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Jaskier sniffled. Then, when there was no reaction, sniffled louder.
Beside the burbling brook, Geralt continued scraping the drowner guts off of his gambeson, cruelly ignoring Jaskier’s plight.
“Perhaps you think I am ascribing your great battle to song,” Jaskier called archly, his quill pausing upon the notebook perched on his knee. “Nay, dear friend, I am making my Last Will and Testament.”
“You caught a chill, Jaskier,” Geralt said measuredly, inspecting his dripping garment.
“And a fever,” Jaskier drew the camp blanket tighter over his shoulders and shivered. “Soon I shall grow insensible as my brain boils, and lose my voice from the strain-”
“I can only hope,” Geralt muttered.
Jaskier gasped in outrage, rising to stomp over and smack Geralt on the shoulder, which moved him not at all.
“Summoned the last of your energy for that, did you?”
“If I was at my full strength, you would be in the river,” Jaskier hissed, returning to his seat and sitting heavily. “Such cruelty! When it is your fault I am in this state!”
Geralt sighed extravagantly. “You mean when I told you to stay put, yet you followed me and fell arse first in the freezing water?”
Jaskier waved away the accusation, coughing pointedly as he slowly bent to retrieve his discarded notebook. “Just because you are blessed with an unflappable constitution doesn’t exempt you from human sympathy, Geralt.”
Hauling his damp gambeson from the water, Geralt gave it a sniff then, satisfied, spread it under the sun to dry. Jaskier had fallen silent at this time, and when Geralt turned around, it was to see him laying on his side on a patch of grass, huddling pathetically beneath the camp blanket with his knees pressed to his chest. The pages of Jaskier’s open notebook ruffled in the breeze.
Quietly, Geralt stepped over and sat down at Jaskier’s side, taking a breath of the sweet summer air to clear the scent of rotting drowners from his nose.
“You’re fine,” Geralt said finally.
“How do you know?” came the petulant answer, muffled by Jaskier’s blanket.
If you were truly dying, you would hide it better, Geralt didn’t answer. He still remembered the incident with the wyvern where Jaskier had said not a peep about the wound in his side until after Geralt had slayed the beast, only to turn and find Jaskier slumped over on the side of the road, pale and bleeding through his doublet.
I didn’t want to distract you, Jaskier had slurred, smiling with bloodless lips.
The memory vexed Geralt with guilt. Sighing, he put his hand on Jaskier’s slumped shoulder, feeling his shivers through the blanket.
“What do you need?” Geralt asked, and Jaskier turned with an expression of surprise.
“A soft bed and a comely nursemaid,” Jaskier hurriedly added as Geralt rolled his eyes, “but I’ll settle for soup.”
“Soup I can do,” Geralt made to stand, only to feel himself tugged down by the elbow.
“And … perhaps my poor, aching head would feel better with some stroking?” Jaskier asked hopefully, clearly emboldened by Geralt’s sudden generosity.
“Save that for your comely nursemaid,” Geralt groused, but his gameson would take a while yet to dry and Jaskier’s eyes were large and puppyish, tugging at the space in Geralt’s chest which should have been, had been cold and empty before a certain musical menace had waltzed into his existence.
Somehow, before the end of the night, Geralt had been cajoled into not only making Jaskier a soup, but a poultice for his head, then holding him through the night for warmth (as Jaskier claimed, though it was still the dead of summer). And of course, stroking his forehead and nape, carding his fingers through Jaskier’s dandelion-soft and only slightly sweaty hair as the bard’s breathing grew slow.
“A nursemaid you are not,” Jaskier mumbled happily beneath Geralt’s clumsy ministrations. “But you are comely enough, my friend. I shall leave you everything in my Will.”
“Shut up, Jaskier,” Geralt said fondly as Jaskier finally drifted into a deep, healing sleep.