Did I start another chapter fic? Yes, yes I did. Did I intend to? No, no I did not. It was supposed to be a short thing but it didn’t turn out that way because I’m just like that.
It is also available on my ao3 at chronically_obsessed so please leave kudos and comments there too. Do enjoy this, courtesy of your emotionally starved writer <3
***
Summary:
A crazy sorceress intended the obedience curse for Geralt but she’s dead and now Jaskier is cursed to do anything and everything Geralt says. This is a problem
*****
Chapter 1
“He is my responsibility!” The sorceress
screamed, her lovely face twisted in rage and insanity. “My child!”
“You are not
healthy,” Geralt said firmly, yet diplomatically, “you shouldn’t be taking care
of a child in this state, he is not your son. I will not permit you to use
magic on anyone like this.” The child previously mentioned cowered behind an
overturned table, the boy’s house was in shambles around the him, his father
was probably off doing heaven knows what under some or other spell.
The deranged woman
shrieked. “Permit? You will learn,
Witcher. I do not intend to take orders from you, she grabbed a vial from the
mess on the floor and poured its contents on the floor before Geralt’s feet
with a psychotic laugh, he didn’t dare take his eyes off her. She started an
incantation and wind raced through the chamber, taking the shambles of the house
with it, wooden splinters and shards of glass embedded themselves Geralt’s skin
one for one, like he was a morbid version of a throwing knife target.
He lunged for her,
but found he couldn’t move further than a step, he looked to the floor. The
salt had multiplied, it crept in a circle around him, a thick line of white
around him. Shit. The child cried out
as the circle formed. “No,” the boy screamed.
“Get out!” His words were hard to understand through his tears, when Geralt processed
the message the circle had sealed around him. He was trapped.
The sorceress
finished chanting and took a step forward.
Geralt wrenched a
dagger from his belt and before thoughts could cloud his instincts, threw it at
the grinning sorceress with an aim of pure reflex. It struck true with a
sickening thump. The woman’s grin froze, then melted slowly off her face as the
room calmed, even her unruly dark curls seemed to deflate as a shocked expression
crept over her face.
“You said you
wouldn’t kill me,” she said in childlike surprise, clutching the dagger in her
chest. Blood soaked her light brown fingers, slender and lovely even now.
Geralt breathed hard, somewhere behind him the boy was sobbing. He crawled to
the edge of the circle, the splinters, the debris lodged in his skin making the
movement difficult. He looked her in the eye, the least he could do.
“I’m sorry.”
The sorceress
started sobbing, she screamed through her tears. “No!” She crawled closer to Geralt until she was nearly in his face.
“I was supposed to live! I am not finished!” Only the line of deathly
white salt separated them.
“You were supposed
to live,” Geralt agreed and her anger melted to sorrow and she clutched her
chest, blood stained her hands, her dress as it flowed to the floor. The
sorceress braced a hand on Geralt’s shoulder as her strength gave out. Geralt
held her hand and soon she fell on top of him, barely breathing, he moved her,
trying to get her into the comfortable position, as comfortable as one could be
when dying. Her head lay against his chest.
She stopped
sobbing, breaths coming slowly. She clutched Geralt’s hand in hers, both now
soaked red. Geralt stroked her hair in a way he hoped was soothing.
“I’m sorry,” she
said as her hand released its grip on his, going slack. She gazed at nothing
now, Geralt closed her eyes. He hoped it gave her some peace.
***
That’s when
Jaskier came bursting through the open door. “Geralt!” he screamed, “Geralt,
are you-“ his eyes slid to the dead sorceress in his arms. “Oh,” is all he
managed. The room was quiet. A few sniffles came from behind the ruined table, Jaskier
instantly hurried to the source of the sound, his eyes widened when he saw the
terrified boy.
“Are you alright?”
he asked. The boy nodded mutely, wiping away his tears with his expensive
looking sleeve.
That being enough
for him, the bard turned back to Geralt. His eyes seemed full of grief. Grief
for the dead woman in his arms whom he barely knew. Who had tried to kill him.
