“You don’t sing anymore.”

Jaskier looked at him from across the fire, the flames casting his face into a maelstrom of flickering colors, distracting from the surprise written plainly there. The bard had paused with his flask halfway up to his lips, stock still like a deer in the woods awaiting the pack that’s come to chase it down.

And Geralt certainly intended to do just that. He couldn’t handle the silence anymore - constant and insufferable. No. That wasn’t not quite right. It wasn’t silent. Jaskier still babbled like he wanted to use every word he could before the grave, but he didn’t sing anymore, and Geralt had never realized how much of Jaskier’s very being was song. Their travels turned into quiet, meandering conversations that the witcher didn’t know how to navigate. It required opinions, words - none of which he had.

Jaskier’s singing had served as a bridge in their companionship. Something to keep Jaskier’s mouth busy, an outlet for the bard’s energy - and while Geralt would never admit it, it had been a pleasant way to pass the time. Even now, he didn’t know why he had ever wished it away… Perhaps because he had been unused to it.

And change was a frightening thing.

Touch-Starved | How to Care for Your Witcher

(read it on AO3)

Jaskier couldn’t say when the realization had struck him. It came to him as most subtle changes in thinking do - slowly, like bread crumbs picked up over time, leading him to the inevitable. Geralt was touch starved.

And not because he disliked touch.

On the contrary, the witcher was a glutton for it, it was more that the man didn’t ask. He didn’t know how. In Kaer Morhen, the young boys had been taught only what they needed to know. Vesemir, as far as Jaskier could understand, was the only mentor Geralt had that had shown even a modicum of affection and even that had been held at arm’s length. Not that the bard could blame them, he supposed, once Geralt had explained one night, too deep in his ale to stop, that most witcher-children don’t survive the trail of the grasses.

“And even if they do,” Geralt had groused, “Witchers don’t die in their beds.”

Witchers were plucked from their families, starved of love for everyone’s protection, then if they survived the transformation they were released into a world that would just as likely kill them as the grasses should have. Why grow attached to someone meant to die? Why show them anything else other than what the world would later show them? It set everyone up for failure, or so Geralt explained.

“That’s stupid,” Jaskier had said, the words rounded with laughter because surely Geralt had been jesting. Using his ignorance about witchers against him. Only… Geralt flinched in that minute way witchers did - that way only the observant might catch - and hid his face in his mug again.

oh.

So Jaskier did what the bard did best: he instigated. His career hadn’t come about by sitting down and waiting for change, after all. He put himself out there in the way he did all things. Same as how he had cowed the witcher into allowing him to become a (at first begrudging) traveling companion. Same as how he infected the lands with his music, normalized his presence at court affairs. Change was a matter of repetition, and it had to start somewhere.

So Jaskier started simply - with Geralt’s hair.

“There are better ways to keep it out of your face during your hunts, you know,” Jaskier said simply one evening as he watching the witcher bathe. Geralt hadn’t seemed keen on the company - no doubt because bathing was generally something someone did in private - but he also hadn’t argued beyond one singular growl the moment he realized Jaskier was not only joining him in the room, but intended to converse.

“I know,” Geralt rumbled, a strange curl to his mouth. It was obvious this was a conversation the man had heard before - one he didn’t enjoy having. “You wouldn’t be the first to say I should cut it.”

Jaskier blinked, legs crossed, and then laughed - the room filling with steam and the melody of his amusement.

“Heavens, no ~ I’d never even suggest it, Geralt,” Jaskier said, running a hand through his own hair. “I’m quite envious of your length. I tried to grow mine out once, you know. Just looked ratty. You’ve got a luscious mane and any man or woman who suggests you sheer it needs a swift boot to the ass, honestly.”

Geralt blinked at him, nearly owlishly, and that made something odd in Jaskier’s breast twist. It wasn’t attraction. Jaskier knew attraction, he was no stranger to bed or stranger’s beds or how attraction more often than not led to bed. This was… different. Something people sang about rather than acted upon. Something to tuck away and think about later.

“Then…?” The witcher prompted, confused.

“Can I show you?” Jaskier asked. He kept it neutral, simple; resisting the urge to let his excitement slip lest Geralt refuse on instinct. The man leaned back against the wall of the tub, and regarded him for a long, suspicious moment. Jaskier had planned this, though. There was no better time to persuade a witcher than fresh from a victorious hunt, made soft by a decent meal and a long soak. And lavender, of course, he always spiced Geralt’s baths with lavender. His keener sense of smell seemed to get more from it than any human. Already Geralt’s eyes looked heavy and pleased.

“Fine.”

Jaskier stood from his stool, then hefted it up and gracefully brought it over so he might perch easily behind Geralt. A lot had changed since they first started traveling. The witcher no longer fidgeted uneasily any time the bard placed himself at his back or out of eyesight. That curious feeling in his breast curled again.

Jaskier took a brush from the little table he had placed aside before hand, revealing that he had planned this, and gently began the process of brushing Geralt’s hair. He started at the ends – free of all manner of monster gunk now, but still as tangled as a feral child fresh from the woods. He worked his way up as he asked this and that about Geralt’s hunt, distracting him with easy topics of conversation that the witcher could easily be swayed into.

Geralt was not one for talking, but the witcher could never quite resist the urge to talk about monsters. Particularly if there was something to correct.

“A bruxa,” Jaskier commented idly, more than aware of the correct answer as he said, “I thought they were those great, hulking bats. How did they manage to make you bleed from your ears?”

That had gotten Geralt started, alright. Bruxa were often curvaceous women, their flesh looking as though they had been carved from marble rather than pink, living flesh. The were slight in comparison to the sort of vampire Jaskier had been referring too.

