#witcher biology shit

[lassieposting]

not to get all emotional about notw again but one thing i love about the single parent vesemir dynamic is that the kaer morons would end up having a completely different training experience to basically every generation of witchers that came before them.

like. netflix!vesemir seems to grow up towards the end of the golden age of witchering. for him personally, witchering seems to still be a lucrative profession - he makes a very robust living, and he can afford to live in the lap of luxury in his off-hours, but he does also admit that he's built his brand on taking only the most dangerous contracts, which will bring in the most money. deglan, however, complains that he's "down two dozen witchers" in one year because they're struggling enough to take employment elsewhere, as sellswords or criminals. he's down enough manpower that he forces ves, his golden child, to join in with training the baby witchers - a chore he's spent most of his adult life skiving with zero consequences. so like. they're not doing great, overall.

but when vesemir was training, there were still plenty of witchers at kaer morhen, with a tried-and-true system for teaching youngsters. he probably would have had a mixture of academic classes (the three Rs, history, politics, languages, maybe some law? everything he'd need to keep out of trouble in various kingdoms once he's on the path), and then both theory and practical classes for things like alchemy, weapons training, monster lore, etc. there's lots of time spent poring over old bestiaries and potion recipes, lots of rote memorisation, before he's ever allowed to try anything out for himself.

(he's old for a newbie - twelve or thirteen and with zero fighting experience - so he's actually in some remedial classes as a kid. he's in the same group as Luka and Sven, both a few years younger, for all his fighting skills, because he's got a lot of catching up to do. at some point, once he's shown enough promise to impress, deglan gets personally involved in his training, gives him extra lessons, etc. It works out for him - he's a fast learner with a natural talent.)

but at the end of notw, kaer morhen is a smoking ruin, and vesemir and the four surviving baby witchers are? basically on the run. they wouldn't be able to go straight home; the humans are still riled up, and there's no way to know that they won't come back to finish the job if they realise some of the witchers survived. ves is an unparalleled fighter, but he's only one man. they'd swarm him, get around him and kill the boys easily. he'd have to give them time to calm down and lose the thirst for mutant blood before even considering bringing the last hope of the wolf school back into potential danger. so they'd be on the road for? quite possibly a long while.

so the kaer morons don't have access to the massive library at kaer morhen during that time. they don't have a bunch of trainers who've become highly educated experts in their respective fields. all they've got is vesemir. and while he's got a working knowledge of all the things a witcher needs to know, he's only an expert in one field, and that's fighting. he's also still got to work to support them, so the amount of time he can actually spend tutoring is, well, limited. they have to learn on the fly, often by trial and error.

they learn what happens when a witcher overdoses on potions the hard way: watching the fallout of vesemir actually doing it to survive a fight. he's sick as a dog for days, heaving like he's trying to bring up his own innards long after there's nothing left in his belly. they're young, but they know witchers aren't supposed to get sick, and it's horrifying for them. they're not entirely sure exactly why he reacted that badly - not like the long lecture on biology that vesemir got when he was in training - but they sure as shit know they don't want it to happen to them.

they learn healing the same way - by the seat of their fucking pants, more often than not. vesemir uses himself as a practical example, because he's never been all that spectacular at the theory side of things - when he's taking post-battle healing potions, he'll explain which ones he's using and why, or if he has a small injury he'll use it as an opportunity to demonstrate how to properly stitch or cauterise a wound. he's grouchy and short-tempered a lot of the time, sore and tired and with a hundred paces he'd rather be than airing his scars to fascinated and grossed-out little boys, but he does his best, because this, this practical shit, this he can do. they'll need this knowledge, eventually. but there are also times where he comes home on the verge of collapse, using the wall to stay upright and struggling to get out of his armour before keeling over into bed, and they have to learn to keep calm and put that new knowledge into practice independently and fix him up themselves.

eskel learns igni early, long before they're sent to nenneke, because sometimes the fire goes out while vesemir is off hunting or scouting or taking a moment to go out of earshot and grieve in fucking peace, and if he doesn't figure out how to relight it, his little brothers will be cold. he's seen ves do it. he knows how to make the sign, more or less. he just figures it out, trying to replicate what vesemir does until it works. he's naturally inclined towards magic, which is probably why it works for him, but he still works it out by himself.

geralt picks flowers for vesemir when they're on the move, between villages. he knows ves is struggling with balancing everything, and he thinks he recognises plants that he's seen in vesemir's alchemy kit, the ones he makes potions out of. he collects as many he recognises as possible, and when vesemir is stabling the horse at the next inn, geralt tugs his sleeve and hands them over. some of them are useful. some of them are useless, and some of them are poison. ves gets down on geralt's level and shows him how to spot the differences between this white flower and that white flower, and geralt gradually brings him fewer things that would probably make him sick.

lambert doesn't initially learn to fight in a safe, structured class with padded armour and a little wooden practice sword like ves did. he learns to fight by picking fights with eskel and geralt, both a few years older, and getting his arse handed to him, until he figures out how to use their bigger size and greater strength against them. by the time they get back to kaer morhen and vesemir has somewhere safe to actually do some proper training, lambert has already become pretty adept at just…getting out of the way of whatever is trying to hit him.

vesemir gets them all little daggers, for when he's not around to protect them - live steel, a big responsibility for a small child. remus watches how vesemir looks after his gear after a hunt and starts to copy him. vesemir oils his sword, remus oils his dagger. vesemir checks his armour for damage or wear and tear, remus checks his clothes for the same. he'll come sit by ves and just. copy him. eventually vesemir starts showing him how to mend a tear in a gambeson courtesy of the business end of a forktail, and he'll matter-of-factly rip a side seam out of a spare shirt so remus can practice fixing something that ves doesn't have to wear into battle again anytime soon.

just? baby witchers who get back to kaer morhen eventually and start their training proper, only to realise that they've learned a bunch of this shit out of order already just from living on the road with vesemir for a year or two, having to see the really ugly side of his job, and trying to make his life easier. witchering 101 baptism of fire edition for all of them

[lycanbucky]

ANOTHER LAST TAG FROM @flowercrown-bard THANK YOU FOR BEING PATIENT WITH ME LOL <3

Five Things I Love to Write

Werewolf/Shapeshifter AUs. Give me that sweet, sweet angst of learning to control your bestial impulses, mastering your new form, and discovering a new depth of understanding for the world around you. (And mourning your sudden intolerance to cocoa.)

Slow burns! Nothing makes me feral faster than characters slowly discovering each other's idiosyncracies, how they fit into each other's lives, and finally getting to realize, "Oh, shit, this is serious, they actually love me back. NOW WHAT."

Lore-heavy fantasy. My favorite part about the media I consume is being taught things about this foreign world. Witcher with its tracking and monster weaknesses, Resident Evil with its virology, Pacific Rim with kaiju biology, Avatar (yes, the James Cameron Avatar) with its ecology and spirituality. Show me how the world works, teach me what it is from the ground up, and prove to me that this information matters. I LOVE breathing that feeling of wonder and awe into a dense story world.

Healing fics. Listen. I love me some emotionally and/or physically broken men. I also love patching them back together with the unstoppable power of love.

Enemies to lovers. If they haven't had a knife at each other's throat, is it really love?

Tagging: @steverogersnotebook @violetcancerian @coaleyed and @hermywolf

[funkzpiel]

I feel like at some point on the road, Jaskier would have been like, 'I thought Witchers didn't need to eat as much as ordinary folks,' and Geralt would have been like, 'Well, we can starve for a lot longer,' and Jaskier would have been kind of irrationally angry about it for a while.

More Geralt whump? Fuck yes. Thank you for the prompt, I love it.

Jaskier didn’t notice – not at first, not for a long time. Despite his frequent travels with the white wolf of Rivia, he had never even thought to ask. Something entirely unexpected for a man as chatty as himself and it would not be the first or last time Jaskier kicked himself for not noticing. He had always assumed that witchers had very slow metabolisms or some other strange mutation that allowed them to better digest and absorb nutrients and make the benefits of meals last longer. After all, Geralt rarely ate.

Perhaps ‘rarely’ was too strong a word, Jaskier admitted, but even so he could remember just as many instances in which Geralt didn’t eat as he did.

But it wasn’t until he found himself sharing a fire with the man one night that the question finally came to him. It had been a long ride with few breaks; a ride that had immediately devolved into a fierce fight with a creature Geralt had been contracted to handle, quickly followed by another rough ride when the blasted thing had managed to fly away, wounded and bleeding. Thankfully it had left quite a trial to follow, low as it had been flying and bleeding as it had been – but it meant that the two of them were running off of fumes and Jaskier, for one, was unused to it.

Well, no. Not unused to it. He had known hunger in his younger days, back when he had first left Oxenfurt to start his travels as a bard. Fame did not come without its prices – unless one had a very generous benefactor to start with, of course. And the price had been crude, cruel and simple: play for free, get his name out there, and starve until his music had the hearts of enough folk tied around his fingers that he might then play for pay. He wasn’t always hungry, of course. There had been more than one maid or village lass who had taken pity on him, in love with his blue eyes and silver tongue in that way young ladies – bored with village life – tended to sometimes be. But he had known hunger and cold.

Even though the years had been long since those meager days, even now he could not help but think ‘I remember worse hunger pains’. That didn’t mean he enjoyed it though. And if Jaskier was good at anything – singing and writing and general charisma aside – it was whining and surviving.

He plucked the fluffiest bits of his bread from within the hardened crust of the loaf he had in his pack and moaned as that first tuff nearly melted in his mouth – too stale from riding to be properly soft, but hunger had blurred that line of reasoning into something far more fantastical and pleased.

“Gods above, I love bread,” Jaskier all but moaned, slumping on his log as if the taste alone had rendered him useless. He fluttered his lashes. Geralt grunted.

“Come now, Geralt. Even you with all your witcherly stoicism can’t deny that there’s nothing quite as good as bread after days of starving,” Jaskier pointedly out, plucking another chunk of bread and placing it on his tongue with another lewd moan – now purposefully so.

Geralt rolled his eyes, face canted down toward the fire as he stoked it with a stick, ensuring that the logs lay just right for the best flame. Jaskier continued on, too merry from his meal to stay his tongue.

“Food’s always best when drunk or starving,” he mused.

He remembered lectures about that, at some point in Oxenfurt. His studies, while fundamentally focused around literature in general, had varied. A good writer needed to know a little of everything, after all, and he was nothing if not thorough when it came to his craft. He could still remember an old bore of a professor going on and on about a human’s instinct to survive and that, when starving, food was often times described by patients to be far richer or more delicious than normal – even if that food was in fact bland or stale or generally something the patient might detest in regular circumstances. The body recognizes the necessity of eating, numbs the mind of any factors that might keep them from eating, and therefore everything tastes as if it had been delivered from the heavens themselves.

“Agreed,” Geralt said, setting his stick aside to stand. Jaskier watched him with childish passivity as the witcher went to Roach, filled a feed harness with grain or whatever it was he tended to give the ol’girl, and went about attaching it to her head so she might eat – obviously reminded of the task by their conversation. Then he attended to Jaskier’s horse as well, Daisy. That made something fond prickle in Jaskier’s chest.

“It’s stale and I don’t even care,” Jaskier continued to babble, breaking the hard crust off piece by piece now as he continued to consume his meal. Geralt grunted again, crouched by his pack again, and despite Jaskier’s assumption that the man was now finally fetching his own meal, the witcher instead returned to his place at the fire with his sword, a rag and some oils – and surprisingly no whet stone.

Jaskier rose his brows.

“Really, Geralt? I know you witchers have a frankly unhealthy relationship with your swords, but it can wait. Aren’t you hungry? Tired?”

Amber eyes met his overtop the brilliant flames of their fire. They seemed paler somehow, but the fire made it quickly difficult to hold the man’s gaze; even moreso to make out fine details. Otherwise Jaskier might have seen the hollows of Geralt’s cheeks beneath his riding stubble, or the dark circles that had made a home of the space beneath his eyes. Might have noticed he was paler than usual.

But he didn’t.

“Hmm,” Geralt said, eyes dropping back to his sword as he oiled his rag and began the lengthy process of cleaning it with the meticulousness of a witcher.

