We'll have my usual type of 'storytelling' meaning there is no real story, just two the two dumdums learning about cultural differences, getting used to each other etc. Your perfect toilet break read or whatever.
Fast food fondness, December 1282Marlene had not been overly thrilled at the idea of leaving her sanctum, the kitchen, to Kit.
"I promise, I won't ever again put the sugar pot where the salt pot is meant to be stored," she begged her. "I didn't do it on purpose, you know that!" In the end Marlene relented. After all she liked Kit and a ruined pie was not going to change that.
"You know, we could also just not put salt and sugar into identical pots…" Kit suggested but sighted and gave up when she only got a stern gaze in response. "Okay, got it. I'll never again mess with your mise en place." When Marlene left the room, Kit whispered to Geralt: "I'd expect this degree of stubbornness from some Michelin-level cook. They'd probably give her three stars alone because they'd be scared of getting that stare form her." She shuddered.
Geralt smiled at the odd dynamic that had been brought into his home. "I have not understood a word of what you just said. Just… just do what it is you wanted to do." He pressed a kiss on her cheek and left her to her own devices.
Kit had been wanting to make one of her favorite meals for him for a while now. It had been a little bit of a hassle to get tomatoes at this time of year which had put her plans on hold until she had been able to get some from the royal greenhouses. Geralt's garden was catered exclusively to his needs concerning his potions but Kit had already asked him to make some room for vegetables next year.
She was still getting used to food not being widely available everywhere and at any time. Geralt remembered a conversation that they had a few days prior over lunch.
"So, you're telling me that whatever you need, you just go to one of these supermarkets and it'll be there?"
"Yes."
"Everything?"
"Mostly, yes. Seasonal foods will be a lot cheaper and also fresher since they didn't have to make their way halfway around the world." Geralt looked at her, so utterly fascinated by the idea of plenty of food being always accessible that he chewed on his empty fork without noticing.
"Even cheese?" he asked.
"All kinds of cheeses."
"And meat?"
"Whatever your heart desires."
"But you probably have to go there first thing in the morning before they are sold out?" he prodded with a raised eyebrow.
"Not really. Most supermarkets in my area are open from seven in the morning to nine or even ten at night. If they ever run out of stock it's either because something is on sale or because a global pandemic causes people to think that toilet paper is going to be the new currency, leading them to stock up unreasonable amounts of it. Heaven forbid the stupid toilet paper runs out, it'll be the end of civilization as we know it." Kit rolled her eyes.
"What's toilet paper?" The term perplexed Geralt. In his mind, these two words simply would not fit together.
Kit sighted. "Thin, soft paper that we use to wipe our butts with after, you know... Flush it down the drain with whatever just came out of… us."
Geralt pondered for a moment. "Do I understand correctly that you use paper to remove shit?"
"Exactly that."
"Paper is expensive!" he exclaimed in shock while gesticulating with his arms. "What's wrong with you people?"
Kit looked at him pitifully. "You know nothing, Jon Snow…"
"What…" He was not even sure how to respond, his expression stuck somewhere between exasperation and shock. Her calm smile did nothing to improve the situation. "But I did understand that reference," he added frustrated while pointing his empty fork at her. Kit had become his favorite riddle. Whenever he had finally understood something about her and her background, five new things popped up that would reliably confuse him.
Kit put her fork down. "Look, it's a world of plenty. Plenty of things and plenty of things that are very different from what you get here. Just believe me when I say that toilet paper is an appropriate way to deal with bowel movements." She shook her head. "It fascinates me to no end that you chose to focus on this detail and not the fact that we are able to ship food around the entire world and have it arrive in stores freshly without it perishing along the way. Hey, we have super sophisticated supply chains, we invented freezers and fridges to keep food fresh, but sure, focus on what we wipe our butts with..."
Defeated, Geralt rested his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling. "I have so much to learn about you still."
A mischievous grin spread across Kit's face. "It would be terribly boring if you hadn't. For me at least."
In the end Kit had given in and had told him more about the mysterious toilet paper and after that the whole issue had not quite shocked him as much anymore.
While he was brooding over some paperwork on the big dining table, he heard the clatter of pots, something being stirred, something else being chopped. She had not even told him what kind of meal she intended to present him with.
After a while he noticed that it had become eerily silent.
"Everything okay in there?" he shouted without looking up.
"We're good," she claimed confidently through the closed door.
Shortly after, the smell of something delicious hit him. Kit poked her head out of the kitchen.
"This small oven for bread is perfect, exactly what I needed." She was practically giddy with excitement. "Clear the table, it'll be done in a few minutes."
Geralt's stomach had started to rumble and he hastily grabbed his papers and stuck them into a drawer somewhere in the bedroom.
