All works must be Jaskier/Dandelion-centric (otherwise what is the point, darling?)
There is no minimum or maximum word count (you know size doesn’t matter to me ;))
All canons (book/game/show) and ships (or gen) welcome!
Please tag @whataboutthebard when posting on Tumblr and #wreck the bard/#whump the bard/#wuv the bard for whichever prompt(s) inspired you that day!
Prompt schedule HERE!
Please add your works to the AO3 collection HERE
We encourage creators to post their fic/art/other on the day of the prompt, but late submissions are of course welcome (Melitele knows I’m not the most punctual of fellows myself …)
This is a kink and Dead Dove-inclusive event, but all explicit fic must be under a cut and properly tagged (see suggested posting template) and explicit art should be preview-only/tumblr-safe (full art may be linked elsewhere)
Only 18+ folks may post #wreck the bard or explicit fics! Under 18 posters of explicit work will not be reblogged and will be removed from the collection (sorry kiddos …)
Play nice and enjoy yourself! Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do ;)
FAQ
Do I have to sign up?
Not at all! Just post on the appropriate date and tag the appropriate tags, and you’re on your way!
Can I use more than one category’s prompt? Ex: wreck AND whump?
Of course! The more the merrier!
Are original characters allowed?
Yes! You know me, I just love meeting new people …
Do I have to have a tumblr or AO3 account?
You must have at least one to participate in this event, since publicity of the works will be consolidated on this tumblr and the AO3 collection.
Are crossovers/AUs allowed?
So long as they are full of heartbreak and heroics (and feature me)!
Can I post more than one fic/art/other per day?
Please post as many as you would like! I am already amazed by your productivity, darling!
Do I have to post every day of this event?
Post as few or as many times as inspires you!
Who do I have thank for the lovely banners and icon??
Event banners are by the ASTONISHING @contemplativepancakes and category banners are by the IMPECCABLE @petrifiedforests. Our brand new adorable icon is by @d-andilion <3
Oh no! My Wuv fic became smutty (Wreck fic became angsty/Whump fic became fluffy etc.)!
We are still very happy to have you and your lovely work! Just remember to tag appropriately!
Who is behind this REALLY?
Alright, Valdo, just because YOU don’t have a wide, thriving fanbase doesn’t mean that the rest of us need to come under suspicion. Do not ever talk to me or my lovely managers @greyduckgreygoose, @kueble, @witcher-and-his-bard, @valdomarx, @jackironsidesfic, @d-andilion, @rebrandedbard, @petrifiedforests, @samstree, @julek and @welcomemysentence again (inquiries NOT by Valdo Marx encouraged).
Vi Moxt Miirik Chapter Two – @katwriteswitcherthings – Geraskier, non-human Jaskier, Geralt and Jaskier through the years as Jaskier learns to let Geralt in
November 8: meeting after a long time apart
A Worthwhile Journey – @professorjaskier – Geraskier, Geralt finds Jaskier in Oxenfurt
November 9: a special performance
[ART] Jaskier playing the violin, @spielzeugkaiser
Vi Moxt Miirik Chapter Four – @katwriteswitcherthings – Geraskier, non-human Jaskier
November 10: sweet confession of feelings
Hit Me with Your Sweet Love (Steal Me with a Kiss) – @spilledbutter – Yenskier, modern setting getting together
CW: smut, drinking; contains light D/s, oral sex, dirty talk, teasing, vaginal fingering, vaginal sex
Vi Moxt Miirik Chapter Five – @katwriteswitcherthings – Geraskier, non-human Jaskier
November 11: Kaer Morhen or cutagens (cute aspects of mutagens)
Goodnight My Angel – @professorjaskier – Geraskier, Jaskier & Ciri
CW: Mentions of a house fire, car crash, and canonical character deaths (Calanthe & Eist)
November 14: bundled up
Cause When It’s Cold (I’ll Wrap My Scarf Around You) – @beth--b – Geraskier, Jaskier at Kaer Morhen
Mornings – @d-andilion – Valskier, modern AU, established relationship
Bard-rrito – @kell-be-belle – Geraskier, Geralt chooses an unorthodox method of soothing a cranky Jaskier
Vi Moxt Miirik Chapter Nine – @katwriteswitcherthings – Geraskier, non-human Jaskier
November 15: engagement or wedding shenanigans
Vi Moxt Miirik Chapter Ten – @katwriteswitcherthings – Geraskier, non-human Jaskier
November 16: hand-holding
If It Means We Get the Wallpaper Right – @wren-of-the-woods – Geraskier, referenced past torture, kissing Jaskier’s scars better
My very belated contribution to @whataboutthebard. I’d intended to write this in a marathon session last Saturday and post it the same day, but although I managed 8k, it was not done. It’s now finished at a whopping 17.5k. Props to @a-kind-of-merry-war, who guessed the length correctly sight unseen when I was still dismally hoping for 15k.
This fic was supposed to be posted on the 19th of November, whose prompts were:
Wreck: somnophilia or sleepy sex, Whump: sleep deprivation or coma, Wuv: watching over them as they sleep/waking up together
This is mostly whump, with a side order of wuv. I intend to post an epilogue that covers the wreck part soon ;)
This fic is G, 17.5k. Some minor discussion of inadvertent food restriction from poverty/circumstances. Oh, and sleep issues, as you might expect. It’s a mash up of season one with a bit of book canon. This is the problem with having so many WIPs that were begun before season 2 aired, I suspect. One gets into A Groove.
Find it on AO3 here.
I’ll Be Here When You Wake
Jaskier has always been a poor sleeper. It’s worse in towns, with their lamps burning late into the night, and their fascinating people to talk to. Villages are a little easier: even the most enthusiastic farmer in his audience is all too aware that he must get up at cock’s crow to ... comb the sheep, or whatever it is they do. But even when all of his audience goes to their beds, there’s no guarantee that Jaskier himself will sleep. He’s thrown himself onto more than one palliasse in exhaustion and still got up an hour later to burn a rushlight or squint in the moonlight to work on a poem or song. (Poems are easiest, because he likes to be able to play through songs as he’s writing them, and even lutes are a lot less welcome in inns during the wee hours than they are in the evening.)
It’s why he rarely stays when he takes a lover. Being awake when you don’t wish to be is bad enough, but tossing and turning in a strange bed and keeping someone else awake is worse. Especially when they’re someone who barely knows you, and has little patience for a lover keeping them from their rest. Better if he leaves once they’re both done. His lovers are more likely to remember him fondly that way, and he is much less likely to be bored. Jaskier is even worse at being bored than he is at sleeping.
He’s better when he travels with Geralt. Travelling with Geralt means spending more nights under the stars instead of by rushlight, and that seems to make his body remember better what sleep is, and how much it likes it. And Geralt goes to bed early, even when they stay in towns and villages, which encourages Jaskier to do the sensible thing. And when they share a bed, and Jaskier is manfully trying not to fidget (... too much), Geralt will grumble, ‘Sleep,’ and throw an arm and leg over Jaskier, pinning him to the bed. The first time it happened, Jaskier thought he was going to die from suppressed fidgeting. But after that first time, his body seemed to take it as a signal that it was time to finally let him sleep. Now when he feels the weight of Geralt’s arm or leg over him, he finds himself melting into sleep within minutes. It’s a relief.
He hasn’t travelled with Geralt for a while now.
Not travelling with Geralt means sleep is as difficult to find as it always is when he’s alone. So he doesn’t realise he’s cursed at first. He’s just having a bad run of nights. That isn’t unprecedented, although it’s been some time since it was last this bad. He isn’t sure whether he’s had a run quite like this since the last year of his studies at Oxenfurt Academy. Regardless, he knows that although it’s not pleasant, it will end eventually. It always does.
He just—Can’t sleep.
Well. He sleeps, but it takes him so long to fall asleep – even longer than usual. More than once he’s seen the first blushings of dawn peeping into the window of his room before his body finally lets him rest. And when he does sleep before dawn, he often finds himself waking every hour, and once he drags himself upright in the morning, it’s as though he hasn’t slept at all. He’s started sleeping through when he’d usually wake, too – he’s thrown out of three inns in a row for oversleeping past the time he ought to leave.
Even then, it’s just a couple of weeks of poor sleep, that becomes three weeks, that becomes a month. Then two. He doesn’t really think about how long it’s been, because it’s hard to think when he’s this tired. He’s aware that it’s been a long time now, but he’s just kind of ... resigned to it. He can’t think clearly enough to be worried about it. This is just his life now. He’s good at pretending that he isn’t exhausted. He doesn’t have enough spark to be able to write new songs, but that’s all right. He has plenty stored up, and at some stage he’ll sleep again, and then he’ll write. New songs always come much slower when he isn’t travelling with Geralt, anyway. It’s fine. He doesn’t need sleep to be able to put one foot in front of the other to get from place to place, and he’s well practised at pretending to be more enthused than he is when he performs. He makes more mistakes than he usually does, but they’re mostly minor fumblings, and so long as his audience has had enough to drink, it isn’t as though they notice. It doesn’t matter that he’s frustrated by it. He’s getting on fine.
A farmer offers to give him a lift in his hay cart. He’s headed somewhere or other for market, Jaskier thinks, although truthfully he doesn’t ask the farmer a lot of questions. He’s happy enough just to get to rest his legs for a bit.
He jolts awake and it’s hours later, and the sun is riding low in the sky. He’s missed much of the day. He has no idea whether the farmer has taken him where he promised. He doesn’t remember where they were heading. It hadn’t seemed very important. The man could have slit Jaskier’s throat in a field and taken all of his worldly goods – not that he had much – and Jaskier would never have known. He feels deeply shaken. He vows to get more sleep, and for a minute he believes that if he just tries, it will be that easy. That his years of terrible sleep have been some kind of personal failing, due to him not trying hard enough to be good, and now that he’s made this decision, it should be easy to fix it.
‘We’re here,’ says the farmer. ‘I’ll be heading home tomorrow afternoon if you want to head back that way. Just let me know.’
‘Yeah, thanks, good,’ Jaskier says vaguely, and slips off the end of the cart.
He needs to find a room at the inn, and then tonight he won’t slip into anyone’s bed. He’ll be good. He’ll go straight to his own room, and he’ll blow out the rushlight early, and he’ll sleep. He can’t keep doing this.
There are no rooms to be had. Tomorrow is market day, the innkeeper tells him tiredly, which means that they’re completely full up. He could sleep in the hayloft, if he likes.
He doesn’t like, but he thanks her graciously. It will be better than sleeping under a bush. And she’s willing to provide his meal a little cheaper if he plays for her guests tonight. It’s the best kind of deal that he ever gets in a small place like this, and he’s grateful for it. And with market day tomorrow, and her inn full up, he might even find a few more coins than usual in his lute case after he finishes.
He isn’t travelling with Geralt, after all, he thinks, and tries not to notice the pang in his chest at that. He doesn’t need a room to keep his things in, not when he’ll have his lute with him through the evening. So this is fine, actually! It’s fine.
He chats to a couple of merchants in for the market over dinner. One of them is a tinker. He offers to repair Jaskier’s pots at a discount, but Jaskier has to admit that he hasn’t one, at the moment.
‘Whyever not?’ the tinker asks.
‘No horse,’ Jaskier laughs.
‘No—No horse,’ the tinker repeats. ‘How—Why? I thought you said you travelled!’
‘I do,’ Jaskier says. ‘I had a horse, but she was stolen. And I used to travel with someone else who had a horse, so she carried all of our things. But I’m alone again. I ought to buy another, I suppose. Once I have money again. And perhaps I’ll be able to buy a pot from you then.’
The tinker laughs.
The other merchant sitting with them is bringing furs down from the frozen north, where Geralt grew up. (Jaskier squashes that thought as soon as he has it.)
‘Aren’t you worried?’ Jaskier asks. ‘Having your cart out of sight while you eat in here?’
‘My boy is wit’ it,’ says the furrier, laughing. His accent is thick, as though the act of speaking could turn air to honey in his mouth, much like the other Kaedwenians Jaskier has known. (Very different to Geralt’s accent, although Geralt often had an echo of that thickness for the first week of spring.) ‘Big boy, fists like hams. He will keep safe. When I am done, I send him in for supper. He likes music. He will like seeink you perform. He has little pipe of his own.’
He mimes playing a tune on a small pipe.
‘Perhaps he could join me for a song,’ Jaskier suggests.
The furrier laughs. ‘He does not bring it with him! He plays sometimes, in winter. Stops us goink mad.’ He taps his forehead, and laughs again.
Jaskier smiles politely. He changes the subject, asks if they think it’s worth him coming along to the market tomorrow, perhaps entertaining the crowds. The furrier – what is his name? Jaskier is usually good at this, but his head feels full of straw – is very enthusiastic about it.
‘Much better than usual, where it is standink around for hours, hopink someone wants your wares,’ he says. ‘Feet get less sore when dere is somethink to watch.’
Once Jaskier’s dinner is done, he tunes his lute and prepares to perform. His fingers feel thick and stupid, and tuning feels like it takes forever. He keeps turning his pegs too far, and then over-correcting. He knows that some of that forever is simply because he’s tired and cranky, and so even a minor inconvenience feels like a world-ending disaster. He shoves down that irritation, and pastes on a smile before getting up to play.
He blanks on the words to the second verse of the first song he plays, which is never a good omen. It’s fine, though; he just skips to the third verse and elides the second verse entirely. Likely no-one even notices. But he notices.
It’s a performance full of stuff-ups. His fingers are like sausages, and he fumbles a few fret changes. He even stumbles over his own feet at one point, although thankfully he doesn’t actually fall over, and his audience seems to think the near-pratfall was deliberate. It’s probably because he’s already so aware of the mistakes he’s already made, but he keeps making them. This finger on the wrong string, the wrong note played in this verse. He hates it, even as he keeps playing, and it’s harder and harder not to show his frustration on his face as he plays.
‘I’ll just take a quick rest,’ he says, grinning at the gathered crowd. It’s earlier than he normally would, but perhaps if he takes a rest he can shake off this malaise. There is a fair collection of coins in his lute case, though, which is cheering. He leaves them there, because people are more likely to add more coins if there’s a healthy amount already there. Besides, it’s easier to scoop them all up at the end of the night, and right now he doesn’t have the energy for anything more than the bare minimum of what he needs to do. He does spot that someone has dropped an entire Gors Velen Noble in, which is generous. They’re difficult to spend outside of Gors Velen, though. He picks it up, and spins it in his fingers for something to do with his hands.
The furrier and the tinker are still at the table when he slings his lute onto his back and slides back onto his spot on the bench.
‘Good work,’ the furrier says, clapping him on the shoulder. ‘I should go, let Iwan come in and eat. But you did good job.’
He passes Jaskier a tankard of ale. Jaskier takes it thankfully and drains it. Singing is surprisingly thirsty work.
The tinker says something, although whether it’s to Jaskier or to the furrier, he isn’t quite sure. He’s so sleepy. He folds his arms on the table and closes his eyes. He knows he won’t fall asleep, not in the middle of a crowded tavern full of people laughing and drinking and shouting together, but at least he could rest his eyes. They feel like they’ve been roughly peeled, and left in the sun to dehydrate for a week of hot summer days, and then shoved straight back in his face. Keeping them open nearly hurts. Besides, if he has his eyes closed, no-one’s going to expect him to respond to them, or to follow the conversation. And he’s tired enough that following what they’re talking about is hard. They might as well both be speaking Elder for the amount of effort Jaskier has to put in just to follow what they’re saying. If he just closes his eyes for the next few minutes, then hopefully that will give him just enough rest that he’ll be able to turn this shambles of a performance into something he can nearly be proud of.
He jolts awake when someone roughly shakes his shoulder.
‘Time for you to get out,’ says the landlady flatly.
Jaskier blinks at her, and then looks around. The tavern is empty. The light is wrong. He somehow fell asleep? It isn’t night time any more, which means that he has to move quick-smart in order to go play at the market. Fuck.
He pulls himself to his feet, and is reassured to feel the weight of his lute still on his back. The lute case is where he left it, on bench across the room.
It’s empty. It’s completely empty. He wants to cry. There had been enough money in there to feed himself for a week, maybe even to stretch to a room in another inn, and now there’s nothing. Someone, or several someones, have helped themselves to whatever coin had been left there for him in payment for his performance.
No matter. He’ll go and play through the market, and he might make a fraction of it back, if he’s lucky. And he still has that single Noble he’d had in his hand when he slept last night. That’s something, at least.
He gathers up his lute case, not bothering to buckle it closed when he’s just going to lay it out at his feet again, and pushes out the tavern door.
The market is over. There is churned up mud where three dozen pairs of feet have walked, and deep cart ruts where merchants set up their stalls and left again. The furrier and a younger man – presumably his son – are leaning against a nearly empty cart, with just a few worn-looking skins in the bottom. They’re talking in low voices, and sharing some bread and wine.
‘Jaskier!’ calls the furrier, when he looks up and spots him. ‘My son very sad to not see you play last night. We try to wake, but we cannot.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he says, shamefaced, picking his way over to their cart. ‘I ... I haven’t been sleeping well recently.’
‘That is pity,’ says the furrier.
His son says nothing. Jaskier shuffles in place. He tries not to look at the bread in their hands. He is suddenly starving, but he has no food, and now no money with which to buy any more. He’d spent most of the last of it on the hayloft that he didn’t get to sleep in. He could hardly go back in to the inn and convince the landlady to feed him. She was already annoyed with him – doubtless because she’d had to deal with the patrons last night who were deprived of the music they’d been promised.
He won’t starve to death. He’ll wait until the sun is a little lower in the sky, and he’ll go scrumping for apples, and whatever he can find in people’s gardens. If he just takes a little, it should be all right. And then he’ll just move on. He’ll have more luck in the next town. And if he heads towards bigger places than this, he might find a tavern or an inn that’s willing to let him stay there for a few weeks, maybe even give him room and board. Even just a room would be nice.
‘We are heading back nort’,’ says the furrier, looking him over. ‘We could take you, if you like. Could leave you in Dorian.’
Jaskier’s chest swells with hope, but then he remembers the woeful state of his purse.
‘I can’t,’ he admits. ‘I can’t pay you. All of the money that people left in my case last night was gone when I woke up.’
The son looks at his father, and shrugs. ‘We had good day,’ says the son. ‘Come with us anyway. You could play when we stop tonight.’
‘That is kind of you,’ Jaskier says, his eyes prickling. ‘If you’re happy to have me.’
The son shrugs again. ‘Is no problem. Vasko and Nikita will not notice extra load.’
He pats the rump of the ass beside him, who makes an affronted noise. Both of the Kaedwenians laugh.
‘Ready to leaf?’ the furrier asks.
‘If you’ll let me put my lute away,’ Jaskier says, kneeling down to do just that.
His stomach rumbles, but the Kaedwenians are leaving now. There’s no time for scrumping, but if he’s lucky, they might give him some of their supper. They’ve been kind enough so far. If not ... he might find something to eat where they stop. And one day without food won’t kill him. He buckles his lute case closed, and swings himself up onto the cart.
The son sits in the back of the cart with him, and the furrier sits up front. There’s a jolt as they get under way, and then it’s just the easy rhythm of the road. He can feel every stone that the wheels run over, but he gets to rest.
The furrier’s son produces an apple, and cuts slices out of it with his knife. He offers one to Jaskier, who tries to hide how grateful he is at the kindness.
‘Father tried to wake you when he left last night,’ the son says. ‘And we tried to wake you when tavern closed for night, send you to bed. But you would not wake.’
‘That’s not usual for me,’ Jaskier says. ‘But I’ve been sleeping badly for months now. I suppose I just needed the rest. Still, not quite as bad as when I travelled with Geralt—’
He stops suddenly, the sting of their separation still so fresh, even after months.
The son waits, then says, ‘Geralt another bard?’
Jaskier is shocked into a laugh, almost forgetting his pain. ‘Ha! No. No, he’s a witcher.’
‘You travel with witcher? You are interesting man to know.’
‘Not any more,’ Jaskier says, as brightly as he can.
‘Sleep badly with witcher, then?’
‘Plague, no, the opposite,’ Jaskier says. ‘No, but once he was sleeping so badly that he decided to see if he could find a genie to grant him a wish.’
‘Djinn is myth,’ says the son.
‘That’s what I said,’ says Jaskier. ‘But it turns out that they are very much real, and also deeply unpleasant. This one destroyed the house of the mage that wanted to capture it.’
‘Sounds like story worth telling,’ says the son.
