if you're looking for some geraskier prompts, i offer you this: geralt genuinely thinks he's ugly. to him, the hair and the eyes and the overall witcher-y-ness make him complete undesirable to humans unless he pays them. early on in their relationship, jaskier takes the time to convince him otherwise, listing off every single thing that he loves about his witcher's body. (PLEASE feel free to add some more non-human witcher traits, too. we love some fangs in this house)

Geralt isn’t surprised when villagers shrink back from him in fear, or when children run from him in the street. He knows what he looks like. Deathly pallor, ghostly white hair, yellow eyes which glow with unnatural luminescence. His is a face of nightmares.

It’s even worse when his concentration slips and his pupils slide back to their natural cat-like slit, excellent for hunting beasts in the darkness but a horrifying sight for anyone to behold.

And that joke he likes to tell about having his fangs filed down... well, let’s just say that doesn’t seem so funny when he’s been on the road for half a year and he realises his canines have grown back in, sharp and pointed and threatening.

So he understands why men’s breath catches in their throats when they see him, and why townsfolk look away when he passes. His appearance marks outwardly what he has always known to be true on the inside: that he is not, and never has been, human. That he is an abomination, a thing only good for killing, and that they are right to be afraid of him.

He tries not to impose his presence on others. But in occasional moments of weakness, he just wants to be around people, even if he can never be one of them. He sits in the darkest corner of the tavern that he can find and pays for his ale with an extravagant tip.

And that’s how he meets Jaskier. Barely out of childhood, flush with the beauty of youth, wide blue eyes and rosy cheeks and a smile that never leaves his face. He is, in a word, breathtaking.

Geralt does everything he can think of to rebuff him. His is no fit life for a young man, and he is no fit traveling companion for anyone. And yet, Jaskier stays. It is baffling.

Geralt prefers it, at least, when Jaskier walks ahead of him. That way, he can watch over him without having to feel Jaskier’s gaze on him in return. When they walk together, he sometimes catches Jaskier staring, looking for too long at his face or his hair or his blood-spattered armour. He knows he is repulsive, but it still hurts to feel like the object of sick fascination, like one of those travelling freak shows with oddities presented in cages.

Still, sometimes, he is weak, and when they stop at an inn for the night he will order a bath and allow Jaskier to sit by him in the tub. When Jaskier wants to smother him with oils, he agrees to it even though they burn noxiously through his heightened sense of smell, because he can’t change the way he looks but he can at least cover up the way he smells.

And when Jaskier offers to wash his hair, he will let him. Even though he should refuse. Even though it’s not right to oblige someone like Jaskier to put his hands on a thing like Geralt. Because Jaskier clearly feels obligation, or guilt, or something of the sort, and Geralt should not take advantage in this way.

But it feels so good, to have someone touch him tenderly for once, to have  Jaskier carefully work out the knots in his hair and to scratch light fingers over his scalp, and in those moments Geralt lets himself imagine that it is because Jaskier cares, because he can look past Geralt’s hideous mutations and to the person he is beneath.

In his very weakest moments, he even lets himself pretend that Jaskier can see him as he cannot see himself: as human. As a thing of beauty. As someone worthy of care, perhaps even worthy of love.

But that’s only ever a passing fantasy. Because who could ever love a monster like him?