That gave Jaskier pause. He had seen the man fight. Geralt had described the Churt as a young adult, even though Jaskier couldn’t have imagined a larger Churt in his life. The point being: the Churt had been no babe, and while Geralt was a witcher of immeasurable skill, the beast had done its fair share of harm in turn. With the bend of its wing it had struck such a blow on Geralt’s right shoulder blade that it had tossed the witcher across a small clearing and into a try. Jaskier hadn’t imagined the wet pop he had heard at the time, nor had he imagined the gash the thing had landed on Geralt’s thigh and hip when it swooped down from above, talons first.

Geralt had excused himself to wash the worst of the fight off in a river, leaving Jaskier to settle Roach and start the process of picking up flammable tinder for the fire – something that once upon a time, he never would have trusted the bard to do. It made a little bloom of warmth grow in his chest at the thought even as dread slowly but surely began to curl in his gut.

He hadn’t seen Geralt take any salves or wrappings to the river. And if Jaskier was tired from riding without food, he could only imagine how ravenous he might feel after riding and slaying a Churt on just as empty a stomach.

“Geralt, come on,” he repeated, the cheer he had felt from his bread now weak in his tone. “You should really eat something.”

“M’fine,” the man said, focused on his task.

Jaskier felt his brows pucker into the slightest frown and not for the first time cursed Geralt for the wrinkles he would no doubt get because of the stubborn witcher and his stupid concepts of logic and reason – aka, his utter lack of either when it came to simple matters of health, wellbeing and general comfort.

Witchers, honestly.

But not for the first time Jaskier tried to quell his sharp tongue if, for no other reason, because he himself was not a witcher and sometimes they were able to do extraordinary things due to their mutations. He tried to keep his tone light as he asked, “Are witchers able to digest their food more slowly or something?”

Geralt snorted, but under the crackle of the fire Jasker could not tell if it was the white wolf’s attempt at a chuckle or not. Jaskier plucked another bit of bread from his loaf, stuck it in his mouth and looked at the witcher pointedly – expecting a real answer.

Geralt grunted, cleared his throat in a manner Jaskier might describe as ‘uncomfortable’ in witcher-speak – a tongue of body language rather than words – and when it became obvious Jaskier would not fill the silence for him or move on, surprisingly answered.

“In a manner,” he admitted.

“In a manner,” Jaskier repeated theatrically, as if this in fact explained all the secrets of the universe, and nodded his head sagely, “Ever a man of many words you are, Geralt. In what manner?”

Geralt blew a breath through his nose in a heavy huff, his eyes darting up in that way he did whenever he was gauging whether or not something was worth sharing with Jaskier. It appeared his distate for being badgered outweighed his dislike of talking about himself, because he kept his eyes pointedly down on his sword as he said, “Mutations.”

“Ah. I see.”

Amber eyes darted to him for a fraction of a moment – almost, dare Jaskier say, nervous; but he couldn’t be certain with the firelight. No, not nervous exactly… but without a doubt Geralt was anticipating something. Bracing himself, one might say.

His sword was already positively gleaming, but the man continued to focus on it as if it were rusted. When Jaskier threw a stick at him, staring at him pointedly, mouth full of bread, Geralt sighed – haughty and on edge.

“Witchers,” he said slowly, drawing it out as if unsure of how to proceed, “Adapt easily. Our bodies can speed or slow our metabolisms as needed.”

The bread in his hands felt suddenly too rough, too heavy. He had a terrible, awful feeling he knew where this explanation was headed, but he needed to hear it. Needed to know for sure.

“Geralt,” he said just as slowly if only to show Geralt that any cheerful playfulness in him had passed and that there was no escaping this conversation now. “What precisely are you trying to tell me? That you have an on-off lever for your hunger?”

Geralt blew out a breath through his teeth that stirred his messy silver hair. It was like pulling teeth, Jaskier thought, frustrated.

“We can starve a long time before it becomes a problem,” he finally said, clinical and blunt, as if he had said something mundane like ‘witchers are more flexible than most’ rather than ‘I can suffer starvation longer than mortal men before I’ll ever die’.

“Geralt,” Jaskier snapped, unsure of what he was even trying to say. The word had slipped past his teeth in a snap, unfettered and unabashed and wholly horrified. Geralt might have flinched, it was hard to tell past the fire, and finally Jaskier had had enough of the man’s cowering. He stood and rounded the fire – loomed over the witcher – and saw the nearly feral glint of the man’s eyes as he pointedly did not look at him. Eventually, words returned to him. “Tell me this is some utterly terrible version of a witcher joke. Humor really does not suit you, you know.”

“Sure, it’s a joke,” Geralt deadpanned, something tight about the way he held his shoulders.

���Geralt!”

“What?” He finally snapped, the word nearly a hushed snarl when his eyes finally darted up to meet Jaskier’s and finally – finally – he saw it. Geralt was thin. It showed in his face, scant of even so much fat as to fill his cheeks, and from this angle the fire cast dreadful shadows in those hunger hollows.

Gods above, his gear. That’s why he hadn’t noticed, at least not yet. They had not exactly found a tavern in some time – sleeping outdoors provided little opportunity to disrobe or enjoy one another’s company in comfort. He had thought it surprising that Geralt had kept his armor on for more, if not all, of the trip. Now he knew – it was just as much a cover as the fire had been.

“Take it off,” Jaskier said.

Geralt blinked slowly, caught off guard. Slow from hunger, Jaskier realized. Something no doubt made worse by the witcher’s difficult relationship with sleep.

“What? No.”

“Geralt.”

“I already did it.”

He meant his wounds, Jaskier realized, and for some reason that made him angry.

“Another lie!” Jaskier said in an explosion of hand movement, too wound up to settle his tendency toward the theatrical as he gestured at Geralt’s shoulders – at the way he was obviously favoring one side over the other, and continued, “I saw you go to the river. You didn’t bring a single salve with you!”

Geralt rolled his eyes – not so much a dramatic gesture as it was a minute flutter of his lashes – and said, “I’m a witcher, Jaskier. It’s fine.”

He had heard the story before. Witcher, in Geralt’s mind, appeared to be synonymous with ‘immune’. But even so, the man was generally good about salving and bandaging himself. His body was, after all, his greatest tool. And yet he hadn’t this time.

“You don’t have any food, do you?” He finally accused, catching on, “Or salves? Gods above, Geralt, why did you take this contract without those things!”

“Because I needed the contract to buy those things,” Geralt said through his teeth, nearly baring them like his namesake might.

It was an argument that was quickly going nowhere, and Jaskier could not exactly pin point why exactly there was a kernel of fury growing in his stomach, searing him from the inside out in a rising tide. Instead he just made an utterly exasperated sound at Geralt, took a step forward – ignoring the tension that bloomed in Geralt’s body in reaction – and shoved the rest of his bread into the man’s hands before stomping off to his pack with a frustrated, “Why didn’t you say you utter oaf!”

Geralt’s brows shot up.

“Jaskier, I can’t,” he said, eyes on the man as he held the bread loosely, his rag haven fallen to the ground. “This is yours.”

“And now it’s yours, you bloody idiot of a witcher,” Jaskier said back just as quickly, his tone almost lilting as he fell back into the comfort of jesting words to hide the anger in his gut that made him want to – he didn’t even know! Kick a tree, maybe? Punch a man? Tie Geralt down until he understood how to better take care of himself? Yes, that one. He busied himself with digging through his own pack on Daisy. His horse whickered at him cheerfully as he shuffled things around. He found another chunk of bread – this one smaller but better than nothing. He also pulled out a tin of cured meat he kept for emergencies, as well as a leather wrapped kit – crude at best – of what scant medical supplies he had come to find necessary during his trips with Geralt. Bandages, cheap salves, thread and needles. He turned back to Geralt, his findings in either hand, and nearly barked out a laugh at the sight of the witchere. The man had never looked more uncomfortable or out of his element, staring at him like Jaskier were a lion that might make of a meal of him rather than a wispy bard with bread, meat and medical items.

“You look as if I’ve revealed myself to be another Churt in disguise,” Jaskier said, coming closer now. Geralt moved, perhaps to stand, to flee, but not quickly enough – and that, in and of itself – convicted Jaskier on his path even more. He pressed a hand onto Geralt’s knee, cautious of where he thought the man’s wounds might be, and urged him back down onto the log as he took a seat beside him.

“Surely you’ve been without coin before,” Jaskier said as he delicately places the second loaf onto the cleanest bit of bark that he could manage, then the tin and medical supplies. Geralt looked like a cornered dog but Jaskier just kept talking, as if his babbling might ease the witcher into some modicum of familiarity and comfort. “I’ve seen you hunt. So why not hunt?”

He asked even as he knew why. Geralt had already hinted at it. With a metabolism that sped and slowed as needed, it meant that his body had burned most of its energy in the fight. Now it was slowing again, drawing the warmth from his skin as his heart beat dropped to an almost unnatural rhythm. Hunting took time and energy. It meant Geralt was now in league with most wild predators – better to wait for an ample opportunity that promised success than to blindly waste it looking for an animal in the woods at night. Better to bide his time, even if that meant a gnawing stomach.

“No point right now,” Geralt said, confirming his suspicions. It was strange to simultaneously see the man as a predator and yet realize that meant that, in this moment, he was vulnerable for the very same reason that he was dangerous.

“Right, of course,” Jaskier said idly, more focused on the task at hand now that he understood the problem, “Not to rush things along because I generally prefer to take my time disrobing my partners, but let’s go, Geralt. Eat your bread, off with your armor and such.”

Geralt stiffened, then held the husk back to him with a murmured, “It’s yours. I don’t need handouts. M’fine.”

The words ‘I’m used to this, it’s not a big deal’ went unsaid – and wisely so. Jaskier might’ve given him a motherly wallop for it. Instead he shoved the bread back toward Geralt with a quick, “Yeah, well, if it’s mine then that means I can do whatever I want with it. And I want you to eat it.”

That, in combination with hunger, seemed to finally cow the witcher into some semblance of obedience. He pulled a tuff of soft, white bread flesh from its stale husk and went about eating it with far less drama than Jaskier had. But the bard didn’t miss the way the witcher’s fingers nearly – nearly – trembled. For the first time he realized the problem might be far worse than a day or two without food. There was no telling how long the witcher had gone without before Jaskier had arrived to join him on his trek.

He realized with a start that he didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to know how long Geralt could go. He’d much rather focus on ensuring he didn’t ever go that long ever again.

Jaskier pressed into Geralt’s space with long arms and clever fingers, unfastening buckles and straps around Geralt as the witcher ate. He pulled off his chest armor and had to bite his tongue not to hiss. The witcher’s shoulder was a mass of purple – masked except for where it peaked out beneath the hem of his collar, but telling nonetheless. It’d heal, Geralt always did, but it didn’t mean the man needed to suffer while he did. He tugged at Geralt’s shirt, easing it over his head as he sighed, “For a man as adept and trained for survival as you are, Geralt, you’re an astoundingly huge idiot.”

“Wow, thanks,” Geralt mused, a chuckle blurred around the edges of the words, muffled as the shirt slipped over his head and—

Jaskier had to bury his teeth into his knuckles to avoid spitting out the first, dramatic invective that sprung to his tongue. But by Melitele’s tits, the man was deceptively built looking for a man as thin as he was at the moment. With his armor on he looked like a brick wall – tall, broad and built for tasks no normal man could handle. But beneath all that, even as muscled as he was, the truth remained that the white wolf was thin as a rail almost. He tried to remember the last time he had seen the witcher, the last time they had shared a room, shared each other’s company. He was a surprisingly lithe man for someone so accustomed to a job like witchering – but he hadn’t been this thin. He must have been decently fed, last he saw him, because now Jaskier could almost swear that if he had a hand on either side of Geralt’s hips, his fingers would nearly touch. An exaggeration, and yet, he didn’t want to try in case he was right. He could see every rung of Geralt’s ribs, every knob of his spine. His stomach curved inward, even the musculature of his abdomen less prominent that he remembered. And his hips; the way they jutted even while sitting…

Gods above, how long did he starve this time?

Even faced with so much suffering, Jaskier held his tongue firmly between his teeth until he was certain he would not badger the man. Geralt knew how thin he was. There was a reason why he had kept his armor on with Jaskier. He had known the bard would fret. He had tried to hide it. Hounding him now wouldn’t reverse the effects of Geralt’s stint with hunger – but it would drive the wolf away, keen as he was to avoid confrontation and care like a Labrador unwilling to be bathed.