“They tend to attack by vocalizing,” Geralt said, his conversation made smoother the more Jaskier brushed his hair and soothed his mind, lulling the witcher into something soft and malleable. “They have secondary vocal chords in their throat capable of hitting far higher pitches than humans. They weaponize that asset and use directional blasts of both force and sound to disorient their prey. A normal man would faint, but a witcher—”

“Bleeds from their ears and shakes it off?” Jaskier chuckled, grateful that the witcher’s back was to him as the thought made his smile falter. He kept picturing the sight of blood running down either side of Geralt’s neck. It had taken a while to clean his ears of it, either opening clogged with dried blood. It was partially why Jaskier had been speaking more softly all evening – afraid to further hurt Geralt’s already sensitive, wounded ears.

“Hmm,” Geralt said in agreement, leaning back into Jaskier’s hands as the man finished with the brush, set it aside, and began to comb his fingers through long white strands – looking for the natural lay of the man’s hair. Beneath him the witcher shivered.

“Did I hurt you?” Jaskier asked, “Thought I got all the knots.”

It took a moment for the witcher to understand the question. He clenched his jaw, struggling with some foreign battle, and finally said, “No.”

Ah. He didn’t know how to say that he liked it, Jaskier realized. That he wanted more. That would be a battle for another day, showing the witcher that it was okay to want rather than live by need alone. For now, this small admission would be enough.

Jaskier hummed, that little sound of acknowledgement bleeding instinctively into a song rather all on its own. It was a village lullaby he had heard somewhere another – one that lacked words, relying on soft and lingering tones instead. He split Geralt’s hair into sections, then deftly began to thread them into one another with deft fingers.

Jaskier had lived with sisters, once. He remembered how his mother would braid their hair. How they asked for him to learn as well because when they sat in a train, braiding one another, one person always got left out – who better for that person to be than Jaskier with his closely shorn hair? It had become a love language for him. A form of taking care of others.

Perhaps the witcher was not the only one getting anything out of this, Jaskier realized.

Geralt let out a small noise, once or twice. Quickly snuffed, nearly hidden beneath Jaskier’s humming, but there all the same. Jaskier wondered if the man would become more vocal with time, just as he no longer flinched when the bard slipped behind him.

He hoped so. Jaskier was a man bred from a love of music – and never had he heard a sound quite so lovely as Geralt’s softness, if only because it was so rare. All the while, Geralt leaned into his fingers like a hound pressing against its master’s leg.

He weaved silver strands, as soft and silken as pouring milk, one into another until they formed a stunning patterning of lacing strands from the back of Geralt’s head to just past his shoulders. He tied the tail off with a ribbon, a rich gold color, and took one last chance to run his hands from Geralt’s temples back to the nape of his neck, searching for fly-aways he knew wouldn’t be there.

“There,” he said, digging his thumbs into the meat of Geralt’s shoulders and massaging lightly, keen to transfer his momentum into more progress while he had it. Geralt let out a soft huff through slack lips – eyes hooded, nearly closed. “Finished.”

Geralt opened his eyes at that, and sensing the man would want to see what Jaskier had done, Jaskier grabbed two mirrors. One for Geralt to hold, the other for him to help.

“Hold up yours, yes, just like that,” Jaskier said, then angled his own so that Geralt might see the reflection of Jaskier’s handiwork. The witcher stilled, and for a very long moment, he just stared. Jaskier was just beginning to wonder if perhaps he was wrong in thinking he could manage to sway Geralt with practicality – after all the braid was an excellent solution to his hair troubles – when Geralt handed the mirror back to him.

“That works.”

Jaskier set the mirrors aside, grinning victoriously even as he forced a little sass into his tone to avoid suspicion.

“Oh, so generous of you to say, master-dear. “That works”. No “Jaskier, you genius”! Not even a “you did a lovely job, I’ve never looked so handsome”!”

Geralt snorted.

“I never look handsome.”

Jaskier kicked the tub and said, “I will kill you myself and steal your jawline if you ever dare to lie like that to me again.”

Geralt leaned back, his long tail hanging over the back of the tub as he pressed the top of his head against Jaskier’s belly and said, “Is that so?” with a smirk of all things.

Oh, this had worked so much more nicely than Jaskier had thought. His stomach did a little flip at the freely given contact. The dampness from the witcher’s hair began to seep into his shirt, and yet Jaskier couldn’t even begin to care. He’d crawl into the tub fully clothed if that meant Geralt would start seeing himself as a human with more rights to happiness than the lies that Kaer Morhen and society had beat into him.

“So, what do you think?” He asked, tucking one stray hair back from Geralt’s brow. The lock was too short, unevenly shorn from the rest of his hair; likely the result of a claw just narrowly dodged. Jaskier pet the short lock back into the folds of Geralt’s hair, strangely fond of the little thing.

He wondered what it would look like in the morning after drying in its braid all night. Soft and wavy, framing the wolf’s grumpy morning face.

“Worth trying,” Geralt said with a hum, eyes closing – pressing into Jaskier. “You’ll have to do it again for the next contract. See how it works.”

With the witcher’s eyes closed, Jaskier let himself smile openly. No grins, no charming flashes of teeth. It wasn’t Jaskier’s smile – but rather Julian’s. The small boy who used to braid his sister’s hair. The young man who struck out on the road to follow his dreams, before he had to change to make them happen. He smiled, soft and fond, and pet Geralt’s hair lightly – all in the guise of making sure every strand was in order – as he said, “The least I can do in return for a good story.”

“Hmm,” the witcher hummed, the sound no longer an answer so much as acknowledgment that Jaskier had spoken, that Geralt was there and present, but too relaxed beneath his touch to really know what was said or what to say.

The bard watched his witcher doze contently beneath his touch. The white wolf tamed, but for a moment, by want instead of need. One day Jaskier would kiss the crown of that sleepy head, when he was brave enough.

So the original prompt had been lovely, utterly lovely, and asked for Alpha!Jaskier using his nature to help Geralt take care of himself (i.e. using his voice, body language, touch, etc. to help persuade Geralt to eat, drink, sleep, rest, etc.) and I LOVED IT and I sat down to WRITE IT and then whatever the fuck this is happened instead… I’m not sure how it spiraled away from me so vastly or how to even quite describe what it turned into, haha. So I’m keeping the original prompt in my rolodex, cause I’d like to try again per the asker’s original idea some time - but for now, have 13 pages of whatever the hell my non-stop headache managed to put together below…

warning: contains abo dynamics, however, literally focuses solely on the dynamic between Alpha/Omega. Does not contain smut. What has happened to me?

