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1.
Pieces of his training come to him sometimes when he's under duress, survival lessons etched into him as deeply as the mutations that made him what he is.
At Kaer Morhen, their instruction covered how to care for horses. Not out of sentiment, purely as a practical measure: a witcher with a mount can travel farther, faster, than one on foot.
A horse can carry supplies, carcasses (or bits of them), can carry the witcher himself when he's too ill or injured, but still needs to move.
"Come on, Geralt, keep moving, just a bit further, that's a good witcher."
He snorts -- or, tries to, his breath barely puffing in the frigid air. With the ice drake dead, the gale has vanished, but it's still bitterly cold. The grip around his waist tightens, as does the grip on his arm, the one that's been slung over deceptively broad shoulders.
"So you are still with me. Well, that means you can bring yourself to move your feet, doesn't it, as I have just now learned that you being an enormous slab of chiseled muscle wrapped in impressively foreboding armor means that you are extremely fucking heavy and wouldn't it be nice if you helped."
It's a fair point, he thinks muzzily, and does his best with his uncooperative limbs.
Before long -- or possibly not, he's not clear on the passage of time -- there's light, and stone underfoot instead of snow. "Good, all right, let's sit you down," is panted near his ear, and it's more of a coordinated fall, but he's down.
Then there are hands -- hands he knows, clever, talented hands -- stripping off his icy armor, and when one of them brushes his cheek while pulling off his cuirass, the warmth makes him suck in a breath. "Gods, Geralt, you're freezing," he hears, and two palms are cradling his jaw; every other part of his body feels that much colder. He pries his eyes open to see Jaskier's face, very close, mouth set, blue, blue eyes intent. "Geralt. You're with me?"
Geralt blinks, and hums, and something eases in Jaskier's face. "Good, yeah," he breathes. "Stay right here, okay? I'll be right back," and he leaves, taking all that heat away with him.
Geralt drifts a little, until there's the sharp, echoing clop of hooves on a stone floor -- no, cave floor, the cave they'd found earlier, he remembers now; the light's coming from their meager fire. "Down, Roach," he hears, and soon, there's a heavy, solid weight behind him. Hands press at his shoulders, and he leans back against his horse's flank, warm through his cotton shirt.
He opens his eyes again, and Jaskier's kneeling in front of him. He gives Geralt a quick smile, and smoothes his fingers down Geralt's sleeves, hissing when he reaches the bare skin of his wrists. "I think drastic measures may be called for," he says, his mouth giving a nervous little twitch, and he's gone and back again, this time with the blankets from their bedrolls.
"You're probably going to think me terribly forward," Jaskier says archly, and then tucks himself against Geralt's chest, pulling Geralt's arm around himself and drawing the blankets over the both of them. In the warm hollow under the covers, he chafes Geralt's hands between his own, his hair brushing softly against Geralt's cheek and neck.
He's aware enough to wish that Jaskier were being forward, instead of simply keeping Geralt from freezing to death. He'd be happy to sit here and enjoy this, pretending Jaskier had chosen to cuddle against him, chosen to give Geralt leave to nose gently into his hair and brush his lips across the top of his head. But even as he starts to shiver, exhaustion is dragging him down, away from that wistful notion; the comfort of being pressed safely between horse and bard is loosening his hold on consciousness.
Witchers were never supposed to bond with the creatures that walked the Path with them. Sentimentality is weakness, and weakness is death.
But Geralt closes his eyes, and lets himself be weak.
2.
Jaskier's plucking away at a new composition. There's a thin strip of skin showing between the curling ends of his hair and the collar of his shirt, and when he bends his head to look down at his notes, he bares the two small moles at the nape of his neck.
Geralt is indescribably fond of those moles.
Jaskier has his own armor, arguably better at turning a blade than Geralt's is, for the easiest knife to avoid is the one that's never drawn. His, though, is made not of leather, but of vibrant colors and delicate lace, charm and sweetness and humor, and he dons it as religiously as Geralt does his own, because the world is an unpredictable place.
Jaskier tends to keep his head high, chin up -- the better to project, presumably, but also because he won't be cowed (even when he should, by all sane measures). It took a while for Geralt to realize that was just part of the palisade around the bard.
His head bent, his neck vulnerable, exposed, is the kind of thing Geralt only tends to see when they're alone, and he treasures that evidence of Jaskier's trust, that he feels safe showing Geralt the unguarded parts of himself.