He still held her limp hand in his, his eyes staring at nothing.
“Geralt,” he tried
gently.
Geralt seemed to
come back to himself and met his eyes. Jaskier stepped closer, and put a
comforting hand on his shoulder.
“Jaskier.” He said
it as if he only recognized him now.
“Come on,” Jaskier
urged and picked a thick splinter from Geralt’s cheek, “we need to get these
out.”
Geralt hummed in
agreement. He drew the dagger smoothly from the sorceress’ chest and wiped it
on his own shirt instead of hers, probably lodging a dozen splinters deeper
into his skin but Jaskier didn’t reprimand him.
He moved the woman
aside and stood up, eyes searching. Jaskier grabbed a wine stained tablecloth
from the wreckage on the floor and handed it to Geralt to drape over the dead
body. Blood mixed with wine, it crept slowly in a morbid fashion over the pale
cloth until the blood couldn’t be distinguished from the wine.
A voice shouted
from downstairs. “Mikolaj!” Heavy
footsteps raced quickly up the stairs. “Mikolaj!”
“Father!” The boy
shouted and suddenly a figure appeared in the doorway.
“Mikolaj,” the
lord sank to his knees in relief as the boy ran to him and enveloped him in his
arms, ignoring the two men completely. They stood awkwardly to the side as man
and his son blocked the doorway.
Finally, the lord
lifted his head and in his first bout of common sense in probably quite a while,
demanded “Who are you?”
“They saved me,
Father,” said Mikolaj. “They saved me from her.”
The lord’s eyes
widened as they drifted to the body under the quickly reddening tablecloth.
***
The lord had given
them a frankly outrageous sum to thank them for their deeds. Geralt had looked
so uncomfortable that Jaskier was worried the ground would swallow him, but before he could refuse Jaskier had jumped in
and thanked the lord politely. They had needed the money.
He had however
refused the offer to stay the night. The forest floor they were sitting on was
still warm with the setting sun as the bright day turned slowly to twilight.
Jaskier chattered away to fill the silence as they removed their sleeping mats
from Roach’s saddlebags. Geralt mumbled something about firewood as he made to
take off into the forest but Jaskier was having none of that.
“No, come back
here and sit down. You are not impaling yourself with any more splinters.”
Geralt grumbled but did as he was told. Jaskier retrieved some dried meat from
their packs and shoved some into Geralt’s hands with a simple order, “Eat.”
Then he took off into the forest to collect the wood himself. Geralt grudgingly
began gnawing on the meat.
When he came back,
arms full of wood, he found Geralt shirtless and mournfully inspecting the
state of his shirt. Jaskier stared at the amount of glass and wood embedded in
his skin and thanked the God’s that he
wasn’t a Witcher.
He soon found his
eyes skimming over the wounds and instead lingering the muscle and skin. He
blushed and looked away. He knelt down, his back toward Geralt and busied
himself with making the fire.
Jaskier laid out
the wood carefully, hyperaware of Geralt at his back. He tried and failed to
get the fire going. His fingers were clumsy with the spark stones, so when he
nearly split his finger open by missing the other stone Geralt sighed and laid
a hand on his shoulder.
“Move aside.”
Jaskier moved instantly. How odd, he’d wanted to refuse and then… He moved
without question and let Geralt cast a sign on the fire which had it instantly
blazing. He chose to ignore the strange feeling.
“Alright,” he said
with determination as he stood up, “let’s get it over with, shall we?” He
fetched the medical kit from Geralt’s bags and moved to the Witcher’s back,
tweezers in hand.
He took a deep
breath and got to work. Geralt sat perfectly still as Jaskier focused on
pulling the large glass pieces out first. He laid them into one of the any
cloths they always carried for good reason.
Geralt flinched
when Jaskier accidentally pressed down on wound. “Sorry,” Jaskier winced.
Geralt only hummed
and let him continue. The process was slow and probably painful but Geralt
didn’t complain and soon his back was clean and Jaskier moved on to his arms.