“You put even my boyish figure to shame, Geralt. Going after my job, are we?” He joked because he couldn’t bare the silence. If it were silent for so much as a moment longer he’d babble. He’d babble, and that would devolve to nagging, and he needed the witcher to sit still, to trust him. To finally, finally allow someone to care for him despite his conceptions about what was or was not his, and how far he could push the limit of witcher mutations before he pushed too far. Geralt snorted, back shivering like a horse shoeing flies when Jaskier ran two fingers lightly over his bruising. It was swollen, puffy; hot to the touch. Dark as pitch, made worse by the flickering light of the fire. He opened one jar of salve, coated a few fingers liberally, then went about rubbing it into the man’s skin as gently as possible while still working it in to the muscle and damage before. Geralt moaned – Jaskier couldn’t tell if it were pain or relief, but he continued regardless.

“Hardly about to start singing in pubs,” Geralt mused, evidently just as eager to settle back into some semblance of normalcy. Unused to being the one being taken care of rather than doing the protecting. It rankled him something fierce, muscles tight under Jaskier’s hands.

“Yes, well, maybe you should consider it,” Jaskier said lightly, dipping his fingers back into the jar for more, “With a voice like yours, you’d be quite exotic for the trade. Women would swoon at your feet – if you can hold a tune, of course, very important. Pubs tend to feed their bards. Pay’s good, too. Better than…” he trailed off. It felt too raw, too cruel to take a shot at Geralt’s profession now when the wolf was so bare and vulnerable. Here Jaskier had taken his armor and his wrappings, both physical and metaphorically, and exposed the witcher for what he was: mortal, self-abused and exhausted. To go on felt like a moot point, like kicking a man while he’s down. It felt wrong to acknowledge once more that witchering was a thankless trade. Painful, even, when Jaskier knew Geralt risked his life often, protected thankless assholes that tried to fleece him often – and he starved himself to do it, too.

Geralt made a sound Jaskier couldn’t quite navigate.

“Eat the meat in the tin as well,” Jaskier guided the conversation away, tone light despite the way his breath hitched in his chest seeing Geralt like this.

“Jaskier, this isn’t necessary—”

Jaskier’s hands drew still on Geralt’s back. Something swollen twisted his chest and throat into something thin and strained as he said, “Please, Geralt… if for no other reason than to appease me. I may not have a witcher’s metabolism, but I’m tired as well.”

The tin squealed lightly when Geralt opened it. The same of dried pork wafted up lightly – stronger when Geralt took a slice and held it over his shoulder with a gruff, “At least eat some, too.”

Jaskier would have laughed if the whole situation wasn’t so fucked up. Instead he just hummed a pleased, “How thoughtful,” and took the morsel directly from Geralt’s fingers with his mouth, unwilling to touch it with his salve-greasy fingers. Geralt was more comfortable with that gesture than being taken care of, and Jaskier decided then and there that he’d have to work on that.

Geralt ate the jerky and Jaskier sent a quick halfhearted prayer of thanks to the gods on the off chance they were real even though he was pretty sure they weren’t and mainly enjoyed referencing them for how colorful they made his curses. Once the worst of Geralt’s shoulder was handled, he ran a hand over the rungs of his ribs down to the – sharp, too sharp – jut of his hip and asked, “Did you actually attend to those gashes or do I need to strip you completely?”

“They were shallow enough. Nearly healed,” Geralt grunted around a strip of meat. Jaskier looked at him pointedly, brows raised, and Geralt offered a grumbly, “Truly. It’s fine.”

Jaskier waited another beat for added affect before capping the jar with a soft, “Alright, Geralt. I trust you. But if they’re not gone in the morning, please put salve on them?”

Geralt grunted at that, and Jaskier took that as a sign of victory.

Much of the tension had eased from Geralt’s shoulders now, but there was still a great deal of exhaustion under his eyes and in the shadows of his cheeks. Jaskier wiped his hands clean on a rag, watching the witcher eat with a strange fondness in his gut he couldn’t quite name. He was unused to this, he realized. Not just with Geralt, but in general. In brothels or taverns or even with the witcher, his relationships had been centered around passion and drive. The need to fulfill his desires with lips and fingers and teeth. He had shared meals and treats after with maidens and men alike, of course, and had even himself been cared for some. But had never really done the caring himself and mostly certainly not in a context as benign as this. He had never felt the urge to. No one ever stuck around, after all, and both parties were only ever fulfilling the same selfish desires only…

This was difficult. Geralt was different. Jaskier wanted to help. They wouldn’t lay together, not tonight. There was no ulterior motive, no benefit other than… Well, other than Geralt’s comfort and safety. Jaskier’s hands stilled in his rag, gaze caught a bit wide-eyed on the snacking witcher when suddenly Geralt’s own amber eyes lazily caught his, no longer as edgey as he had been.

“What?” The witcher asked, the idiot.

“Nothing,” Jaskier chirped quickly, eager to cover the sudden revelation before he had time to properly turn it over in his mind and understand it. He tossed the rag at his pack and for once he was the one avoiding the witcher’s gaze as he said, “I was merely thinking about how lucky you are to have such a handsome and selfless friend such as me. Talented, charming and capable in the woods – you were born beneath a lucky star to have met me. What would you do without me?”

Geralt snorted again and that, Jaskier could tell, was a laugh. He grinned in return, back on familiar footing, and came to sit thigh to thigh with his witcher. Geralt hummed, curiously close to a cat’s purr, and Jaskier had the oddest urge to run his fingers through the man’s hair just to hear more of that sound.

“Starve a little longer, I suppose,” Geralt said, playfulness dulled by the truth in it. Blunt, daft ass of a man. Jaskier stretched his legs before him, forced himself not to go off on another tirade unless the witcher – too used to doing things only on his own terms – shut down after all the work the bard had done to loosen him up that evening.

“Yes, well, from now on what’s mine is yours, Geralt. I’ll pack accordingly.”

Geralt stilled.

“—Jaskier, you needn’t trouble—”

“If you’re starving you can hardly protect me or perform those heroic acts of inhuman deeds I do so love to sing and profit off of, can you? Consider it your cut in the fame you’ve brought me with your witchering,” Jaskier said cheekily, eager to cover his own vulnerabilities like the coward and hypocrite that he was. Something stole across Geralt’s face, something unidentifiable, and Jaskier felt his gut curl ever so slightly.

“Of course,” Geralt said. Jaskier felt the slightest bit of distance grow between them suddenly, their comradery turning the littlest bit stale. Guilt stabbed him lightly. The fire crackled. “That is why you come, isn’t it.”

It almost… almost seemed as though Geralt was disappointed by that – mildly, as witchers tended to be, and yet more poignantly because of that.

Well… he had stripped Geralt of his manly pride, his clothing and his illusions of not being a twig. The least Jaskier could do was offer some boon in turn. Even the playing field, so to speak.

He sucked in a breath, let it go slowly, catching Geralt’s attention because of it.

“It started that way, yes. Though not wholly for the stories or the songs… But now… Geralt, I would follow you even if there were no story to sing about in some pub,” he admitted. “If one of our trips just comprised of us dozing under willows by the river, I’d join you. I’d keep the songs just for myself. Sing them to you. Maybe it’d help you sleep.”

Geralt watched him for a long time. Jaskier began to fidget, his neck burning and no doubt red as the silence made his words sound more and more ridiculous. He was just about to say, ‘forget it, I’m just daft with exhaustion, you know how it goes,’ when finally, Geralt spoke.

“What would you sing about then,” Geralt asked slowly, carefully, “If not about whatever I killed?”

Geralt was staring at him, his face a blank sheet, and Jaskier felt prickly all of sudden, frustrated that the witcher could so easily hide while he was weak to expressing himself at the drop of a hat. But the moment felt important to Geralt regardless, somehow the bard could just tell. Perhaps it was his increasing fluency in the wordless speak of witchers. The worst of that dazed, hollow hunger-glaze had retreated from those amber eyes. Still there around the edges, but otherwise focused on him in a manner Geralt rarely allowed himself to do.

“I’d have plenty to sing about,” Jaskier said softly, his protective, charming mannerisms falling away layer by layer under those eyes. “I’d love nothing more than to sing about the white wolf finally enjoying himself for a moment – even if that moment were as benign as enjoying an apple freshly plucked from the tree. Even if it detailed only the litany of your snoring or the way the wind dances in your ridiculously white hair.”

Geralt snorted, a wry twist of amusement to his lips as he looked out into the night and said, “Enough. I’m not one of your conquests from some backwater village or high court function. Stop blowing smoke up my ass.”

He should joke. It was his cue to joke. Geralt was offering him an out. He should joke.

“I could sing even about this,” he said instead, his eyes traveling to the dark bloom on Geralt’s back – proof of his mortality despite the legends Jaskier had hand in crafting.

“Some song that would be,” Geralt grunted, “No one wants to hear about a half-starved witcher. Sour the mood immediately.”

“Don’t be so shallow, you’re cleverer than that,” Jaskier chided.

“I’m daft, I’m clever – which is it?”

“Believe me, the contradiction frustrates the hell out of me too, witcher,” Jaskier chuckled, the littlest bit of a frustrated grumble in the tone as he leaned in, crowding the man. “But I stand by it. Perhaps that should be the next song I sing: how to take care of your witcher. Help some other fool bard out there who also fell head over heels for their witcher.”

“Your witcher?” Geralt asked, brows raised.

“Ears like yours, I know you heard me, Geralt. A mouse farts and you wake up. Don’t play coy with me.”

Geralt actually let out a soft huff of a laugh at that.

“How to care for your witcher… you think you know how?” He mused, too weary to fight or snap, it would seem – made soft by the salve and Jaskier’s hands. Steadier than the witcher from those early days, so skittish and closed off.

“You’re still here, aren’t you?” Jaskier said, puffing up, proud. Geralt shook his head, exasperated, and Jaskier pressed, “I’ll start with feeding you properly, since you can’t be trusted to make sane choices. And anything after that, well… I’ll learn as I go!”

And that was as close to saying ‘I love you’ as he could get for now. The witcher too easily spooked, and he himself unfamiliar with this version of himself that loved beyond the first fuck. It wasn’t ‘I love you’, not yet. But if the witcher could show him his wounds, trust him with his back, well…

They were both learning as they went.

[roughentumble]

i miss the early days of twn fandom, where every single one of us vastly misunderstood witcher lifespans and thought the trials made them functionally immortal.

[toss-a-coin-to-your-stan-account]

Okay so THOUGHTS:

Do not talk to me about Eskel or Triss' hair. Do not. No.

Speaking of Triss I am DELIGHTED that they didn't make her FUCKING INSUFFERABLE like in BoE.

Voleth Mier (Derogatory)

I was so fucking worried I'd have to watch yennefer be a prisoner of Nilfgaard for a majority of the season but she was not and I'm happy

FRINGILLA

FUCKING

FRINGILLA

I'm so glad we got to see more of her and her motivation this season I fucking love her a whole lot now

(Also the first time I watched s1 was after I took a biology class so I always thought "flagellum" when I saw her. Sorry queen </3)

Her and Francesca........ Sapphic activity

DARA MY BOY!!!!!!!

NENNEKE! FUCKING LOVE NENNEKE THEY DID HER SO GOOD

CIRI MY SWEET BABY

I'm so fucking glad we got to see her do more than run around and be scared. We actually got to see her be sassy and fierce and funny and a kid. I love her.

HER AND GERALT!!! THAT IS HER DAD!!!! HE LOVES HER SO MUCH

YENNY BOO

Yenny boo!

Yenny boo <3

Yenny boo :(

Yenny boo :)

...Yenny boo.

Gonna fucking cry I love her so fucking much. I. Her. I love her.

MOMMA YEN! We're not at the best spot with it right now but we got our start and we're gonna get there besties I know it. I can feel it.

They're gonna be such a fambly.....

YENNSKIER STANS WE FUCKING WON THIS SEASON HOW ARE WE DOING

The softness. The trust. The understanding. The vulnerability.

The hands.

The hands.

Holy SHIT we won.

Rience was every bit as sadistic and ruthless and just as much of a Fucked Up Twisted Guy in the books.

And I fucking loved it.

THE TORTURE SCENE??? HOLY FUCKING SHIT JOEY'S ACTING WAS FUCKING IMMACULATE

And yen acting all drunk... cute

"This is my wife." WE ACTUALLY HEARD THAT. WE HEARD JASKIER CALL YENNEFER OF VENGERBERG HIS WIFE. THIS WAS REAL.

