HELLO @breannaneo! So, my Tumblr just threw its whole self in the sea when I tried to post this yesterday, so let’s try again!
My original plan had been “oh dang this?? THIS IS GOOD!” and I’d intended to write a silly little crack!fic... then it got a bit out of hand. Anyway it’s now 3k words and very long so. You have been warned! (I’ll probably post this on AO3 at some point, just because ohgod it’s so long)
Geralt isn’t sure if this is a curse or a blessing.
He never asked for this. He knows that magic can be used to transform someone – he thinks of Yennefer, briefly – but the process is long and painful and dangerous. It’s a choice one has to take, to harness chaos and use it to make oneself beautiful.
It’s not something he’s ever been interested in.
Sure, there are glamours and other fae spells designed to enchant and bewitch, but that power is far beyond his own and anyway – a glamour is just a fancy word for an illusion. And this, he thinks, as he stares in the mirror and runs his hands through his long, dark hair – is real.
The medallion resting on his chest is still, for once. Geralt knows that there’s powerful magic at play, yet the medallion isn’t responding.
There’s a sudden cold pit in his stomach and – oh – fear. That’s new. Real fear. He tries to pull from the well of power that controls his spells, his Signs, even though he knows what’s going to happen. The power is gone. He tries to cast Igni anyway, aiming it at the spent candle next to the washbasin. There’s no response.
Fuck. He’s about to turn away from the horrible mirror and start getting dressed, when the door to the room bursts open.
“Geralt! Have you seen the notice on th-Argh!” Jaskier is frozen in the doorway, eyes wide.
Geralt takes a step forward and Jaskier quickly backs away. His hand instinctively reaches down and Geralt feels a little surge of pride – he’s going for the silver dagger he’d gifted the bard months ago, now strapped to his hip. “Look, Sir, ah - whoever you are. I think you’re in the wrong room.”
Geralt raises his hands in surrender. Jaskier grips the hilt of the dagger and stands a little straighter. “Right. Like I said. Wrong room.” He leans back on one hip and casts an appraising gaze over Geralt’s new body, his expression softening. “Unfortunately.”
Geralt blushes. He can feel his skin growing hot, his ears turning tingling, even his fucking chest. He knows that it’s bullshit that witchers don’t have emotions, but he’s lost that knack at oppressing them. The blush does not go unnoticed, and Jaskier smirks.
“My very large and very strong companion will be returning soon,” he says, lip quirking, “you’re lucky I found you and not him. I think you’ll find I’m far... friendlier.”
He winks. He fucking winks, and Geralt’s face is burning and –
“Jaskier.” At least his voice hasn’t changed. The smirk slides from Jaskier’s face. “It’s me, Jaskier.”
“… Geralt?” Jaskier’s voice cracks. “No. I don’t believe you.”
“For fuck’s sake. It’s me!”
“Tell me something only you know. Go on.”
Geralt rolls his eyes and takes a step forward. “Jaskier…”
The bard’s hand is back on the dagger before he has a chance to finish the sentence. He relents with a sigh.
“Fine,” he says, keeping his hands raised, “Your real name is Julian. You studied at Oxenfurt. The last time you saw the Countess de Stael you dumped her, but she’s telling everyone it was the other way around. You’ve got a scar on your elbow from a bar brawl, and another on your arse from—”
“Right, okay, thank you. That’s enough.” Jaskier unhands the dagger, and Geralt relaxes a little. “What happened to you?”
Geralt shrugs. “No idea.”
He steps forwards, peering at Geralt’s face with a frown. He reaches up, placing a gentle hand on either side of Geralt’s jaw, moving his head as he examines him.
“This is so weird.”
“Thanks.”
“No, I mean… it’s you. You look like you, now I know it is you. Just the hair is different.” He pauses, thinking. “And the eyes.” He releases Geralt’s face, and steps back, head tilted to one side. “And the scars.”
He’s right – Geralt turns back to the mirror, staring at his new body. He’s a little slimmer than he was, his muscles not quite as defined, but it’s very clearly him. The scars that marred his skin are gone – he feels oddly blank without them. Untouched. His hair reaches just below his ears, dark brown and slightly curly. His eyes are wide and soft and green, and – he realises with a start – he doesn’t remember what colour they were before the mutations anyway.
Jaskier appears over his shoulder and looks his reflection in the eye.
“Are you… ah,” he begins, nervously, “are you human?”
