Chapter Text
Geralt wasn’t able to escort him all the way to Oxenfurt at the beginning of sophomore year. They made it to Mulbrydale– Jaskier with the beginnings of riding sores on his ass, Geralt as fit and unfazed as ever (the rotten, rugged bastard)– before they were approached by a group of harried-looking locals.
“Master Witcher! A word, please– we’ve been trying to get news out for weeks, but there’ve been no witchers in these parts since the harvest, and Melitile knows we can’t afford the ploughing dowry the courier service charges to forward missives to Temeria–”
Geralt’s voice was perfectly flat, audible to Jaskier only. “Lucky me.”
They dismounted at the inn, if you could call it that– a five-foot bar and two tables downstairs with a single room for rent upstairs– tethering Roach and Pegasus before going inside to hear the rapidly growing crowd of frantic villagers out. Jaskier received several curious looks, but made no attempt to explain himself beyond a vague gesture at the lute strapped to his saddle.
The problem was thus: a group of self-described archeologists, with no affiliation to any university or organization (”Tomb robbers,” Geralt interjected each time they used the word 'archaeologists,’ and while their faces soured they didn’t argue) had found their way into a previously sealed chamber in one of the elven catacombs criss-crossing the underground around Novigrad. They’d spent a lovely week ‘exhuming artifacts’ (”Stealing.”) before the first of the wraiths showed up. It appeared first as eerie blue lights, floating harmlessly around town at night– then as ragged, fully formed specters, the shadowy suggestion of their rotted hands reaching into people’s chests and inflicting a delirious sickness upon anyone they touched.
To his own surprise Jaskier sat quietly, listening to the proceedings. This was the first time since their wedding he’d seen anyone except Geralt’s brothers interact with the man. Despite flocking to his arrival, everyone– which was half the town at this point, clamoring to get their own word in edgewise– remained in an orbit several paces away from him.
The fourth villager to say their piece, a balding man in a conspicuously fine tweed coat, wouldn’t even make eye contact with Geralt. He instead began to explain his encounter to Jaskier, as though in the absence of a formal explanation for his arrival alongside Geralt he’d been figured for the witcher’s keeper.
“I was in the orchards when they came through last, three nights ago– just as dusk fell ‘n clear as I see you sitting there, like hobbled old men but hoverin’ a foot off the ground. They breathed out like rocks rattlin’ ‘round in a bottle, witherin’ all the boughs around ‘em each time they did– had to prune whole branches off for fear it’d spread, as they’d gone brown ‘n brittle. It’ll half our harvest next summer–”
Jaskier glanced sidelong at Geralt, as offended as he could ever recall being. The sardonic lift of the witcher’s brow in response told him he’d correctly identified where this little anecdote was leading, and sure enough–
“-just gotten big enough to start really bearing fruit, ‘n now– well, we’ll be a lean group for years to come. Meanin’ to say, if you’ll pardon the frankness, that we ain’t got too much in coin to give– but a bounty of gratitude, to be sure, and food ‘n lodging, of course–”
“But your neighbors just said you’ve been selling elven artifacts– which is why you’re being haunted, I strongly suspect, by elves. Yet you couldn’t pay the courier to hunt a witcher down? And now you can’t pay the witcher delivered to your doorstep more than a song, to kill– at least five of these phantoms, allegedly– despite that very tasteful embroidery on your collar?” He looked contemptuously across the crowd for emphasis. “The whole lot of you are actually quite fashionable.”
It was true. Few humans went hungry in the shadow of a major city like Novigrad, but fabrics beyond simple cotton and linen wefts were still generally above the budget of sharecroppers. The gathered township was appareled mostly in new clothes: some dyed in deep, rich tones and some with decorative stitching at their edges.
“Y’see, that’s– we’ve already gone ‘n spent that money, replacin’ the old rags. They were fallin’ apart at the seams, moth-eaten– ‘s why we went digging around the ruins in the first place.” His eyes had gone wide and nervous, finally shifting his attention directly to Geralt, but it was a bit too late for that.
