#like we didn't call him lil scruffy for nothing!!!!!!

[kordeliiius]

Found some old crewmates pencil drawings that I still like, so I decided to color them :)

[ficsandcatsandficsandcats]

Reader being friends with Eskel and late one night they're chilling or w/e and they confess that they like him but like. Fully expecting him to not feel the same and really nervous about ruining the friendship? But eskel likes them too, just didn't want to mess things up as well and it's just really soft???

Fandom: The Witcher Pairing: Eskel x Reader Word Count: 1,851 Rating: G a/n: Part II. It has been 84 years since I wrote a kiss but I hope you like it xo

            It took three weeks to find him after you’d healed.

            You woke in a room you did not know and had thought for a moment you were taken captive. When Yennefer entered the room and welcomed you to Kaer Morhen, and consciousness, she acted as if it were the most natural thing in the world to wake up in the notorious home of the witchers. Then again, for her it probably was.

            She didn’t answer half of your questions and what she did share you’d assumed. Eskel had brought you and immediately called for her (“Rather impatiently,” she’d sniffed as she said it, though there was a note of respect in her voice.). After Yennefer arrived and you’d been declared stable, he’d left. She didn’t know where and she didn’t know why or if he would be returning. She refused to let you leave until all that was left of your injury was a pale, puckered scar and the warning that it may ache as the seasons changed.

            “Be careful with that one,” she said to you, a final piece of parting advice, “At the best of times a witcher is hard to pin down. Eskel was not at his best when he left here.”

            “You worry about your witcher and I’ll worry about mine,” you’d said coolly, the truth of her words as chilling as the early morning air. You began your trek, focused on the task ahead, but her final words chased after you and echoed in your head long after you’d left the grounds.

            “Is he your witcher, though?”

-----

            Eskel absentmindedly scratched the goat’s scruffy chin as his mind replayed memories he had long since given up repressing. The harder he tried to forget the brilliant red of your blood on his hands or the grey tinge to your skin when he laid you on his bed, the more strongly they returned. His new plan was to surrender to it as he had so many other painful memories that haunted him. He knew it was cowardly to leave but he hadn’t been able to make himself stay. It was a poor excuse but he didn’t have a better on to offer. People praised the witchers for their strength and courage but what was a monster to the loss he’d nearly suffered? The goat wriggled off of his lap and bounded away and Eskel rose quickly to go after it lest it was trying to fight another of its kind. He’d gotten as far as his knees when he froze.

            He’d grown used to seeing you in unexpected places. Moments before your near death and after, but never like this. Never with this expression on your face, half-joy and half-fear. You’d never looked afraid of him before. He stayed in place and watched as you moved closer. This could be witchcraft, he knew, but before long it was too late to fight it as you stood in front of him and when your hand tentatively reached out and touched his face as it had in what felt like another lifetime, he didn’t care.

            “You’re a real bastard,” you said, though your tone of voice lost all of its bite as soon as they left your lips. You had begun to give up hope that you’d find him, and filled with a deep dread that when you did he simply wouldn’t care. Your fingers moved to his lips, softer than you’d expected, and then pulled away.

            “Well?” you demanded.

            “Are you really here?” he asked, a note of awe in his voice.

            “Don’t be so surprised, Eskel, you look as if you’ve seen a ghost,” you said, falling back on sarcasm as the reunion you’d imagined began to dissolve. You weren’t sure what you’d expected. After all, he’d left of his own accord. And he hadn’t asked you to find him.

            “I thought you might be,” he confessed, “I dreamt it a hundred times. Thought maybe Yennefer had been mistaken and you’d come for me one day.”

            You opened your mouth to make a joke about coming for him, more out of discomfort at the strangely vulnerable look in his eyes than any genuine desire you felt at that moment, but before you could speak he wrapped his arms around your waist and pulled you in close. His head pressed into your stomach and you rested your arms around his shoulders. One hand slid into the coarse, brown hair, brushing it out of his face as he wordlessly embraced you. When he finally looked back up at you there were tears shining in his golden eyes.

            “Eskel…,” you began, feeling slightly ridiculous for being so nervous but also knowing better than most that there were no guarantees in this world. Men didn’t usually drop to their knees and cry over people they felt nothing for, but witchers were not men. And Eskel was not like most witchers. He watched you expectantly, arms falling to gently rest against the backs of your calves as if he couldn’t quite force himself to stop touching you until you asked.

            “Y/N?” he prodded gently after he couldn’t take the silence anymore. You cleared your throat and took a deep breath. Yennefer had asked a question and you needed an answer.