He screamed not to hurt her and I just. A moment. I need a moment.

YEN FUCKED UP HIS FACE <3

"Goodbye. Good luck. And good riddance." I thought this would be a bitter geraskier line but it was a soft yennskier line and I just. Ah <3

Roach :(((

...I simply ignore it its fine she's fine-

Tissaia & Yen :( Tissaia cares so fucking much about her and it hurts and she doesn't even know Yennefer is protecting Ciri and OUCH

Everything regarding the Elves was so fucking heartbreaking. They deserve so much better from the Continent.

The moment the babies went silent and it was followed by the women crying was absolutely fucking chilling.

Jaskier doing what he can to help the Elves... I fucking love him.

BURN BUTCHER BURN

My FUCKING GOD

He was BITTER

And I honestly think he still might be????

The Hug though......

THE DWARVES

JASKIER STILL NOT FINISHING HIS INTRODUCTION TO YARPEN

SO GREAT

Yenralt is destined to break my heart I suppose...

But the way he reacted when he knew she was there... :')

Their reunion was lovely at least

Istredd and Geralt were the Duo I didn't know I needed (as were yen and cahir) and it was loads better than a shard of ice. Very good. Like it

Philippa <3

The REVEAL

I did NOT expect it this early but I knew it was coming but I still GASPED

GOD

GOD

On the whole, putting aside a... very big series of misteps regarding one particular witcher, I actually very much liked this season! I thought the experience of watching it was far more enjoyable than when I watched season one, and it was worth the wait! I had a hell of a weekend watching it <3

[pillage-and-lute]

Prompt: Either out of embarrassment or being a little shit, Jaskier lies outrageously to Geralt about humans (on the level of “I’m molting” or “These? They’re rocks, to snack on.”) and might get away with it?

Hi Dahliavandare! I always love seeing you in my inbox. I changed this just a *teeny* bit. WARNING: VERY SLIGHTLY HORNY (it’s Jaskier, duh) There is also a little bit of angst because Jaskier gets sick.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Jaskier,” Geralt growled.

“What?” The young bard yelped. “I wasn’t even singing that time.”

“No, you just--hmmm.”

“I just hmmm what?” Jaskier asked, pausing in his near-constant strumming.

“You smell like...hmm.”

“I smell?” Jaskier said, both hands planted on his hips. “That’s pretty rich coming from you, my friend--”

“Not friends.”

“You smell like a barn. Anyway-”

“No, Jaskier,” Geralt said, running one, gloved hand through his hair. “Witchers can sort of smell emotions, right?”

Jaskier looked up at him, a sudden hint of anxiety in his scent. “I thought that was a myth.”

“Not entirely.” Geralt shook his head as if clearing a thought from it. “We can’t smell complex things, but joy, fear, anger...desire.”

Jaskier, for once, didn’t look at Geralt, studying instead the flowers at the side of the road. “Desire?”

“I-yes.” Geralt said. “And I wanted to know if all humans smell like...”

“Desire?” Jaskier said, then began talking fast. “Oh yes, of course, most humans, especially my age, well, they smell like this all the time. All the time. Naturally.”

It sort of checked out, at least to Geralt’s thinking. Young humans were horny, and although the overriding scent when Geralt was around was fear, he remembered being a teenager, with all the baggage that entailed at Kaer Morhen, and yes, constantly horny was among those memories. Jaskier himself was definitely still young by human standards, perhaps twenty or so from his youthful features. 

Geralt chalked the horniness up to humanity and hormones and left it at that. 

--- 

Later on, Geralt had other questions related to humanity, more specifically that part of humanity that included Jaskier. 

“I thought humans couldn’t eat those?” Geralt couldn’t, he’d eaten one during training on a dare and spent the next day with his head in the privy.

Jaskier looked down at the mushroom in his hand. It was a beautiful, bright red, with little white spots. He’d been snacking on similar ones for the last mile or so. 

“Of course we can,” he said. “Humans eat these all the time.” There was a rising tone in his voice that indicated something, but as Geralt had mentioned before, witchers couldn’t actually smell the more complicated emotions. 

“They, um,” Jaskier said. “They just can’t be eaten by humans during-er- during summer. It’s fall now, so it’s okay.”

Geralt shrugged. What did he know of human biology? He wouldn’t be eating another of them ever, at any time. His stomach lurched a little just at the thought.

---

“You didn’t buy the ring.”

Jaskier looked up at Geralt, eyes bright in the sunshine. The bustle of the market around them pushed against him like a tide, but a little patch of space was left around Geralt. Jaskier stepped into the space. “The ring?”

“You liked it,” Geralt grunted. “I could tell.” It had been a little thing, cheaply made of poor materials, but the bard’s eyes had lit up upon seeing the little buttercup detailing, and he’d admired for several minutes, although without touching. 

Jaskier shrugged. “It was made of iron.”

“And?”

“Human’s can’t wear iron, Geralt.”

“Then why did the man sell it?” 

“Well some humans can wear it of course, those with very tough skin, but I’m delicate.” Jaskier sniffed. 

“Humans...can’t wear iron?” It didn’t sound right.

“Not right up close to their skin,” Jaskier said. “It turns us, um, purple.”

Geralt shrugged it off. He’d once been called to a castle where a baron had believed himself cursed because his finger was turning green, but he’d simply been wearing a cheap brass ring.

---

After the first winter they met again in the spring something was definitely different.

“Your freckles,” Geralt said.

“What about them?” Jaskier said, looking away.

What about them indeed. They glimmered like chips of mica. At first Geralt had thought it a trick of the light, but no, there was a definite glitter to Jaskier’s skin.

“They’re...shining?”

Jaskier cocked his head at Geralt, cheeks shimmering. “Geralt,” he said slowly. “You know humans shimmer in the spring...right?” 

Shimmer?

“I’d never noticed,” Geralt said. Admittedly he paid a little more attention to Jaskier than perhaps he ought, but still, one would think he’d have seen this before.

“It’s part of the growing process,” Jaskier said. 

---

“Jaskier, your cheeks are red,” Geralt said, stepping out of the small bathtub the inkeeper had brought up. He stepped closer to the bard, still naked and dripping water, and pressed the back of his hand to Jaskier’s forehead.

“Nnhgh,” Jaskier said.

“Are you well?” Geralt asked, cupping Jaskier’s flushed face with his other hand. It didn’t feel like he had a fever.

Jaskier pushed his hands away, face even redder than before.

“I’m perfectly fine, Geralt,” he said, higher pitched than usual. “Human faces get red for no reason now...put on some pants.”

---

“Jaskier you’re drunk,” Geralt said. It was a pretty obvious statement, considering he had his bard draped over him like a shawl.

“Hehe, yep,” Jaskier said, reaching up with one, long finger and tracing Geralt’s jawline with it. 

“You didn’t have any alcohol, I’m sure of it.” Jaskier normally had an extremely high alcohol tolerance in any case.

“‘O course not,” Jaskier said, leaning even more fully into Geralt’s hold. “Had milk.”

“Milk can’t get people drunk.”

“Milk can’t get witchers drunk,” Jaskier slurred. “Get’s humans drunk though, dunnit?”

“Can it?”

“Yeah, definitely, not the kids, but like, how often do you see, like adult humans drinkin’ milk?”

Not often, Geralt thought. He put Jaskier to bed in the inn and it was like pouring an octopus into a bucket. One loose yet gripping arm pulled Geralt closer to Jaskier, the bard leaned in and brushed soft lips to Geralt’s cheekbone.

Geralt wondered if it was another mystery of humans that the spot seemed to tingle all night and he couldn’t seem to stop thinking about it.

---

Geralt clutched Jaskier as the bard fell to his knees, groaning. His face was sickly in it’s palor and he was trembling. He’d just lurched up from the table at the inn and stumbled to the door. Geralt had followed him and the young bard had just collapsed like this.

“Jaskier,” he said, clutching a chilled cheek, his other hand seeking one of Jaskier’s. “Jaskier what’s wrong.”

“Lemon,” Jaskier whispered, lacing shaking finger’s with Geralt’s. “In the fish, there was lemon.”

“Lemon’s fine, isn’t it?” Geralt asked, slow heart racing as he looked into eyes that were becoming glassy and clouded.

Jaskier shook his head and it seemed to exhaust him.

“’S fine for humans.” He said. “Not fae.”

“Fae,” Geralt said, cradling his friend. “Jaskier you’re not making sense.” 

“Mmh,” Jaskier said, smiling sadly. His face changed, his eyes going glow bright and his ears lengthening a little. His skin took on a slightly green tint. 

Geralt looked into the face of his fae bard, rubbing a thumb over his cheekbone and the shimmering freckles there. “How do I heal you, you have to tell me.”

Jaskier blinked slowly, eyes dimming further.

Geralt shook him, desperation taking over.

“Jaskier what heals a fairy?”

What heals a fairy? He’d learned that at some point hadn’t he? Long ago. They were rare, and most witchers never saw one in their whole lives but if you could help one they’d grant you one wish, not tricks. 

Poetry. 

Fuck.

“Jaskier,” Geralt rasped, throat feeling dry. Those beautiful eyes blinked at him, slowly. 

“I...I think you have pretty eyes,” Geralt said. “And I like when they, um, match the skies.”

Jaskier blinked at him in confusion, brow wrinkling slightly.

“You look pretty in blue,” Geralt managed, inventing wildly. “And look pretty in green. You look lovely in about every shade in between.”

Some of the deathly palor was fading from Jaskier’s face now and Geralt sought more words. “I thought you were pretty that day you wore purple,” he said. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck, idiot he was an idiot, nothing rhymes with purple. 

“I like your spirit, your moxy, your...your yurple.”

Jaskier was indeed looking better now, and he was smiling.

“I like the way you talk to me, and how you’re always there,” Geralt whispered. “I like the way you hum to me when you help me brush my hair.”

Jaskier sat up slowly, blinking in the dim light.

“I like the way you give treats to Roach, um, and I like the way you smile,” Geralt gulped at the look on Jaskier’s face. “But most of all I like how much I love you, so I want you to promise to, uh, stay? For a while?”

“Oh Geralt,” Jaskier said, cupping his cheek. “That was bad.” Then he kissed him and Geralt’s brain went very very fuzzy.

A little later, in their room in the inn, where Geralt was finishing the fish and Jaskier was having stew avec no-lemon-at-all, he asked, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Jaskier tilted his head thoughtfully as he chewed a piece of potato. “Well, at first I wasn’t sure how you’d take it,” he said. 

Geralt nodded. Fae were a feared and reverred group amongst humans, so caution was reasonable.

“Then it became a sort of game,” Jaskier said shrugging. “I couldn’t resist. So I left you little hints. I thought you’d figure it out for sure with the freckles or the milk.”

Geralt huffed a little sheepishly.

“I don’t care that you’re fae,” he said after a moment.

“I know,” Jaskier said. “And I don’t care that you’re an awful poet.”

“It worked, didn’t it.”

“It did, and now you get a wish, no tricks,” Jaskier held up his hand as if taking an oath. “I promise.”

Geralt thought for a moment. A wish from a fae was no small thing. It should be something powerful, something earth shattering and precious and rare.

“I wish you would kiss me again.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Oop, here it is (after quite the wait, sorry about that) I’m actually so proud of this and it’s super sweet and fluffy.

[grison-in-space]

real sorry for all the new folks following me this week, as I am driven underwater by the weight of lab chaos and have very little energy for much else except sudden hyperfocused text dumps at the moment

hi my bio is about three years out of date, I go long stretches of time posting nothing and occasionally lunge out of the shadows to produce a long and deeply nerdy commentary on some other poor bastard’s years-old OP. I’m not updating the bio. it’s been a long week and I am tired.

that this has finally happened to me is some kind of regretful cosmic irony, especially because it was really quite well described and explained costuming detail work, and I’m mad I don’t have the specialist knowledge to do such a thing half so well as redhorsedawn did.

those of you who are here from the giraffe thing last week, you’re more likely to luck out and get more of that moving forward; I am in fact a working biolo--aw motherfucker probably I’m supposed to call myself a neuroscientist now? ew, fuck that. I’m a behavioral ecologist in a trenchcoat lurking in a neuroscience lab which is pretending real hard that it belongs in the Psychology department of my current institution for funsies. I got a lot of big opinions about biology and animal behavior, and my training and inclination tends to be more on the “how do we understand animals within their own context, and how can we decode their communication and experiences” side of things and not so much the “how can we use animal cognition as a model to understand humans?” side. most of my actual day to day work right now is either coding or ferrying tiny little mice back and forth from their home cages to the place where they get to play video games in exchange for slurps of milkshake. they seem to like that sort of thing. me, I like the coding better, but we’ve been pretty short staffed lately.

