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“Pack up, bard, I’m coming to get you,” Yennefer says into the xenovox as she pushes through the inn’s crowded common room, glaring people out of her way.
“Geralt?” Jaskier asks, his voice clearly distressed despite the poor, tinny quality of the xenovox.
Yennefer takes a breath and forces herself to sound calm. She may have a deserved reputation of being a bit, well, forceful, but she’s not so cruel as to worry one of her lovers about the other unnecessarily. “He’ll be fine. A bad reaction to a potion and a knock on the head, but I got the impression from his thoughts that crippling headaches are a relatively common occurrence for our hard head.”
Disturbingly so, in fact. Yennefer shudders at what she felt when she looked into his eyes, which was surely just an echo of the pain Geralt’s feeling. The tired, grim resignation was even worse.
“Ok, a headache.” Jaskier takes a breath of his own, just audible above the sound of a crowd in the background. “Yeah, those are awful, but he gets them sometimes.”
“He gets them sometimes,” Yennefer parrots angrily, as if they’ve wronged her by not warning her in advance of this new weakness of the Witcher.
Jaskier ignores her. “There are still two days left at this competition, and I'm in a good position to win the purse. Are you sure you need me?”
“Stay with me,” Geralt had said as Yennefer had fled the room. They were the only words he’d spoken since she found him curled up behind the inn with his arms wrapped around his head.
She hadn’t stayed, had made some excuse about supplies, cast a soundproofing spell to protect his senses, and then bolted.
“He’s in pain, bard,” Yennefer says, finally finding a clear path to the door. “He needs his good little bardling to come simper and make doe eyes over him.”
“I’m going to ignore the insults because you’re distressed,” Jaskier says primly. “And honestly, they were most of that.”
“Pack your things.”
“I know it’s difficult to see him go from striding around, all dry humor and rippling muscles, to curled up and in pain, but he will be ok, Yen.”
“I know that,” Yennefer snaps as she walks down the street in the direction of the woods, where a portal will be less likely to attract attention. “I literally just told you that.”
“And you are more than capable of what little care he needs,” Jaskier adds.
And there’s the sticking point. Because Yennefer doesn’t do caretaking, doesn’t, can’t, won’t do caretaking. “That’s your job in this relationship, you do the bathing and cooing and caring for the hurts,” Yennefer says, and she just manages not to add that she’s the one who does the hurting half the time.
Jaskier appears to hear what she doesn’t say.
“We’re all three of us deeply broken people,” Jaskier says. The sound of the crowd behind him has dimmed, as if he found a quiet corner. Yennefer can picture him, lute in one hand, crouched down around the xenovox as he comforts her, and she loves and hates him for his easy way with people in the same thought.
It’s how their relationship works, it’s fine.
“Speak for yourself, bard,” she tells him with as much disbelieving arrogance as she can muster.
“We’re all broken,” Jaskier repeats. “And sometimes our sharp edges cut each other, but we are more than our teeth and claws, Yen.”
That has the ring of truth to it. Yennefer stops in the middle of the muddy track through town and forces herself to sit with that like an old, painful lesson from her days at Aretuza.
“So what, you have a procedure for these headaches?” she asks finally.
She can hear the relief in his voice when he answers. “First, get him off the floor.”
“He wasn’t on the floor.”
“He’ll be on the floor now,” Jaskier says with ringing confidence. “Practically in the fireplace.”
“Damned fool Witcher,” Yennefer says. She’s already turned back towards the inn without realizing it.
“A bath will make him feel better, will loosen the muscles in his neck and shoulders, if you can get him into it. Otherwise just try to keep him warm, gently work at those muscles with your fingers.”
“And I thought you just liked getting your hands on his naked skin.”
“We both like getting our hands on him, don’t distract me. Then put him to bed and curl up around his back.”
Yennefer stops just before the door to the inn. “This is why I wanted you here. I’m not going to do that.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not big enough.” It’s not the real reason and she knows it.
“And I’m huge,” he says, voice dripping innuendo.
The guard at the inn’s door makes a disgusted face on hearing that but waves her back into the building readily enough.
“It’s not about size,” Jaskier says with a sigh, as if she’s being particularly obtuse. “It’s about skin-to-skin contact, about grounding him and giving him pleasant sensations to distract him from the pain.”
Yennefer is standing in front of the door to their room now. “What if he doesn’t want any of that?” From me? she does not say but can’t help but think.
“He will, but feel free to ask him,” Jaskier says. “It wouldn’t hurt either of you to be a little more explicit about consent, anyway.”
“Bah,” Yennefer says, hand up to slam the xenovox closed. She pauses. “This better work.”
“You’re welcome,” Jaskier says.
She slams the box shut at that.
Geralt is curled up on the floor in the fetal position, practically in the fireplace. He still has his arms up, bent at the elbow, so his particularly impressive biceps are sandwiching his head. It can’t be about cutting sound now, not when not a wisp of it makes it past Yennefer’s spell.
The least she can do is get him off the floor, she decides. It’s not as if that requires any great nurturing effort, only power, which she has in abundance.
“Geralt,” Yennefer says softly, kneeling behind him.
He doesn’t move.
Yennefer considers touching him to get his attention and decides neither of them need to deal with the fall out if he lashes out blindly in response.
“Geralt, love,” she says a little louder, biting her lip when the endearment slips out. Five minutes on the xenovox with the bard was enough to turn her into a bleeding-hearted fool, apparently.