He moved the injured Witcher around gently, either letting Geralt brace an
elbow on his own knee for balance or holding his wrist in place as he worked on
his forearm.
Geralt didn’t look
at him, he just stared at the fire as if the memory of the sorceress in his
arms wasn’t quite gone yet. Jaskier let him be but once or twice he found his
attention slipping to the way his muscles flexed and relaxed. He brought his
focus back quickly before he hurt the Witcher.
“I can do the rest
myself,” Geralt offered but Jaskier ignored him and motioned form him to lean
back on his elbows. Geralt did so with a sigh, baring his chest and stomach to
Jaskier. Oh. Oh the gods must have been particularly proud of this masterpiece.
He almost drooled at the expanse of sculpted muscle carved into tanned skin.
He hoped the near darkness hid his blush,
before remembering that Geralt had Witcher eyes and it wasn’t dark yet anyway. He
hoped he had ignored him.
“Umm.” He shuffled
around, trying to find a good angle to work at and finding none. “Do mind if…”
he stammered.
“Just do it,”
Geralt ordered unceremoniously. Without Jaskier’s conscious consent, his body
moved to straddle the Witcher who looked pointedly away. That was odd, he
frowned at himself. But at the wide expanse of Geralt’s blood splattered and
splinter covered torso, all thoughts of oddities flew out the window. A large
gash on his stomach looked gruesome, Jaskier’s insides clenched at the thought
of disinfecting it. He hated disinfecting.
“You know,” he
said as he leaned down to work with another piece of debris, just to fill the awkward
silence with something, “I don’t know what you were thinking running into that
house. She could have killed you and now you look like… I don’t know what. This
is why we need each other. What were you thinking?”
“This is why we
need each other?” Geralt asked and of course ignored the rest of what Jaskier
had said. This is what one called ‘selective listening’.
“Well, you know.”
Jaskier shrugged, not looking away from where he was wriggling a stubborn
splinter out even though he could feel those yellow-golden eyes on him. “I’m
your impulse control and you’re mine.”
Geralt snorted and
finally looked away. “Hmm. You’d have been dead at twenty-one. You’re very
lucky to have me.”
“Yes,” Jaskier
said softly as he finally pulled the stubborn piece free and laid it on the
cloth, “I am.”
The quiet was
heavy as Geralt looked at him. Jaskier avoided his eyes, fucking Witcher
hearing and seeing and gods just fuck the Witcher.
He nearly laughed at the thought, wouldn’t that be nice.
“So am I,” Geralt
said softly. And then, “Were it not for you I’d have to seduce some sorceress
to wrench glass from my back.”
“Wouldn’t take much
for you,” he said offhandedly. His
face burned as he realized what he had said. Fuck, he really needed to focus.
“Hmm,” he said as
if he were making a note in a diary. He had that
expression on his face, Jaskier could hear
the smirk. “Because I get all the women?” He wished he had told the stupid
Witcher to move into literally any other position, at the moment everything
just screamed fuckable.
Shit.
He looked stubbornly
down to where he was working and did his best to ignore the eyes on him. “Just
shut up I’m almost done.”
***
Geralt dutifully
shut his mouth and let him work. Even though he wouldn’t admit it and Jaskier
didn’t mention it, killing the sorceress had left a mark. He couldn’t stop thinking
about it but the fact that Jaskier was right there, safe and sound and alive
and not insane in any way that was serious made him feel a bit better and soon
the dead sorceress faded from his mind.
By the time his torso was once again free of
foreign objects, Geralt felt obligated to mention that his leather pants had
saved his legs from being impaled. He was somewhat reluctant to mention it
because, see, the thing was, he’d recently come to the realization that he
wouldn’t mind Jaskier taking his pants off. It was a serious problem.
That left only his
face. Jaskier sighed as he finally, willingly this time, looked him in the eye
as if the task was daunting but he’d made up his mind to do it anyway. Well
didn’t that just sum up his own situation just perfectly.
