"This is a godless place," Jaskier announced, closing the cupboards with an air of finality.
Geralt tried not to squirm at the judgement. Not his fault if he'd been too busy for anything more than protein shakes.
A modern au where Jaskier just— moves in. He starts talking to Geralt in a pub, probably trying to hide from someone, and somehow pries out of him that he had a spare room, and boom that's it, he's acquired a bard. Before either of them know what they're getting into, without even knowing each other for more than an hour.
And Geralt is keeping himself alive and functional thank you very much, even if his life is just work-gym-lie in bed and don't think-repeat.
Summary: “The white wolf wants you. He’ll have no other.” As you grieve the loss of your father, your mother marries the king. Whilst you struggle to acclimate to your new life, you begin to suspect the interest your new brother has in you is less than familial.
A/N: taps mic um, hey. it’s been a while. i hope you enjoy this latest installment of Tonality, and that you all enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing it. ❤️ mind the tags, reblogs and comments are always appreciated.
You stumble out from behind the tapestry and back into the hall, your head spinning. Geralt rushes out after you, locking the door quickly behind him. The stone wall is comfortingly cool against your palm as you stagger against it. War? You cannot help the next thought that comes rushing up before you can stop it—Because of me? There is a dull buzzing like flies in your skull that makes it hard to concentrate on anything else.
Air. I need air.
Dizzily you stagger toward the courtyard, swallowing down lungfuls of crips evening air as you push through the heavy doors and nearly tumble out into the coming night. You are grateful for its emptiness, there are no fawning courtiers present to heap their honeyed demands upon you, no one to see as you catch yourself against the stone railing as you stare down at the dark, empty square below.
You do not want this.
“Things were better before we came here,” you murmur hoarsely. “Simpler.” Geralt says nothing, but you can feel his presence there behind you. Your skin practically itches with it. “I find myself wishing we had never come.”
“To wish for what was is useless, when what is lies now before you.” For a single irrational moment you hate him—he is the avenue for this new knowledge that plagues you now, the channel through which this new pain now flows, but it subsides after two harrowing heartbeats. Like him or not, Geralt is the reason you breathe now, and he is the reason you know more than you did before you ventured into the city in the first place.
Had you followed your mother’s instruction, you would still be abed, ignorant. At the thought of your mother, your stomach churns.
Treason.
“I am a pawn.” You have never before felt both so useless and so used. It seems a cruel irony that you wield both more power than you ever have before—and yet somehow simultaneously none at all. How had you not seen it? How had you not known? “This Hunt is nothing more than an excuse to bring restless noblemen to heel!” Your fingers tangle in your skirts as you ball your hands into angry fists. Geralt cups your chin with thick, calloused fingers.
“Did you think the throne might be secured with words, Princess?” He speaks not cruelly, but plainly. “That every knee would bend willingly?” You think of the people you saw in the city—the baker, the merchants, the fishmongers and blacksmiths—you imagine them starving, terrified. You imagine them dead, their bodies strewn in the streets and in the mud. The earth is always thirsty, and it will drink blood just the same as water.
“The Throne of Bones cannot be shored up with promises, little witch. An oath with no blood spilled is only air.”
“I will not see rivers of blood shed in my name.” You set your jaw defiantly. “I will not see innocents killed for aspirations of crowns and glory!” Geralt drags his thumb over the curve of your cheek, his golden eyes filled with pity. Your heart hammers in your chest at the contact. You are so acutely aware of the inches between you, more than ever. And for a brief moment, you are unsure of whether to be angry at the sliver of air that holds you apart—or grateful for it.
You settle for the latter as he pulls at the weight of your lip with his thumb as your stomach knots at the impropriety of his touch.
“Then I expect, Princess,” he says softly, “that you shall simply have to close your eyes.”
—
There has not been a Hunt since before your mother was born, and yet the entire keep falls into arrangements for it with a familiarity that astounds you. The courtyard below you is filled with a steady streams of provisions, supplies and people, though the greedy wind snatches the noise of it all away. You watch the silent pantomime of tiny figures for a moment more before you pull away from the parapet.
You feel somewhat swept away by the preparation, its importance filling you with an acute anxiety that makes your stomach churn. This is when you will be presented to the people, when you will be judged, and you fear you shall be found wanting. And not just wanting, but guilty—of some unspoken crime you had committed simply by being born. Over the course of the last week you had bitten your fingernails down to the quick until you tasted copper, much to your mother’s chagrin. She’d held your raw hands in hers as she frowned at you.
A princess’ hands should never look this ghastly.
You know it is foolish to long for the days when it mattered little if your hands were dry and cracked from turning old brittle pages, and you returned to the manor at dusk with twigs in your hair and grass stains on your dress, but you yearn for them still. There has been little time for books since your arrival in Rivia, and even this moment you have had to steal. At the thought, you cast a grim glance behind you at the empty doorway leading back into the keep just to assure yourself you are in fact still alone.