When Kit finally brought out the food on a wooden cutting board, he was not quite sure what he was looking at.
"It's so… flat. And round," he commented while water gathered in his mouth.
"If a pizza isn't flat, you did it wrong."
"Pizza?"
She put the food down and started to slice it halfway through in a quick and graceful motion that told Geralt that she had done this countless times before. She then separated the halves again with a few more precise cuts, each accompanied by a crunching sound, until they were left with eight triangular pieces.
"A base of bread, covered in tomato sauce and cheese with any sort of topping you like. We'll have salami and garlic today." She removed one piece, by flipping the knife on its side and lifting the cheese covered triangle with the flat side of the blade, hoisting the food onto Geralt's plate. The cheese, golden and full of air bubbles, stretched into thin ropes that eventually snapped. She repeated the action for herself, grabbed her slice and started eating.
"Not cutlery," Geralt was pleased to acknowledge.
"You can use cutlery of course," she explained between two bites, "but I might have to leave you for another man if you do that."
"Is that how you usually choose your men? You judge them by their use of eating utensils?" He smirked and remembered the times when he would carry a spoon in the shaft of his boot.
"Absolutely. Bonus points if you manage to eat without hands."
"What about feet?"
"Even more points for creativity."
Geralt grabbed his piece and tentatively bit off the pointed end. The crunchy crust of the dough, combined with the melted cheese and the seasoning she had used, united themselves to what had probably been his best culinary experience to date. The fact that one was supposed to eat it with their hands only made it taste better.
"Delicious," he mumbled with his mouth still full. Kit watched him, beaming with pride.
They might have been different on so many levels but they both enjoyed making the other happy, one way or another. Weird doings with paper seemed to be a small price to pay for that, Geralt decided.
"You must make this again sometime soon," he declared after the last bit of pizza had been devoured. He thought that a world with food so delicious must have been a heavenly place without violence, without hate. He suddenly remembered the way she had handled the knife.
"You never told me what kind of weapon one carries in your world," he asked as a, at least to him, logical result of the conclusions he had drawn in his mind.
"How did you get from pizza to weapons?" Kit furrowed her brow. "But to answer your question: preferably sarcasm." She cocked her head. "Seriously though, what for would I need a weapon?"
"How did you defend yourself before you came here?"
She contemplated the question. "I'm still going with sarcasm. We don't really use weapons. Not where I live anyway. It's just not necessary." This confused Geralt so much that he had trouble putting it into words. "But I guess if I had to choose something, it would be a cast iron pan."
He shook his head in horror and disbelief when she started arguing its benefits.
"It's very handy and a woman with a pan in her hand is nothing most people would immediately identify as a threat. But you can still deliver a decent blow with it," she reasoned.
"You can't be serious."
"Well, obviously I can, but right now I am not. I don't do weapons, it's as simple as that."
Geralt rumbled. "I don't like this."
"And I don't like the absence of democracy in your governments but what can you do?"
It was something that he had been contemplating for a while. The longer she stayed with him, the better he got to know her, the more he liked her. In fact, he never wanted to go back to a life without her. But a fear, that something might happen to her whenever he was not present, had etched itself into his mind. By their way of living, it was a ridiculous fear. They spent most of their time together and when Kit worked at the palace, Geralt would go with her and then pick her up later on. Kit was probably one of the most well-protected people in the duchy. And yet…
In a way that allowed no further discussion on the topic, he announced: "Tomorrow we'll start training. I will show you the basics so you can defend yourself. You will learn how to fight."
She would not learn how to fight.
Geralt's sudden desire to train her had been met with a thoroughly confused stare by Kit the night before. But eventually she had agreed. Unfortunately, it turned out that in order to learn how to fight, much more than the mere agreement to be trained was needed.
Kit repeatedly failed to follow Geralt's instructions. Her body, it seemed, refused to process even the simplest flow of movements necessary to wield a sword. He had given her a stick for training purposes and tried to show her some basic footwork, their footprints all over the first snow of the year, but she was wholly unable to repeat any of it without making mistakes or forgetting the order of steps altogether.
"I'm sorry, Geralt. I've always found this kind of stuff difficult. I never managed to learn anything that required a choreography. Or rhythm. Or coordination of limbs," she admitted after they had been outside for a little over two hours. "I learned nothing, literally nothing, from years of taking self-defense classes. I just can't… I'm not made for this." Geralt felt sorry seeing her look so defeated and freezing in the cold. He did not expect her to excel at fighting but he was surprised just how badly she was holding up. While she was fragile compared to him, he had never seen her shy away from lifting things heavier than he thought she should be able to carry, had never gotten the impression that she tried to avoid any kind of dirty work. For as long as he had known her, she had shown nothing but determination. But maybe, he thought, I got it wrong.