If he were to grasp Jaskier's shoulder, rub a thumb across those moles, would he relax into it? Would he give the little sigh he gives when he flops onto a comfortable bed?
If Geralt nosed into his hair, pressed a kiss to his nape, would his breath catch? Would he lean into Geralt, like he does when he's warm and pleased and in his cups?
If Geralt decided to nip him there, set teeth and tongue to Jaskier's skin, would he groan, and flush, and turn to give Geralt his throat, too?
"What are you smiling at?" Jaskier asks, looking back over his shoulder, his face light, as if he's prepared to join in the joke.
"I'm not," Geralt says, and Jaskier scoffs, because they both know Geralt can be a bald-faced liar.
"What are you thinking about, then?" he asks, more softly, and Geralt could tell him, he could. He could.
He doesn't.
"Armor," he says, and hides behind his own.
3.
If anyone were to ask, Geralt is watching out for the bard.
Even if -- particularly if -- it's the bard himself who asks.
Geralt can't remember whether Jaskier really entreated him for guard duty this evening or not. Most of the time, Jaskier will either beg a favor or claim a favor owed, under the most spurious of pretexts, and Geralt will acquiesce with ill grace. The rest of the time, it will simply seem safer to be on hand, a deterrent to any trouble looking to find Jaskier.
In any case, the result is the same -- watching out for the bard gives Geralt an excuse to watch the bard.
Usually from a dark corner, or the shadow of a pillar, somewhere to darken the avidness with which he watches Jaskier play into mere alertness. It's clear, when Jaskier's in front of a crowd, that he was born to do this; the flush on his skin, the shine to his eyes, the brightness of his grin all speak to a man in his element.
And when he bounds over to Geralt afterward, smelling of joy and pride and accomplishment, turning that gleam and glee on Geralt alone, Geralt will allow him to steal his beer, and will watch his throat work, will let his eyes follow the path of a bead of sweat trickling down his temple, veering aside to darken his hair.
Though not, it seems, tonight.
Jaskier has paused in putting away his lute to speak to a dark-haired young woman. From where he stands at the end of the bar, Geralt can only see the back of her head, and the tavern noise obscures their words; Jaskier nods, giving her an encouraging smile, taking her hands and gripping them, before she ducks her head and vanishes into the crowd.
Geralt frowns, and downs the rest of his beer himself.
Jaskier, when he makes his way to Geralt, is so preoccupied that he doesn't notice Geralt's stein is empty until it's at his lips; he has the nerve to give Geralt a dirty look, and signals the bartender for another.
Then he unrolls a scrap of paper tucked in his hand, and Geralt feels no shame in reading over his shoulder:
old stables
20 minutes
"Geralt --" he begins, his eyes wide, and Geralt glares at him.
"No."
"You don't even know what I was going to say, you're just being difficult." He flicks the back of Geralt's hand with his forefinger, but that tiny sting is dwarfed by a far deeper one.
"You were going to ask for an escort through town to meet that girl," he rasps, and has the grim pleasure of watching Jaskier blink in surprise -- his only pleasure this night, it would seem. "No."
"Please," Jaskier says, and places a hand over Geralt's on the bartop -- warm, always so warm when he's been playing. "Please, Geralt, it's serious."
Jaskier wheedles and charms and coaxes. A simple plea is not the weapon he tends to employ. And Geralt, damn his eyes, yields to it.
"I'm bringing a sword," he growls, his hand twitching.
"Good, yeah, good," Jaskier says, his fingers tightening over Geralt's, and he can't even enjoy the smile on Jaskier's face.
-----
It's one of the rougher towns they've been through; they pass a number of alleyways and overhangs whose shadows are not as empty as they might be, but no one accosts them. Geralt's jaw is set, his movements slow and deliberate; Jaskier once described him in a similar mood as having a "palpable air of menace," and he'll admit, at least in the privacy of his own head, that he does, occasionally, lean into the fearsome reputation of witchers in order to avoid trouble.
Not that it's ever aided him when the trouble comes in the shape of a certain bard who keeps sneaking past all his defenses.
They reach the stables, clearly run down and no longer in service, and Geralt stays back as Jaskier reaches the doorway. "Come on, Geralt," Jaskier says, his brow furrowed, and Geralt clenches his hand so hard the leather of his glove creaks.
