Somewhat Clear

deerna
somewhatclear

Rating: SAFE
Fandom: The Witcher
Relationship: Geralt/Jaskier
Tags: omegaverse, purring witchers, non-sexual intimacy, getting together, pre-relationship, pack dynamics, bathing/washing, cutting hair, scents & smells
Wordcount: 2968
Notes: partecipa alle iniziative di LandeDiFandom Maritombola (prompt 90: omegaverse) e Esploratori del polyverso (stesso genere: romantico)

Summary:
Geralt comes back from a hunt absolutely covered in shit. Some hair-cutting needed. Purring happens, mortification ensues. Expectations are met.

Excerpt:

Human Alphas didn’t purr for their packmates. They didn’t purr for other Alphas. They actually didn’t purr much at all, because it was an omega thing—and even the omegas, they reserved it for their partners, for their mates, for their Alphas. Even knowing that Jaskier didn’t have a shame bone in his body, and that he had bedded other Alphas, often and with pleasure, Geralt couldn’t ask that of him, not without compromising their fellowship. He couldn’t think about Jaskier refusing. He couldn’t think about scaring him off.

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The good news was that the kid was fine. A bit scared, a lot tired, and she would forever be afraid of spiders — but she was alive. She was going to be fine, eventually. Geralt had been almost happy to see her crying while he deposited in her mother’s arms; she’d been so still when he found her in the nest, half-covered in webs and slime. She’d been still and cold and her soft, yet-to-develop scent had almost been overpowered by the smell of rotting flesh and decaying fluids—but she was okay now. Geralt had not failed her. Geralt had done what he had been made to do.

The bad news was that Geralt had to walk, run and fight in mud, arachae’s blood, miscellaneous viscera, fermented shit, decomposing silk, and the remains of what he thought was a half-digested cow for three hours in order to save her, and he didn’t have the chance to rinse yet. The goop that clung to him felt disgusting and the smell was—something else.

Jaskier was just a little bit impressed. “Holy shit, what the fuck is all that?” he squeaked in horror, clutching a notebook to his chest, when Geralt pushed the door of the room open with his shoulder.

“Coin,” Geralt deadpanned, showing the small pouch in his gross hand, before throwing it aside in the vague direction of the saddlebags piled in a corner of the room. He wasn’t supposed to be paid for this job, because the woman already paid for their lodgings, but she had insisted and Geralt wasn’t going to turn down extra money — the kit he was wearing was so deeply drenched in shit he was almost certain it was a lost cause. “Tell me you had that bath you were raving about earlier.”

“Was that an attempt at humour? Dreadful, Geralt.” Jaskier clicked his tongue and put his notebook aside. “Anyway, yes, I did. The water should still be good, if cold. I trust the dregs of my lavender soap won’t offend your delicate Alpha sensibilities,” he continued, gesturing at the wooden tub standing next to the brazier. He grinned when Geralt rolled his eyes at him, but then his expression softened. “I’m assuming it went well?”

“The kid is fine. She wandered in the pastures, got stuck in an arachas nest.” He dropped his sword in a heap to be cleaned later. Vesemir would have his head for threating them like so much cheap scrap metal, but he couldn’t be fucked to care, at the moment; his limbs were lead, his skin itched, and his own smell was lost under the stench that wafted from everywhere. It was really starting to get to him. A headache was brewing just behind his eyes.

“Arachasae?” Jaskier sounded confused. “Aren’t we a bit too north for those?”

“Yes.” Geralt stopped in the middle of pulling one glove off. “How do you know that?”

Jaskier coughs. “First of all, I pay attention when you talk. Secondly—I might have abused of my academic privileges to access the inner sanctum of the university library in Oxenfurt. You always complain that I get my monster facts wrong, but you also hate when I start piling you with questions, so I took the matter into my own hands.”

Huh. “How proactive of you.”

“Thanks.” Jaskier cleared his voice. “Can I help? You’re gritting your teeth worse than usual, and I can’t tell if you’re hurt with all that grime clinging to you.”

“I’m fine,” Geralt grunted, forcibly relaxing his jaw. “It’s just gross.”

