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Geralt doesn’t so much let Jaskier accompany him on tonight’s monster hunt as run out of ways to stop him simply following, short of tying him to the bed. Really, he probably should have done that, but the bard was so very insistent that he be allowed to come along for once and Geralt is well aware that he has a Jaskier-shaped weakness in him.
(‘It’s about authenticity, Geralt! How can I recount a faithful tale of your heroics if I’ve never even seen the damn monsters up close?’
‘Your tales are never faithful.’
‘Yes, well, it’s a bit different to skip over some of the more sordid details than to have no idea how to properly describe a kikimora, so –’)
So Jaskier’s trots along at Roach’s heels when they leave the village for the neighbouring vale. Geralt tries to focus on the facts of the hunt rather than the fact that his very human, very breakable companion really, truly wants to watch Geralt wave his silver sword about and get covered in viscera. From the accounts Geralt’s heard, there are a pair of kikimora lurking in the swamp at the bottom of the valley, probably two soldiers. As with most insectoid species, soldiers are more aggressive and far more heavily armoured than their worker brethren, making them twice as dangerous.
And he’s bringing Jaskier. Fuck.
The bard in question is currently singing softly, trying to figure out a tune he likes for his new ballad. Geralt grits his teeth and doesn’t tell him to shut up, not yet. They reach the edge of the dense forest a little while later and he brings Roach to a halt before they go in, sliding off her back in one easy motion and loosely securing the reins to a low-hanging branch. If she needs to, she’ll be able to break free.
‘Jaskier,’ he grunts, and the bard stops in the middle of a line comparing the silver glow of the full moon above them to the sheen on Geralt’s swords. ‘Hush now.’
‘Yes, sir, right away, sir,’ is the cheeky reply, Jaskier’s scent still containing an aggravating lack of fear.
Does the idiot have any self-preservation instincts? Geralt is quite seriously beginning to think not. He makes no further comment, though, turning to retrieve a potion from the saddlebags. Gulping down Cat for heightened senses, he pauses over Swallow, considering. After a moment, he throws that back too; he’ll have to make a new batch of it before his next contract, but if ever there is a night to take the health reinforcement potion, it’s tonight. He exhales slowly, feeling the slight burn in his blood that comes with so much potent alchemy, his body already adjusting to the familiar magic. Behind him, Jaskier is humming under his breath, apparently physically incapable of being properly quiet, and there’s a tendril of anticipation curling in Geralt’s gut at the thought of turning around now, with his skin bleached white and his eyes and the surrounding veins black as ink.
(This definitely did not play a part in his eventual acquiescence to Jaskier’s request – no, demand earlier that evening. Geralt absolutely does not have a perverse little desire that he can’t quite throttle out of existence for Jaskier to see him like this, barely one step from the monsters he hunts, and find out if it’s enough to finally scare the bard away.)
Geralt turns, his senses having fine-tuned to a razor’s edge, deluging him with a thousand snippets of information about his environment. The shadows that swathe the forest melt away before his powerful stare, hiding nothing. He glances at Jaskier, bracing himself for the worst, and finds the bard already watching him. There’s a slight tension in his posture that wasn’t there before, a faint thread of wariness in his scent – and that’s it. The strongest element in Jaskier’s familiar smell is somehow still trust, his faith in the witcher overwhelming his automatic response to Geralt’s ghastly appearance.
It’s more than Geralt expected, more than he could have asked for, just like most things with Jaskier.
But he has a job to do and he cannot let himself get distracted by the openness in those bright blue eyes when he’s about to go into battle, so Geralt growls a heavy, ‘Keep back,’ and strides into the forest, unsheathing his silver sword as he goes.
He hears Jaskier following at a distance, still humming because of course he is, but it doesn’t take long for Geralt’s attention to be caught by signs of thoroughly disturbed foliage and tracks in the earth. He judges them new enough to have been made tonight, which means the kikimora aren’t down at the bottom of the valley, but somewhere in the woods with them.
Creeping forward with ever more caution, Geralt’s been following the tracks for less than five minutes when he hears an awful screeching and the crash of large bodies against fragile trees. He hurls himself into a forward roll without pause, rolling to his feet as a kikimora lands where he’d been a second ago, front limbs raised high in preparation to strike. It shrieks at him and the second giant bug monster skitters out of the trees after it, immediately trying to flank him. Geralt snarls defiantly, shoving the second, smaller kikimora back with Aard and lunging at the first, ducking under its slashing claws and slicing his blade into one of its unprotected leg joints. The creature howls and writhes, knocking him off his feet before he manages to sever the limb. It attempts to impale him while he's down, forcing Geralt to roll quickly, instincts surging with the alchemy in his blood to keep him alive and in one piece.