The creak of the thick spine is comforting as you open the book and the smell of aged paper and old leather washes over you. You trace the thickly embossed lettering on the inside with a sad smile. The Silver King. Your father’s name is looped there in neat cursive near the bottom of the page, and your own messy childhood scrawl is there above it. You have not had the courage to look at this book since he had been buried—let alone open it. It contained, of course, the great deeds of the first Witcher-King, a recounting of his great deeds, along with more than a few fairytales. But more than that, it contained your father.
It was his book, really, and it still feels that way even now as you hold it.
Every memory of the two of you curled over its pages as your father’s sure, steady voice carried with it the stories of generations—though you had always been more partial to the fairy-stories than the lengthy ballads your father tended to skip over for your benefit. But in the end, it had been you who recounted those flights of fancy back to him when the sickness had taken his mind and memories. You had seen it in his eyes, the light of recognition in those brief and shining moments where he truly knew you once again before pain and confusion stole him from you every time. Even now your chest feels tight and your throat achy as you turn the first page.
By habit more than anything you begin to skim over the first section the way your father did, repeating his summary in your head as you slowly turn the pages.
“Ollast the Silver was not born a king, you see, he would say. He was born in the dirt. His mother a stablegirl, father some nameless lout. There were no kings then, my Dear. No one to hold back the dark.” You can almost hear him—almost. You remembered your stomach knotting in childish fear as he described Ollast’s mother leaving him on a tree-stump in the forest, pleading with Father Wolf to kill him swiftly. How the great beast with slavering jaws and eyes like luminous moons had taken the infant instead, clinging to its matted fur along with the weapons of fallen warriors—and had raised him.
As you drag your finger across the page it suddenly stops, like the paper has…grabbed you. Your entire hand goes numb and sharp, shooting little pains erupt across your palm; like you’d been sitting on it and cutting off circulation. Only you hadn’t been—and as you lift your hand, flexing it with a grimace, you glance down at the page.
The Witch’s Trials.
You grimace. Your father had only read it to you once after you’d begged, and only because you had noticed that he always skipped a few pages after Ollast’s departure from Father Wolf’s forest. You’d demanded to know why he wasn’t reading it all to you—you deserved the full story. Though after he’d finished you hadn’t slept properly for weeks, waking in your bed clutching at your covers as you whimpered.
“I can’t go to sleep, Papa,” you remember sobbing into his arms by the light of the fire. “The Witch will get me!” You swallow thickly. How horribly ironic. You begin to read in earnest then, dropping your eye to the page that had ensnared you.
Ollast did not know these woods. He had been raised up in the forest of the Great Wolf, and all of its creatures knew him. Every drop of river water, every blade of grass. And so he knew he had come to the wood at the edge of the world when the trees were strangers to him; when the animals fled his approach with the air stinking of their fear. The Wolf had told Ollast that his children would know his scent. And as he traveled through the tall thin trees that did not know him, he saw the yellow eyes of the Wolf Children as he passed.
You shiver, gooseflesh pricking up on your arms.
He was not afraid, for had his sword of silver and bone, and he could make the symbols of fire, water and wind. Ollast greeted the Children.
“Hail!”
They gnashed their teeth and scraped at the dark earth with sharp claws.
“Hail to you, furless one.” Said the black wolf. “Why have you come to this place?”
“I seek the bridge, do you know it?”
The Children laughed. “Aye.” Said another. “But once you cross it you will be gone, returned to the world of man. We will not let you. You stink of human meat, and we are hungry.” Ollast saw then that the Wolf Children were thin, their bones pushing through their matted fur. He pitied these creatures, as they slavered and salivated at the thought of eating him.
“Have you no game to hunt?” He asked. “No meat to fill your bellies?”
“No,” snarled a gray one. “SHE has eaten them all, the Witch.” A chorus of terrified yips and howls filled the air. The Wolf Children were afraid.
“The one that gnaws the bones and sucks out the marrow.”
You swallow thickly as a cool shiver brings gooseflesh to your arms. She has eaten them all. You are about to return to your father’s book when the sound of footsteps makes you tense. For a brief, fear filled moment you wonder if your mother has discovered you at last, if she has finally come to force you to take part when instead the king himself ambles around the corner. He does not quite see you at first, squinting as he casts furtive glances over his shoulder.
“Gods be bloody good,” he mutters, shaking his head. You scramble to your feet, snapping the old book shut. He sees you then, and you are sure to bow your head, dropping into a somewhat clumsy curtsey. “Oh, no, no need for all of that, it is only us here.” King Vesemir casts a look around the narrow little walkway and then back toward the door before whispering conspiratorially. “I’m avoiding counsellor Abernathy.”