Jaskier didn’t seem reassured; he stuck close, hovering just out of his line of sight as Geralt removed the other gauntlet, undid the clasps and buckles on his chest piece, kicked off his boots. The squelch of organic matter clinging to the worn leather made his skin crawl, but most of it came off fairly easily when Geralt poured water over it. His trousers, on the other hand—he could feel the congealed filth gluing the material to his legs, too dry and too caked on to be just rinsed out.

He sighed and went to rummage through his saddlebags, until he found his hunting knife.

Jaskier blinked. “What do you need it for?”

“Cutting off my trousers.” Geralt sat on the floor and knocked against the hard crust of mud. “They’re not coming off.”

“Well, that’s drastic,” Jaskier observed, but didn’t comment further.

Geralt dragged the blade roughly through the lacing and down the outer edge of the trousers’ leg, peeling away the fabric as he went. As he expected, even the braies underneath had been completely soaked through. He’d considered cutting along the stitching, so he could wash and repair them in a second moment, but the headache pulsed in his temples, and his muscles felt knotted, and the noise of his teeth gnashing against each other was almost as awful as that fucking smell. He hung the ruined garments outside the window, to be dealt with it later; he just wanted to get in the bath.

It took him three attempts to cast an Igni strong enough to warm the water, and when he finally stepped over the edge of the tub to sink into the scalding water, he had to focus not to throw up, the stench suddenly so much stronger in the steam. He swallowed thickly around nothing, started to methodically scrub himself down—face, chest, stomach, legs, arms. His soap didn’t smell like anything—it wasn’t like Jaskier’s cacophony of decorative, fancy scents, that floated heavy on top of his own Alpha musk like foam over beer—but it usually did the job.

But the tang of rot seemed to cling to him like a sickness this time, thick against his nose and on his tongue and even in his ears somehow. He looks down at the body in the water, too thin and too wiry and too pale and too scarred but clean, and—

“Geralt, are you sure you’re not hurt?”

“Yes,” he snapped, startled. He’d forgotten that Jaskier had been in the room, for a split moment. Was he going insane? He dug the heels of his hands against his eyesockets, willing the migrain to subside. “I’m fine.”

“I know it’s not really my business but you smell—not fine. I mean, you also smell like a flooded slaughterhouse or something, but you also smell distressed and it’s… well. Can I do something for you?”

“Mmh,” he replied noncommittally, still scrubbing uselessly at his skin.

Geralt wasn’t supposed to ask for things while he was on the Path. The winters at Kaer Morhen were a different matter; in Kaer Morhen, he would’ve asked to sleep in Eskel’s bed as he read some book late into the night, he would’ve curled up next to Vesemir as he napped next to the fire in the great hall, he would’ve sat in the kitchen behind Lambert as he kneaded the bread muttering to himself—breathing in their familiar scent, listening to the subtle vibration of their bodies grow until it bloomed in a full blown purr, letting it heal him.

Human Alphas didn’t purr for their packmates. They didn’t purr for other Alphas. They actually didn’t purr much at all, because it was an omega thing—and even the omegas, they reserved it for their partners, for their mates, for their Alphas. Even knowing that Jaskier didn’t have a shame bone in his body, and that he had bedded other Alphas, often and with pleasure, Geralt couldn’t ask that of him, not without compromising their fellowship. He couldn’t think about Jaskier refusing. He couldn’t think about scaring Jaskier off.

He almost jumped out of his skin again as something touched his hair—Jaskier’s hand, soft and gentle, he realized, hearing the bard’s voice right behind him. “Listen, even I can sense that you’re tired and you’re stressed and you’re just—what if I helped you with your hair? They’re still covered in the stuff.”

Geralt blinked. Remembered falling face-first in a puddle of arachas blood and digestive fluid. Remembers shoving hair out of his face with a muddied gauntlet, the snapped tie lost in the swamp. “Oh. My hair.”

“Yeah, oh,” Jaskier echoed with a laughter, not unkind. “You’re too tired to think, let me take care of it.”

