To Love and Be Loved
A/N: Pure humour (and fluff!) with our favourites. Akela is 17.
Summary: Geralt and Yennefer aren't exactly the most well-behaved parents when it comes to Akela and teenage boys.
Akela would have thought things would calm down after they met Yennefer and she half-joined the… slightly dysfunctional family.
Geralt was the father, of course he was, and therefore it was practically his duty—and most likely his pleasure—to drive off any boy who even so much as looked her way.
Yennefer, however… well, after their first meeting, Akela would've expected her to most certainly be the type to encourage her in the romantic side—which was very few and far between, thanks to Geralt—of her life.
Since that day in what Akela had so eloquently called Yennefer's whore house, they'd grown closer, in a way Akela wouldn't have ever thought herself capable of receiving. The idea of a mother after being raised by so many men was a wild idea. Even so, Yennefer seemed more placid than Geralt, and certainly not as protective, which was proved wrong in ways Akela never even noticed. This time, however…
She should've expected it.
Geralt was as protective as any father, so it was only natural that Yennefer would therefore be as protective as any mother.
Jaskier… was an asshole, but Jaskier wasn't important.
Geralt and Yennefer were.
Sage was, too.
They clearly didn't think so, but Akela did. He was a sweet boy, with a young, handsome face and bright eyes that she knew would tell a thousand stories in years to come. She'd wished to be a part of those stories for a moment. Just a moment. A beautiful moment where he had his hand on the back of her head and a smile on those lips. The lips she'd been moving in to kiss, eyes gently closed and heart fluttering wonderfully in her chest.
And the lips she'd been pulled away from quite swiftly with a rush of magic to her chest.
Sage cried out as he was pushed against the bed in the room she'd taken him to after an hour of wandering around the quaint village. Jaskier had likely been at a tavern, drinking himself to song, and Geralt and Yennefer, after months of not crossing paths, had more than likely been doing something Akela wished never to think of.
Once she'd stopped stumbling over her own feet, her head snapped up to see Geralt and Yennefer standing by the forced-open door, a hand each held out, tendrils of magic encircling them both, looks of pure stone on their faces. Geralt glanced first at her and then to Sage, but Yennefer's harsh gaze was fixed entirely on the boy, and Akela began to feel very concerned for his safety, with good and experienced reason.
"Wait! Stop!" she shouted, rushing over to where Sage was scrambling to his feet. She stood protectively in front of him, glaring at the two. "What the fuck do you think you're doing?"
Geralt tilted his head to the side, but nevertheless slowly pulled his arm back down to fold across his chest with the other. "I could ask you the same thing."
"Except you couldn't," she told him, "because you know full well what I was doing, which was why you barged in here like a couple of manic hunters finally cornering their prey!"
Yennefer smirked, her hand falling limply to her side a second later. "I rather like that analogy."
Akela felt Sage anxiously take her hand where it was held behind her. "Akela, you didn't tell me he was..."
She squeezed his hand to stop him. No, she hadn't told him her guardian was a witcher and his girlfriend a mage—for obvious reasons—but she had a hopeful feeling that wouldn't scare him off, as long as he left the building in one piece.
Her glare intensified on the two still standing precariously at the door. Her jaw clenched and she huffed irritably. "You realise I'm seventeen, yes?"
They looked at each other. "What about it?" Geralt asked.
"I'm not seven," she elaborated, feeling déjà vu.
For the briefest of moments, a flicker of something akin to hurt crossed the witcher's face, but it disappeared in a second and returned to the steely expression it had been before.
Yennefer stepped forward and Akela moved back, glaring at her in warning as she spoke. "You're still a child compared to us. Too young for boys," she said with a raised eyebrow, before those violet eyes snapped to Sage's terrified ones and all but bore into them.
Groaning, Akela's grip on Sage's hand tightened and—with the slightest hint of pushed-down anxiety—she pulled him in front of her. He gasped, but other than that seemed to trust her well enough. "Geralt, Yennefer, this is Sage. He's seventeen, like me, and very much not a monster." With that, she held up his hand, dirty from work, and lifted his lips high enough to show his teeth, ignoring his halfhearted protests. "There," she said with an air of finality, "no fangs! No claws! Perfectly, beautifully human."
And he was. Human. It'd been a small light in a big darkness to find him. She'd been growing bored, aching to return to the road, which explained why she hadn't been as wary of a stranger as she had been when Sage asked her if she was alright as she'd seemed a bit lost… but the hour she'd spent with him, discussing his work on his farm and her less-than-ordinary life quenched any distant worries she may have had. But she knew he wasn't dangerous. Perhaps a bit ditsy, but she seemed to like that about him. The way he stuttered around her and made sure he was smiling every time she happened to look in his direction… It felt like that should mean something. She didn't have any experience with romance, but she'd seen it.
She smiled at him, hoping to reassure him, and he gave her a hesitant one back, though there was still a fear in those eyes that she hated to see, so she dragged him towards the door.
Geralt stepped in front of it, burly arms still crossed over his chest.
Akela glared at him.
He glared back.
Sage fidgeted.
Yennefer was silent, immensely enjoying the show.
Geralt hummed. "Do you have a penis?" he asked Sage.
The boy spluttered and Akela, quite honestly, couldn't have looked more mortified.
"U-uh, y-yes? Ob-obviously?"
Geralt nodded once and turned to the girl as though all her questions and his suspicious had been confirmed. "There's my problem.
"Mine, too," Yennefer spoke up.
"There's our problem," he corrected. "I don't give a shit how human he is. He's a boy. A teenage boy. And you're a teenage girl. Those two are a…" He trailed off, supposedly looking for the right words. "Displeasing combination."
She sniffed once. "Well, like you said, that's your problem, not mine, so, if you don't mind, Geralt, move your idiotic ass—"
"Akela," came his growl, which she promptly ignored.
"—out of the way so I can take Sage safely back to his family and advise his poor parents to keep their doors and windows locked for the rest of their lives in case my over-protective guardian and his dear friend come to murder their son viciously in his sleep for daring to touch me." She stared at him firmly and saw him glance a little unassertively over her head at Yennefer.
"Keep it in your pants," he told the boy, who hastily nodded. "And do not lay a finger on her again."
"Uh, yes, Sir."
That was the best she was going to get at this moment, so she stayed silent. He grumbled and moved to the side, sparing one more ominous look at Sage, who winced terribly.
"Thank you," Akela said with as sweet a smile as she could muster. She spun suddenly, confusion in her eyes, and stared at them both. "How did you even know we were in here?" she asked cautiously.
Yennefer shrugged, still clearly irked by the sight of the boy tugging a little desperately at Akela's hand. "We were… tipped off, you might say."
"Tipped off by who—"
A low growl emanated from her throat as she turned at the suddenly obvious realisation. Letting go of Sage, she strode determinedly off in the direction of the tavern.
"Julian Alfred Pankratz! You're supposed to be on my side!"