You’re forced to hide a smile behind your hand. You yourself had often found your own eyelids rather heavy as you listened to the dull, droning sound of the elderly counsellor’s voice.
“I shall take the secret to my grave, your Grace.” You say, and your step-father laughs deeply. “None shall know that on this day, his Majesty hid from his most experienced counsellor.” The king wipes a mirthful tear from the corner of his eye with a sigh.
“It is a rather good spot,” Vesemir replies before giving you a conspiratorial wink. “And I am doubtful his Lordship will be able to manage all the stairs.”
You laugh, and there is true mirth in the sound. “He does go on.”
“Ever so much.” He glances down at the book in your hands and his eyes widen. “My Gods. Is that The Silver King?” He asks. “I don’t think I’ve seen a copy of that in… years, I daresay. Not since I was a child.”
“Oh?”
“Oh yes.” The king nods and a rather wistful look enters his golden eyes. “I did my share of reading after my fall.”
“Fall?” You ask. “You…fell?”
“I was quite the adventurous lad, you know. Used to climb all the way up and hang right off the flagpole, Gods I was stupid.” He shakes his head. You turn to look up at the turret, but only bare stone stands there now. The king glances over at you. “Not there anymore, mind you. My father hand them taken down after I fell, you see.” Your hand flies to your face in shock as you glance down at the distant courtyard below.
“But not all the way down, fortunately. I landed on the balcony, just there. Quite a few broken bones, it was a ghastly sight I imagine. For nearly two years all I could do was lie in my bed and, well, read. The Silver King was quite a favorite of mine. I always did like the part about the wolves.” You shiver again.
“I think my favorite was the one about the gilded feather.”
The king nods at your book. “It looks like quite an old copy.”
“Ah, yes.” You glance down at its worn cover as your heart twists painfully in your chest. “It was my father’s.”
“I am truly sorry for his loss.” You taste no lie on his words, the milky film that would hang over them like spider’s silk is gloriously absent, and you sigh with relief as they ring true. “He was a fine regent, and a better father, I am sure. I know you grieve him still.”
“Thank you, your Grace.” You squeeze the book against your chest. “With time I am sure his passing will… pain me less.” You swallow against the thick, uncomfortable feeling forming in your throat. King Vesemir looks at you apologetically.
“It will not.” He rests a hand upon your shoulder affectionately. “But you will grow around it.” He looks back toward the door with a sigh. “I take my leave. And,” the king turns back to you with a small smile. “I shall not tell my lady wife that I have seen you.”
“Thank you, your Majesty.” Though he has dismissed the formalities, your head still bows instinctively. “Truly.”
—
The dream tries to shift around you, to flow like water into something, somewhere else. But you know it now, old and familiar like the feeling of a pebble in your shoe. You have never thought of a dream as wanting, as able to want. But what other way is there to describe the yearning of the physical space you occupy to shift into something else? You thread your fingers through the loose weave of it, and feel the sagging threads of the dream pulling apart like weak fabric. Its threads are sharp like silver wire, and you wonder if you will bleed in the waking world where they sink into the meat of your fingers as you pull the dream taut like fabric around you, snapping the dull world into sharp, biting clarity.
Tonight, the dreams do not control you, flowing over you like a river, no. No, tonight you stand still, the stone parting the rushing water.
The dream has brought you to the hedge maze, though here the bushes grow wild and unkempt. Dry, bare branches reach out like gnarled, beckoning fingers, the dark, starless sky hanging ominously overhead. You’ve no wish to enter the gardens, not here, but your father is in there. You can feel his presence like pins and needles all along the back of your neck. The knowledge settles within you as if it has always been there in the strange way that dreams do.
The White Keep looms over you like a skeleton, its stone parapets starker and thinner than you remember. The yawning, empty windows stare down at you, eyes in a great and terrible head. The maze too is different, folding in on itself in impossible spirals like the shell of a snail.
Your father stands at the center.
You had not realized it was him at first—the worm-eaten burial shroud conceals his face. And though his clothes have been eaten by maggots and mice, you know them—know him. There is no wind, but the shroud moves as though caught by a breeze you cannot feel. He reaches up for it, his fingers snagging in the holes as he tugs it down. For a brief moment you consider looking at his face, holding his gaze—but your eyes drop to the paving stones before you shut them.
“Do not look, my daughter.” His voice is around you, threading through the air like music before it is in you, too, thrumming like a thousand stilted heartbeats. “You must not.”
“Father.” Your chest aches with the weight of the many words you wish to say, all the ones you would give anything to have spoken into existence whilst he still lived. And somehow, of all of them, the ones that reach your mouth first are perhaps the most childish.
“I miss you.”