He is not standing around to listen to Jaskier fucking that girl.
"Please," Jaskier says again, softly, and it slips in like a knife between his ribs.
He'll check to make sure that Jaskier is not about to be robbed or killed. That's all.
But the stables have the musty, hollow smell of a building long-abandoned, except by opportunistic birds and rodents. The girl steps out from a stall, alone, and looks up at Geralt with a pale face, then at Jaskier.
"I told you I'd bring him," Jaskier says, and Geralt has a flash of anger-betrayal-what-the-fuck before Jaskier steps back to his side, and sets his hand on Geralt's shoulder. "Now, tell him what you told me, about needing a witcher," he says, and just that quickly, Geralt feels something settle back into place inside him.
Turns out the girl works for a country school outside of town that's being terrorized by barghests; the headmaster is a superstitious man, who blames the beasts on the students' wickedness. "If he knew I spoke to a witcher, I'd be let go," she tells Geralt. "I can't lose my position. I have a sister to care for."
The girl insists on paying -- the workers had taken up a collection -- so Geralt names a price far lower than he should have for the job.
Back at the inn, he's gathering his blades when Jaskier stops him for a moment, laying a gentle hand on his forearm.
"Thank you, Geralt," he says plainly, eyes clear and somber.
He will learn, one of these days, to stop underestimating the bard. Jaskier, without effort, cuts him to the quick.
4.
"I wonder what people would think, if they knew that witchers regularly went around picking flowers?"
Geralt scowls across the campsite at Jaskier, without any real irritation in it, because Jaskier's voice betrays that he's in a playful mood, and Geralt knows the role he's been assigned. The bard is sprawled against a fallen log, doublet folded behind his head, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He's been not playing his lute, exactly, just plucking a single string at a time, then silencing it with the pad of his thumb.
"Nothing good," Geralt says, and looks back down at the celandine petals he's mashing into paste.
"Afraid that no one will want to hire a monster hunter with a soft spot for floral arrangements?"
"More likely they'd just decide to torch the fields."
Jaskier's lute gives a discordant twang. He looks over to see Jaskier's face twisted in a frown, and feels a twinge himself; it's nothing but the truth, but sometimes the truth seems to genuinely upset Jaskier.
It's never a pleasant feeling to know that he's been the cause of Jaskier's unhappiness. In an attempt to divert the both of them, he holds out the rough mortar and pestle he's been using. "If you're done torturing that thing, you might make yourself useful."
Jaskier blinks, and then gives him a filthy grin. "Geralt, are you concerned about me abusing my instrument?"
Sighing, Geralt brings the mortar back into his own lap, but Jaskier scrambles upright, and then his hand is closing around Geralt's before he can get back to work. "You cannot feed me a straight line like that, Geralt, you know I can't resist," he says genially, and settles in next to him. "Now, what am I doing?"
Geralt shows him how to grind the petals, then watches as Jaskier starts. He's quickly distracted, though; Jaskier's hands are sure and capable, as always, but with his sleeves rolled up, Geralt gets a tantalizing view of his leanly muscled forearms. Jaskier's terrible joke must have stuck in his brain, because he has a flash of imagining those those muscles flexing, hands fisting themselves into a set of bedsheets as --
Fuck. He shakes his head sharply, eyes squeezed shut. When he opens them, Jaskier is looking over at him, concern creasing his brow. "Are you all right?"
He looks back at Jaskier for a moment, and does not say, fantasizing about bedding you, so, close enough. Instead, he turns away, reaching into his bag to pull out four small bottles he'd prepared earlier.
"What… is that?" Jaskier asks, with what Geralt finds to be an appropriate amount of caution.
"Dwarven spirits and drowner brain," he says, deadpan, and enjoys Jaskier's theatrical shudder more than he should.
He divides the celandine mash into equal parts and adds some to each bottle, shaking them after he's recorked them. Jaskier leans in to look down at the resulting potions, resting his shoulder against Geralt's. "You're really going to drink those," he says, and it's not a question, so Geralt doesn't answer.
"There's something almost poetic about that," Jaskier says, contemplation in his voice. "Mixing a flower and a monster to make something magical."
His shoulder is warm against Geralt's. "Not the first bad match made by alcohol," Geralt rumbles, and Jaskier's laughter bubbles through him like a deceptively potent spirit.
5.
