Archive of Our Own ^beta

“I thought witchers had excellent hearing,” Jaskier grumbled. “Then how come you didn’t hear anything? I mean…” he paused and tried to swallow but there was too much dust and it was like breathing in sand. “There must have been some creaking, some warning sign.”

Nobody answered him, but Jaskier continued talking, just to hear his own voice. It was grounding.

“But you probably couldn’t hear anything with all the yelling,” he berated.

He had been doing half of it himself, hurling angry, hurtful words at each other. Because he had told himself that he wouldn’t stay silent anymore, not after the last time. He closed his eyes briefly at the painful memories. Not as painful as having half the keep fall on his head moments ago.

“And you would have thought that in a place full of witchers, someone would have come to investigate a sudden, loud crashing sound, but no… no one in sight.”

Not that he could see anything in the dark anyway. He tried to accompany that with a shrug, but even that small movement seemed impossible, so he stayed really still and focused on breathing.

“They probably didn’t want to intrude. On account of all the yelling.”

They had been doing that a lot, lately. Bickering. Full on arguing. It was winter and they were stuck in Kaer Morhen – by choice, but he still felt trapped sometimes.

“That’ll teach you, for trying to take out your frustrations on me,” Jaskier mumbled.

Geralt didn’t say anything. Not even a grunt or a hmm.

“I think I’d even be happy if you got mad at me right now. Just say something,” Jaskier pleaded. “Actually no, don’t yell, my head hurts.”

More silence. The darkness was starting to get oppressive. Jaskier tried to move once more. It felt as if the whole building was pressing down on Geralt, who was lying across his chest. It probably wasn’t the case, or they’d be dead already. The witcher wasn’t moving, and Jaskier couldn’t tell if he was breathing. The air was getting thinner, dust was threatening to make him cough, but there was no way he’d be able to, not when his lungs felt crushed, there was no room for them to expand, there was no – Jaskier closed his eyes tight and tried to focus. Don’t panic, he told himself. Don’t panic or you’re both dead.

And then Geralt grunted, a soft noise, barely audible. Warm air tickled Jaskier’s ear, and he smiled.

“Geralt! Thank the gods you’re not dead! Could you–” Jaskier abruptly stopped talking when the witcher shifted, and the whole stack of rubble on top of them creaked ominously. “Maybe don’t?” Jaskier whispered.

Geralt pushed again, not listening, not answering. Trying to get on all fours, but there was no room, and he was going to knee Jaskier in the groin and…

“Oh.”

Suddenly there was room to breathe and Geralt was no longer flattening him like a living blanket. Jaskier shivered at the loss of warmth and grappled around, using his fingers to explore. Debris, wood and stone, the soft linen of Geralt’s tunic. The witcher had rolled on his side and he was lying next to him now. The collapsed ceiling didn’t collapse further, which was good. Jaskier took a few controlled breaths – it hurt, but less now. Time for another tirade, he thought, and he turned his head towards Geralt, even though he couldn’t see him.

“What were you thinking? Did you really want the last thing you ever told me to be, ‘No one forced you to come here’? I wanted to come! You begged me to come! I’m allowed to whine and gripe about the cold and the drafts and… the damn building is a ruin, Geralt! It fell down on us! We could have died!”

Jaskier drew a shaky breath, feeling light headed all of a sudden. He had worked up a sweat trying to argue with an unresponsive witcher which was just plain pathetic.

“Say something?” he pleaded once again, his voice very small compared to his last outburst.

“Hmm,” Geralt said.

Jaskier just tightened his grip on his tunic and smiled in the dark, hoping the witcher could see better than him.

“Told you...” Geralt said, his voice rough, as if talking hurt, “to stay… with Roach.”

“What? No, Geralt, this wasn’t a hunt,” Jaskier babbled, a bit too fast, concerned and panicking. “We’re in Kaer Morhen. Did you hit your head? Actually scratch that, of course you hit your head, the whole tower crumbled on us…”

“Jaskier?” Geralt said, cutting him off.

“Yes?”

“Shut up.”

“You… What… No,” Jaskier sputtered. “You don’t get to tell me to shut up! I thought you were dead! You weren’t moving!”

Geralt let out a low, whining sound, like a wounded animal, and Jaskier clamped his mouth shut after that. They lay there for a while, in silence and in the dark, before Jaskier couldn’t take it anymore.

“Do you think they’re looking for us?” he asked in a tiny voice.