“And I you, my dear child.” He pauses. “That is why I have tarried in this place when I should not.” The threads of the dream are cutting so deep now you fear they shall take your fingers with them, but you hold them still. Hands cup your cheeks, and the fingertips are dry, withered. Tears well behind your closed eyes. “It’s hungry, this place.” Your father’s voice is hollow, somehow. Like it is missing vital weight. “Can you feel it?”
You can.
“You are a Princess, now.”
“Titles.” You scoff, sniffling. Though you cannot look upon your father’s face, you know he is smiling—or he would be, were there enough left of face. “If titles meant anything at all, I would wake on the morrow in my own bed.”
“I am afraid change is the nature of living, my child.” Your father’s burial shroud brushes against your skin as he pats your head, and it smells like damp earth. “You cannot go back. Only forward.” His heavy sigh is the whisper of wind through dry branches. “And so many, many paths before you…”
“Which one? Which path do I choose?” You ask frantically, straining to hold the moment still. “Which is right, father? I-I don’t know anymore, I don’t—I need you!” You plead with the specter.
“All.” His cold, withered hands drop from you and for a brief, terrible second your eyelids flutter. “And none.” His sorrow is your own, for the weight of it in your chest is the same terrible ache as always. “But none lead where I can follow.”
“Where?”
“Power.” He sighs, and the sorrow is overwhelming, almost as much as the dream. “So much power.” His fingers rasp against your cheek. “I cannot bear to see it.”
“What do you mean? Father I—I don’t know what to do. Mother, she’s changed, she’s, I’m afraid of her.” The admission feels like a betrayal, even though you know she will never hear it. “Please don’t leave me.” You strain against the dream. “Please. I-I have, I have so many questions—” You smell copper. “There, there is elf blood in me—” You try to hold onto him and the dream at the same time, clutching at his presence with aching, raw fingers as the dream begins to tear itself to pieces.
“I cannot reveal in death what I did not know in life, my dear one, my daughter.” His voice is like shifting sand, blowing away from you into the darkness. “The hungry dark has shorn off pieces of me and I have indeed given them gladly, to remain for this moment.”
“No, no—”
This shade is all that remains of your father, and that too slips away through your trembling hands like a last, final sigh.
“Grieve not, sweet child.” The dream rushes over you like a dam breaking, and you are drowning in it. “We shall meet again when it is time for your end, and I think that is not quite so long to wait at all.”
You sit up, coughing and sputtering at the cool air. Your hands ache as you grasp at the sheets, and when you lift them to your bleary eyes they are terrible to behold. Thin red lines crisscross the meat of your fingers, biting deep into your palms. There is dried blood on some of the marks, and still others remain an angry, insistent red. You drop them back to your sides as tears gather in the corners of your eyes, leaking down your cheeks.
You will not meet with your father again—not even in your dreams.
Somehow, the thought fills you with sorrow instead of relief, like you have lost him a second time.
With a quiet moan of pain, you drag yourself toward the edge of the bed. The stones are cold on your feet despite the low fire burning in the hearth, and the sky outside your window is dark, though in the infinite distance there is a thin, orange line marking the boundary between sea and sky. Dawn will not greet you for some time yet, but when you think of returning to your bed, your eyes fill with tears and your aching hands clench. No, you will not be returning to sleep this evening.
Instead, you don your dressing gown and venture out into the halls. They are different now with the night to silence them. Larger, perhaps. Certainly more…off-putting than you find them in the light of day. Madge’s pipe-hoarse voice rings in your mind’s ear. Theres bones in them walls, all them glorious castles, she’d said, resting a hand against the lacquered wood paneling that lined the manor’s halls. How d’you s’pose they built them, love? She’d asked as you stared at her, wide eyed from the carpet before the fireplace. With blood and bones.
Rudderless, you wander. If there are ghosts here, they do not appear before you. You are alone, at least for now.
The carved doors of the observatory remind you of the ones in the throne room as you stand before them. Large, dark and heavy wood, with delicate images of familiar constellations that remind you of nights spent watching the stars until your mother summoned you back inside. Her lips would be pressed thin with displeasure as she plucked twigs and grass from your hair. The glass doming the cavernous room is crystal clear, the stars clearly visible above you. Like the door, there are star maps and constellations carved into the stone floor, and you kneel slowly to trace your fingers along the neat lines. Father Wolf’s great maw and shaggy shoulders, the Mother’s hands folded in prayer.
Your eye is drawn to the Crone, her hunched form set some distance away from the Mother and the Wolf. In her lantern rests the Eastern Star, brightest in the sky, the guiding light from here to hereafter, so said the priests with their stark painted faces and feverish eyes. But as you kneel to sweep away a little of the gathered dust, you cannot help but note her position. Swathed in shadow, the brass incense burner at the head of her carving dull and empty, the altar plate turned nearly black with age.