Also available to read on AO3

Little girl, little girl ~ don’t lie to me; Tell me where did you sleep last night?

In the pines, in the pines ~ where the sun never shines; Shivered the whole night through

- In the Pines

“Someone spotted your witcher out by the wood. He’s in a right state. No one’s brave enough to go near’em.”

Those had been the words of the messenger who had tracked Jaskier down at the inn, sent by the alderman. Jaskier had been prepared to go out into the rain and find a soggy, grumpy witcher. But “a right state” didn’t even begin to cover it.

It was raining. Of course it was raining, Jaskier thought petulantly as he braved the weather to find his witcher. It was easy to hide behind his griping. Easier to whine about the cold and the wet than to think too heavily on the messenger’s words: “No one’s brave enough to go near’em.”

He found Geralt at the tree line, as promised. There were at least six trees that had fallen victim to the man, carved up in great hacking lines that bore no pattern or reason. Just vicious, gaping wounds that oozed sap and frayed bark. Weeping splinters atop their roots. Geralt was busy carving up another tree. He was using his steel sword. It kept getting caught in the bark, the blade not made for slipping free of wood as easily as it cleaved flesh or bone. Every time it snagged, Geralt would snarl, shoulders heaving as he yanked it free and attacked again, each time without any of the finesse expected from a witcher. So he wasn’t practicing; not that he should be, so fresh from a hunt.

Jaskier could tell from afar that the man was exhausted. He could hear wheezing in his heaving breaths, see the way his armor struggled to make room for each inhale. His shoulders were low, his arms heavy. He didn’t move his feet more than he had to, instead forcing his hips and thighs to bear the weight of his movements, his attacks. His skin was pale and sickly, and even with the potions having faded off, his veins still showed through his skin like silvery cobwebs.

Something must have gone wrong, there was nothing else to it. Jaskier had seen Geralt like this before. Witchers by nature and grooming were not the most expressive people. They did not know how to tolerate any pain that was not physical. That usually meant their distress got channeled into outlets such as this: calculated violence. As if that stress and that emotion could be worked out of the body like a knot from sore muscles. Each blow exhausted him, each strike winded him – but it kept his mind off whatever had happened. Focused on movement, on the swing of his sword, the angle of the blade’s descent.

Jaskier leaned against the fench a short way from the snarling witcher, elbows braced atop its warped wooden rail. He’d let the witcher tire himself out, that tended to be the best move to make in this particular dance. He’d watch, be there when Geralt—

Jaskier’s thoughts came to a grinding halt as Geralt’s sword buried itself deep into the wood of his victim, then snapped with a clang that rang out like a song in one long, mournful note. The air drew sharp and electric, and Jaskier felt himself tense like an animal suddenly all too keen that a predator was nearby and on the prowl. Water trickled down the slope of his nose, under his collar, between his shoulder blades. He shuddered, eyes fixed on the witcher. Geralt stumbled with the force of the sudden break, and for a moment Jaskier thought that had done it, that had been the last straw of the witcher’s stamina. He waited for the man to fall to his knees. For an opening to go to him, gather him up and help him home. But instead Geralt drew himself up, sides heaving as he panted like an overrun horse, and held the broken sword up so he might better admire the damage.

The metal that remained attached to the hilt was jagged and short. It glimmered weakly, its runes in shambles, its use outlived. Magic popped and crackled along the blade in fits and bursts like a death rattle until finally Geralt tossed it aside – a sneer curling his lip, exposing his teeth. He stood still, like a rock in the middle of a raging river, head down as he glared at the broken sword among the grass. Jaskier prepared to walk to him, guide his exhausted witcher back to the inn, only to freeze when a wounded sound split the air with the same viciousness as Geralt’s sword had split the tree.

The bard’s eyes darted further into the tree line, looking for the source of that animalistic sound – then shot back to Geralt who was moving now, fast as a whip, fist colliding with the tree. Leaves fell, casting him in a veil of baby green leaves and spring petals as the force of the blow shook even a tree as thick as his victim to its core. But the sound, the sound had Jaskier shivering. Wet and fleshy. Geralt’s knuckles – gods above –

Geralt didn’t stop. He reared back, struck again, that howl that had sent icy dread down Jaskier’s spine tumbling from his lips, from behind his teeth, from deep inside his chest. Snarling and blind, Geralt punched again, and again, the sound of his knuckles impacting worsening each time. Jaskier heard a snap and finally that broke the trance that sight had cast upon him, wide-eyed and fawn-legged. He leapt the fence with more grace than he thought himself capable of. Long legs crossed the field, willowy and lithe, and although he knew he was in fact moving quickly, everything felt slow and distant.

“Geralt!” He shouted but could not hear his own words. The rain suddenly worsened, pelted him, as if each sheet might hold him back from his goal single handedly. Geralt either didn’t hear him or did not deign to listen. Petals and leaves kept tumbling down around him in bursts, decorating his hair, littering his armor. Haloing him with life as he raged. Striking, again and again, slap, slap, slap – “Geralt, stop!”

The words came out in a boom, slicing through the rain like a thunderclap.

Jaskier managed to catch the man by the bicep on his backswing, and even through his armor the bard could felt the whipcord tautness of the man’s muscles – the way he held himself, still yearned to strike, but neither relaxed nor continued. Vibrating like a hound snarling at the bit, waiting for the command to launch itself forward and maul its target.

Geralt wouldn’t look at him. His eyes were fastened on the tree, his jaw clenched so tight Jaskier swore he could hear the groaning of his bones, plaintive and grinding. A muscle was leaping in his cheek. His pupils were blown wide, so black and so large that only a thin sliver of amber remained. But he stopped.

He stopped.

