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janie_tangerine
“You have such nice hair,” his mother always tells him, ruffling it with her long, slender fingers. Geralt always preens under her touch, and he smiles wide up at her. “Just like mine.”
“Yours is prettier,” Geralt always replies, same as this one time, and she smiles when he says that. He likes his mother’s hair — of course it’s the prettiest. It’s soft and red and bright and long and slightly less curly than his own, and it fits her so well. Geralt thinks he also would like to wear it long when he grows up and becomes a knight.
She always compliments that. She’s been doing that since he was born. Sometimes, though, he wonders about his eyes. Hers are light blue and his own are brown, and it’s not that he doesn’t like them, he thinks they’re okay, though his mother’s are so much prettier, but when he asks her, she never answers.
“You have pretty eyes, too,” he asks her. “Why don’t I have them?”
“It just was chance,” she replies, voice half-choked, and then she doesn’t say anything more. He tries to ask for more information, but she never answers, and so he lets it go. It’s not like they need anyone else around anyway — they were fine for years without his father, whoever he is, so what’s the point in thinking about that any further?
So he has the eyes of some man he’ll never know. It’s all right. You can’t miss what you don’t have, after all. He tells her that he wants to have it long like her, but his mom tells him that she’ll give it a trim, it’s too unruly, and why wouldn’t he want to have nice, tidy hair?
He lets her cut it. She’d probably know best. She has the prettiest hair in the world after all, doesn’t she, and he loves her so much, and he wants to make her proud so very much, and maybe he’ll be a healer like her when he grows up. He tells her that as the scissors cut and cut.
“Of course you’ll be,” she smiles, and maybe her voice feels a bit too tight, but he barely notices it.
2.
“What’s with that hair now?”
“Look at it, it’s — will mine come out like that, too?”
“Please, you won’t do the Grasses more than once. If you survive the first one.”
“Shut up, of course I will!”
“Gods, it’s so weird.”
“Geralt, did you become older than Vesemir in a month?”
He doesn’t answer any of them.
Not that he has any business doing it. He just walks through the yard, ignoring each and all of them, trying to let that slide over him, until he’s inside Kaer Morhen and he’s walked into his little room and he’s found himself staring at his own face in the mirror that — didn’t use to be there, but — he thinks the alchemists found him one. He didn’t want it, but — he also spent a week resting here after the Grasses and they wanted to check on him and so they left it there, he doesn’t know why he needed it, but —
He looks at himself.
His brown eyes are gone, and now they’re — that unnatural, eerie yellow, but — that’s — most of the others have them like that. He had figured it would happen. But —
His hair is just so white. They’re right. He looks like an old man, but in an unnatural way — it’s not normal old white. It’s just — as if color completely drained out of it, and it’s not as curly anymore, and he hates how the short cut his mother favoured falls over his head, and —
He punches the mirror.
It shatters into a lot of pieces, and his wounds are healed in the span of two minutes.
He bandages his own hand anyway, he won’t risk dying of infection after the hell the Grasses put him through, but —
He’s not fucking keeping it short anymore. He wanted it long, he always did, and short and like this it just looks horrible and they drilled into all of the trainees, him included, that witchers don’t care about looks nor need to, and they don’t care about luxuries or anything except their job and that short hair would be better when it comes to fighting monsters because it can’t be grabbed at —
He hates it.
He hates it.
If he can’t choose anything about this, at least he’ll fucking grow it out. Not that anyone else will ever like it, but it’s all right. As long as he doesn’t absolutely loathe it, he’ll live.
3.
He’s been a fucking idiot.
He could have just — he could have tied the damned hair back, but no, he had to be in a hurry and he didn’t even listen to Jaskier when he asked if he could use one, but — the way the villagers put it it was urgent and there was a kidnapped child involved and he couldn’t afford to waste a single second, and —
Well.
Turns out that the child had managed to actually run from the lair where the wight dragged her so Geralt only had to kill her and bring the kid back home, but it had been a nasty fight and he’s pretty sure it was a kind of wight he never saw before because the guts that leaked all over him when he cut her open are a lot harder and stickier to get rid of than usual, and —
And now he’s more or less bathed and staring at himself in the inn’s mirror and trying to look at his hair, the only part he couldn’t manage to wash, and —
The fucking guts stuck into it.
He can’t seem to un-knot it, and it’s all — covered in brown slime and it smells like wight guts and he wants to throw up still, and it’s covering all of it except maybe a few strands in the front.