There is only one true God, here, you realize. And his name is Wolf. You wonder if the rest of the kingdom is as reverent of their devouring God of justice, or if this is simply a reflection of the painted-priests’ own fanaticism.
“I see sleep evades you as well, Princess.” Geralt’s black-honey voice makes you shiver, gooseflesh rising on your arms. You had not heard the door open again, but there he stands in the doorway, arms folded thoughtfully behind his back. He cocks his head. “Or perhaps you are evading it?” He chuckles. The Prince approaches you in ever tightening circles, reminding you uncomfortably of his steed below, in the pits.
“A bit of both, I suppose.” You say after a long moment spent watching him. His footfall is so quiet it scarcely makes a sound, and you wonder if what little there is is merely the product of your imagination. There is a spark of something in your belly, burning low but steady, like an ember, and it flares at his approach.
“Sleep has been…unkind to me of late.” You think of your father, see him crumbling to nothing in your minds eye. “I dreamt… things I should like to forget. And some I suppose I wish I had never dreamt at all.”
He comes to stand before the constellation of the Crone, standing nearly in the palm of her outstretched hand.
“Perhaps they do not wish to be forgotten.” Geralt replies, glancing up at the brightly lit night sky and then back to you. “Perhaps they should not be.”
“I saw my father.” You say, clutching your arms tighter about yourself. “Always my father.” The silver light of the moon draws Prince Geralt in even starker contrast against the shadows, his pale hair, pale skin, hungry eyes. The white wolf indeed. “I dream other things, too. Dark things.”
“Mm.” He hums, reaching out to finger the loose curls falling about your shoulders. When his eyes meet yours they seem to glow, luminous and bright in the twilight. “The dark does call to dark.”
“Dark calls to dark.” You snap, your cheeks burning. “Have you come merely to do me insult?”
“Insult? How eager you are to misunderstand.” He shakes his head, chuckling. “It is respect I pay you, little witch. Is the night not dark and beautiful?” He asks with a pointed look. “Is not the sea?”
“And yet it is not awe that fills my chest to brimming when I behold what things await me behind my closed eyes.” You cannot forget the feeling of your father slipping away to a place you could not follow as you had held on with every bit of yourself in a vain attempt to make him stay.
“Two things might yet be true, Doe, there is much to fear in darkness.” “And so too in the light of day.” His gaze drops to your hands, which you promptly hide in the folds of your shift. He threads his fingers through your own and you gasp, tugging at your hand.
“L-let go—”
Geralt holds the palm of your hand up to the brightness of the moon, and your breath catches uncomfortably in your throat as he traces the raw lines still patterning your skin with his thumb.
“It hurts, does it not?” He asks softly. “Holding back the tide.” His touch is gentle, softer by far than you would have thought him capable of. You are reminded of how poisonous his kindness can be—his rage at your door the chiefest of all. that nothing is given without something being taken in return.
“The pain has passed.” You reply curtly, wishing that gooseflesh did not rise on the back of your neck at his touch. “I-if you would excuse me?” His golden eyes are luminous in the dark.
“And if I would not?” His thumb slides over your knuckles, tracing each one. “If your Prince should bid you stay?” The spark of heat in your belly becomes a flame, rising up into your chest and you swallow audibly.
“Are Ladies Isolde or Emilia no longer amenable, my Prince?” You ask, schooling your expression into one of perfect innocence, and you feel no small measure of satisfaction as his lip curls. “I am quite certain there are no short supply of Ladies who would be quite eager to wake and… chat with yourself, Highness.”
You had hoped—naively, perhaps—that time and proximity would dull the Prince’s strange interest in you, but it seems they have only done the opposite. Instead of releasing your hand, he threads his fingers through your own with a satisfied hum.
“If you’re jealous of our chats, little witch,” he purrs, “You have only but to ask for one of your own.” Your belly twists at the heat his words carry, and you can feel the pass of his gaze down your body as though it can penetrate the fabric of your shift; as though he can see the trembling flesh beneath.
This time, it is your mouth that wrenches itself into a bitter scowl. “I thought you done with this—this—” The words are strangled in your throat as you try unsuccessfully to dislodge him.
“I admit, I ought not to be concerned.” He says slowly. “But perhaps that is why you vex me so.” He twists a curly lock of your hair around his finger, coiling it around and around before letting it spring free. “With the softness of your skin.” His thumb passes over your knuckles as his other hand finds the nape of your neck. “The scent of your hair.”
“Geralt—” He does not stop speaking, not even when you say his name, like he does not hear you, or care. The dam is broken now, the words flowing over your own and drowning them out.