‘I was under a spell for half of it, so I had to get the details from Geralt after, and he is not a natural storyteller, let me tell you. The whole thing was pretty gruesome, all told. I still feel like I ought to be able to get a good song out of it, though, if I can work out which parts to keep.’
‘Why not just tell story,’ says the son.
‘It doesn’t work,’ says Jaskier, relaxing into the explanation. He’s tried to explain this to Geralt before. but Geralt never wants to hear it. ‘Real life is messy, with confusing little bits that don’t make sense unless you explain half an hour’s worth of back story. Songs need to be done in a dozen or so lines of poetry. There isn’t the space for much in the way of details. If I wrote epic poems I might manage to put in most of the story, but even then there are bits which are unimportant or confusing, and which if you trimmed away the story is easier to tell.’
‘Like whittlink,’ says the son. ‘Cut away parts of wood which do not look like bear.’
‘Yes, exactly,’ Jaskier beams. ‘That’s exactly it! You trim away the unnecessary details until the story is the right shape. Sometimes the same events could be a comedy or a tragedy, depending on how you look at it. The genie was both, in a way.’
‘How so?’ asks the son.
Jaskier hopes that the son and his father actually use each other’s names when they stop. He’s going to find this trip very awkward, otherwise.
‘Well ... the whole thing was a little absurd. I wound up choking half to death on my own throat because of a wish that the genie fulfilled in the worst way possible. Geralt wound up under a mage’s geas because he was trying to undo that wish, and the geas had him doing all kinds of ridiculous things, like spanking a priest in the high street.’
‘Sounds like good way to end up as execution,’ comments the son.
‘Ye-es,’ says Jaskier. ‘Although he was saved by a wish that he didn’t know he had, and accidentally exploded the guard’s head.’
The son laughs uproariously, slapping his knee.
‘Now tell tragedy part,’ he says.
‘Well,’ Jaskier says slowly. ‘the mage we went to for help was cruelly treated as a child, and had her ability to become a mother ripped away from her. She thought that if she could ... capture the genie, and tame it, she could recover that ability.’
‘Poor woman,’ says the son, shaking his head.
‘Mm,’ Jaskier agrees.
He still doesn’t quite forgive Yennefer for being Geralt’s true love, but if he puts his own selfish feelings aside, he can recognise that Yennefer has had a difficult life, even from what little he knows of it. It’s just hard to remember that, because it’s Yennefer. She doesn’t exactly invite pity.
Jaskier chose his path for himself. He never wanted to be his father’s son, and so he has carved out a life where he isn’t. He wonders if he would be equally as fixed on being an heir as Yennefer is on motherhood if he had been disinherited before he decided to become a bard. Or if he’d never met Geralt, never had an adventure. He could see how he might. It’s a realisation born of his recent insomnia, and he wonders if this new fellow feeling will survive his next meeting with Yen, or if they’ll be sniping at each other as soon as they meet again, all sympathy forgotten.
(Less productive things to come from his insomnia include hours spent awake, going back over every moment he spent with Geralt, wondering if there were things he could have done differently, to make it all have turned out in the end. Things that Jaskier could have done to keep his friend.)
‘Did she catch djinn?’ asks the son.
He passes Jaskier the wine bottle, and Jaskier takes it with a nod. There’s only about a cup’s worth left, but it’s enough to wet his whistle.
‘No,’ says Jaskier. ‘Geralt thought—Geralt says that if she had, it would have torn her apart. He tried to stop her. Used his last wish to stop her from catching the genie, somehow. I don’t know how, I’m afraid. Geralt was not very clear, and I was never sure whether he wasn’t sure how he’d done it, or if he was ashamed of how he’d done it.’
‘Probably shame,’ says the son. ‘Men are often not good to women, even though we are stronger, and should be better. Especially powerful women. Make many men angry.’
‘That’s the thing,’ Jaskier says. ‘Geralt is a good man. I’ve never known him to be anything other than courteous and kind, unless whoever it is really doesn’t deserve it. Often he’s still polite when they’re incredibly rude to him. He only tends to get rude when someone is being cruel to someone else, especially someone defenceless. He never does it if they’re being cruel to him. He doesn’t think he’s worth it.’
Jaskier stares out at the road unspooling behind them, and yawns.
‘But he also carries so much shame in his heart. Shame for not being good enough, or fast enough. Or for times when he only had two bad choices, and he chose the one which seemed better, but which turned out worse.’ He thinks about that, and adds, ‘or when he chose the better of two poor choices. It’s as though he feels that if he’d been a better man – well, a better witcher, a better person – he’d conjure up some third option where nobody was hurt. Sometimes I wish for his sake that he could. But how do you undo the mistakes of a dozen other men, that they made a decade before you arrived, in a place you don’t live, among people you don’t know? It’s impossible.’
‘You feel greatly for him,’ the son says, thumping his chest in emphasis. ‘Your friend witcher.’
‘Well ... yes,’ Jaskier admits. ‘I travelled with him a long time. We’re—We were close.’
The son nods, and turns to watch the road for a while.
Then he says, ‘Is witcher last part of tragedy?’
Yes, Jaskier thinks. That moment, looking through the windows of that destroyed house, that was the beginning of the end.
But he isn’t going to admit his awful doomed one-sided love to this young man. Not when he and his father are his literal ride to Dorian. He might be sympathetic, but it’s far too risky. And in Dorian, Jaskier might actually make enough to see him through the next month or so. If he’s really lucky, he might be able to make enough that he can put some aside towards a new horse. It would be the sensible thing to do, if he plans on continuing to travel the roads as he always has.
‘He survived,’ Jaskier says instead. ‘And he saved the mage. And she seemed to forgive him for it.’
He also isn’t going to admit to watching them through the windows of that house. He isn’t going to admit the churn of mixed feelings as he stood there, nor the way that Chireadan had to pull him away.
His eyes droop. The sun is low in the sky, but not quite setting. Apparently one solid day of rest is not enough to make up for weeks of poor sleep. He shouldn’t really be surprised at that, but he wishes that he could have some of that weight of exhaustion lift. Perhaps he’d feel less sleepy if he weren’t on a cart, he thinks. The gentle motion of the wheels, the swaying of the cart, the drum-like rhythm of the asses’ hooves on the hard-packed dirt road. It all conspires to make him drowsy, and the smell of the furs and the unwashed man beside him, and the horse-like smell of the asses means that if he closes his eyes, he could almost be beside Geralt again.
‘It is only perhaps hour until we stop,’ says the son.
‘Good,’ murmurs Jaskier.
He drifts. He sleeps.
*
‘We are here,’ says a rough Kaedwenian voice.
Jaskier blinks his eyes open, and has to hold up an arm to shield himself from the sun. It’s nearly shining directly in his eyes, and it’s blinding. He sits up and waits for his eyes to adjust, and then looks around.
‘Where are we?’ he asks.
He’d thought they were going to stop for the evening in a wood, or something. This is ... not that. There’s cobblestones beneath the cart.
‘Dorian,’ says the furrier.
‘Wait, what?’ says Jaskier. ‘It can’t be. Dorian was several days’ drive—’
‘Yes,’ says the furrier shortly. ‘And we are here.’
Jaskier wants to protest, to argue. It’s absurdity itself to suggest that they could be in Dorian. He would have woken before then. He’s tired, but he’s not so tired that he could lose several days.
Fuck, he needs to piss. And eat something. And he still has no money.
‘You should find mage,’ says the furrier’s son. ‘Not right to sleep that long without waking. Perhaps your friend’s mage with djinn would help.’
‘Right, yeah, thanks,’ Jaskier mutters.
He staggers off the cart, and nearly falls when his legs buckle beneath him. He manages to catch himself on the cart’s edge, and after a few terrifying moments, his legs seem to support him enough to stand. He staggers over to an alley between a couple of buildings, finds a spot where he won’t be immediately obvious to passers by, and unbuttons his breeches.
Considering how desperate he’d felt, he’d expected to let loose a stream that his father’s destrier would be proud of. But instead he produces a thin dark-yellow stream that tapers off all too soon.
Several days, he thinks. Well, fuck.
He buttons himself as hurriedly as he can. His fingers don’t seem to want to work any more than his legs want to carry him. He doesn’t remember being this shaky after he staggered out of Yennefer’s house in Rinde. Although he supposes he’d only been asleep for a day then. This time he’s been asleep for what – three days? Four, perhaps, if he counts sleeping for most of the previous day and missing the market.
A cold hand clenches around his heart. The furriers are right. Poor sleep can’t explain that. He doesn’t like the way that it’s worsened, either – to go from most of one day to three is not a good pattern. Will it get worse from here? Will he fall asleep tonight and wake up in a week? A month? Or not wake up at all?
He leans against the wall of the alley and despairs. For the first time since he was fourteen and crying himself to sleep in his room in Oxenfurt, he wishes that he was home, in his father’s house. He is so incredibly vulnerable here. For all his father’s faults, which are many, and his disagreements with his son, which are near infinite, if Jaskier was still at home, his father would fix this. That was, if there was something to be fixed. If he suddenly fell asleep and could not be wakened, a mage would at least be summoned.
He has no idea what will happen if he falls asleep again, perhaps this time for good. Will they assume that he’s dead? Will they hastily arrange a pauper’s grave, and tip him into it and bury him alive, and sell his lute? It’s a truly terrifying thought. He could disappear here, he realises. No-one will know where the famous bard Jaskier went. No-one would expect ‘He fell asleep one day, and never woke up, so he was buried in a rough hole under no name, like a peasant who died of the plague in a foreign place.’
Would Geralt miss him? He has desperately hoped that the whole business on the mountain had just been a fit of pique, and not Geralt’s true feelings about the last two decades. He likes to imagine that one day Geralt will notice that Jaskier hasn’t been around for a while – someone as long-lived as Geralt might not even realise that so much time has passed – and then he’ll think, I miss Jaskier. I wonder where he’s found himself? Perhaps he’s found himself in trouble. Or adventure. And then he’ll set out, looking all heroic and possibly a little tragic if he remembers how sharp he’d been. Then he’ll tell Jaskier that he’s sorry, and that he’s missed his songs.
Jaskier knows that he’s only fooling himself. But he also knows for a fact that stranger things have happened. He watched some of them with his own two eyes, and wrote astoundingly popular songs about them afterwards. So it’s possible. Perhaps not very likely, but possible. Besides, Geralt is very bad at feelings. While that might mean that he truly was bottling everything up until Jaskier managed to crack that demijohn of resentment wide open, Jaskier hopes that isn’t the case.
Perhaps if he dies here, Geralt will feel sorry for how he treated Jaskier, and go looking for him, and won’t be able to find him. And then, because he’s Geralt, he’ll doubtless blame himself, and miserably brood across the Continent about the fact that he’s lost the best friend he’s ever had.
The thought is a lot less comforting than Jaskier would like it to be.
He needs to find a mage. It’s his only chance now. He doesn’t want to die in Dorian. That isn’t a remotely poetic end. He’d like to die at a hundred and two on stage of the Tretogor Eisteddfod, handing over the grand prize to some starry-eyed infant, but he’d also accept a dramatic death – at the hands of a dragon, perhaps. He doesn’t want to simply fall asleep here, and die unnoticed and unmourned.
At least Dorian ought to be large enough to have a mage somewhere about. He’ll just have to ask. He straightens himself up, tugs his doublet down, lifts his head, and leaves the alley.
The furriers’ cart is still where he left it, much to his surprise.
‘Here,’ says the son, striding over to him, and passing him a bottle of wine and a rough bag. The bag turns out to hold a slightly old loaf of bread, large enough to feed one person, and a couple of apples. ‘We are not stoppink here, but my father worries. You had no food since we left village behind, and you are poor. Nothing to do except sell lute, and then what would you do, eh, bard? So: food. Be well.’
‘Thank you,’ Jaskier says. ‘That is unbelievably kind of both you and your father, um—’
The son smiles, and interprets his hesitation correctly. ‘Iwan,’ he says. ‘And Janssel.’ He gestures in the vague direction of where his father sits with the asses.
‘Thank you, Iwan,’ Jaskier says. ‘I’m Jaskier. I don’t remember if I said. I hope you both have safe travels home.’
Iwan nods, turns on his heel, and heads back to his cart. He pulls himself up onto the bench at the front beside his father, and they move off.
Jaskier looks up at the sky, shading his eyes and squinting. The sun isn’t quite at its zenith, but he has no way of knowing if it’s before noon, or after. Either way, he has plenty of time before he needs to find somewhere to stay. He heads towards Dorian’s marketplace. In his admittedly limited experience, mages like to be the centre of attention. He guesses that means that either their shop is on the market square itself, or it will be nearby. Even if he’s wrong, if there’s a mage in Dorian, someone in the square ought to know where they can be found.
Pleased with his reasoning, he looks around the square. There’s a tavern there on one side, and he thinks longingly of a full bowl of pottage all of his own. It isn’t the kind of tavern that has rooms for rent, though, so he’ll try one of the other inns first. After he finds a mage.
It turns out that he was right: there is a mage who has set up shop on the market square, on the opposite side to the tavern. He doesn’t know what kind of thing he was expecting. He knows Yennefer has a shop in Vengerberg – Geralt told him once – but he’s a little vague on what she sells. Creams and unguents, if he remembers what little Geralt had said.
He has no idea what this mage sells. The window is entirely made of panels of bullseye glass, so Jaskier can’t see any details of the interior of the shop. There is a hanging sign above the door, but all it has is a complicated magical-looking symbol and, picked out in gilt letters, Member of the Brotherhood of Mages. The symbol reminds him uncomfortably of waking in Yennefer’s house during the whole genie fiasco. He’d managed to go years without thinking of it, and now there are two reminders of it in a day.
No, he remembers. Not within a day.
He tries the door to the mage’s shop, but it doesn’t open. He knocks on the door instead.
A young man opens it, perhaps a decade younger than Jaskier himself. It’s so unexpected that Jaskier says nothing at first, merely stares at him. He hadn’t known there were young mages. It stands to reason that there would be, but he had just assumed that they were all old men. Or terrifyingly beautiful women like Yennefer. He isn’t expecting this.
‘Yes?’ asks the mage – or possibly his servant? There’s no particular reason why a mage couldn’t have a servant.
‘I, uh, wanted to see a mage,’ Jaskier says. ‘I think I might be cursed.’
The mage looks him up and down, and it is clear that whatever he sees, he is supremely unimpressed.
‘I could make time from my busy schedule to see you,’ he says – no, he drawls. ‘For a fee.’
‘Ah,’ says Jaskier.
He doesn’t know what sort of fee a mage charges, but he guesses that however much it is, it will be more than he has. Probably more than he could earn in a week, even if he isn’t increasingly worried that he won’t be able to make any kind of money in the next week. Hopefully he’s able to stay awake tonight, and if he’s really lucky, then maybe ...
‘Um, out of interest, how much is your fee?’ asks Jaskier.
The mage names a price. It is ... well, maybe if he’s able to stay awake tonight, and he’s really lucky, and also if Crown Princess Adda happens to stop by the tavern that he’s playing in and leaves an insignificant little sapphire or ruby trinket in his lute case, he could probably afford it.
‘I have ... a Gors Velen Noble,’ he admits.
The mage doesn’t even deign to reply. The door begins to close in Jaskier’s face.
‘Wait!’ he cries, and throws himself into the gap to stop it closing.
The mage opens it partway with a long-suffering sigh.
‘I’ll try to get your fee,’ Jaskier says. ‘I’ll come back if I do. But um. If I don’t, could you leave a message for—for Yennefer of Vengerberg?’
He doesn’t think that Yen will come to his aid, but at least that way someone would know what happened to him. And she’d probably tell Geralt. It’s better than nothing, and it isn’t as though there’s anyone else worth telling.
‘How do you know Yenna?’ the mage asks.
‘Um. We met in Rinde. And then in the Dragon Mountains,’ Jaskier says. ‘She saved my life once.’
The mage looks him over again, and his face says clearly that he doesn’t think Yennefer ought to have bothered.
‘What is your message?’ he asks, sounding incredibly bored.
‘Oh,’ says Jaskier. He hasn’t thought this far. ‘Uh. Tell her that you saw Jaskier in Dorian, I suppose, and that I think I have some kind of sleeping curse, so I don’t know if I’ll see her again. And, I guess, that I’m sorry how everything turned out with Geralt.’
The mage snorts derisively.
Admittedly, Jaskier doesn’t know exactly how things had turned out between Yennefer and Geralt on the mountain. For all Jaskier knows, they might already have made up and be tucked away in some palatial chalet in the Lyrian Mountains, fucking each other’s brains out. But the argument didn’t look like it had been a pleasant one, even from Jaskier’s viewpoint of several yards away up a rocky slope.
‘I’ll tell her if I see her,’ says the mage, already closing the door behind himself.
Well, fuck. That does not sound particularly hopeful. He doesn’t think the mage will bother to pass the message on, and if he does, will he remember any of the salient details? It doesn’t seem likely.
Jaskier leans against the door and considers his options. There is not a long list. The only thing he can think of to do is find somewhere to stay, hopefully somewhere that is eager to have him perform as well. Then he just has to try to save up the – he swallows at the thought – truly unconscionable amount of money that the mage wants, and hope that he can manage to stay awake long enough to get help. He wonders if it is better to try to stay up indefinitely or not. He’s a little afraid to sleep now, but then, he only started to sleep for so long after weeks of insomnia. Perhaps if he goes to bed tonight after his performance, he’ll sleep a normal amount, and wake up in the morning, and he only has to avoid staying awake for too long.
He doesn’t think it will be that easy, though.
First things first: find somewhere to stay—
His stomach reminds him that he has not eaten in several days. Right. Revised plan: find somewhere to sit and eat his food. Then find somewhere to stay. There’s no point in panicking yet. He’s lived through hairier situations.
He carefully does not think about the witcher who ensured he survived those situations, and the fact that said witcher can no longer be relied on to care what happens to him.
*
Geralt is very tired when he and Roach come into some small, forgettable Redanian village. All he wants is to be left alone, and to be allowed to take a room in the inn. If that’s too much to hope for, as it often is, he would settle for simply being left in peace.
A broad young man makes his way towards Geralt across what passes for this village’s market square. Either he has a job for him, or he intends trouble. With the young man’s serious expression, it could be either. Geralt is tired. He hopes it’s neither. Perhaps the young man wishes to talk to someone else, and will pass him by completely.
Geralt knows he’s not that lucky, though, so he’s unsurprised when the young man stops in front of him.
‘You are witcher?’ he asks.
Ah. A contract, then. ‘Yes.’
‘You know witcher called Geralt? I do not know any other name.’
‘Yes,’ Geralt says, surprised. ‘That’s me.’
‘That is lucky,’ says the young man. ‘My father and I met man called Jaskier. Says you were friends.’
He eyes Geralt. Geralt says nothing, and merely waits for the rest of the story.
‘We think he is cursed,’ says the young man. ‘But he is poor, so no money to pay for mage. But he says he has great friend who is witcher, who saves him from djinn with help also of lady mage. We have had lucky trip, and my grandmother says that if you have luck, you must pass along, otherwise luck leaves you. I thought seeing witcher is sign to pass luck along, try to help Jaskier.’
‘Where did you see him?’ Geralt asks. ‘And what kind of curse?’
If anyone was going to get themselves cursed, it would be Jaskier, Geralt thinks. He tries not to think about the heavy stone of guilt he’s carried with him since Jaskier left. Even if he never wants to see Geralt again, that’s no reason not to try to help him.
‘In Dorian,’ says the young man. ‘He sleeps too much. My father thinks it is getting worse.’
Geralt relaxes. ‘Jaskier just sleeps soundly,’ he explains. ‘When he does, that is. He’ll be fine.’
‘He slept in our cart for nearly four days without waking,’ says the young man flatly. ‘We shake him, we splash water in face, nothing. My father says he fall asleep on table night before, no one can wake him all night. He only wake next day after market done.’
‘Fuck,’ Geralt says. That does sound like a curse, and one that’s progressing rapidly. ‘When did you see him in Dorian?’
Dorian is a good three days’ ride from here. Maybe he could get it to two if Roach lets him push her, and if he gives her a good rest at the other end.
‘Four days?’ the young man says. ‘Maybe five. Travelling, days smear together, you know?’
‘Mm,’ Geralt says. It will be at least six days by the time he gets there, he thinks. Maybe eight. The curse will have got much worse. He’s already running over his mental list of the supplies he has on hand and gauging if they will be enough to see him to Dorian. He thinks they should stretch. ‘Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome,’ says the young man. ‘Luck is in your hands now.’