"I'm always with you anyway. Can't you just protect me?" The way she looked at him, with so much trust and admiration in her gaze, made him weak. Happiness overwhelmed him on hearing that she saw no issue with putting her life in his hands.
He sighted and pulled her into a tight embrace. "I will always protect you. It would just make me feel better if I knew that you could look after yourself. At least a little."
"I'm afraid that's not going to happen." She cuddled into him as the cold was lapping on her skin even beneath her thick, woolen cape. He ran his hands up and down her back as he felt her shiver.
"I have an idea," Geralt announced after a while. "Let's give it one last try."
Just an hour later they found themselves on the tournament grounds. Everything was still covered in fresh snow as the area was only used for a few weeks every summer when the annual tournament took place.
"Stance. Feet apart, legs straight," Geralt instructed Kit as he pushed her feet slightly apart by positioning his own leg between hers. "Rotate your body, back straight. Left arm outstretched, loose grip on the bow. Pull the string with the other hand, elbow on the same height as the rest of your arm. And shoulders down." He put his hands on her shoulders, to ease her into lowering them before he rested his arms beneath hers to support them. While archery had never been part of his witcher training, he knew the basics. Geralt suddenly thought of Milva. She would have been a much better teacher, he mused.
"How do I target?" Kit asked, trying her best to stand still.
"You don't. You need to get a feel for how the arrow will fly."
"I'm getting a feel from something very different right now." She turned her head towards him, an expectant look on her face.
"Don't look at me, look at the targets, focus."
"Geralt?"
"Yes?"
"How am I supposed to focus on anything if you're breathing down my neck like this?" she huffed.
"Can't help it." He shrugged his shoulders while a roguish grin spread across his face as he inched even closer to her. He felt her trembling lightly when his beard scratched over the sensitive skin on her cheek, his lips tingling with her energy as he let them graze over a small patch of skin on her temple, all while pressing his middle a little closer to her.
Kit, it seemed, had enough of his distractions and unceremoniously dropped the bow into the snow to wrap her arms around him. "If you distract me, at least do it properly."
"I don't usually accept orders but…" he said as he bent down to kiss her. And for a few moments, while hungry lips met, the issue at hand was completely forgotten.
Kit, now finally warmed up, gave it a few shots but not a single one hit even close to the targets.
"I mean… the last one nearly grazed the target. That's something, don't you think?" she shrugged, not seeming overly concerned with her lack of skills.
Pissing someone off by trying and failing to injure them was a surefire way to die, Geralt thought while running one hand over his face in despair.
"Any alternatives?" she asked.
"Maybe we do need to go back to the frying pan…" Geralt grumbled.
"Or maybe we don't and we simply accept the fact that fighting isn't for me?" Kit suggested.
Geralt had never seen her fail at something before and he got the impression that it bothered him more than it did her.
"Geralt?"
"Hm?" He was standing behind her, had his arms wrapped around her waist, his face buried in her hair.
"Have you ever… I mean… How were the others? Did they know how to fight?" Her voice was timid as if she feared the answer.
Geralt thought about the women he had been with. "No. But they were sorceresses so they had their own means of defending themselves," he admitted reluctantly. Even before he had opened his mouth he knew it was a bad answer. Thanks to Dandelion's allusions to Geralt's former life, he knew very well that Kit had a certain kind of respect for these sorceresses that she was wholly unfamiliar with but who, in her mind, were much better, stronger and more beautiful than she was. She had never said anything about it, but Geralt had noticed her reactions whenever they were mentioned: Her heartbeat would pick up for a moment and there would be a pained expression in her eyes for a fraction of a second. He had never acted on it though, deciding that, as long as she did not say anything aloud, he would not make her talk about the issue.
Lying to her, however, was not an option. That was one of the few things Kit had asked of him in the very beginning. She had told him she was sick of learning details about his past life from Dandelion's songs that were occasionally played here and there.
"It's like I'm dating a celebrity. You might not have tabloids here but these songs are about as annoying," she had said.
"Did you just call me a celery?" he had asked, only to learn that a celebrity was not in fact a celery with an extra syllable added for fanciness – because he felt like that might be something Kit's people would do.
Geralt felt her slump a little in his arms. "Oh," was all she said.
It pained him to think that he had made her feel bad about herself when she had no reason to. She had been forced to rebuilt her life from scratch, something that required a kind of strength that not many people had. And she had done it with grace and kindness, something that he greatly admired. But what he liked most about her was that he was the main recipient of her kindness and he would do anything to keep it this way.
