Work Text:
Regis, as always, knew Geralt was coming long before he could see him. No one else ever caused that much commotion on his ward, especially during the long, quiet night shifts. The door to the clinic had opened with a bang, causing one of the nurses at the front desk to gasp loudly.
“Sir, you’re-”
“I’m looking for Regis,” Geralt interrupted. “Is he here?”
“You need to sit down,” the nurse insisted. “You’re bleeding everywhere!”
Regis finished washing his hands and turned off the tap, rolling his eyes. Not once in all the years of knowing Geralt had asking him to sit down ever worked. The man was practically allergic to any position that could be construed as even mildly restful.
“I need to see Regis,” Geralt said again. There was an odd quality to his voice that Regis could not place, almost as though he didn’t understand his own words.
Regis quickly walked down the hallway and opened the door to the waiting room.
Geralt looked terrible. There was a gash on his hairline and down his cheek that were both bleeding sluggishly and Regis could see bruises along his face and his arm. His hair was falling loose from the ponytail he’d gathered it into and his clothes were covered in dirt and leaves and some dark, sludgy substance that Regis strongly suspected was toxic. Most worrying of all was the large red stain blooming on the side of his white shirt, seeming to spread out from under Geralt’s pale, shaking hand where it was pressed against his ribs. He was bleeding, and clearly had been for some time. Witcher physiology or not, he needed to get him stitched up and taken care of as quickly as possible.
“Geralt,” he said from the doorway.
Geralt’s eyes snapped to him and the tight lines around his face softened slightly in relief.
“What on earth happened to you this time, my dear?” Regis mused, stepping forward and slinging one of Geralt’s arms over his shoulders. He wrapped an arm around Geralt’s back, hand resting on his uninjured side, and helped him back toward the hallway, shouldering some of his weight.
“Bad contract,” Geralt said quietly. “It was… I was sloppy. Like a some new fresh-faced idiot straight out of training. Fuck , that hurts.”
Regis guiltily retracted the hand that had been gently probing around the back of Geralt’s head. “Sorry,” he said. “But you seem to have hit your head rather hard. You’ve almost certainly got a concussion. It would’ve smashed a less sturdy man’s skull in.”
Geralt gave a huff that might have been a laugh, if it were under more pleasant circumstances. “It’s fine,” he said. “I have a hard head.”
“On that, my friend, I think I can agree. As would most of your other friends. Notably Yennefer, she always does accuse you of being stubborn and I can’t say I disagree.”
Geralt looked sideways at him as they hobbled down the hallway towards the examination room that Regis had (with equal parts fondness and exasperation) started thinking of as Geralt’s. Regis could have just carried him there and been done with it, but he knew better. For anything short of a life-or-death situation, Geralt would not take kindly to being treated like an invalid. Regis had pointed out, of course, that having a friend with vampiric strength and speed was hardly any good if you weren’t going to take advantage of it from time to time, which had earned him a heartfelt invitation to go fuck himself.
So. Hobbling it was.
“You make fun of all your patients, doc?” Geralt asked.
Regis smiled. “No,” he said. “Only my favorites. Through this door, please, and have a seat in your usual spot.”
Geralt did as he was told, moving to sit on the exam table with slow, deliberate movements. Regis began to gather his kit.
“So,” Regis said. “What happened?”
Geralt sighed. “Fuckin’ rotfiends. I was expecting a pack of ghouls, maybe an alghoul or two. Instead, I found an entire colony of rotfiends.”
“Are those the ones that explode upon death?” Regis asked. He handed him a small vial of Swallow that he had taken to storing in a locked cabinet. “Drink this.”
“Those are the ones,” Geralt said. He took the vial and drank it. He grimaced at the taste. “One of them was big. Weirdly big for a necrophage. Sent me flying into a rock. Banged my head, lost my footing, and that was enough for one of them to get the upper hand and knock me to the ground.”
“You are fortunate to have all your limbs intact,” Regis said. “And you’ve been bleeding too long. You look like a wraith. We have to get some fluids back in you or you’re in for a very unpleasant night while all that regenerates.”
Geralt laid back on the exam table with a groan.
“Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” Regis teased. “One night here with me and I’ll send you home right as rain tomorrow morning. You’ve slept in worse places. Shirt off, if you please, let me have a look at your side.”
Geralt sat up, wincing and pressing his hand against his side. He grumbled under his breath, swearing to himself as he tried to wriggle free of his shirt and his jacket without his concussion making him dizzy or the gash in his side doubling him over.
He managed to get one arm free of his jacket after a moment and looked down, staring rather forlornly at the other one.
Regis took pity on him. “Would you like some help?”
Geralt sighed, closing his eyes. “Please.”
Regis stepped forward without further comment, gently tugging off the other sleeve of the jacket and draping it over the back of a nearby chair. He returned to the hem of Geralt’s shirt, gently lifting and helping him to remove first one arm, then the other from the sleeves. Geralt clenched his jaw when Regis lifted the shirt from the wound, murmuring soft encouragements, but gave no other indication of his discomfort.
“There,” Regis said, patting his shoulder gently. “Lie back, please. I’ll stitch this and give you something for the pain, have a look at that concussion, and then you can sleep.”
Geralt nodded, reclining on the exam table and closing his eyes. Regis briefly wondered if his concussion was making him more pliable than usual; getting Geralt to agree to painkillers and rest was usually something of a struggle. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, he shrugged and got to work cleaning and stitching the wound.