I am interested in a bunch of other shit that isn’t so much about animal behavior or brains too in terms of nonfiction and am equally likely to lunge out of the bushes to rave about: sexuality, gender shit, disability, human history and how it relates to these things, human social and community dynamics, asexual community history (motherfucker I was there when we argued about the shade of purple to put in the ace flag; you bring ace exclusionism into my space and I will make fun of you as publicly as I know how) and occasionally how to spot TERFs/why radfem shit is enticing. I do not tolerate TERF shit, and I do not bother with DNIs: my version is that when TERFs reblog my crap I make them wish they had a DNI for me. the thing about posting all my non-fannish stuff to @grison-in-labs is a lie; I always forget what goes to what blog and confuse the streams, so unfortunately the only way to interact with me is to put up with an occasional firehose of content. sorry. I also can’t tag for shit.

those of you who are here from the “no actually Jaskier is a fairly burly dude who merely puts deliberate effort into being perceived as small and non-threatening and fuckable” side of things are--well look my fannish posts tend to be few and far between unless I’m actively trying to riff with someone or interacting. if you want that shit you gotta talk to me and my entire workplace is currently a rolling tire fire, so.... yeaaaaaaah, I’ve been distractable. uh, my partner @coffee-mage-sans-caffeine is writing a big ol’ Witcher fandom novel, and I beta for my buddy @abeautifulblog sometimes. I fear writing fiction myself and generally don’t bother, but I will meta until the cows come home; lob me a fun idea and I’ll chew on it with delight. I can overthink anything. 

generally if you talk to me and are friendly I will talk to you and be friendly back; I do not count followers and will not notice if you read this whole thing and fuck off into the night, but I wanted to let y’all know what you were getting into. again though: I cannot consistently remember tags, I am sorry, but I am rolling in with metaphorical Starbucks--worst fucking nerfed ADHD ever I swear to fuck--and doin’ my best here. I do believe very strongly in de-escalation; if there’s a conflict and you didn’t mean to make one happen, and you try to communicate with me in good faith, I’ll try and listen pretty much every time.

motherfucker, the pizza is burning. should probably eat.

have fun, folks.

[hanzajesthanza]

this isn't just a witcher problem it's also a problem i've seen in a lot of fantasy works. a lot of writers don't seem to recognize biracial characters. they either exist for the angst or they identify wholly as part of one culture, and not another at the same time. it's so weird.

yeah 😅😅 the little representation of biraciality in media also seems to trickle down to the understanding of it irl, or maybe it’s a reflection of it…

and like i said in the reply i just put on the post too, there’s such a diversity of cultural and familial experiences and also what biracial/multiracial people can look like that i don’t think many people are equipped to understand that — which happens all the time in the perception of race, ethnicity, nationality, and culture — any group that one does not belong to is just perceived to be a monolith with no diversity of experiences.

for me, what’s also significant is that my identity, how i identify and how others identify me, has changed throughout my life depending on where i went to school, which family members i spent more time with, and basically who and which cultures i was around. because that changes throughout time, and has changed me throughout time. for me it’s really impacted by both my family’s american assimilation (an internal struggle) and by others peoples’ perceptions of me (an external struggle). during elementary school (where most people were chinese) my classmates literally told me it’s not possible for me to be chinese because i don’t ‘look chinese’… but then when i went to university (where most people were white), many people asked me ‘what kind of asian’ i was or if i had an asian parent. and in high school and university, when academically discussing the topic of race as a social concept being defined by social perceptions rather than biology, i was like “yeah, no shit” because it’s always felt like like my race changes depending on which room i step into 😅. x group sees me as y group, and y group sees me as x group. it’s about the differences they can identify between myself and themselves, which isn’t inherently a bad thing, sometimes that’s just how people identify others — it’s just a phenomenon i’ve observed.

and re: my witcher ocs, i think it would be interesting to explore this in a human-elf context and the stereotypes humans and elves have of one another. also because sapkowski has spoken in interviews about assimilation amongst the dwarves, but less assimilation amongst the elves, and i’d like to look into what assimilation amongst the elves looks like — because there are indeed a few city elves, but it feels like they are purposefully forgotten by non-assimilating elves and humans alike. they also speak about this topic a little bit in baptism of fire ch. 3, as regis remarks about why it’s more difficult for elves to assimilate than it is for dwarves. also there are other elder races besides elves and dwarves that everyone always forgets about like halflings and gnomes but anyways… (and omg that reminds me another biracial character i forgot about (who isn’t a half-elf, but) is the hamadryad wife of the beekeeper from tower of the swallow ch. 3 😁 and i’ve always wondered about her and hamadryads, if dryads aren’t supposed to leave brokilon… ?? perhaps her family and ancestry can be traced back to the marshy landscape of of riverdell, when there were dryads in places outside of brokilon 😯)

i think it’s gotten better throughout the years, as there has been more visibility for the fact that biracial people can exist (or maybe just because elementary schoolers are mean lol) but what is important to me at this stage is looking at how biracial people themselves are affected by perceptions of race and culture…

because a lot of the media about the topic of biraciality always focuses on interacial unions — which is important in of itself and also really interesting to me personally, such as the topic of miscegenation laws — but sometimes, the topic of interracial unions are unfortunately “milked for drama” like focusing on a “romeo and juliet” type narrative, and rarely does it focus on the lives of the babies that came out of these unions, like myself 😅 — because the story doesn’t end with the couple.

also that the diversity in interracial relationships — a lot of relationships are presented to an audience as having a “they truly loved each other and had to disregard everyone’s judgements to be together and live happily ever after, even if they experienced discrimination and prejudice” feelgood narrative, which isn’t a bad thing on its own and i’m happy for couples that had a good happy ending to their stories, but interracial couples are subject to the same kinds of relationship troubles that uniracial couples are. like divorce and domestic abuse and all of that stuff. the story never ends, because people’s lives are not a narrative created for other people’s entertainment. it’s life, which just unfolds as it does…

which is why i like the witcher book series and its realistic viewpoints on the fantasy genre and think it’d be interesting to explore this topic in specifically this universe. which i’m planning to do with my OC, as i’d like them to be a part of angoulême’s hanza from the orphanage, who also experienced loss when cintra was razed by nilfgaard…

[moonlightreal]

Fate season 2 trailer!

It’s not too dark, but somehow I find it hard to see!

What I saw:

The castle!

Girls doing magic!

Bloom being ragey!  And scaring Rosalind, which is nice.  Bloom, if you must be annoyingly angsty and destiny-ridden, please aim it at the annoyingly evil character whose presence is entirely your fault.

The girls being all friendish. Please oh please let them have some kind of friendship arc here. I know the actresses like each other, so their characters could have friendistry if only the script let them!

Silva getting hauled off by soldiers. Phew!  I worried we’d lost two of the three cool grownups who are my favorite characters!

Bloom being flamey.

Someone… ok I cannot tell the boys apart in this, maybe it’s the tiny window I’m watching on or the dull color palette... tempting Bloom with her right to be a normal teenager.  Bloom, srsly, did you never learn that with great power comes great responsibility?  Yeah it sucks but you are where you are.

Aisha meets a boy!

Bloom and Sky on a horse.  Oh please let it be the fairy steed that eats meat that Terra mentioned in the prequel novel.  Please oh please let it be a spooky worldbuilding horse.  If not, at least we now know the otherworld has wolves and bears, sheep, Burned Ones, and horses.  +1 animal.

Riven tempting Musa to avoid her great responsibility.

Terra hugging her dad!

Beatrix in bed with her two-dude harem! You go Beatrix, get ALL the dudes!

“Rosalind was working on some super mysterious shit” ...how?  She’s been locked up!

Students are going missing and there are weird jewel-spider things that latch onto people, probably to take over their minds!  There are also maybe bigger ones that fly around and attack people?  Are those the worse monsters Rosalind mentioned?  They’re not very big.  Ok, getting mind controlled is worse than running away from a big monster but big monsters are more impressive to look at!

Fighting!  Swords!  Magic!  Smooching! Yesssss! Except for the smooching, all the things I am here for!

Hints that we’ll discover Bloom’s true origin?

Aaaaand what looks like all the girls “transforming”?  Maybe?

What I did not see:

Dowling, who did die so if she doesn’t come back that’s a disappointment but not a surprise.

Andreas, who’d better turn up to get his plot threads tied up!

Stella’s mother, ditto on the plot threads!

Fate… feels cheap.  I know it isn’t, the castle must’ve cost a lot, the actors are great, the CG is fine but there’s just this vibe of “we have no budget.”  Maybe it’s the small number of unique props?  Maybe it’s just the lack of worldbuilding in the writing giving the impression of an empty world with no biology or culture?   Maybe it’s the color filters dulling out every scene?  Maybe I’m just used to watching things like Witcher where everything on the screen reminds me that I’m watching another world so my standards are too high?  I can’t trace the source of that impression, but it’s one I keep getting.

But disappointing vibes or not, we got more Fate to enjoy, play with, and gripe at, and what could be better than that!

[laurelnose]

nah, eskel keeps it down! he’s exaggerating a little (he’s never actually been desperate enough to eat a drowner over literally anything else and he hopes he never will be) but there’s no reason a full-fledged witcher shouldn’t be able to handle a little bit of drowner flesh when they consume drowners as parts of potions all the time. 

outright lying to students is cheating—the object of the game isn’t to think up a fantastic lie but to know something that is so obscure and implausible-sounding that students are hard-pressed to believe it, because when they realize it is true, 

you get to watch them have a mini existential crisis over the fact that the world is really just that goddamn fucking weird

[lays on floor] my favorite game at marine field stations is “say increasingly implausible facts about the animals you’re bringing up and watch students’ faces squinch up as they try to figure out if you’re joking or not” and i can’t stop picturing Worst TAs Ever Geralt and Eskel elbow-deep in drowner corpses harvesting alchemy ingredients with a pack of trainees and geralt pauses and is offhandedly like “you can get drunk eating drowner flesh if you don’t prep it right, yanno”

trainees: that can’t be true. no one eats drowner flesh

eskel: nah, they eat them in skellige sometimes. it’s not drunkenness, geralt, it’s oxide poisoning.

geralt: d’yaeblen drunk, they call it.

trainees: *look to eskel like he’s going to be the sensible one in this madness*

eskel: *casually carving out a strip of muscle* anyways it doesn’t affect us.

geralt: *stifling laughter*

eskel: we witchers can eat drowners raw if we’re desperate. decent fallback if you get stiffed on payment and can’t afford food. *slurps down the drowner meat raw in front of god and everyone*

trainees: !?!!??!!??!!

[samstree]

Hug a Witcher Day (3/4)

In which Jaskier goes missing in the spring. Can Geralt finally realize his feelings for the bard in the middle of a crisis?

(hurt/comfort, soft geraskier, 3k, rated T, cw: mentions of a canon-era plague, sick children, and a citywide lockdown.)

part 1, part 2, read on AO3

The third year since Jaskier invented Hug a Witcher Day, Geralt all but forgets about it completely.

He steps into the Two Weatherfish, where they agreed to meet, and realizes that the bard isn’t here. Or in the entire city of Ard Carraigh. No one has seen any trace of the famous bard who won’t quit singing praises for witchers.

Geralt pushes down the slight panic in his chest as he steps out of the last tavern in the city, and decides to just head for Oxenfurt.

It’s not like Jaskier has been the most reliable companion in the past, often distracted by dalliances or even anything shiny and new. One time he wandered off to watch a local celebration and Geralt found him hours later next to a lake, with thousands of lanterns floating above the water, illuminating the night sky like burning stars peppered on a dark canvas.

The soft, orange light spilled over Jaskier’s features, his eyes gleaming like the stars too.

Geralt snorts despite himself. There’s no doubt the bard is just delayed by someone who caught his eye and decided that a promise to a witcher isn’t all that important—the same witcher who he keeps claiming to be his best friend.

Geralt isn’t sure how to feel about that, or how to react when he finally sees Jaskier. Perhaps he will cease to talk about hunts for a while, leave the bard hanging, just so he can get a taste of the same frustration.