Jaskier didn’t enjoy having to use that trick on Geralt – his voice. It was the equivalent of taking Geralt’s choice from him, his autonomy, and while once upon a time Jaskier used to look on such things with rose-colored glasses and nostalgic ideas of romance and “the way of things”, it wasn’t until he met Geralt that he learned that his voice was a very powerful, very painful thing. A tool easily manipulated into a tactic for control rather than kindness; control disguised as comfort. He was no master. Geralt was no pet.

The thought of trying to control something as untamable, as wild and beautiful as his witcher, made him shiver sickly.

No, he had long ago told himself he’d never use it. Yet here he was, the words tumbling so forcefully from his lips without a second thought. A command. Stop.

Geralt kept thrumming beneath his touch, every inch of him shaking. Trembling so finely that were he made of the fine edges and dangling trinkets of a wind chime, he’d be singing faintly. His nostrils were flared, every breath coming out in a huge, heaving plume from each. From his throat and beneath the falling hush of the storm, Jaskier caught the sound of something strangled emitting from the witcher. Lodged tight and captured behind his teeth; a moan, a whine, a snarl, a plea.

Help.

Jaskier hated to use it. It had been a problem in the beginning – his voice. What it stood for, what it meant, what it took away. A problem that took no small amount of effort to work through. Jaskier had been chock-full of all these ideas and notions of what it meant to be an Alpha, what it meant to have an Omega. The bard had built up this fantasy in his head of what that would look like. How he would coddle them, protect them, nest with them, because that was what an Alpha was meant to do. It took time to pull that structure apart in his mind. To rebuild on healthier foundations, all from scratch. Once or twice he thought Geralt would leave him. The Omega was too wild, too free. Every archaic tradition made him buck like a stallion refusing the bit and saddle. In the beginning, it had been infuriating. Frustrating. Offensive, even. Now…

Jaskier had been so blind. He had seen Geralt as something unique to be tamed rather than the truth – there was only one true way to love, regardless of secondary gender, and it was through respect, communication, and the understanding that tradition was a construct, not a rule.

Geralt stayed. They worked through it. Together, they rebuilt that house in Jaskier’s mind, in both of their minds. They made concessions, they navigated the dark together and created a language all their own with which to define what it meant to have a mate, to be an Alpha or an Omega. And one of those concessions had been simple and clear: do not try to own me or control me. Do not use biology against me.

I am a person, not a conquest.

Jaskier had used it. His voice. But he couldn’t watch Geralt do that to himself. Guilt curled coolly in his guy, greasy and sneering. But it was done. It was done.

“I’m sorry,” Jaskier said, voice raised over the howl of the wind and the rain, but normal. Unaffected, powerless. Pleading. “I didn’t mean to… but your hands, Geralt, gods above, you wouldn’t stop.”

Geralt’s pupils contracted ever so slightly, that mad expanse of black thinning with every word that reached him. His heaving exhales turned into something shaky and stuttered, and finally Geralt blinked. He let Jaskier guide his arm down, slim hands reaching for his pale and quaking one. His knuckles – Geralt hissed, the pain finally registering as he caught sight of them – were torn to shreds. Swollen, broken and bleeding despite the rain that ran over them. Bark stuck out in places. Stung. Geralt groaned, nearly whined, before he caught it behind his teeth and swallowed it down with a grimace of distaste. His hand was shaking harder now in Jaskier’s.

The longer he was still, the more Jaskier saw that panic – that frenzy – begin to take root again. Spreading like vines and weeds that filled Geralt’s eyes, blinding him, choking him. Overwhelmed. Amber eyes drifted from the wreckage of the tree slowly, slowly to Jaskier’s face. And for a man as stoic as Geralt, with expressions so minute and so fleeting, Jaskier looked at him and saw nothing but shattered glass, buried beneath the thin line of his lips, the little wrinkled dip of his brows, the unfocused haze of his eyes. Lost.

“Geralt?” Jaskier asked, his heart throbbing painfully against his ribs in great, crushing pulses, “Are you with me?”

Geralt clenched his jaw tighter. His pupils expanded. Something flickered – wild and animal-like – in the lines of his body and the tense edges of his bones. Feral and bewildered because his mad fight with the trees hadn’t worked as it should. It had exhausted him, broken him – and yet whatever had caused the panic remained with nowhere left to go.

His gaze strayed back toward the tree. In Jaskier’s hands, his own curled back into a fist even as he swayed on his feet, all color leeched from his skin – drenched and wrecked.

“No,” Jaskier said, softly but firmly. It drew the witcher back to him. Had the man stepping closer, pressing into his space. Drawn to the confidence of his tone. “Tell me what you want. How to help. Anything… just not that. No more. Please.”

Geralt said nothing, but in Jaskier’s palms and the cradle of his fingers, the witcher’s fist went slack. Trembling and bloody. Jaskier nodded at that, tried to think of how far the inn was without looking – too afraid to lose Geralt by breaking eye contact.

“How can I help?” He repeated, but Geralt just grimaced as though Jaskier had suggested plucking his nails from their nailbeds. He was searching for words that the School of the Wolf had never given him, Jaskier realized. So he asked instead, “What happened?”

All at once, Geralt’s pupils contracted to thin slits, then expanded all over again – worse – eclipsing all but the thinnest ring of amber at their edges. As though an electric current had gone through the man, he stiffened. A noise grew and choked him. Jaskier reached up to grasp the back of his neck on instinct and instinct alone, the call to soothe him too great to resist despite their many conversations. It went beyond tradition now. It was a bone-deep need, irresistible. His fingers dug into the witcher’s neck. Urged him down the scant few inches of difference between them until Geralt’s forehead rested against his own, white hair running into brown beneath the rain. Geralt huffed against him, a soft, relieved little sound, and his eyes flickered shut. Ever so slightly, his shoulders slackened, responding to that hand. Jaskier felt himself have to bear more of Geralt’s weight as the exhausted man leaned into him.

Geralt could have pulled away. He had before. But he didn’t.

“Does this help?” Jaskier asked.

The man keened, remained pliant in his hands.

“Do you want this?”