Surely the other witchers must be wondering where they were now. Or maybe they thought they were making out in one of the remote bedrooms and didn’t want to disturb them – Lambert claimed he still had nightmares weeks after walking in on them one morning.

“Who?” Geralt said. Jaskier could imagine his face right now, all confused, knitting his eyebrows.

“Your brothers,” Jaskier said softly. “We’re in Kaer Morhen,” he repeated. “The roof of the tower collapsed on us. You probably saved us both, and I still hate this place very much.”

Geralt made a non committal sound and Jaskier bit his lip – too much information at once. The witcher was surely concussed, at best. Jaskier refrained from trying to reach and check his skull for injuries. What could he have done about it, trapped as they were, if his fingers had found blood in Geralt’s hair?

“Smells like blood,” the witcher mumbled, confirming his fears. “Are you hurt?”

A hand nearly smacked Jaskier in the face; Geralt’s fingers were branding hot on his cheek.

“I’m not,” Jaskier blurted.

At least he didn’t think he was bleeding. He tried to take stock of his own body. He was cold, and sore all over. He was still short of breath, like he did when he first woke up under the heavy form of an unconscious witcher, shielding him from a certain death.

“I don’t think I’m the one bleeding,” he ended up saying.

Geralt made a throaty sound, like he was trying to swallow but had trouble doing so, and suddenly, light flickered in the dark. It was a tiny flame, held above the witcher’s palm, and it looked strained, but Jaskier sighed in relief. Geralt was covered in dust, pale like when he drank his potions, but his eyes were golden in the light of the flame. One pupil was blown out, way more than the other, and Jaskier hoped it wasn’t as bad a sign for witchers as it was for humans. Just a concussion, he told himself – Geralt had had worse. And while it was true, it didn’t ease the bad feeling gnawing at him when Geralt asked, sounding lost, “Where are we?”

“In Kaer Morhen,” Jaskier said. “The worst place on the Continent to spend your winter. Apparently I was right.”

He could see in the witcher’s eyes that he had lost him after ‘Kaer Morhen’, but it didn’t stop him. If it was a concussion, then he couldn’t let him sleep, right? And what better than listening to his favorite bard complain to keep a witcher awake…

“We’re trapped,” Jaskier said, matter-of-factly. “You’re injured. I’m cold and my fingers and toes are tingling. We need to get out, and fast.”

Geralt stayed silent and blinked sluggishly, without offering any opinion.

“Can you use other signs?” Jaskier asked, thinking out loud. “The blast one… But no, we’ll end up crushed and that’s the opposite of what we want.”

Geralt didn’t answer. He just looked at him through the light of his tiny, flickering flame.

“How about that shield one? Do you think you could use it while you blast us out of here?”

It was a lost cause, but Jaskier liked running his mouth. He felt restless, trapped, he had to do something, anything.

“Your eyes are very blue,” Geralt said unexpectedly, his voice airy.

“Oh gods, your brains are scrambled,” Jaskier moaned – he wasn’t prepared to deal with that sort of thing, he was just a bard, they had no potions here, no way to contact the others. They were going to die and Geralt was… hitting on him?

“You need to calm down,” Geralt said, maybe the first coherent thing since he woke up.

“I can’t…” Jaskier wheezed, and once again the air felt thin and his breath short.

Geralt put a large hand on his chest. Not pressing, just lightly touching, above his heart. And he breathed, slowly, deliberately, as if to show Jaskier that there was still enough oxygen for the both of them.

“Sometimes,” Geralt said, “I forget that you’re human.”

“Fragile,” Jaskier snorted dejectedly. That was the reason for their earlier argument – Jaskier’s limitations and how taxing life in the keep could get for him. Geralt called him whiny and Jaskier had said he wished he had stayed in Oxenfurt.

“Perfect,” Geralt corrected, and he sounded far away, as if lost in thought.

“Well don’t get sappy on me,” Jaskier snapped. “We still have to rescue ourselves.”

Geralt seemed to mull this over for a moment. The flame wasn’t wavering so much now, so maybe his witcher healing had started to do its thing. As for Jaskier, he felt so cold, and yet he was sweating a lot; he chalked it up to the growing anxiety building up in his chest. He blinked rapidly and tried to clear the drowsiness threatening to lull him to sleep. He suddenly wished Geralt would hug him tight and keep the cold at bay. But there was no room to move and rearrange their limbs without bumping into the unsteady walls around them.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” Geralt offered instead of comfort.