"It's not only that though," he continued cautiously, turning her in his arms so that he could reach for her cheek and caress it softly with his thumb. She averted her gaze, "You are very important to me, much more important than anybody else ever was." Her excited heartbeat told him that he had said the right thing after all. "Naturally, I worry about you. I would worry about you still even if you were the most proficient fighter or sorceress on the continent." Maybe Yennefer had once meant to him as much as Kit did now, but neither she nor anybody else could ever make him stay. If Geralt had managed to stay anywhere for a woman, it was never for long and more often than not, the urge to leave overcame him early on. For the first time in his life, Geralt did not feel like leaving. In fact, he felt the exact opposite. The more time they spent together, the more he felt drawn to her. She had created a weird balance of being with him all the time, showering him with love and affection, while never asking him to change or do anything for her. He thoroughly enjoyed this new experience – their love and their intimacy that seemingly came without a price, without any powerplays.
"I'm sorry. This was a stupid idea."
Kit finally looked up to him. He could tell she had been close to tears.
"You know," she finally said, "I worry about you, too. Every time you go out to hunt or investigate, I fear that something will happen to you and that I won't be able to fix you fast enough. And I hate it." She rested her face in the crook of his neck. "But there's nothing to be done about it. So we both have to live with fear. It's fair, don't you think? We'll both suffer a little while worrying for the other." Geralt's hand ran over her back.
"Would you prefer it if I stopped being a witcher entirely?"
"Maybe. But it wouldn't be right. It is what you are after all. And how selfish would I have to be to ask you not to save people in need? No, I don't think I can ever ask that of you."
"Then what do we do?"
"Maybe we need to get used to it. If you really think about it, we haven't known each other for that long. I have only lived in this world for a few months. I hope… I think once some time has passed it will become easier."
"I don't think I'll ever stop worrying about you. But I suppose you're right." It had not even been half a year since he had found her but Geralt was not able to remember having ever been happier.
"There are normal people here who don't have you, or magic and who still manage to live. It can't be that difficult." She intertwined her fingers with his while leaning against his chest. He squeezed her hands and lowered his chin on her head.
"Are you not scared? You used to be terrified at the idea of monsters."
"I used to. Still am, to a degree. Wouldn't want to meet any if I can avoid it. But you were right after all. There aren't as many. And along the way I got used to the idea." She made him look at her. "And I have you. You make me feel safe. In fact, you make it very hard for me to be afraid of anything happening to me. What more could I ask for?"
A lot, he thought. "You are a strange woman."
"We wouldn't be standing here if I wasn't, would we?" Her expression changed. "But even if something were to happen me… These past few months have been fantastic. If I'd die now, I'd die happier than I've ever been."
"Please don't say that," he urged her with a tortured expression.
"But it's true. I had a comfortable and safe life. But here, nothing is safe. I'm forced to live differently now, nothing I would have ever done back then. And the risks always turn out to be worth it. Life here is refreshing, I'm actually having fun at work and I love what I do. And you – sometimes you give me this look and it makes me feel like you really see me and that you really… really care about me. This is a dream come true." She pulled his face towards her to kiss him before he was able to protest. "If I were to die now my only regret would be not to be able to spend more time with you."
Geralt stared at her in awe. Somehow, she always knew what to say to put him at ease and he believed every word of it because he was ridiculously, stupidly and unbelievably in love.
"I do not deserve you," was everything he could think of saying while losing a part of him in those blue eyes.
"And yet, here I am." She sighted. "And here I belong. Anybody who has a different opinion on that will have a hard time prying me away from you. If it comes down to it, I'll defend myself with whatever I have. Fingernails, teeth... If I have to, I'll figure out how to kill someone with a butter knife if it means I get to stay with you."
Geralt smiled. Because he believed her without a doubt.
"I won't let it come that far," he said earnestly, as he leaned his forehead against hers.
"Does that mean we can go somewhere warm now?" Kit asked after a moment. "I'm freezing to death – that's something you can't just fight away."
"If I remember correctly, in case of hypothermia one should rid themselves of their clothes and seek each other's warmth."
"God, you're so sexy when you use medical knowledge to make me undress." She kissed him passionately.
"A man should always know his lady's weak spots." As if to prove his point, he started to nibble on her ear lobe, a very prominent weak spot of hers.
Kit giggled. "Okay then, take me home. I have some other spots that need to be thoroughly investigated."
"Investigating is my specialty," he jested as he took her hand and they started walking.
"Private detective Rivia, investigating in between the sheets since… wait, when exactly were you born again?"
And just like that the ease between them had been restored. Geralt even considered that, next time something bothered him, he might talk to her about it first before making rash decisions. But then again, he was not making any promises…