Another sound. Jaskier felt a plea of his own whimper past his lips, so desperately wanting to soothe – needing to soothe – and yet loathe to assume, to take advantage. Not when he had seen the wildness in Geralt’s eyes in those early days. Not when Geralt had asked for more than tradition dictates.

“I need a yes or no, Geralt,” Jaskier breathed, the plea nearly lost to the rain, “Please.”

Geralt shuddered under his hand, all the way down the length of his spine. His jaw worked at something, huffed helplessly, then finally wheezed, “Yes,” like a death rasp. Needing nothing more, that knot of dread in Jaskier’s stomach unraveled – curling out into long, winding tendrils of instinct that directed his limbs thoughtlessly. His hand on Geralt’s neck squeezed a little tighter and a purr rumbled in his chest at the sight of how that little gesture had made Geralt’s eyes soften, relax.

It was like finally flexing a muscle he hadn’t moved in a very long time – a need he hadn’t realized had gone unanswered for so long. Jaskier’s bones thrummed pleasantly at the sight of his Omega – Geralt – responding to him so openly. It wasn’t just that he was feeding into his instincts. There was a level of trust there. A bond that went unsaid. He had no doubt that Geralt would have slunk into the woods by now, fangs gleaming and eyes wild, if he didn’t want Jaskier to touch him, help him.

That was enough.

“Ok,” he said in a hush against the crown of Geralt’s brow. He inhaled the scent of the witcher – rain, blood, Geralt. Then he dipped into the waters of his nature that he had abstained from for so very, very long. He used his voice. “You’re going to follow me to the Inn.”

Geralt nodded, brow still against his, and beneath Jaskier’s hands the bard felt a shiver run through the witcher – electric and pleasant. When he was sure the man would obey, he let his hand leave Geralt’s neck, instead weaving one arm around his own neck so their sides were as flush as possible. Geralt burrowed as closely as possible, and the longer they walked, the more he found the witcher leaning into him not purely for the pleasure of touch alone. Geralt was exhausted. From the contract, from whatever had gone wrong, from his rage at the tree line.

He wouldn’t have made it home alone, Jaskier realized. He might not have even tried. That realization made something strange and uncomfortable twist dreadfully in a place that had never quite twisted before. Geralt was hardly his first partner, Omega or otherwise. Hardly his first trial with instincts.

But never had he felt this; this keen understanding that his Omega was just a man, and that despite every stereotype that insisted that a ‘good Alpha’ could protect one’s mate by will alone, he could not protect Geralt from anything. He could not protect him from this, from his Path.

He could only be there to help him home.

“Witcher,” the alderman exclaimed at the sight of him the moment they returned to the inn, but one look from Jaskier – sharp and feral, daring the man to come closer – had him pause. It was the growl that followed, making Geralt shiver in his grasp, that sealed the deal. It was apparent then and there the man had not even considered Jaskier might be anything more than a Beta. Whether it was from disorientation or surprise or a keen understanding that to push any further would be to invite a fight, the alderman merely said, “Apologies. It can wait.”

Jaskier didn’t realize he had been baring on pearly incisor, lip curled, until he managed to guide Geralt up the stairs and back to their room. He sat Geralt on the bed and when he realized the man would not look him in the eye, he forced his expression, his body language, into something open and familiar rather than bristled and tight as it had become the moment the alderman had tried to conduct business with them.

The village leader wanted to know the status of their contract. Jaskier knew this. Knew that the intent had been benign, one born of fear and concern for his people. But what about Jaskier’s people? What about Geralt? How had the man not known right away that now was not the time? He turned away lest Geralt see how even so much as thinking about it affected him.

Jaskier wanted so badly to ask what had happened. He had seen Geralt return from missions in a variety of states: pleased, exhausted, annoyed, covered in guts, clean as a whistle – and he’d even seen the man fail before. But never like this. Geralt sat on the edge of the bed like a man numbed from a blizzard, still and pliant, eyes staring. It was a drastic change from the feral thing he had found at the tree line, and Jaskier still didn’t know if it was an improvement or something worrisome. The white wolf’s hands quaked on his lap – bloodied, splintered and swollen – and Jaskier decided there was no better place to start than that, once he got the man into dry clothing.

“Let’s get your armor sorted out,” Jaskier mumbled, automatically going to work on the man’s many straps and buckles with the efficiency of the practiced, peeling him apart piece by sodden piece until nothing but a thin, whipcord tight witcher remained. Geralt just let him do it. No grumbling, no grunts, no protests. The bard felt sick, off-kilter.

Jaskier took care to set his swords against the nightstand where he could easily reach them, then to set his armor in the corner in the way he had seen Geralt do many times before. All the while, the witcher didn’t stir. He just sat there, similar to the way he meditated. Distant, detached. Drifting. There, and yet not.

Jaskier dipped into the other room to heat the water he had already ordered be drawn long before his trip into the storm – knowing Geralt would want it when he returned and eager to remove at least this from Geralt’s plate. He let it heat as he returned to the witcher.

“Stay there, Geralt,” Jaskier said idly, the words tumbling from his lips on instinct as he fetched first a stool, then the medical kit from Geralt’s pack and began setting up beside the bed. He placed the stool between the weak spread of the witcher’s knees and automatically placed one hand across the span of one thick thigh and squeezed as he navigated his way around the witcher’s kit. Geralt’s breathing steadied ever so slightly and without looking Jaskier rumbled softly, pleased, “Good, Geralt. Very good. You’re doing so good for me.”

Jaskier and Geralt had played with the merits of praise before. The bard knew firsthand that the witcher was utterly starved of it, that it was an easy way to twist the wolf around his finger and get him howling. But this was different. These were no mere words meant to rile up an affection-starved, stoic cut of stone of a witcher. This was so much more.

Genuine praise for a man who knew not how to ask for help, and yet in his own way was asking for it. Because while Jaskier had made his concessions with Geralt, he had asked for some of his own as well. That was the core of relationships: give and take. I will not pester you, I will not control you, but in return please trust me. Please come to me when you need shelter, no matter the circumstances. Let me anchor you in the storm.

