Archive of Our Own ^beta

(1)

The wind has picked up considerably by the time they finally stop to set up camp, made all the more bitter without the warmth of sunlight to soften its bite. Geralt is probably enjoying himself immensely, the bastard, what with the way he runs warmer than most humans due to the mutagens coursing through his blood. No doubt the frigid breeze raising strips of gooseflesh down Jaskier’s arms is actually pleasant for the Witcher. 

Involuntarily, a shudder ripples through Jaskier and sets his teeth chattering, though he clamps his mouth shut immediately. As discreetly as possible, he shuffles closer to the fire. He refuses to confess that he’s cold, not when Geralt had raked his eyes down Jaskier’s outfit just that morning and made his opinion known with a remarkably expressive raised eyebrow. 

It’s just a little bit of cold, ultimately. Jaskier has survived worse; surely he can make it through one night of this. He’ll lay his bedroll closer to the fire and fold the edges beneath his body to maximize the amount of heat held in against his body. Morning will come before he knows it. 

A blanket thumps against his chest then, startling him so that he’s barely able to catch it before it tumbles into the dirt. He clutches it close. It’s oddly reminiscent of the woolen blanket that had been folded at the foot of the bed in the last inn they’d stayed at. The weight of it in Jaskier’s arms is comforting, and even in the few seconds that he has been holding it, he can feel a pinprick of warmth blooming in his chest and spreading out through his torso. 

“Did you—” he starts, but he trails off, not knowing what to ask. Did you steal this, certainly, but also did you know I was stubbornly willing to freeze to an early death to avoid stroking your ego, and did you give me this because you were worried. In the end he says nothing and peers owlishly at Geralt instead. 

Geralt’s lips thin at the scrutiny. It’s a grimace of discomfort and not irritation, though, made apparent by the way Geralt’s eyes skate away from Jaskier’s instead of narrowing. “It’s cold,” he says gruffly. “I don’t want to dig your grave first thing in the morning.”

“You could always cremate me,” Jaskier offers as he wraps the blanket around his shoulders and tucks himself into his bedroll. “Take me with you, and sprinkle me in the four corners of the Continent, so that I may truly see the world.” The blanket is stupidly comfortable, and he smothers a sigh of happiness into its folds.

Geralt begins banking the campfire. “Go to sleep,” he says, not unkindly. “Wake me if you get cold again.”

Jaskier drifts off long before Geralt finishes speaking. 

(2)

They're just an hour from the next village when a cockatrice comes tearing out of the sky and descends upon them. It hooks its talons into Jaskier's arm with a loud screech and flails its tail wildly, and only Jaskier’s frantic shimmying and ducking spares him from sporting a new scar across his cheek.

Geralt manages to dislodge it by casting Aard, but not before its talons rake straight through the delicate fabric of Jaskier’s doublet, ripping away half the sleeve. As Geralt makes quick work of the cockatrice, Jaskier examines the damage, distraught; the creature tore clean through the most delicate of the embroidery, and the tailor who sold him the doublet back in Oxenfurt might be the only woman on the Continent with the skills to mend it. 

It’s a true tragedy. The doublet had been one of Jaskier’s favorites, powder blue with silver embroidery down the sleeves that evoked the image of flower petals and yellow buttons marching in neat lines down the front. 

“Are you alright?” Geralt asks, not even breathing heavily. Meanwhile, Jaskier’s heart is still racing, even as it slowly sinks into the vicinity of his stomach alongside the realization that he’ll have to discard this doublet entirely. 

He doesn’t let on to his devastation, though. Geralt, who owns maybe three tunics and two pairs of trousers, surely wouldn’t understand. Instead Jaskier blinks away the tears pooling in the corners of his eyes and plasters a mildly disgruntled expression onto his face. “I’m alive, I suppose, but I’m a far cry from alright! Look what that, that, that disgusting beast did to my doublet! I’m in absolute shambles, Geralt, how am I to perform tonight looking like a harlot dressed in last season’s castaways?”

Geralt quirks an eyebrow. He scans the rest of Jaskier’s body and, upon deeming him uninjured, picks up Roach’s reins and starts plodding once more toward the village. 

“Oh, it’ll take half my coin just to afford the fabric to mend this,” Jaskier laments as he scurries to follow. It’s a lie, of course; he’s already resigned to selling the doublet for scraps, but that’s hardly Geralt’s fault, and Jaskier doesn’t want him to worry the way he would if Jaskier didn’t complain at least a little. 