The young man smiles briefly, and heads towards the tavern.
Luck, Geralt thinks sourly. It had better not come down to luck, or Jaskier is doomed.
🌼
He damn near falls off Roach’s back when he pulls her up in the stable yard. Roach isn’t much happier. Her sides are foaming, and her footing is much less sure than usual, although she isn’t quite stumbling yet. He’s been keeping an ear on her heartbeat, but he knows he’s pushed her close to her limits. Her eyes are drooping, and her lips are twitching. He pats her neck clumsily.
‘Sorry, girl,’ he murmurs. ‘But we can’t let Jaskier come to harm, can we?’
A stable boy is hovering nearby. Geralt beckons him over.
‘She’s been ridden hard,’ he says. ‘Make sure she has plenty of water. And throw a blanket over her when she starts to cool down.’
The boy nods, and hurries to take Roach’s reins. She’s resistant at first, but the boy coos at her, calling her a pretty girl and rubbing her nose, and she seems to realise that her labours are done. Now she gets to drink cool water and nibble on sweet hay.
Geralt stumbles a little himself as he leaves the stable yard. His legs are unused to walking, and his thighs ache from gripping Roach’s sides. Now he just has to find Jaskier. The first step is to ask in inns and taverns, especially the type that are more likely to look kindly on a bard down on his luck. Luckily for him, they’re also the sort that are most likely to put up with a witcher’s business, so he can kill two sirens with one well-placed Aard.
He pushes the door of the Horse’s Head tavern open, and heads towards the bar.
There’s a sour-faced innkeeper there, who takes one sweeping look at Geralt, and snaps, ‘Well? Have you come about the contract on the noticeboard?’
‘What contract?’ he asks.
‘About the man in my cellar,’ says the innkeeper, his wrinkled face shifting into what is clearly his habitual scowl.
‘No,’ Geralt admits, ‘I’m looking for a bard—’
‘Aye, that’s the one,’ the innkeeper says, folding his arms. ‘So will you come see?’
‘I will,’ Geralt says.
The innkeeper lets him behind the bar, and opens a trapdoor. He climbs down a ladder into the cold cellar, and Geralt follows.
‘Here,’ the man says. He lifts a lantern off its hook, and heads to where a figure lies, stretched over the top of several barrels, half wrapped in a linen sheet. It reminds Geralt uncomfortably of a shroud.
The figure would look peaceful, if it wasn’t such an unnatural stillness, and if it wasn’t lying on such a bizarre bed. Jaskier has always seemed to fall asleep in strange places, but Geralt has never seen him like this.
‘Can’t wake him,’ the innkeeper says. ‘It’s been days now. And he’d only paid for the one night. What am I supposed to do, eh? I had the lads bring him down here, but I don’t know if it’s some kind of plague or something, if we ought to slit his throat and burn the body to save the rest of us.’
The innkeeper has kept his distance from Jaskier’s body this whole time, Geralt realises. Geralt steps towards Jaskier slowly, although there is no plague that he knows of that leaves its victims asleep. As he steps closer, he can feel his medallion vibrating. It only gets more vigorous the closer he gets to Jaskier’s body.
‘It’s not a plague,’ Geralt says. ‘It’s a curse.’
He slips his medallion inside his armour so that its clattering is muted, but it means that he can feel its buzzing against his skin in counterpoint to the panicked beat of his heart.
‘What am I supposed to do with a cursed man?’ the innkeeper demands. ‘I need this space for my supplies. I’m not running a hostel.’
‘Do you have a room I can take?’ Geralt asks. The innkeeper’s frown deepens, and he adds, ‘I can pay.’
‘I suppose I might,’ the innkeeper says.
‘Take Jaskier’s—the man’s body up there, and I’ll see what I can do about breaking his curse. He should have a lute, too. Where is it?’
‘I don’t know about any lute,’ the innkeeper says. He’s lying, Geralt would put money on it.
‘It might be the vector of the curse,’ Geralt says, shamelessly. ‘I’ll need it in order to break the hold the curse has on this man. Try not to touch it directly, if you can, and especially don’t damage it or break it. That could cause incalculable damage. I’d rather not see others suffer this same sleeping death.’
The innkeeper looks alarmed. ‘I’ll, uh, see if one of the lads has put it somewhere safe,’ he says.
‘That would be wise,’ Geralt says gravely.
‘Do you need help to bring him up?’
Geralt thinks about it, thinks about a couple of men more used to hurling barrels carrying Jaskier up, and how little thought they might give to Jaskier’s fragility.
‘No need,’ he says. ‘I can take him.’
He wraps the linen sheet around Jaskier more firmly. Then he hefts him over his shoulder, and climbs the ladder back up. The innkeeper directs him to a room, and he carries Jaskier there and lays him out on the bed. Geralt stands there, staring down at the figure on the bed. Jaskier is peaceful, in a way he rarely is when he’s sleeping. It’s worse than that time in Rinde, then Jaskier had merely looked deeply asleep. Now he is so still that Geralt has to listen to be sure that he’s alive. It isn’t helped by seeing Jaskier half wrapped in a linen sheet on top of the bed’s blankets.
He sits on the edge of the bed, watching Jaskier’s chest softly rise and fall as he thinks. He pulls the linen sheet off, so that at least Jaskier looks less like he’s being laid out for burial. Geralt has no idea what to do next.
‘This isn’t the kind of curse I know how to break, Jask,’ he says conversationally, as though Jaskier might answer him. ‘You couldn’t be turning into a werewolf instead?’
There is no answer from the figure on the bed.
‘At least you’re safe for now,’ Geralt says. ‘And we might get your lute back. I’ll see if there’s a mage in town – that’s a good first start. And then ... I suppose if we’re not lucky, I’ll see if we can find Yen.’
He lets out a long breath.
Jaskier’s face is still and peaceful. Geralt looks down at him and ... he wonders.
There are stories. They’re mostly nonsense, but sometimes they have a glimmer of truth to them. Even Jaskier’s more fanciful songs are usually based on something. The problem is working out which part of a story is true. There’s more than one about being woken with a kiss, so surely it’s worth a shot?
It feels as though his heart is twice its usual size as he leans down. Almost all he can feel is that frantic rhythm. Then he breathes in, and there’s Jaskier’s smell. He hasn’t realised how he’s missed it. He wants to drink it in, to take a vial of it with him when they inevitably part again. His hand tightens on the sheet beside Jaskier’s head as he closes his eyes and fills his lungs with that smell.
He’s afraid that the kiss won’t work, and afraid that it will, but there’s no use in hesitating. He leans closer, and kisses Jaskier.
Just before their lips meet, he feels Jaskier’s breath brush his skin. And then it’s a gentle, soft kiss. Jaskier’s lips are dry. He doesn’t kiss back, but is his breath moving a little faster? Is he waking up?
Geralt draws back and watches him. He waits for Jaskier to move, for his fingers to twitch, for his eyes to blink open.
There’s nothing.
It might just take a little time, Geralt thinks. Curses sometimes do, after all.
But as the moment stretches out, there is no change to Jaskier’s heartbeat, nor his slow breaths. His eyes do not flicker open. His mouth does not part on a gasp.
Geralt tells himself that he isn’t disappointed. He was right, after all. The stories are utter nonsense. If there’s any truth in them at all, it isn’t a truth that will help him.
He sighs, and pushes himself up to his feet.
‘At least you’ll stay here when I tell you,’ he says to Jaskier. ‘I’ll go see the mage. I’ll be back soon.’
He wonders if he should put Jaskier under the blankets. It isn’t a cold day, but it isn’t that warm either. Jaskier’s not moving, and his heart is far too slow for a human. He’ll get cold, Geralt decides.
It’s strange, to lift and move Jaskier and not have him so much as stir. He understands why the young man and his father recognised the curse so readily. Soon enough, Jaskier is tucked in bed.
He stands in the doorway, and looks back at Jaskier’s silent form. Then he closes the door behind him, and heads out into the street.
🌼
It’s just Geralt’s luck that he recognises the obnoxiously understated sign on the market square. It doesn’t give any name, of course, but he remembers it from the last place he saw it – in Aedd Gynvael.
He hopes it’s just a common sign, one that nearly any puffed-up mage might hang, but he knows in his bones that it isn’t.
He knocks on the door. There’s a slightly longer wait than would be usual before the door opens. As though someone wanted to savour the moment that has brought Geralt to this doorstep.
‘Well, well, well,’ says Istredd, wearing the smuggest look Geralt has ever seen adorning a magic user’s face, which is a category with stiff competition. ‘Geralt of Rivia. What could you possibly want from me?’
‘I need your help,’ Geralt says, trying not to grind his teeth.
‘What kind of help could you need?’ Istredd muses, folding his arms and leaning against the doorway.
‘I need to break a curse,’ Geralt says. ‘Will you help, or not?’
Istredd clicks his tongue. ‘This is why witchers are best suited cleaning up after pests. You’re oversized ratcatchers. You should stick with lopping off the heads of dragons and not meddle in the magical affairs that are beyond you.’
‘I’m not meddling,’ Geralt says, smiling so that he shows all of his teeth. ‘I came right to a powerful magic user to see what could be done.’
‘Yes, well,’ Istredd says, realising that he manoeuvred his own way into that one. ‘My time isn’t cheap. I have my research to think of. I can’t just be darting hither and yon on the whims of some errant monster hunter.’
‘That is fairly said,’ Geralt says. ‘I admit that I haven’t much to offer in the way of recompense. I wouldn’t want to bother you with such a trifling matter. Jaskier is stable, and if I hire a cart, I could take him to Vizima. I believe Triss has made something of a study of unusual curses, and I certainly haven’t seen this one before.’
Istredd’s expression sharpens at the mention of Triss and again at the phrase unusual curse, and Geralt knows he has him.
‘Oh, Jaskier, you say?’ Istredd says, with an artificial casualness. ‘There was some fool in motley who came by a few days back. I had thought he was simply here to gawk, but I suppose he must truly have been cursed. He did ask me to pass a message along to Yenna before he left, and I couldn’t leave one of Yenna’s friends without aid.’
You knew, Geralt thinks coldly. You knew he was cursed, and you couldn’t be bothered to help, even when he came to you.
‘That’s very kind of you,’ he says instead.
‘Bring him here,’ Istredd says with a gracious wave of his hand, ‘to my laboratory. We’ll see what can be done. Doubtless with my superior knowledge and understanding of such things, it will be broken in no time at all.’
‘I’ll be back shortly,’ Geralt says. ‘The inn where he lies is not far, and I can carry him here.’
Istredd falters at that, but he covers it quickly. ‘Good. I’ll start my preparations.’
Geralt gives an ironical bow of his head, and leaves.
You hadn’t thought how your refusal would affect the man begging for your aid, had you? Geralt thinks, fuming as he walks back to the inn. You simply dismissed him as beneath you, and never thought of him again. He lets himself scowl, since once he’s before Istredd again, he’ll have to hide how enraged he is – at least until Jaskier’s curse has broken.
On his way, he stops at the nearest noticeboard to the Horse’s Head to pick up the bill that the innkeeper had posted. There’s sadly not much more information than he already had, but since it’s signed Henry Attehil, at least he now knows the name of the inn’s landlord. The man hadn’t thought to introduce himself, and Geralt hadn’t cared to ask.
His expression must still be stormy as he opens the door to the inn. The innkeeper looks up in relief at seeing him enter, but shrinks back when he sees Geralt’s face.
‘Ah, um, witcher,’ he says, looking nervous as he comes out from behind the bar clutching a familiar-looking bundle, wrapped in a blanket. ‘One of my boys found this in ... in a store room.’
‘Good,’ Geralt says, trying to rearrange his features to appear less threatening.
He takes the bundle from the innkeeper, and puts it on a table. He unwraps the blanket to reveal Jaskier’s lute case. He relaxes, but he needs to be sure that the lute itself is intact.
‘Are you sure that’s wise?’ asks the innkeeper, as Geralt unbuckles the case.
‘Witchers are resistant to curses,’ Geralt says. ‘Besides, I won’t touch the instrument itself.’
There is a small chance that the lute really is the means by which Jaskier was cursed. Without being able to ask Jaskier about it, he can’t rule it out. He thinks it’s unlikely, since it’s definitely the same lute that the elves gave Jaskier all those years ago, and Geralt’s medallion hasn’t so much as shivered. If Jaskier was cursed with his own lute, it would most likely require its victim to play it, something which Geralt has no intention of doing. But all the same, it’s safest not to touch it at all.
‘Still intact,’ Geralt reports. ‘That’s good. It means that we’re not likely to find the curse being transferred to anyone else. I’ll take it with me. Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome,’ says the innkeeper. He doesn’t meet Geralt’s eyes as he speaks, and Geralt knows he was right: the man planned to sell Jaskier’s lute and keep the money for himself. ‘So ... do you think that you will be able to break the curse?’
‘I have spoken with Master Istredd, and it sounds hopeful,’ Geralt says, praying that it is. ‘I’ll take the bard to Master Istredd’s, along with the lute.’
‘Good, good,’ says the innkeeper, meaninglessly. ‘Would you like something to eat? On the house.’
‘I would,’ he says, feeling hunger gnawing at his insides. ‘But I promised Master Istredd that I’d bring him soon, so I ought to go there directly. But when I return, I’d be very grateful for some food.’
‘When you return, then,’ says the innkeeper, nodding.
Geralt goes back upstairs, with Jaskier’s lute case slung over his shoulders. It’s much lighter than his back-mounted scabbard, and it’s a very different shape as well. Jaskier lies on his back, as still and unmoving as he was when Geralt left. Geralt is struck again at how wrong it looks. Jaskier sleeps on his side, curled around a pillow, or a bundle of blankets, or even Geralt. He shifts and repositions himself throughout the night, although he doesn’t toss and turn as much as he does when he can’t sleep. Jaskier is someone who needs to move, seemingly as much as he needs to breathe. Having him lie immobile like this is ... wrong.
Geralt pulls back the blankets, wraps Jaskier back up in his linen shroud, and gathers him up in his arms. He still feels heavy and solid and real, which would reassure Geralt more if he hadn’t carried dead bodies before. He has heard mages say that you can feel the difference in the weight of a body from life to death, and that the weight that is lost is that of the soul. Geralt himself has never thought that dead bodies feel very much lighter, so if that’s true, the soul must not weigh very much at all.
Jaskier still feels the roughly same weight as the other times that Geralt has had to carry him. Hopefully that’s a good sign. The innkeeper is good enough to open the door for him once he goes downstairs, and then he’s out into the sunshine of the Dorian streets.
People gawk as he heads towards the square. It’s unsurprising, as he holds an unmoving human body. At least no-one is brave enough to interfere with a witcher.
‘Hoy! Witcher!’
The shout comes as he is a stone’s throw from the marketplace. He turns to see a guard running after him. He waits for the man to catch up, since ignoring him is likely to make Geralt look like a threat.
‘Can I help?’ he asks, trying to radiate polite helpfulness from every pore.
‘What are you doing with that body?’ the guard huffs. ‘We don’t let mutants like you about our city to murder with impunity.’
‘He isn’t dead,’ Geralt says. ‘He’s cursed. See, he yet breathes.’
The guard looks at Jaskier’s unmoving body, and seems unconvinced.
‘That your work, is it?’ the guard demands.
‘No,’ Geralt says. ‘I was hired by Henry Attehil, of the Horse’s Head, when one of his patrons fell asleep and could not be woken.’
‘Come with me, and you can explain that to the captain of the watch,’ says the guard, grabbing Geralt’s upper arm.
Geralt does not let himself be moved. ‘Perhaps you could come with me instead,’ he says. ‘Master Istredd is expecting me shortly, and I said I would bring his patient. I don’t know if you have had much business with mages, but I find that they tend to be impatient, and free in expressing their displeasure.’
The guard wavers.
‘Master Istredd’s workshop is just on the market square,’ Geralt says. ‘It isn’t that far a walk from here, and then you’ll know if I’ve told you the truth.’
‘Fine,’ the guard says. ‘But if Master Istredd knows you not, you’ll come with me.’
‘Of course,’ Geralt says. ‘I could hardly outrun a fine member of the Dorian Watch with a full-grown man in my arms, could I?’
He could, he knows, if he had to. But unless Istredd is more dedicated to revenge than to the intellectual puzzle of Jaskier’s curse, it won’t come to that.
The guard dogs his steps all the way to Istredd’s shop.
‘Perhaps you could knock on his door for me,’ Geralt says. ‘Being that my arms are full.’
The guard steps forward and knocks smartly on the door. They don’t need to wait long; Istredd opens it as though he were waiting for Geralt’s arrival.
‘Well, well, I wouldn’t have expected you to need an escort, Geralt,’ says Istredd, who seems to have regained his good humour. ‘Do you really think the streets of Dorian as dangerous as all that? Do you need your friend’s assistance to carry the patient inside?’
‘No, I can manage,’ Geralt says.
Istredd steps back to allow him to pass.
‘Do you need assistance, my good man?’ Istredd asks of the guard, still waiting for Geralt’s arrest.
‘I—No, your lordship,’ says the guard.
‘Run along then, there’s a good fellow,’ says Istredd, and closes the door in the guard’s face.
‘Where shall I lay Jaskier?’ Geralt asks.
‘On my work table,’ Istredd says, leading the way. ‘The layout here is much the same as it was in Aedd Gynvael, if you recall visiting me there. I find it much easier to arrange it so that my workshops are laid out the same way each time, that way I can devote my intellect to the things that truly matter.’
‘Convenient,’ says Geralt dryly.
He lies Jaskier on the mage’s work table, and unshoulders the lute.
He follows Istredd. The inside of the building does appear to be much the same as Istredd’s Aedd Gynvael workshop. Geralt wonders how much magic it takes to rearrange a building the way one might the contents of a chest.
‘I don’t know if this is part of the curse as well,’ he says. ‘I thought it worth checking.’
Geralt takes the lute out of its case while Istredd fetches a tool from one of the shelves that looks a little like a baby’s rattle, with the same bells around the top. It has runes inscribed on the sides, though, and a pointed crystal at the top. He waves it slowly over the lute, across the top and around the sides. The bells don’t ring, and nothing else seems to happen.
‘Entirely unmagical,’ says Istredd dismissively.
Exactly as Geralt had thought. That’s a relief. He puts the lute back into its case, slings it onto his back, and retreats to lean against a wall. He isn’t leaving Jaskier alone with Istredd, even though he doesn’t think Istredd will take his dislike of Geralt out on his patient. Not while he’s still an interesting puzzle. But Geralt will feel much happier keeping an eye on everything.
Istredd lifts one of Jaskier’s hands, moves it over Jaskier’s face, and lets it drop. Jaskier’s hand hits his forehead and falls aside.
‘Fascinating,’ Istredd comments, and makes a note on a piece of paper.
‘He’s not here to be your entertainment,’ Geralt growls.
‘Did you know that a truly sleeping body behaves differently from one merely feigning sleep?’ Istredd asks. He wraps his fingers around Jaskier’s wrist to feel his pulse.
‘He isn’t pretending to be cursed,’ says Geralt with exasperation.
‘I have my methods, Witcher,’ Istredd says, not even bothering to look at him. ‘Please allow me to follow them. I do not question your sword-swinging technique, do I?’
Geralt tightens his hands into fists at his sides, then releases them. Istredd is doing him a favour, he reminds himself. Although the man is as irritating as a sharp pebble in his boot during a long walk, Geralt has to put that irritation aside, for Jaskier’s sake.
Istredd takes a pin, and presses it to one of Jaskier’s fingers. Jaskier does not rouse, and a bead of blood wells up where the pin had pricked him. Istredd squeezes it into a small bowl, and takes it to the alchemist’s wood stove he has set up on the far wall. Geralt watches, but what Istredd is attempting to do with a tiny amount of Jaskier’s blood is opaque to him, even when he adds a drop or two of some potion.
‘Well?’ Geralt asks, when he feels he has waited long enough.
‘I cannot provide you with an answer just yet,’ Istredd says, stirring his mixture. ‘But I know ways in which he has not been cursed. It would, of course, have been more useful if I could have asked Jaskier about his curse myself. Then this would take less time.’
You had that opportunity, Geralt thinks. You chose not to take it.
‘Is there something that I can do to speed this up?’ Geralt asks.
‘Actually, yes,’ Istredd says. ‘You could fetch me a new egg. One laid yesterday, if possible.’
‘I’m not doing your shopping for you,’ Geralt says, folding his arms. ‘Stock your own pantry.’
