Theo lays with his head in your lap as a storm rages outside.
You play with his hair - curling and uncurling it around your fingers and then massaging his scalp when you felt like it - as he told you stories.
His voice was calm and sleepy as he talked of flowers, stars and your shared friends and all the shenanigans the slytherins were getting up to.
It was something surprising but endearing - Theo loved gossip and you were always the first to hear about whatever was going on in his friends and classmates lives.
He talks and holds your hand and talks and sometime after midnight, he falls asleep, cradled against your chest with his head on your arm.
Welcome to Fluffy February 2024! In our fourth year, we want to spread fluff and good feelings throughout all of February. The guidelines for submissions/content are here.
We are using the one prompt-a-day format. As in previous years, no one is obliged to write/draw/create every single day -- do as many as you want! 2024 is a LEAP YEAR so we have an extra day of fluff to celebrate!
You are totally free to reinterpret the prompt in a different way. Please tag @fluffyfebruary so we can reblog your creations!
Prompt: Smile
Fandom: The Witcher (TV)
Pairing: Geralt & Jaskier
Summary: Jaskier discovers something interesting about his companion.
Word count: 1,404
read on ao3 instead
written for @fluffyfebruary
Jaskier had been traveling with Geralt for four years when he finally learned something absolutely fundamental about his friend. The witcher might disagree, but to Jaskier this was the most important discovery he'd made since he'd found the man himself.
It was a hot day and they were stuck in mud up to their ankles, trudging through some hovel right at the edge of a wide river.
"Why are we here, Geralt?" Jaskier had whined, lifting his hat to wipe the sweat from his brow. His companion had only grunted and walked on. "Geralt. Geralt! You know, I'm sure Roach would have a thing or two to say about you dragging her through this mire. We could catch a disease! What if we all get a parasite! And for what!"
He looked over at the horse in question to see what she thought of the situation, but Geralt moved in front of him to feed her a treat from the saddlebag.
"Roach is fine," he said. She did look fine-- crunching down on the hard, rooty end of a carrot and somehow making it through the mud like it was water instead of awful sludge that was trying to take Jaskier's shoes off his feet every time he took a step. He stopped walking, overheated and annoyed.
"That's it!" he cried. "I'm finding an inn--" he looked around at the sad little huts and gardens. "--or a tree stump, or somewhere I can go and wait for you to come back. This is ridiculous."
Geralt looked at him and said, "Okay," and gave him a look that clearly meant, Why should I care? It would be hurtful if Jaskier hadn't spent so much time with him. Geralt never wanted him to come with him on Witcher business. By now the bard was good at convincing himself it was solely because Geralt cared so much for his health and well-being.
Rolling his eyes, Jaskier made to turn around and stride away, forgetting for a moment that his shoes were firmly stuck in mud. He felt his bag drop first as he flailed his arms to steady his balance, and then he was tipping backwards as if in slow motion, gazing up at the unfairly blue sky as he finally landed on the ground. His lovely linen shirt squelched into the ground as his legs bent at the knee, his shoes still planted.
Roach stepped away, alarmed. Geralt patted her side reassuringly while his gaze was on Jaskier, who blearily noted how fetching his yellow eyes looked against the summer sky. As he watched, the witcher closed his eyes and opened them again, too long to be a blink but too short to be anything else.
Furrowing his brow, Jaskier stuck out an arm to Geralt, who sighed but heaved him out of the mud. His clothes and shoes left the ground with an awful sucking noise.
Subtly, he watched the witcher's face as he dragged himself back into order, wiping mud from his elbows and the backside of his satchel. After a few seconds, Geralt blinked, short and unremarkable. Jaskier was tempted to call it a fluke-- after all, blinking slightly longer than usual could mean anything, or nothing at all. On top of that, the bard was frustrated with Geralt, covered in mud, and wanted nothing more than to strip all his clothes off and plunge into a cold bath.
