#writintober

Witchers are made and taught to perceive and control all the physiological needs of their bodies. They need air, water, food and sleep in approximately that order. The mutant body does not need to be touched.

Three years ago he had gone two days without water whilst tracking an unidentified venomous beast along the outskirts of the Korath desert. The first gasps of water after the kill had felt like-

Two days ago Jaskier had clapped him on the back announcing his need to piss and as he had stood to leave his fingers had slipped from leather onto skin, ghosting over the back of Geralt’s neck. It had felt like-

The mutant body does not need to be touched.

The Witcher touches people to hurt them. Very occasionally to protect them from hurt. (Renfri had touched him to ask for protection.) Jennefer touches him when she wants sex. Jaskier touches him to- Jaskier's touches do not have a clear pattern. Sometimes he touches to convince Geralt. Sometimes as a side effect of alcohol. Sometimes to impress others. Sometimes fear. Sometimes excitement.  Jaskier touches Geralt when he wants to. Because. He wants to. He wants Jaskier to touch him.

part one, two, three, four

"When did you become a viscount?"

"Ten seconds ago,” Jaskier replies with a wink.

He looks like he could be a viscount: A couple of heavy rings on his fingers. His doublet in the shimmering pale blue of a winter sky (and his eyes) with two vertical panels of rich deep blue that are embroidered in silver with four-petaled flowers enclosed in diamonds, and two columns of matching silver buttons. The edges are all trimmed in fine grey-black fox fur.

The individual grey hairs he'd had at their last meeting have grown into great waves of silver spreading from his temples. Where they are clipped short, in the neat beard he had once been unable to completely grow, they catch the sun, sparking like magnesium fire. And his eyes, still as bright and sharp as they always were, are refined with ever more lines marking the years he has spent laughing.

Geralt shakes himself, and remembers to be suspicious of Jaskier's schemes

"Where are you going?"

Over the years, the decades, their meetings change from Geralt buying them two pints of shitty ale in the back of a slightly ominous pub, to Jaskier ordering a hog roast, and fine wine to a plush booth, if not a private room. No longer does Jaskier play for tips to an almost hostile crowd, but the crowds start asking for him. Courting him. As the money in his pockets turns from copper to gold, his copper hair fades to silver. Despite his best efforts Geralt watched more than a handful of human lives fully unfold. They don't often go so fruitfully upwards. And he has to admit, just to himself, in quiet moments, that it is quite pleasant to watch. Of course a full stomach and mild inebriation always help warm feelings.

These days him and Jaskier tend to know when they're both in down a day or two before they get around to bumping into each other. Towns have always filled quickly with scandalised whispers of the unnaturally pale Witcher that has appeared in the rough end of town, but now excited whispers of the great bard Jaskier flow in the opposite direction and into Geralt's ears. More and more Geralt finds himself wandering towards a familiar song only to found it being sung by the wrong person. They tend to finish their set early, shaken by the sudden appearance of a silent, glaring Witcher.

Jaskier holds Geralt's face in his hands, running his thumb across Geralt's cheekbone. Skin so smooth. Always smooth.

"When I saw you appear again, pale and fresh and pink at the tips, suspended in that crystal water, you were as bewitching as the first day I saw you. In the back of that pub." Geralt can only furrow his brow in reply as Jaskier’s eyes again fall to wander across his face. "It's like going back in time. Being in my own memory."

"You never kissed me."

"I wish I had."

...OR...

Jaskier has that odd look on his face again. “I was joking earlier but you really don't, do you?”

Geralt frowns. “Don't what?”

“You don't age.”

Parts: one, two

Geralt is coated head to toe in more than one thick dark liquid, holding up the end of a mangled corpse of something in his left hand. It's unclear where the corpse ends and where he begins, though his pristine yellow eyes still gleam menacingly out of the grime. It seems that Geralt is having to re-negotiate the value of the corpse-ing with a local who is suddenly adamant that half a body is worth only half the bounty.

"I can assure you - the other half of this chort won't be killing your cattle."

It's such a familiar sight, and such a bizarre thing to feel nostalgia over, that laughter bubbles out of Jaskier’s chest.

[previous]

Although, in this tale, it is Jaskier who wanders towards a familiar sound. This afternoon he is situated outside the patisserie on the town square nibbling a breakfast tarte aux fruits and doodling lyrics when the childrens' raucous games fall raucous games dissolve into an excited sprint away from him. As they run jabbering, the conversations in their path fall hushed, and turn in one direction. With everyone else, Jaskier looks towards the loose crowd forming around a dark silhouette.

Jaskier smiles and drops his quill. He weaves through gasps and gawps of horror and disgust "Thank Melitele. Now both beasts can leave us alo-" And all the same things they always say- "Been poisoning the water for weeks. They owe us half I re-" Dropping generous smiles to anyone who looks his way. Because this is how he knows that Geralt has returned.

[previous]

The tailor coughs, "Gentlemen, I have three doublets suitable for the Witcher’s measurements. Shall we... get started?"

With a wave of his hand, Jaskier sends the tailor's assistant scurrying to the stone benches tucked around the edges of the room. There he lays out and unwraps the doublets from the plain fabric they had been transported in. Jaskier watches the clothes, Geralt watches Jaskier, and the tailor watches them all.

As soon as bright yellow fabric trimmed in black is revealed from the first package, Geralt catches Jaskier's eye and minutely shakes his head.

The next: countless interlocking geometric satin panels in the many green shades of a dappled forest. The last an almost black merlot, intricate velveteen brocade.

As Jaskier approaches the table the assistant hops back out of the way, and stands with his hands clasped behind his back.  

Geralt asks, "And how will the Viscount Jaskier be dressing me tonight?"