Of Bards and Witchers

Eighth

    Julian is poised with his chin propped in the palm of his hand as he leans against his desk. It is well before dawn and yet he finds himself awake and staring past the lecture hall seats, engrossed in the peeling wallpaper in the back. Peeling paper and delicately painted flowers wilting. Given enough time perhaps their petals will flutter to the ground. The silence of this lecture hall is stifling. He wonders if he can move— wonders if a breeze might send him careening with the wilted plantlife— yet he does not. Is he even breathing? He blinks, and yet he feels as though he isn't even seeing anymore. Perhaps time has frozen him in place. Maybe he was never there to begin with.
 
    "... sor?"
 
    He thinks belatedly that something is moving- and thinks for a moment that maybe it is himself- but no, it can't be, not really. He blinks again and yet still he does not see. His mind is stuffed so full of wilted flowers that he they must be real and spilling from his mouth.
 
    "... sor Julian?"
 
    "Julian," she barks. Her brows are creased and a frown dangles from her lips. It is never said sweetly. It is never something said fond or spoken endearingly. Julian can only do wrong, it is all he knows how to do. He wishes he could be good. When she strikes him he does not cry. He does not know what he has done, but it must have been bad for his mother to fret so.
 
    "Professor Julian?"
 
    He jolts; flinching back into his seat with enough force that his tea falls to the floor and shatters. He stares at it and then stares some more and takes a shuddering breath. Wetness dampens his cheeks; he touches it but can make no sense of it, and so he kneels instead to collect the shards. His hands feel as if they belong to someone else entirely. They shake.
 
    Hands not of his own cup his face, and then he is pulled forward and pressed into the firmess of another. It is warm and real and unravels something in his chest that he didn't know he harbored. Julian is twenty and it should be embarrassing to be crying now, of all times, when he has finally made something of himself, but somehow it isn't. His body has forgone him and mourns something that he cannot name. He sobs freely and cannot bring himself to care at the heart of it.
 
    —
 
    It is midday when the Witcher stumbles into the tavern. He is covered in a fine sheen of what looks to be ash- it looks like he had tried to rub it from his face, but as his hands were coated in it as well there was very little he could've done. His passive expression does not change as his eyes meet Jaskier's from where he plays at the center of the room, but something in them gives him pause.
 
    The Witcher looks away and mumbles something to the innkeeper who huffs rather disgustedly, then stalks off to his room.
 
    Jaskier debates all of thirty seconds, eyes flitting between patrons and starewell before he clambers to his feet follows; the patrons begin muttering as he does, flinging bits of food as he passes.
 
    "Bard!"
 
    "Yes, yes, Bard," he calls back, agreeably. "I'll be back shortly."
 
    He stands in front of the Witcher’s door, and he must have heard him coming because the door swings open before he can bring his fist to rap against the wood. Geralt blinks down at him, displeasure carved into his features— whether at the sight of him or at the discomfort of whatever it is coating his skin the bard cannot tell. Jaskier squeezes past into the room before the Witcher gathers his wits enough to ask him to leave.
 
    “Hmm.”
 
    “Yes, hmm,” Jaskier echoes. He perches himself on the edge of the man’s bed as the door clings shut and lifts his lute from his bodice. “Go on, then, what happened?”
 
    “She is gone.”
 
    Geralt crosses the space in only a few strides, methodically stripping his armor and letting the pieces fall haphazardly as he does so. He sighs and props his lute beside the bed before getting up to collect them— he’ll have them washed later.
 
    After a beat— he’s heading for the bath, he realizes— Jaskier speaks again. “That much is obvious,” he says. “I meant with you. Are you alright?”
 
   The Witcher turns, bare chested— scars litter his skin on all sides like constellations; it is not the first time he has seen them but he can’t help himself from wondering where they came from— and meets his gaze with a striking resemblance to the look he gave across the fire on their first night together.
 
    —
 
    The person embracing him hums into his hair— a soft and simple melody that still manages to send a shiver down his spine. It stops as he finally gathers his breath.
 
    “Professor Julian?”
 
    Julian blinks. His hands are fisted into the fabric of someone’s clothes. He blinks again, releasing them to palm at his eyes as the voice finally registers.
 
    “Pardon the sight of me,” he mumbles as he lifts his face. Alexander turns his head a bit as their eyes meet. He says nothing, merely flickers his gaze about the empty room. “I regret to admit that I am unsure what came over me.”
 
    “You are not happy,” Alexander says. It is not a question.
 
    Julian parts his lips—
 
    “You are a good teacher.” 
 
    — and shuts them again.
 
    “Many things can be good. Mathematics are good, but they do not make me happy so I do not do them... Most people do not like bugs, but they are good too. They make me happy. I study them, and it’s okay that no one understands. Did you know that Porphyrophora polonica gives us red dye? And—”
 
    —
 
    He’d turned, of course, to give the man modesty as he enters the tub, but after some minutes of very little scrubbing his skin begins to crawl. He’s certain Geralt is content with just scrubbing at his skin with a wet rag and leaving it be but Jaskier would never be able to live with himself if he allowed it to happen.
 
   “Daft Witchers,” he mutters as he makes his way over. “There is soap, Geralt, for Melitele’s sake, use it.”
 
    And the Witcher looks up at him with widened eyes, though the expression is schooled over rather quickly. Jaskier pulls a seat to the edge of the tub and rolls up his sleeves— he pays his searching gaze no mind as he pulls the rag out of Geralt’s hand and lathers it with soap before pushing it back into his grasp.
 
    “No need to look at me like that,” the bard mumbles. He motions with his hand for the man to move. “Turn your back to me so I can get at your hair.”
 
    The Witcher doesn’t move. “What?”
 
    Jaskier blinks. “Your hair. It needs washing.”
 
    The burning embers of the Witcher’s irises flit over his face— his throat, his hands, back again to his face— ... oh. He lowers himself so that he’s leaning on his knees.
 
    “I mean only to offer my help in washing your hair. Surely,” he says, “if I tried anything, which I have no intention of doing— because what is a bard if his muse is dead? Surely you could snap me in half without much trouble.”
 
    Geralt huffs, eyes still raking across his features, but he must see something because he turns.
 
    Jaskier is slow in his movements as he goes about them. “I’m going to wet your hair, alright?”
 
    “Hmm.”
 
    “I’m going to rub this into your hair— I apologize in advance if I get caught on any tangles.”
 
    “Hmm.”
 
    “Good gods, Geralt, do you own a brush?”
 
    “No.”
 
    “No!?”