“Nope– you wanted to talk to me, so talk to me. Being that I’m not a witcher, I can’t say what the current market pays per ghost, but I’ll confidently guess it’s more than gratitude, lodging, and spare change can cover. There’s a thriving market for secondhand clothing in Oxenfurt– particularly garments so lightly used as yours. We don’t intend to take food out of your mouths, but I’m delighted to share that, should your ‘not too much coin’ not quite cut it, we’ll happily barter in goods to make up the deficit. Now: before we get bogged down with the where and how, let’s discuss payment.”
Jaskier watched the man sputter and begin to purple with deep satisfaction.
“And just who the fuck do you think you are, lordling, to talk to me like that–”
“My husband.” Geralt’s grainy voice cut through the rising tensions like a knife. His seated body remained as lax as it’d been since they arrived, save a certain tension in his shoulders.
The shifted mood was palpable. All the crowd’s muttering agitation from moments before, rising to a slow crescendo at the thought that they too might have to relinquish their frocks and overcoats, froze as if in fear of drawing his gaze.
“If I’m killing them it’s forty-five crowns a head– two hundred and twenty-five total, if the five you’ve identified are all there are. You–” He nodded his head at the frazzled looking older woman who’d given her account first, “-mentioned there were a set of silver bells, looted and sold in the first haul. The tongue of them, inside– crystal?”
She gawked at Geralt like he’d done a party trick. “I’d thought glass, but– it could’ve been.”
He nodded, brows drawn together in a grim expression. “That’s what they’re after. If you can find and buy those back I’ll return them to the chamber and seal the fissure for thirty crowns. No fighting needed, and you can all keep your outfits.”
“But if–” It was the asshole again, still puffed up but retreated back a step. “-if you replace them, and we leave them be, you wouldn’t have to seal it up, would you?”
Geralt shifted his weight, visibly annoyed. “I don’t take jobs I’ll have to do twice. Decide what you want done and tell me in the morning; either way I’ll need half up front.”
He stood, rabble parting around him as he strode out to fetch their saddlebags. Jaskier took to his feet as well, stretching with exaggerated carelessness before scanning the crowd for a likely innkeep or barmaid. “The room upstairs– could we have water brought up, please?”
An anxious teenager knocked on their door some ten minutes later, half hunched over from the weight of the full bucket in his hands.
Jaskier thanked him very cordially– he’d normally tip, but not after that fucking debacle downstairs– and shut the door in his face when he didn’t scurry off immediately, instead staring through the doorway to where Geralt was sprinkling lines of coarse salt across the windowsill and at every drafty crack in the wall.
Jaskier washed his face and hands before doing a cursory job scrubbing down his pits and crotch.
“What a shitshow– an insulting shitshow.”
“That’s about the shape of how it usually goes.”
“How do you deal with it?”
“I leave if the pay’s not good enough. More often than not they’re able to find the money somewhere once I re-mount Roach. If they’re really hurting for coin– and they’re not too horrible– I’ll only take partial payment once I’m done.”
“'Not too horrible’– they treated you like a mangy dog, Geralt! They’re afraid of you.”
“Obviously they’ll be paying full price– and most people are afraid of me. You were.”
Flushing with shame, Jaskier clucked his tongue reproachfully. “I got over it quickly.” As though to prove it, he reached out and tugged Geralt’s shirttails loose the next time the witcher walked by, just to be a nuisance.
“You’re in the minority there.”
“But they asked for your help! They’ve been actively looking for a witcher.”
“People want snakes on their property when they’ve got a rat problem. Doesn’t mean they like snakes. Or want them to linger once the rats are gone.” Finally seeming satisfied with his salt-lines, he reached up to pull his shirt off. It gave Jaskier a gratifying view of his chest and the dense, pale hair down his front.
“But it’s ungrateful! It’d be one thing if you were… I don’t know, a boor, or threatening, but you were perfectly cordial– more cordial than I was–”
“I’m non-threatening now?”
“...you’re not that threatening.”
Geralt snorted, lifting his arms wide for Jaskier’s appraisal. He was almost alarmingly gaunt for how broad his frame was, musculature sharp and striking as a result. Maybe thirty percent of his skin was scar tissue, creating a textured map of lines, dots, and gouges. Combined with the strangeness of his hair and eyes, it gave the impression of a lean, hungry animal.
Jaskier remembered the quiver of his own stomach, staring into Geralt’s mouth at his long, sharp teeth during their vows.
