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It feels like a dream, but Geralt’s dreams have never been as sun-soaked as this. Dandelion has scouted out a patch of tiles in Corvo Bianco’s fields, an old worker’s pavillion stripped of its roof but still partially shaded by an overgrown olive tree, good for spreading out a thick blanket and sharing a meal—the kind of hedonistic behavior the bard has encouraged him into since retirement. Geralt lazes on the sunwarmed stone, feeling everything like a housebroken tomcat, almost overwarm between the two bodies bracketing him. Dandelion and Regis share grapes and gossip over him as he rests, and occasionally someone tucks an errant strand of hair behind his ear, or will rest their hand where his linen tunic has been rucked up, thumb tracing patterns onto his skin.
He can hear them speak but can’t take it in, half-asleep and relaxed as he is—his subconscious has long since stopped registering them as a threat, and so their voices wash over him like a babbling stream. Occasionally they talk as if he’s listening, and he grunts and hums a response. From the light dappling his eyelids he can tell hours have passed since they broke fast at mid-morning, picking through the basket of fresh bread and soft cheeses that Marlene packed, but he knows his lovers can chatter on long after sundown. There are nights where Geralt curls between them while they yammer on about astronomy and alchemy and math and music theory, and in the morning they’re still following some impossible-to-discern tangent, Dandelion yawning into Geralt’s chest with a smile as Regis speaks animatedly enough for the both of them.
He can smell rain on the horizon. The kind of summer storm that boils up from the heat of the afternoon before dumping warm rain down by the bucketfull. He'll have to gather them up and bring them inside before too long, or they’ll all be thoroughly soaked. Well, he’ll at least have to make an attempt, though he knows how it’ll end. They’ll wheedle him into laying back down as they try and fail to wrap up the threads of their conversation. By then the deluge will be unavoidable, even if Geralt carries Dandelion over his shoulder like a squawking, wiggling potato sack and they sprint inhumanly fast through the vineyard. They’ll drip puddles onto Corvo Bianco’s tiles as they pile into the bedroom, stripping soaked clothes off each other and wringing out locks of wet hair. They’ll fall into bed, and Dandelion and Regis will continue their conversation until Geralt reduces at least one of them to moans. But afterwards their burbling stream will continue, meandering as ever, as fingers comb out knots from Geralt’s hair or scratch down his spine.
Someone presses a gentle kiss to his shoulder, a chaste, almost absentminded brush of lips against linen. A cool wind rustles the olive tree, making the dappled light dance. Yes, he’ll have to gather them up soon, herd them inside. But not yet.