The next morning, he pays a visit to the local tailor and emerges with a fraction of what he’d originally paid for the doublet. Still, it’s better than nothing. When he gets back to the inn, Geralt doesn’t ask him where he’d gone, just remarks that in a stroke of good fortune, there had been a contract for the cockatrice and he had already collected the coin. “It’s enough to cover another night or two in the inn, if you want to work the crowd,” Geralt offers, and that’s that. 

Except two days later, Geralt tromps back into their room and chucks a paper-wrapped package onto the bed. 

“What’s that?” Jaskier asks, already bouncing over to pick it up and turn it in his hands. He glances briefly at Geralt, who inclines his head in permission, before tearing the paper away. 

It takes him a moment to recognize what he has unearthed as a doublet, cornflower blue with floral motifs stitched in twin columns down the front, and it takes him even longer to recognize the flowers themselves. “Forget-me-nots,” he breathes, through the lump that has suddenly appeared in his throat, as though his heart is finally trying to make a run for it. 

“They’re your favorite,” Geralt says, and though the words are a statement, his tone holds a question, as though he is seeking confirmation that his assumption is correct.

But seeking confirmation suggests that Geralt has put enough thought into the premise to have made an assumption in the first place, and Jaskier doesn’t know what to do with that. 

“Most people assume I favor buttercups, given the name I bear,” he says, deflecting his own emotional crisis. “The rest think I must prefer roses, for their poetic value and symbolism of love.”

“But you don’t,” says Geralt. 

“I don’t,” Jaskier agrees. “Forget-me-nots have been my favorite for — ah, pardon the joke, but — for as long as I can remember.” He finally slides the doublet on over his chemise, noting where it hangs loose and how the sleeves come to rest a little too far past his wrists. He’ll have to get it tailored, of course, just as he gets all of his clothing tailored, but there are surprisingly few alterations required, highlighting yet again that Geralt has been paying attention to him — enough to have an approximate sense of his measurements. 

For the first time since Geralt entered their room, Jaskier turns to fully look at Geralt, trying to find the right words to say thank you and how did you know and why did you go to the trouble, but he forgets all that once he catches a glimpse of the expression on Geralt’s face. It’s simultaneously hungry and heavy with something uneasy. He doesn’t want to talk about it, Jaskier realizes. 

Just this once, he thinks he can grant Geralt’s wish. 

“I feel quite betrayed, you know,” he teases. “If you’ve had such good taste this whole time, then you clearly choose to dress like a mourning widow, and that’s just unconscionable! We must give you an image-appropriate makeover, to match your newly rehabilitated reputation.”

Geralt’s frown deepens into a full scowl, but the tension sloughs off his shoulders along with it, and his relief at being back on familiar ground is nearly palpable. “Try it, and you’ll soon learn to play your lute one-handed.”

Jaskier clicks his tongue. “Yikes, touchy. Well, maybe we’ll start simple, learn to accessorize.”

(3)

When Geralt finally trudges back into town, alghoul head in hand and Jaskier in tow, Roach is nowhere to be found, and everyone in the vicinity seems to have developed short-term amnesia. 

It takes judicious application of one of Geralt’s daggers and Jaskier menacingly whispering a few words in Elder that really mean you’re an ass but sound somewhat like a curse before the barkeep finally breaks down, admitting that the local lordling had heard tell of a Witcher in the area and paid the tavern a visit the night before. 

“I didn’t see nothin’,” the barkeep insists, “an’ I ‘specially didn’t say nothin’, but it’s possible the lord left with a mare more’n he came with. Liked her coat, see. If I had to make a guess.”

After a moment, Geralt extracts his hand from the barkeep’s collar and lets the man slide back across the bar to settle again onto his own two feet. 

“It won’t be difficult to get her back,” Jaskier notes. “Just turn that glare on him; he’ll shit his pants in his haste to appease you, and to avoid finding himself at the wrong end of one of your swords.”

The barkeep clears his throat hesitantly. “Ah, Master Witcher, sir,” he says in a small voice. Geralt closes his eyes and appears to swallow a sigh, so Jaskier turns to the man and gestures for him to continue. “The lord only takes audiences with nobility. Thinks himself too good for us common folk, see. You’d not make it within ten paces of the gates without bein' turned away. Could be weeks ‘fore he agrees to see you.”

Geralt pins the innkeep with a glare that causes the man to squeak and cower beneath the bar. Then, with a smile that is infinitely more bared teeth than gesture of goodwill, Geralt grits out, “Thank you for your help,” turns on his heel, and stalks back to their room. 

“Surely the lordling would make an exception if a Witcher demanded an audience?” Jaskier says, hastening to fall in step. “Especially a Witcher who still, ugh, reeks of rotting alghoul.”