‘It isn’t for my pantry,’ Istredd says, sounding annoyed. ‘It is for the curse. The potentiality contained in an egg—’
‘I would have thought you would have all the things you needed to break a curse in this place,’ Geralt says, looking around himself. ‘What with your impressive collection of skulls and things in jars.’
‘Some items for ritual casting must be acquired fresh,’ says Istredd, turning back to his stove, and beginning to fiddle with an alembic.
‘Fine,’ Geralt says. ‘I’ll see what I can do, but the stallholders will have left for the day by now. Is there anything else you need?’
‘Fresh milk would also work,’ Istredd says without turning around. ‘If my hunch proves correct. I ought to have all of the necessary other ingredients I require.’
Geralt rolls his eyes, and leaves.
The market is empty of stallholders when he opens Istredd’s front door. He hasn’t friends he can call on here. He considers going back to the Horse’s Head, but decides he doesn’t want to leave Jaskier alone that long, and nor does he trust Attehil to be truthful. There is a tavern across the square, though, and if they serve food, they’re likely to have an egg, and possibly some milk.
The barmaid agrees that they can, indeed, provide him with an egg for very little coin.
‘Not cooked, mind. I need it raw,’ Geralt says. ‘And ideally it’s best if it was freshly laid. Master Istredd requires it.’
‘Fresh laid this morning,’ she confirms. ‘Alice keeps hens.’
‘Perfect,’ Geralt smiles. ‘I don’t suppose you have any milk?’
‘How much do you need?’ she asks.
‘I think a cupful would be enough,’ he says.
She provides him with a cup’s worth of milk and a tankard to keep it in, as well as an egg of his very own, still in its shell. He promises to bring the tankard back once he’s done with it, and she smiles.
‘What’s it for?’ she asks. ‘If you don’t mind my asking.’
‘A curse breaking,’ Geralt says. ‘Or so I’m told. These ingredients sound a lot like the beginnings of someone’s breakfast to me.’
She giggles. ‘I’ve never helped someone break a curse before. Nor helped prepare a mage’s breakfast neither.’
‘You’ve been very helpful,’ Geralt says. ‘And my friend will no doubt be very thankful if your contribution was key to helping him.’
‘Get along with you,’ says the barmaid, but she’s blushing, and her smile is pleased.
When he returns to Istredd’s workroom, he finds the table where Jaskier had lain is empty. He feels cold.
‘Istredd?’ he calls.
‘Through here,’ comes the reply. ‘Take the door in the right-hand corner.’
On the far side of a bookcase, there is a door he hadn’t noticed. Through it is another workroom, with a large space of bare floor at its centre. Istredd has chalked a large circle with a geometric figure suspended within the circle. Jaskier lies atop the geometric figure, and Istredd is chalking runes around the circle’s edge.
‘Ah, Geralt,’ he says. ‘Come in. Did you find an egg?’
‘I did,’ Geralt says. ‘What’s all this? What’s that on Jaskier?’
There was a smear of something dark red on Jaskier’s forehead, and on each of his palms. His boots and netherhose had been removed, and the same mixture was on his soles. Istredd had unbuttoned Jaskier’s doublet and shirt sufficiently to daub more of that same suspicious mixture just below the dip between his collarbones.
‘Part of the method for breaking the curse,’ Istredd says cheerfully.
‘That isn’t his blood, is it?’ Geralt says.
‘No, a paste made of—I don’t need to explain it all to you. You aren’t a mage.’
‘I’ve never seen anyone need this amount of fuss and nonsense to break a curse,’ Geralt says.
‘If you want hedge-witch methods, ask a hedge-witch,’ sniffs Istredd. ‘Although I doubt you’d find one with the sheer power required to break a curse of this level and complexity.’
‘My deepest apologies,’ says Geralt insincerely. ‘I am not so versed in magework. Is it very complex, then?’
‘Oh, terribly,’ says Istredd. ‘It’s a variation on quite an old curse. I haven’t seen cast in person, merely written about, since it fell out of favour so long ago. But this variation has some interesting twists. The mage has added details based on some of the more elegant theoretical ideas of one of Radcliffe’s treatises, which I hadn’t seen anyone incorporate into practical spellwork—’ He breaks himself off mid lecture. ‘But you aren’t interested in all of that. If I take my notes to the Brotherhood, however, we might be able to determine who it was that cursed your friend. If he doesn’t know himself, that is.’
‘Is the counter spell nearly ready?’ Geralt asks.
‘Very nearly. Hand me the egg. But don’t step on the lines of the working.’
Geralt picks his way between the chalk lines, and passes Istredd the egg.
‘What do I do with the milk?’ he asks.
‘Oh, that was only to be used if you couldn’t find an egg,’ says Istredd. ‘We shouldn’t need that. Give it here, and I’ll use it tomorrow.’
‘The barmaid at The Pannier would quite like her tankard back,’ Geralt says, as he passes it over.
‘Fine,’ Istredd says with irritation, and places the milk just outside the circle, on one of the runes.
‘Will that be safe there?’ asks Geralt. ‘Won’t it be part of the spell?’
‘It will act as a kind of overflow,’ says Istredd. ‘Like a gargoyle on a temple diverting rainwater. If the levels of power get unbalanced, the milk will prevent things from spilling out past the circle and into the rest of the room.’
‘Is that a danger?’ Geralt asks, raising an eyebrow.
‘Not really,’ Istredd says. ‘A mere precaution.’
He settles back onto his heels beside Jaskier, and begins to chant in Elder. Geralt can pick out the odd word here and there, but something about the chant seems to elude his grasp, and the words slip away, like fish in a stream. The chant builds to a climax, and then Istredd holds up the egg. He cracks it above Jaskier’s head, and then there is a blinding light without light, and a deafening noise without sound. Geralt’s ears are ringing, and there are dark spots floating before his eyes for a minute or so before they clear. There is a disgruntled noise that Geralt could recognise from three rooms away with his eyes closed, and his heart sings.
‘Ugh, fuck, my mouth feels rank,’ says Jaskier.
‘It worked!’ says Istredd. ‘I was exactly right about that modification to the rune matrix. There’ll be a monograph in this, I’ll warrant. You don’t mind if I publish my findings, do you?’
‘Uh, no?’ Jaskier says, blinking at Istredd in confusion.
Then his eyes settle on Geralt.
‘Geralt,’ he says. ‘You’re here!’
Then Jaskier’s smile slips off his face.
‘I’m still dreaming,’ he says dully.
‘I should say not,’ says Istredd, offended. ‘I’m a little more skilled than your village hedge-witch.’ He gives Geralt a dark look.
‘What is that smell?’ Jaskier says. ‘Like something’s rotten. Or burning. Or both.’
Geralt notices then that the tankard of fresh milk is no longer sitting just outside the circle. Where it had been, there is a small pile of ash.
‘The Pannier wanted their tankard back,’ he says. ‘I thought you said that it was only a precaution.’
Istredd looks at the little pile of ash. ‘Better the milk than us,’ he says dismissively. ‘And I’m sure they won’t miss a tankard.’
‘Where are my boots?’ Jaskier asks, looking at his feet, and then around the work room. Geralt passes the boots over. Jaskier’s netherhose are tucked in the top of one.
‘Where did the egg go?’ Geralt asks. ‘I thought it would have landed on Jaskier.’
Jaskier looks alarmed, and pats himself down, but there is no raw egg on his person.
‘I told you, it was part of the spell,’ Istredd says. ‘Its essence is subsumed. I would quite like to get my thoughts down while they’re still fresh, if you don’t mind. We might have made history today.’
‘All right,’ Geralt says. He can take a hint, and he isn’t all that keen to spend time in Istredd’s company. ‘Come on, Jaskier. I’ll take you back to the tavern.’
He holds his hand out for Jaskier to take.
‘There may be some after effects of the spell,’ says Istredd. ‘Nothing to worry about. They should pass in a few days.’
‘What kind of after effects?’ asks Jaskier, pausing in putting on his second boot.
‘You may feel more sleepy for a few days, and require a little extra sleep,’ says Istredd. ‘And you may struggle to sleep until your body remembers when night time is. Either way, it should clear up. Should you let me know how you fared, I’d be most interested.’
‘Great,’ Jaskier mutters, but he takes Geralt’s hand and lets himself be pulled to his feet. ‘Just like usual, then.’
Istredd has completely lost interest in them now that the curse is broken. He hustles them out of his ritual room and closes the door behind the three of them, then settles down to write. Geralt leads Jaskier through the mage’s house and out onto the street.
Jaskier waits until they’re outside in the market square, and then he says, ‘Interesting friend you have there, Geralt.’
Geralt can’t help but scowl. ‘We’re not friends.’
‘You and he are not friends like you and I aren’t friends?’ Jaskier asks.
Geralt stares at him. ‘What? No. You and I are friends.’ When Jaskier says nothing, Geralt adds, ‘I’m ... sorry if I never said it.’
Jaskier gives a deep sigh. ‘I’d be tempted to make you grovel, but I suppose the fact that you saved me from an uncertain and tragic fate is apology enough.’
‘I truly am sorry,’ Geralt says. ‘For what I said. Before. On the mountain. That was unforgivable.’
‘Well, that’s taken all of the fun out of having the high horse,’ Jaskier says. ‘Tell me about your not-friend the mage instead. It sounds like there might be a story there.’
‘There isn’t,’ Geralt says, because the last thing he needs is Jaskier writing some kind of song about everything that happened in Aedd Gynvael. ‘He’s ... He’s my Valdo Marx.’
‘Eugh, fair enough,’ Jaskier says with an exaggerated shiver. ‘Then why on earth did he help you? He wouldn’t help me.’
‘I knew him already,’ Geralt says. ‘So he was more likely to listen. Then I appealed to his vanity, and tempted him with an intellectual challenge. Oh! Your lute.’
He lifts the strap of the lute case over his head and passes it over. Jaskier holds it, unspeaking, staring at it.
‘It seemed intact,’ Geralt says. ‘I don’t think it’s been damaged. Even the strings looked fine, although I didn’t pluck them to check. And it isn’t cursed. Istredd confirmed it.’
‘Good,’ Jaskier says vaguely. He’s holding the strap of the case so tightly that his knuckles are white.
‘Jaskier?’ Geralt asks.
‘I’m fine,’ Jaskier says, shaking his head. ‘I just ... assumed it was gone. Sold. Especially when I woke in a strange place.’
‘I think that innkeeper planned to,’ Geralt says. ‘I told him it was the key to your curse, and that anyone who touched it might come down with the same thing.’
‘Did you? That was rather clever of you.’ Jaskier laughs, but it’s an odd, strangled laugh.
‘Let’s go back to the inn and order you food,’ Geralt says. ‘The innkeeper said he’d give me a meal on the house, and I’ve not eaten since sunrise.’
‘You must be starving,’ Jaskier says. ‘We should get you some food. Why haven’t you eaten?’
‘Wanted to make sure I got here in time,’ Geralt says. ‘Besides, I can’t be as hungry as you. You mustn’t have eaten in days.’
‘My belly does feel as though I could eat an entire cow in one sitting, horns, hooves and all,’ Jaskier says with a twist of his mouth. ‘To the inn, then.’
They head off again. Now that Geralt has thought of it, he feels his own hunger rising. He hopes that the promised meal will be filling and generous.
‘I could write a song about this,’ Jaskier muses. ‘Might change the victim of the curse, though. Perhaps a princess with a jealous stepmother. You’ll have to tell me how it was broken. I think I fancy a true love’s kiss.’
‘Didn’t work,’ Geralt says. They’re nearly at the Horse’s Head, and he can smell something delicious wafting from the kitchen.
‘Oh ho,’ says Jaskier.
‘What?’ says Geralt.
‘Didn’t work? Not doesn’t work?’
‘Both,’ says Geralt. ‘Either. Why?’
‘Well, didn’t work suggests that you tried,’ Jaskier grins. ‘Did you kiss me, Geralt?’
Fuck.
‘I—’
Is his face red? It feels hot. As he continues to fail to say anything, Jaskier’s grin drops away, and his expression shifts. Is that pity in his eyes?
‘Geralt,’ Jaskier says softly.
‘I thought it was worth trying,’ Geralt says. ‘That’s all.’
‘Do you ...’ Jaskier says, and trails off.
‘I should see to Roach,’ Geralt says quickly. ‘I rode her hard to get here, and I want to be sure she’s pulled up all right.’
Jaskier follows him into the stable yard. ‘Did you ride into Dorian today, then?’
‘Around midday,’ Geralt confirms.
He finds Roach’s stall and gives her neck a pat. She snorts in Jaskier’s direction, and deigns to let him stroke her nose. Her heart still sounds as strong as usual, and she seems in reasonable spirits. A little more rest and she’ll have recovered from their desperate flight south. Geralt sighs with relief, and pats her flank.
‘We should see the innkeeper,’ he tells Jaskier. ‘Whatever they’re cooking smells delicious.’
‘Thank all the gods,’ Jaskier says. ‘I feel like I haven’t eaten for a month.’
Geralt frowns. ‘It hasn’t been that long, has it? That’s not what—’
‘Not what what?’
‘Not what the young man said. The one who took you to Dorian. I thought it had only been six days. Maybe seven.’
‘I don’t actually know,’ Jaskier says quietly. ‘When they woke me up in Dorian, I didn't know how long had passed. And I don’t know how long I was asleep this time.’
‘The man I met, the Kaedwenian, he thought he’d left you here about six days ago,’ Geralt says as they headed to the back door of the inn. ‘Perhaps seven at most.’
‘That’s still more than long enough to go without food,’ Jaskier says, giving Geralt a tragic look.
Geralt laughs. ‘It is. Let’s get you fed.’
Henry Attehil, the innkeeper, is easy to find, at least.
‘Could I have that meal now?’ Geralt asks politely. ‘And I would pay for another too, please.’
‘Of course,’ says Attehil.
‘The job is complete,’ Geralt says. ‘As you can see. The curse is broken.’
‘Yes,’ Attehil says, his expression closing off.
‘I believe you promised a reward,’ Geralt says, taking out the notice with the innkeeper’s signature at the bottom and placing it on the bar.
‘Well, yes, but,’ Attehil says, looking around as if someone in the empty bar might save him from having to pay. ‘You didn’t break the curse yourself, did you? Perhaps I should give the reward to Master Istredd.’
‘Master Istredd charges a lot more than what you offered to break the curse,’ says Geralt. ‘Which you are no doubt aware of. Otherwise you would have asked him to do it.’
‘But still, you did not break the curse,’ Attehil blusters.
‘I assisted Master Istredd,’ says Geralt. ‘And I acquired some of the ingredients for the curse breaking, leaving me out of pocket.’
‘Fine,’ snaps Attehil. ‘But your friend owes me for his accommodation for these last few days.’
‘How many of those did he spend in the cellar?’ Geralt asks.
Attehil’s lips press together.
‘Perhaps if we give you a quarter-rate for the nights he spent in the cellar, that’s the cost of another night in a room,’ Geralt says pleasantly. ‘You can take it from the reward money.’
‘And another for tonight,’ says Attehil.
‘No need; he’ll stay with me,’ Geralt says, and then remembers that perhaps Jaskier might not want that. Jaskier doesn’t speak to contradict him, and Geralt can always leave him the bed.
‘Fine,’ says Attehil.
He angrily counts out Geralt’s reward, deliberately shorting Geralt by a further ten orens. Geralt lets him; after all, he’s never been paid for saving Jaskier’s skin before.
‘A couple of pints of ale as well, if you please,’ Geralt says, a couple of coins back towards Attehil.
Attehil takes them with poor grace, and Geralt scoops the rest of the money into his purse. He secures a table for himself and Jaskier in one corner, and sits down on the bench with a sigh.
‘I can’t believe you got paid for breaking my curse,’ Jaskier says.
‘Me either,’ Geralt says.
A young woman – possibly Attehil’s get, considering their similar features and the matching scowl across her face – brings them an under-filled pair of tankards. She thumps them down on the table, slopping some of their contents over the sides. They watch her angrily head back to the kitchen.
‘Well, I’m not feeling very welcomed,’ Jaskier comments.
‘I suspect that they intended to pay the contract with the money they made selling your lute,’ Geralt says. ‘I didn’t know about the contract when I arrived, so they probably thought they might not have to pay me. And the fact that I stopped them selling the lute as well ...’ He shrugs. ‘I’m not surprised they’re miffed.’
‘It’s my lute!’ Jaskier says, outraged. ‘Besides, they put me in the cellar. The cellar! Me!’
‘Not on the ground, if it makes you feel better,’ Geralt says. ‘You were lying stretched out across the top of a few barrels.’
‘That does not,’ Jaskier says with dignity, ‘make me feel better.’
‘At least they didn’t dump you somewhere,’ Geralt says, ‘looking on the bright side.’
Jaskier shivers. ‘Yeah. I suppose that’s lucky.’
Geralt takes a sip of his ale.
‘So tell me about these spell components you fetched for the master mage,’ says Jaskier. ‘Were they terribly difficult or dangerous to get? Very expensive, perhaps? Crushed sapphires and ambergris? Rare herbs from your personal supply?’
‘Terribly difficult to get,’ Geralt deadpans.
‘What were they?’ Jaskier presses.
‘A freshly laid egg and a cup of milk. I fetched it from a nearby tavern.’
Jaskier stares at him, and then bursts out laughing.
‘What a noble quest you ran!’ he gasps between gales of laughter. ‘I’m so delighted I had such a hero chasing down all of the terribly rare and precious ingredients that were required.’
The barmaid brings over a couple of bowls, and dumps them on the table with as much grace as she had the tankards. Inside the bowls is pottage – very cheap, but good stick to the ribs food. Geralt has a small loaf of bread with his, and he slips it across to Jaskier.
‘Fuck, I’m ravenous,’ Jaskier says, pulling out his flatware from its pouch on his belt and attacking his food.
Geralt takes another sip of ale, and watches Jaskier over his tankard’s rim. It’s so good to see Jaskier happy and whole, especially after seeing him lying so still. Geralt is hungry too, so he applies himself to his food. There is quiet for a while, other than the sounds of eating. Jaskier wipes his bowl clean with a hunk of bread, and offers the rest of the loaf to Geralt, who takes it gratefully.
‘I feel like I need at least one more solid meal like that to feel like a proper person again,’ Jaskier comments. ‘And ... we have a room? Not that I’m all that keen on sleep, but ...’
But some time in a quiet place, away from strangers, would be welcome, Geralt guesses.
‘It’s upstairs,’ he says. ‘I don’t know what the innkeeper did with your pack.’
‘Don’t have one,’ Jaskier says. ‘Just my lute.’
‘Where are your spare shirts?’ Geralt asks. ‘Your ... underthings?’
‘In my—’ Jaskier begins, then stops short. ‘Oh. I must have left it behind somewhere. Weeks ago.’
Geralt raises an eyebrow, and Jaskier flushes.
‘I hadn’t been sleeping,’ he says defensively. ‘For a month or two, perhaps. It was hard to think, and my memory just didn’t seem to work properly.’
‘Surprised you didn’t leave your lute behind,’ Geralt comments.
‘I couldn’t leave my lute behind!’ Jaskier says with horror. ‘That’s my lute.’
Geralt hides his smile.
‘I’ll ask them to send up some water for you to wash with,’ Geralt says. ‘And you can borrow one of my shirts.’
‘Thanks,’ Jaskier says.
The barmaid allows that they could probably send up a couple of jugs of water for washing, so Geralt takes Jaskier up to their room.
‘You can take the bed, if you like,’ Geralt says. ‘And I’ll loan you a shirt and some underclothes. We’ll get you some new things tomorrow with the reward.’
‘Thanks,’ Jaskier says, sitting down on the bed. ‘Where will you sleep?’
‘I can sleep on the floor,’ he says, looking away. ‘Whatever you’re comfortable with.’
He feels unsure of their standing, like he did the first weeks they travelled together. He hates it. He doesn’t know if Jaskier forgives him, or if they can go back to the way they were, before he fucked everything up and pushed Jaskier away.
‘Of course I don’t want that, Geralt,’ Jaskier says. ‘Not unless you’d be more comfortable with that.’
‘No,’ he admits. He’s selfish. He wants to share the bed with Jaskier, to be able to press his nose into Jaskier’s hair, maybe throw his arm around him to reassure himself that Jaskier is here, that he’s fine.
‘Share the bed with me, then,’ Jaskier says. ‘No point in giving yourself a crick in the neck for no reason.’
He pauses, and Geralt wonders if he’s going to take that back, or say that perhaps he doesn’t wish to sleep just yet.