Praise for a promise kept against the witcher’s every independent instinct, giving into a nature he had struggled against the image of for so long. For his health. Because he trusted Jaskier.

Geralt seemed to melt somewhat, the stiff line of his spine curving gently beneath the weighty blanket of Jaskier’s words and touch. The bard did his best to keep at least one hand on the man at all times as he went through the delicate process of cleaning the wolf’s knuckles and bloodied fingernails, plucking splinters and wooden shrapnel from his skin, and applying ointment and sterile wrappings. Murmuring in low tones, so close to his voice but not quite, how good the witcher was. How much he appreciated his trust.

In the cradle of the bard’s working hands, the witcher’s fingers slowly steadied but for the lightest, faintest tremor.

Already Geralt’s fragmented bones were reknitting beneath his tattered flesh; a taxing affair. Jaskier could see it in his eyes as a heady cloud of exhaustion began to overtake the man, but still Geralt fought it, too afraid to give in. Too afraid to loosen the steel trap that was his mind and open himself up to whatever had happened. Whatever haunted him from the woods. Jaskier’s mouth pulled into a taut, concerned line.

“Alright, up now. Out of your smalls and into the tub,” he said, the directions helping him as much as it did Geralt. He braced the witcher by the forearm as he obeyed, disrobing entirely with an eerie, distant slowness. Drifting. Drifting in the current of Jaskier’s voice, his direction. Drifting far away from the woods and whatever lay inside them.

Jaskier guided him to the tub. Eased him in, singing soft praises beneath his breath all the while – smooth and steady.

“That’a boy, Geralt, just like that. Keep your hands out of the water. I’ll handle the rest. Yes, good. So good,” he babbled, draping either of the witcher’s hands to hang over the rim on either side before taking a washcloth, lathering it with soap and beginning an intimately familiar habit. This he knew. This they both knew. In this, they had even, stable ground.

Geralt wasn’t terribly filthy, for once. However long he had spent in the downpour, it had done the trick of washing the evidence of the woods and the fight away. It was more a matter of warming and soothing the wolf now. Easing the tremors from the corded muscles of his shoulders, the tight lines of his arms. He washed his hair, digging his fingers into the man’s scalp gently, scrapping idly with his nails. In the mirror, he watched the witcher’s eyes begin to fall and hood. Dazed and heavy and drifting.

Jaskier had never thought he’d share a moment like this with Geralt. He’d help the man with his wounds before, of course. They’d learned ways to show their affections for one another. But this was different. Primal and organic, impossible to imitate or force. What he had always wanted, so very long ago…

He remembered once – one of their first arguments about their dynamics, back when they were both unpracticed in the art of loving one another – how viciously Geralt had sneered at him when Jaskier had described the way he was supposed to take care of the man, the Omega. Remembered the jagged cut of his teeth, the wildness of his eyes, so unlike the stories he had always been told as a boy about Omegas.

“Shall I swoon for you, too? Lay down and present right here like some animal in a field?” Geralt snarled, outrage breeding a tremor in his bones. Shaking him from somewhere deep the way earthquakes could rend great fissures in the ground.

“Is it really so terrible for me to want to take care of you!”

“You don’t need to take care of me, you like the idea of taking care of me. They all do, until the time comes – but no one wants to clean up after broken glass! You wouldn’t be taking care of an Omega, Jaskier. It wouldn’t be soft. It wouldn’t be a simple matter of building a nest and stroking my hair. You’d be taking care of a witcher. And that’s dangerous for everyone involved,” he roared, “I’m not some item on a checklist to cross off and prove that you’re an Alpha. Don’t debase me by trying. I’m not collateral in your identity.”

There was a wound there, somewhere, just as much as there was truth. It took time for Jaskier to see that, but he did, eventually. He learned to live without a checklist. Learned to bite his tongue when people mistook Geralt for the Alpha, Jaskier for the Omega. He found the beauty in a relationship established not by society, but by communication and trust. Slower to grow, but stronger for it, like a tree with roots that spread and spread and spread.

Roots that led them here – to the moment Jaskier could finally prove himself. Not as an Alpha, not to society, but to Geralt, as a partner. Prove that he was someone who could be relied on. Present and patient, without ulterior motivation. So he wouldn’t ask about the woods again, not while Geralt was like this. He wouldn’t take advantage, knowing that his voice could likely get him anything right now. The witcher was vulnerable, his every defense devoted to protecting his mind from himself.

So Jaskier would guide the man while he drifted until the witcher found his way home.

“Water’s cooling,” Jaskier murmured, rinsing the man’s hair carefully before brushing it back, looking Geralt in the eyes – searching. But the witcher wasn’t there. “Come on. Food, then bed. That’s all that’s left to do, Geralt, I promise. Almost done, you’re doing so well.”

He eased him out of the tub, sat him atop another stool. Toweled his hair – always so much whiter after washing, like freshly fallen snow – and brushed it out. Clothed him, double checked that his wrapped knuckles were still sterile and dry. He coaxed the witcher into eating a few strips of jerky from their packs and a glass of water, unwilling to leave the man alone to order food from the bar. Then, finally, he eased Geralt down unto the bed.

It was hard to navigate how much space to give. The Alpha in him bayed to plaster himself close, cover the man with his body – to protect him. But their arguments echoed in his head, replaying over and over. Was he betraying Geralt in doing this? Was he no better than any other Alpha? Was this right? Geralt’s pleading eyes from the tree line haunted him every time he closed his eyes.

He laid on his side, watching Geralt stare at the ceiling a few scant inches away.

“It’s done. Everything’s done. There’s nothing left to do, Geralt… Try and rest,” he finally said, giving the witcher the initiative to seek that rest however he saw fit – in Jaskier or otherwise. Geralt’s head slowly turned on his pillow then, gaze falling from the ceiling to land on Jaskier’s face. He stared, so far away despite the intimacy of the bed, until finally he blinked. His pupils contracted ever so slightly, focusing.

“Jaskier,” Geralt said.