“Right, yes, you’re a horror. Absolutely. You’d be extra terrible, I assure you, if you came over here and sucked me off. It’d really add to the whole… thing you’ve got going that you’re clearly so proud of, I promise. I’ll go tell everyone what a terrifying blowjob it was afterwards.”
Just like that, all Geralt’s menace was cast off by his laughter.
“Not the worst way I’ve been propositioned, but it ranks.”
“Quite an accomplishment given your age– I’ll take it. Idle curiosity, what takes the top spot? Just so I know what I’m trying to de-throne.”
Geralt stripped off his riding pants and sat down next to Jaskier on the bed, throwing a thick arm around him and pulling them both down to the mattress. He spent a few minutes kissing the back of the bard’s neck before he answered. A few of the ‘kisses’ would soon be blooming into dark bruises from the feel of them.
“Woman in Temeria– Velen– got her leg mangled by an endrega, needed it amputated a few days before I came through to clear out the nest. And everyone knows witchers are sadistic sexual deviants– so she thought I’d forego payment if she let me–”
“Is this going where I think it’s going?”
“Probably.”
“...that’s going to be hard to beat.”
Geralt shrugged. “We get more shit like that than you might expect. It’s why the ‘witchers only care about money’ narrative’s been pushed so hard. Less weird, horrifying alternatives get offered up.”
Jaskier hummed in understanding, reaching up to pet the hair on Geralt’s forearm where it hung across his hip. “You’re going to have to stay here, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” Geralt sounded guilty. Which he should– he’d promised to escort Jaskier all the way to university, so he could show him off– but the dreadful kernel of goodness at the center of Jaskier’s chest wouldn’t let him begrudge Geralt entirely. “If I thought the people struck ill were doomed I’d probably just tell the healthy to salt their doors and windows, ride with you the last day to Oxenfurt then come back. But it seems entirely magical, which means if I get rid of the source–”
“They’ll be cured.” So time was of the essence.
“Mm-hmm.”
“I’m sure I’ll be much too busy to notice your absence anyway.” His haughty tone warbled in the middle of the sentence. Geralt squeezed him gently.
“When I’m done with the wraiths I can head over to Oxenfurt to see how you’ve settled in, if you like. Make an appearance before I set out on the Path.”
“And here I thought you sucked those hickeys into my shoulders to make your appearance for you.”
The witcher grinned against his skin. “They can announce me before I arrive.”
Jaskier wanted to say yes. A year ago he would’ve. Strange how keeping responsible company made you more responsible yourself. “No, it’s alright. You’ll come to me once the fall has come and gone, for the winter holidays. I’ll keep myself busy until then– maybe even forget about you entirely. I’m a man in high-demand, as you might expect.”
“I don’t doubt it.” Jaskier still hadn’t figured out what to do when Geralt was sweet in response to him being a preening, intentional prick. His husband thankfully carried on before he had to decide. “I’ll write you. If you want to send letters back– I’d like if you did– send them within a day of receiving one, to the town I sent mine from. I’m not going anywhere more than a fortnight’s ride from here, and I’ll linger long enough to clear out all the local contracts.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. You know, there is one thing you could do to soften the blow a bit. The blow of you not being a man of your word, that is–”
"Suck you off?”
Jaskier shimmied up out of Geralt’s arms, kicking off his braies and sitting with his back to the headboard. “I mean, I wouldn’t say no.” His eyes sparkled. “Unless you’d like me to.”
Ever a man of action, Geralt positioned himself between Jaskier’s thighs and got to work.
His silver hair was mesmerizing, sliding over his shoulders and swinging down to frame his face with the rhythmic bobbing of his head. He lingered at the tip periodically, stopping to suck particularly hard and rub his tongue against the leaking slit like he was trying to get a better taste of Jaskier’s precum.
“Oooh shit– I w-was lying, earlier; I’m not going to be able to forget this.”
Geralt pulled off with a sopping wet ‘pop’ that made Jaskier’s lower stomach clench. “I know.”
“Show-off.”
“Mm-hmm.” He stuck his tongue exaggeratedly far out to lick up Jaskier’s shaft again, which should’ve been silly, except that the way he pulled his lips back to do it put his fangs on display. “I thought you wanted terrifying head.”
