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“Any change?”
Geralt is leaning against the doorway when Jaskier looks up, sleeves pushed up to his elbows and hair messily hanging into his face. He looks tired, and Jaskier fears he will only make it worse.
But lying will do no one any favours, and so he shakes his head, dropping his eyes back down to the still form curled into him. Yenna seems small like this, curled into Jaskier in near-fetal position with her head in his lap, even with the fluffy blanket covering her. Maybe especially with the blanket.
“Her fever’s still at 38.4°C, though she woke up briefly a while ago and had some water.”
Geralt hums unhappily. Jaskier almost expects him to approach, but he keeps his distance. He hasn’t stepped foot into the room since depositing Yenna on Jaskier’s couch, chagrined and apologetic and guilty for not heeding her wishes even then and keeping his distance, though Jaskier doesn’t think that she will hold it against Geralt.
Things are strained between them, yes, but not because of a lack of care. It would be easier if they didn’t care quite so much.
“Ciri?” Jaskier asks. So far, nobody has told him what, exactly, happened; all he’s been able to glean is that a lesson for Ciri went wrong, somehow, leaving both sorceress and apprentice sick.
“Better. Triss says she’s over the worst of it, but there’s still… Triss still needs her under supervision.” Geralt hesitates briefly. “If you need backup…” He trails off, shifting.
They both know he can’t offer to relieve Jaskier, but the gesture is still sweet.
Jaskier summons a smile from somewhere. “I’m okay. I’ll need the loo at some point, but I’m hoping she’ll wake soon.” He can hold it, anyway, because the last thing he wants is for Yenna to wake, shivering and disoriented, and be alone. “You go fret over your daughter. I’ll yell if anything happens.”
Something relaxes in Geralt’s face, making him seem even more tired. He doesn’t return to Ciri’s room two doors down immediately, though. Instead, after another brief hesitation, he enters the room after all, crossing over to the couch. Geralt’s hand is large and dry as he cups Jaskier’s face, tilting it so he can press a kiss to the corner of his mouth.
“Thank you,” Geralt murmurs, like this is something he needs to thank Jaskier for.
Jaskier rolls his eyes and twists so he can kiss Geralt properly. “Don’t need to thank me.”
Geralt chuckles weakly and bumps his forehead against Jaskier’s, letting it rest there like he needs to gather his strength. When he leaves, he visibly has to drag himself away, but not before he has given Jaskier’s lips another peck and Yenna’s blanket cocoon a glance so full of longing Jaskier’s heart aches.
Jaskier watches him go, still absentmindedly rubbing his fingers into Yenna’s scalp. “Oh darling,” he whispers once the door to Ciri’s room has opened and shut again, “what did you two do?”
38.9°C, the infrared thermometer says.
Jaskier stares at it and chews his lip. Triss said to call her should it reach 39°C. 38.9°C isn’t quite there, yet, but it’s worryingly close.
The display on the thermometer goes dark while he’s still staring at it.
With a sigh, Jaskier brushes a wisp of black hair back from Yenna’s forehead. The skin underneath his fingers is searingly hot, as though Jaskier could crack an egg open and fry it. The thought makes something constrict in his chest, and he reaches for the wet rag to distract himself, dragging it over her forehead.
If someone had told him a year ago that he would be caring for a sick Yennefer Vengerberg, Geralt’s terrifying then-girlfriend and something akin to Jaskier’s arch-nemesis in their competition for Geralt’s affection, and voluntarily at that, he would have recommended they check themselves into the closest urgent care.
And yet, here they are.
Here he is, and the thought of not being here, of having her go through this alone, or with only Geralt there, torn between tending to Ciri and giving Yenna her space, and trying to show his caring, seems impossible.
She whimpers in her sleep, eyes moving rapidly behind closed lids. One of her hands clenches in the fabric of Jaskier’s pants, and a shiver wracks her body that isn’t assuaged by Jaskier rubbing his hand over her too-hot back.
“Oh darling,” he whispers again, using the hand not stuck under the blankets to smooths out the creases on her forehead. “It’s not fair, that you’re struck down like this, hm?”
He bites his lip again, but Yenna is still agitated, and there’s really only one thing Jaskier knows to do in such a situation: he starts to sing.
And with each soft and gentle line, she relaxes a little more, until she is once again sunk into a deep and hopefully restful sleep.
Yenna’s eyes flutter open an eternity later – or so it feels to Jaskier – accompanied by a soft whimper that would have alerted him to he waking if he hadn’t been watching her anyway.