‘I always sleep better next to you ,’ Jaskier says, examining his fingernails. ‘I missed you.’
Geralt’s slow heart thumps. ‘Me too,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry for what I said. You didn’t deserve it. I just ... wanted it not to be my fault. And I didn’t want you to be kind to me.’
‘And you weren’t in the mood for jokes,’ Jaskier completes. ‘I guessed that, about the time that you started screaming at me.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. The shame that he’d felt after Jaskier left fills him anew.
‘I didn’t hear your conversation with Yen, you know,’ Jaskier says. ‘I was too far away, and the wind was too loud. I didn’t know if she’d just told you that she had to go back to her shop or something.’
‘We’re done,’ he says. ‘She doesn’t want to see me either.’
‘Oh, Geralt,’ Jaskier says. He shuffles to the edge of the bed, and opens his arms for Geralt to step into.
Geralt stands on his knees before him, and lets Jaskier fold him in his arms. Geralt closes his eyes and leans in. He can hear Jaskier’s heartbeat, and smell his unwashed skin. The comfort of that familiarity surrounds him. He rests his head on Jaskier’s shoulder, and a sob escapes his chest. He can fall apart if he wants – Jaskier will hold him together. His eyes burn, as they always do when he wants to cry, ever since the trials. His breathing hitches, and he stops thinking about anything. The misery of losing both Yen and Jaskier all at once wells up like a fountain, and he sobs it out onto Jaskier’s shoulder.
There is a knock at their door.
‘Leave it on the wash stand,’ Jaskier says, not moving from his spot.
Geralt keeps his eyes closed so he doesn’t have to acknowledge the visitor. He knows it’s the barmaid from downstairs: he can smell the oil she uses on her hair, and hear the pattern of her heartbeat. He hears her put down two full ceramic jugs of water on the wooden wash stand, one clinking against the basin there, and then her footsteps go back towards the door.
‘If there’s anything else you want,’ she says, and she sounds hesitant.
‘We’ll come down and ask,’ Jaskier says. ‘Nothing for now, thank you.’
The footsteps leave, and the door closes behind her.
‘Sorry.’ Geralt sniffs. ‘You didn’t even like Yen,’ he says, his words muffled by Jaskier’s doublet.
‘Perhaps, but you did,’ Jaskier says. ‘And I’m sure her loss hurts you. And I’ve never liked seeing you in pain.’
‘A witcher’s life is pain,’ Geralt says, quoting his masters.
‘There are philosophers who say that all men’s lives are pain,’ Jaskier says gently. ‘But I’ve never thought that pain was the most important part of life.’
Geralt draws back so that he can look Jaskier in the face. He has that same serious look he had when he tried to comfort Geralt after Borch’s seeming death.
He loves me, Geralt thinks. Even after everything I did, he loves me. Whether that is a love like the one he has for his brothers, or something deeper and more frightening, he doesn’t know. He isn’t sure it matters. Jaskier is still here, despite everything.
‘I really am sorry,’ Geralt says.
‘I know,’ Jaskier sighs. ‘It’s not ... it’s not all right what you did. But we’re all right. So long as you don’t do it again.’
‘I’ll try,’ he says. ‘It was ... everything was so much. It was overwhelming.’
‘So tell me that,’ Jaskier says. ‘Tell me “I need to be alone for a bit.” And I’ll leave you alone.’
‘I will,’ Geralt whispers.
‘That’s all I ask.’ Jaskier rubs Geralt’s upper arms affectionately. ‘I suppose we should wash.’
‘You especially,’ Geralt teases, glad to be back on safer ground.
‘I was cursed,’ Jaskier says primly. ‘You have to make allowances.’
‘How did you become cursed?’ Geralt asks. ‘You never said.’
‘I don’t rightly know,’ Jaskier admits. ‘But if the insomnia was part of the curse, it must have been a while ago. And not sleeping made my memory very poor. Like trying to read a piece of parchment that has been soaking in a puddle for a day.’
‘That sounds awful,’ Geralt says.
‘It was a bit,’ Jaskier says. ‘Tell me about Roach. Is she all right? You didn’t say.’
‘She’s fine,’ Geralt says. ‘Recovering nicely.’
‘I’ve never seen you work her so hard that you worry about her afterwards,’ Jaskier says.
‘I try not to,’ Geralt says. ‘I don’t want to risk her unnecessarily.’
‘But you did this time.’
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘You sounded like you were in trouble. And the carter said that he’d left you four or five days previous.’
‘You said that the carter left me six or seven days ago.’
‘Yes.’
‘So you rode here in two days? Were you close?’
‘No,’ Geralt says. ‘I was in Redania. Which is why I need to give Roach a rest.’
‘And you tried kissing me,’ Jaskier says. ‘Was that because of the mage or before?’
‘... Before,’ he says.
Jaskier hums, and looks away. ‘I always thought that the stories about a kiss breaking a curse were supposed to be about love.’
‘Yes,’ he whispers.
‘Not just the love of a friend,’ Jaskier says, looking him in the eye. ‘True love. Between sweethearts.’
‘Yes,’ he says again.
He’s afraid, he realises. His heart is pounding a nearly human beat.
‘Geralt,’ Jaskier says softly. ‘May I—?’
His hands cup Geralt’s jaw, and Geralt can’t bear it any more. He jolts forward, kissing Jaskier. There’s a moment of terror when he thinks that he read everything wrong, that Jaskier is going to push him away, but then Jaskier’s mouth opens beneath his. Jaskier’s hands slide down around his shoulders and pull him in closer.
It’s nothing like kissing Jaskier’s sleeping lips. It takes them a moment to overcome their desperation and settle into a proper kiss. Once they do, Geralt can’t help his groan. There’s a heat running down his spine and settling at its base. It’s too much, too fast, but he needs to feel Jaskier’s skin against his. There’s a fire beneath his skin, and it won’t be quenched by anything except consummation. Jaskier is the fuel that feeds that fire, and Geralt thinks that if he can’t touch him, it will destroy him.
Jaskier pulls back, one hand on Geralt’s collarbone.
‘We need to wash,’ Jaskier says. ‘I don’t want to fuck you smelling like the last two weeks of travel. I feel foul.’
Geralt sighs. That’s fair enough. He pushes the fire down, banks the ache for later.
‘And I am sleepy,’ Jaskier says, looking out the window of their room, where night is beginning to fall. ‘Which is a wonder. It feels like I might actually sleep tonight, and wake in the morning feeling rested. I cannot tell you how that feels after nearly three months of this nonsense.’
Geralt noses the side of Jaskier’s neck, and nips his skin just below his ear.
‘We’ll wash and sleep, then,’ he says.
‘Perhaps you can tell the innkeeper we’ll stay another night,’ Jaskier says. ‘Then no-one will be hustling us from our bed. The morning can be our own, and in the afternoon we can perhaps buy me a new shirt or two.’
‘Good idea,’ Geralt says. ‘I can go down now.’
‘Might be wise,’ Jaskier says. ‘I’ll take the first wash, if I may. Then I’ll feel better about everything. May I borrow that shirt you promised?’
‘You may,’ Geralt says. His voice deepens without his permission.
He is trying to keep himself under control, but the thought of Jaskier wearing his things is making that difficult. Jaskier grins at him, as though he knows exactly what Geralt is feeling.
Geralt pulls out one of his clean shirts and a pair of braies for Jaskier, and another set for himself. Jaskier takes the underclothes with a smile, and motions Geralt towards to door.
‘Go on,’ he says. ‘Go tell our gracious host that we’ll be staying another night.’
Geralt does as he’s told. He wants to stay here and watch Jaskier undress, watch each sliver of skin be revealed. But he wouldn’t be able to stop at watching, now that it’s on offer. He’d want to touch. To put his mouth on the back of Jaskier’s neck ...
It’s definitely wise to send Geralt out of the room. Especially since Jaskier is tired, and needs to sleep. If Geralt stays, remembering that they ought to sleep will be harder.
Attehil grudgingly allows them to stay an extra night, although it’s the money that he’s happiest to see.
‘Will your friend be playing tomorrow?’ he asks.
‘Possibly,’ Geralt says. ‘Usually it’s hard to get him to stop. But he’s still recovering from the curse. I’ll let you know tomorrow.’
Attehil nods, and Geralt goes back upstairs. He knocks before trying the door.
Jaskier is dressed, but he is very much not decent. He’s wearing Geralt’s shirt and braies, and is spread out on the bed like a feast on a noble’s table. The light is fading with the sunset, and Jaskier has lit the rushlight that the inn has left them. The golden light makes him look all the more alluring.
‘Wash up,’ Jaskier says, gesturing imperiously at the wash stand. ‘Or I shan’t let you in the bed.’
Jaskier has tipped his dirty water out the window already. The empty basin waits for Geralt, along with the second jug of cooling water. He pours it into the basin, rinsing out the washcloth and finally scrubbing the road from his face. The washcloth is dingy with grime when he rinses it again, and Geralt grimaces.
He feels Jaskier’s eyes on him as he strips. He tries to be quick, but he’s also aware that he’s filthy and overdue for a wash. Jaskier has already seen him in every state, from freshly washed to covered in mud and blood, but Geralt still wants to impress him. None of this is new to them – they’ve shared a bed before, they’ve seen each other naked, they’ve bathed together in bath houses and streams – and yet it all feels so new, and as fragile as a cobweb.
He dries himself off with the linen towel, and pulls on his own shirt and braies.
‘Perhaps we can head to the bath house tomorrow?’ Jaskier asks. ‘Do you think that the reward money will stretch so far?’
‘It might,’ Geralt says. ‘We’ll see.’
He sits on the edge of the bed, waiting for Jaskier to give him a sign of how to proceed.
‘I’d like to see you clean and relaxed,’ Jaskier says. ‘Maybe get my hands in your hair, and get it all nice and clean too.’
‘Mm,’ Geralt agrees. That does sound nice.
‘May I?’ Jaskier asks, reaching for him.
‘You may,’ Geralt rumbles, and then they’re kissing again.
It’s softer, this time. Sweeter. Comfortable kisses, ones that don’t have urgency beneath them, but a promise of deep intimacy. Geralt would have been afraid of that promise once. Now, it’s all he could ever want. How could he be afraid of such a promise from Jaskier? It’s Jaskier. He’s seen Geralt at his worst, and he’s still here.
‘I could kiss you for a hundred years,’ Jaskier murmurs, resting his forehead against Geralt’s, ‘and still feel like I’d not done it enough.’
‘I wouldn’t mind if you did,’ Geralt murmurs back.
‘I would have such plans for you,’ Jaskier says through a yawn, ‘if I wasn’t so sleepy. I slept for days. Days, Geralt! I shouldn’t have to go to bed yet. It’s unfair.’
‘It is,’ Geralt smiles. ‘But you need the sleep, and I’ll be here when you wake.’
‘You will, won’t you?’ Jaskier smiles.
He pushes the blankets down and crawls beneath them.
‘Coming to bed?’ he asks hopefully.
‘I am,’ Geralt says.
He likes going to bed early, and rising early, too. It’s a habit formed during his training. And tonight he has even more reason to be abed: the morning will bring the chance to touch Jaskier. He blows out the rush light, and slips under the sheets. He pulls Jaskier closer, since he can, and they settle into an embrace. Jaskier tucks his head over Geralt’s shoulder, and once he’s pulled Geralt half on top of him, relaxes with a sigh. One of his legs is hooked around Geralt’s, so that he couldn’t escape if he wanted to.
‘I like seeing you in my shirt,’ Geralt says lowly. ‘You smell of me. You smell of us.’
‘Maybe we should buy you some new shirts then,’ Jaskier says. ‘And I’ll make sure my next doublet pairs well with black.’
‘Mm,’ Geralt says, trying to ignore the reignited want under his skin, and how tantalisingly close Jaskier is.
‘Sleep now,’ Jaskier says. His voice is lax with oncoming sleep, and he pats Geralt’s side with absent affection. ‘There’ll be time for that in the morning.’
‘When we wake,’ Geralt agrees, and eventually he follows Jaskier into dreams.
Just want to give a heads up since technically the event ends today. I have a fill that is already out and already in the collection (you might have seen it already "The Earth of Me"), but it is currently listed under anonymous that i can't post and claim on tumblr until after midnight tomorrow or it will give me away (I'm in an event where everyone has a week to guess who wrote what) I hope this is okay! Thank you for running the event (even though I only had time to write one thing :( )
We are happy to wait until you post your literary masterpiece on here <3 This account shall be monitored for a few days more, still!
The potions make everything seem so much more, and Geralt’s skin is buzzing as he makes his way back to their camp. Thankfully it was an easy contract for once, and he even survived the fight without getting covered in blood or ichor. Jaskier won’t let him crawl into their shared bedroll on nights he comes back that filthy.
No, right now he’s just sweaty and on edge. His blood is pumping in his veins and he still feels the rush of energy he gets right after a good fight. Normally the best cure for this is to grab Jaskier and fuck through it, but his lover will definitely be asleep at this point. He’s been gone for hours and it’s closer to sunrise than sunset.
Prompt: Watching the other sleep. Wuv with a bit of whump.
Pairing: Geraskier.
Rating: All Ages.
Warnings: None.
Can be read on AO3. @whataboutthebard
-
Jaskier was asleep. Not in his bedroll like a normal human being would be, no he was sleeping sitting in Geralt’s lap, curled up against Geralt’s chest, his head resting on his shoulder.
Geralt wasn’t sure how he’d ended up like this but it had started with talking. No, it had begun with a song.
Jaskier had insisted on getting his input on his latest song though why was beyond Geralt since the bard always ignored any correction Geralt had to inaccuracies. The back and forth had turned into a conversation, which had turned to banter which had led to both of them laughing.
Oh, how Jaskier could make him laugh. Even when he didn’t mean to when he tried his hardest not to when the whole world felt meaninglessly cruel.
The laughter had turned into a friendly wrestling match and that’s where the specifics became unclear to Geralt but the next thing he knew he was sitting up against a tree with Jaskier firmly planted in his lap, grinning at him.
“Caught you,” Jaskier had chuckled.
“Have you?”
“Yes. Got you well and truly pinned.”
“If you say so.”
“I do. And for my prize, I claim a nap.”
“A nap?” Geralt said surprised.
“Yes,” Jaskier had replied curling up against his chest. “You make for a lovely pillow.”
Then promptly the bard had drifted off, leaving Geralt looking baffled at him.
His first instinct had been a moment of annoyance and the thought that he should just shake him awake and tell him to stop this nonsense immediately. But Jaskier had looked so soft and adorable as he lay there, chin tucked down and his hand resting on Geralt’s chest. He looked far too sweet sitting like that to disturb so Geralt had wrapped his arms around him, cradling him in his embrace.
It wasn’t the kind of protection humans sought witchers for. They were a bulwark against monsters and chaos, a wall best serving at a distance, not something you huddled against seeking warmth, shelter, or companionship.
Yet here Jaskier was, cuddled against him, like there was nowhere else he’d rather be napping on his warm afternoon, than in Geralt’s lap.
He shouldn’t like it. He shouldn't want to gently hold him close, his hands itching to smooth down the strands that had become ruffled in their friendly scuffle. And definitely shouldn’t want more, to hold Jaskier again when night fell and darkness surrounded them both, and have the bard sleep peacefully against Geralt’s side.
It wasn’t what witchers were made for or something they should long for, yet Jaskier never failed to make him want more than he should, treating intimacy and closeness with Geralt as if it was the most natural thing in the world, yet simultaneously leaving Geralt terrified of losing what he already had.
Jaskier snuffled in his sleep.
‘Don’t wake,’ Geralt thought. ‘Let me hold you a little while longer.’
Despite a chill breeze picking up Jaskier didn’t wake, only snuggled closer. Autumn was fast approaching and though the trees had not yet begun to turn their color they soon would and then he and Jaskier would part for the winter.
With every passing year, Geralt hated it more. In the first years, he had expected them to part and never meet up again, but every spring without fail Jaskier would pop up sooner or later. Now autumn had become bittersweet, more bitter than sweet if Geralt was honest and every spring filled with dread that this year things would be different. More than once he had contemplated inviting him with him for the winter but had always chickened out, fearing that facing a winter of the rough cold of Kaer Morhen and the doubtful hospitability of his brothers might be what finally killed the bard’s interest in him.
He shouldn’t hold on to Jaskier like this, he should cradle him in his arms hoping that maybe when he woke he’d want to stay. To do that would only mean heartbreak when Jaskier bid him a permanent farewell, as the bard inevitably would. Humans were not meant for the Path and at some point, Jaskier would realize that.
Yet Geralt couldn’t help himself.
Witchers were supposed to be emotionless, but the ones that had made him had failed miserably with that aspect when they did and his heart was ever unquiet, longing, for something he knew he could never have.
Jaskier shifted again, yawned, and tugged his face in against Geralt’s chest with a muted groan. It seemed his allotted time was up.
“Done with your nap?” he asked, trying to keep his wistfulness out of his voice.
“Not quite. I think I’ll stay here a bit.”
“Jaskier, we need to go.”
Geralt tried to sound convincing. No really, he did.
“We could stay. Make camp here.”
“It’s too open. We can be spotted for miles.”
“But we have a stream and Roach has some nice grass to munch on.”
“Hmmm.”
It wasn’t wise, it was too open, too vulnerable a position. They shouldn’t stay, he shouldn’t stay.
Geralt didn’t move.
“You know, you’re incredibly warm,” Jaskier said. “Makes me wish I could sleep with you at night.”
Jaskier didn’t mean it that way, not the way sounded, Geralt knew that.
“You could keep me warm.”
“I told you to bring more blankets.”
“Well I didn’t, but if we shared bedding it would solve my being cold.”
Geralt didn’t answer.
“Please?”
“I’ll think about it.”
He would. He shouldn’t, but he would. He thinks about what it would feel like to lie with Jaskier curled up against his side, the weight of his head on Geralt’s shoulder, the warm breath against his skin. The bard’s soft snores close to his ear.
He’d think about it, want it and Geralt already knew he would agree. Like he would agree to anything for just a little more time with his bard.
Prompt: watching over them as they sleep/waking up together
Pairing: Geralt/Jaskier/Yennefer
Rating: T
Word Count: 6.6k
Five times Jaskier falls asleep before Geralt and Yennefer and one time they fall asleep before him. On AO3 here! @whataboutthebard
~
One
The first time it happened, Geralt was fairly sure the bard had been poisoned.
In his defense, it was not unlikely. Geralt had only been traveling with him for a few months, but he already knew that Jaskier had a penchant for eating anything soft or crunchy-looking within a twenty-foot radius and a ridiculous talent for making enemies. He could just as easily have eaten the wrong berry as run afoul of an angry spouse when they were last in town.
So, when Geralt turned around from where he had been sharpening his sword to see Jaskier passed out over a log on the other side of their camp, he was understandably panicked. His sword clattered to the ground as he scrambled off his own log and around the campfire to reach the bard. His hands flew over him, checking pulse and temperature as he scented for illness or injury and found—
Nothing. Jaskier was perfectly healthy.
“Mrph?” said Jaskier groggily. His eyes opened partway. He blinked a few times, then squinted up at Geralt. “Is something wrong?”
Geralt stared at him. Jaskier’s bleary squint morphed into an expression of concern. He sat up a little, as though getting ready to run if necessary.
“Geralt? What’s going on?”
“I…” Geralt trailed off, unable to figure out how to say ‘I thought you were dying and I panicked even though you’re apparently fine’ without sounding like an idiot. “Nothing.”
Suddenly, Geralt found himself the target of the Jaskier’s most potent ‘my feathers have been ruffled’ glare. “Nothing! Why on earth did you wake me up, then? I was having a perfectly wonderful nap. You ruined my good dreams, Geralt!”
“Hmm,” Geralt apologized.
“Hmm,” Jaskier mimicked. He rolled his eyes with all the disdain of a middle-aged noblewoman hearing the latest gossip. “Is that all you have to say for yourself?”
“Hmm.”
“You’re insufferable. I’m going back to sleep.”
With that, Jaskier slid off his log, rolled pointedly away from Geralt, and curled up on the ground with his head on a nearby bag. Geralt stared at him. Jaskier closed his eyes, refusing to even glance at Geralt.
When Geralt did not move for another few moments, Jaskier cracked one eye open to glare behind him.
“Go away. I’m sleeping.”
Geralt decided not to point out the obvious falsehood. He returned to his seat across the camp and retrieved his fallen sword.