“And then I think perhaps I might be sated by knowing them; that indeed your skin is soft,” he cups your cheek, and the intimacy of his touch sets your heart to racing. “And the scent of wildflowers, which by rights should belong to the warm summer days now belong to you and you alone.” Geralt’s thumb traces the shape of your lower lip. “It is the sweetest torture.”
You should push him away, snatch your hand back and put precious space between your bodies but you are frozen. You do not understand why a wanting heat flares in your belly as he nudges your chin up with his index finger. You dislike him—despise him, perhaps—and yet still you burn.
His mouth slants hotly across your own, one hand tangled in the curls at the nape of your neck and the other fisted in the fabric of your shift at your waist. It is soft but hungry, and he sighs against you as though a great thirst has now at last been slaked. A quiet gasp escapes you and Geralt’s tongue snakes in between your parted lips to stroke softly at your own.
Oh Gods—
There is no comparison between this and the hurried, talentless groping brought about by opportunity and youthful curiosity. No, every word, every caress is full of intent which terrifies you—and thrills you. Geralt tips your head further back, a hungry sound spilling from his lips and into your own mouth. His hands move deliberately over the curve of your hip, his fingers sinking possessively into the softness of your skin through your shift.
You suspect the hard shove you give him only works because of his surprise, and he stumbles back a pace or two. His lips curve upward into a knowing, triumphant smileIt is all the time you need to affect a limping sprint across the room as the wound in your side screams. Geralt could overtake you easily, but he does not take a single step after you, not even when you tug open the door and flee into the hallway and back towards your chambers.
Your heart is still beating so hard it aches in your chest as you close the door behind you, waiting for… you aren’t sure, really. The sound of footfall? Another bout of rage outside your locked door? You draw trembling fingers across your lips, a soft pantomime of his own. The burning ache at your core will not abate, no matter how sternly you will it to, and your cheeks burn with embarrassment instead of passion when your thighs slide together with the sticky slick gathered there.
Shamefully you crawl into bed, pulling the thick covers up over your head as you curl into yourself. You will not be Isolde or Katrina, Samille or Emilia—or any of the others whose names and stations you could never know. Why, then, will the terrible, wanting pulse between your thighs not leave you be? It is almost as insistent as Geralt himself, your body demanding your attention with all of the eagerness of a spoilt child. More than once you catch your wandering hands as they stray toward the slick, pulsing heat—
But then you remember the smug, victorious smile on his lips as you’d fled, and the weight of your humiliation crashes down on you again. It feels like a concession to tend the fire of his making, to acknowledge the fervor he has awakened in you with anything other than firm disdain.
It is in this fitful, unfulfilled half-state that dawn finds you, having turned sleeplessly all night beneath your covers. When Kassandra greets you at your door to help you bathe and dress, it is with a solemn expression, her lips pressed tight with worry.
“Do you feel quite well, my Lady?” Her eyes stray down and then back to your face again. “Does your wound ail you?” I must look ghastly.
“A—a bit, I suppose.” You mumble lamely, unable to produce the truth. “I did not sleep well.” The look of pity Kassandra gives you makes guilt rise like bile in your throat.
“I wish I could let you remain abed, my Lady, but we must hurry. I fear Her Majesty shall be here to fetch you soon.”
“What?” You blink tiredly at her. “Why?”
“T-the execution, my Lady,” she says softly, piteously. “The king’s will is done this day.”
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"Stupid Cupid, you're a real mean guy
I'd like to clip your wings off so you can't fly"
Jaskier declined another cup of ale from a particularly eager drunkard. The same man clapped his shoulder roughly in praise, making the younger man stumble forward. All the while his smile never faltered. Geralt's grip tightened and he took a swig of his ale.
Or, where Geralt and Jaskier debate literary interpretations on the basis of the witcher's self-imposed solitude, and Geralt just wishes that Jaskier's attention was his alone.
Tags: Pining, Sharing a Bed, Jealousy, Jealous Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Pre-Slash, Character Study, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Mutual Pining, Oblivious Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia
Chapter: 1/1 Word Count: 1,981
AO3
Heavy boots beat into the muddy earth as the witcher's path transformed from a peat forest floor to the overturned muddy road of a small village. The soggy ground tries to cling to his every step. Ahead of him, the light and merriment of the hamlet's single tavern flooded into the street, a mirage in a desert of muddy squalor.
The armored man carried no proof of his labors other than the grime on his boots, and a few less potion bottles in his bag.
He entered the tavern alone and unnoticed as he moved through the jovial crowd towards an empty seat on the room's perimeter. A smiling barmaid offered him an ale in return for his coin. It's sweet on his tongue after the acrid potions.
Across the room, a different woman offers her pint to a shining man, and asks for nothing in return. He takes the pint with one hand, the other slung around a well worn but cared for lute. After a long swig he returned the pint. He left the woman with only that barley kiss, and gave his voice to the rest of the room.
The witcher sips from his own pint.