I’ll have to cut it, he realises, and —
He breathes in, grabs a small knife and only realises his hand is shaking when he grabs the handle tighter, but what else can he do?
It’s hair.
It grows back
Witchers aren’t vain like that, it’s not like it matters, it’s just fucking hair, and the moment the blade reaches his hair he can barely begin to cut before his fingers shake again.
“Fuck,” he growls, wishing it wasn’t this fucking hard, and then the door opens, and —
“Geralt…?” Jaskier asks, putting a couple of plates on the side — right. He went for dinner. Hot food. He forgot that.
“Leave it,” he says, trying to raise his hand again, and then his fingers shake so much the knife drops. “Fuck.”
“Geralt,” Jaskier says, coming closer, “we’ve known each other for what, six years, and I’ve never seen so upset as now, so can you please tell me what’s going on?”
He closes his mouth. He’s not — maybe if he shuts up Jaskier will leave it —
“All right,” Jaskier presses, grabbing the knife from the ground, “let me just see if I can decipher this situation.”
“Jaskier —”
“That’s — wight guts, I suppose.”
He grunts in agreement. No point in denying it.
“And I suppose you didn’t manage to get it out.”
“Obviously. Will you just stop telling me things I know already?”
Jaskier opens his mouth, then — then his eyes go wide, Geralt can see it in the mirror, and then they narrow, and then they look sad, and — what the fuck is his problem?
“Let me guess,” he says, his voice suddenly impossibly soft, “you don’t really want to cut that pretty hair of yours but it seems like you won’t get that out of it regardless?”
He doesn’t answer.
He figures there’s no need to.
“I think I have something that might help,” Jaskier says.
“What?” He hates how hopeful that sounded, for his standards.
“As much as you think my hair products are ridiculous,” he goes on, “I have a rather good oil that — I usually put it on after the soap, it makes the hair silkier, but I’m sure that with enough effort I could untangle that mess. I can find a bucket and you can lean back there. Might take a while, but you wouldn’t have to cut it.”
He should say no. He should tell Jaskier to just cut it. His old teachers telling him that witchers care not for vanity are all voices in the back of his head telling him to just be done with it —
“If you can,” he says, and before he knows it, he’s laying on the ground with his hair soaking in the bucket behind him, full of scalding hot water, and Jaskier’s fingers are first trying to get rid of as much guts as he can, and then he starts rubbing oil through his still dirty hair, getting slime and gore and whatever fucking else was stuck in there out of it, and Jaskier’s fingers are nice and it hurts less than he had ever thought it might be, and what if he closes his eyes and lets him do that? At worst, he’ll be relaxed when Jaskier has failed.
He nods off. He was tired. He doesn’t know how long it passes, but then —
“All done!” Jaskier’s voice is so cheery, it immediately throws him out of the moment. He blinks his eyes open.
“You — you managed?” He rasps.
“Stand up and look for yourself,” Jaskier says, patting his shoulder, and —
He stands, and looks at himself in the mirror, and —
Oh.
Jaskier not only managed to clean out his hair completely — it’s half-dried now, so he figures he nodded off for a while —, but it kind of looks shinier, silkier. Maybe it was the oil? Also —
“Did you trim the ends?” He asks, noticing that they are more even, looking less… haggard.
“Just a tiny bit,” Jaskier says. “I know you like it long. But it was split quite badly and I thought I’d trim it some, and yes, after getting it out first I washed it with good soap and then I did the oil again. Took a while, but I have to say, I’m very happy with it.”
It’s — Geralt thinks it’s never looked this good in his entire life, since the Grasses. He swallows, a hand touching the table. “Thanks,” he says, finally turning towards Jaskier. “I — it looks good. I mean, not that I care, but —”
“Geralt, you were upset as fuck at the idea of cutting it, spare me the lie. It’s not like I judge. I do carry ten different oils around for mine, right? And hair as pretty as that, it absolutely deserves good care.”
“… As pretty as mine?”
“Of course it is! It looks like fresh snow bathed in moonlight, and I know you don’t care for the color, it’s obvious, but it’s exceedingly pretty. Any time you want me to help with it, you just ask.”
Oh.
Oh.
Jaskier is smiling at him as he absolutely means it.
No one is more surprised than he is when he tentatively smiles back. He doesn’t remember the last time he did. Not for this. Not… because he actually was happy about it.
“Thanks,” he says, quietly. “Might take you up on it.”
Thing is… he thinks he will.
He really thinks he will.
End.