“Again with that!” Jaskier exclaimed. “It’s a little bit late for that, isn’t it? What do you suppose I should do? Magically whisk myself away from your drafty, unsafe witchers’ hideout?”

He was expecting a harsh reply, maybe some self-deprecating bullshit. But Geralt remained silent and the flame just flickered out, plunging them in the dark once again.

“Oh gods, Geralt? You’re not dead, are you? Geralt?”

The shrill sound of Jaskier’s panic echoed on the jagged walls of their narrow prison, but the witcher stayed utterly silent. His chest was still moving, Jaskier noticed after some fumbling, and he let his hand there, using the slow movement to ground him, a mirror of Geralt’s earlier actions. Not dead. He was not dead, he told himself.

There must be something he could do. They couldn’t just lie there and wait for the other witchers to finally realize that they weren’t holed out somewhere, boning. It wasn’t like it happened on a daily basis or anything. He huffed, wondering if there were little puffs of white smoke with each exhalation; he was so cold, right now, how could he be so cold in such a cramped space…

Time to save themselves, he thought, and he patted Geralt on the chest, as if to tell him not to worry.

“I don’t know how much oxygen witchers need, but I haven’t suffocated yet, so I’m guessing there must be air coming from somewhere,” he thought out loud, his voice hollow in the darkness. “Maybe if I could crawl, I’d be able to find a way out.” Get help. Come back for the unresponsive witcher who might or might not be dying next to him.

“Alright,” he said, and he tried to move for the first time since Geralt slammed into him full force, just before the building crumbled on them. His legs felt heavy and alarmingly cold, but they were free and nothing seemed broken or actively bleeding. Maybe if he could just twist and get on all fours, he’d be able to…

All thought left his mind when he pushed on his elbows and something pulled deep inside his abdomen. He grit his teeth to contain a strangled scream and let his head fall down, careful not to move anymore. That wasn’t good – whatever was hurting inside his belly was bad news, and maybe he should have noticed earlier.

He licked his dry lips and imagined he was in bed, where he could just reach and grab a pitcher of water on the nightstand. He was so thirsty and so cold – why was he shaking like that? His hands twitched and he tried to make a fist, feeling weak and clammy.

And then he heard it. A small, scraping sound somewhere on his left. His first idea was rats, but no, he could make out voices as well, human voices. Witcher voices.

“You hear that, Geralt? Help is coming.”

Help who had no idea where they were. Time to yell, he thought. But his voice was strained and the witchers were making too much noise to notice. When he stopped shouting, he found that he couldn’t hear them anymore.

“Geralt,” he said again, frantic, slapping the witcher on the cheek none too gently. “Geralt, wake up! Use your signs, do something!”

Witcher medallions, Jaskier thought wildly, energized by a new hope, were able to pick up magic – they would react to Geralt’s signs.

The witcher twitched and a small flame lit up once more, tiny and fragile, sending shadows all around them. There was a long streak of blood on the side of his face that wasn’t there before, and the sight nearly made Jaskier gag.

“I’m so sorry,” he babbled. “Please, Geralt, use your magic. We need more than that.”

Geralt blinked and wordlessly complied. The flame grew stronger as he seemed to falter, turning deadly pale by the minute – just a trick of the light, Jaskier told himself, he’d be fine, he was a mutated warrior after all, it had to take more than a pesky accident to kill him.

The noise picked up again, somewhere on their left, and then someone – Lambert, Jaskier smiled – swore loudly.

“Geralt,” Jaskier breathed out. “I promise you that if your brothers find us, I’ll never say anything bad about Kaer Morhen, ever again.”

Time slowed down after that glorious moment of hope. Geralt kept his eyes shut and sometimes hmm-ed, but he didn’t ask where they were or what happened. Jaskier thought he preferred his earlier confusion to his silence. The flame grew small and then vanished, while Jaskier found it harder and harder to fight sleep. His breathing was fast and shallow, almost like panting, and he couldn’t control it anymore – it should have been worrying but he had a hard time caring.

Nothing seemed real anymore, until a loud scraping noise made him jump out of his skin. It jolted something inside his belly and he groaned, fingers clutching at his wool doublet. The thing was probably ruined now, which was a shame because it was the most sensible outfit he had brought.

“Get a grip, Jaskier,” he berated himself.

His voice sounded so very small now, pitiful and weak. A strangled yelp escaped him when the ground shook once more, and everything around them started grinding.