“Yes,” the bard said, relieved and yet hesitant to hope. There was a long moment where it looked like the witcher was going to say something – eyes trailing across the room, no doubt wondering how they got there, how much time had passed. Instead those amber eyes just fell back on him. Was he mad, or—

Geralt turned onto his side so he might face the bard. He curled his hands between them, then reached until his bandaged hand could properly splay across the span of Jaskier’s chest – right atop his heart. He hummed, eyes closing as the witcher felt the tempo of the bard’s heart, Jaskier realized.

“You stayed.”

Jaskier felt his brow furrow, confused, and breathed, “Of course,” as if there were no other answer, no other possibility. Amber eyes bore into him for a long time. Then Geralt burrowed closer, only so close as to tuck his nose beneath Jaskier’s chin and into the hollow of his neck, and finally the witcher went lax.

Geralt had been right. It hadn’t been simple.

But it had been worth it.

Jaskier fell asleep at some point, the witcher tucked into his arms. One arm had fallen asleep, all numb and swollen feeling and promising the uncomfortable pinch of pins and needles when he finally freed the limb from Geralt. The witcher never stirred, not once, not until he woke.

When he did, he spoke into the long column of Jaskier’s throat, voice rough from shouting himself hoarse – no doubt in the woods.

“I didn’t get there in time,” Geralt finally said, lips chapped and brushing against Jaskier’s skin. Breath hot and steady. A shiver trailed down Geralt’s back beneath his hands, so he chased it with the warmth of his palms.

Jaskier closed his eyes. Now that he had Geralt back, the contract began to return to him. Something about a beast in the woods. Missing children.

Children.

I didn’t get there in time.

“But… the alderman said the children had returned from the wood,” Jaskier asked. He had been certain that’s what the messenger had relayed to him when he came to tell Jaskier about the raging witcher at the edge of the wood.

Under his chin, Geralt swallowed dryly – but when he spoke, the words followed as cool and detached as ever. Clinical and distant.

“Not all of them.”

Distance was entering the man’s voice again. Geralt had told him, once, on a particularly drunken night, about what happened when a witcher failed a contract. If he was lucky, he got to keep the upfront deposit. If he was marginally less lucky, he didn’t get paid.

Generally, he got run out of town. Stoned. Spat on. Cursed.

Geralt knew what lay ahead. It wouldn’t matter that he had saved some of the children. Wouldn’t matter that the beast was dead. Only pain lay ahead. Pain on top of the knowledge that he had failed. Disrespect on top of the memories of those little bodies and whatever had been done to them.

And Jaskier hadn’t a clue what to say. What was there to say. That it wouldn’t happen like that? Surely they couldn’t blame him when he had been the only one brave another or skilled enough to try? No villager would have done better and Jaskier didn’t think any other witcher would have had any more luck either. But that wouldn’t matter to Geralt. Any explanation, any pardon would wilt in the man’s hand, fall away to dust.

Respect for a witcher tended to go hand in hand with their successes, and it would appear that rule had bled into Geralt’s bones like marinade into meat, stewing and soaking until the man’s own self-respect obeyed the same principle.

Jaskier worked his jaw, searching for words, but nothing came. His years of education, his grasp of language, his every beautiful string of words – all of it felt stale and worthless before the witcher’s grief. Children were dead.

Jaskier held Geralt closer, buried his nose into the witcher’s hair, and hummed deep in his chest where the witcher might feel it against the splay of his hands and the tight curl of his body. The grief was Geralt’s to hold, who was he to belittle or speak it away? All he could do was share it. Be present for it.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered into Geralt’s hair. He felt the wolf let out a hushed breath against his throat, as though he had been holding it for some time. Geralt didn’t respond. He also didn’t pull away. He had been waiting for Jaskier to leave, the bard realized.

No one likes picking up after broken glass. Liable to get cut.

They stayed like that, together – the room silent, yet so full.

[LINE BREAK]

They dozed most of that morning. Jaskier let Geralt lead. After all, who better to navigate those waters than the man who had navigated them before. It was not his place to take it away, nor to numb it from the witcher’s mind. He did made himself present, and quickly realized that’s all Geralt ever wanted all along.

Eventually the witcher dressed. Jaskier thought they would go to the alderman next, but instead Geralt led them out of the village, back to the tree line. He never told the bard not to follow. In fact, he walked quite close to Jaskier all the while. It wasn’t until they returned to the edge of the forest – the bark scarred by Geralt’s outburst – that the witcher finally stopped, momentum faltered.

The bard looked from the woods to the witcher, confused, and asked, “Do you… not remember the way, or…?”

“I remember,” Geralt said, one hand on Jaskier’s chest just as he had done that morning – anchoring himself to the bard’s heartbeat. His gaze was firm if brittle, but he kept the bard’s gaze as he said, “You need to stay here.”

For the first time since Geralt had returned him, there in that inn bed, curled tight to his chest, Jaskier found that instinct to control rearing its head again. He had only just got the witcher back. The thought of losing him to that haze again made his gut clench violently. His eyes fell to the gloves that hid sterile white bandages, pain hidden beneath heavy armor and duty.

He could not stop himself from arguing.

“Oh no, Geralt, I’m not sending you back into there alone after last night, there’s no way,” he babbled, his own gaze turning a touch frantic at the thought, but Geralt just eased a hand to the back of Jaskier’s neck and squeezed – once – to get his attention.

“There are some things only a witcher should see, Jaskier.”

Ah. It was bad then. Messy.

It won’t be like caring for an Omega. You’ll be caring for a witcher.

The sound of Geralt punching the trees, splitting his knuckles, breaking his bones – all of it – echoed in Jaskier’s ears, running over him like a winter chill. But for a witcher, there were simply some things an Alpha couldn’t do… Some things they could not be protected from.

“You don’t have to do this alone,” Jaskier tried. His eyes drifted to the trees. To their long shafts and shifting branches and dappled shadows, all swaying so innocently, so invitingly. Those children had been lured in by much the same innocence. They had played in the wood, in those trees. Fetched berries for their mothers and kindling for their fathers. Somewhere, back behind those pleasant bows of grass and gentle curves of oak, there were bodies. Small, fragile little bodies. Jaskier shivered.