He tried to return to sharpening it, but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to look away from Jaskier. Geralt’s heart was still beating a little too quickly, not quite recovered from his earlier scare. Across the camp, Jaskier’s breathing was regular. It had not quite regained the slow steadiness of sleep, but it was on its way there. His heartbeat was human-fast and familiar. His soft hair shone a little in the firelight, looking almost like fine strands of ruddy gold. His scent was calm. Jaskier was perfectly fine. He was simply… falling asleep.
He was falling asleep. He had fallen asleep. Deep in the forest, utterly alone except for a grumpy and antisocial witcher titled the Butcher of Blaviken, Jaskier had fallen asleep.
Geralt did not understand.
Geralt was dangerous. This was a well-known, universally-acknowledged fact. Geralt was a machine built for death. Geralt did not have friends. Geralt had no mercy when he decided someone deserved to die. Geralt could easily kill a human with his bare hands.
And yet Jaskier — fragile, human Jaskier, who was almost completely defenseless against any kind of physical threat, who was lying five yards away from him on the ground — was fast asleep.
He smelled content. There was a faint smile on his face. He looked young and soft and somehow, impossibly, safe.
Jaskier had done many strange things since Geralt met him, but Geralt thought this may be the most bewildering yet.
Slowly, Geralt returned to sharpening his sword. Jaskier did not react to the noise. He was already fast asleep. Geralt’s chest felt oddly warm.
Perhaps Jaskier’s oddness could be nice, once in a while.
Two
After that, it kept happening. Jaskier would fall asleep well before Geralt most nights, when they traveled together. Slowly, tentatively, Geralt became used to it. It was just another entry on the long list of Jaskier’s peculiarities. Geralt didn’t mind — quite the opposite, though he would never admit it to Jaskier — so he simply let it happen. He never brought it up again after that first night, though he thought about it more than he would like to admit.
Things between them settled into comfortable familiarity. Geralt knew what to expect from Jaskier. He knew where they stood.
Then, about half a decade after Geralt met Jaskier, Geralt’s world was once again flipped on its head.
The day started just like any other. Jaskier was with him, having just returned from a stint in Oxenfurt to see some friends, and was chattering away as usual. Geralt, who had spoiled Roach to his satisfaction when his last contract proved unusually lucrative due to some townsfolk singing Toss a Coin, was riding beside him and hiding his fondness as usual. He hadn’t expected Jaskier to join him when he set out, so it was a longer ride to the next town than Geralt would usually risk when accompanied by a human, but he wasn’t worried. The road stretched over gently rolling plains and farmlands. Jaskier should be fine.
The wide, flat landscape seemed like much less of a blessing when Geralt finally noticed the storm making its way towards them.
“Fuck,” he said, and Jaskier immediately stopped rambling to listen. The bard had little common sense of his own, so it was a blessing that he was smart enough to make use of Geralt’s from time to time.
“What is it?”
“Storm’s coming.”
“Oh.” Jaskier frowned. He looked around them, saw the plains stretching out in every direction, and his frown deepened. “Well then, I guess we’ll just have to outrun it.”
They did not outrun it.
They were still several hours away from the nearest town when the clouds broke over them. What started as a drizzle steadily turned into a downpour. The dusty road became more of a muddy line, and then, in low-lying places, a series of puddles. Both of them were thoroughly drenched, but Jaskier’s refusal to wear anything sensible for travel meant he had it even worse than Geralt. The bard’s walk turned into a trudge. He stopped talking after about an hour in the rain. After an hour and a half, Geralt caved and let Jaskier ride Roach. By the time they finally arrived at the village, Geralt was becoming concerned for the bard’s health.
They acquired a room at the inn with relatively little trouble (it seemed that looking waterlogged and pathetic had a few benefits), but it was the only one left after the influx of other travelers seeking shelter from the rain. The innkeeper had apologized, but Geralt waved her off easily. He and Jaskier had shared before; anywhere warm was fine by him.
When he and Jaskier opened the door to find only one bed in their room, Geralt wished he had made more of a fuss.
Jaskier would have to take the bed, of course. Geralt wasn’t cruel enough to ignore his human constitution. The bard needed warmth and rest, both of which would be easier to come by in a real bed. Geralt would have liked to sleep in comfort, of course, but he would be fine without it. Jaskier needed it more.
Once both of them had changed clothes and become marginally dryer, Geralt began unpacking his bedroll. It was at this point that his plan was interrupted.
“What are you doing?” asked Jaskier. It was the first thing he’d said at a volume louder than a mumble in over an hour. Geralt was relieved enough that he was talking to be unbothered by the way Jaskier looked at him like he was an idiot.
“Getting ready for bed. Obviously.”
“There is a perfectly functional bed right here, Geralt. I think. Unless you’ve noticed something with your fancy witcher senses. Are there bedbugs, Geralt? Or dried blood? Is it an illusion? Is there a monster under the bed? Is the bed the monster, Geralt? Geralt!”
Geralt suppressed the urge to laugh. That would only encourage him. “Bed monsters aren’t real, Jaskier.”
“How would I know? I didn’t think giant, terrifying insect monsters were real either, and it ate my best doublet!”
“I told you to stay away.”
“Well, I— nevermind. Why are you trying to sleep on the floor?”
“You’re taking the bed.”
Jaskier blinked. “So?”
Geralt shot him a glare. “So I’m sleeping on the floor.”
“Are we not sharing?”
Geralt stopped. Slowly, he turned to look at Jaskier. “What?”
“Why aren’t we sharing the bed? There’s enough room. It’d be warmer.”
Geralt looked at the bed. There might be enough room for both of them, but not by much. They would certainly have to get in each others’ space.
“You want to share the bed. With me.” Geralt felt like he had to check this. He was still reeling a little at the idea.
“Yes, you idiot. That’s what I’ve been saying. Just for sleeping, of course.”
“Of course,” Geralt echoed faintly.
He couldn’t remember the last time someone wanted to literally sleep with him. Quite possibly, it had been before the Trials.
“So?” said Jaskier.
“What?”
“Are you going to put that bedroll away?”
Geralt looked at the bedroll. He looked at Jaskier. There was no trace of hesitation anywhere in the bard’s body. He was tired, annoyed at Geralt, and a little confused, but there was no fear. There wasn’t even nervousness. If anything, Jaskier was impatient for Geralt to get in bed with him.
It was one thing to be able to sleep in the vicinity of a mutated, monster-hunting freak. It was quite another thing to fall asleep in his arms.
Geralt was beginning to think he would never understand Jaskier. Perhaps he should simply accept it.
Wordlessly, he began to repack the bedroll.
“Thank you,” said Jaskier. He clambered under the covers, settling on the side of the bed closest to the wall, and held up the corner of the blanket in invitation. Once Geralt had the rest of the room settled to his satisfaction, he obeyed the unspoken request and climbed in next to him.
Jaskier smiled and snuggled close the moment Geralt was lying down. There were a few seconds of slightly confused shuffling before they settled with Jaskier lying on his side, half on top of Geralt and clinging to him like an octopus, while Geralt’s arm wrapped around his shoulders to keep him steady. Jaskier was between Geralt and the wall; he couldn’t get out of the bed without clambering over Geralt. He was, for all intents and purposes, cornered. He seemed utterly unperturbed by this fact.
“Goodnight,” said Jaskier. Geralt blew out the candle with a carefully-aimed Aard. Jaskier closed his eyes, snuggled closer to Geralt, and fell asleep within moments.
Geralt looked at him. His face was slightly smushed where he was using Geralt’s chest as a pillow. His hair tickled Geralt’s nose a little. His exhales ruffled the hem of Geralt’s undershirt. In Geralt’s arms, he felt heavier and more solid than he appeared. He was very warm. His breathing was steady.
It took Geralt a long time to fall asleep that night, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to mind.
Three
Time passed, and Geralt grew more and more used to how Jaskier looked when he was asleep. He grew to know the way his face relaxed, all the energy and enthusiasm of the day slowly seeping out until what was left was an expression of peace. He grew to like the steady, comforting rhythm of his heartbeat and slow breathing. He grew to love the easy trust inherent in the gesture, the inherent certainty that Geralt would never hurt him. Sleep was perhaps the most powerful lowering of one’s guard, and Geralt was honored that Jaskier chose to do so around him so regularly.
Geralt knew how Jaskier looked when he slept. That was why looking at him, lying there and looking so small in the middle of Yennefer’s huge bed in Rinde, felt so deeply and inescapably wrong.
Jaskier would never choose to lie neatly on his back like this, because he always slept on his side or on his stomach or in some strange, twisted shape resembling a mutated starfish. Jaskier would never lie still like this, because even in his sleep he was full of little noises and movements and life. Jaskier would never sleep in this bed without first getting to know its owner, because even he was not stupid enough to sleep in a place he did not believe was safe.
It was Geralt’s fault that Jaskier was here, injured and unconscious like a grotesque parody of what Geralt had feared was happening on that first day Jaskier fell asleep with him, all those years ago. Jaskier trusted Geralt with his life implicitly. Geralt had betrayed that trust.
Jaskier was still, but not resting. Jaskier was quiet, but not because he wanted to be. Jaskier was defenseless, but not by choice.
It was completely and utterly wrong.
Geralt could not do anything about it. He could not wake Jaskier and he could not heal him. All he could do to help was to aid this sorceress and hope against hope that she could do something.
It turned out, of course, that she could. Yennefer healed Jaskier and moved on to her various other schemes without a second thought.
She was beautiful and powerful and near-indestructible, and Geralt was spellbound.
Jaskier was confusing, but Geralt could understand Yennefer. Jaskier was ridiculous, but Geralt could take Yennefer seriously. Jaskier was terrifyingly fragile, but Yennefer was terrifyingly strong.
Before Geralt knew it, he and Yennefer were bound together and the path of his life was permanently altered.
Yennefer, it turned out, could also sleep near Geralt.
They slept together both literally and figuratively. Geralt grew to love the literal sense most of all. There was something indescribably beautiful about Yennefer when she let down her guard just enough to sleep, when she allowed Geralt farther past her walls than most people were ever allowed to get. Yennefer could easily kill someone before letting them see her vulnerabilities, and it would not surprise Geralt to know she had done so in the past. Any weaknesses she allowed Geralt to see were very thought-out, deliberate gestures of trust. The knowledge meant more to Geralt than he could express.
When Jaskier slept near Geralt, it made all sorts of complicated emotions tangle around Geralt’s heart. When Yennefer slept near Geralt, he simply felt happy and honored.
It wasn’t that all his thoughts about her were in comparison to Jaskier: far from it. Being in her presence was an all-consuming experience, more beautiful and intoxicating than the finest wines. It was one of the many, many things he loved about her.
When he did end up comparing her to Jaskier, though, his thoughts inevitably turned in that direction. Jaskier was charming and irritating and idiotically trusting. Yennefer was confident and powerful and beautifully calculating. Yennefer made more sense. Yennefer, for all her fiery danger, was so much easier for Geralt to love.
Geralt and Jaskier still traveled together frequently. They could still go weeks or months together without running into Yennefer. Slowly, though, Geralt stopped letting Jaskier sleep so close to him. One room at an inn turned back into two, and two bedrolls beside each other became two bedrolls on opposite sides of a campfire. When Jaskier was asleep, Geralt couldn’t stop remembering his horrible stillness after Geralt hurt him. He couldn’t seeing Jaskier’s vulnerability as just another opportunity to fuck up. He couldn’t stop feeling that Jaskier’s trust was something to fear.
Geralt and Jaskier slept apart from each other. Geralt and Yennefer slept together.
It was better for everyone that way.
Four
The first time Yennefer really noticed Jaskier sleeping, she didn’t have time to enjoy it.
She’d seen him resting before, of course, but she never really paid attention then. For most of the years of their acquaintance, she had seen him as nothing more than an irritation. It wasn’t until the dragon hunt, or maybe even until she saw him again in Oxenfurt, that she realized how much the twit had come to mean to her. His ridiculousness was somehow the only sanity she’d encountered in months.
When she felt herself unraveling in that Kaer Morhen laboratory, she found herself going to Jaskier without a second thought.
“I need your help,” she said, and at those words Jaskier came awake despite his grumblings. He followed her with his usual ridiculous chatter, grounding her as she talked through her thoughts and gave him the jasper. They went their separate ways, and then there was blood and danger and death and chaos in all its definitions.
She didn’t think about the encounter much until later that night, alone for the first time in days.
She lay awake in one of Kaer Morhen’s drafty abandoned rooms, unable to convince herself that she was safe. She knew, logically, that she had her chaos back. There was very little that could harm her now, and even less that could also get past Geralt and the other witchers. The knowledge was not comforting.
She could still feel the blood rushing from her wrist down her hands. She could still hear the screams: those of the dying witchers, those of Geralt and Ciri and Jaskier and even herself. She could still feel the keep shaking in wave after wave of Voleth Meir’s magic.
Her thoughts returned to Jaskier, then. He had looked so peaceful in those brief seconds of sleep she managed to witness. It was oddly anachronistic, seeing him there in such unfamiliar surroundings and in the midst of all her panic. She was almost envious. For all his dramatics, Jaskier had a peculiar kind of resilience that few people could match.
Right now, though, what she envied most was his ability to sleep.
Jaskier had a big bottle of alcohol with him when he was asleep in the lab. Perhaps Yennefer should try it.
She was seriously considering getting up in search of some sort of drink when, to her great surprise, there was a knock on the door to her room.
Geralt was talking to Ciri. The other witchers were cleaning and grieving. It must be—
“Yennefer?” asked Jaskier from outside the room.
“What is it?” asked Yennefer.
“Oh, thank Melitele,” he said, ignoring the question. “I was beginning to think I would never find you in all these corridors. Do you think someone would come looking for me if I got lost or fell into some forgotten laboratory? I’d rather not have to find out. Can I come in? It’s cold out here. You’d think a keepful of witchers might try to repair the place a little.”
Yennefer opened the door. Jaskier blinked down at her in surprise.
“Oh! Thank you.” He slid past her and into the room, then flopped down on her bed.
“What are you doing?” she asked. She hoped she didn’t sound as confused as she felt.
“Visiting the most disagreeable witch of my acquaintance. What does it look like I’m doing?”
“I’m the only witch of your acquaintance.”
“Precisely.”
Yennefer huffed, then tried to return to her original question. “Why are you even awake?”
“I ran out of wine.”
“So you came to find me?”
“Geralt’s busy with that daughter of his. The other witchers don’t look like they want to be disturbed.” Jaskier’s charming facade broke for a moment. He looked startlingly vulnerable. “I… didn’t want to be alone.”
“Oh,” said Yennefer.
For a moment, there was silence. Yennefer felt oddly blindsided by the whole encounter. She decided to chalk it up to her exhaustion.
Jaskier sat up on his elbows and looked at her. “So? Are you coming?”
Yennefer raised an eyebrow. “Coming where?”
“To bed.”
“This is not the time, bard.”
“Not like that! I just want to sleep.” He paused, then made a face. “Dear Melitele. I’m starting to sound like Geralt.”
That startled a laugh out of Yennefer. “The old wives were right. Witchers are contagious.”
“Oh, gods, don’t make me think about it. He only pulls it off that whole brooding act because he’s so handsome. I’d just look stupid.”
“You already look stupid.”
“I— Shut up! Are you getting in bed or not?”
Yennefer probably should have refused. She probably should have kicked him out of her room and fallen asleep on her own.
She did not.
“Fine,” she said. “Shove over.”
Jaskier obliged, and Yennefer climbed in next to him. She settled down on her back the way she had been before Jaskier arrived, so Jaskier had to lie on his side and curl around her in order to fit. He did not seem to mind this at all. He snuggled up close to her, throwing an arm around her waist and tucking his head against her neck. His breathing started to slow the moment he was settled. Yennefer could feel his exhales against her neck.
Yennefer was suddenly struck by how long it had been since someone had held her like this. She wasn’t sure if she could remember the last time it happened. Even Geralt, when their relationship had been at its best, was never exactly the cuddling type.
That would explain the warm, fluttering feeling in her chest. It was because she had this human contact after so long without it. It had nothing to do with the particular person involved. Obviously.
Still, there were very few people she would allow to come this close to her. There were even fewer who would actually want to do so.
She didn’t know why Jaskier had suddenly become one of those people, but right now, she couldn’t quite bring herself to mind.
“Thank you,” Jaskier whispered against her throat. Yennefer startled a little. She hadn’t realized he was still awake.
“What for?” she whispered back. Somehow, in the darkness and quiet, she found herself without her usual defenses. She couldn’t summon the banter from earlier; she was left with nothing but earnestness.
"For being here," said Jaskier simply.
Yennefer thought of the blood running from her wrists in the battle. She thought of the pain of Voleth Meir. She thought of all the danger and pain she'd undergone in the last few weeks. Her eyes felt suspiciously moist.
For being here.
She didn't think anyone had ever said that to her.
"You're welcome," she whispered. Jaskier held her a little tighter. If her voice was a little shaky, he was kind enough not to mention it.
"Goodnight, Yennefer," he said. Within moments, his breathing had slowed to the deep evenness of sleep.
Yennefer stayed awake a little longer. She felt like she was savoring something, something precious that she might not experience again. Jaskier was a welcome warm in the cold keep. He snored a little. Yennefer, after making sure he was definitely asleep, ran a gentle hand through his hair. Jaskier snuffled a little and cuddled closer.
It was strange that the presence of this ridiculous, idiotic man could be so soothing.
She felt her heartbeat slow as she lay there, Jaskier's steady warmth against her side. Her eyes fell closed without her noticing. She shifted to press closer to Jaskier, and his arm around her tightened in response.
She fell asleep and slept soundly until dawn.
Five
Yennefer and Jaskier shared a bed more often than not, after that. Though they never discussed it, Yennefer could tell that they both slept better that way. They settled into a strange sort of routine. Yennefer spent her days with Geralt and Ciri, discussing strategy and magic and whatever else required their urgent attention. Jaskier spent his days off in the depths of the keep doing something or other: talking to the other witchers or composing, perhaps. No matter what they had been doing during the day, Yennefer and Jaskier met in Yennefer’s room about an hour after sunset. They didn’t talk about much of consequence; just having Jaskier’s company without pressure or expectation was enough to lighten Yennefer’s mood on its own. It was the only part of her day when she didn’t have to watch her every move for fear of upsetting the careful balance between her and the rest of the keep. She valued it more than she could say.
Sleeping better improved her mood, as well. She could feel herself slowly starting to recover from the peril and fear of the last few weeks. Jaskier looked better, too: he was gaining some lost weight, and the bags under his eyes had been significantly reduced. It was obvious that the rest was helping both of them.
Geralt, it seemed, was not so lucky. He was a little slower than usual and a little more irritable, though he did his best to hide it around Ciri. It was obvious to those who knew him that he was not sleeping well, but he did not say anything about it and Yennefer was not sure enough of where she stood with him to push it.
This stalemate held until shortly after she, Ciri, Geralt, and Jaskier left Kaer Morhen for Aretuza.
They were about a day’s journey away from the keep, still deep in the Blue Mountains. Geralt had hoped to make it farther that day — apparently there was a particular cave he usually used for shelter when he was in the area — but Ciri had been so exhausted by the journey that no one had the heart to push forward. The place where they had ended up was unfortunately open, with no trees and few convenient boulders to shelter behind. They set their tents beside the largest of the boulders and hoped it would be enough.
It was not.
They started the night in two different tents, with Yennefer and Jaskier in one and Geralt and Ciri in another. Yennefer was not sure if Geralt chose the arrangement because it was most similar to how the four of them had slept in Kaer Morhen or because he didn’t trust Yennefer with Ciri, and she was not about to ask.
The wind began to pick up soon after everyone was settled. The tents went from standing still to trembling to shaking violently. The canvas was loud, flapping and rattling against the tent’s poles. Yennefer, who was on the windward side of the tent, was hit in the face a few times by said overexcited canvas.
“I think this tent wants to become a kite,” said Jaskier. “How strong are the poles?”
“Shut up,” said Yennefer, rolling over and attempting to pin some of the most energetic parts of the tent under her. She heard a rustling sound from Jaskier’s side of the tent and worried for a moment that something had broken before she turned to see Geralt poking his head through the tent’s door.
“Yen! Is there anything you can do about the wind? Ciri’s getting scared.”
“I’m a sorceress, not a weather deity!”
“Can you at least make the tents a little sturdier?”
“The more spells I cast, the easier it would be for another mage to track us.”
“None of us are going to get any sleep if the wind goes on like this,” Jaskier said, chiming in. “It would also be very unpleasant if a tent broke while we’re in it.”
