Rayn, she/her, 35. Writer, cosplayer, sometimes GIF maker, and very occasional artist. Here you'll find Stranger Things, MDZS, The Witcher, cats, and random stuff in no particular order. Feel free to come say hi or send in a request! :) If you're looking for my fandom creations without my other nonsense, that's @drowningbydegrees-fanworks
You can find my AO3 here if that’s your thing, but here are links to all my Witcher creations.
Fic - One Shots
MUSIC PROMPT LIST FICS
Prompt List
A Love Like This | G | 1,009 Words | No Warnings Apply
Jaskier does nothing quietly. He is bright colors and endless conversation. He is music and theatrics. He unapologetically takes up space, bold and loud and impossible to ignore. Jaskier does nothing quietly.
Except for this.
Written for the Music Prompt 4. Dolce
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Nothing But the Background Noise | T | 3,385 Words | No Warnings Apply
Geralt has always been at home with silence. It’s a quality that lends itself well to the life of a witcher, this ability to find peace instead of loneliness in the quiet of his own company. But they spend that night in their room’s single bed and Geralt lies awake wondering when the warm press of Jaskier’s face tucked against his neck became such a welcome thing, when his fingers tangling in the bard’s hair got to be so instinctive. When did Jaskier’s get to be so wrapped up in his life as to leave Geralt dreading the absence?
In which Geralt realizes that sometimes you don't discover how much of a fixture something is in your life until you're forced to contemplate not having it.
Written for the Music Prompt 8. Incidental Music
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Call Me a Casualty | T | 1,670 Words | No Warnings Apply
He has a plan.
Okay, admittedly calling it a plan is somewhat of an exaggeration. What Geralt has is an overwhelming sense of grief that floods the empty spaces left behind as his temper ebbs, and the horrifying realization that while it all hurts, it’s Jaskier’s departure that leaves his heart aching. What he has is an urgent need to set things right, and only a nebulous idea of how to do so. For starters though, he needs to catch up to Jaskier. That’s a straightforward task to set his mind to, and Geralt assumes he’ll figure out the rest on the road.Written for the Music Prompt 16. Mosso
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This Too Is Ours | E | 1,919 Words | No Warnings Apply
They fit like they were made for basking, tangled up with each other in the comfort of a warm bed while the snow falls outside He could go back to sleep, Jaskier thinks. It’s winter. He might be teaching, but it’s still a break of sorts. If he can’t sleep in now, then when can he?
Idly, he drags his palm down Geralt’s flank. There’s comfort in the familiar topography of the witcher’s body, and isn’t that a heady thought? Geralt is - has allowed himself to be - familiar territory. It seems a silly thing to be so giddy over, but Jaskier smiles as he nuzzles against the nape of Geralt’s neck.
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OTHER ONE SHOTS
Something To Hold Onto | T | 11,146 Words | No Warnings Apply
“Is it some kind of prank, do you think?” Jaskier asks, squinting at the noticeboard.
It’s littered with contracts, each more peculiar than the last. Missing people, haunted houses, someone convinced his sister is possessed because she’s acting strangely. The last is vague, giving no indication of what “strangely” even means. It would be weird for a sizable city like Novigrad, but it’s completely nonsensical in a village as small as Hillcrest, which is barely large enough to support an inn. The notices are all quite new, so normally Geralt would be tempted to write it off as someone being a menace. But the writing is different, the paper is different, all of it is different enough that it’s probably not one person.
As it turns out, there is no prank, leaving Geralt to try to fix things before whatever is wrong with Hillcrest consumes them all.
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We Break Like Waves | T | 3,469 Words | No Warnings Apply
For three days, they are happy. It matters less that Geralt struggles to put to words what Jaskier means to him when it’s all right there, neatly conveyed in the simple band wrapped around the bard’s finger. Jaskier holds his hand out to admire it for what must be the hundredth time, smiling as the candlelight catches facets of the solitary ruby set in gold.
What begins as a long overdue honeymoon ends, as things so often do in Geralt's life, in disaster.
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Noonwraiths and Other Woodland Forest Creatures | T | 3,716 Words | No Warnings Apply
Jaskier is used to his favorite customer, who is possibly some sort of cryptid, showing up at odd hours. What he's not used to is said customer showing up injured.
A modern AU featuring 24 hour diner server Jaskier and Geralt who is... still a witcher.
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If You Say It Again | T | 4,243 Words | No Warnings Apply
Geralt is what Jaskier cheerfully describes as "forever years old" when he discovers that okay, maybe he is just the littlest bit affected by… actually he’s not sure what one would call this. He’s not even sure if it’s specifically what was said or just the act of being spoken to like a person in a vulnerable moment. Either way, it’s more than a little unexpected, but that’s not actually the problem. After all, everyone finds themselves unraveled by something a little unorthodox now and again, and in the grand scheme of things, this isn’t really all that weird.