“Careful,” someone said – Eskel, Jaskier realized, always the voice of reason.

“Yes, careful please,” Jaskier repeated with a strangled laugh. It sounded like they were right next to them now. So close yet out of reach.

“Jaskier?” Eskel shouted, making the bard wince at the volume in sympathy with Geralt’s concussion. But Geralt didn’t move at all. “Are you alright?”

“Of course they’re not,” Lambert sneered before Jaskier could answer. He imagined the younger witcher, hands on his hips, criticizing the whole operation every step of the way.

“I can’t wake Geralt anymore,” Jaskier croaked. The urgency in his voice silenced the witchers, and for a few seconds, all Jaskier could hear were dull thuds. They were sounding a wall, right next to them. “Please don’t blast us up?”

“Keep talking,” Lambert said. “I promise it’s Eskel who’ll use Aard. They refused to let me use bombs.” It was probably meant as a joke, but Jaskier shuddered at the thought.

“I don’t feel very well,” he said. Dust rained on them, and he grit his teeth, trying not to breathe in it. “I’m cold,” he said – he had complained about the cold for weeks, ever since they left Ard Carraigh. The witchers had groaned, teased and joked, but also built large fires and provided pelts and warm blankets. “Very cold,” he repeated.

“We’re almost there,” Eskel said. “Hang on.”

Everything shook suddenly, and Jaskier squeezed his eyes shut. One more jolt and he might shatter completely. The diffuse pain in his abdomen wasn’t diffuse anymore. It felt like hot coals burning him from the inside. He hoped he had just pulled a muscle, but some part of him knew it was much more serious.

Dust settled. The witchers were discussing in hushed voices, too fast for Jaskier to follow. There was a soft tapping sound nearby, but it wasn’t coming from behind the rubble. Geralt’s arm jerked and hit Jaskier’s shoulder.

“Geralt?”

But Jaskier’s heart sank when it became clear that the witcher hadn’t miraculously woken up and that he wasn’t trying to get his attention. The small movements increased until they became spasms, full body jerks that were frightening to witness. He wanted to hold Geralt, make sure he didn’t hit his head again, but he couldn’t reach him, couldn’t twist enough without feeling like his entrails were ripping off. It was a nightmare that just wouldn’t stop. He closed his eyes and tried to slow his breathing, but Geralt sounded like he was dying next to him and the witchers were yelling and there was so much dust and everything was shaking and…

Silence. Geralt stilled. When Jaskier opened his eyes, he could see again, as light was flooding their prison from an opening on his left. He could make out Lambert’s stupidly grinning face, covered in dust and sweat, and Eskel, straining to maintain some sort of magic shield, so that no rocks fell on them.

“Can you get out?” Lambert asked, hands hovering near Jaskier’s shoulders, hesitating to grasp and pull. It was probably for the best because Jaskier was sure he would break and his guts would spill.

“Geralt?”

“Let’s focus on getting you out first, shall we?” Vesemir said, his voice calm and smooth. Jaskier hadn’t even seen the old witcher there.

“He’ll be as right as rain after a potion,” Eskel explained.

As if that would be enough to fix a broken head. He just had a seizure, his brain could be leaking out of his skull as they spoke. Jaskier started wheezing, short of breath and slightly hysterical, when Lambert patted his cheek like it would do him any good. Then he gripped his arms and Jaskier blanked out.

Next thing he knew, he was lying on his side on the cold stone of a drafty staircase. There was a hole in the wall and Geralt looked dead.

“Back with us?” Lambert asked.

Jaskier grunted when he understood that the question was meant for him. “Wouldn’t dream of being anywhere else,” he joked rather lamely.

Lambert squeezed his shoulder but like Jaskier, he was staring at Geralt and the other two witchers actively trying to save him. At least it was what Jaskier thought – hoped – was happening. Vesemir poured some thick looking potion into Geralt’s mouth, while Eskel was holding his head in his lap, like it was the most fragile thing in the world. There was so much blood that his hair looked brown.

“Is he…” Jaskier hesitated, as if saying it out loud would make it real somehow.

“He’ll be fine,” Lambert assured. It sounded as if the young witcher was trying to convince himself.

Vesemir tsk-ed when Geralt made a choking sound. If his eyes had been open, they would be turning pitch black right now, Jaskier thought. Potions weren’t a magical cure-all, but maybe they’d give him time to recover.

