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jaskiercommabard · 8 months

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Hi can I request “Let me do this, please.” for geraskier please and thanks 💛

I'm sorry this took so long! I am a slow writer on a good day, and I was planning on doing like a 300 word drabble but Geralt said NO. 2500 words or I feed you to Roach

Read on AO3

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“Geralt, help me, please,” Jaskier screams.

Not Jaskier.

It is not Jaskier, but that doesn’t keep the blood from rushing in Geralt’s ears as he hunts the thing that has his voice.

Jaskier is safe, back at the inn - probably sleeping by now, or else terrorizing the pretty barmaid Geralt had left him flirting with. He’s safe, far away from this barren, gore-filled clearing, unless-

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have followed you.”

The voice is thick with tears, wobbling pitifully. The cries continue, ricocheting mercilessly through the forest.

“I’m afraid.”

“Don’t leave me.”

“Geralt, Geralt. I’m here.”

He is not here. The only trace of Jaskier comes from the strip of thick linen blocking Geralt’s vision, the barest memory of lemongrass and cinnamon hitting the air when he tugs the fabric more securely over his eyes. Beneath it, only rot.

Geralt turns in a slow circle, blade raised and ready to strike. He’s spent all day tracking the location of a nightwraith that has been calling young men to their deaths in the forest, and now the moon is high. Geralt is not a young man, so he is relieved to find - in a stroke of his peculiar sort of luck - that the nightwraith isn’t overly particular about which hearts it rips out and leaves at the edge of town.

“There you are,” it coos, the tone familiar and melodic. “I tried so hard to find you.”

It’s a perfect mockery of relief and exhaustion, the same sigh that greets him after a long day riding or a long night performing, and it’s close. Its feet fall just like Jaskier’s, a little heavier on his right side where his hip is starting to give him trouble - Geralt can almost see the unevenly worn soles of his boots crunching toward him through the blanket of leaves on the ground.

It's late enough in autumn that Jaskier would be grousing about the cold, and as soon as the thought crosses his mind, the creature's teeth begin to chatter.

“There’s something out here. I’m frightened. Why won’t you help me?”

Closer, now. Close enough for Geralt to lunge at it, and the gasp that falls into the quiet air when his sword finds the creature’s flesh belongs to Jaskier, too.

The strike falls short of a killing blow, thrust out blindly as it is, and does little more than confuse and enrage it. Soon the voices are overlapping, shrieking above him, losing their soft edge. Vicious wind tears around him and he’s caught in a squall of Jaskier weeping, Jaskier laughing, Jaskier howling in pain. It is behind him and before him, above him and around him, oppressive, inescapable. He has no choice but to rip the fabric from his eyes and-

And there is Jaskier, where Geralt knew he would be, kneeling in the dirt with trembling hands pressed into his side. A gruesome stain slips out from beneath his fingers, so similar to the red of his doublet that it only makes the fabric darker, and a matching ribbon of it falls from his mouth.

It’s a nightmare Geralt has woken from a thousand times, Jaskier all blue and pink and red, too red at the end of his own sword.

"Why?" the thing mouths, but it's lost, crackling out somewhere in the air instead of falling from his lips. The creature wields his voice like a weapon as it loses control, twisting that sweet tenor into something that stings his ears.

The taste of blood coats Geralt’s mouth and fills his nose, real and hot and nauseating. It's a strong illusion, built from grief and malice, and it has to end, now, before he cracks beneath the weight of it. He has no choice but to sprint past Jaskier to reach the corpse on the other side of the clearing, but even his enhanced speed is no match for a wraith this powerful. Fingers colder than ice wrap around his ankle and he is flung like a doll to the ground, knees singing with pain as they crash into the earth.

“Let me do this,” he shouts over the roaring wind, twisting back to face the wraith. He’s foolish for it, maybe, but it’s easier to argue with a monster when it wears a face he squabbles with a hundred times before breakfast most days. “Please. Let me help you!”

For a moment, the frigid hand on him only tightens. It’s enough to make his bones creak, but then Jaskier’s face softens, rippling out from the center. That familiar mop of messy hair turns golden, tumbling easily over a set of round, narrow shoulders. Finally, blue eyes turn maple brown - upturned and mournful, a perfect match to the farmer who had begged Geralt to find his missing daughter.