“I was being facetious—” Geralt pushed himself up off his forearms to grab covetously at Jaskier’s thighs and licked him again, pausing at the tip to let his open mouth hover threateningly over the poet’s cock. “–but I might’ve been onto something. Play it up for me?"
Still hovering, Geralt pushed Jaskier’s thighs wider and growled. “You know this is mine, don’t you? Even when you’re being dainty about it?”
“Pretty sure it’s attached to my pelvis– and that you have your own– but for the sake of this impending nut yes–” Geralt growled again, louder, rumbling and bassy in a way that would’ve made Jaskier want to piss himself if his wires weren’t so thoroughly crossed.
“The rest of you’s mine too. Keep that in mind when you’re off ‘forgetting about me’ at school– I’ll be taking my pound of flesh from any little friends I can still smell on your sheets when I come to set you right this winter.”
Body locking up like he was seizing, Jaskier came in ribbons across Geralt’s neck and jaw.
"...even for you, that was fas–"
"'Even for'– here's a novel idea: take it as the compliment it is and shut the fuck up, perhaps?"
He could feel the witcher’s hands ease where they gripped him, ready to withdraw from the game they were playing, settle back into being Jaskier’s even-tempered husband. He reached down to cover them with his own, grip firm. “Get off first.”
After a thoughtful pause, Geralt grunted. Then he pulled his hands out from under Jaskier’s, tapping the bard’s hip with two fingers hard enough to sting. “Knees together, then pull ‘em up.”
It took several seconds for Jaskier to comply, mostly because Geralt’s next course of action was to wipe the cum from himself and lick it off his hand with a stern, satisfied expression. He stared inarticulately for a bit too long, apparently, because–
“Jaskier.”
“Huh?”
Geralt leaned in to loom over him. “Press your thighs together or it’s going in your ass, and you can whine and cry the rest of the way to Oxenfurt with your swollen cunt chafing against the saddle."
Jaskier moaned, loud enough he was sure he’d be getting dirty looks on his way out the door tomorrow morning. “What am I going to do without you?”
Fierce expression cracking, Geralt rolled his eyes and pressed a kiss to Jaskier’s temple.
“I’m sure you’ll have a great time, sweetheart.”
Jaskier was not having a great time.
Three mornings a week at seven sharp Jaskier sat at the back of a massive lecture hall for ‘Poetry of the Greats: Influential Northern Authors and their Living Legacies’. What he achieved in punctuality and regular attendance he undermined with inattentiveness: he was barely alive as he slunk into class, rolling out of bed after doing nothing but brushing his teeth and slipping into proper shoes.
Geralt’s letters, when Jaskier received them, were plucked out of his little letterbox on the way out the door, worth fighting to get his key correctly in the lock when he saw the corner of a dirty envelope in the narrow slot.
He read them in class. Professor Hagenrot liked to talk about his ongoing project with the Library of Dol Blathanna, mailing them transcripts copied from the hundreds of elven ruins dotting the nearby countryside to be translated by the older living elves there. It was so “new,” and “exciting,” with so many new developments every day that he started off class with a comprehensive overview of what he’d achieved since they last saw him.
He talked about the elves, Jaskier thought– slipping his finger under the wax seal of Geralt’s letter, the distinctive imprint of his silver amulet visible in it– as though they were as long gone as their cities. Like they were a revered and mythical race, lost to the cruelty of time, and not relegated to slums outside the city. One of the friends Jaskier’d made busking at the Seven Cats Inn– a wonderfully plump elf named Gveneth– said that professor Hagenrot got his clothes washed at the elven laundry outside the walls, because it was cheaper, and treated the staff like dogshit.
So. Not a faculty member Jaskier had any special interest in networking with.
Even if he did notice Jaskier reading his own mail in the back of class– which he hadn’t so far– he couldn’t fail Jaskier with the quality of work he turned in. At worst he’d get a C, which would’ve put him in hot water back when his father was paying for his schooling, but Geralt didn’t care as long as he was passing.
(“Can you tell me the grades of any of the bards you’re learning about in your lessons?”
“No, I guess not.”
“Neither can I. C’s get degrees. Not saying don’t learn your shit, but I’m not going to… y’know. This doesn’t fit into our dynamic in bed, that’s all.”