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Left All the Lights Burning (But Nobody's Home) | M | 3,739 Words | No Warnings Apply
Geralt is quiet, but he’s always quiet, so that really doesn’t mean much. When he can’t hear the witcher, Jaskier squints at the dark room, wishing his friend didn’t absolutely insist on wearing black all the time. “I don’t suppose you can do that magicky thing you do and break us out of here?”
No answer comes.
Written for Whumptober prompt 26. concussion
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For the Space of a Heartbeat | T | 2,021 Words | No Warnings Apply
As it turns out, falling into bed with your very best friend who you are privately very much in love with isn't nearly so nerve wracking as waking up with them the morning after.
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Rosetta Stone | G | 1,408 Words | No Warnings Apply
It’s not a seduction that the bard settles on, at least not in any traditional sense. There’s no lack of attraction (really, Jaskier is continuously baffled by how anyone could look at Geralt and not want him), but it’s background noise. He thinks of this more like finagling the two of them into some sort of harmony.
In which Jaskier realizes that while his affection for Geralt is almost certainly returned, they say it in entirely different ways, and takes it upon himself to translate.
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Untitled | G | 517 Words | No Warnings Apply
Reply to the prompt: What about when Geralt first realizes he's in love with Jaskier?
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Something is Bound to Give | T | 2,754 Words | No Warnings Apply
For the space of a single breath Geralt concedes. He almost melts into Jaskier’s painstakingly careful touch, the soothing way the bard invites him to take refuge in someone else for a little while, but then Geralt’s mind catches up with the rest of him.
AO3
Where You and I Collide | T | 1,388 Words | No Warnings Apply
The words don’t pass his lips. At first Jaskier thinks this is too new, too fragile a thing that’s come into being between them. Then, he fears that perhaps they don’t mean the same thing by any of this, that perhaps he’s offered up his heart to someone who has no use for it.
Based on a prompt asking for something about Jaskier and Geralt struggling with feelings.
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Fill in the Blanks | G | 1,438 Words | No Warnings Apply
“I want nothing.”
The thing is, it’s not a lie. Not really. It’s just that it’s an incomplete sentence..
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I’ll Wish Upon Embers | E | 9,128 Words | No Warnings Apply
“But allow me to raise this one point for your consideration.” There it is, accompanied by Jaskier’s expression scrunching in a way that Geralt is exasperated to realize he finds rather endearing. “Have you ever tried?”
---
Geralt lets Jaskier talk him into sticking around for a village's midsummer festival. He assumes they're staying for Jaskier's benefit, but somewhere between the flower crowns and the bonfire, Geralt realizes it was a gift meant for him all along.
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Fic - Multi-part
Though I Try Not To | E | 16,120 Words | No Warnings Apply
“You didn’t come back,” Geralt murmurs as if that somehow covers everything.
AO3
Even in the Dark I Know You | M | 8,196 Words | No Warnings Apply
The thing is, he’s seen Geralt in a bad way. Even the witcher can’t always avoid injury in his line of work, and so Jaskier has plenty of practice patching him up. But this is new, and it makes something awful and anxious twist in Jaskier’s stomach.
A contract goes wrong leaving Geralt captive and stripped of most of his senses by the time Jaskier gets to him. Part one is based on the Geralt Whump Week day four prompt of betrayal and part two is based on the day five prompt of loneliness
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Even if it Hurts (Even if it Makes Me Bleed) | E | 25,074 Words | No Warnings Apply
Is that a pickup line? Maybe. It’s the worst one Geralt has ever heard in his very long life, but that isn’t the problem. The problem races, red hot down the length of his forearm, pooling uncomfortably around his soulmark. The scrawled out writing on the underside of his wrist had told Geralt the first thing his soulmate was going to say to him as soon as he could read. Silly as it had sounded, it’s even more ridiculous out loud.
To say Geralt is not a fan of destiny is a monumental understatement. Given the fact that the soul mark scrawled out on his wrist is the worst pickup line he's ever heard, he doesn't anticipate his soulmate being any more welcome than anything else that life has saddled him with. But the longer he spends with Jaskier, the harder his soulmate is to resist, and somewhere along the way Geralt knows he'll have to reckon with whether his feelings are manufactured by kismet or truly his own.
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Once Written in the Stars | E | 15,512 Words (WIP) | No Warnings Apply
When Geralt accidentally trespasses on a fae forest, only the unexpected kindness of one of the forest's inhabitants saves him. Unfortunately, it also leaves him saddled with a travel companion who has never really met a human, let alone thought about how to play at being one. It goes about as well as you'd think.
AO3 | Tumblr 1 | 2 | 3
Art Stuff
Geraskier Gif Set
Set to Stray Italian Greyhound by Vienna Teng
Geraskier Image Set
Set to Civil War by @sincerelyjoanna-blog-blog
We have exactly one Christmas tradition in my house, and it feels very important to share it. I've been a cat person basically forever and for most of my adult life, my house has had more cats than people in it. They've all liked sleeping under the Christmas tree and all that, but other than that, they always just sort of ignored it.
But in 2018, we got Natasha.