The pettiness remains in Geralt’s mind up until he steps into the academy and rampant fear licks up his chest.

Essi is the one who meets him at the gates, worry deep between her brows and rambling about how Jaskier never made it to the yule ball like he should. In her hands are two letters, clearly Jaskier’s handiwork judging from the neat curves and flourish, talking about his excitement to see his ‘Little Eye’ perform again, and how unfortunately his travel would be delayed due to an unexpected ailment.

Don’t you fret, poppet, for I am sure to beat this sickness within days. The promise of listening to your new ballad is already doing wonders for my health! It is a shame that my stay in Vizima is soured thus. The city, so beautifully rich in culture…

“Vizima,” Essi says frantically. “A plague broke out in the city last winter. Smallpox.”

A buzz begins to ring by Geralt’s ear, muffling out Essi’s voice and leaving only the thundering of his own heartbeat.

“They told me King Foltest sealed the gate to stop the spread, and…and no one has heard from anyone inside since then. Geralt, please, you are a witcher. Aren’t you immune to human sickness? That’s what Jaskier told me, isn’t that right?”

“I…yes.” The lump in Geralt’s throat stops any other words from getting out. His blood runs cold in the warm breeze of Oxenfurt’s spring.

“Please, Geralt, you must find him. I need to know. The university won’t allow me to go, but I…I must know. No matter what happened to him.”

The implication hangs in the air.

Tears well up in blues eyes too similar to Jaskier’s. Essi would be my sister in another life, Jaskier once commented adoringly and it’s only standing right here that Geralt can truly see the identical fierceness in her eyes.

As if Geralt needs her to ask. As if he isn’t willing to charge into the land of the dead if it means Jaskier gets out of it unscathed.

“Of course, Essi,” he promises solemnly. Her clutch on his forearm is so tight that any other man would be bruised by the force. “I promise.”

“Keep him safe, if it’s not too late.”

In his near-century long life, Geralt has rarely felt cold, unrelenting fear as he does when Essi breaks into sobs.

 *

The sickness in Vizima casts a gloomy cloud over the sky, choking Geralt’s breaths. The streets are eerily empty. Only a few people will pass through in a frenzy every now and then.

Geralt’s legs take him right through the main streets, to the far corner of the city, where countless makeshift tents are set up and stretching towards the edge of the woods. If anyone has indeed fallen to the disease, that’s the most likely place they will be sent to. If anyone passes, that’s also where they keep the records so friends and families can look for their names.

Bile rises in his throat at the idea of looking through stacks of books for Jaskier’s name.

Geralt walks between hundreds of beds of one tent after another. Some healers throw him an odd look but carry on with their work, the flash of their white scrubs weaving through the busy establishment.

Against all odds, a pang of relief hits Geralt when he notices how the patients are well-treated by healers who seem to know what they are doing. The fever is brought down with a soaked cloth and a minty salve is applied for the irritation on the skin.

He searches and searches, until the sun is almost down, when—

A soft tune is carried over by the gentle breeze of spring.

And there Jaskier is, kneeling next to a little boy on a bed and humming a lullaby that Geralt only remembers vaguely. The bard is wearing the same white scrub like every carer at this camp, his brown hair slightly ruffled, and dark circles are hanging under his eyes. Geralt can see how tired he is by the hunch of his shoulders and the barely-there quiver in his singing, by his unkept stubble and the smile that’s dangerously close to falling.

And yet, he makes the most beautiful sight in the world.

Geralt stands there, drinking in the presence of his bard. The languid heartbeat of a witcher picks up, fluttering and almost bursting out of his chest.

Jaskier runs his fingers through the boy’s hair when the lullaby comes to an end. He tucks in the blanket and slowly pulls himself up, his knees creaking from the strain.

Blue eyes meet Geralt and Jaskier’s shock morphs into unbridled, blazing joy. Within the blink of an eye, the bard is standing right in front of Geralt.

“Geralt,” Jaskier breathes oh so carefully like he’s scared of waking from a dream. “What are you doing here? Wait, you don’t have any protec—oh right! Witcher biology. Can’t catch anything from us.” The bard lets out a sigh and his shoulders drop in relief. “How did you get through the gate? Punched another guard, didn’t—”

“You are okay,” Geralt says, dumbly.

“I am. Why wouldn’t I be?” Jaskier frowns. “Geralt, why did you come to Vizima in the middle of a plague? Not that I’m complaining about seeing you, but how exactly did you find me?”

Geralt doesn’t want to look away from Jaskier’s face—ideally for a long time to come, but he needs to rummage through his pack for the crumpled letters.

“You sent these to Essi last winter.”

Jaskier takes the letters, flattens the frayed edges before reading his own words.

“Yes, I did tell her…” Cold horror takes Jaskier aback. “Shit. She must think—Oh, Geralt, that wasn’t it! I only caught a stomach bug. It was never the pox! But then…they locked the city gate so fast and everything was in chaos for weeks. I couldn’t get more letters out. Oh, I wish I could take it back! I didn’t think—”

“You damn well didn’t.”

The words come out a lot harsher than Geralt intended, and Jaskier flinches back. Geralt pinches at the bridge of his nose, feeling contrite at his untimely outburst.

“No, Jask—I’m not…” he heaves out a sigh. “She didn’t even know if you were alive for months.”

Neither did I.

“I’m so sorry.” Jaskier is close to tears. “She must be worried sick.”

“She is.”

I was.

“And you too, Geralt. Please forgive me.” Jaskier’s chin wobbles, his arms hovering between the two of them as if he wants to put them around Geralt. “I want to ask you not to be cross with me again, but that seems to be all I do.”

“Jaskier…”

Geralt calls out when he finds not even an ounce of anger in his heart, not when he just spent weeks fearing the worst, not when Jaskier is standing right in front of him, safe and hale, his eyes flowing with guilt.

Jaskier might just be the death of him.

“Fuck. Just don’t pull this again.” Geralt softens his tone, knowing how unfair the request is when such things are out of Jaskier’s control, but the bard replies in earnest.

“I won’t. I swear.”

Exhaustion washes over the bard once again, making him look a lot older than he is. From the looks of it, Jaskier has been working in these camps for months and the last thing he needs is an unsupportive friend.

And Geralt doesn’t intend to become one.

“And you are dressed like this because?” Geralt nudges Jaskier in the shoulder to ease the apprehension on his face.

“Funny you should ask.” The bard presses his lips into a thin line before continuing. “I may have lied—nay, implied—that the seven degrees I acquired at Oxenfurt included…medicine. Hold on! Before you judge, I do know how to care for pox patients. I caught it as a child too and that’s why I’ve been fine this whole time.”

“Hmm. But you don’t have the—”

“The scars. No thanks to my grandmother’s secret healing salve that she insisted on keeping secret. It worked like a charm back then, almost like magic. We’ve been trying to replicate from whatever I remember. The mint is helping a little but something is still missing. Oh, well.” The bard rubs his fingers at the hem of his scrub. “Perhaps that explains all these crazy rumors about her heritage, with all her herbs and teas that always miraculously cured everybody. Honestly, I don’t even blame them.”

Geralt muses the possibility of Jaskier’s grandmother not being completely human and makes a silent decision to unpack it later.

“Then I guess your personal experience should come in handy if we are going to stay here for a while.”

“We? You are staying?”

“The exits are still closed.” Geralt tilts his head in nonchalance. “Might as well lend them a hand.”

And never take his eyes off of Jaskier again.

“That’s…wonderful, in a terrible, terrible way. Being trapped in the same place during a plague. Gods, that sounds like something out of the cheesiest romance novel.” Jaskier gasps as soon as the words are out. The smile on his face blossoms into a heated blush.

“Just promise me one thing, Jask.”

“What?” The cornflower blue eyes uncharacteristically avoid Geralt in a vain attempt to hide how flustered he is.

Don’t scare me like this again.

Don’t get taken from me.

Don’t leave me.

“Read less romance novels. Once this blows over,” Geralt answers, finally.

The fluttering in his chest returns, although this time for a completely different reason. The reason not being how adorable Jaskier looks embarrassed and rosy-cheeked.

No. Definitely not.

 *

“Little Simon asleep?”

Geralt asks as he stokes the fire, watching Jaskier struggle out of the sweat-soaked scrub and throw it into the laundry pile. The bard sits down next to him on the log with a groan and leans into his arm.

“As flattered as I am that he can’t fall asleep without my songs, it does get a bit taxing to sing every night while kneeling on the floor.”

“The kid is sick. Can’t blame him for having bad taste in music.”

The jab would have landed better if he isn’t wrapping his arm around Jaskier so that he can rest his head on Geralt’s shoulder. The days are too long even with most of the patients released home, and it’s been taking a toll on Jaskier.

“Cruel to me when I’m down, huh?”

Under Geralt’s palm, it’s unmistakable that Jaskier’s arm isn’t as thick as it once was, and he really doesn’t want to think about how the sharp of Jaskier’s jaw is becoming more prominent by the day.

Geralt rubs gently up and down Jaskier’s bicep to draw a contented purr out of him.

“Hmm. Now you’re forgiven.” Jaskier nuzzles into the crook of Geralt’s neck so his muscles loosen under the ministration. “It’s so unfair that a shift never wears you out like the rest of us, my dear. So unfair that you don’t need as much food too. I’d kill for some witcher superpowers these days.”

“Trust me, you won’t like what they cost.”

The late summer heat, mixed with the smell of sweat in Jaskier’s hair, should make it extremely uncomfortable to be sitting so close, but Geralt only finds it calming to have Jaskier sagging against him.

Jaskier’s thinning shoulder is too worrisome. Geralt will have to leave him most of the dinner rations again. Excuses are so easy to find, once Geralt realized that Jaskier never questions what he’s told about witcher biology, trusting every word from Geralt’s mouth. It’s just a little lie, a little exaggeration.

The bard is rubbing off on him.

“Simon is among the last ones here,” Jaskier says tiredly into Geralt’s neck. “It will soon be over. They are saying everyone can go in a month or so.”

“We can go even now.”

The prospect of traveling again stirs up something hopeful under Geralt’s skin, prickling with excitement, but he knows more patience is required for now.

“Nah, I should at least see little Simon home. You were right that the boy has suffered enough. The fever is terrible. Even I still have nightmares about it after so many years. It’s excruciating, almost like death is trying to mock you. One moment a fire burns through your whole body, the next it swallows you whole into this…nothingness, cold and alone.”

Geralt tightens his hold and breathes in the melancholic scent emanating from Jaskier’s skin.

“It was my grandmother, again. She sang the same lullaby to me every night, kept me sane. It’s helping little Simon too.”

“It’s in elvish,” Geralt murmurs absently when Jaskier is close to drifting off. The bard’s leveled breathing fans over the collar of Geralt’s neck.

“…hmm?”

“Nothing. Maybe for later.”

Geralt’s fingers reach the side of Jaskier’s head and thread between the soft brown locks, keeping his drooping head in place for the nap. When he looks down to where Jaskier casually drapes over half of his body, the two of them almost melding into one, Geralt is suddenly hit with how much their relationship has changed over the past few years, and at the same time, how it feels completely natural like puzzles fitting into place.

This newfound intimacy should scare Geralt, but strangely, it doesn’t. Maybe it’s because the witcher has learned long ago to treasure his bard as a companion and friend, to protect him and care for him, even without ever admitting it out loud.

Maybe he should.

And what would he even say? Geralt is equally elated and stumped at the thought of the two of them growing into something more. If the fluttering in his chest is a result of loving Jaskier, the bard deserves to know, and he deserves the best words.

Geralt scoffs softly when he realizes that he’d kill for something completely opposite. Not the strength of a witcher, but the silver tongue of a bard, the ability to weave the most beautiful prose to describe what Jaskier means to him.

The summer cicadas are singing with renewed vigor, the sizzling sound disrupting his train of thought. For now, Geralt will need to content himself in simply being with Jaskier.

And, perhaps, in pressing a tiny kiss into his soft brown hair as well. Under the night sky, only the stars will know.