He simply said, "Right, well. I'll see you when you're finished, I assume." He tried to be subtle as he took Roach's sack of treats from the saddlebag, but it didn't work. The horse nosed at him and the witcher tilted his head and frowned even deeper.
"So you both come back," he quipped, trying to sound like he was joking even though he wasn't. "I'll just be taking this with me on my quest to find suitable lodgings. Don't be out too late, dear." He stuffed the sack into his own bag and carefully marched away.
Two days later, Geralt came back to the little riverside town, smelling truly awful and with the head of some hideous swamp-thing strapped to his saddle. Jaskier had been fortunate enough to find an old, unused stable and made himself a nice little bed out of smelly hay. He hadn't felt inspired to play (he wasn't sure anyone there would be able to pay him for the privilege) so he worked on composing new songs instead as he waited for the witcher to return.
When he did, Jaskier didn't notice at first, too busy staring into the distance and counting off lines of metered verse. He was sitting on a boulder on the riverbank with one foot on the ground and the other propped up on his seat. He had nothing with him but his lute and his leather-bound notebook.
He jumped when he felt something shove his shoulder. Roach was behind him, Geralt looming above on her back. He sprang to his feet.
"Geralt! The Lady Roach!" he said, then stopped. "What is that smell?"
Before Geralt could answer (or, more likely, not answer), Roach pushed him again with her nose. Then she pushed him again and he stumbled to keep his balance.
Geralt made a noise that might have been a sigh. "Where are her carrots, bard?"
Jaskier was trying to pet the horse into submission but she wasn't interested in being mollified and began to nose her way into his jacket.
"Is that what this is about? I have her little bag in the stable just there--," his voice cut off with a warble as Roach took a step forward, shoving Jaskier along with her, and he lost his battle to stay upright. For the second time in three days, Jaskier watched the earth turn to sky in front of his eyes as he fell backward, this time directly into the river.
When he came up spluttering, he saw Roach pawing the ground and the witcher standing next to her and staring at him. When their eyes met, Jaskier glaring in disbelief, Geralt closed his eyes again in that same long blink as before. Then he turned his head to look at Roach and did it again at her.
Jaskier stood up and dripped, looking around at the river. The water was cool and relatively clear. "There isn't an inn here, Geralt," he said. "This is probably the best place to bathe for several miles." He did want to grumble a bit at the hair plastered to his face and the soaked feathers in his hat, but the water felt like heaven in the summer humidity.
"Also, I can smell you from here."
Geralt huffed and looked away, but he tied Roach to a log and undressed. As he waded into the water and felt the grime and sweat wash away from him, he did it again. One moment his face was hard as the steel of his sword and the next his whole expression seemed to soften and his eyes fell closed, then opened again.
Jaskier felt epiphany close over him. Oh. He was reminded of the cats his sister had kept growing up. Their nurse had told them to watch and listen whenever they could because not every creature used words like they could. Pay attention to everything else, she'd said, and you'll get the message anyway.
Jaskier was paying attention. He was paying the most attention. He thought he might have just made the discovery of his lifetime. Namely, that the witcher Geralt, White Wolf and the Butcher of Blaviken, smiled. Not only that, but he did it often.
After that, Jaskier was on the lookout for Geralt's peculiar little smile. Unfortunately, he saw it most often directed toward Roach or whenever Jaskier managed to embarrass himself somehow. It wasn't until they'd been traveling together nearly ten years that he started to see it more regularly even when he hadn't just fallen over a tree stump or ripped his trousers.
When they met that spring, Jaskier spotted him at the stables before Geralt had turned around.
"Geralt!" he shouted, joy making his limbs feel light. He had stopped resisting the urge to hug Geralt somewhere around their seventh year, so he didn't hesitate before throwing his arms around the witcher, who simply looked down at Jaskier and blinked, long and slow.
This is for @fluffyfebruary day 28 The last time/last meeting
Athena and Odysseus meet again after ten years since the separation/fight. They have a proper talk about what happened and they also apologize to each other before they finish up as Mentor and Student.