Geralt turns to him. “I think I am.”
Jaskier swallows. “Right, then.”
*
They try to figure out what’s happened over breakfast. Geralt picks at his food listlessly – it tastes different in his mouth now, somehow blander. He’s hungry, properly hungry. It’s an unsettlingly human feeling.
They conclude he must have been cursed; or at least enchanted. Jaskier asks if he’s pissed off any sorceresses lately and the answer is, for once, no. The past few weeks have been rather dull – routine monster hunts, wary townsfolk, thankful aldermen.
“It’s like those fairy stories,” says Jaskier, thoughtfully chewing on a slice of bacon, “where an evil fairy turns a handsome prince into a monster. Just… the other way around.” He catches Geralt’s expression, and quickly corrects himself; “not that you were a monster before, but you get what I mean.”
They’re more than stories, Geralt knows, thinking back to Nivellen and his cursed castle. “So, what?” he says, raising his newly-perfect eyebrows, “will I be cured with true love's kiss?”
Jaskier chokes on his bacon. “Maybe,” he says, spluttering, “or we can take the Geralt route: find whoever did this to you and hit them until they turn you back.”
“Or we can do that.”
*
Geralt is stubborn, both as a witcher and as a human, and insists on carrying out the contract he’d received before being changed. But it’s hard-going without his supernatural strength, without his Signs. He can’t bolster himself with potions either: they’d kill him instantly. Even the sword feels heavier in his hand.
The contract is for five ghouls, and by the time they’re finally dead he’s broken and bleeding and exhausted. Jaskier too – the fifth had been his, taken down with the silver dagger while Geralt had been struggling with the fourth. They’re both covered in blood. Geralt slumps against a tree stump, breathing heavily. There’s a stabbing pain in his side with every gasp – broken ribs, he thinks. He’s covered in deep cuts and slashes where the ghouls had attempted to rip him apart. It takes Jaskier a full half an hour to get him to move, and he only relents when it’s clear the bard is motivated by real, actual fear. He doesn’t need his witcher senses to see the horror in Jaskier’s eyes when he realises how wounded Geralt is.
He usually tries to avoid healers, often unsure how they’ll react to a witcher, but with his new face they’re seen and treated easily and quickly, the middle-aged woman clucking her tongue at him for being so reckless.
“We hired a witcher, you know,” she says as she stitches closed one of the tears running across Geralt’s back, “he’d have cleared ‘em out, no problem. No need to go getting yourself hurt.”
Geralt and Jaskier share a look, but don’t say anything.
*
The townspeople continue to treat them kindly. The stares – both fearful and angry – are gone. Jaskier spins some lie about the witcher needing to leave to deal with a matter elsewhere, and Geralt finds himself the centre of attention as the locals praise his bravery for dealing with the ghouls. They even give him the payment for killing the monsters, after a little nudging from Jaskier, and offer him free board until his wounds are healed.
Geralt wants to move on, to retrace their steps to find whoever cursed him, but Jaskier refuses.
“You’re not a witcher anymore, Geralt,” he says two days later, gently changing the bandages wrapped around his arm, “You need to rest.”
He’s right, of course. Geralt does need to rest. He needs to rest now more than he ever has done before as his body begins to heal itself, painfully slowly. He feels tired all the time, and he’s lost the respite of meditation. He struggles to sleep, despite how exhausted he feels, pressed against Jaskier’s back on the straw bed. The landlord had offered them another room, but he’d said no – refused before he’d even finished the sentence – much to the landlord’s (and Jaskier’s) surprise.
He doesn’t want to be alone.
*
Geralt is hyper-aware of the way Jaskier is looking at him now. He can’t decide if the bard is being more attentive than usual. He's always followed him around, washed his hair, bound his wounds. When he gently cleans at the deep gash on his arm Geralt peers at him, trying to read his expression, looking for a change.
When Jaskier had first found him transformed a week ago there’d been a glint in his eye and a swagger to his posture. He’d flirted with him, before he’d realised who he was. Geralt isn’t foolish – he knows his new face is handsome, he knows it’s more appealing than the grizzled visage of a witcher. He catches Jaskier staring at him, sometimes – and there’s a knot in his stomach to go with the blush. Jaskier looks at him, and he knows it’s not him he’s looking at like that. He knows those glances aren’t for him: they’re for the stranger who’s face he’s been cursed with.