There are about a dozen pictures like that, but I always adopt adult cats, so we figured this just came with having a kitten in the house. She was just this tiny little fluff who still fit in my cupped hands despite being about six months old, so we put away the ornaments, shrugged it off, and took advantage of the opportunity to have a really cute Christmas card the next year.
Then, 2019 came around.
Natasha escalated to sleeping in the tree in between trying to eat all the branches, and honestly, it was too funny to make more than a cursory effort to stop her. My partner and I assumed that since she was still pretty tiny, she had more growing to do and would surely get to a point where her own body weight would keep her from doing this. In the meantime, we left the tree without ornaments that year and just called it good.
But then 2020 came around, forcing us to acknowledge that:
Natasha was not going to get too big to do this. At this point it had become clear that she wasn't developing slowly. She was just a really tiny cat. She's less than half the size of any other cat I've ever had.
Natasha was also not going to chill out enough to stop doing this.
But hey. Who needs ornaments with a face like that poking out of the branches at you all the time?
Sure enough, 2021 Natasha also had zero chill about the tree, but at this point it would have been weirder if she did leave it alone.
I thought I had seen everything, but this year I'd been kind of down and my partner decided to surprise me by setting up the tree and stuff while I was at work. It was an incredibly sweet gesture considering they don't actually even like Christmas decorations. It also meant I got to come home to this.
I kept expecting her to fall out, but she just chilled there, surveying the room until she got bored. And yes, that is absolutely a big, fancy cat tree she's ignoring in favor of scaling the Christmas tree.
Two days before Christmas, she has finally gotten bored enough that I'm making my first attempt in ages to actually put up ornaments. At this point, I'm not sure if I'll be more disappointed if they have to come down or if they don't.
The tags are all great here but this one made me look at it for a couple seconds. I don’t recall jesus being born an adult im very certain he was also a baby at some point
self-flagellation and self-bullying are all bad motivators for change BTW. it can be hard to escape from a spiral but genuinely u have to be nice to urself or nothing will change
you have to take care of yourself and not punch yourself down because you feel like you 'deserve it'. if you feel like the world is against you, you should at least be on your own side while you work through things.
did i tell u guys i got into an argument on twitter bc i said foxes are dogs and someone tried to bring up their actual fuckin. classification or whatever and i just said “foxes are dogs cause they are fluffye” and they kept arguing with me. the entire time i was like “you will not survive the immigration to tumblr you are lucky we are not there right now”
Okay, bringing a cosplay prop as carry-on wasn't my FIRST choice (I was finishing painting it about an hour before leaving for the airport, only to realize it's about 6 inches too long for my suitcase), but it turns out that carrying a trident around has made for a lot of really hilarious interactions.
Actually that’s exactly how it works. Here, lemme break down the numbers. I’ll be using the 2020 presidential election voter turnout.
In 2020, the total U.S. population was about 332,450,000.
Of that number, about 240,000,000 were eligible to vote.
Of eligible voters, only about 66.1% actually voted. And that’s a high turnout, historically speaking.
Of the 158,427,986 eligible voters who actually voted,
81,283,501 voted for Biden. That’s 24.5% of the overall U.S. population.
74,223,975 voted for Trump. That’s 22% of the overall U.S. population.
(I’m guessing the graphic used updated number from 2024 for population size.)
But yes, that’s exactly how it all works. Not everyone in the U.S. is eligible to vote (sometimes due to voter suppression, but also due to being too young).
Of those who ARE eligible to vote, as many didn’t vote as voted for either Biden or Trump.
Who wins is determined by who fucking shows up to vote.
Democracy works exactly as well as how much you participate in it.
Trump voters are only 22% of the general population.
Which is why it's important to pair posts like this with actual resources on, for example:
Who can vote
How to register
How to fill a ballot
Where to vote
What to expect on your ballot
How to report if your voter registration is illegally denied or mishandled
How to process a change of name or address
How to get an ID card (financial assistance not available)
See, the thing a lot of people don't get is, the US system is designed to SUPPRESS AND DENY votes. Fun fact for those who went to school elsewhere: none of the stuff I linked is actually required learning in our schools. Followup fact: the reason I mention financial assistance for ID cards is, our free ID (social security card) is not valid for voting in half of states; expensive photo IDs are required.
For the Americans, you must understand: Most places with elections take the exact opposite approach. Do you know how fucked up it is that in the US you can't even get a whole day off work, despite voter queues often being several hours long due to lack of polling places? How absolutely pigshit bonkers it is that people have to PAY to vote (via ID fees)?
The international folks are appalled because that's fucked up! 18% picking your president is unhinged! It actually truly does represent a broken system!
In other words this is a real, systemic issue that can take years to overcome IF you even have the ability to do it at all.
If you're lucky enough not to face any of the hurdles, stay informed on the subject so you can help the rest of us out.
Voter suppression is not caused by personal moral failing.
"The best part of writing fiction is letting your imagination grow" "the best part of writing fiction is bringing light to the world" wrong. The best part of writing fiction is having hundreds of strangers on the internet ask you what the fuck is your problem.