Fluffy Feburary [2024], Day 13
Prompt- Splurge
@fluffyfebruary
It had started quite simply with Elizabeth wishing to spoil her darling boyfriend. After all, who wouldn't? With wide cerulean eyes and such soft skin.
So she might've gone on a little... splurge. They'd gone to various tailors getting clothing ordered for him.
After they were done with the clothing though Ciel grabbed her hand and dragged them to a bakery. Intent on getting some sweets for the both of them. She was more then happy to oblige, after all; Seeing that sweet smile on his face made her heart race.
(and want to kill anyone who dared try and take it away)
It was a tacky line, really, and one she'd heard a hundred times before, in a dozen different languages, in a hundred different bars. But that was the game, wasn't it? That was the dance. They would chase her, make contact -- usually just with their eyes and the interested tone of their voice, but some of them were braver, bolder, reaching out to brush gently against her arm or her back, leaving something warm and tingling behind, initiating the dance, whether they knew it or not.
And if she liked them?
"Why?" she would ask, flashing them a toothy grin, "do I need to walk by you again?"
It was an easy thing, really. A light hearted game. But it never really meant much of anything. None of it ever did.
His first words were a little different though. An opening shot changed by the nature of the environment and the circumstances they found themselves in. She, stubbornly incommunicative and seething; him, brightly amused and curious.
"I'd be careful. This one looks like a biter."
She wouldn't have called it love at first sight. Not even love at second or third. Hell, what was love anyway? A forbidden pair-bond and the sickness of potals, a knife willingly swallowed that twisted painfully in the chest. It wasn't something she wanted any part of, nor was it something she had any reason to fear. She was a drone, and drones didn't do that kind of thing. They enjoyed the chase and the play and the dancing but… it was never more than tacky lines and laughter shared for a moment in a private space.
And yet. There was something in the way that the looked at her, and something in the warmth of his mind as it brushed strangely against her own. Something in the way that he looked at her with recognition, something in the way he handed her dignity as if it was inconceivable to him that she might not deserve it, something in the way that he had visited her before he had gone.
There was something…
Something warm within her chest.
It felt strange, sitting there as it did. Strange and foreign but not at all like a knife -- it was more like he had left a ray of sunlight there, one that reached her even in her cell within her brig.
Maybe she really was going to go crazy here. They said isolation did that. That a drone, removed from the colony and cut off from the Collective would quickly lose all sense of self and direction and descend into madness, chasing echo ghosts and waking dreams.
And yet. She didn't feel crazy, sitting there. She felt…. warm. Clean. And re-grounded, her hand raising every now and then to touch the bow he had twisted from her bandana. She kept catching herself looking at her faint reflection within the atmo-shield that kept her prisoner, tilting her head this way and that to admire the shape of it against her brow.
She didn't know what to think of it, really.
It wasn't love at first sight, but…
She wouldn't mind if he were to walk by again.
Suits / Marvey / Rated G
It wasn't like Mike had never experienced a snowstorm, and it wasn't even that Manhattan hadn't had one recently. It was that snowfall in the city got muddy and slushy and suspiciously colored way too quickly, and the surprise four inches of perfectly playful precipitation was less than pure after a late night in the office. Mike had been so excited to cut out and go to the park with Harvey, slyly challenging him to a snowball fight and debating himself about the best cafe for hot chocolate on the way home.
While Harvey had little control over the weather or the last minute twists in their cases, he really wanted to remind Mike that throwing baseballs and snowballs were very similar skill sets. He wanted to make corny jokes about keeping him warm and getting him out of his wet clothes. He wanted to stop Mike's pouting about how declaring a snow day would be better for the workplace morale.
So when the next storm was predicted to come through upstate, Harvey rented the safest crossover he could find, found a fancy milk frother, and whisked Mike away for a snow day or three.
