something familiar | ao3 | jaskier x yennefer | ~1100 words
s02e04 alternative events, Yenskier edition
“Bard.” Yennefer could barely believe it was him. Months after their last meeting, and he turned out to be none other than the Sandpiper. Yennefer never thought she’d be so relieved to see him.
Jaskier looked her over for a long moment. “Witch,” he said, disdain in his voice. “What are you doing here? And what fresh hell did you just crawl out of?”
“A sewer,” Yennefer responded. “What’s your excuse?”
“Ah, a sewer,” he said as she approached. “I always knew you were a bloodsucking, joyless…”
She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close. A warm sense of comfort spread through her at being with someone who, despite everything, she would call a friend. Finally, after weeks of pain and discomfort and being on the run, she was with a friend.
“…Hugger,” Jaskier finished. “We are hugging.”
Yennefer pulled back and looked into his confused, cornflower-blue eyes for a moment. She was so relieved to be near someone she knew after weeks of loneliness and despair, and without thinking, she leaned in and kissed him. He tensed for a moment and then relaxed into it, his hands resting on her waist. He tasted like beer, and he smelled like the smoke of the tavern and sweat and a little bit like dandelions.
Yennefer realized what she’d done and quickly pulled away. She tried to keep her face calm and collected, but what had she been thinking? Kissing him? Him ?
“Hold on,” he said after a short moment, their faces still close. “You hate me.”
“Yes,” she replied, and then she understood. “But I know you.”
She leaned in to kiss him again, but he held her back.
“Yennefer,” he said softly. “As delightful as you taste, you smell truly awful.”
She smiled just slightly. “I’ve been on the run for a while.”
He searched her eyes with his and then sighed. “All right. Let’s get you a bath.”
* * * * *
The bath felt amazing, and Yennefer leaned back to soak her hair in the warm water, which was turning gray from the filth of the sewer.
Jaskier sat nearby, close enough to talk to her, but with his back turned to give her some privacy. Polite, but she had no intention of keeping her body concealed from him once she was done with this bath.
“You know, I’ve heard some of your songs,” Yennefer said.
“Oh?”
“Sounds like you dedicated a good few verses to me.”
Jaskier cleared his throat. “Perhaps.”
“How did that one go? ‘Her heart, as though a jewel, adorned her neck. Hard as if of diamond made, and as a diamond so unfeeling, sharper than obsidian, cutting—’”
“I get the point,” Jaskier said, the tips of his ears turning red. “But don’t pretend we’ve ever been able to stand each other.”
She finished scrubbing herself clean. Jaskier passed her a towel over his shoulder as she climbed out of the tub, again politely averting his eyes. As if he’d ever done so before. She knew he was being unusually careful around her because of her situation as a poor, helpless quarter-elf, which would have annoyed her if she hadn’t been so relieved to feel clean and safe.
She dried herself off with the towel and wrapped it around herself, then went to stand in front of Jaskier. He swallowed and looked up at her eyes as she pulled him to his feet. She wrapped her arms around his neck. “So, I’m clean.”
“So?”
“So…” She tugged at the corner of the towel and it fell to the floor at her feet.
Finally, Jaskier’s eyes roamed over her bare form. Slowly and with a light touch, as if she was forbidden to him, the tips of his fingers trailed down her curves from her collarbone to her waist. She closed her eyes and let out a low, satisfied hum at the touch as his hand finally stopped to rest against her bare skin.
He looked back up at her face. “But Geralt…”
“Fuck Geralt,” she said. She pulled him close and pressed her lips to his, trying not to be too desperate though she really was. She wanted comfort, she wanted pleasure, she wanted something familiar, before she lost it by getting captured or killed or exiled to a land she barely knew.
“Yennefer, wait,” Jaskier says again, breathless but insistent. “I love—loved—Geralt too.”
She hesitated, surprised. She shouldn’t have been, the way Jaskier followed around the witcher like an adoring puppy. The way he so patiently took care of Geralt when they traveled together. The way that, only an hour before, he had sung bitterly about Geralt with heartbreak in his voice. But she was only surprised for a moment.
“Fuck Geralt,” she said again. “He’s not here. I am.”
Finally, Jaskier nodded and acquiesced, picking her up. Her bare legs wrapped around his hips as he walked her back towards the bed, their lips never leaving each other's.
He grinned as he laid her down on the bed and started to pull off his clothes. “I never would’ve dreamed I’d want to do this with you, witch.”
“Nor I with you, bard,” she said, kissing him again before he got a chance to respond.
* * * * *
They got dressed immediately afterward. Jaskier had Sandpiper work to do, and Yennefer needed to get to Cintra; it wasn’t safe for her in Oxenfurt, especially not outside of the safe cellars where the elves were hidden.
“I hope you know this was just a one-time thing,” Jaskier said, pulling on his pants. He was unexpectedly muscular, with thick hair covering his toned chest. And now he also had messy hair and fingernail scratches down his back, which was a look that, for once, Yennefer thought suited him rather than being an annoying indicator of his womanizing personality.
“I hope you know this was just a one-time thing,” Yennefer replied. She knew it would be, even though it had felt so good. She hated to admit there was some truth in the rumors about the poet’s love-making capabilities.
“I still don’t like you, you know,” Jaskier said.
“The feeling is mutual.”
He smiled at her lightly, and then his face became serious. “I’ll make sure you get to Cintra safely, Yennefer.”
Yennefer clenched her jaw, irritated again that she was again being reminded of how helpless she was. That she had to be helped by none other than this sing-songy twit. But she plastered on an expression of gratitude. “Thank you.”
Jaskier cleared his throat. “Come on, let’s go. We don’t have much time to prepare for the next ship.”
Yennefer followed him out, feeling once again a sense of sorrow that she was letting go of the companionship of someone she knew and liked. She didn’t have a choice, but that didn’t make it hurt less.