Jaskier didn’t want their last conversation to be about regrets. He was supposed to be the fragile, human one of the pair. The one destined to die first. Not Geralt.

Lambert was looking at him with an expression akin to horror, and Jaskier wondered if he was talking out loud. He wheezed like a fish out of water, which made no sense because he wasn’t trapped anymore. Then why couldn’t he breathe? His fingers twitched and Lambert started shouting.

“Vesemir! He’s turning blue! What should I do?”

Jaskier knew with detached horror that he was talking about him.

“What did you do?” Vesemir snapped, his tone accusatory.

“Why does everybody always assume I’m responsible when shit goes sideways?” Lambert muttered.

Just as Jaskier became the center of attraction, Geralt gasped awake. Jaskier wanted to sit up and check on him, but he found that he didn’t have the energy to do so. He tried to say something, anything, but his mouth wouldn’t cooperate. Lambert was shaking him, he noted distantly, but he stopped when Vesemir berated him for it. He hoped Eskel was making sure Geralt’s brains wouldn’t swell and hemorrhage while they focused on him.

“Jaskier, son,” Vesemir was saying. Jaskier tried to concentrate on his voice and ignore the feeling of dread at being called ‘son’ – he got called a lot of things in the keep, ‘Geralt’s bard’, ‘hey you’, but never ‘son’ before.

His doublet and shirt were lifted before he could react. His skin was pale and mottled, and his eyes widened when he saw the giant bruise on the left side of his abdomen. He watched blearily as Vesemir’s hands hovered above it and felt nausea rise. He clamped his mouth shut and tried to swallow. Lambert tapped his cheek lightly.

“I’m awake,” he said, but it sounded garbled.

“What happened?” he heard Geralt say, and he would have laughed if it didn’t hurt so much.

“Help him up,” Vesemir said. Jaskier wanted to protest, but Lambert gripped under his shoulders and heaved and that was enough for him to pass out.

*

“How do you feel?” the voice cut through the fog in Jaskier’s mind. He knew it was Vesemir without opening his eyes.

“Floaty,” he said. His lips smacked weirdly, like he lacked control of his mouth.

“That’s to be expected,” the old man stated.

“Bard, you’re on so many potions right now,” Lambert snorted from somewhere on his left.

Jaskier’s heart rate must have picked up because a large hand squeezed his ankle briefly, and Eskel’s deep voice reassured him. “Carefully diluted potions.”

Only Geralt was missing, but Jaskier couldn’t open his eyes to check if he was there, he was too tired even for that.

“Why?” he mumbled – he meant why was he here, why was he drugged up, why was everything so fuzzy and distantly painful – but the words refused to form.

“Your spleen just about ruptured,” Vesemir said in a calm, clinical tone. “But I managed to save it.”

“What’s a spleen?” Jaskier croaked, vaguely panicked at the idea of having injured something he didn’t know he had until now.

“Ugly thing was bleeding inside like a–” Lambert got cut off by what sounded like a slap to the back of the head.

“It’s an organ which cleans the blood. Some say that it helps regulate emotions.”

“But we all know that’s bullshit,” Lambert said when Jaskier started to frown. “And you’ll be fine, Vesemir didn’t even cut it out.”

That was a horrifying thought.

“Now sleep,” Vesemir said.

Jaskier fell asleep before he could ask about Geralt.

*

“Tell me again why Geralt isn’t here with me while I recover from a near fatal injury?” Jaskier whined from his bed for the hundredth time that afternoon.

He was swaddled in blankets, his torso carefully wrapped in white linen, partially hiding the impressive bruise on his left side. Underneath the bandages, the stitches were neat – ugly and black – and they would ‘scar nicely’, Vesemir’s words. It made sense that the old witcher had some notions of surgery, having had generations of kids under his care, but Jaskier never thought he’d get a firsthand experience.

“He needs time,” Eskel said, not looking up from his book.

Lambert just scoffed and said, in a deep, gruff voice that was probably supposed to sound like Geralt’s, “Hmm, I nearly killed my boyfriend… Hmm, now I need to hide and brood…”

He twirled the knife he was playing with between his fingers with a smirk.

“The keep nearly killed me, not him,” Jaskier corrected. “I would be dead if it wasn’t for him.”

“He caught a stone with his thick head and then he managed to squash one of your internal organs like a ripe fruit,” Lambert retorted.

The image was horrible, but Jaskier knew that nothing of the sort had happened – he had Vesemir’s word. He still felt weak because of the blood loss, and sore all over, but it wasn’t nearly as dramatic as the younger witcher was making it sound.

