Summary: Desideratum - to long for.
Five times Jaskier needed Geralt, plus one time Geralt needed him.
Hey yall, this is another train fic! Keep an eye out for the next part on Friday from our next mystery contributor!
He told himself it was for a number of reasons that he went out looking for Geralt. He told himself it was because he was bored at court, because Virginia was in a cooling phase, that Arthur was due back home any week now and Jaskier wasn’t looking forward to another shouting match between the count and countess.
Jaskier told himself so many things as he followed the rumors to the river as to why he went looking for Geralt but the true reason.
When he came down the path, he took a beat, watching his- his what? Geralt would never let him call him anything that made Geralt his anything. But there Geralt was, his shoulders drawn in a hard line of tension, sleeves rolled up over his elbows.
Everything had gone tits up so fast that Jaskier didn’t know what else to do, so he did what he always would do. He clung to Geralt and hoped that the look of worry and concern were real and not just a creation of his own panic as he struggled for breath. The lump in his throat when he looked at Geralt was no longer just metaphorical and it crushed against his windpipe in a way that felt too much like a hand strangling the air from him.
He tried for words but nothing came and Jaskier simply let himself be dragged along, first to a healer who was simply ineffectual and then to the witch. He was out before too long, sliding into a hazy sleep where he couldn’t call out for Geralt any more than he could with that thing blocking his voice.
Coming to was no more illuminating than before, but he had a taste in his mouth of dust and blood and something sharp like magic meant to harm, In his fog he thought maybe he had been put in a bed in an inn somewhere and turned, reaching for the solid line of Geralt’s side that wasn’t there. For a moment, panic swelled in his chest and he thought the magic had come back, choking him again, but it was just the same pain he realized he was growing accustom to.
The woman on the edge of the bed, her back turned to him was gorgeous and haunting, her black hair cascading down her naked back-
Her naked back. What had happened? Where was Geralt? Why did Jaskier remember an orgy?
“Not to be untoward or anything, but did we-” he gestured vaguely between himself and the woman but when she turned, her face was a mask of determination and power. He scrambled from the bed, his boots by the door.
When she asked for him to try some scales, the only song he could think to sing was Geralt’s. If he was close, maybe he would hear, maybe he would come and save him. Jaskier needed him to appear, to pull him out by the scruff of his neck as he always had and make those faces at him again, the ones Jaskier could tell himself made it feel like Geralt actually cared, even a little bit.
“Make your last wish!” she demanded as she stood above her circle of candles.
He knew what he desired, what would sooth the thing roiling in his gut but in the moment, he didn’t want to risk putting Geralt into the path of this crazy woman. “I- I wish very badly to leave this place forever!”
When she started chanting, he ran.
“Oh Geralt, thank the gods,” he huffed. It would have been so easy to just lean into him, into the space where Jaskier knew he’d be safe. He could pretend that Geralt would be happy he was alive even as he rushed in to save the witch that had just nearly tried to kill him.
“She saved your life, Jaskier, I can’t let her die.” What was he supposed to do with that.
Jaskier stood in the middle of the road, watching as the house seemed to partially collapse, and his heart collapsed with it. His chest constricted in a way he hadn’t been expecting. Sure he had cared for Geralt but something else, something like poison slipped between his ribs and festered into his heart.
Jaskier didn’t just care for Geralt, he might have been just a little bit in love with him and it hadn’t been fair that he had resigned himself to a life chasing after the impossible.
“... It wasn’t supposed to go this way.” There was a war within him. His- not his. Geralt was gone and Jaskier was left behind, as always, picking up the pieces of something he hadn’t realized would shatter so easily.
“They’re alive!” Chireadan slumped down in front of him, pulling him to the window
Jaskier pushed in beside him, expecting relief to sooth the vibration under his skin. They were alive alright, and fucking their way to proving it. It had never bothered him before the idea of Geralt sleeping with someone. It shouldn’t have mattered then and so he told himself it didn’t.
Just this once, and then we’ll never see her again. Jaskier reasoned, turning away quickly.
And it wasn’t… and it wasn’t… and it wasn’t. And each time they ran into Yennefer by chance, by fate, or by Geralt’s own undefined need, a part of Jaskier chipped and cracked and threatened to shatter.
“I thought we had a contract in Vizima?” Jaskier bounced along side Roach, his fingers working over a particularly tricky chord procession.
“I have a contract in Vizima,” Geralt deadpanned, not looking at Jaskier.
“That’s all well and good, but this is the road to Murivel,”
“I know how to read a map, Jaskier,” he growled back, but there didn’t seem to be any heat behind it. Instead, Geralt seemed almost pleased with himself.
“I don’t doubt your ability with a map, Witcher, but I’m starting to doubt your sanity. What are you playing at?” he jogged up a bit until he was nearly in step with Roach, pushing his lute back over his shoulder.
“There’s a bardic competition in Murivel for one of their festivals.” And there it was, that smile Geralt gave him on the rare occasions when the coin was alright, the people weren’t awful, and all the gods agreed that Jaskier should have something at least slightly nice in his life. He tried not to admit how much he had come to live off those smiles or to read into them.
“What about the contract?”
“Hm,” Geralt smirked, urging Roach on, leaving Jaskier to follow.
They had found a room at a tavern on the edge of town and Geralt had even agreed to attend for Jaskier’s performance.
“I mean it, Geralt! I’m counting on you,” Jaskier teased, throwing a towel at him as he climbed out of the bath.
It felt like nearly every eye in Murivel was on him when he took the stage, but even through the haze of pipe smoke and the setting sun, Jaskier could still make out Geralt towards the edge of the square, his eyes not leaving Jaskier as he began to play. He hadn’t realized how much he had needed just that one set of amber eyes on him to settle his nerves.
Jaskier had glanced away for a moment but when his eyes found Geralt again, those same eyes were now caught in violet ones framed by dark raven hair and a smile like a knife. It cut Jaskier to ribbons and his fingers tripped over the chords he otherwise knew in his sleep.
Geralt had said it was because of a bardic competition, but as Jaskier left the stage, knowing that he lost points for his sudden loss of breath mid performance, he felt… played.
Geralt would come back, of course he would. He always did. Jaskier sat at the end of the bar in the tavern and watched the door as he slowly tipped himself into the well made mead, spending nearly every coin of his third place winnings. He watched and waited as the tavern slowly emptied out, the barkeep getting more and more aggressive with insisting Jaskier call it a night. And so he did.
Jaskier climbed the stairs alone and pushed into their… his room. The only thing there that had even suggested he wasn’t travelling alone was a second cloak hanging beside his on the back of the door. He reached out, adjusting it without purpose until he couldn’t bare to touch the thing any more.
The note he left for Geralt was short and to the point and Jaskier didn’t think he would even think anything of it. Jaskier was prone to taking off randomly and this would have been no different, not from where Geralt stood anyways.
He hadn’t slept and he watched through the tiny window as the sky beyond the city went from a deep bruising blue to a soft gray. He had set out then, not looking back as he found the road west.
Jaskier swallowed around the lumb that had caught in his throat, the memory of the djinn tinging it with that same sharp taste that still left him breathless and helpless.
“She saved your life, Jaskier. I can’t let her die,” he said, his eyes softer than they normally would be.
The exhaustion in his bones couldn’t outway the burning in his chest that propelled him forward. Jaskier had never understood why Geralt couldn’t have let her die while Jaskier himself stood there choking to death on a need he could not name.
