Prompt 15
Jaskier realizes that when Geralt comes back from a hunt, pent up, eyes black, still snarling and panting like a beast, the only thing that helps is cuddling him.
He hugs him, and runs his hands through Geralt's hair, and gently washes him with a rag and hushes words into his ear, and it helps bring Geralt back down.
Sometimes he wakes up to Geralt coming back from a late-night hunt and immediately grabbing Jaskier's waist and yoINking him into Geralt's bedroll so they can snuggle. It's cute. And Jaskier certainly has no complaints.
Jaskier tries to ask him about it one time, but all it earns him is a "Shut up, Bard." and Geralt acting weird the rest of the day. Maybe he's embarrassed? Jaskier doesn't know why. He has no idea what the potions must feel like to Geralt, perhaps he truly needs the warmth and mass of a person in order to not want to rip his own hair out or scratch off his own skin or something else?
So he's just fine with hugging his beefcake of a bestie (of whom he may be completely head over heels in love with) if it means keeping some awful ailment at bay.
And he believes this for at least a decade, before he meets Geralt's brothers. Don't get him wrong, they're lovely people! But one day, an exceptionally difficult hunt calls for all three of them to go together and leave Jaskier at camp. Jaskier is a bit concerned over how he'll comfort all three of them at once, but when they come back, he finds that Geralt is suddenly ignoring him, and Lambert and Eskel are acting normal, if not just very exhausted.
Jaskier pulls Lambert aside and asks him why they're not itching to hug him, and Lambert is very confused. Jaskier explains that usually Geralt needs to hold him in order to deal with the after-effects of his potions. Lambert explains that's not a normal witcher thing, and that Geralt probably just likes him, but he explains it in his own lovely lambert-y way, meaning it's mostly just laughing hysterically at his big brother catching feelings for some bratty noisemaker in silk (He likes Jaskier! It's just... Not what he saw Geralt going for.)
Jaskier tries to talk to Geralt about it, but Geralt stops him from even walking close to him, and walks farther off as extra salt in the wound. It's like he can't even bear to be around Jaskier. It hurts a bit. Jaskier asks Eskel if Geralt took different potions or has a toxin of some sort i him that makes him behave like this instead of the normal, and then explains everything Lambert told him. Eskel agrees that it sounds like him just being comforted by the feeling of his mate safe and sound next to him, and that they've never seen Geralt like that.
Jaskier is confused, because surely Geralt doesn't feel the same way, right?
sURPRISE SECOND ATTACK! THE MONSTER RETURNS! OH NOOOOO
Anyways, It slashes the shit out of Jaskier's arm, or perhaps chest, I don't know, whichever wound strikes your fancy, and the witchers go after it, but as soon as the beast is killed, Geralt rushes to Jaskier, and holds him close. The others try to walk over to help patch Jaskier up only to get growled at by their own brother.
So now Lambert and Eskel are playing rock paper scissors on the ground over who REALLY got the final hit on the beast while Geralt sits 12 feet away from them, mending his bard. He growls at them if they look at Jaskier and him too long. A while later, he's off the high of the potions and adrenaline combined, and the witchers sure are going to have a field day lovingly making fun of their brother over this.
But first, Jaskier and Geralt need to have a heartfelt talk.
♡!Optional addons!♡
• Big bonus points for a sequel or additional chapter of Lambert starting to act the same way over Aiden (or other ship of your choice, but Lambert and Aiden are my bread and butter lol)
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Love doomed Team Soulfire.
Because they all love so very deeply don't they? They love their children, they love their friends, they love their homes, they love the little peace they have found in the Island.
They love so deeply that they just want to go home.
But love can be a curse.
Love can lead to nothing but pain and disaster when that love blinds you.
The Entity says that their children's lives are at stake, that they must win if they ever want to see them again, that there is a cursed team and they cannot lose, that their lose is death to their children. And Team Blue cannot risk it, they cannot allow themselves to let their children be put at risk in case they are the cursed them.
For love, they would do anything.
And that was exactly what they did. When other's are getting their resources, when they are thinking about what to do, how to proceed, Team Soulfire already knew, they knew they would do anything for their children, they would kill and they would die.
Surely everyone else was on the same page wasn't them? Their deaths meant nothing as long as their children could be saved.
Love blinded Team Soulfire.
Love blinded them to the pain they inflicted on others. Made them unable to realize exactly what they are doing the moment they spilled first blood, because that? That was the moment Purgatory began.
Not when they landed on the desolate Island, not when they were separeted on teams, not when their children's lives were considered a prize in a twisted game.
That first death? That started Purgaroty. Because what Team Blue didn't realize was that not everyone else was blinded by love as much as they were, that for others killing wasn't their first goal, that for a brief moment people thought they could fight against the system, that they could try in other ways.
But after that? Oh no, there was no turning back from that.
They didn't realize that when you kill someone over and over and over and over again, without mercy, without pause, without thinking about the sort of pain you are inflicting on them, it doesn't matter why you are doing it. They wouldn't look at you and see a friend, they wouldn't see a person who just wants to go home, who just wants to end this hell.
They will see a murderer.
They will see someone who sees their suffering as a means of gaining points, they will see someone who doesn't care about anyone else.
They will only see betrayal.
They will only see a enemy.
You cannot burn your bridges and expect to find a way home. You cannot stab the people around you, even if you do it for love, even if you believe yourself to be doing it for good reasons, and expect them to open your arms to you when you need it.
Team Soulfire loves. They love so deeply, so intensely, so very much.
And their love doomed them to be hated. To be viewed as the ones willing to do anything, to kill and betray and destroy anything the others have. Their love blinded them to the suffering they inflicted upon the others.
And the most painful thing?
Team Soulfire does not realize others are not playing the game as they are. That when they try to even the scoreboard, when they try to make things "fair" they are just feeding an uncontrollable fire, they are just scattering the ashes even further, they are hugging the broken pieces of what once was and they don't realize that the blood coating their hands.
Oh my darlings, how they put so much faith in a verbal agreement about the safety of the egg statues. How they love the children so much that they could not imagine that others wouldn't see those stones the same way they did, that they wouldn't be petrified that there was the slight chance that hurting the statue could hurt their children, how they believed that people would feel the same, would respect it as much as they did.
But of course they didn't. Because Team Bolas Rojas has been stabbed in the back from all the sides multiple times, they could not phantom the idea of trusting the people who have hunted them for sport, who have killed them for points in their own home, who have done nothing but hurt and betray them, they don't look at Team Soulfire and see friends just trying to go home, trying to protect their loved ones, they just see the people who hurt them multiple times.
And Team Green Ninjas agreed to not kill the statues, they truly had never any intention of finishing the job, but at no point their ever promised they wouldn't try to win, because at the end of the day they too worry so fucking much they couldn't imagine the possibility of not trying to win to save their children.
So that leaves Team Soulfire isolated, burned by love, forever to be distrusted and hated and avoided because of the actions they took in day one, because they believed that anything done in Purgatory was done for love and would be forgiven because they all have the same goal, they all want the same thing, because they believed people would understand their motivations.
And they did! They do!
It just doesn't matter.
Because the hurt they caused is too deep to be soothed by that.
For love, they have caused what seems like irreparable amounts of pain.
For love, they doomed themselves to be the villains in the eyes of everyone they know.
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