Everything sort of... greys out in his mind after that. Conscious thought recedes under the weight of decades of experience and practise and the magic that makes him a witcher. This is what defines him as a non-human, what lives under his skin and stares out of his gold eyes, causing humans to flinch and back away. His sword becomes an extension of his body, hacking and stabbing and tearing. He breathes and blood spills, the kikimora stumbling beneath the ferocity of his attack. Pain slashes across the back of his thigh and he hisses, feral as the beasts around him, but the wound isn't deep so he ignores it, seizing the brief window of opportunity to get inside the smaller kikimora's guard and relieve it of its head.
Foul blood and gore splatter across Geralt’s clothes and face, the stench especially offensive with his sense of smell in its heightened state. The monster’s body crumples around him and he automatically crouches amongst its limbs as the remaining kikimora screams in rage and launches itself at him. He snarls, a guttural sound promising violence and death, the battle-hunger holding him tight in its fangs. An armour-played leg stabs into the ground inches from his head and he grabs it, allowing the kikimora to pull him free of its kin’s corpse. It shrieks, flailing wildly, and Geralt releases it, kicking off a knee joint to get him in close enough to thrust his blade up under its jaw. The beast wails shrilly in its death throes, body shuddering above him, but he doesn’t move until it goes limp, collapsing as the last one had.
Geralt rips his sword up and out of the kikimora’s skull, breaking its neck, making it easier to tear the whole head off with one hand. He tosses it behind him, striding over to the smaller beats to retrieve its head as well. Then he stops in the middle of the impromptu clearing and just –
Listens.
His body is starting to tremble, pumped up on potions, but Geralt holds himself rigidly, sword held diagonally across him in a white-knuckled grip as his senses scour the area around him for any more threats. His eyes follow every flicker of movement among the trees, his nose catching the scent of every creature that has passed by here in the past day, his ears –
‘Geralt?’
The warning growl is out before he knows its begun, though his flaring instincts settle just as quickly, recognising the soft voice and knowing the hesitant footfalls belong to someone he trusts. Someone who will not steal his prize, who will not hurt him.
‘Is everything alright?’ Jaskier’s tone drips concern as he slowly approaches the tense witcher. ‘The fight’s finished now. You’ve won.’
Yes, Geralt knows that, thank you, but it’s not like he can just turn off Cat and Swallow. His opponents may lie dead at his feet, but the visceral urge to hunt yet thrums in his veins. He almost snaps at Jaskier to leave, to spare himself the sight of Geralt in his most murderous state, stripped of all civility to reveal his truest self.
He doesn’t, though, and Jaskier reaches him, cautiously coming around to his front. Wide blue eyes stare up at him, the bard’s pulse pattering away, and there’s an unfamiliar element to his otherwise usual scent of rosin and brandy. It makes Geralt’s nose wrinkle, interpreting the smell as bitter and acrid and –
Geralt hates that his weakness to Jaskier is so great that his heart bleeds at the thread of fear in the bard. It’s hardly a scent Geralt’s not used to. Hell, it’s in the air all around him whenever he walks into a human settlement, no matter the size. As soon as people catch a glimpse of the swords, the hair, the eyes, fear corrodes their natural scent like rust does iron.
But this is Jaskier. As much as Geralt denies it, Jaskier is different. Jaskier never, ever smells afraid when he’s near the witcher.
Until now.
‘You’re shaking,’ the bard mutters, wringing his hands as his bright gaze flits over Geralt’s form. ‘And bleeding. How bad is it? Do I need to get Roach? Are you hurt anywhere else? What about the –’
‘Jaskier,’ Geralt rasps, as much to shut the bard up as anything else.
It works, Jaskier’s mouth snapping shut and his gaze locking on Geralt’s again. Geralt breathes deeply and winces as that cursed bitterness fills his nose. He opens his mouth to speak again, intending to say that Swallow is already healing the gash in his leg or that Jaskier could make himself useful by gathering up the heads, but what comes out is quite different and wholly unexpected.
‘I smell fear on you.’ His tone is accusatory.
