One
Jaskier can't see what the problem is, and says as much to the taciturn witcher at his elbow.
Geralt frowns, lifting his head from where his chin is merely hitting his collar, "There's a problem?"
"It seems there must be, my dear, for there's a steaming, full plate in front of you and you're not eating it."
"Hmmm." He makes a token effort and picks up his spoon, pushing food around listless as if the cutlery is too heavy whilst Jaskier watches on, brow furrowed deep with the weight of his concern. His heart sinks when Geralt drops the spoon without taking a bite and goes back to staring into his untouched ale.
"Are you sick?" asks Jaskier, knowing better than to try and reach out and touch him in a room full of people.
"Not hungry."
He's flabbergasted, jaw dropping open, "You've just fought a drowner- for pittance, I might add. You've done everything to work up an appetite." Roach, on their return, had dived nose-first into her feedbag and not resurfaced for almost half an hour. So surely he must be-
"I'm not hungry." Geralt stands abruptly, shoving his chair backwards and his plate towards Jaskier. "Eat it yourself, if it bothers you." And he's stalking off before he can say another word, the crowd parting in distaste as he strides to the stairs and out of sight.
Jaskier pulls the plate towards him and eats alone.
Two
Everything is too loud in Geralt's ears, a living waterfall streaming through his head even as everyone around him sleeps like the dead. There's another bad fucking idea at play here- very bad, very stupid, very foolish, the sort that'll blow up in their faces like the Dragon Hunt did. Hopefully Jaskier won't leave like last time. He pauses, breath halting in his ribcage.
Where did that thought come from?
He and the bard have discussed this and it's over.
Yet try as he might, his mind keeps returning to the devastation unfurling across the bard's face, opening like a flower to sunlight and Geralt the axe. The world has quietened to his ears but the at the cost of everything else sounding as if he's underwater. This has been happening too much lately, appetite fleeing at the sight of food, fear fleeing at the sight of a monster, just like now and he knows he will not want to sleep until sunbreak and the rest of the camp begins to stir to life. Then, he will want to sleep as means of escape.
He turns over onto his side and the world tilts with him. Doesn't right itself. He focuses on Jaskier, sprawled over their bedrolls, the only part of him exposed a slither of skin at his ankle which Geralt grasps as tight as he dares in his fist. The world remains on its side. Long into the morning and he does not dare let go or close his eyes longer than it takes to blink.
There is a certainty in his guts: something terrible will happen if he closes his eyes. Terrible in the sense he will leave again. Maybe Yennefer will be behind it. Maybe he will leave because the dawn unveils the truth like pulling back a curtain. Maybe he'll be stolen away in the night like a changeling. Maybe he'll just vanish, there one moment and gone the next. Maybe he's really just cursed and isn't actually here at all.
The answer is no clearer when Jaskier wakes up, yawning and stretching and paying no mind to Geralt's hold on his ankle. Then he opens his eyes. And then he immediately sits upright and leans over, face looming into his vision from above, care in every line of his face. Geralt feels the world tilt dizzyingly. "Holy shit, Geralt, your eyes."
My eyes?
"They're all red!" the bard exclaims, dabbing carefully at his monster eyes with the corner of a wet cloth he makes appear from nowhere. It's a light-feather touch, hardly felt. "Oh, you look rather a mess and your eyes look all sore- how much sleep did you get?"
He shrugs, feeling the grit in his tear ducts and the soreness in his stiff muscles. "Didn't." Apparently he forgot how to blink, too, if it's so noticeable. The hot flame in his sternum doesn't dissipate when he explains he didn't sleep, instead only burns hotter. Odd, Jaskier insists talking about things makes them better. Geralt should have known better. He does know better. So why…. Fuck if he knows. Fuck's the best word for everything. Fuck.
Three
"Um, Geralt?"
"Hmmm."
"What are you doing?"
"Tending to Roach."
"…All day?"
The glare he levels in the direction of the stable door makes him almost take a step back, "Are you saying Roach doesn't deserve the best?"
"You know perfectly well I consider Roach a star of the finest magnitude, but I've never known you spend an entire down in the stables with her."
"Hmmm."
"You've not sharpened your swords either."
"Hmmm."
"Okay, then. I'll… see you later?"
Four
"Five!" Jaskier's voice cuts into his head and cleaves it in two. Geralt shuts his eyes and at once the bard is rousing him again by tapping his cheek without relenting. "Five!" he yells, bristling like a stray cat. "Five monsters, Geralt, with four potions and no White Honey. Just how stupid are you?"
He frowns. "Very?"
His mouth flattens into a hard line. Wrong answer. "You could have come back. You should have come back." The bandage around his bicep is knotted tight enough to make him hiss, every inch if his skin tender with the effect of four combined potions. So it was a bad idea, after all. Better not tell Jaskier that. "You're lucky Roach has all the common sense you've seemingly lost!"
