“What do you mean, Geralt knows more about girls?” Triss asked, as Eskel checked another door and made a face. 

“Oh, I mean– Geralt… well, he’s a little better at fitting into society in general than the rest of us, so he… interacts more… with women.” Eskel was clearly working very hard to come up with the words to say this.

“You mean he gets laid regularly,” Triss said, sparing him the need to be delicate.

“I wouldn’t say regularly,” Eskel said, amused. “But more often.”

“He’s better at society than you?” Triss was skeptical. “You seem reasonably well-socialized, to me.”

Eskel gave her a look that was hard to read, and continued down the hallway. “I’m missing half my face,” he said in a moment, a little curt. “Tends to put people off.” 

It certainly wasn’t half his face, and Triss had already gotten used to it, but she guiltily remembered her first impression, which had been that he was the scariest person here. “Does it really?” she said. “Everybody here has scars on their faces, though. I was starting to wonder if it was an initiation thing.”

Eskel swung around suddenly, leaning slightly into her personal space, and she shrank back in sudden fear from his frightful expression. Then he laughed, a little bitterly, and turned around and kept walking. “It does,” he said. “Weird. No, it’s not an initiation thing, it’s just an occupational hazard of getting the shit beat out of you by supernatural horrors for a living.”

“That wasn’t playing fair,” Triss protested. “It wasn’t your face that scared me so much as you being twice my size and looming at me in a dark hallway! Maybe don’t do that to people!”

“And you thought I was well-socialized,” he said.

“It always floored me,” Yennefer said, “how disgusting he is about hygiene and yet, he’s always so careful with his teeth.”

“I don’t think his teeth heal like other parts of him,” Jaskier said. “Like, I think they’re stronger than standard human teeth, but if he gets them knocked out I don’t think they’d grow back.”

“Fair,” Yennefer said. 

“Must be he’s not immune to tooth decay,” Jaskier said, “although we did determine that he doesn’t get tapeworms. Wait, don’t you know either?”

“Why would I know?” she asked.

“You’re a mage,” Jaskier said. “An Aretuza-educated mage. Their library must be– surely you know, like, everything about, uh,” he trailed off at her expression. “Magical. Stuff. Like. Like Witchers. Right?”

“Witchers are their own thing,” Yennefer said. “They don’t tell anyone their secrets. Which is why there are no more Witchers because everyone who knew what their thing was got killed so they can’t make any more.” Then she made a face. “Tapeworms?”

“You know,” Jaskier said, making a face and a nonspecific gesture. “Tapeworms.”

“I know what tapeworms are,” Yennefer said, “I grew up on a farm. What are you talking about?”

“Geralt doesn’t get tapeworms,” Jaskier said. “He figures he’s probably poisonous to them. Or all the potions he takes, anyway; no time for them to get established. He didn’t really know they were a thing until I explained them. Which is why he can just. Eat whole raw dead things and not worry about it.”

“That’s disgusting,” Yennefer said.

“You’re telling me,” Jaskier said. “He never did that in front of you?”

“No,” she said.

“Just, grabbed a rabbit, snapped its neck, ate the whole thing bones and all?” Jaskier made a vague pantomime of the neck-snapping movement and then wished he hadn’t. “Usually leaves the skin but not always.”

“That’s horrible,” she said. “What the fuck.”

“He does that all the time,” Jaskier said. “So I had to explain to him that humans can’t eat like that not only because it’s gross but also because we’d get worms and die. Do you know what kind of parasites rabbits can harbor? Well done for me, thanks.”

“That’s absolutely repulsive,” Yennefer said. 

“He’ll do it with deer too but at least he has to cut them up first,” Jaskier said. “Though it’s really impressive how much of one he can just. Eat. Bones and all, it’s incredibly fucked-up.”

“Stop,” she said. “Oh my gods, stop.” 

“He’s so disgusting, Yennefer, and not at all for any of the reasons people think Witchers are gross. Just, on a personal, human level, he is a repulsive person. With terrible habits.” He gestured wildly. “And I know he has to have been dialing that back for you, because he was making an effort for you, and I wonder if that was on purpose or if he felt compelled or what, but it was deeply weird to witness it and I don’t know how I feel about discovering that it was a whole bizarre djinn-inspired mindfuck.”

“And yet,” Yennefer said, “you still fucked him, of your own free will, without compulsion.”

“I wish I fucked him,” Jaskier said. “We never got to, there wasn’t any privacy.”

“Even with him eating whole rabbits right in front of you,” Yennefer said. 

“Yes,” Jaskier said, defeated. “I have no standards. I can’t help it.”