--

I didn't know plague doctor Jaskier could be a thing until I started writing this chapter, and the ending just had to make way for it. Sorry that the chapter count has gone up. I promise hugs are cuddles are on the way!  <3

Tagging: @wanderlust-t @rockysstupidity @flowercrown-bard @alllthequeenshorses @mothmanismyuncle @percy-jackson-is-sexy- @constantlytiredpigeon @behonesthowsmysinging @birdsflyhome @dapandapod @artisanbaguette

Please feel free to tell me if you want to be removed or added to the list <3

[rebrandedbard]

A little drabble exchange for @theamazingbard that accidentally became more of a ficlet. Threw in a little hispanic nursery rhyme since I don’t know if we have them in english for making pain go away. I tried googling but it was unhelpful. 

TW: Descriptions of blood, drinking it, gross stuff like that. Canon-typical wounds. References to drinking and inebriation.

WC: 2617

Lips Black as the Rose

Featuring highervampire!Jaskier as he tries to figure himself out after being turned. A bit of spice in there. Am I picking and choosing parts of the lore as I see fit? Yes. Is it very sexy of me to do so? One hundred percent. Will I beta this before posting? Oh absolutely not, you know the drill. ‘No beta, we die like men and get our shit wrecked in the comments’ is my go-to Ao3 tag for a reason.

-

Under no circumstances would Jaskier ever cause harm to another living thing, but the world did not reciprocate that exact philosophy. He’d been chased and held at the business end of many a sword, dagger, lance, and—on several unfortunately memorable occasions—a startling variety of available flatware. Things were rougher after meeting Geralt and having his usual human pursuers overshadowed by the threat of monsters.

Where once a spoon in the hands of a rabid duke would seem a most threatening opponent, Jaskier now found himself on the run from a more literal array of rabid beasts, and he could quote the running speeds the prove that having an extra pair of legs did indeed give certain monsters a leg up, so to speak, on the competition. But then, having no legs at all could prove a better advantage, and such creatures as those often had the additional advantage of long, venomous teeth.

Suffice to say, it was a difficult thing to be a lover in a world of fighters. Particularly when one falls into the company of another presumed lover, only to discover that their invitation to dinner was, in truth, an invitation to be dinner.

A vampire. Young, wine drunk, and foolish, Jaskier allowed himself to be led into the vampire’s den. It had been many years ago, he no longer remembered the details. He only remembered a sharp pain on his shoulder, followed by a woozy numbness, and he awoke in a strange bed, in an inn he did not check into, with his reflection missing from the mirror. He’d run away from home shortly after, fearing a bloodlust that was never to come.

It was a strange thing, being a vampire. After months of research, Jaskier came to no conclusions as to what it meant to be one exactly. He experimented with the content of old myths, touching silver very cautiously, taking delicate bites of foods prepared with garlic. He could cross a river just as well as any man. All in all, there was not much wrong with him, and he wondered what all the fuss was about. Well, there was a bit of fuss in that he could no longer be sure of his appearance, and he’d become more vain than ever, relying on the opinions of others to assure him that he looked presentable. This was a particular bother where Geralt was concerned, for he rarely paid compliments—if ever—and was not inclined to offer opinions concerning such trifling things as fashion or appearances.

Jaskier felt sure that Geralt would have noticed right away, but when their paths crossed again, Geralt seemed entirely ignorant of Jaskier’s dramatic change in biology. Running his tongue over his teeth, he could find no fangs. People complimented him on his eyes, still cooing over how bright and blue they were; and he’d been so afraid they’d turned a ghastly red as in the stories. From what he could tell, he appeared human. He had no violent urges to drain the blood from red-cheeked virgins, nor had he transformed into a bat and flown into the night. Sunlight only burned his skin as much as it had before, though it might have been harder on his eyes. He found himself squinting more in the afternoon, and it was unpleasant hot at times.

All in all, he was relatively normal.

“Such beauty ought to be preserved evermore.” That was what the vampire had told him that night. A great favor, immortality, but he wished he might have been offered a list of instructions to go with it. Figuring things out on his own was exasperating. And though he was not quite compelled to drink blood, there were times when he was … drawn. By curiosity.

When Geralt returned from a hunt, his flesh torn and body bleeding, Jaskier found it challenging to tend his wounds. Many times, he’d almost given into temptation. It did not help that he’d wanted to know the taste of Geralt’s skin long before the transformation. Now, there was an intoxicating layer to the fantasy, and the smell of Geralt’s blood made him hazy, like the bouquet of a strong wine. Or more realistically, the cloud of bitter vodka. If it had been a particularly nasty fight, Jaskier was sure he could taste Geralt’s blood by the smell alone, so powerful it made his nose wrinkle. He could get drunk on the fumes, and it was not always so pleasant.

He never dared try. There were too many things to consider. For a start, there was no telling what the blood of a witcher would do to him—and that was before factoring potions into the equation. Having never fed of blood, Jaskier did not know how his instincts would react, and he was sure he had some animal instinct to him now. He might drain Geralt dry in a matter of minutes, or the taste of blood might make him go insane and start tearing at his surroundings like a mad beast! Or, simplest and frightening of all, Geralt might kill him. So Jaskier kept his secret, never giving in to his curiosity.

But one day, he’d slipped.

“Fuck,” Geralt grunted. He clenched his hand and a sharp smell pervaded the air. In sharpening his sword, his hand had slipped. He’d cut the meat of his palm, just above his wrist.

Jaskier was up at once, Geralt’s bag in hand, ready to wrap the wound. He was very quick these days in getting things bundled up as soon as possible. Once the wounds were wrapped, the smell was not as pronounced. He fished out a strip of cloth and had it round Geralt’s hand in a matter of moments, working efficiently with good practice.

Geralt smiled ruefully. “A clean wound, at least. Should stitch itself up by morning.” He chuckled and inspected the wound, his eyes flicking over to Jaskier. “Haven’t done that since I was a child sharpening my first dagger,” he said.

“Did you cut yourself often in training?” Jaskier asked.

“No, not so often. We didn’t waste wrappings on such small scrapes either.”

There was a distracting shadow of red seeping through the cloth. Jaskier scoffed. “So you let it bleed into the open air, did you?”

“We were less inclined to coddle than humans.”

“Coddle?” Jaskier said, raising an offended hand to his chest. “My dear, a dressing is hardly evidence of coddling. If I wished to coddle you, I’d kiss it better and sing a little chant.”

Geralt presented his hand to Jaskier, smirking humorously. “Then do it. I’ve never heard of humans having such power as to kiss wounds better. Would save me a lot of trouble.”

“Erm … ” Jaskier flushed, considering the proffered wound. He nearly made a joke about lacking such power, being no longer human, but he bit it back. To cover his hesitation, he took Geralt’s hand and gently sang the rhyme his nurse used to calm him after a scraped elbow or knee. His tongue rolled musically as he rubbed the dressing carefully. “Sana sana colita de rana, si no sanas hoy, sanarás mañana.” Then he bent his head down to kiss the place.

“I don’t see what frogs’ tails have to do with my hand,” Geralt joked.

But Jaskier did not hear him. Instead, he felt oddly fixed in place, a metallic tang on the tip of his tongue. He opened his mouth slightly, closed it, and licked at his bottom lip to chase the memory of the taste. As he did, his tongue scraped the end of a long, pointed tooth. He stumbled back unsteadily, muttered his excuses, and fled to the safety of his bedroll across camp. There he sat, writing nonsense in his notebook as though struck by sudden inspiration.

He’d tasted Geralt’s blood. And now he wanted more.

The next few hunts were blessedly without injury. Jaskier found he was able to breathe again. It twisted his gut whenever Geralt went off to fulfill a contract, and his conscience was at odds with this new obsession. He wanted Geralt to come back whole and unharmed. But he wanted some cut, some smallest scrape upon which to lathe his tongue. When he thought of it, he felt a stirring in his gums, and touching the place, he found the fangs had grown in again. It took concentration to hide them again. He took to smiling with his mouth closed after the first incident, and he developed a habit of biting his lips.

When they came to a larger town, Jaskier went straight to the butcher. To quell his growing need, he bought fresh meat, sneaking a sip from the blood dish beneath the draining sheep’s carcass while the butcher’s back was turned. It had the strangest effect on him. Within minutes of leaving the butcher’s shop, he felt light-headed. He felt drunk, in short, and he wobbled his way to the inn, a giggle in his throat.

For dinner, he asked the potmaid to send the loin to the cook and surprised Geralt with it: a small treat to celebrate his recent hunting success. In truth, he wanted nothing to do with it, festering in the shame of his lie. The loin had merely been an excuse: something to keep the butcher busy while he drank his curiosity like some writhing leech dredged up from the water.

It made him drunk. He made note of it in his book and swore that would be the end of things. This odd affair made it easy to forget, his stomach turning in guilt and disgust at the thought of repeating the act. He was fine and healthy without blood, therefore there was no need to partake. He could go the rest of his life perfectly happy never drinking another drop. Until the day it fell from Geralt’s lip.

Jaskier stared at it from across the room. Geralt had just returned from a fight, his eyes and blood black with potion. His armour was scratched up, covered in foulness from monsters unknown, but he was alive and whole, hardly bruised. Jaskier tried to focus on the smell of the guts dripping from his armour. It was still as disgusting as ever, even with vampiric senses to influence his opinion. The wretched blood was still unappetizing. But above it, he smelled a strange scent: sweet, a touch of iron. And there, shining on Geralt’s lip, the wet glisten of blood.

He swallowed hard as Geralt wiped the cut on the back of his hand. The blood smudged along his chin, all the more enticing. His knuckles turned white on the sheet of his bed as he held himself in place. Ordinarily, he would be up on his feet to help coax Geralt out of his armour by now, but he did not trust himself to be so close.

Geralt shed his shoulder pads, looking at Jaskier from the corner of his eye. “It’s a bit slippery,” he said. He inclined his head, beckoning Jaskier over. That was their way. They did not ask things from one another. It was simple routine, and the brief lapse was something awkward to acknowledge.

What excuses could he provide? Jaskier stood on trembling legs and made his way, biting his own lip to hide the fangs he felt beginning to grow. His fingers were clumsy as he fumbled with the clasps, far too close to Geralt’s face. His breath caught, watching a bead of dark blood roll down his lip, over his chin. His lip was stained black.

Geralt had always had nice lips, Jaskier felt. He was always reminded torturously of this fact when he helped Geralt out of his armour. How could one undress such a man without indulging in the fantasy of what came after, even a little? But oh, it was a dangerous line of thought. Now he was bewitched by his senses, his focus single-mindedly drawn to that point on Geralt’s lip. To kiss him now, to lick the blood from his lip—it would be divine. He felt his heart beat faster at the prospect, his hands stalling to unbuckle Geralt’s breastplate as he stared. Just one taste. One kiss was all he wanted.

A hand pressed against his chest, stopping him short. Jaskier startled out of his unconscious reverie and looked at Geralt in horror. He hadn’t—! Had he? His attention flicked between Geralt’s eyes and his lip, and to his relief, the blood remained untouched.

“Not just now,” Geralt said, voice rumbling in his chest. “The potions might paralyze you—at least for a day. Anything lesser would die from a drink of it. It turns my blood to poison.”

Jaskier blinked, edging back. “I … don’t understand your meaning,” he feigned.

Geralt followed him, stepping forward. He raised a hand, caressing Jaskier’s cheek gently. “I know,” he said. “You’re not the best at keeping secrets. I noticed some time ago you stopped aging, and there’s no shadow at your feet, even on the brightest afternoon.”

He swiped his thumb over Jaskier’s bottom lip. Jaskier gasped, his lips parting, and Geralt pushed in. Then, his thumb was pushing Jaskier’s top lip away, revealing a glistening fang. He nodded, satisfied, and stepped back once more.

“You’re a vampire,” Geralt said. “And not a common one either. My medallion doesn’t react to you at all.” He chuckled and added, “As if you could be common by any measure.”

Jaskier turned away, picking up one of Geralt’s shoulder pads. He clutched it to his chest, whether for protection or for comfort he could not say. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I was afraid to tell you … afraid what you might say. What you … might do.”

A warm hand smoothed down his arm comfortingly. There was a teasing quality to Geralt’s voice when he spoke. A hand wrapped around Jaskier’s waist, making him nearly jump in surprise.

“In regards to what: the knowledge that you’re a vampire, or the knowledge that you want to kiss me?” Geralt asked, words hot against Jaskier’s neck.

Jaskier shivered, the adrenaline of his fear quickly turning to something sweeter. “Both,” he sighed. He closed his eyes, trying to focus, to understand Geralt’s intent.

“You cannot drink of me tonight,” Geralt whispered, “but I can satisfy that other hunger, if you only have the discipline to keep your teeth to yourself.”