The bard was singing lyrics that Geralt has heard already from across a campfire. He's singing about some forest nymph and a young hunter, an overdone narrative, but the excitement of the crowd would have you believing otherwise. The witcher humored himself at the thought.
He had said so to the bard earlier, when he paused his playing, "How many songs have been written about men discovering women in the forest?"
The bard had smiled at the not-so-subtle jab to his creativity and hummed to himself as he pondered the statement. He watched Geralt for a moment, the witcher was patiently stitching a patch onto one of Roach's worn saddlebags.
"Perhaps that is simply a reflection of the nature and the wants of men?" Jaskier smirked, plucking absently at strings.
Geralt huffed, "More likely to run into a leshy before a beautiful woman that may or may not want anything to do with a fresh idiot in the woods."
Jaskier paused his strumming and held a finger to his lip, "I think it's about transgressions. Two individuals from two different spheres collide: men and women, civilized and wild, innate and learned behavior, constraints and freedom, and so on. The result is unpredictable, a form of chaos. Say, Geralt, have you ever seen a real nymph?" He broke out of his pedantic mood.
"No. And if I did I certainly wouldn't emulate your lyrics."
"Well of course not, you're the nymph." The bard retorted with a grin.
"What?"
Jaskier didn't pause for Geralt's sake, "Your nymph can't be in the forest, because you're already here."
Only Jaskier would argue about such literary metaphors with a witcher. He watched the witcher comprehend his layered words, glaring at the scholar across the fire.
"It's not simply about women in the woods, Geralt! It's about stepping out of the boundaries of one's life, and discovering what lies outside of your experience. That's why the hunter dies, or the nymph flees, or sometimes they fall in love. Transgressing that boundary can be freeing or destructive." The bard spoke as if he were trying to condense pages of scholarly labor for Geralt's sake.
"So I haven't discovered a nymph because I'm already here?" He gestured to the tree canopy around them.
"You haven't found your nymph because you haven't tried to."
"I'm not looking for a naked woman in the woods."
"The nymph is a literary stand-in, Geralt!" The bard was exasperated now, "She's countless things: fate, death, love, coming of age, change, chaos, so on."
Geralt smirked his rudest, most witcher-y smile that Jaskier was too busy lecturing to notice.
"Of course, there is the simpler reading that everything outside of the measure of civilization is inherently chaotic, and that chaotic potential is manifest in the traipsing of the naive young hunter through the woods. So really it's all just a boring affirmation that the woods are dangerous." He spoke in a single breath.
"Of course." Geralt huffed in a quiet mocking.
Jaskier whirled his head back towards Geralt, realizing his feigned ignorance, "You know what I'm getting at!"
Geralt looked back down at his neglected handiwork and smiled.
Jaskier had turned up his nose in dramatic offense, "That's why you won't find your nymph." His hands returned to his lute strings, and Geralt returned to his work with a chuckle.
The audience around the man right now certainly weren't inquiring about the latent themes of his verses.
The bard reached the end of his song with a flourish. There wasn't a moment of silence before the cheers and whoops of the crowd replaced his voice. He was smiling wide and Geralt could see his chest rising with heavy breaths.
There was no stage platform in this tavern, it was too modest of a venue for much performance space at all. The happy drunks closest to the bard shook him by the shoulder and more offered their pints. Jaskier sipped from several drinks before declining any more. His face was rosy from the performance and the ale.
Geralt's pint felt weighty in his hand. He wondered if the bard would make his way towards the witcher's subdued alcove. He might have a few more songs for this crowd, but Geralt could see that he had been entertaining them for quite some time.
Jaskier declined another cup of ale from a particularly eager drunkard. The same man clapped his shoulder roughly in praise, making the younger man stumble forward. All the while his smile never faltered. Geralt's grip tightened and he took a swig of his ale.
The bard was looking towards him now, finally. He strolled by as cheerful hands applauded for him and clapped his shoulders and back. He thanked them, relishing in the praise even as he aimed to retire across the table from the witcher. Geralt turns his attention to his drink as the bard approached.
"How was the hunt? I see you've tracked in less gore than usual?" Jaskier beamed as he sat down across from him. His skin was glistening from the performance and his hair was a bit frizzy from the tavern atmosphere.
Geralt hummed, gloved hands pondering his mug.
Jaskier took a sip from his own cup, given to him by someone during his journey across the tavern floor.
"Just a few ghouls digging up shallow graves outside of town."
"You'd think everyone would learn that lesson by now. Maybe someone should write an instructive ballad." He tutted as he motioned with his cup.
"I think the crowd prefers naked people in the woods."
The bard's eyes lit up before he spoke, "That would be quite the subversion. The village gravedigger hasn't done his job. And now instead of a nymph, you're on a date with grave ghouls!"