Geralt only shakes his head. Once they reach the room, he begins preparing his swords and armor. “There’s no need to try our luck. Time to put that courtly reputation of yours to good use.”

“Geralt, I don’t know how it has escaped your notice, but I’m a bard. My courtly reputation is good for absolute fuck-all outside of revelry and merrymaking.”

Geralt grunts impatiently. “And when you aren’t a bard, you’re a noble.”

Jaskier freezes where he’s standing. Slowly, deliberately, he moves to lean against the wall, his arms crossed casually in front of his chest, one ankle hooked behind the other. “I’m sure I have no earthly idea what you could mean,” he tries, and he hopes that Geralt won’t notice the way his voice has suddenly jumped an octave in pitch. 

Just as slowly, as though Jaskier is the one making no sense in this situation, Geralt says, “You’ve never used a last name or said where you’re from, suggesting you know the power of both. You wear ridiculous finery, the intricacies of which you’re intimately familiar with. Not to mention you have a courtly reputation to begin with. So stop acting stupid, and get dressed. You’ll never secure an audience with the bastard if you’re showing off your chemise to all and sundry like some backwater tart.”

Jaskier gasps and sputters, utterly taken aback and hardly knowing which part of Geralt’s speech to address first. “A tart? A backwater tart, no less! Backwater tarts wish they had half my charm and sexual prowess! And you’ve, you’ve got some nerve, Geralt, trying to, to take advantage of my nobility — um, alleged nobility, that is — right after insulting my virtue and slandering me. Imagine the outrage I’d feel if I were actually noble—”

Geralt tosses a doublet unceremoniously at Jaskier, who squawks and scrambles to catch it before it can fall to the floor. Geralt stills, then, and turns to face Jaskier with a pinched expression. “Doesn’t matter to me if you’re noble or not,” he says in a low tone. “You’re still Jaskier. Still annoying; still unshakable.”

Jaskier looks down at the doublet in his hands to hide the way his cheeks burn as relief trickles down his spine. “Oh, well, as long as I’m still annoying,” he says, but even he can tell the indignance he’s affecting rings false. A small smile stretches unbidden upon his lips. “Come on, then, let’s go rescue the love of your life.”

(4)

For once, Geralt is the one who has been invited to the gala, which is being thrown in honor of Geralt ridding the city of the werewolf problem that had plagued it for the past few months, and Jaskier is the one accompanying him. The Lord and Lady had made it clear they were sparing no expense, so grateful were they for Geralt’s assistance. 

Which means, of course, that Geralt had wanted to skip town the night before, the ungrateful fucker, and had to be aggressively coaxed into attending by Jaskier. 

Jaskier regrets it now, though, because Geralt has fucked off to a corner to stand menacingly and glare at any would-be well-wishers. Meanwhile, Jaskier is stuck with the thankless task of making the rounds and chatting with the attendees and reminding them that, despite the startlingly accurate impression he’s doing of a disgruntled hirikka, Geralt is generous and noble and quite friendly, once you get to know him. The least Geralt could do is pretend not to be miserable, honestly. This is all for Geralt’s benefit, in the end; nobles who believe him to have a kind heart will speak highly of him to their peers, which translates into those peers being more willing to pay a fair price for contracts down the road.

Jaskier takes a break what feels like a thousand years later in order to hunt down a glass of wine to wet his parched throat. He thinks he ought to check up on Geralt, remind him to look pensive instead of annoyed, but halfway to the corner Geralt has claimed — and, really, did it have to be the darkest corner in the whole damn hall, too? — Jaskier is waylaid by one of the lords he’d spoken to earlier, a younger man whose name Jaskier had forgotten immediately upon learning it. Keren? Kearney?

“Aren’t you a darling thing,” the lord asks in a manner that might be an attempt at seduction, but might also just be the tone of someone used to getting what he wants. “With eyes so wide and blue, and your mouth so pretty pink. Join me for a dance, won’t you?”

Jaskier licks his lips and takes another sip of wine. His eyes dart to Geralt’s corner, but Geralt isn’t paying him any mind, and Jaskier doesn’t know how to get his attention discreetly. “Ah, I’m quite tired, my lord, and unfamiliar with Temerian dancing besides,” Jaskier hedges. “I’m sure there are others here who would prove more satisfactory dance partners than I.”

The lord’s eyes narrow. Kellen, maybe? “You presume to know what would satisfy me better than I?” 

Jaskier smiles apologetically. “Not at all, my lord. I simply do not wish to dampen your enjoyment when I step on your toes for the fourth time.”

The lord’s expression warms again. “Rest assured that your company is joy enough, then, and come join me for a dance.”

