angles of his face that shift and glitter as he moves, softening and deepening the severe creases around his mouth by turns - one moment he’s handsome, the next nightmarish, always so dear to Gaetan it makes his chest ache. 

"It's…" he doesn't know how to finish the sentence, hadn't really thought he'd have to. 

"It's Gothur Gvaed," he says, at last, turning his head away and stepping back a little "number two. You talked about wanting a home again and I just thought… well it makes me better than the king of Nilfgaard anyway…" 

He trails off. It feels as though his throat is closing, something akin to panic setting in. He doesn’t want Letho to see him like this and yet that’s all he wants; he wants to be vulnerable, wants to show Letho…

"C'mere" Letho all but whispers, and Gaetan goes.

Letho’s hand comes up, towards his face, and he flinches from it but Letho just cups his jaw gently, runs his thumb over his cheek. 

"Missed a spot," Letho says, voice pitched low and quiet, eyes searching. 

His thumb, when he pulls his hand away as though afraid to touch Gaetan for longer than a few seconds at a time, is smeared with blood.

Without really thinking much about it Gaetan tilts his head ever so slightly to draw the point of his tongue along the digit, licking the blood away. Letho’s skin is warm and salty beneath his tongue, beneath the tang of blood, the pad of his thumb sword-calloused and strong. 

Letho groans as though he's been punched and then there are lips against his. 

Gaetan startles. 

He's never been kissed before and the rush of emotions the gesture evokes in him is terrifying. It feels as though he's been struck by lightning, goosebumps prickling along his skin. Letho’s lips are warm and slightly chapped and so gentle against his and Gaetan thinks he must be dreaming. Nothing has ever felt as good. 

"Okay?" Letho asks, pulling back slightly, feeling him tense. 

Gaetan can't answer, can't give words to just how okay he is; his knees are water and his heart is thundering in his chest like it wants to break free and run. All he can do is lean down and kiss Letho himself. 

Letho sighs into the kiss and it turns Gaetan’s knees to jelly. Suddenly he’d trade all the diamonds in the world to hear that sound even one more time. 

Suddenly there’s a strong hand against the curl of his hip and then Letho is surging up against him so he towers over him, leaning down, devouring his mouth. The diamonds tumble to the floor with a metallic clatter at the movement, go bouncing off in every direction but neither of them has it in them to care; lips locked, Letho’s broad hand careful against the bruised hinge of his jaw. 

Gaetan moans into the kiss, hands coming up to fist against the corded muscle of Letho’s waist, nails scrabbling desperately at the tough leather of his armor. Somehow the crown gets knocked loose between one soul-devouring kiss and the next and the harsh clang of the drop startles both of them. They part, breathless, and for a moment Gaetan is afraid that Letho will pull away, back off, put an end to this. He doesn’t. He simply draws back for a moment, peers down at him with a look so loaded with meaning that Gaetan can’t hope to decipher it. 

“Alright, Kitty?” 

He nods, too desperate for words, and tries to haul Letho against him again but the bigger man holds him back, gently, with a hand to the center of his chest. 

“I need words, love” and god if Gaetan doesn’t shiver at the sound of that word in that deep-gravel voice. 

“yes” he all but howls, reaching out to curl his fingers into the chest strap of Letho’s scabbards “Yes, yes, please”

He’s never asked for this before, just as he has never been so sure of anything in his life. 

Letho takes his time undressing him; not fumbling, exactly, simply seeming to savor every newly exposed patch of pale skin, thick fingers so gentle, unbearable, against the twisted scar-map of his body. The bitemarks and the neat bone-deep slash marks of the ones he’d done to himself, the twisted, purple ones that had been done to him, the touch nearly burning in the tenderness of it. He hisses when Letho rubs his thumb over the horrible self-made keloid scar that bisects his inner forearm. The touch pulls to the surface the long-healed memory of the pain; a bright and nearly stabbing ache as the dead nerves come alive for the first time in a decade (he’d nearly out-bled his accelerated healing that day, nearly ). 