He lets his song trail off with a hum and drags the pads of his fingers over the curve of her jaw. “Hey,” he says quiets awhile she blinks the confusion from her eyes.
She makes a soft noise in return before curling more tightly into him, like a tiny, hot dragon.
“You up for a bite to eat?” Triss had been by half an hour or so ago, dropping a cutting board full of fruits on the side-table. Apparently, they all aid in healing or something, and if Jaskier can make Yenna eat at least a few, it’ll go a long way towards speeding up her recovery.
Considering he still feels choked whenever he catches a glimpse of the dark rings under her eyes, barely visible with how she’s hiding her face in his lap, he is willing to do (almost) anything.
Yenna makes another soft noise but uncurls, wincing as she does. She is shivering, and though Jaskier isn’t particularly cold himself – not with her as his personal furnace – he untucks the blanket enough to wrap it around himself, too. Yenna struggles, but in the end, she manages to sit up on her own. She doesn’t remain upright long, slumping into him like this simple act sapped what little strength she’s been able to gather while asleep.
“Fuck,” she mutters, voice rough.
Jaskier wraps his arm around her and noses at her neck, so tantalisingly close. He knows he shouldn’t, because this is many things, but sexy it is not, and yet…
He leans in, pressing a chaste kiss to the column of her throat. Not everything is about sex, after all.
Yenna sighs and tips her head against his upper arm to give him better access, and he takes the implicit permission and kisses his way from the junction of her throat all the way up to her ear. Her skin is still worryingly hot, but she’s alive, pulse thrumming underneath his lips. The reassurance is sweeter than the ripest fruit Triss might have been able to procure.
“You scared me,” Jaskier murmurs while Yenna reaches for one of the cut-up persimmons. “Scared all of us.”
She makes another soft noise, and then a cut-off groan as she catches herself heavily on the little table. It takes her a few moments to right herself again.
Jaskier bites down on the worry threatening to spill from his lips and instead shifts them both until she is sitting in the vee of his legs, wrapping both arms around her midsection and helping guide her back against his chest.
It’s not like her to be so weak. It’s not like her to be sick. In the half decade that Jaskier has known her, he has never seen her have so much as a cold, so this fever… to say it’s concerning is an understatement and a half.
It’s a testament to how poorly she is feeling that she doesn’t protest his clinginess, just eats the persimmon slowly, pausing to just breathe in between. She doesn’t even lick the juice off her fingers once she is done, doesn’t complain about Jaskier wiping her clean with one of the embroidered handkerchiefs she usually teases him mercilessly about.
“You were singing.” Her voice is barely more than a whisper, but Jaskier’s heart swells nonetheless.
“Did you like it?”
To his relief, she smiles. “Soft.” She burrows closer into him, and he wants to wrap her up and take her to bed and just let her sleep until she feels better. It’s not what he usually wants to do with her in his bed, but it doesn’t feel strange. There is no room inside him for it to feel strange, not with the worry still coursing through him.
The silence stretches until he is almost certain she has drifted off again, when she asks, “Is… about me?”
Jaskier stills. “That depends,” he says carefully, “on if you will kill me or threaten my manhood again if I say yes.”
She chuckles. “Silly Jaskier.” Her hand finds his under the blankets, interlacing their fingers. “I love you, too.”
Much to his chagrin, this renders him briefly speechless, twisting so he can look at her, with her beautiful, tired smile and the flush on her cheeks that is clearly fever-induced and yet makes her look adorable. Belated, he hopes that she currently is too beat to read his thoughts.
“Darling,” he finally manages, “you – you can’t just say this like this, when – when there’s absolutely no way I can properly show you what hearing you say this does to me, just –”
She shushes him softly, twisting a little further with barely a wince to press her hot and dry lips to his. It’s embarrassing that even though objectively, it is terrible, Jaskier will remember it as one of the best kisses he’s ever had. Few kisses in his life have been preceded by a honest love confession from a terrifying sorceress, after all.
“Can do that later,” she says, eyelids already drooping again. Belatedly, Jaskier remembers that he’d meant to ask her what the fuck has happened to leave her and Ciri in such states.
“For now… cuddles?”
There is no way Jaskier can say no, not when she looks like this – not when she asks him outright. He can always ask her or Geralt or Triss later, when they’re all a little less frazzled.
“Always, my love,” he tells her and presses a kiss to her temple before helping her lie down again.
She slots herself against his side as soon as he has done the same, and though curiosity and worry still course through him, Jaskier finds himself drifting off to sleep without quite meaning to.