            “Well, when a person nearly dies it makes them think about things. I mean, you probably know, you’ve nearly died a thousand more times than I have…”

            His eyes grew sorrowful and he hung his head, forehead brushing against your belt.

            “I should have moved quicker,” he said, saying aloud the words he’d been chasing in his mind since you’d been struck down, “I should have seen it coming.”

            “Eskel we’ve gone over this, it wasn’t your fault. It’s a natural part of hunting, sometimes people die. Anyway what I meant to say was –”

            “I shouldn’t have let you come,” he said, turning his head back up to look at you, a determined expression you didn’t like settling into his features.

            “I get to make those decisions myself thank you but what I was going to say-”

            “I promised myself I wouldn’t let another get hurt due to my carelessness. I won’t break it again. We’ll find you someplace to be, someplace safer, I’ll talk to Ves-”

            You clasped a hand over his mouth and though he could have easily brushed it aside, he fell silent. The amber eyes looked up into yours, waiting for condemnation or instruction.

            “I am trying to say that I love you,” you said, enunciating each word clearly because you knew you wouldn’t be able to repeat them if he asked. Your heart pounded loudly in your chest as you watched the words sink in, the expectant shifting to curious. The brow furrow and slacken as realization dawned on him, and for a moment he were gazed up at you as if waiting for a caveat. You slowly released your hand from his mouth but still he was speechless.

            “Eskel?”

            “Hmm.”

            Your arms slackened and you forced your spine straight though your body wanted nothing more than to crumple in on itself.

            “I value your friendship and if I’ve ruined it I would never forgive myself but obviously you don’t have any obligations and gods please don’t try to let me down gently or go along with anything because of some misplaced sense of guilt because I would rather look at Roach the wrong way in Geralt’s presence than make you feel… burdened with my love or whatever we want to call it we don’t have to call it love we don’t have to call it anything in fact we can just-”

            He pressed one finger softly against your lips and you fought the sudden urge to slide it into your mouth. His mouth quirked into a smile and you saw a glint in his eyes as he shook his head. Amusement, and something more. Something that gave you hope.

            “So many words, pretty girl,” he murmured, caressing your bottom lip with his thumb, “There are so many words for what I feel. But right now I’d just like to kiss you, by your leave.”

            He felt your heart skip a beat but he waited for your answer, given in a series of surprised blinks and then an eager head nod.

            Eskel had thought long and hard about the many different ways your first kiss may go. He’d imagined them brusque and passion driven or soft and practically chaste or even accidental, lips brushing at a glance and then going back for more at the recognition of how right it felt for them to be together. He closed his eyes and tilted his face up in one fluid motion, lips finding yours instinctively. Your lips were chapped from the journey and cold from the evening air and a goat bleated indignantly in the background and it was perfect. His arms wrapped back up around your waist as your hands clasped his face. He didn’t wince as your fingers ran against his scar or when your tongue brushed up against a rough, sword-hewn edge of his mouth. He let you in, yielding to you with a soft sigh that you swallowed, rolling it into a moan as you moved your body even closer. He pulled back, placing a quick kiss on your nose as he did before pressing his forehead against yours. His hair fell into his face and you reached up and tenderly brushed it back, tracing the strong contours of his jaw and cheekbone and chin.

            “I lo- I have loved you, Y/N,” he breathed the words, a final submission.

            “How long?” you asked, the warmth of the words sinking deep into your bones and filling you with a soft, radiant happiness unlike anything you’d ever felt before.

            “I don’t know,” he admitted with a shy smile, “The day I met you? When you made Lil’ Bleater a flower crown to match your own at the festival? Every time you scowled at me when I tried to shrug off your healing? I love you in so many ways it feels as natural as the tides, building and growing but never truly more or less. Just in different forms. The only constant I have for you is my love. I hope that’s enough. I hope I…”

            His words trailed off but you saw their meaning in his amber eyes.

            “It’s everything,” you answered, “You’re everything.”

            The tears that came unbidden to his eyes were happy but you brushed them away just as tenderly as any other and when he kissed you again he pulled you down to the ground next to him, eager to give as much of himself as you wished to take.

-----

Yennefer was woken by the sound of insistent cooing. She rolled over to face it, gently extracting Geralt’s arm from her side to reach out to the pigeon that had alighted on the window. As soon as she loosed the note from its leg, it jutted away again. Cautiously she unrolled the tiny piece of parchment and smiled at its contents.

            Yes.