With a hand that would have trembled if it could, Letho brings the mangled limb to his lips, kisses right at the deepest, widest, ugliest part of it, his breath hot as fire against the damaged skin. 

Gaetan cries out at the feeling of it, knees turning to water beneath him, breath coming thick and fast in something close to a sob. He sags against the firmness of Letho’s chest, held up only by the Viper’s solidity and the butterfly-gentle grip on his wrist. 

“Please” he gasps though for what he’s not sure. He’s never begged before, not even for mercy, not even for it to stop, never for more “Letho…”

At the sound of his name the Viper smiles, curls his hand more firmly against the small of Gaetan’s back to haul him impossibly closer. This movement, the abruptness of it, sends a spark of pure pleasure up Gaetan’s spine as their bodies connect. 

He’s hard he realizes in wonder, powerless to stop the way his hips chase the contact, an animal instinct. He never gets hard, not anymore, didn’t even know he could but now he’s desperate for it. He moans into the next devouring kiss, body pistoning against the firm press of Letho’s thigh desperate for this for anything , some raw kind of fire burning burning burning beneath the skin of him. There’s tension in his pelvis, a string pulled too taut and he’s going to… he’s...

“That’s it” Letho humms, leaning to press a shivery kiss to the skin behind his ear “C’mon, Kitty. Let go for me” 

He cums with an agonized groan that he feels shake the very foundation of his being. It feels as though the very core of him is being hollowed out, torn from him. It feels so damn good and seems to roll through him for age upon age upon age, sending him shaking into aftershocks that have his eyes rolling back into his head. 

He knows he’s babbling, crying out nonsense, but Letho just holds him through it, supports his weight, and gentles him down with soft touches and butterfly kisses to his sweat-slick throat, his burning cheeks. If he could cry he knows he would be but he can’t find it in him to care. He simply sags against Letho, curls into him, hips beginning to move again in sharp little jolts that send zings of oversensitivity racing through every nerve. He’d never wanted this before but now that he does he’s desperate for it in a way he didn’t know he could be. 

“Please” he pants, lax-mouthed against Letho’s smiling lips “more, more, more. Letho. Please” 

“Whatever you want, Kitty” Letho says, voice thick with lust. 

The Viper gentles them down to the floor, pillowing Gaetan’s head in one broad palm so he doesn’t crack it against the hardwood; such an innocent little gesture of care that it nearly makes Gaetan sob. Like this Letho is propped over him, all broad shoulders and strong torso and the position, the size-difference, nearly makes him panic. But then Letho is touching gently at the curve of his waist and his palm is so warm, his expression so soft that Gaetan forgets what it means to be afraid. 

“Too many clothes” Gaetan growls, beginning to pick at the buckles and straps of Letho’s armor, making a point of wiggling around as much as he can just to be distracting. 

With a half-laugh Letho pulls back and sheds his clothes efficiently and without preamble, leaning down again to cover Gaetan’s body with his own, now gloriously naked. The warmth and breadth of his skin is alarming, nearly too much, but Gaetan feels protected by it, held still and sure against that muscular chest.  Letho rolls against him, gently, as sure of himself as the tide, hands wandering Gaetan’s skin: the dip of his sternum, the sensitive join of thigh and torso that has him hissing out in sensitivity, cock jumping. The thick bulge of Letho's cock, wet at the tip already, drooling, presses up against his inner thigh, against the rut of his hip bone. He presses up against it just to feel more of that delicious heat and Letho growls softly and nips at the skin of his throat. 

With a jolt, he realizes he actually wants this. 

“in me” he growls, nails against Letho’s shoulder blades, his mouth pressed against the jut of that bullish jaw, breathing in warm skin and blood and safety “in me” 

Letho laughs and obliges with a single slick finger at his hole. With a shock, he realizes it’s blood that Letho is using to ease the way. The realization has him shuddering, throwing his head back to thud against the floor as he tries to breathe through the sudden overwhelm.

“More” he growls, spreading his legs and wiggling his hips in an attempt to get more of Letho inside of him, more more . 

“Hush, kitty,” Letho says, leaning down to nibble at his kiss-puffy bottom lip “there’s plenty”

And there is too. 