“So you’re not going to come spank me and threaten to drag me home by my ear if I’m not a straight A student?”
“...you know, I’m rethinking that sentiment as we speak.")
His eyes scavenged the page before he began reading, taking in the angular slant of Geralt’s handwriting and a faint, dried brown splatter in one corner. Either blood or stew– both equally likely, it being Geralt.
Jaskier,
I hope this letter finds you well. That’s usually an implied sentiment, but it’s worth saying in light of what you’ve told me about recent events on campus.
Geralt had been extremely regular about sending correspondence since the first murder in Oxenfurt two months ago. He’d made a point to linger around settlements large enough to receive mail, and begun making his way directly back to Oxenfurt almost three weeks before their originally scheduled rendezvous.
You said you saw the first victim alive, the night before her body was found. If she was hale and whole that late in the evening her corpse wouldn’t have looked as ghastly as you’ve described it in the wee hours of the next morning, floating in the river or not. Water bloats, anyway, it doesn't wither.
If you’re absolutely sure there are no drowners (by your own observations, not the word of the city guard– I’m surprised they don’t look up in the rain and drown) it’s probably a lesser vampire.
Could be a greater one, but they’re generally too self-important to leave corpses around without some staging or implied narrative. Very dramatic. You’d have a good nose for that kind of case. Take the pendant I sent you off with– the Quen rune– to an alchemist to make sure it’s still charged. If it’s not you need to buy a handful of verbena and mash it up with half a cup of Mahakam spirit (yes, the liquor) then leave it in that overnight.
If the alchemist tries to sell you some other way to re-charge it, don't return to that apothecary. They’re either stupid or a skinflint. Nothing having to do with moonlight is going to make it stronger, or make you last longer in bed. It’s a protection rune. It protects. That’s all it does.
I thought about sending Dancing Stars with this letter, as I can’t overstate how unhappy I am that you’re living on a posh little river island with a (probable) vampire, but decided they’d be more likely to blow up the courier than make it to you.
Every staff member of the venerable institution you attend should hope you don’t need this information, but vampires are deathly afraid of fire. A hot poker would be a much more appropriate weapon than any sword not forged in silver, should it come to that. Tell your peers to keep their hearths going.
I’m a day’s ride south of Benek, making all due haste for Oxenfurt. This will be my last letter prior to our next meeting, as I’m only three days out– Gods willing– and I don’t know if the river will be frozen enough to cross where I meet it or if I’ll have to follow it west to the shallows.
Your last few letters have been worryingly flippant. I won’t pretend to have the moral high ground about feeling an appropriate amount of concern for the wellbeing of strangers, but you’re not a stranger. I expect you to keep your eyes peeled and tread lightly. I know you love to poke fun at my abundance of caution, but I can’t help what I feel or how deeply I feel it. Wear your slyzard cloak when you go out, and choose clothing that covers your wrists and neck– which shouldn’t be an inconvenience in winter, but I never know with you.
I’ve sent a vial with this letter, corked and waxed– if there’s another murder before I arrive, or you notice any three-grooved furrows in the ground within a hundred paces of your dorm, uncork it and rub some of its contents behind your ears. The bloodflow there will make the scent spread. Re-apply every six hours, until the thing is dead or I arrive.
Jaskier looked down into the envelope, surprised. Sure enough the vial was there, corked and waxed. It was smaller than he expected; maybe the size of his pinky, filled with transparent yellow fluid.
His brows drew together in a mixture of confusion and disgust.
'Transparent yellow fluid’. Right. Tactful way of putting it. Jaskier wondered if Geralt had put the rim of the vial up to his cock or just pissed in a tankard and scooped some out.
You’re a smart whelp. You can figure out what it is. I don’t care how distasteful you find it, I expect to find that vial, used or unused, on your person when I arrive to meet you. No matter what time of the day or night it is, or how delicate you feel about using its contents.
It’s not going to attack anything that smells like a witcher if there are other viable options.
I take comfort in the fact that you probably would’ve done this without me asking
and no, that’s not an insult,but because it’s worth saying: if given the choice between getting attacked and throwing someone in front of you, please choose the latter. I’m aware what a cold and damning sentence that is, just as you’re hopefully aware of what a visceral investment I have in your happiness and wellbeing.Which is to say: I’m sure you’re aware by now of what you married.