Ah Roach, Geralt thinks gratefully, such a good horse. She's saved his life so often he can't count that high. Each curse Jaskier mutters not-quite-under-his-breath adds a stone to the weight on Geralt's chest, until each exhale is a short, shallow whistle escaping past the hot coals in his chest. It's been like this most of the time (every day) lately; he's not sure what this different type of pain means, he's just waiting for it to merge into all his other aches and stop catching his attention. The flame is doused by apparently nothing on the continent- not ale, sex, food, fighting- nothing. The closest thing he gets to relief is burying his face in Roach's mane and letting her nibble on his hair a while.
More concerning is how little he desires to do anything else, how rising from his bedroll in the morning feels like an old man. And thinking about how he'll never be an old man or even old enough to retire makes his chest throb and his ribs burn. That's becoming part of this new normal too. He's getting more and more reckless- this latest fight case in point. Every instinct can be screaming for him to do one thing and Geralt does… nothing. It's the inaction which scares him more even than doing the polar opposite. Every contract, every fight, every meal, every sunrise, his mind tilts off-balance and tries to weigh him in place.
With a dramatic and vicious flourish, Jaskier ties off the last bandage and looks him hard in the face. Geralt feels his mind weigh an ounce heavier with each passing second, a tonne for every grey hair he's caused his bard. "Are you alright?"
He swallows. "Yes." (He's afraid.)
Five
Few things does Jaskier like more in the world than the chance to help his witcher with his bath. Washing up post-monster fight when accommodation and circumstances allow is a ritual started from the very first days of their companionship and one he treasures. And not just for the way it lets him touch his lover's naked body. He gets to choose nice-smelling oils, wash and brush his white hair, rinse away every piece of evidence of monsters and the outside world and make Geralt purr.
Naturally, then, is Jaskier rather put out and baffled at the current situation he finds himself in. Never in thirty three years, will he swear on his part-elvish blood, has Geralt refused a bath.
Jaskier tries a different tact and switches topic mid-sentence "-Is this because it wasn't a difficult fight so a bath is too much reward? Because we've talked about this darling and-"
"No." Geralt draws himself up to his full height and glares. Better men than Jaskier have fainted from that look alone.
"Pray tell, then, why you don't want a bath!" He feels like he's on a slippery surface, losing his footing and the subsequent bid to stay upright. "I mean, you always have a bath- always! Why don't you- can't you just have a bath tonight anyway- just for me? You always have a bath!"
"No." The tension in his shoulders could make flowers wilt- he hasn't even taken his boots and armour off and Jaskier's just- well, he's just at a fucking loss here.
But he's not in the business of forcing a man to partake in anything he doesn't want to and he especially cannot force the mountain that is Geralt of Rivia so he concedes, beginning to unbutton his doublet and breeches. He'll have a bath, then, another on top of the one he had earlier. Better than letting the water go to waste.
"Alright." He slides in up to his neck. The water is lovely and if it feels this good to him, he can't imagine the relief it'd give to a man on the tail-end of a monster fight and a four-mile trek. "Will you at least explain why you're not in the mood for a bath tonight?"
His only forthcoming answer is the soft clinking sounds almost lapped up by the water as Geralt turns his back and slowly starts to undress.
Whatever portion of sense and intuition he has left to him keeps him quiet as piece by piece drops away to show more and more livid purple bruises across that broad expanse of back he's dug his fingernails into countless nights. "Was it really the hellhound that the village claimed?"
The question garners him a shrug- barely there, almost missed amongst his other movements.
The water is slowly cooling but Jaskier heats up with a flare of anger as the bruised and scratched flesh is hidden behind an (unwashed) black shirt, "Are you going to speak more than three words to me this evening?"
Whatever game Geralt is playing, it's horrid and unfair and really not satisfying to the worry that Jaskier carries around in his heart every time he's left behind waiting to see if his lover actually makes it back alive.
"No. Good night," says Geralt coolly, climbing into bed and pulling the covers up to completely cover his head. The blankets are too short and his bare feet poke out the other end and it's a testament to tonight's ambience that he cannot spare a second even to find the sight endearing,
"Bastard," he mutters. When he climbs into bed himself, hours later, he makes sure not to touch him at all.
Plus One
Geralt snarls and skitters out of his grasp like a wounded beast, "Don't touch me!" Which for him is practically a dramatic scene.
a beacon ignites in Jaskier's head. "Geralt," he drops his voice into dulcet tones, a thing that is soft, as if the man before him really is a savage animal, a stray, and he the bard a good Samaritan tempting him from the side of the road. "You're injured. Those wounds need cleaning."
Rule two of witchers: do not let wounds fester. (Rule one: Don't get killed.) He knows Geralt knows this. He doesn't know what's going on.
He steps closer and Geralt steps back- alright he's not quite snapping and snarling, but it's close enough. "Darling-" he begins, cut off with a warning growl.
"Don't call me that!"