The bard fished the bar of soap out of the tub without hesitation, worked it in a lather in his hands, and set to wash Geralt’s hair like it was his mission, like it was the most natural thing in the world, like they did it all the time. Geralt was too tired to think, and let him take care of it.

A distant part of his brain, the one that was most mutated and closest to his animal instincts, felt alarmed at having another Alpha so close to his neck—but it was fuzzy, fogged up. It was just Jaskier. His calloused fingers felt nice against Geralt’s scalp as they loosened up the worst of the dirt, the nasty stink dissolving like magic. He didn’t close his eyes, but it was so tempting. He really was tired. Meditation wasn’t going to cut it this time, he really needed to sleep—a nap actually sounded wonderful, in such warmth, in such safety.

Something pressing against his diaphgram, pushing to come out, gets rudely interrupted by a sharp tug above his ear. “The hell are you even doing, back there?” Geralt mutters, groggy and woozy, audibly swallowing around the purr that almost got out of his throat, fuck. So much for not making things weirder.

“Ah, I’m sorry—I don’t think this is coming out,” Jaskier says, still tugging. “I’m basically done, the rest is as clean as it’s going to be, but there’s a bit of—honestly I don’t even want to know, it’s just a clump of something. Maybe I can get it out with my brush? A comb would be better though, do you have one?”

“No.” Geralt scrubs his face, trying to wake himself up a bit. “It’s fine, just cut it off.”

“What?”

“Cut it off. Use the knife—it’s still somewhere on the floor.”

“First the trousers, now the hair—do you do this a lot, when you can’t get things clean?” Jaskier sounded absolutely appalled. “That seems so wasteful.”

Geralt shrugged. He had a point, but— “It’s just hair. It grows back.”

Jaskier sighed. “Fine, but we’ll do it my way. Get out of the tub and get dressed while I find my scissors. Do I even want to know how many times you gave yourself a ridiculously uneven bald patch and called it a day? Don’t answer.”

Rolling his eyes and climbing out of the tub, Geralt toweled off, got into a clean change of clothes and—because if he didn’t do something he just knew he was going to fall asleep—he set out to wipe down his swords, nose curling in distaste. Now that he doesn’t have it in his hair anymore, the mud-stench is manageable but something about it really set him off.

“Ah! Here we go,” the bard exclaimed a moment later, triumphantly pulling a pair of tiny scissors out of his pack. He climbed on the bed just behind Geralt, the mattress dipping slightly under his weight. “Stop doing whatever you’re doing and look straight ahead, please. What’s the point of all this, if I just end up giving you a lopsided haircut?”

Geralt hummed, wrapping his now clean sword in its protective cloth and setting it aside. “You could’ve just used the knife, I cut my hair with it a million—”

“I’m not even listening to you,” Jaskier cheerfully spoke over him, covering his shoulders with a towel. His fingers were gentle as they combed Geralt’s damp hair away from the offending tangle, sectioning off a portion from his temple to just behind his ear. Geralt had to bite the inside of his cheek. “Why do you even grow it out? You could just keep it short and save yourself a lot of grief. I would tease you about vanity, but long hair on Alphas went out of fashion how long ago, a couple centuries? You’re not that old.”

“No, I’m not.” Vesemir was, though. “I just prefer it long.”

Jaskier hummed absently. “Alright—I’m going to cut it like this, to give people the impression that you shaved youself partially bald on purpose and not by accident,” he explained, tracing lines on Geralt’s scalp with his fingernail. Shivers ran down Geralt’s spine, building pressure in his chest. “Alright?”

“Sure,” Geralt choked out. “Go ahead.”

The bard was precise and focused as he worked on cutting the hair, but it still felt like torture to Geralt; every snip of the scissors, every brush of fingers against the scalp, Jaskier’s muted, warm scent—he wasn’t wearing any of his usual fragrances, hadn’t bothered putting on any perfum knowing that they weren’t going to leave the room, and it was buttery and crisp, like a smatter of spice on a freshly baked loaf of bread, like the kitchen in Kaer Morhen, like safety, like home—it made Geralt’s core feel like jelly, and he had to tense every muscle in his body not to lean back into it.