I’ll be there before your break starts, which will hopefully give me enough time to adjust before you start parading me around like a pedigreed horse. I would like to re-state that I’ve committed to nothing more intimate than civility with your peers. Meaning I won’t do tricks on command, no matter what kind of shiny new toy you’ve made me out to be.
Realistic expectations aside, I’ve grown sick of my own company to a degree I’ve never felt before. Witchers are solitary by convenience rather than some innate unfriendliness, despite popular opinion, but every day reminding myself how convenient it is provides less and less comfort. You are sorely wanted. Even the bits of you I bemoan when we’re together.
Deeply fond,
Geralt (of Rivia, if you’d forgotten.)
Jaskier slid the vial of– piss, apparently, into the breast pocket of his shirt, simultaneously mortified and preening. That was…
…well, disgusting. The functional act of it was, at least– voluntarily rubbing something like that against his skin. But the idea– the sentiment of it– being marked like territory, like property–
Jaskier crossed his legs, miserable in his disheveled exhaustion-turned-arousal. The ending was very sweet, too; Jaskier stopped himself from lingering over it, in case he got maudlin. It felt more than a little pathetic, but he missed Geralt. Not so much that it consumed his every waking thought, but enough that he felt a pang every time got off alone, or looked at the griffin feathers he’d tied to the wind chime in his windowbox.
Not that he’d become a complete social recluse in his pining. The village outside the city walls was less concerned about things like ‘noise permits’ and ‘curfews’, so Jaskier took to playing a few gigs a week, eventually showing up with such regularity that the establishments cleared a spot for him on his nights.
He typically wasn’t the only performer– singing over the dull roar of the drunken working class– but sometimes he’d get people’s attention, and a few people clapping got a few more, and suddenly the whole tavern was joining in on the bit of ‘Above the Knee, Below the Navel‘ where you stomp three times and spin (to extremely varying degrees of success,) and Jaskier remembered that he was going to Make It.
“–after your preliminary draft is graded! We’re almost in the submission window– the sooner you get it to me, the sooner your grade can be finalized.”
Oh. Class was over. Folding Geralt’s letter carefully along its crease lines, he tucked it into his bag and stood. Music theory was halfway across the island, which left him barely enough time to go buy breakfast between here and there. If he were more responsible he’d wake up early to eat, but Jaskier was nothing if not a realist, and he realistically wasn’t ever going to wake up earlier than 6:30.
He made it halfway down the lecture hall’s stadium-style stairs before a clear, disgustingly pleasant voice interrupted his reverie. “Big hurry you’re in, Pankratz– or have you taken your witcher’s name? Does he have a last name?”
Valdo was good at what he did– what they both did. That fact that made Jaskier despise him as much as the targeted, deliberate ridicule he singled Jaskier out for.
“I’m keeping my last name for now, thank you for inquiring.” His tone was light and sweet. “Though I might take on ‘of Kaer Morhen’ once we all move back east in a few years. You’re familiar with it, I presume? From the elven ‘Caer a’Muirehen’, the Keep of the Elder Sea– central in Maraval’s epic of the Wildling Sage, of course.”
Arguably the most influential long-form poem surviving from before the turn of the century, featuring the titular sage taking refuge in the witcher’s keep. It wasn’t in vogue as a performance piece– due to the honorable, bordering on affectionate light it painted Witchers in– but as the first known work to include a mix of novelization, poetry, and balladry, it was universally taught in colleges.
Valdo’s face soured, puckering with envy. It was a high point of pride, as a bard, to live an interesting life. “Oh, is it still standing? I heard the massacre left it perforated. I suppose your husband’s used to camping in run down shitholes though, given his profession– provided he’s not a figment of your imagination, obviously.”
If he could’ve thrown a punch without getting expelled he would’ve. Geralt taught him how– thumb curled outside his balled fingers, twisting your whole arm to get more power behind it. “Obviously. Well, this has been delightful, but I have better things to do.”
Jaskier shuffled sideways to step around the other student, expression carefully neutral, internally seething.
“Just like that? No honor left to defend, then, or are you finally giving up the yarn you’ve been spinning?”
“You’ve already decided what you think the truth is, and again: I have better things to do than argue with you. The matter will be put to rest when Geralt arrives.”