“He feels bad,” Eskel said.

“But he’s alright, isn’t he?” Jaskier asked again, on edge. He could still see Geralt lying next to him, white as a sheet with his hair all bloody.

“I think so,” Eskel said with a warm smile that pulled at the scar on his cheek. He closed his book and stood up. “Lambert,” he asked suddenly, “can you help me with something?”

“What?” Lambert barked.

Eskel swept his legs off the bed and gripped his sleeve, dragging him out of the room. Sure enough, when Jaskier turned his head to watch them leave, he saw Geralt standing in the doorway with a sheepish expression on his face. He had his hair down, clean and untangled, and he was wearing a simple white tunic over black pants. He looked nothing like the fierce warrior everyone wanted him to be.

“Took you long enough,” Jaskier mumbled, picking at a piece of lint on the blanket to stop staring at him.

“Hmm,” Geralt said, standing awkwardly at the foot of the bed. As if he was afraid of getting closer.

“Geralt, next time, let’s not get in an argument in the remotest wing of that ruin you call a home,” Jaskier said.

The jab fell flat and he immediately felt bad when Geralt’s face twisted. He looked crushed, like he expected Jaskier to crawl out of bed and run away. For someone who pretended to be emotionless, you could read him like an open book.

“Come here,” Jaskier said, and he patted the edge of the bed. Geralt took Eskel’s seat instead.

“Did you know the tower was unstable?” Jaskier asked quietly.

“Of course not.”

“Then stop beating yourself up over it. It’s not your fault.”

“I could have crushed you…”

“Pretty much anything could crush me,” Jaskier remarked.

“My shield failed,” Geralt confessed, so low Jaskier nearly didn’t catch it.

“You had a skull fracture,” Jaskier reminded him with a shudder. “Of course it failed.”

“I should have done better.”

“How about you lie with me for a while, and tomorrow you’ll work on some roof repairs or something? If that makes you feel better.”

That elicited a very shy smile, at least. Jaskier knew the witchers had plans to renovate some parts of the keep, but it was so large and there were so few of them. He patted the covers once more and Geralt finally yielded. He took off his boots and climbed on the bed, moving gingerly, careful not to touch Jaskier, like he was afraid he might break.

Jaskier sighed and grabbed his tunic, pulling with a huff until the witcher was close enough to his liking. Geralt frowned and tensed. Jaskier knew he could smell his pain, but he just had Vesemir operate on him so he was allowed to reek a little.

“I’m not made of glass,” he said.

“There was so much blood,” Geralt said, looking at the ceiling.

“Your skull was bashed in,” Jaskier confirmed. All good now, he told himself, as he ran his fingers through Geralt’s hair.

“You were so pale, and your lips were blue,” Geralt continued.

“You saw?” Jaskier asked. He thought the witcher had been unconscious the whole time after the others found them.

“Everything. Vesemir taking the knife to your ribs. The blood…”

Jaskier hugged him awkwardly, with one arm trapped between them, not daring to move too much. He didn’t want to pull a stitch and have Vesemir shoo Geralt away. The witcher curled up instead with his head in the crook of his neck. He had told him once that pulse points were where a person’s scent was the strongest. Jaskier had laughed and found it weirdly endearing at the time, but now he got it.

“I’ll understand if you don’t want to come back next year,” Geralt whispered into his shoulder.

He needed to survive this winter first, Jaskier thought, but he didn’t say it out loud.

“Where else would I want to be?” he shrugged lightly.

Geralt hmm-ed. “Oxenfurt is safer.”

“Last winter I spent at the university, I ended up getting stabbed during a brawl.”

Geralt raised his head, propped up on his elbow, and stared at him.

“Was it Valdo?” he asked with murder in his eyes.

“No,” Jaskier lied, because he didn’t want Geralt to kill his favorite rival.

“I should have been with you,” Geralt said. “I would have protected you.”

“You do know that I managed to survive on my own before we met?”

“Barely,” Geralt said, one corner of his mouth lifting in a smile.

“Maybe, but I’m human. Getting hurt is part of the human experience. You get stabbed? - you need stitches. A building collapses on you? - you need bed rest for a month.”

“Did Vesemir tell you that?” Geralt frowned, surprised and a little worried.

“Shush, let a man dream.”

“You’ll be back on kitchen duty in no time,” Geralt said, nuzzling closer.