“I’m done,” Jaskier finally announced after what seemed an eternity, putting the scissors down. “Not that you can see yourself—but what do you think? How does it feel? Breezy?”

Geralt was afraid to open his mouth. “Mmmh.”

“It’s a bit different, but I think it’ll make you look very—edgy. From this side, at least.” His nails scratched gently at the shaved side, unexpected and warm and tingly.

A shudder went through Geralt’s body as his core suddenly relaxed, before settling into deep, low vibrations. He could feel them start just below his sternum and propagate down his stomach and up his spine like slow, rich waves of warmth, and—Jaskier could feel them, too. He knew, because he’d gone still like a statue behind him, and he wasn’t breathing.

“I’m—sorry,” he croaked, mortified, an ache spreading in his gut as he tried to clench down. “I’m—I can’t make it stop.”

“That’s—that’s okay!” The bard sounded strangely strangled, but a hint of spicy-sunny wonder colored his unpolluted musk, rather than sour unease. He seemed to realize that his fingers were still frozen against Geralt’s temple, so he started to move them, petting along the newly cropped hair. “Does—this feel okay?”

“…Yes,” Geralt admitted. It was very nice, actually.

“I can tell,” Jaskier murmured, pleased. “You smell so much more relaxed now, and you sound—”

“I’m so sorry,” Geralt repeated, automatically.

“Don’t be, you have a lovely tone. Actually I’m a little flattered, it usually takes me a lot more work to get my Alphas to purr for me—I know how it sounds, but that’s actually good for you, did you know? There’s little, precious research about it, but apparently subvocal vibrations are naturally healing one one’s body and mind—”

“I know.” Geralt bit his lip. In for a copper, in for a crown. “My brethren and I at the school—we do that often.”

“Socially? That’s fascinating,” Jaskier commented. “Maybe something reminiscent of some kind of pack behaviour? It makes sense that it survived in an environment such as witcher schools, being such old institutions, but I wonder if you guys being injected with mutagens played a role in it…” He shifted a little on the bed, pressing his chest against Geralt’s back—and it was his turn to stop breathing now, because Jaskier was purring too, subtle and effortless and happy.

“You’re purring, too,” Geralt pointed out the obvious, unable to contain his surprise.

“That I am,” Jaskier answered. “I enter very easily in resonance, that’s a bard thing. I can stop if it makes you uncomfortable, but—”

“No.” He grimaced at the suddenness of his own answer. “I mean, I don’t mind.”

They stayed like that, pressed back to front, Jaskier slumped over Geralt’s shoulders and him leaning back against the bard, for quite a while—until Jaskier deemed the position stupid and uncomfortable and demanded to lie down, spooning properly with his arms wrapped around Geralt’s middle and his nose rubbing just against the scent gland in his neck.

Geralt had never thought he could have anything like this while he was on the Path. The winters at Kaer Morhen were a different matter—they were all witchers, they knew the unspoken rules between them, there were no human expectations to hinder them—but Jaskier was human.

“You’re smelling distressed again,” Jaskier mumbled in his skin, sleepy. “While still purring, which is something I never saw before and didn’t think was possible. You never stop learning.”

“Humans don’t usually do this,” Geralt said. “Unless they’re with—”

The vibrations against his back stuttered a little, and Jaskier scent soured so subtly Geralt wouldn’t have caught it, if he hadn’t been a witcher. “Don’t worry, I’m not expecting anything,” Jaskier drawled, interrupting him. “Just enjoying the moment until it lasts. What is making you smell like that?”

Geralt swallowed. “You not expecting anything, I guess.”

“Do you want me to expect something from this?” Jaskier asked, sounding a little incredulous.

“Witchers don’t want things,” not while they were on the Path. The winters at Kaer Morhen were a different matter—but he knew that Jaskier could smell it on him. The bard tighetened his arms around Geralt’s waist and pressed a careful kiss against the nape of his neck, sending a shiver down his spine.

Geralt close his eyes. A distant part of his brain, the one that was most mutated and closest to his animal instincts, felt alarmed at having another Alpha so close to his neck—but it was fuzzy, fogged up. It was just Jaskier, and Geralt had always liked the thrill anyway.