“If it pleases you.” Jaskier sets his goblet down and takes the lord’s hand, letting himself be pulled into the throng. They enter just as a fast-paced jig begins, and Jaskier hates it long before the first bead of sweat rolls down the back of his neck. The dance calls for them to throw their partners about quite bodily, and the lord misses no opportunity to press close to Jaskier. Distantly, Jaskier counts the bars, wondering how many he’ll have to endure before he can finally beg off. 

And then another hand slips between Jaskier’s and the lord’s and pulls Jaskier to another partner’s side.

“May I cut in?” Geralt says, having already cut in. 

“Witcher,” the lord greets, shedding all pretenses of charm. 

“I’m not usually one for parties,” says Geralt, his amber eyes flashing in the lowlight, “but the ones thrown for me? Well.” This time when he says, “May I cut in,” his voice brooks no argument. With a scowl, the lord passes Jaskier off and slips away, and Geralt wastes no time in tugging Jaskier close. They complete a few cycles of the dance, Geralt leading and Jaskier following, and Jaskier notices that with each cycle, Geralt is pulling them closer and closer to the edge of the crowd.

“I didn’t know you could dance. Or that you enjoyed it,” Jaskier comments as he places a hand against Geralt’s and pivots past him. 

“I don’t,” Geralt grunts. With a final spin, he breaks through the last of the dancers and drags Jaskier to the corner he had been occupying previously. “But he was bothering you.”

“I wouldn’t have let him take liberties, if that’s what you were worried about. I know how to deal with drunk lords who feel entitled to whatever pretty thing they’ve set their eyes on.”

“I know that.” Jaskier has no time to crow before Geralt continues, “I meant you shouldn’t have to dance. If you don’t want to.”

Jaskier examines him. He feels like some things are clicking into place, though he has no clue what those things are, or where they're headed. “I wanted to,” he says, entirely to see how Geralt will react and not at all because he actually means it. 

Geralt growls. “You never want to dance. There’s no point in both of us being miserable.”

“Just you, is that it,” Jaskier says, unimpressed. 

Geralt doesn’t answer, and that’s answer enough. 

Jaskier conducts a perfunctory scan of the hall. He has interacted with most of the important nobles in attendance, and Geralt has already received the coin he is owed. “You’ve met with the Lord and Lady?” he asks, and when Geralt nods, Jaskier takes hold of his wrist and begins tugging him toward the exit. “I think it’s quite stupid for either of us to be miserable when we could be happily riding to the next town instead, with all the dancing and stuffy outfits left behind,” he says with a devious grin, and the barely-there smile Geralt bestows upon him in return is blinding in its brilliance. 

(5)

After an hour of fruitless tossing and turning, Jaskier gives up sleeping as a lost cause and sits upright in his bedroll. The embers of their fire glow dimly, drawing Jaskier’s eye and burning bright afterimages into the backs of his eyelids, but his eyes already burn with exhaustion, so it’s not much of a change. At least the dancing colors are novel. 

Given the mesmerizing glow of the embers, Jaskier doesn’t realize Geralt is awake or that Geralt is watching him until he asks, in his characteristic gravelly rumble, “Can’t sleep?”

“Mm,” says Jaskier. 

They don’t talk for a bit, and the quiet is comfortable, ambient. In the distance, a stream gurgles. Slightly closer, leaves rustle as nocturnal fauna venture forth from their dens to eat and play. 

“Nightmares,” Geralt says, and it should be a question, because there’s no way Geralt could know about the images that dance through Jaskier’s dreams: Geralt dying of blood loss from a gash to his thigh too deep to stanch until he can swallow a vial of Kiss; Geralt’s head being torn off by a pack of drowners too large to fight alone; Geralt dying, and dying, and dying, and Jaskier unable to save him. There’s no way Geralt could know, because Jaskier has not told him. So it should be a question. 

But it’s not.

“Can Witchers read minds?” Jaskier asks, the levity he had aimed for undercut by the weariness that weighs down his words. “How else could you possibly know that?”

Geralt is quiet for a moment. Then he turns to lay on his back, the amber of his eyes disappearing from Jaskier’s line of sight. “I have them, too, sometimes. I’m familiar with the way they linger, the scars they leave that no one else can see.”

Jaskier frowns. “Nightmares operate on fear, though. I thought Witchers didn’t feel fear.”

“Mm.” An owl calls, and calls again. “Witchers feel fear, but we don’t let it rule us, or govern our actions. Fear is...a warning. A reminder that even we have limits, and disregarding them will lead, inevitably, to our own demise.”