“I can’t strengthen both tents without risking our safety,” said Yennefer, sitting up. As soon as she stopped weighing down the canvas, it billowed again and hit her in the back. She grimaced.
“Could you just strengthen one of them?” Geralt asked, reaching up to hold the tent’s poles steady when they threaten to bend too far.
“I’d rather not—”
“But I would rather not spend the night like this!” said Jaskier, looking at her pleadingly. “Especially not when Ciri is scared.”
It turned out that Yennefer was not as immune to Jaskier’s pleading eyes as she liked to believe she was.
“Fine. Go help Geralt and Ciri get their things in here.”
It took nearly half an hour of fumbling and rather panicked maneuvering in the dark, but eventually they managed to collapse the other tent and move it and its contents safely into the remaining one. Geralt checked on the horses while Yennefer carefully cast spells to reinforce the tent and shield it from the wind. By the time everyone was finally safe inside the tent, the flapping of canvas and creaking of poles had nearly been reduced to nothing. Yennefer couldn’t safely do anything about the cold and the whistling of the wind outside, but her efforts had been good enough if the way tension bled out of Jaskier and Ciri was anything to go by.
“Thank you, Yen,” said Geralt, stepping back inside and closing the tent’s door behind him. Even he sounded relieved.
“You’re welcome,” said Yennefer. She let out a breath, ready to go back to her bedroll and sleep for a very long time. She turned back to where she was sleeping earlier. It was now covered by supplies and the packed-up remains of the other tent.
She looked around. The small tent was very, very cramped. There was no way they were all going to be able to lay out their bedrolls.
Jaskier frowned, seeming to have come to the same conclusion. “Hold on. Where do we sleep?”
There was silence for a few long moments as everyone looked around them with expressions ranging from annoyance (Yennefer) to constipation (Geralt) to thoughtfulness (Jaskier). Ciri was the first one to speak.
“I guess we’ll just have to cuddle,” she said.
Jaskier shrugged. “Sure. Do you think we can find all the bedrolls?”
“Hold on,” said Geralt. “Are you sure about this?”
Jaskier raised an eyebrow at him. “Is the thought of sleeping near all of us really so repulsive to you?”
“I… No, but—”
“Can you think of an alternative?”
Geralt sighed. “No.”
“Then help us find the bedrolls.”
After a while of searching and trying to rearrange things within the tiny tent without hitting anyone else in the head, they managed to create a pile of bedding composed of bedrolls, blankets, and parts of the other tent in an area that was just barely big enough for the four of them to lie down. Ciri flopped down first, obviously exhausted, and began arranging the blankets to her satisfaction. Yennefer lay down next to her, and Jaskier curled around Yennefer. Geralt tried to lie down on Ciri’s other side. There was a crinkling noise as he almost crushed a nearby container of food and sat back up, grumbling.
Jaskier sighed and stood up again. Despite Yennefer’s very best efforts, she found herself missing the warmth of him the moment he was gone.
“You get settled,” he said to Geralt. “I’ll find a spot after.”
“You don’t have to—” Geralt tried to say. Jaskier interrupted him.
“Just do it. I’m marginally smaller and you’re exhausted.”
Geralt looked like he wanted to argue, but a glare from Jaskier quelled whatever argument he was going to make. He stepped over Ciri and Yennefer to take Jaskier’s place behind her. His body was warm against Yennefer’s back. She could feel the tension in his every muscle. She was not sure whether to be offended or sympathetic; she hoped his awkwardness was due to the strangeness of the situation and not the fact that he was forced to be close to her in particular. She pressed a little closer to him regardless. She did not feel like letting pride prevent her from enjoying his witchery warmth.
After looking at the three of them in consideration for a moment, Jaskier climbed on top of them. After a few moments of awkward rearranging, he managed to settle himself across all three of them. His head was on Geralt’s chest, his torso across Yennefer’s stomach, and his legs tangled with Ciri’s. Yennefer spluttered a little. Ciri giggled.
“What are you doing?” asked Geralt.
“This is the only way I can fit!” Jaskier said, the defensiveness of his words belied by the smile on his face. “Anything else would have me squashing our things.”
“So you’re squashing us instead?” asked Yennefer with a raised eyebrow, desperately trying to hide her own smile.
“Exactly!” said Jaskier.
“Oh, fine,” said Ciri. Yennefer couldn’t quite manage to hold back a laugh.
Jaskier shifted around a bit until he seemed comfortable, giving a happy little sigh before going still. The warm weight of him over Yennefer’s torso was surprisingly comfortable. She could feel his chest move as he breathed, the pace of it slowing as he relaxed. Behind her, Geralt was slowly relaxing as well. There was something soothing about Jaskier when he was like this, half-asleep and warm and so trusting that it still took Yennefer’s breath away sometimes. There were very, very few humans who would dare to relax in the company of Geralt, Yennefer, or even Ciri. Jaskier’s blithe indifference to how dangerous they all were was like open sunlight after a week spent indoors: difficult to adjust to, but beautiful nonetheless. Something about his trust that he was safe made her feel safer, too.
Within minutes, Jaskier was fast asleep, snoring slightly as he lay draped across the three of them. Yennefer twisted a little to look at Geralt and they shared a silent moment of fond commiseration. She was sure that Geralt was just as awed and amused by the bard as she was, even if he often refused to show it. The smile they shared made her feel almost as warm as the bard currently pursuing a new career as a blanket. It gave her hope that perhaps their relationship might not be as broken as she had thought.
Perhaps the wind storm hadn’t been such a bad thing, after all.
Plus One
Jaskier put down his quill and straightened with a satisfied sigh. He lifted his arms to stretch with some reluctance, because it meant moving his hand from where it had been resting in Yennefer’s hair. He was sore from sitting in one place for so long, though, and sacrifices had to be made.
After stretching thoroughly, he blinked around him at the room. He must have been composing longer than he’d thought. Darkness had fallen while he was lost in the world of paper and song; the room was now illuminated only by a single candle which Yennefer or Geralt must have lit while he was distracted.
They were in a rather unremarkable room in a rather unremarkable inn. Ciri was off on a short expedition with Lambert, presumably to learn how to make explosives. The three of them had been told to wait in this town until their return and so, remarkably, they found themselves with several days of free time. Geralt had completed all the available contracts, Yennefer had done all the witch-ing she could do, and Jaskier had, scandalously, almost exhausted the town’s patience for his ballads. That was how they ended up here, spending a quiet evening in each others’ company.
He looked down at his lovers. Yennefer had been reading, curled up with her head in his lap, but was now fast asleep even though Jaskier had been moving around. Geralt was slumped against Jaskier’s side, his head on the bard’s shoulder, also asleep. He had been repairing the handle of a dagger which now rested on a side table next to the bed. He was, to Jaskier’s fond delight, snoring slightly.
For a moment, Jaskier’s breath was stolen away by the sheer trust he was being given. Geralt and Yennefer were both deeply asleep, not simply dozing or meditating. Geralt’s dagger was within Jaskier’s reach; if he had wanted to, he could easily have taken it and slit one of their throats before even Geralt’s witcher-fast reflexes could catch him. There were very, very few people to whom Geralt would show such trust, and even fewer who Yennefer would permit to do so. Jaskier did not think the fact that he was one of these people would ever cease to fill him with awe.
Geralt’s position could not be comfortable, though; even a witcher could get a sore neck sleeping like that. Reluctantly, Jaskier resigned himself to waking him up. He shifted to gently shake Geralt’s shoulder.
“Geralt, dear heart,” he whispered, “You can’t sleep like that.”
“Hmm,” Geralt complained, doing his best to hide his face in Jaskier’s shoulder. Jaskier had to take a moment to breathe simply to avoid passing away from sheer love and delight.
“You’ll be the death of me,” he said fondly, poking Geralt gently in the shoulder. “Now lie down properly so we can sleep without ruining our backs.”
Geralt continued to grumble wordlessly but did as he was told, sitting up enough to remove his shirt and let Jaskier put his notebook on the side table and slide under the covers.
“Wha’?” mumbled Yennefer, who had been disturbed by the movement. She shot a sleepy glare at Jaskier, looking rather like a disgruntled kitten. “Why’d you move?”
“To get under the blanket, love. Come join me.”
Yennefer’s disgruntled face was so similar to the one Geralt had made that Jaskier had to stifle a laugh, but she complied. She got under the covers and lay down right up against Jaskier’s side, then glared at him until he started to stroke her hair.
Geralt returned from where he had been folding his shirt and storing his knife. He joined them by flopping down on top of Jaskier, eliciting a grunt from the bard at the sudden weight. They had learned, over the months, that the only reliable way to get Jaskier to sleep without moving about and inevitably elbowing someone in the face was to squash him. Jaskier certainly did not mind — the extra warmth and weight was soothing, and watching Geralt and Yennefer try to decide whose turn it was for bard-blanket duties was an unending source of amusement.
Yennefer shifted so she was holding Geralt’s hand and Geralt hummed happily, burying his face once more in the crook of Jaskier’s neck. Jaskier resumed stroking Yennefer’s hair and she made a sound of approval. If his lovers were cats, Jaskier thought, they would both be purring. The thought made him smile.
“Stop being fond and go to sleep,” Yennefer grumbled, and Jaskier laughed.
“Yes, milady,” he said. She made another approving sound and went still, her breathing already slowing.
Jaskier could feel his own heart slowing as well, the warmth and trust of his two absurdly powerful lovers soothing him better than anything else ever could. On top of him, Geralt was once again beginning to snore. He thought he felt a little bit of drool on his throat. Instead of indignation, all he felt was fondness and awe at the vulnerability. He really was hopelessly in love.
Geralt’s breath was warm and slow against him. Yennefer’s chest rose and fell steadily beside him. It was as though nothing existed outside of this bed, as though the whole of Jaskier’s world had been condensed to this tiny space of calm and contentment and home.
Jaskier was asleep within moments, feeling warm, safe, and impossibly loved.
(valskier, E, modern au, established relationship, possessive behavior, d/s undertones, rough sex, technically i wrecked the wrong bard but jaskier did the wrecking and i think that counts, 1.7k, read on ao3)
Valdo has been grinning like a Cheshire cat since he left the cafe, pumpkin spice latte in hand. A long day of teaching spaced-out undergrads, topped off by grading term papers in his puny office for three hours, demanded a festive pick-me-up. The drink would have been enough to lift his spirits, but it’s the phone number scrawled messily on the side of the cup that really sent his mood skyward. And to think, he almost went into the bakery next door.
The number itself is of little interest to Valdo. The scrawny barista that handed it to him seemed sweet and everything, but Valdo isn’t really on the market these days. He has a boyfriend after all. A boyfriend that he is practically skipping home to with another man’s phone number clutched close to his chest.
That makes him sound a good deal more devious than he actually is. It isn’t Valdo’s fault, it’s not as if he dictates his boyfriend’s curious behavior. He’s just reaping the benefits.
As expected, Jaskier is already sprawled on the couch when Valdo gets home. Valdo almost trips on his shoes in his haste to kick them off in the entryway. His heart is already pounding in his ears. He takes a deep, calming breath that does very little to actually relax him before he steps into the living room.
Jaskier leans back over the couch and gives him an upside-down smile. “There you are.”
“Here I am,” Valdo says, his voice a noticeable note higher than usual. He clears his throat. “Sorry I’m late, I stopped for coffee.”
“And you didn’t get me any?” Jaskier’s smile morphs into an exaggerated pout.
Valdo snorts. “Like you need caffeine after five PM.” He did consider getting something for Jaskier, but now Valdo is glad he didn’t. The cup of whipped cream and sprinkles that Jaskier thinks passes for coffee could very well have distracted him from the task at hand and Valdo has got himself far too excited to be passed over for sixteen ounces of pure sugar.
Jaskier reaches over the couch and makes childish grabby hands at Valdo. “Give me a sip at least,” he says.
Valdo hands over the cup with a casual air that requires so much conscious effort, he wonders briefly if there is steam coming out his ears, and retreats to the bar separating their kitchen and living room. He finds some mail there to flick through but he doesn’t absorb a word of it.
“What’s this?” Jaskier asks.
“Hm?” Valdo peeks innocently over his shoulder to see his boyfriend holding up his latte with a curious expression. The phone number stands out starkly on the paper cup. “Oh, the barista wrote his number on my cup, poor thing. I have to admire the confidence.”
Jaskier chuckles. “‘A’ for effort.”
There’s no noticeable change in Jaskier’s voice or demeanor, but Valdo knows it’s only a matter of time. He’s planted the seeds, and now all he has to do is wait. Sure enough, Valdo hears the groan of the couch springs a heartbeat later.
Valdo worked out this little quirk of Jaskier’s a few months after they started dating. Jaskier has never been the jealous type. It would be a little ironic if he were considering the sheer volume of infidelity he’s been personally involved in. He’s caused at least two divorces and that’s just that Valdo knows of. But that doesn’t mean Jaskier is completely immune to his boyfriend being hit on by other people.
It took Valdo a few times to put two and two together, especially with instances being so far between, but eventually, the peculiar pattern revealed itself. It could be an overly friendly colleague at work or a stranger chatting him up in a bar, or a fellow patron watching him a little too closely at the gym. Or, say, a scrawny barista’s phone number on his coffee cup. But whenever Jaskier finds Valdo on the receiving end of a proposition, Valdo has five minutes at maximum before he’s bent over the nearest flat surface.
He and Jaskier are generally an adventurous couple; fucking in unconventional locations or liking it on the rougher side is nothing new for them. But there’s this look in Jaskier’s eye when Valdo catches a stranger’s attention. There’s a heat, an urgency, a desperate need to claim that drives Jaskier to take Valdo where he stands. And Valdo loves it. He loves feeling cheap and priceless all at once, loves being wanted—needed—so badly that they can’t make it to the bedroom just around the corner.
It’s not like Valdo goes around looking for people to ask him out so he can wave it in Jaskier’s face. He’s not a monster. But he is an attractive man in his prime (who is not afraid to admit it) and every now and then, it just happens. Why shouldn’t they both get a little fun out of it?
Jaskier appears behind Valdo without a word of warning and places his hand ever so lightly on Valdo’s hip. Valdo always runs cool so Jaskier is like a furnace to him, even when they’re barely touching. Soft lips brush the back of Valdo’s neck.
“I missed you today,” Jaskier says lowly, his breath hot against Valdo’s skin.
“I guess not.” Jaskier snakes an arm around Valdo’s waist and pulls Valdo flush against him. Valdo feels the hard line of Jaskier’s cock against his ass and swallows his moan. “Maybe I’ll just have to keep you here with me forever.”
For a moment, there’s nothing but the sound of Valdo’s ragged breathing and their bodies pressed together. Jaskier is torturously still. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.
Inhale…
All at once, the tension snaps.
Valdo whines his next exhale as Jaskier pins him against the bar with a leg shoved between his. The bar is too high to bend him over so Valdo’s fingers can only scrabble uselessly for purchase while Jaskier sucks bruises into the side of his neck and gets to work on the fastenings of his trousers. Valdo’s hips buck without his permission, seeking what little friction Jaskier’s hand offers.
Jaskier grins against Valdo’s reddened skin. “So desperate for me already, darling?” he teases.
Valdo digs deep for a snarky reply, but nothing escapes his parted lips. Everything that isn’t Jaskier’s hand or his cock or the heavy weight of him pinning Valdo to the wall has disappeared into thin air. And why should he deny being desperate anyway? He knows Jaskier is too.
“Don’t clam up, now,” Jaskier says as he shoves Valdo’s pants down to his thighs and starts on his own. “Aren’t you going to sing for me?”
“If you get on with it,” Valdo groans, as though he wasn’t standing here pretending to read the mail not two full minutes ago.
Jaskier laughs and nips at Valdo’s neck hard enough to sting. “That’s more like it.”
The last of their obstructive clothing out of the way, Jaskier grinds his cock between Valdo’s cheeks, length sliding against his hole. A string of high-pitched curses falls from Valdo’s mouth. He wonders for a breathless moment if Jaskier is going to fuck him dry before he hears the wet sound of Jaskier spitting into his hand.
Jaskier pushes into Valdo with two spit-slicked fingers, but he only works him for a handful of seconds before he removes them again. Pleading little whimpers leave Valdo unbidden. He can already feel the stretch and the sting, just this side of too much and it’s turning him into a babbling mess already. With the edge of the bar pressing a hard line against his stomach, Valdo is completely trapped against the glorious heat of Jaskier, entirely at his lover’s mercy. Jaskier presses the head of his cock against Valdo’s hole and buries himself to the root in one quick, hard thrust.
The noise Valdo makes is primitive, almost animal. Jaskier pauses, listening for objections but Valdo has none to give. He clenches around that edge of pain in a wave of pleasure and rides it as far as it will take him. Valdo doesn’t have to wait long for another to sweep him away. A needy whimper from him gives Jaskier his cue to move.
Jaskier fucks him without restraint. It’s hard and fast and blissfully relentless, everything Valdo has been aching for since the moment that hero of a barista handed him his stupid coffee. Every word that isn’t Jaskier and please and yes is driven from Valdo’s head. He’s ruining his nails on the hard surface of the countertop and he’ll probably bruise where the edge is digging into the base of his breastbone, but Valdo doesn’t want to stop for a second, doesn’t even want the space to breathe.
Valdo used to think possessiveness could only ever be a bad thing. He’s had partners that wore it like a weapon, interrogating Valdo about the friends he seemed too close to or throwing fits when he was too slow to respond to a message. People who wanted to be the center of his universe when he was far from the center of theirs. Who wanted to have him under their thumb and give nothing in return.
But Jaskier has never been like that. He doesn’t bat an eye when Valdo makes plans without him or doesn’t call back right away. Jaskier trusts Valdo not to stray and he would never pay him the insult of looming over his shoulder the way his predecessors have. When Jaskier stakes his claim, it’s never about control. It’s showing Valdo how deeply wanted he is, how desired. It’s telling Valdo that he can have whatever he needs right here if he wants it, that he can belong right here if he wants to.
And Valdo has never wanted to belong anywhere the way he wants to belong with Jaskier.
Valdo doesn’t last long under Jaskier’s swift, pounding rhythm. His vision whites out when he comes, dropping his head back against Jaskier’s shoulder with a strangled cry. Jaskier doesn’t slow for a second. He fucks Valdo through his orgasm and into that sweet haze of oversensitivity while he chases his own release. When Valdo finally feels the hot rush of Jaskier’s spend inside him, his own cock is twitching again.
A breathless laugh bubbles up in Valdo’s chest and he lets himself sink back into Jaskier’s waiting embrace, floating in the weightlessness of his afterglow. Jaskier lavishes Valdo’s neck with lazy kisses.
“Fucking gorgeous,” Jaskier murmurs contentedly. “And all mine.”
Valdo grins like an idiot, warmth blooming in his chest. “All yours, love.”
Title: Vi Moxt Miirik (Chapter Eleven - Also on AO3)
Prompt: Whump: Hand Injury
Pairing: Geralt & Jaskier
Rating: T
Warnings: None
Another direct continuation of yesterday's chapter, featuring good sis!Essi!
Summary:
Our favorite lovable Bard is a little more than he let's Geralt know. Follow them through the years as he learns to let down his walls and show Geralt how beautiful he really is.
Chapter Eleven
"Damn it, Jaskier!" Geralt hissed out, fury clear on his face as he wrapped bandages around Jaskier's palm. Jaskier, to his credit, just sat there on the straw pallet of their borrowed room as Geralt tended his wounds. The Lady Drouhard was kind enough to give them some of her old linens to rip into bandages since all of Geralt's had been in his pouch. That was on his hip. That got soaked in seawater.
Because both of them had been soaked head to toe beneath the waves as the tides came in with both of them out on the Dragon Fangs.
Jaskier winced as Geralt turned his hand over to tie off the bandage, letting out the smallest whimper before biting it back. Geralt's eyes flashing up to his face immediately let him know he'd failed at stopping the noise.
"Why is it that I am always shoveling you out of a pile of shit?" Geralt growled out harshly as he stood. Jaskier could feel the tears at the corners of his eyes, but he refused to let them fall.
"...I don't..." He tried to speak up, but Geralt wasn't having it.
"Novigrad, Cintra, Rinde and fucking all of it!" He yelled. It was the loudest Jaskier had ever heard Geralt. Jaskier bit his cheek to keep from crying out, refusing to look up at the furious Witcher.
"That's not fair." Jaskier's argument came out small, voice constricted tightly so as not to shake.