Geralt nodded at Jaskier's almost empty cup, "Let's save the composing for tomorrow."
Jaskier barked a sufficiently intoxicated laugh before quieting. His eyes flitted from Geralt's face to the contents of his cup. Geralt raised his cup to drink and watched the bard over the rim.
"You could…" the voice which previously controlled the whole tavern floor was now barely a mumble, "…too. Y'know?"
Geralt swallowed his ale, "What?"
"You could sit with the rest sometime… where the music is." Jaskier's face was flush from the alcohol. He must be drunker than Geralt guessed.
Jaskier turned his head towards the roudy floor, Geralt followed his gaze.
"I'm always where the music is. The music won't let me alone." The witcher poked without any bitterness.
The bard laughed again before responding to Geralt's sarcastic remark.
"Hey, Bard! Give us one more song!" The clamor of the tavern infiltrated the witcher's secluded table. More voices joined the inebriated choir of requests. "And the witcher's back!"
"Give us one about your witcher!"
Jaskier belonged to the crowd once again, acknowledging their requests with a raise of his mug.
Geralt watched him scramble off of the bench, lute in hand. He looked back at the witcher and something unreadable flickered across his features. Whatever his hesitation was, he was snatched away by joyous hands towards the tavern floor.
Not willing to be the present subject of the ensuing ballad, Geralt saw it fit to retire early. He would leave while the music was lively and the people were still happy.
He moved through the crowd easily from his alcove towards the stairs. The bar's patrons at the edge of the floor smiled at the witcher as he passed them, a few saluted him with a brief, "aye, witcher", but the room belonged to the performing bard.
The sound of merriment dimmed as it followed him up worn down stairs, down a shabby hallway, and into a sparsely adorned room. The sound was replaced with his own melody of unfastened buckles and untied leather armor. He opted to retire onto the thin mattress, rather than meditate through the night on the wooden floor.
The linen sheets were scratchy and thin, not enough to bother the witcher, but he wondered if Jaskier would have any complaints. Looking up at the ceiling, he could feel drafts of air from thin walls.
Two fingers pinched away a lone flickering candle. Cat eyes adjusted to the dark space, and a restless mind wandered back downstairs to his and Jaskier's secluded table.
Eventually, Geralt closed his eyes to the wood grain of the ceiling, ready to welcome sleep.
Either seconds or hours later, the wooden door creaked open and a familiar scent piqued his senses. He didn't open his eyes yet, instead he listened to the sound of fabric shuffling and boots being tossed onto the floor. The bard must be tired if he's treating his cherished clothes as haphazardly as it sounds.
Before he can open his eyes to check, a familiar weight lands ungracefully and dramatically beside him on the small mattress, like diving into a lake.
Geralt exhales a laugh, "You smell like ale."
The bard hums in response as he makes himself more comfortable. Warmth spreads between them where the bard's side touches the witcher's.
Geralt lies like a statue while Jaskier twists and turns. He doesn't stay in one position long enough to register if it's comfortable enough for him before he twists some more.
"Would the floor be more to your liking?"
Geralt's eyes are still closed, but he knows the bard's smile when he hears him laughing. Finally he's stopped his ministrations, the only movement is his quiet laughter.
"No, I don't think so. I'm quite content." He slurred melodically.
Of course he was content, Jaskier was always that, content. He was content to share everything with Geralt, and also nothing at all. He was content to share pints with other tavern guests and to share music with the whole tavern floor.
"You left early," Jaskier grumbled into his elbow. The bard was going to be complaining about a headache tomorrow. Then shook with laughter again, muffling a statement in the crook of his arm.
"What's so funny now?" The witcher didn't move while the drunken man laughed against him.
"Just something about nymphs or what other," the bard waved a hand cheekily before adjusting with his back to Geralt's reclining form.
Geralt rolled his eyes behind closed eyelids, "Go to sleep, Jaskier."
He swore he could hear the bard's lips curl into an even more drunken smile.
"G'night, Geralt." The bard's voice was drifting further from their shared moment.
Geralt hummed. With cat eyes he glanced once at the sleeping man in the darkness. Tomorrow they would set out on the path again, there would be no rowdy taverns for a few days, no ale and no real bed either. The thought pleased him.
“Your smile… it's so damn good. I… would like to be the reason for it. As often as possible.”
"You are the reason, Geralt. More often than you think."
One of my favorite moments from “(Nie)wystarczająca bliskość”, a lovely fic (dedicated to me on top of that🥺👉👈hehe) by my friend @morska-owieczka 🧡 thank you so much for your lovely work, your Geregis never fails to make me smile, and I hope I can get you to smile in turn. Hope you like it! :)
For those of you who have not read it yet but don't speak polish, that's no excuse, it's 2025, translate it somehow 💆♂️
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