They had looked just like hers, watery and wide, when the man chased him down outside the alderman's hut. Find my girl, he had pleaded, pressing a stack of old coins into Geralt’s palm. Bring her home, however you can.

The flickery image of the girl nods once, just the barest dip of her chin as she releases his ankle. It’s enough for Geralt to lurch away, extending his hand to cast Igni over the too-small body decaying in the dry grass beside them. For a moment, above the rot and char and heat, the air is washed out with a breeze of sweet hay and lilies, and then she is gone.

What’s left behind is a maelstrom of untamed rage and malice, once more with Jaskier’s face, flickering now as the illusion struggles to hold itself together. Something sick and sharp blooms in Geralt’s throat, but he raises his sword anyway. He wavers, and the wraith smiles with his friend’s mouth. It’s all wrong - all sharp, dripping teeth jutting out from endless black, and that is just enough to snap Geralt back to focus.

The wraith shrieks, the witcher springs. It still has Jaskier’s tears and Jaskier’s hands and Jaskier’s sweet, wide eyes when it dies on Geralt’s sword.

The pleasant hum coming from the warmly lit hall of the Merry Magpie rises when Geralt stalks in the front door, its patrons ruffling like rattled hens at the sight of him. He forgoes the bar entirely - he’ll collect his coin from the alderman and deliver it along with a box of ashes to the farmer in the morning. Tonight, he’ll tend to the cold spike of grief and guilt settled in his own chest.

He can’t shake his unease as he climbs the stairs to the shadowy upper floor of the inn - it rolls around in his gut, sends his shoulders bunched halfway to his ears. It’s irrational, he knows, but the feeling only winds itself more tightly around his spine when he shoves open the door to their shared room and finds it empty.

Geralt swallows around the sharp thing creeping higher into his throat. The bard isn’t far, not with his lute and songsheets strewn about the bed. He’s just as likely to be in a room around the corner with that freckled barmaid, or out behind the inn with the stableman he’d been making eyes at all day, or-

“In here, Geralt!”

In his panic, he’d missed the thick humidity of the room and the scent of Jaskier’s soap, missed the familiar tick of his heart beating quarter-time against Geralt’s own.

“That is you, Geralt?” he continues, calling from behind the dressing screen in the corner of the room. “You’d better be Geralt, or you’ll have some explaining to do to my outrageously large and occasionally violent very best friend in the whole wide world-”

His voice swings up an octave when he turns to find the witcher only a few paces from him.

“Merciful gods, witcher, you really have to stop doing that. It’s…unnerving. I am unnerved. Has anyone ever told you you’re unnerving?”

Jaskier has. Frequently, but Geralt is so caught up in staring at his throat working, whole and unhurt, that he doesn’t answer.

“Fuck. Are you alright?” Jaskier asks as he rounds the steaming basin in the center of the room to close the space between them. His tone is tempered now, low and even, the way it is when he soothes Roach while Geralt picks pebbles out of her shoes. Geralt wets his lips but only nods, and careful hands rise up to pet him over anyway.

There’s a peculiar crease in his brow, a dimple beside his frowning mouth that, surely, no creature could ever mimic. It only deepens as he works away the armor to uncover Geralt piece by piece, unable to find any visible injury. The help only slows him down, really, but Jaskier is warm and real and his waist fits neatly into Geralt’s palm where his hand has drifted, so he lets himself be fussed over.

The bard is chirping away as he always is when the thorns start to prick at Geralt’s stomach again.

“Jaskier,” he tries to command, but it comes out strangled, “I need you to stop talking.”

The bard squawks indignantly, swatting at his shoulder where he’s masterfully knocking loose a pauldron that needs its latch replaced.

“You are so rude, do you know? You’re terrible to me.”

“Jask. Stop.”

Either Jaskier hears the plea he’s trying to swallow, or Geralt is bleeding out on the forest floor and hallucinating, because he snaps his mouth shut obediently and steps back. That’s wrong, that’s worse, so Geralt tightens the hand on his waist to draw him back into the circle of his arms.

He presses his face into the space beneath Jaskier’s jaw, because he wants to, and because he can’t help himself. His other hand drifts into the gently curling hair at the nape of Jaskier’s neck, damp with sweat and steam from the bath slowly cooling beside them. He startles slightly at the touch, but Geralt only noses in further.