Letho’s fingers are nearly impossibly thick, the stretch of them nearly too much to be borne. But Letho kisses him gently, runs a soothing hand across the sharp-shorn curve of his scalp, and is so impossibly gentle about it that Gaetan finds nothing but pleasure. 

“Enough” he growls, desperate for it, gagging with the need to be filled, to be consumed and possessed in this way “Letho…” 

Letho flips him onto his stomach easily, hauling him up one-handed to his knees and elbows so his back is arched at just the right angle, presented for Letho. He grips at Gaetan’s hips, his sides, smearing blood onto his skin, red tracks drying rusty against the paleness of his skin. With the other hand he spreads Gaetan’s cheeks. There’s the sound of spitting and something warm and slick hits Gaetan’s hole and is worked inside of him with the insistent press of Letho’s thumb. 

He leans back against it, pillowing his teeth in the meat of his forearm just for something to hold on to as the broad, slick, head of Letho’s cock presses up against the stretched give of him.

He flinches, suddenly, stills inside himself, something old and frightened pinging at the back of his brain. He holds still, retreats without meaning to into the cold and quiet place where he had learned to go when this happens. All he can see is the blood-smeared floor, the dust, the destruction, the smell of gore thick in his sinuses. Suddenly the desire is gone, replaced by a sick-stomach longing for it all to be over . 

It’s Letho he reminds himself, feeling the slow sink of Letho into his body like a knife blade into his guts you want this you stupid fuck, you want this. Don’t ruin this. Don’t ruin this for him. 

It doesn’t help. He thinks he may be sick; past and present overlapping and blending, twisting this into horror where before there had only been love. He doesn’t… not like this. Not like this… 

Behind him, Letho stills, and Gaetan could sob with the relief of it, with the shame. 

“C’mere,” Letho says, pulling back, hand gentle against his hip to hold him upright when he falters “I want you to ride me. I want to see you”

It’s not a judgment, not an acknowledgment of his failure; it’s a simple desire stated with blunt calm and Gaetan feels his heart swell. 

It’s the work of a moment for Letho to flip onto his back, pulling Gaetan with him so he’s pillowed on his chest, legs splayed around his hips. 

“Alright?” Letho asks, kissing him long and slow and deep just because, and Gaetan melts. 

“Yeah,” he says, surprised by the truth of it. Like this he can see Letho's face, can ground himself in his eyes can hold on and remember who he's with, what this is, that he wants this. Letho doesn't scare him. “Now where were we?” 

“Right about here, I think” Letho replies, punctuating the sentence by thrusting languidly against Gaetan’s stomach, and Gaetan whines. 

The way Letho is looking at him has him plumping up again; the raw-edged need for touch, for something, slowly coming back to life in the core of him. Letho is patient, lets him set the pace, teases him with gentle touches to the sensitive head of his cock just to smile when he shakes and gasps for more of it. He sets a lazy pace, lifting himself and easing back down by increments, body adjusting to the heft and stretch of Letho within him with difficulty - body unused to relaxing on purpose, to letting something in without a fight. There’s a momentary shift as Letho readjusts beneath him and then his cock is hitting something within him that has Gaetan shouting, back bending as sparks dance behind his eyes. 

“Alright?” Letho asks, chuckling, as Gaetan gasps and begins picking up the pace, trying to get more of that feeling, more of that white-hot pleasure. 

“Fuck you” he grits out, biting through his lip to keep from moaning like a two-bit whore as Letho’s cock grinds into that spot inside him that has him lighting up with pleasure. 

There’s a smear of blood on Letho’s cheek, on his throat, and Gaetan can’t help but scoop up more from the puddle they’re lying in and run a finger-full of it against Letho’s lips. The Viper’s blood-stained mouth opens against it, his warm tongue darting out to lick the blood away and Gaetan moans as though he’s been run through. He leans in to kiss it away, licking away the acid-rust tang, tangling their tongues together to share the taste. 

Letho groans beneath him, hips jerking and driving his cock even deeper into the tight clench of Gaetan’s body, setting off lightning sparks of pleasure that seem to ricochet up and down Gaetan’s spine. 