“Alright, sit up,”
he said and Geralt’s heart almost stopped dead in his chest as he sat up. Jaskier’s
face was barely three inches away from his own, his lips were right there and
gods, now he noticed how Jaskier was practically sitting in his lap. Oh
heavens, his eyes were a very bright
blue.
Logically, Geralt
knew that the bits in his face would hurt a lot more than the rest but it still
came as a shock when Jaskier pulled the first one free. He flinched at the
sting. Jaskier’s face contorted into a pained expression for him. He nearly wanted to tell him to stop tugging at his newly
discovered heartstrings but then he’d have to admit that Jaskier was tugging on his heartstrings.
“I’m sorry,”
Jaskier winced as if this was as painful for him as it was for Geralt. Actually
he had already forgotten what there was to be sorry about so he said nothing.
Jaskier fumbled with the tweezers for a moment before continuing.
The process was slow
but the pain was far from his mind as he stared at the blue of Jaskier’s eyes,
the tongue peeking through his pink lips as he concentrated, the neatly groomed
eyebrows and the furrow of concentration between them. It was cute.
“Stop staring.”
“Where else should
I look?”
“I don’t know.
Close your eyes,” Jaskier suggested sarcastically, not looking away from the
piece of wood he was gently easing from just below his lip
“Hmm,” he
pretended to consider. “No.”
“Oh you know what?
The universe has decided to torture me. You have been sent to test me,” he
claimed dramatically. Geralt smiled in amusement.
“Right, brace
yourself. There’s one in your lip.” Jaskier put his fingers hesitantly on his
lip to hold him in place and Geralt’s eyes slipped shut. Jaskier’s fingers were
cool on his lip.
Fuck.
There was a quick sting
and the splinter was out but the fingers stayed and Jaskier was still sitting
in Geralt’s lap. Geralt opened his eyes.
“That’s all of
them,” Jaskier murmured, looking at his lips. That was unfair. Did he even know
what he was doing?
“You’re speckled
with blood. And that cut needs disinfecting and dressing.” Neither of them
moved.
“You still need to
eat,” Geralt said and only because it was all he could come up with. Then
Jaskier jerked away as if he’d been burned and cleared his throat. He got up,
leaving Geralt feeling cold.
He grabbed a piece
of cloth and the waterskin and started cleaning Geralt up like he was a helpless
child and couldn’t do it himself. He bandaged the few wounds that were looking
prone to infection. The last deep cut on his stomach seemed to smile at them as
f it knew it was rather inconvenient.
Jaskier awkwardly
returned to the previous position of straddling him to get a decent angle to
work at. It was even worse than the first time. Geralt wished something would
come and eat him alive just to save him from this misery of seeing and not
being able to touch.
Jaskier cleaned
the blood away with a wet cloth and took another to douse in disinfectant. He
took a steadying breath before he started.
The disinfectant
burned on the cut as Jaskier touched it down gently, Geralt flinched and
groaned in pain, his whole torso tensed but the cloth was already gone, Jaskier
removed it as if it had burned him.
He’d forgotten how much it hurt.
“I’m sorry, I’m
sorry, I’m sorry, Geralt,” he rambled and scrunched his eyes up as if he really
could feel Geralt’s pain. Gods why did he have to be so damn… Jaskier.
“Just put the
cloth back on,” Geralt ordered through clenched teeth.
“No,” Jaskier
protested but his hands instantly put the cloth back where it was, so quickly
Geralt nearly doubled over in pain. “No what the hell tell me to take it off,
Geralt. Right now.”
What? Why? “Fine,”
he said, “just do as you see fit then, why don’t you?”
The cloth with the
disinfectant was instantly gone, thrown away into the trees somewhere. Jaskier
was heavily, his eyes were wide and frightened. He stared at his own hands in horror.
*****
Thank you for reading! Please leave likes and comments. With the rate I’m going at the next chapter should be up very soon, like tomorrow maybe idk.
