Imagine if Geralt didn’t go to Kaer Morhen for winter the first year after meeting Jaskier, because he got severely injured on a contract and by the time he healed, he knew he wouldn’t make it before the path froze over. So Geralt and Jaskier keep traveling together as the weather gets worse and worse, as Jaskier, having taken care of the witcher for those two weeks, is now too late to return to be a guest lecturer at Oxenfurt.
The witcher doesn’t care much about the snow, his mutagens keeping his body warm enough that with the thick cloak he has, he barely even feels chilled. He doesn’t usually get cold at all, really, the only time he’d ever even shivered being when he had overestimated the integrity of the ice on the lake near Kaer Morhen.
If he ever got cold as a human, he doesn’t remember it, although surely it can’t be as bad as the bard is making it seem. Yes, the man’s cloak may be a bit thinner than Geralt’s, but that didn’t mean the bard had to whine so much about the snow coming down or his wet trousers. The bard’s voice was annoying enough when it wasn’t coming across muffled from the wind and the scarf covering half of Jaskier’s face.
Besides, if her really didn’t want to come with the witcher, he should have stayed back at the inn they left three days ago.
The witcher was a bit more concerned, annoyingly, when the verbal onslaught was slowly replaced with chattering teeth, but the bard would be fine. They’d make camp soon, and the fire would warm him up, and then Geralt would be stuck with his loose lips again.
So a couple hours later, Geralt left Jaskier with Roach at the empty cave he’d found, trusting the bard to get a fire started while he went out to see if he could find something to eat, now that the storm was passing. He eyed the bard for a second, but he’d already stopped shivering, so he should be able to make a break for it if anything did see him as an easy meal.
Thus, when Geralt came back half an hour later to find Roach still tackled, curled around Jaskier on the ground, with no fire to cook the rabbits he’d scrounged up, he was beyond infuriated. Swearing loudly, he stormed over to the useless bard, eager to give him a piece of his mind, when Roach let out a sharp, piercing squeal.
At him.
Blinking rapidly, Geralt instinctively held up his hands, taking one careful step forward. When Roach didn’t react, he took another, watching as his horse snuffled at the bard’s hair with a soft whinny. Geralt was beginning to wonder just when Jaskier had become Roach’s new favorite, before he noticed how the bard’s usually bright blue eyes seemed…vacant.
He called the bard’s name, but the man didn’t answer. More worried now, he reached for the bard’s forehead, wondering if he was sick—
Geralt recoiled his hand instinctively at the coldness of Jaskier’s skin. Only corpses were ever that chilled, he swore, noticing for the first time how the bard’s heartbeat had become witcher slow.
He quickly got to work building a fire, and turned to the bard, hoping for some reaction as the flames started to grow. But the bard didn’t even seem to notice the change, eyes now closed and body leaning even more fully against Roach, far enough from the fire that little warmth would reach him.
Swearing again, he pulled Jaskier closer, grateful for the way Roach easily let him do so.
And if Geralt ran his hands over every part of the bard’s skin he could reach as he held him in front of the fire, desperately trying to heat him up?
Only Roach was there to witness his worry and care, and she seemed to be on the same page about their—the bard.