And Geralt wanted to go alone.

The Alpha in him bared its teeth and paced the cage of his self control, looking for any gap in the bars, any sign of warping or fatigue. Gods above, did he feel fatigued. But Geralt’s warning rang like a bell in his mind and realized, finally, the truth beneath Geralt’s bristling and snarling and feralness: most Alpha’s didn’t want to stick around with someone they could not protect, could not control. A witcher’s Alpha had to be a man willing to go against instinct. It was no easy ask. Obviously, Geralt had been left before.

No one wants to pick up after broken glass that they cannot protect, cannot prevent from breaking. Picking up finer and finer shards, all so sharp and piercing, cutting up their fingers until they could hold on no longer. Dangerous for everyone, Geralt had said.

“I told you it wouldn’t be easy, Jaskier,” Geralt broached with surprising gentleness. With understanding. He was waiting for this to be too much. Braced for it. Expecting it.

Jaskier let his shoulders slump as he found himself at the crossroads Geralt had always known their relationship was leading to. Could Jaskier handle this – handle fighting his instinct to protect – knowing that there was no protecting a witcher?

I told you it wouldn’t be easy.

His career had not been easy. Leaving home and financial security and the royal safety net of his birth right had not been easy. Going against expectations and becoming a bard rather than head of household had not been easy. Loving Geralt had not been easy.

Difficulty was not synonymous for worth or regret.

The bard ran a hand through his hair, looking around, then finding a suitable stump he plopped down with bardly grace, crossed his legs, and said, “Nothing worth having ever is,” with a beatific smile.

The witcher stilled, eyes ever so slightly wide, and stared at him – stunned. Behind him, the trees swayed lovingly. Petals and leaves danced between them, carried on an unknown current. Drifting.

Geralt opened his mouth at that, then closed it – at a loss for words, not that he ever had been a man of many words at all. He looked out over the village, over the inevitable. He’d return to that village soon enough. He’d tell them of the fate of the children who hadn’t come home. And more than likely, he’d be run out of town – and Jaskier with him. Geralt was at a crossroads of his own: could he bear to let someone carry the burden of their scorn with him, knowing they deserved none of it?

Jaskier watched, waited – let Geralt lead.

After a long, searching moment, the witcher clenched his jaw and nodded before finally disappearing into the wood without him.

It took time to bury the dead. Time to make sure they were buried deep enough to be protected from ghouls or anything else that might dig them up for an easy snack. Time to transfer their little bodies from the scarred nook of woods infected with their fear and their death to somewhere deserving of little bodies to be put to rest. To honor their graves with rock markers and holy candles and incense to ward away any creature that might try to make an easy snack of them so early after their deaths. Time, and great care, and all the while Jaskier waited patiently because Geralt, in his own way, had promised to return if he promised to stay.

Petals danced. The woods whispered a hushed lullaby. And on the alter of Geralt’s table, he offered the only thing the witcher had ever asked for: in the face of every difficulty ahead, every non-conventional hurdle, every contradiction of instinct – Jaskier stayed.

Jaskier waited.

He stood only when a slim, broad shouldered figure appeared from the womb of the woods, solitary and wraith-like in that way wolves always seemed to appear when separate from their pack. He paused at the tree line, in that delicate state of existence between the wild and man; and seemed surprised to see Jaskier there. Surprised, Jaskier realized, but also relieved. Some unspoken tension seeped out from the man’s shoulders. Left him like a malicious spirit leaving cursed flesh, finally setting its victim free. His entire body language bespoke of a man finally breaching the surface of some vast, unknown lake.

Jaskier wondered how long he had been drowning.

“You stayed,” Geralt grunted. Stunted and unaccustomed to being proven wrong.

“When have I ever been conventional, Geralt?” Jaskier asked, unable to hold back the volume of his smile, the light of it, the relief. “Of course I stayed. You came back.”

Geralt shifted from foot to foot, obviously uncomfortable.

“I did,” was all he managed. And that was enough. That was everything.

Jaskier broached the gap between them and laced his fingers in dirty, grave-soil stained hands; all too aware that beneath those gloves were the bandages Geralt had let him apply when the witcher had been weak, vulnerable and wanting. A symbol of the concessions that bound them. He could not protect Geralt as his armor did. Could not show his care publicly like any normal Alpha might. No one might ever know, may not ever see. But for that price, for that payment, he could have what mattered. He could have what the witcher was too scarred, too wary to offer anyone else.

Yes, he thought as they walked hand in hand back to the village – ready to face the people’s ire together. It was much better to love the man than the idea.

Geralt was real, more solid and more vast than any concept of intimacy or love that Jaskier had ever conceived of as a boy.

Oh there is no doubt in my mind that Yennefer would take great pleasure in ruffling Jaskier's feathers the moment she realizes that the wispy bard (in comparison to Geralt) is not only an Alpha, but he's the WITCHER'S overprotective Alpha! As if Geralt needed protecting! She knows it bothers Jaskier just as much as it flusters Geralt (who does not know to deal with his protective Alpha at all and is generally just bewildered, because Witchers are not precisely your standard idea of omegas, he was not trained for this, how make bard calm the fuck down???).

Cue Yennefer giving them grief at any and every opportunity just to see Jaskier flash his teeth and preen like a peacock. And if that means Geralt begins to appear with more and more evidence of their bond -- braided hair, the constant scent of his Alpha, hickies and trinkets and generally just looking well rested beneath all that embarrassment -- well then good. Three birds with one stone.

She gets quality entertainment. Geralt gets taken care of. Jaskier gets to do those Alpha things he can't particularly do when it comes to protecting Geralt from his job and monsters.

I am forever devastated by the way his ‘short hair’ looks in the Witcher 3, compared to his other options; but I often think of how he’d look with an undercut, since his shorn sides/pony tail option is so, so close to it.