A shiver ripples through him despite the sweat sticking his hair to the back of his neck. “Yen?” he grinds out.
“I’m here,” she says.
His body uncoils a little, but he doesn’t turn around. When she puts her hand on his shoulder and feels how rock hard his muscles are, Yennefer suspects he can’t. Which means he can’t brush her off if he wants to, and suddenly Yennefer has a creeping, slimy feeling that the bard is right about consent. Damn him.
“I need to move you to the bed,” she says, tacitly asking permission.
“Can’t move,” he says, curling a little tighter around his head.
“I know, dumbass,” Yennefer says. She bites her lip. So much for endearments. “I can move you; you don’t have to move yourself.”
Geralt just grunts, which usually Yennefer can interpret. She’s finding it difficult now, without being able to look into his eyes.
But she’s not going to leave him on the floor if he’ll bear moving, so she carefully gets the tendrils of her power under him and slowly lifts. Her hands find their way to beneath his body even though it’s her magic that is truly supporting him. He just looks so vulnerable, floating alone in the air, she finds herself stepping closer to touch him.
He makes a little noise as she sets him down on the bed.
Yennefer leans closer, putting her ear down by his face.
“Convenient,” he says, just a breath of sound.
A smile snakes its way across Yennefer’s face as the realization hits her like a thunderclap: this is still Geralt. He’s no better at receiving comfort than she is at giving it, and yet he’s cracking jokes through his pain to make it easier for her.
She can do more than get him off the ground.
“The bard said you’d like a bath,” Yennefer says. “But I’m not sure we can manage it.”
Geralt grunts, and this time it’s definitely agreement. His arms are still locked around his head.
“I’m going to take your clothes off,” she says. “Don’t get any ideas.”
Another spell has his clothes slithering away, but she pulls the sheets and blankets up, hopefully before his nakedness can really register. Not that he’s ever seemed too shy about that around her.
If Tissaia could see her now, using her magic to undress and swaddle a man who has a headache, what would she think? Yennefer pushes away the thought and reminds herself she doesn’t care what Tissaia thinks.
“I’m going to get in bed with you,” she says to Geralt, though she pauses before she does to see how he’ll respond.
“Not complaining,” Geralt says, a little louder than he’s spoken up to this point.
“We’re not getting any ideas, remember?” Yennefer teases as she slides into bed behind him.
The broad, pale expanse of Geralt’s back rises in front of her like a wall, his muscles standing out starkly beneath his skin.
“Geralt,” Yennefer says, as she puts her hands on his nape. “You must tell me to stop if this hurts, understand?”
The little twitch might be a nod, but Yennefer finds she doesn’t need it. He’s already uncurled a little, just at her touch. So long as she continues to get that reaction, she’ll keep going.
She starts lightly, an image of the bard massaging Geralt’s shoulders in the bath guiding her movements, just gliding her hands over the skin of his upper back at first. When his shoulders start to come down, she presses a little harder with her thumbs into the uneven knots of flesh, holding the pressure until they release. Little by little, Geralt’s arms drift down from his head and his legs uncurl.
It’s quiet in the room, with nothing but the sound of the fire cracking and their breaths, as if the whole world outside has frozen, waiting for her to put Geralt back together again.
Geralt ends up stretched out mostly on his stomach, propped up with a pillow beneath his chest. He either drifts into a meditative trance or sleeps, his breathing slow and even, his body not entirely relaxed, but no longer quivering with strain beneath Yennefer’s.
She scoops her bottom arm between his narrow waist and the mattress, then considers her options.
He’s clearly more comfortable, and it’s not as if she’s uncomfortable exactly. Geralt’s body is warm against hers and he smells pleasantly like leather and alchemy, though she’d never admit she finds the scent oddly comforting after all these years. It’s tolerable, if only just, her skin crawling with the need to get up, to do something.
There’s nothing for her to do now but wait and watch over him while he suffers. He’s suffering a little less for her interventions, but he’s still suffering.
Yennefer shakes her head. Always suffering, this Witcher of hers. She wishes she could say it’s one of his charms, but it’s quite possibly the most off-putting of his many off-putting behaviors.
It takes a bit of careful wiggling, a few more conjured pillows, and a quick search through her mental library of books, but she manages to find a way to distract herself. She leans a book onto a pillow beside Geralt, props herself up a little behind him, and hooks her chin over his shoulder. Settling in to read, she gives his waist another squeeze.
Hours pass before a slight movement beneath her heralds Geralt’s return to consciousness.
“Is your headache gone?” Yennefer asks softly.
“Not entirely,” Geralt says. “But it’s better. Thanks Yen.”
“You’re welcome.” Yennefer kisses the point between Geralt’s shoulder blades, a place she’s seen Jaskier press his lips a couple hundred times before without understanding the attraction. She thinks she might get it now, the lure of this vulnerable skin Geralt only shows to them.
There’s a breath of silence before Geralt speaks again. “You’re good at this, you know,” he says, his voice guileless and thick with sleep.
“I’m good at everything,” Yennefer says, tucking away the compliment and ignoring the way it makes her chest swell with pride or love or tenderness or some other such soft thing she doesn’t trust.
Geralt snorts. He’s asleep moments later.
Yennefer puts away her book. She tucks herself around Geralt’s back and falls asleep smiling, her lips still pressed to his neck.