Hurt and anger instantly begin to boil up in his gut and he takes a minute to clamp down on the urge to yell. It has not escaped his notice that something is wrong here. Very wrong. The beacon has grown into a bonfire, threatening to lose control. "Alright," he resumes after a long pause. "But you still can't leave those cuts untreated." They've gone ignored long enough: Geralt returned to their camp two hours ago and the only reason Jaskier's played along with his bad attitude so long is he provided the very plausible excuses of 1) not being dead and 2) tending to Roach. Yes, the edges are already starting to knit back together with his advanced healing powers, but that's not the point.
Geralt remains stony-faced. "No."
The beacon spills over and sets everything alight, "Geralt of Rivia, you sit your arse down here right now and let me take care of you!"
Without hesitation, he sits down on his arse in the dirt where he stands, looks up at him like a soldier expecting his next order.
Jaskier will take what he can get.
No time is wasted and he makes short work of the shallow slashed and grazes littered over his witcher's body. "Now then, we need to talk."
The first crack appears in his armour, the briefest of emotions flickering across Geralt's face. It's gone as quickly as the trees above their heads wave their branches in the wind. "I don't…"
When no more words are forthcoming he leans in closer, careful not to actually touch until he's given the go-ahead. "Would it be easier with Yes and No questions?"
He nods. Another crack, this time identifiable as relief. "Alright. Tilt your head if your answer is 'don't know'."
A nod.
He starts with the obvious- there's nothing wrong with asking the obvious. "Are you injured anywhere else?"
Headshake. No.
Are you sure? Instead he asks "Did you sleep at all last night?"
No.
"The night before?"
No.
"Do you know the last time you slept properly?"
No.
"Do you remember the last time you ate properly?"
No.
"Are you hungry now?"
No.
He draws in a deep breath and exhales through clenched teeth, "You've just fought a monster, how can you not want to eat something?"
Head tilt. Don't know.
As the wildfire in his head burns out, everything is slowly falling into place. Like tea leaves; only he reads the warning signs now the danger has already occurred.
"Do you think there's something the matter with you? Geralt?"
Jaskier crosses the invisible boundary and puts a hand on his knee, ducking his head until those golden eyes meet his own. Clouded over, not just with exhaustion but… confusion? Instead of pressing the lack of answer, Jaskier keeps his hands where they are and waits.
"It's… tipping," Geralt says haltingly without meeting his gaze. "Everything is tilting and- and- witchers don't have feelings."
"Right," he answers, mostly just because Geralt needs him to respond in some way, even though he knows for certainty that what he just said isn't true. Truth is dawning and it is all perfectly clear and horrible.
"But I haven't felt anything."
"What do you-" he stops himself, doubtful there's any way Geralt can explain what that means. "What do you do, then? When you realise you aren't… feeling, I mean?"
He frowns and gnaws his lip and Jaskier feels all sorts of ways at such blatant emotionalism. It shouldn't be like this- where is Geralt's iron-clad control?
"I go- Roach is soft. I go to Roach."
On cue, Roach whinnies softly, pausing in her delicate munches of grass to kick a hoof in her master's direction. the tiny flicker of a smile it brings to his face gives Jaskier hope that all is not list.
"Is this why you've not been eating and sleeping?"
A nod. Yes.
Well that at least answers all his questions, Jaskier supposes. "Why didn't you tell me before?"
A blank stare, "Witchers don't have feelings."
The problem is probably less that and more that they haven't a clue how to talk about their feelings in the tough, unyielding atmosphere that was Kaer Morhen, though he doesn't push the issue.
Geralt's eyes lower and he mumbles so quietly the words are nearly inaudible, "Thought you'd notice, if I didn't… But then I couldn't explain it all in my head straight so what if I told you and…"
"I'm not a mind-reader, Geralt," only he speaks very, very softly as an apology for saying that when what he means is: I did notice something was wrong. Noticing wasn't enough.
It will make this easier for next time, at least.
Jaskier pauses. There isn't going to be a next time, is there?
Possibly not. Possibly because a man can't lose his mind twice. A broken thing cannot shatter again. Although if anyone was going to find a way, it of course isn't going to be Geralt. Oh fuck.
"This isn't happening again." They both flinch at the harshness in his voice and Jaskier grasps hold of his hand until he feels bones creak. "Tell me how to help you."
"I don't…" After several minutes of floundering, he simply shrugs.
The barefaced helplessness on his face does it. "Alright, then, I'll decide and if there's anything you don't want to do, you tell me when it comes up. We're going to sleep in as long as we like in the morning, then we're collecting your coin from the alderman and we'll ask him at the same time the best way to the coast. You aren't going to take any contracts, I'm going to perform and earn us more than enough coin. We'll stop at the coast for as long as we want and do anything we want. How does that sound?"
"Can Roach go in the sea?"
Jaskier laughs. Even Geralt cracks a smile. This might not get any better but Jaskier's now determined things aren't going to get any worse. "Roach is an absolute madam, of course she can do what she likes too."
Roach interjects with a snort that almost sounds happy and it makes Geralt's smile widen just slightly. Jaskier lets himself breathe out in relief. Far be it from him to tempt fate, but he thinks perhaps everything is going to be alright.