He starts to move again; experimentally at first, then with more purpose when he hears the noises he can pull from the man below him.

Letho doesn’t whine, doesn’t writhe, but he groans, he pants, and the sight of him - lips rouged with blood, a wide and aching tenderness in the black pools of his pupils - makes him into one of the most incredible things Gaetan has ever seen. He lifts his hips, drops down again, relishes the way the movement jogs that incredible place inside him, and punches the air from his lungs. Like this he’s in control and Letho makes no move to take it from him and the power of his position brings with it a fierce kind of protectiveness; he will never betray this trust Letho has given him, never.

“Gaetan” Letho gasps suddenly, eyes wide and full of something that may very well be called wonder, and he’s done for. 

Gaetan cums with a howl, a feral sound that feels punched from him, nails digging bloody gouges into the meat of Letho’s chest as he does. He’s a being made of fire, a single raw-edged nerve, and he thinks he may black out for a moment with the sheer agonizing pleasure of it, back bending nearly double as all he can stand to do is hold on for dear life as Letho jerks against him, within him, once twice more and finds his peak as well. 

Gaetan isn’t sure how Letho gets them into bed but somehow he manages it. It seems as though he blinks and suddenly he’s warm beneath a richly appointed collection of blankets, held close and gentle against Letho’s chest with one of the Viper’s broad hands rubbing gentle circles against the scarred skin of his back. 

“Think you broke my brain” he mumbles, nipping at the peaked bud of Letho’s nipple in retribution just to feel the Viper shudder “There are easier ways to kill me you know”

Letho laughs, a great full-bellied thing, and Gaetan goes warm at the sound of it. He has to kiss Letho again just to shut him up, feeling wrung out and satisfied in a bone-deep way he didn’t even know was possible. 

“Don’t wanna kill you” Letho says. 

Gaetan snorts, rolling so he’s pillowed on Letho’s shoulder. 

“Make it a holiday. I think that’s the first time anyone has ever said that about me”

There’s a beat of silence, both of them too comfortable adrift in the afterglow to move much just yet. Most of the candles have burned down and the room is comfortably dim, the air thick with the scent of lust and sex and blood, of him, of Letho - the combination so heady and wonderful it makes Gaetan shiver. He wants all of it, he realizes, all of this. It’s a new and frightening thing, this wanting . He knows from experience that wanting something only opens you up to the possibility of having whatever it is taken from you - never in his life has he had anything he got to keep. But for the first time, he’s not afraid of the magnitude of his own desire. Perhaps this time he can have something of his own. 

“You know I loved you from the first moment you sidled up to my fire and jumped into that tree and asked me to bust some skulls for ya” Letho says, tucking his face into the side of Gaetan’s neck. 

“What do you mean?” he asks, heart beating nearly human-fast in the hollow cavern of his ribs “why?” 

He feels rather than sees Letho’s shrug in the darkness. 

“Why not? You didn’t see the monster of me. You were the first one” 

Gaetan thinks he’s going to shake out of his skin; the guilt, the disgust at himself too much to bear. 

“I’m the monster of the two of us,” he says at last, feeling choked by it. He’s unsure where the need to explain himself is coming from but he’s powerless to stop now that he’s started “‘M gonna snap someday. I can feel it like a buzz at the back of my brain, always. I’m gonna snap and someone is going to have to put me down for good and I can’t...” 

This is the thing that scares him most, the thing that’s dogged him all his life; that Aiden will have to do it. He’d tried to do it himself just to spare everyone the future pain. 

“So?” Letho says, after a long moment during which Gaetan began to fear the Viper was having second thoughts  “Whoever they send for you will have to go through the both of us. If you’re a monster then we can both be. We can be monsters together.”

“I love you,” he says, desperately, too quickly, not quite daring to believe it. 

Letho doesn’t reply, simply holds him close even as Gaetan clings to him in a way that has to be too tight to be comfortable. 

He holds the love in the palms of his hands, gently like he’s never held anything in his life and, for the first time, is held back with the same care.