“What are you saying, Geralt?” The way Geralt’s hand slipped lower and lower down his front, Jaskier thought he knew. Even so …

Geralt chuckled, nose pressing to the back of Jaskier’s neck. “I’m saying I’m tired of the way you look at me like a man starving and refuse to do something about it. It’s gotten worse. It was bad enough before, waiting for you to make your move, but since your turning, it’s insufferable. I feel like the centerpiece of a banquet, waiting to be devoured.”

“You said I couldn’t kiss you,” Jaskier said, breath coming up short as he felt himself pressed back against a firm chest, a second hand coming up to tug at the edge of his chemise. “I have no discipline whatsoever. And you know that.”

“Well then.”

Jaskier dropped the plate of armour as he was pushed backward. He fell, his knees caught by the edge of the bed. Arms caged him on either side, and above him. Geralt smiled, a drop of blood falling onto the sheets below. He pressed his thumb to Jaskier’s mouth once more, something ravenous in his eyes.

“Well then,” he repeated. “Looks like I’ll have to devour you instead.”

[reyofsunlight666]

the whole baron questline in the witcher 3 exists because geralt must confront how badly a family can go wrong before he can make his family right.

like, here's this guy who's Seen Some Shit, who's a man of war, and who's turned to drink to help him cope. here's this guy who's let his unchecked aggression and trauma overtake his better impulses, and terrorised his wife and child. here's this guy who's been left alone, to stew in his anger and violence.

that sounds like it could so easily be game!geralt.

like, i don't think it's an accident that both the baron's children are daughters. one in her early twenties, full of fire, ready to fight and spit in the face of anyone who stops her. and one never carried to full term - one a failure of fertility, a bodily monstrosity, dripping with biology gone wrong.

witchers are sterile, after all.

[jerry-of-rivia]

Weird Witcher Biology

I should probably admit upfront that my degree is in Zoology (specifically an Evolution and Ecology track), so when I talk about Witchers being a bunch of weird gremlins or compare their abilities to animals, I say it with sincere affection. I don’t mean such comparisons to be dehumanizing or derogatory, because this is *extremely* my shit, and I love it -- I find nature fascinating and admirable, and actually relate a lot to these weirdos. (I consider Witchers fellow ecologists, and I have been an exterminator, myself, lol)

Part of my fascination with Witchers being able to scent-track prey and eat it raw, and having kitty cat eyes (they absolutely have tapetum lucidums, fight me!) is because this is such a refreshing push-back against the typical depiction of enhanced warriors. AKA super soldiers: humans altered to be tools of war, engineered to make their biology and psychology better at taking and delivering punches.... and that’s about it. 

Except that’s not how biology or psychology works at all!

Even soldiers in active war zones are not in combat situations most of the time, so all these alterations targeted for combat efficiency would actually end up affecting their regular life way more. There is no reason to believe Steve Rogers, Captain America, can’t also see in the dark or experience other enhanced senses due to his transformation. That his strength and endurance haven’t drastically changed his metabolic needs. Yet you rarely see this depicted or acknowledged outside of fandom. Wolverine and his clones can track by smell, but you don’t really see it used as integral to solving a crime. Their enhancements typically stay regulated to the battlefield, with little exploration of how those same abilities would affect the majority of their life. But that’s what I want!

The Witcher is one of the few properties that follows through on those logical conclusions, and it goes hard. Are Steve and Logan also immune to most toxins? Yes. It’s a cool detail; an ace in their sleeve. 

Meanwhile, Witchers actively exploit that ability and tailor their potions around it because of fucking course they do. This is metal as hell. This is solid world-building! Their enhanced senses are constantly and casually mentioned (Geralt smells everybody) and used as major plot devices that don’t require war. Witchers have an insular culture influenced by their unique biology, skill sets, and social standing. (Traumatized as hell.)

Witchers are weird because that’s what fantasy super soldiers would really be like outside of the war they were altered for. AKA, most of the time. Sniffing criminals, cronching raw meat? Thanks I’m Love Them. 

[wherethewordsare]

A Master Post of Geraskier Writings

(Updated 3/13/2022)

I figured I should put something together here in case anyone is interested. This might not be great? I’ve never done one of these before

-Jay

Things on my AO3:

The Accidental Pied Piper: Over the years, Jaskier had played fast and loose with the idea of "Law of Surprise" and never really considered the consequences of it until Nelfgaard started the war and suddenly he has a brood of children to protect. There is only one place he can think of where they would be safe, but it means going back to the Blue Mountains with the Witchers. His Witcher. He hadn't spoken to Geralt since the Dragon Hunt nearly four years ago. Sometimes the best plans are not the smartest plans.

Rated: Teen and Up. 

Fire Lizards and Flirting:  Out on an ecological survey, Geralt has to fish a handsome stranger with a lute of all things out of the river. Roach is a big goofy Great Dane and responsible for the need to fish the guy out.

Rated: General Audiance

Melody of a Lonely and Broken Heart:  Jaskier tells Geralt about these ruins where it’s said these ghosts come out every Fall Equinox and sing to each other. Geralt knows where it is but says that he’s never heard the singing... Ah, well.

Rated: Teen and Up

The Din in the Silence: He hadn't meant to snap, not really. But now Jaskier wasn't talking or singing on the Path anymore and Geralt was quickly realizing how much he missed it.Or: When your friend messages you to ask "Weird Question but do you think Geralt likes the singing or not? Like is it in the way of something?" And then she sends you this amazing outline and gives you permission to punch it up. This was @thetinymm brainchild . I just took the bones and filled it out.

Rated: Teen and Up

Dreams of You Still Live Inside Me: What is it witchers dream of? What in this world do they want more than anything? Geralt didn't even know until he walked into the den of an unknown mutation and ended up trapped in a dream with his heart's one true desire; Jaskier.

Rated: Mature  [PLEASE MIND THE TAGS ON THIS FIC! IT’S GOING TO GET TO BE A LOT SOONISH]

I also have a collection of fics I am affectionately calling “The Witcher Support Program” where I just write fluff and softness for some other amazing and wonderful people in this fandom. You can find all of those in this Master Post Here: The Witcher Support Program

Jay’s 400 Follower Celebration Bingo Card Masterlist

Here on Tumblr, drabbles, ficlets, shit posts and so on....

My Feelings on Yenskier

Dinners Disasters and Desserts for the wonderful @thetinymm

Morning Came

When You Know

Death and Destiny, Heroics and Heartbreak

Thoughts on Jaskier and The Armor 2.0

In the End 

The tumblr post of Fire Lizards and Flirting

When the Night Starts to Grow Cold... which was inspired by this post from the correctly named @theamazingbard. 

Remind Me Again, Part 1  Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 and Part 5

Waking Up Married in Crinfrid written for @theamazingbard

Dear Heart

The Bed Roll Cuddle ficlet written for @jaskierswolf

The Long Bow ficlet

The Din in the Silence, tumblr edition

Peace

Melody of a Lonely and Broken Heart, tumblr edition

Jaskier Nearly Commits a Murder

Dreams of You Still Live Inside Me [Part 1] tumblr edition

Salt and Wine

Traditions of the Heart

Big Bands and Biology

Before and After the Battle

I’ll Stay with You also on AO3 Here

Back in the Closet also on AO3 Here

Till the Fever Breaks also on AO3 Here

I wrote these prompts from this list here (which I am still taking, and will always take :) My goal is to have the whole list filled out!)

There’s people chasing us and I pulled you into the alley with me and wow you’re close

Your shirt/jumper was in the laundry pile and I couldn’t help but steal it

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Jolting awake after a nightmare and being comforted

“Good morning, beautiful/handsome”

Hands Brushing Accidentally 

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Blind date set up by friends

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We literally ran into each other

You’re leaving for something dangerous and I can’t help but kiss you

Painting the house that ends in a paint fight and giggles

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Everyone thinks I should stay away from you because you’re dangerous

Spin the bottle

Do you trust me?

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We’re dating and I didn’t know you were a mobster/biker

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Having a bad day and the other noticing

“You saved my life!”

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Taking care of the other when sick or injured

I’m your new neighbor and I got locked out, help!

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I called you at 2am because I need you

You caught me doing something dangerous and flipped out

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I know it’s not a lot, but I hope to keep track of it as I go along. My asks are always open, and I sometimes make a pretty decent beta reader if you need it. 

As always, thank for reading and stay tuned!

-Jay~

[omoghouls]

You got any Geralt headcanons? Bc I am five episodes into the Netflix show (having heard stuff about the games, but never actually played them for various reasons) and I already think it is absolutely tragic that I have seen SO MUCH Jaskier omo randomly in the omo tag on Ao3, but hardly any of Geralt himself. He seems like an ideal omo victim...

Eyyy I absolutely do have some has for our silver wolf ;w;

(Personally, I’ve only watched like- 3 episodes of the Netflix series so, these are kinda more around the books and games bc/ I have a goldfish attention span xD)

But OMG I fuking hear you, like, Geralt is such a good omo victim??

- Geralt is a Witcher that had extra trials/experiments ye? Well, I can totally see that bringing some less than desirable side effects amongst the improvements that came with the trials. Namely being his bladder being significantly weaker compared to his Witcher brothers.

-That being said, he still has a strong bladder, compared to a human. However, he still has his limits, something he would rather pretend where not something that plagues him, especially during times of fights or other when around others who he isn’t acquainted with.

-Sometimes to the point where he will try to hold it beyond his limits. He’s rather good at hiding his now, urgent need; if you hadn’t known better you would just think he was just scowling over something that has made him miffed. 

-Being a Witcher, his biology is different compared to humans- his body can filter out his potions and other drinks fairly quickly (hence why he can drink things such as swallow and other things that would kill a human, his body is just, built different lol) Buuuut, that doesn’t fair well if he has drunken a good amount.

With his bladder now firm, all the previous days liquid sloshing around in tune with the rhythmic bouncing of Roach as they travel down the beaten path to the next village that was in need of aid for whatever monster has taken one of their owns. Geralt thinks of veering off the path and taking a leak 

However, he is now too close to the village and, as known, humans don’t always take too kindly to a Witcher prowling about without reasoning. So, he refrains, mainly to save himself from getting pelted with spit and vemonus words from the towns folks. 

-Anyways, he will hold it in until he physically cannot anymore if needed. This, sometimes being an awful idea (although, it is common for this dumbass to have bad ideas, we are talking about Geralt lmao) 

-That being a bad idea when he comes face to face with a monster- he’ll put all his focus in killing the growling creature that is mere inches away from his face. With all his might on his footing and sword placements, his bladder is placed to the side- and Geralt can feel the knawing ache through his focus and that, unfortunately is his downfall

The beast is slain, blood and vesera  coating his tunic as he is planted onto the ground, his breath ragged as he comes down from the adrenaline that is pumping through his veins. The victory is short lived as he feels something,,,,wet, warm and wet beneath the flooring. Urine is pooling around him, muddying the ground and soaking through his slacks.

He closes his eyes for a moment, relaxing his tensed muscles and just, lets his body go, knowing there was no use to even try to stumble his feet and find a tree, he was already soaked. 

-He isn’t too muffed when it comes to having accidents,,,when he’s by himself that is. When alone he can just, stop and find a lake and wash his clothing, take a break, pretend he can’t smell the acidic scent of piss lingering from his trousers 

-But, when others? Different story. He wants to be seen as a strong, lone wolf, not some mutant who can’t keep his pants dry! So, when he’s frozen in place, urine cascading down his thighs and splattering against the floor as others watch on in shock and perhaps some snickers. His emotions might be stunted but, in these moments, he can feel his ears burning and his chest tightening from the many eyes latched onto him and his predicament.

-Also, can totally see him as a bed wetter. This wolf has seen some SHIT and been through a lot in his 90+ years of living. And, many a times these fears and emotions show themselves through his sleeping time and, makes for many sodden sheets :o

(When he and Yen are together tho, she’s v sweet and makes sure her wolf is okay and cleaned up, ofc some light teasing but, just to help make light of the situation and to help take Geralt’s mind off what has happened  ;w; ) 

-ALSO also, all that armour he wears,,,that HAS to be hell to get off when he’s really got to go, just sayinggggg 

AAAAAAAaaaaaaa I have more but, I will save you from the rambling helll, but, if you have any or want some elaboration I am always here for some white wolf pipi uwu