“You’re the bravest of us all, then,” Jaskier murmurs. “To feel fear, the acrid tang of it coating your tongue, the bone-deep desire to seek safety — and then to turn your back on fear itself, instead of the monster that has inspired it, simply so no one else will have to experience that selfsame fear…”

“Brave, or resigned to my fate?” Geralt says wryly. Jaskier concedes the point with a halfhearted shrug that Geralt probably can’t even see. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, but his mind is no less quiet now than it was an hour ago; he opens his eyes again and looks up at the vast swath of stars glittering overhead. He tries counting them, if only to give his mind something to focus on, and gives up when he loses count for the fourth time.

Geralt’s bedroll rustles, then, long after Jaskier had assumed Geralt had fallen asleep, and Jaskier looks over to find him lifting the corner of his blanket in invitation. Slowly, Jaskier rises, and pads over, and slips into the space Geralt has made, and lets Geralt manhandle him so he is lying on his side, with his head atop Geralt’s chest, and Geralt’s impossibly slow heartbeat pulsing in his ear. “Breathe with me,” Geralt rumbles, his whole chest vibrating beneath Jaskier and sending a shiver down Jaskier’s spine in tandem. “Count the beating of my heart. Even invisible scars heal with time.”

Jaskier breathes in, breathes out, and Geralt’s scent settles somewhere in the hollow of his chest, a tangible reminder that Geralt isn’t dead. Geralt is here. Geralt is alive. Jaskier repeats the words to himself like a familiar refrain, in time with the slow thumping of Geralt’s heart, and he doesn’t even notice when the melody lulls him to sleep.

(+1)

Jaskier frowns down at the stew piled high in his bowl. It’s warm and hearty and, most importantly, free. However, it’s also riddled with chunks of carrot that are too browned by spices and gravy to discern by sight alone. He pokes at an offending lump, unsure whether it’s carrot or potato, and ultimately decides it’s better not to chance it.

It’s incredibly disappointing. He had sung his heart out and, in return for his efforts, expected a nice bowl of carrotless stew and a hunk of warm bread. Yet here he is, utterly breadless, with stew that might as well be more carrot than edible, for all that Jaskier will be able to stomach of it.

Before he can poke despondently at the meat again, the bowl is snatched away. “Hey,” he starts to protest, but the words die away when he registers that Geralt was the thief, and, moreover, that he is picking through Jaskier’s stew and unerringly transferring chunks of what appear to be carrot from Jaskier’s bowl to his own. 

A minute later, the bowl is deposited in front of Jaskier again. Geralt says nothing as he turns back to his meal. Jaskier, on the other hand, is left to stare wide-eyed at Geralt, his thoughts spinning in a raging tumult in his head. 

Jaskier had never told Geralt about his intense dislike for carrots. He’s aware it’s childish to be so steadfastly picky about food, and he’s used to grinning and bearing it. He’s used to eating around the carrots, or not eating at all if the flavor has permeated the rest of the meal, and he’s used to smiling and singing around the gurgling ache of hunger in his belly when he can’t secure some other food.

But Geralt had noticed. Not just this, but Jaskier’s preference for blue doublets, and his dislike for dancing, and that he sleeps easiest when cradled in Geralt’s arms. He thinks back to every time Geralt has skimmed the worst of the monster viscera from the bath before Jaskier settles into it, every fire Geralt has made because Jaskier said he was cold, every piece of monster trivia he has begrudgingly shared with Jaskier to enhance his ballads, every time he has mended Jaskier’s clothing for him instead of letting him waste coin on a tailor. 

“Oh,” Jaskier breathes. He turns to Geralt and says plainly, “You love me.”

Geralt grimaces. “Mm.” Resignation is writ large upon his face, and he steadfastly avoids meeting Jaskier’s eye, giving Jaskier free rein to examine him without worrying about being caught. 

He knows Geralt’s game, though, knows Geralt after all these years, and he says fondly, “You hate that I’ve made it explicit, don’t you? If you never say it, you can pretend you never wanted it, but saying it out loud turns it into something you can lose.”

“Astute,” Geralt says dryly. 

Jaskier pries Geralt’s left hand away from where it’s steadying his bowl against the tabletop, then, and Geralt stills. He tilts his head just enough to glance at Jaskier from the corner of his eye. 

Jaskier presses a kiss to Geralt’s knuckles, and then to the heel of his palm, and finally above the pulse point at his wrist, where he fancies he can feel Geralt’s heart racing. “Well, I’ll put you out of your misery, instead of waiting for you to divine this yourself,” Jaskier says against Geralt’s skin. “You’ll never lose me, Geralt. I love you, too.”