A/N: ValmureEld wanted more of Dandelion's moment of "not" panicking, so...here.

Two in a less-than-single bed is actually quite cozy. Granted, Dandelion isn't actually sleeping, but he isn't freezing to death in the draughty attic either with Geralt's body heat to warm him. The most he's managed amounts to a couple hours' nap while treating Geralt as a human pillow, but given how deeply the witcher is sleeping, it appears he doesn't mind.

Really deeply sleeping. It's actually a little odd.

Dandelion adjusts his position, tucks his head closer to the heat of Geralt's chest seeping through his thin shirt, and still the witcher doesn't move. At all. Dandelion's not sure he can even feel him breathing. It takes several seconds longer for the poet to realise that nor can he hear a heartbeat.

His own heart gives a panicked stutter as he straightens up and a hundred terrible thoughts race through his head. Geralt's heart hasn't...stopped, has it? Was it Dandelion's fault? Was he somehow sleeping on the witcher in such a way that it suffocated him? Damn it, they should have stuck with his idea of him taking the floor…

"Geralt?"

Nothing.

Shaking with nerves, Dandelion reaches out a terrified hand to touch Geralt's throat and wonders what the hell he's going to do if the witcher's really dead. He's still warm, right? That's a good sign. What would Shani do if she had a still-warm witcher in front of her who wasn't breathing?

"Come on, Geralt, don't make me answer that," he mutters nervously, and is just about to give up on his confused search for a pulse when he feels a tap against his fingertips.

For a moment, the poet freezes. That was real? He hadn't imagined it?

After what feels like an age, another tap answers him with a "yes".

"Don't do that to me," he chastises the sleeping witcher, but still isn't reassured when he feels just how slow the pulse in Geralt's throat is. He barely has the patience to keep his finger in place long enough to feel it beat again, wondering instead what will happen if he has to go for help and how he's going to explain this.

Was is the potions? Sometime witchers can have a bad reaction to a toxic mix, he knows, though in the dark, Dandelion can't really tell if Geralt looks sick and veiny or not. Better instead then to put to use the talent he knows he can rely upon, and lowers his sharp ear back down to rest on Geralt's chest. It's still warm, and this time Dandelion forces himself to listen for several seconds until he hears a beat. When it comes, the sound is rich and strong and powerful, and the bard's anxiety melts away.

Geralt's heart isn't slow because he's sick. It's because he has no need for it to be fast. What blood Dandelion's own heart takes maybe three or four beats to pump, from the sheer force of it, it sounds that Geralt's can match it in one. Astonishing.

Dandelion closes his eyes in anticipation and lets out a soft, "aha!" when Geralt's heart beats again, the thudding far louder and stranger in many ways than how he'd expect a witcher's heart to sound.

What had he expected from Geralt's heart, he wonders? Something harsh like Geralt's voice, perhaps, or maybe a little rough and unusual like the rest of his appearance, but what he hears, Dandelion can only describe as beautiful. The sound has depth and resonance and a richness of tone less akin to dull percussion and more like a plucked string. Like my lute? the poet muses, or maybe a harp.

Reassured now that Geralt isn't dying, Dandelion knows he could stop listening, yet with his ear still glued to the witcher's chest, he finds he doesn't want to. It dawns on him that Geralt isn't sleeping so deeply because there's something wrong: he simply trusts Dandelion enough that he allows himself to relax fully around him and get a rare night of proper sleep.

That thought fills Dandelion with a rush of warmth as he resumes his close listening. "Incredible," he murmurs softly, waiting for the space between beats so as not to disturb them with his excited utterances. "Simply beautiful."

While Geralt's mutations may be more obvious in the golden flash of his eyes or the milky whiteness of his hair, Dandelion finds the relative obscurity of the witcher's strange heartbeat the most beautiful of all.

He's still muttering his appreciation when several minutes later Geralt at last begins to stir.