After what has been only a moment for Geralt but certainly a small eternity for the bard, he speaks softly into the top of Geralt’s head.

“Just tell me what’s wrong, dear. Please.”

“It had your voice,” he whispers. Jaskier scoffs indignantly, but it’s missing some of his usual bluster.

“I can assure you, nothing and no one on this Continent has my-”

He cuts himself off, tensing in Geralt’s hold as the words hang above them.

Luring our men into the forest, the innkeeper's wife had said. They all heard it - their wives, lovers, calling to them in the night. It drove them mad, ripped their hearts out.

“It had my voice.”

He understands, and the meaning is cutting through the air like an arrow let loose too soon, flying outside Geralt's control.

“And you had to…?” Jaskier grimaces, all blunt teeth, and leans back to drag a thumb across his throat. Geralt nods tightly, follows the motion with his eyes and then with the tips of his own fingers. That familiar sparrow-heart pulse jumps up to meet his touch in the same soft and perfect spot where Geralt had plunged his sword.

“Oh, love,” he breathes, and it twists in Geralt's stomach like a fist. He slides his eyes away to track a bead of sweat falling from Jaskier's temple, and he can smell it - lemongrass and cinnamon, salt-sweet skin. No copper, no decay.��

Though his blood moves too slowly for it to show, Geralt feels the flush high in his cheeks anyway, where it might blossom on a human's face - where it does begin to blossom on Jaskier's. It pricks strangely beneath his eyes, makes his tongue slow and clumsy.

“Did you know?”

A startled noise bubbles out of Jaskier as he meets Geralt’s gaze, but his eyes are fond and soft, wide with something that looks like wonder. Geralt leans into the tender brush of knuckles across his cheek, forgetting for a moment why he ever stopped himself before.

“That you love me?” He laughs, high and soft and musical. It's unbearable. “I suspected. Did you?”

The answer sits on his tongue like the last bite of an apple tart, lives in his throat like a shared skin of good wine, scratches at his chest like an ancient shirt stitched together by a musician's cautious hands.

“I must have. I-” he shakes his head as if the right words might tumble out of him. Jaskier only sighs, an easy smile stuck on his face as he raises his palm to Geralt's cheek. It's the same look he has when they meet each other on the road after a season apart.

He can’t reconcile the smile and the screaming, the image of the wraith still exploding like a bomb behind his eyelids.

"I'm sorry," he says, nonsensically. His thumb is back at the hollow of Jaskier's throat.

"For what?"

"I hurt you."

I cut you down as you begged me not to. As you cried out for me to help you. What does that make me?

"Show me," he whispers, just loud enough to hear over the peculiar tangle of their heartbeats. There is an unfamiliar look on his face, something curious and patient, something that makes him sweat even as the room is cooling.

Geralt swallows hard, presses his thumb into the top of Jaskier's throat, dragging it down until it meets the loosely gathered laces of his chemise. Jaskier's hands fly up to untie them, slowly exposing each precious inch of skin that had been rent and torn by the blade. Instead of steel, Geralt pulls gooseflesh along in his wake. It blooms along with the sweetly creeping flush that spreads across Jaskier's collarbones - blood brought to surface by his hand, again, so different this time.

Geralt continues his path over Jaskier's breastbone, across the dip between his ribs, until he reaches the spot above Jaskier's navel where his sword had struck its final blow. He follows the path again with the flat of his hand, up over a rabbiting heart until his palm rests in its place against Jaskier's neck. His breaths have gone thin and quick, the way they did when he was dying.

He's not dying, now - no, Jaskier is very much alive when he closes the meager space between them. He's alive when he tips their foreheads together, and Geralt wonders how he could ever have been fooled, seeing this face without the crinkles near his eyes and the easy flush in his cheeks. He’s so alive when their lips brush and it’s all sweet and hot, no ash left in the breath they share.

Geralt knows what Jaskier sounds like with steel in his throat, now, what he sounds like drowning in his own blood. He’ll never unlearn it. It's only fair, he decides, that he should know what Jaskier sounds like when his lips find that same place, when his tongue follows.

#Soooo this for sure got away from me lolol #Thank you so much for the prompt I hope this is okay!!!!!#Geralt x Jaskier #geraskier #geraskier fic #witcher fic #little fics #fic prompt #my brain does weird things when I ask it to write

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