Upon a closer inspection, it wasn’t as serious as Regis had initially feared. It was long and jagged, still bleeding sluggishly, but it wasn’t infected as necrophage injuries often were. It wasn’t deep enough to risk any damage to organs or bones and with Geralt’s accelerated healing, it shouldn’t put him out of commission for more than a month. That was still a month longer than Geralt would be happy about, but there was little to be done about that. Perhaps Regis would have to feign needing help with some less strenuous tasks for a few weeks, or call Ciri or Dandelion and enlist their help in keeping him distracted.
As he finished wrapping a bandage around the area, Regis frowned. Geralt seemed unusually pale. His hands had gone nearly as bone-white as his hair, and his cheeks were sallow and wan. Regis closed his eyes for a moment, straining his hearing.
There. Geralt’s heartbeat, steady but too slow, too weak.
Regis sighed. “I had hoped that stopping the bleeding and gettting you on a saline drip would suffice,” he said. “I know a transfusion with human blood won’t exactly be a comfortable experience for you, but I think it’s for the best.”
Regis was met with silence where he had expected a complaint.
“Geralt?” he said, moving beside his head and placing a hand on Geralt’s face. “Wake up, my friend. Look at me.”
Geralt grumbled and opened one eye blearily. “Wassamatter?”
“I can’t tell with all the toxins in your system,” Regis said, sniffing the air. “You took too many potions that haven’t cleared yet. What’s your type?”
Geralt blinked up at him in confusion. “Currently? Talks enough for three, makes killer moonshine, happens to be a vampire.”
For a moment, they stared at each other in bewildered silence. Then, the comment clicked in Regis’s mind and sent a small, excited shiver down his spine. That was undeniably him. He was Geralt’s type? That was a revelation. Not exactly a helpful one at this exact moment, but an exciting and flattering one nonetheless.
Regis silenced the part of his brain that was celebrating loudly and wrangled his focus back to the matter at hand.
“Your blood type, Geralt.”
“Oh.” Geralt blinked again. “Yeah. It’s B positive.”
“Right,” Regis said. “Let’s move you to a more comfortable room and get a transfusion set up. I’m going to get a wheelchair since if you stand right now, I’m fairly certain you’ll fall on your face and you grouch at me when I try to carry you. Stay put.”
Geralt waved a hand at him in what Regis assumed was a gesture of assent. He left the room, quickly alerting one of the nurses that he would need everything for a transfusion in the nearest overnight room, and grabbed one of the wheelchairs. Geralt got in with minimal grumbling and allowed himself to be set up on a bed in an overnight room. Soon, he was reclining in bed with his eyes closed and a needle in his arm.
Regis, who could not deny that he was fretting a little, carefully adjusted the pillow behind him and smoothed his hair off of his face.
“Everything feel alright?” he asked.
Geralt hummed softly, already beginning to drift. Witcher metabolisms were not quite equipped for human blood, so the whole procedure was likely to make him a bit groggy for a few days while his body adapted.
Regis pulled up a chair to the side of the bed, settling in with a sigh.
“You always get yourself into the most interesting of predicaments, my friend,” he said. “Frankly, it’s miraculous you’ve survived as long as you have, getting into scrapes like these.”
“Don’t need miracles,” Geralt argued sleepily. “I’ve got you, don’t I?”
Fondness welled up in his heart. It was so easy to love Geralt at times like this; it always had been. Any time Regis thought perhaps he had rid himself of his feelings, Geralt made an offhand comment that burrowed its way into his heart and made a home there. He had long ago given up trying to stop it, instead choosing to bask in those moments and hold them close. This particular look on Geralt’s face, he knew, would be something he treasured for a long time. Geralt was looking at him with warmth and trust on that dear, confused face and the gentle, simple honesty in his voice was almost too much to handle.
“Yes,” Regis agreed. “You’ve always got me.”
There was silence for a few moments.
“Geralt?”
“Hmm?”
“What did you mean, earlier? When I asked you what your type was?”
Geralt opened one eye and mock-glared at him. “How much more obvious do I have to be?”
“Just a bit more, if you please.”
He gave a very put-upon sigh. “ You , dumbass,” he said. “I meant you. You didn’t know?”
Regis shook his head. “Hoped, perhaps, but never knew,” he said. “Not for sure.”
“Well, now you do,” Geralt said, closing his eyes once more. “It’s you. Always been you.”
“Now hold on—Geralt! You cannot just go to sleep after a declaration like that!”
“Can’t hear you. Sleeping.”
Regis couldn’t help the smile that broke out over his face; not the tight, closed-mouth smile he often restricted himself to at work, but the genuine, toothy grin that Geralt seemed to pull out of him so easily.
He really, truly did love this idiot.
“Fine,” he said, reaching out and taking one of Geralt’s hands in his. “Sleep now, witcher. You’ve earned your rest. But enjoy it while it lasts, because tomorrow morning, you and I are having a conversation . About feelings .”
Geralt made a playful noise of disgust. “I’d rather go wrestle a drowner.”
“Looking like that, I’m not even sure you could wrestle Dandelion, let alone anything with claws,” Regis said. He squeezed Geralt’s hand and gently returned it to the bed, rising from his chair to brush a kiss to Geralt’s forehead. “Rest well, my dear. I’ll be here in the morning.”
“Mmm. Regis?”
“Yes?”
“Thanks.”
“Anytime, Geralt,” he said, tucking the blanket more securely around him. “Anytime.”