Chapter Text
Ever since the day when Geralt, the White Wolf, had confessed to Jaskier that his strangest mutations were, in fact, not of the monster or animal variety, Jaskier had found himself watching the Witcher even more closely than was his wont. Not because he was disconcerted, no indeed! But it wasn’t every day that one discovered their best friend was part plant, and he found himself with an unfortunate combination of greatly heightened curiosity counteracted with a rare sense of tactful caution towards approaching the topic.
He was certain that Geralt had noticed his increased scrutiny, and equally certain that the man knew exactly what was causing it. Thankfully, he didn’t seem too put out by this; if anything, he seemed rather amused, and surprisingly tolerant of the whole thing, which was a relief since Jaskier wasn’t sure he’d have been able to stop even if he wanted to.
Even so, Geralt had worn his best ‘purposefully unreadable’ face when he’d brought it up in that inn all those weeks ago, his tone too casual and his shoulders too straight, which told Jaskier that he’d been more worried about what his friend would think than he was letting on. When it became clear that Jaskier wasn’t going to run away screaming, his shoulders had begun to relax, but it wasn’t until he’d refused to pass the rose oil (roses and onions, really!) and it became clear that Jaskier wasn’t going to make a big deal about it either that he really seemed to settle. Jaskier wasn’t an idiot, nor was he unobservant; it had taken a lot of trust for Geralt to broach the topic, and rather a long time for Jaskier to earn it, and the last thing the bard wanted to do was to jeopardize that trust by being careless. Especially with the way Geralt seemed to be testing his sense of normality these past few weeks.
The thing was, ever since they’d had that little talk, Geralt had taken to letting his more plantlike traits slip into his behavior—things Jaskier hadn’t even realized the Witcher had been hiding until suddenly there was another new odd behavioral quirk that he vaguely remembered the man doing subtly off and on throughout the years, now being taken to an extreme. He’d started doing things like taking off his boots and wriggling his feet into the dirt to “check the nutrition of the soil” (which would have been strange enough already, except sometimes if the soil was rich enough, he’d actually scoop some of it up and sprinkle it into his serving of food), stepping outside shirtless the morning after a rainy day and standing motionless in the sun for a while, reaching out and touching trees and flowers whenever they made camp—ostensibly to check for dangers, as if being part plant gave him the ability to literally talk to them—
And yet, bizarre as these things were, nothing made Geralt’s differences from a normal witcher more stark than when he first started pulling out the potions. Not just any potions—not the ones Jaskier had seen and familiarized himself with by osmosis due to how often Geralt used them over the years—no, these were the potions that were tucked in underneath those, the ones that had earned him nothing beyond a curt, dismissive grunt the few times he’d asked.
The other potions were designed for the normal concoction of mutagens, but these…these were the plant potions. All things considered, he could understand why Geralt had never let Jaskier see him use them before. Some of their effects tended to be rather…strange.
…And most of them turned the man green. Geralt was never living that down.