Jaskier doesn’t respond as Geralt thought he would. There’s no fluster, no half-hearted denials, no rabbiting explanations. He just cocks his head, a small crease forming between his brows as his expression takes a turn for the confused.
‘Well... yes. You look – I mean, okay, you look like shit.’ Jaskier makes a vague gesture in the direction of his face. ‘That doesn’t look very comfortable. Did I mention that you’re bleeding?’
Now it’s Geralt’s turn to feel confusion. ‘I have bled before and I will bleed again.’ It’s the closest he can get to what the fuck do you mean?
Jaskier’s frown deepens and he takes a tiny step closer, his scent unchanged. ‘I know, but even you usually react to a stab in the thigh. And I admit it’s a bit unnerving that your lovely gold irises aren’t visible, but mostly...’
He lifts a hand, slowly reaching out to very carefully brush his fingertips over Geralt’s cheekbones where the black veins stand out. Geralt endures the touch without breathing, afraid that if he moves a single muscle he’s going to wrap himself around Jaskier like a second skin and never let him go. The witcher’s blood is burning up with repressed alchemical power and Jaskier’s touch is blissfully cool.
Perhaps emboldened by the fact that Geralt hasn’t shoved him away yet, Jaskier cups one side of the witcher’s face. ‘Mostly,’ he murmurs, ‘I’m scared of what might be going on inside you.’
Now Geralt doesn’t breathe because the air has been stolen from his lungs. If he hadn’t known better, he would’ve thought Jaskier a sorcerer or a creature with magical heritage.
‘I’m fine,’ he grunts.
(Un)fortunately, Jaskier knows better than to believe that and his lips purse at the flagrant lie. ‘Don’t be a fool, Geralt,’ he says with absolutely no heat. ‘Tell me what I can do to help.’
Keep touching me, Geralt wants to say. Keep looking at me like I’m not a monster.
‘I could kill you so, so easily,’ is what he says instead and he sort of wants to run himself through with his own fucking sword because that’s not what he meant –
Apparently it makes more sense to Jaskier than Geralt, though, because the bard’s expression softens, the bitterness fading to a background note as the damp, cold scent of sadness replaces it. Jaskier lifts his other hand, framing the witcher’s face and gently stroking his thumbs under Geralt’s eyes. Geralt, who wants nothing more than to close said eyes and bask in the attention.
‘And the sun rises in the east,’ Jaskier replies. ‘This is a fact of the world that we all know and accept, and then we go about our lives because this fact is irrelevant to us.’ His voice firms, steel under velvet. ‘You could kill me easily if you were drunk and had both hands tied behind your back, Geralt. Black eyes and corpse’s skin don’t change that. You know that I trust you with my life.’
The final vestiges of the bitterness fade away and Geralt’s breath hitches.
‘Ah, don’t look at me like that,’ Jaskier frets, the chill in his scent rising sharply. ‘If you cry, I’ll start crying, too.’
Geralt physically cannot cry, his body doesn’t do that anymore, not since the Trials, and it’s extremely rare for him to reach such an emotional state that he might wish to, but for him to be feeling that now and for Jaskier to have picked up on that –
His sword thuds to the ground as he hauls the bard into a crushingly tight hug, burying his gore-smeared face in the crook of Jaskier’s neck and struggling to keep his breathing steady. Jaskier responds immediately, tucking his feet between the witcher’s boots and returning the embrace, one hand tangling with the silver hair at his nape as though to anchor himself to Geralt. As Jaskier croons hushed reassurances to the crumbling witcher in his arms, his scent warms, becoming rich and full and all Geralt wants is to be able to sink into it, to submerge himself in flowers and brandy and rosin forever.
He doesn’t know how long they stand there in the moonlit forest, surrounded by trampled shrubs and dead kikimora. When he lifts his head from Jaskier’s shoulder, Geralt’s blood no longer burns, only simmering instead. He looks into eyes of blue and lightly knocks their foreheads together, hoping the fervent gratitude and not-inconsiderable awe that he cannot give voice to is conveyed. Jaskier’s lips quirk up in a small smile, his expression screaming relief and sincerity, so Geralt think maybe his silent thank you made it through.
(Later, when they’re back at the inn, Geralt will tug Jaskier into his bed so he can wrap himself in the delicious scent of trust and he will find the words to tell the bard that that is what he smells of, but for now, this is enough.)