There’s another fear, too. He’s still healing, and even when he’s well again he won’t be able to head back out into the wild unknown. He can’t return to witchering until the curse is gone – he’s too vulnerable. Jaskier had attached himself to him all those years ago for the promise of adventure, of wild stories and heroic deeds. He had not signed up to be a nursemaid for however many weeks it takes for human ribs to stitch themselves back together.
Jaskier could just… leave. Geralt won’t begrudge him if he does. He’s a traveller, after all. He must have itchy feet.
By the start of the second week, still trapped in the town which seems to grow smaller by the day, he’s convinced that Jaskier is building up the courage to go. One evening, while the bard tends to the wound on his back, he decides give him his freedom.
“Jaskier,” he says, voice low.
“Hmm?”
“You can leave, if you want.”
Jaskier’s hands freeze on his skin. “I… what?” He sounds hurt. Geralt turns, and his eyes are shining in the dim light.
“You want me to go?” He says, his lips twitching.
No. “I… if you need to.” Geralt sighs. “You came along because you wanted adventures, Jaskier. I can’t give you that anymore.”
Jaskier’s expression cracks – an annoyed smile. “You’re an idiot, Geralt. I’m not going anywhere.”
“But… you’ll get bored, here.”
The bard gestures to the blood-stained cloth in his hand, to the salves on the floor. “Do I look bored, Geralt? Have I given you any indication that I might want to leave?”
“… No.”
“Well, then.” He brandishes the cloth. “Turn around so I can finish.”
Geralt does as he’s told.
*
Two days later, Geralt awakes to find Jaskier already up, bustling around the little room, shoving things in bags.
He heaves himself up, feeling a little light-headed. Human sleep still leaves him with a headache.
“What’re you doing?” He mutters, squinting at him.
“Packing,” says Jaskier, simply. He tosses a shirt towards Geralt, who fails to catch it. “Time to get up. We’re going to get your face back.”
Geralt sits up fully, swinging his legs around. “What?”
“We’re going to sort this...,” he gestures at his face, his body, “... out. We’re going to get you un-bespelled.”
“But—”
Jaskier pauses in his packing and raises his eyebrows at him, a pair of trousers held in his hands. “But what?”
Geralt doesn’t have a reasonable response. Jaskier frowns at him, then continues to pack as Geralt hurriedly gets dressed.
“We’re retracing our steps,” he says as he slots his lute back into its case, “going back to the last village. Someone, somewhere will know what to do.”
They head out within the hour. Roach is antsy after so long cooped up, but she seems to recognise Geralt immediately, pressing her nose into his hand with a soft huff. Feeling unusually charitable, he lets Jaskier ride her while he walks at her side. Within a few hours, he’s feeling guilty about how much he makes Jaskier walk.
They reach the next village before the sun sets. There’s no inn here, but a gracious farmer recognises Jaskier and lets them sleep in his barn. Geralt is sure they wouldn’t have been afforded the same hospitality had he still looked like himself. In the tavern that night they ask around the villagers if anyone has seen anything unusual – Jaskier even going so far as making up a story about needing to see a witch or mage – but no one has anything to tell them.
Geralt can’t help but feel demotivated by the ordeal, but the villagers continue to treat him kindly. Within half an hour of their arrival there’s a gaggle of women leaning on the bar, watching him beneath their lashes. For once, there’s no one hurrying them along, no one telling them to keep away from the witcher. One of them approaches him, smiling, but for once he isn’t interested.
The landlord has heard that Geralt is the one who killed the ghouls in the next town, and keeps him in beer for the night. When Jaskier returns to him with no information to share, Geralt looks up at him with a lopsided grin.
“Melitele’s tits, Geralt,” laughs Jaskier, pulling his tankard from his unresisting hands, “are you drunk?”
He gets him to his feet and leads him, a little unsteadily, back to the barn where they’re spending the night. Geralt lies on the hay, staring at the ceiling. It smells of sheep.
“Jaskier.”
The bard plops down on the heap of straw next to him, their shoulders brushing together. “Yes?”
“What if I can’t change back?”
Jaskier props himself up on one elbow to look at him. “We’ll figure it out. We always do.”
“But what if I can’t?”
He shrugs. “Then… I don’t know, Geralt. I suppose you’ll have to get a real job. Imagine! How awful.”
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Will you…” he swallows, his head thick, “will you stay?”