"Jaskier! Geralt!" Essi's bright voice called from the doorway, causing Jaskier to snap his head up. She was standing in the doorway; the one eye he could see was bright and sharp, with a confused and concerned look taking over her features.
"I have to go." Geralt growled out, glaring daggers at Essi until she moved out of the doorway. Jaskier just watched him go, listening to the sudden sharp silence left in his wake.
"Oh, kwiatuszku." Essi cooed, sinking down to an inelegant crouch in front of him. "What happened?"
"I fucked up again, perełko." Jaskier's voice was soft as he slipped into their original language.
"It'll be okay." She soothed in the same tongue, as she sat next to him. She slung an arm around his shoulders to bring him closer to her, completely ignoring the much and the sea water still covering his clothes.
"No, it won't." He argued back.
"I saw the bracelet." Essi said, refusing to argue with him. Jaskier couldn't help but wince. Maybe she wouldn't tell Mother if he looked miserable enough. "What makes you think he won't come back for you?"
"That's the problem!" Jaskier could feel a few tears sliding down his face now, so he hastily scrubbed at them before holding up his bandaged hand. "He's too noble to leave me! I am nothing but a burden to him."
"You are not a burden!" Essi hissed, a calloused hand on his chin tilting his face toward hers. He looked up at her, sorrow written clearly all over his face.
"Experience has taught me otherwise, Essi."
They sat in silence together for the rest of the evening, until Geralt made his return just as the sun was setting. Jaskier heard the hallway creaking and groaning under his weight, even if Geralt's steps were silent. Geralt looked at the pair with a closed off expression; Jaskier did not try to parse it. Essi stood and pressed a kiss to Jaskier's forehead before she slipped out the door, closing it with a soft 'thud' behind her.
Jaskier did not force his company on Geralt any longer; he turned over on the mattress to look out the only window in the room that was so covered in cobwebs he couldn't see the sky. He did not even try to feign sleep, he just lay there, stiff and silent the whole night through.
Come the morning things were no better. Jaskier tried to pretend everything was normal; but not even seeing the mermaid Sh'eenaz walking into Agloval's throne room on two legs, clothed like some kind of sea princess could brighten Jaskier's mood.
It came as no surprise to him when he woke alone a week after they left Bremervoord. That was just the kind of person Geralt was. He made sure that Jaskier had made it safely across the Adalette into a sizable town.
Essi caught up to Jaskier on the edge of town, wandering without a purpose along the bank of the river.
"Come on, kwiatuszku." She said softly, taking him gently by the wrist. "Mother misses you. Let's go home. Just for the winter, yeah?" Jaskier nodded and let her pull him along.
He tugged gently at the back of his mind for Geralt, for just a moment. Just long enough to know he was alive and healthy.
And then he shoved it to the back of his mind. If he ignored it long enough, maybe the feeling would fade. Maybe his heartbreak would, too.
Much of the dialogue in this chapter is based heavily on the short story 'A Little Sacrifice'.
Summary:
Our favorite lovable Bard is a little more than he let's Geralt know. Follow them through the years as he learns to let down his walls and show Geralt how beautiful he really is.
Chapter Ten
When the Witcher and Bard met again, neither of them said a word about Rinde. Jaskier fell into step next to Roach just as easily as he had the first time, not even bothering to ask if he could come along.
They met on the road near Dorian in the middle of summer. Geralt had a fairly decent season up until that point, and Jaskier had obviously done much better sporting four expensive-looking doublets, a new fur-lined cloak, and two pairs of good walking boots.
They traveled east along the Adalatte and straight through Kerack. They ended up at a party in a tavern called the Four Maples, and for once Geralt was just as much at fault for the resulting mess as Jaskier.
Jaskier had a slightly nasty side, that was usually only coaxed out from under his performer's joy by bigots and racists. At the Four Maples there was a group of local hunters known as the Rangers. The Rangers had a reputation for 'hunting' elves and other non-humans, usually in the most gory and violent ways possible. They did not take kindly to a witcher.
Geralt had been used to the treatment, ducking his head low in his back little booth, and if the owner had asked him to leave, he would have without objection. Witchers can't retaliate against humans, not without consequences.
Jaskier, however, had worked for years to change people like these Rangers' opinions, and did not bother hiding his anger from them.
One thing led to another, and the whole tavern might have ended up burning down. Luckily for the witcher and his bard, Jaskier was good friends with the local judge. The judge ruled that the Rangers, Geralt, and Jaskier split the repair costs and subsequent court fees evenly, which left them broke but no longer in jail.
Then the Rangers got released from jail right behind them, and the unlucky pair had to spend the next week riding through the forests trying desperately to outrun the hunters. They couldn't go east, the Rangers were blocking all those roads. They couldn't go north, Calanthe would have them thrown in Cintra's dungeons if they came anywhere near the kingdom.
They were broke, tired, hungry and in the middle of nowhere along the coast. They came across no villages big enough for a tavern for Jaskier to play at, and none had any monster problems for Geralt to earn from either. Jaskier ended up selling off several pieces of his good jewelry for food, and Geralt finally sold off some good-quality knives he'd relieved from bandits. Their small provisions had run out the day before, and even Geralt's considerable hunting skills could not make game appear where none lived.
They finally got a break as they were walking up the road toward Bremervoord.
"Oi! Master!" A voice called out suddenly from a small cart parked off the road, and both Geralt and Jaskier looked up at the call, bewildered. "Oh! It is you, Master Bard!" At a look from the bard, Geralt dismounted Roach gracefully and led her a little closer to the cart, where a heavyset man was climbing down.
"Indeed, good sir, I am the Master Bard Jaskier." Jaskier said with a small bow and a smile as the man approached them. "This is my companion, the witcher Geralt of Rivia. It seems you have the better of me, though." He introduced Geralt flawlessly, and the man nervously nodded his head in the Witcher's direction before shifting all his attention back to the bard.
"Ah, yes. I am Teleri Drouhard, spice merchant and leader of the local guild." He gave a little bow back before glancing between the pair. "I had heard rumors you were in the area, and I am very glad indeed I caught you before you passed through." Geralt barely contained a grimace at that reminder of their situation.
"What may I do for, Sir Drouhard, that you have sought me out?"
"Well, you see, my son is to be wed this night. My wife heard you perform last winter at the de Stael Midinváerne banquet and became a fan. When some of the guests told her they spotted you along the road, she demanded I come out to find and hire you. We already have a bard, of course, but she will not be satisfied unless you perform as well, I'm afraid."
"I may be a great bard, but even performers have standards, my good sir." Jaskier said after a moment's consideration. "You have hired another troubadour already and I will not take the money you already promised them." Jaskier turned away from the man to rifle through Roach's saddlebags. Geralt would have objected if he hadn't seen Jaskier use this tactic before.
"Jaskier." Geralt grumbled softly, but the bard just winked at him, out of sight of the merchant. Of course, just because he'd seen it before didn't mean that Geralt would tolerate it. "Beggars can't be choosers. We need that money." Jaskier turned to face the witcher with a scoff.
"Beggars can't- Why you…!" Jaskier trailed off, affronted and making disagreeable noises. "That's the pot calling the kettle black! What about you, mighty Witcher? You who turned down contracts for hirrikkas because they are endangered? Let the mecopterans alone because their bones don't cure impotence? Who doesn't hunt dragons because your Witcher code prevents it? I, too, have a code!"
"Come on, Jaskier." Geralt said with a little eye roll. He was too used to his bard's antics by now, and all too easily played along. "For me? I'll take whatever contract I'm offered next."
"Please, Master Jaskier, my wife will be inconsolable if you do not play tonight." The merchant stepped in to beg. "The other bard will still get her pay, I swear. I'll offer you the same, and a room for you and your companion for the night." Jaskier hummed and let his fingers tap a beat on the saddlebags, letting the man sweat for a moment.
"Alright, my good sir. You drive a hard bargain but I will accept your offer for my services." The man visibly relaxed at hearing those words, and Geralt just rolled his eyes at his bard. Not like Jaskier would have refused either way; they needed the coin too badly and an actual room to stay in would be a great luxury.
"Please, follow me to my house. You both may use it to make ready, and both of you are welcome to the feast tonight."
"And who am I to be performing beside tonight, if I may be so bold?" Jaskier asked as the man clambered back up into his cart.
"Ah, a feisty young lass by the name Essi Daven."
Jaskier couldn't believe their luck! Essi Daven, his dearest sister, was in a small backwater like Bremervoord.
Drouhard was a cheerful enough fellow, even if he did continually get Geralt's name wrong, and didn't even blink twice about putting a Witcher up for the next several nights. It was nice after that... disagreement with the Rangers to see that his songs had reached all the way to the Coast.
Jaskier got to spend the morning getting him and Geralt both presentable; Geralt got to soak in a tub that he could actually fit all the way down in for hours. Jaskier loved when he got to pamper his Witcher. He shaved them both and washed Geralt's hair until it was pure moonlight in his hands, pulling it up into a neat tail that accented his face quite well.
Geralt only had one moderately fancy outfit to wear, and it was one that Jaskier had tailor made several years ago for him. Jaskier loved it when Geralt got a chance to wear it, though it was too informal for the banquet in Cintra. More's the pity; he hated the doublet he'd wrangled up at the last minute for that.
No, this was a simple vest, embroidered with buttercups, and dyed black by Geralt a year after he'd gotten it. He wore it over a soft gray undershirt, and it went well with his leather pants and study boots. He smiled as he finished fussing with the vest and Geralt cast a glance at himself in the mirror. Geralt never said a word about him very publicly claiming the Witcher and Jaskier was damn sure not going to bring it up.
The wedding feast was in a warehouse, and Jaskier was unfortunately separated from his Witcher by Drouhard, who insisted Jaskier be introduced to the whole crowd, and rather poorly at that. At least he waited until Essi was done singing, he had to give the merchant that. With an elegant bow to the audience, Drouhard called for the banquet to begin.
Jaskier tried to catch Essi as she was leaving the stage, but a surge of pretty maidens got between them. Jaskier watched as she tossed a glance back at him, mischief sparkling in the one eye not hidden by her hair. Oh, cock. This wasn't going to end well for him, would it?
She was already making a beeline for Geralt, and blessed Melitele how did she find him so fast? That... that needed his attention. Immediately.
"Ladies, ladies, I must beg your pardons." He cried out, desperate. "I must confer with my fellow bard on our music for this lovely wedding banquet!"
He managed to give them the slip, bringing his lute around into his hands to protect it a measure more. He arrived just in time to see Geralt standing awkwardly next to Essi, who was watching him in fascination.
"Oh good, you found him." He called out, catching both their attention. "Geralt, be nice to Essi." He said seriously, waggling a finger in the Witcher's face. "She's like a sister to me."
"He's been a perfect gentleman so far." Essi cut in with a smile. "He even kissed my hand like a proper court lady."
"Oh?" Jaskier asked, an eyebrow raising in surprise as he looked over at his Witcher, who was steadfastly looking away. "I think some of my courtly graces must be rubbing off."
"Courtly graces or brothel etiquette?" Essi asked lightly, Jaskier resisting the temptation to stick out his tongue at her. Geralt let out a small chuff of laughter that would have barely been more than a breath to someone else, but Jaskier caught it immediately.
"Dearest Sister, I believe you are a miracle worker. You made my witcher laugh."
"That was a laugh? Seemed more like a dying man's breath, if you ask me."
"Geralt is a very reserved man." Jaskier said with a smile, enjoying the grumbling of his Witcher. "Now, we should get down to our serious business."
"Oh? And what serious business do we have, Jaskier?" Essi asked, lightly pulling the one stubborn lock of hair back out from over her eye.
"Who will play first, of course, and what ballads should we play?"
"I've already had a go, why don't you start?"
"Agreed." Jaskier said with a smile as he turned to take in the crowd.
"Oh, looks like the crowd's just gotten a bit more stately." Essi exclaimed as a rather pompous-looking young man entered. Jaskier watched as several rows of people bowed deeply to the man, who gave a small nod, then stepped out of the way toward the other side of the warehouse. "Though he's a bit flighty on his debts. Likes to hire people, but hates to pay for good honest work."
"Some kind of local noble?" Geralt muttered and Jaskier shrugged back.
"You haven't heard yet?" Essi exclaimed in surprise as the three watched Drouhard hurry over to the noble, each man talking swiftly to the other.
"We hadn't even made it into town proper before Drouhard accosted us, Essi." Jaskier explained, and Essi just grinned mischievously.
"That's the Most Noble Duke of Agloval. There's been talk all over the harbor that he apparently has a mermaid problem."
"Mermaids? This close to a town?" Jaskier asked, somewhat surprised.
"Yup." Essi said, emphasizing her word by popping the 'p'.
"Master Jaskier!" A woman's shrill voice interrupted the conversation as the Lady Drouhard approached. It took Jaskier a moment to recognize the Lady Drouhard before he hid his frank unenthusiasm behind his performer's mask.
"My Lady Drouhard, what a pleasant surprise!" Jaskier stepped forward, leading the woman a ways away from their little group. Oh well. He'd just have to corner Geralt and Essi again in a little while and find out exactly what these mermaid problems looked like. It wasn't like mermaids caused a ton of problems for people, other than mean-spirited tricks when they felt like they'd been cheated.
Title: Vi Moxt Miirik (Chapter Nine - Also on AO3)
Prompt: Wuv: Bundled Up
Pairing: Geralt/Jaskier
Rating: T
Warnings: None
This started out as yesterday's prompt but I decided to do something different for that one, but it set the stage perfectly for this one.
Summary:
Our favorite lovable Bard is a little more than he let's Geralt know. Follow them through the years as he learns to let down his walls and show Geralt how beautiful he really is.
Chapter Nine
It took a while for Geralt to relax in Jaskier's house. Jaskier knew it would. Between him being grumpy over Jaskier not letting him help around the house until he healed fully and getting used to the flow of Oxenfurt, Geralt was very grumpy those first couple of weeks. But, Jaskier persevered.
To make it easier on his Witcher, Jaskier made sure to spend at least half an hour before bed composing. It was born out of necessity. Geralt thrived on schedules, on the familiar routines they had fallen into out on the Path. Jaskier loved to compose. It wasn't a hardship.
Jaskier learned a long time ago that Geralt secretly loved his music, even though the man probably thought he'd drop dead if he gave the bard a compliment. Geralt was a man of action, as much as Jaskier was a man of words. The spare lute strings that magically replaced themselves when he traveled with his Witcher spoke volumes enough to Jaskier.
The small smiles Geralt got while Jaskier played softly, working on the same piece over and over again, did as well. There was a certain softness to his face, as he sunk into meditation by the fire or repaired his armor or cared for his blades while Jaskier composed that the bard never saw at any other time.
The long winter nights at Oxenfurt were perfect for a little drinking and reminiscing. As the nights dragged on, and Geralt got more comfortable, Jaskier found himself composing less and less, and just talking with his Witcher more and more.
As they neared Midinváerne, Geralt finally let down all the walls he'd been keeping up.
It might have helped that Jaskier was given a whole cask of really really good elven wine.
In all the time they'd spent together thus far, however, Jaskier had never seen Geralt drunk.
Geralt drank, all the time, actually, as well as buying up tons of the cheapest nastiest rot-gut vodka he could find for his potions. Jaskier had seen Geralt buy a case of booze at a copper a bottle in some backwater hole once; Jaskier had gotten a hangover from just the fumes on those bottles.
Geralt just never let himself get completely inebriated. He'd told Jaskier early on into their travels that Witcher's needed to always appear to be fully in control of themselves around humans. A drunk Witcher was easy prey to a reasonably angry layman.
" 'm not drunk..." Geralt giggled at Jaskier, burrowing his face into Jaskier's stomach. Jaskier smiled down at his Witcher and pulled the blankets around them tighter, wiggling just enough to get into a somewhat more comfortable position against his headboard even as Geralt groaned a protest at his movement. "No leavin'..." He mumbled, wrapping his arms around Jaskier's waist tightly.
"I'm not going anywhere, Geralt." Jaskier soothed, running a soothing hand over the back of Geralt's head.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
My second entry for the fantastic What about the bard? event (@whataboutthebard) on Tumblr. As usual, my beta reader was the amazing @startswitheff.
(When I read today’s #wreck the bard prompt, I realized that the number of Geraskier closet sex fics is disturbingly low and I thought it must be fixed. :) I hope you’ll enjoy it!)
Notes: Based on THIS FANART by @scalesnart which is just adorable. Only two more prompts and I'll be done the ones I wanted to do. Read it on AO3 here. <3
MATCHING CROWNS
By Senashenta
Traveling with Geralt and Roach was interesting. Much more interesting than life with the herd had been. Life with the herd had been boring and tedious, that’s why Jaskier had left in the first place. Of course, he hadn’t quite realized the dangers of the outside world at the time he was packing his rucksack and lute up to go adventuring—which brought him back around to Geralt, who had saved him from the untimely fate of being a wyvern’s dinner and then all but invited him along on the Path to join him. Geralt liked to stress the “all but” portion of that particular sentence. Jaskier ignored him when he groused about it because he knew the Witcher actually rather liked having him there.
Besides, Roach was much better behaved when Jaskier was around, not nearly as snippy and bitey and grumbly in general. She liked Jaskier, just like every horse liked Jaskier—because Jaskier was, not to put too fine a point on it, a centaur. So yes, Roach enjoyed his company and was easier to work with when he was there, a point that he made to Geralt on a regular basis, particularly when Geraltwas being grumpy, which was probably more often than strictly necessary. Really, it was like the man made a point of being disagreeable a certain percentage of every single day.
But when he got like that, stubborn, obstinate, all Jaskier had to do was lay his ears back and bat his eyes and Geralt caved every single time. It was like magic.
Now, that’s not to say that travelling with a centaur didn’t provide its’ challenges: towns and cities were trouble, to say the least, until Jaskier resigned himself to nights in the stables with Roach because there just really wasn’t anywhere else he could stay. It wasn’t so bad, anyway, he could bed down in the hay, which was perfectly comfortable and not unlike the grass back home, and Geralt brought him oatmeal with honey for breakfast in the mornings (if he shared with Roach no one needed to know.)
Settlements were fascinating to Jaskier. He could look and watch and see humans to his heart’s content, where before he’d only had stories to go by. At the same time, he found himself constantly stared at, pointed at by children—and sometimes even adults—and knew the only reason no one approached him or did anything untoward was because he was travelling with a Witcher.
Jaskier was most comfortable when they were on the road between towns, trotting along beside Roach with Geralt on her back, oftentimes with his lute out, singing and strumming away. It was nice, pleasant and relaxing, even when there was no talking between them. It was easy. It made Jaskier feel… well. It just made him feel. Like everything was right in the world, so long as he was with Geralt.
He pushed those feelings down deep inside, though, afraid of what might happen if he actually entertained them.
Geralt was serious and all business, but sometimes, just occasionally, he would allow Jaskier to do something silly. Something he would normally consider a waste of time. He never said anything about it, never admitted he was doing it, but Jaskier appreciated the little gestures of kindness nonetheless.
Today, for instance, he had let Jaskier lead them off the road, down a narrow path and into a beautiful little clearing in the forest. The sunlight filtered through the trees overhead, dappling everything within, and Geralt quietly took Roach’s saddle and tack off, leaving her to roam the tiny oasis unencumbered. Then he took a seat on a rock near the entrance to the clearing, watching his horse and, from the corner of his eye, Jaskier.
The centaur explored the clearing for a few minutes alongside Roach before finding a patch of buttercups and clover and lowering himself down in the middle of it. Humming to himself, he began picking the flowers and weaving them together—until he had a flower crown, which he happily placed on his own head before surreptitiously glancing toward Geralt and starting on another.
When the second flower crown was finished he heaved himself to his feet and crossed over to where Geralt was sitting, then lowered himself down to the forest floor again. “Here,” He held the crown out, “we’ll match!”
He did not imagine the flush of red across Geralt’s face, though the Witcher covered it up quickly, glancing to the side. He pursed his lips, frowning, but nodded slightly—and Jaskier perked up, smiling widely as he delicately placed the crown on Geralt’s head, then clapped his hands together, delighted.
Geralt was silent, obviously embarrassed. After a moment Jaskier’s smile faded slightly and he tilted his head, then leaned forward and kissed the Witcher square on the lips. It was worth it for the startled squawk Geralt let out, and Jaskier laughed brightly, grinning, and looked off across the clearing, “do you think Roach needs a crown, too?”
Now blushing clear as day, Geralt crossed his arms and looked down. “Hmm.” He responded succinctly.