In point of fact Jaskier did want to argue with him. He wanted to tell Valdo that he and all the other talentless jesters from that floor of the dormitory were limp pricks, and they should hope Jaskier doesn’t take it upon himself to sic his husband on them. Not that Geralt would listen, probably, but— he might.
“And that’s going to happen— any day now, right?” Oh, Jaskier could kill him. Might kill him. Might make Geralt kill him.
He turned away to re-fasten the already closed buckle of his bookbag, using the way it obscured his face as cover for the brief, involuntary grinding of his teeth. Getting worked up about it would make him look desperate, not right, and they both knew it.
He could always gloat later.
“Just so! Glad you remembered. Maybe he'll even get here before someone else gets eaten if we’re all particularly lucky.”
Valdo was now dogging along behind him down the stairs, like they were friends catching up between classes and not mortally opposed. “Eaten?” His tone carried an undercurrent of fright that lit Jaskier up like a firecracker.
The joy of a dog with something to chase.
“Of course! A corpse shows up in the river, drained rather than bloated? So soon after the murder, too? I thought you’d have put it together like the rest of us.”
Jaskier– as a would-be bard– was a practiced hand at smug hypocrisy. He delivered the comment as though he himself hadn’t only put things together when Geralt spelled them out in his letter.
“That’s not… the guard would’ve sent out warnings if it were a vampire.”
“The guards couldn’t find their own pricks in the dark. Margaret said she was passing by when yesterday’s corpse was being carried out of the western dorms–” Margaret had said no such thing– “-and saw its hand fall out from under the sheet. Emaciated and bone-white–” Jaskier had no fucking idea what the corpse actually looked like. “-like a carcass after draining.” Just pure, wild, weaponized speculation.
(‘There’s a three letter word for that,’ Geralt told him once.)
The other students who’d been milling around their conversation, walking two steps behind or in front as plausible deniability, grew noticeably restless.
Good. Jaskier hoped it spread like wildfire, and that it kept his name attached to it. It was, after all, his husband they were going to need to kill it.
“We wouldn’t still be attending classes if there was a vampire on the loose–”
Sudden, frantic voices drew everyone’s attention to the propped-open double doors, as though on cue. There was a commotion outside, turning what had been an orderly departure into a jostling pack of bodies, each trying to shove past the other to see what the fuss was about.
Caught in the middle of the crush, Jaskier took a page from Geralt’s book and began throwing sharp, rude elbows at everyone who bumped into him, using their stumbling and shouting indignation to slip into the spot they’d vacated until he was at the front of the pack. To Jaskier’s displeasure but Valdo’s credit, the other man followed tightly behind Jaskier before the gap closed back in after him. Soon they were both on the edge of a massive half-circle of people, students and citizens alike, all staring inward at the gory scene.
The womens’ dormitories were across the way from the lecture hall, their doors flanked by two large bronze unicorn statues depicted lying peacefully on their sides. From the long horn of one hung a member of the city guard: pierced through the shoulder, front saturated in blood that dripped (now-sluggishly) from a massive wound on his neck.
Jaskier heard Valdo choke and then vomit beside him, eyes fixed on the spectacle.
This made two murders in two days, assuming the body found yesterday had been killed yesterday. This corpse obviously hadn’t been sucked dry, though a bite to the neck seemed extremely likely. He was slightly surprised by his own lack of nausea, or at least terror– but then terror came from the unknown, and from lack of control. One of the many things his unexpected marriage to a witcher had afforded him was–
Valdo’s smooth, shaking tenor cut into his internal monologue. “His neck is– it’s– l-like a chunk was–”
Confident he’d taken inventory of all there was to see, Jaskier glanced over at the other bard. “Ripped out? By teeth, perhaps?”
Straightening up, he drew a deep and deliberate breath. Projecting his voice to a crowd– making himself the center of attention– was something he’d needed no additional schooling to master.
“Like I said: a vampire, obviously. Would’ve thought it was a lesser vampire prior to this, but now we’ve gotten dramatic, so perhaps a higher one. In any case: keep your fire stoked, Valdo. I have other protections, of course, but– well. Not all of us are married to witchers.”
With that he turned, setting off to find some hidden corner where he could rub Geralt’s piss into his skin before next class.