Jaskier laughs, and up in the rafters an owl hoots balefully. “Of course I’ll stay, Geralt. Someone has to teach you how to be human, after all.”
Geralt knows he’s drunk. That’s why he can’t stop talking. “And if I change back?”
He sighs. “And what if you change back?”
“Will you stay?”
Jaskier sits up, crossing his legs, peering down at him.
“What’s wrong, Geralt? Tell me.”
He can feel his infuriating human body blush. Jaskier gazes down at him with a soft expression, and brushes aside Geralt’s dark hair, getting a better view of his face.
“I’ve seen how you look at me,” Geralt says, closing his eyes, “Now I’m…” handsome, desirable, “… normal.”
Jaskier laughs again – but his voice is sad. “Oh, Geralt,” he says, “you’re anything but normal.”
“Hmm.”
“I’m not leaving. Whether you’re a witcher or a human.” Geralt feels the straw sag next to him as Jaskier lies back down. “Go to sleep,” he says.
Geralt closes his eyes. It’s a long time before he finally drifts away.
*
They move on from the next village early next morning, and there’s a pounding in Geralt’s skull.
Jaskier has graciously allowed him to ride Roach and is walking at his side in contemplative silence. He’s been very silent, this morning. Geralt thinks back to their conversation in the barn – to his drunken rambling. He feels like an idiot.
He’s about to say something when Jaskier speaks first.
“Geralt.”
“Hmm?”
“Last night. I… look, I don’t want you to get all stoic on me, and I know that it’s hard for you with all these new emotions and whatnot. So. Just listen.”
Geralt doesn’t respond, and Jaskier continues.
“I can’t lie to you, Geralt—” Geralt snorts at that, and Jaskier continues with a little grin, “Okay, I can lie to you, but I’m not going to. Not right now, anyway. Yes, this new look you’ve got going on is very… nice. And I… I like it.” He swallows heavily, and his ears have gone pink. “But… Gods, Geralt, do you really think me so vain that I’d leave you if you went back to the way you were?”
“I—”
“Because I’m not going to leave you. Okay?”
“I didn’t mean to insult you.”
“Psh, Geralt, you’ve insulted me more times than I can count. What’s one more? I just wonder… Geralt, do you want to turn back? Or do you prefer it this way? Because if you do, then—”
“I don’t know.”
Jaskier falls silent.
“The villagers treat me with kindness,” he says, slowly. “No one is scared of me. I don’t get stones thrown at me in the street.” He stares at the road ahead, feeling his heart pounding in his chest. “And… I like the way you look at me. When I’m like this.”
At Roach’s side, Jaskier trips over his own feet. “Oh,” he says. “Right.”
*
They stop to rest a couple of hours later, looping Roach’s reins over the branch of a low tree. It’s a lovely part of the world – all rolling fields and flowers. Above them, trilling birds whirl through the sky. Geralt is peering across the landscape, frustrated with his useless human eyes, when Jaskier appears at his side. He leans into him, bumping him with his shoulder.
“Geralt.”
“Yes?”
“I’m going to do something,” he says, quickly, “but I need you to know that it’s not because of,” he gestures at him, “all this. It’s because of you.”
“What are y—”
His words are smothered under Jaskier’s lips. He’s startled, at first, but Jaskier’s lips are soft and supple and he finds himself kissing him back, gripping Jaskier’s waist and pulling him closer. Jaskier moves his hands upwards and tangles them in his hair. There’s a swirling, intoxicating feeling in his stomach, his skin tingling. He deepens the kiss, tasting Jaskier’s lips with his tongue, who softly gasps against his mouth.
“Geralt, I—” he pulls back, his eyes dark, then freezes. “Oh, gods, Geralt.”
“What?”
Jaskier unhands him suddenly, looking panicked. He begins to dig through his bag, still slung over his shoulder, searching for something.
“What are you—”
Jaskier holds something up. It takes Geralt a moment to register what it is: a mirror. He snatches it from Jaskier’s hand and stares at his reflection.
White hair. Yellow eyes. A scar, long-healed, dragged down his face.
“Fuck,” laughs Jaskier, breathlessly, “You fucking told me. That first day.”
“Told me what?”
“True love’s kiss.”
Geralt’s laughing too, now - but before he can respond, Jaskier is pressing another kiss to his mouth, his hands gripping the fabric of his shirt.
“Ah-” he breathes against Geralt’s lips, softly, “I much prefer you this way, anyway.”