To the untrained eye, Jaskier gives the impression of an ornamental bird, all bright colors and short attention span and a taste for the finer things in life, with a gift for music so innate that he captivates an audience without any effort. But Geralt has shared too many rooms and roads and campfires with him, has seen the work he puts in, weeks of scribbling and rewriting song lyrics, daily sessions devoted to vocal range and dexterity.
"Fingering practice, Geralt," he's been told countless times, with the very same exaggerated leer, and every time Geralt turns away, hiding his smile behind an audible huff.
Jaskier used to practice when they'd stopped for the evening, but one morning he'd woken while Geralt was doing sword drills; he'd finished a spin to see Jaskier staring at him from under a tousled fall of hair, and from the very next morning on, he'd had a practice partner.
He's grown used to it, having accompaniment to his own training; when they're separated, his morning routine now feels out of balance, incomplete.
This morning, Geralt is practicing Signs: calling the energy forth, readying it, and letting it dissipate largely unused. Safer than wearing himself down, when he never knows what the day might hold, whether he'll need the magic later.
He's not above ruffling Jaskier's hair with the occasional passing Aard, though.
Jaskier almost always faces him while Geralt trains; it's oddly intimate, to look up and lock eyes with him while they both practice their trades. Jaskier tends to stop what he's doing and watch when Geralt works his way through the Signs, and Geralt, in turn, finds himself making an extra effort to ensure his form is sharp and correct.
He calls up Axii, the magic dancing over his fingers, and Jaskier shifts, drawing Geralt's attention.
"I don't think I've actually seen you use that one," Jaskier says, looking up from where he's sitting on his bedroll.
"I don't use it often," Geralt admits, letting the magic seep away.
"Why? What's it do?"
Geralt pauses, searching for words. "It… affects the mind, briefly. Makes the recipient… pliant."
"Does it hurt?"
"No." He shakes his head with a humorless smile. "Though people tend to react badly if they realize what you've done."
"Like inciting them to the heights of emotion with your masterful songcrafting. You haven't lived until you've had a grown man threaten you with an adze for making him cry," Jaskier says airily.
Geralt can never tell, when Jaskier says things like that, whether he's being entirely serious, but he's fucking sure that shit doesn't fly while he's around.
Jaskier gestures at Geralt's empty hand. "Can you show me what that does? Cast it on me, perhaps?"
It's an innocent question, but Geralt feels as if he's been plunged into an icy lake. "No," he snarls, as phantom cold flashes over his skin, and he turns away, fighting the urge to clamp an arm over his abruptly hollow stomach.
It's been a long time -- decades, maybe -- since he felt that kind of horror. The idea of manipulating Jaskier's mind, even momentarily, is abhorrent.
"Whoa, hey, I'm sorry, Geralt," Jaskier says, suddenly in front of him, hands out as if trying to calm an agitated animal. "That was -- a terrible idea, clearly, forget I ever mentioned it."
He meets Jaskier's gaze, and whatever Jaskier sees in Geralt makes his own eyes go wide. "I'm sorry," Jaskier says softly, and reaches out carefully, places a hand over Geralt's clenched fist. "I really should learn to think before I speak, as I've been told many, many… many times."
Geralt closes his eyes, and unclenches his hand, lets his fingers tangle roughly with Jaskier's.
He's never known anyone like Jaskier, who somehow manages to dredge up feelings he'd forgotten could be a part of him. Things he was remade not to feel.
And things he never expected to take root in such barren soil, like the warmth in his chest as he clasps Jaskier's hand, soothing and aching at the same time.
He cannot fathom ever wanting to change any part of Jaskier, even for a moment.
"It's fine," Geralt rasps out, and it is. Even if it feels like he's being taken apart, Jaskier remaking him all over again with his own gentle sorcery.
+1.
Geralt's been alone for nearly three months. Jaskier's making the rounds of the summer festival circuit, and the separation this time has been particularly difficult. He feels the bard's absence most keenly in the quiet times, and it's hard to fathom, now, that he ever considered silence to be a blessing.
But Geralt is not the same as he was when he met Jaskier. It's worse to be parted from him now, true, but when he is not…
… When he is not, the days have color that he'd thought long gone from the world.
He's on the outskirts of town when he hears a cart approaching from behind him, and he guides Roach to the shoulder of the road. Well before he's actually overtaken, he hears a familiar nattering from the cart bed, and has time to don a neutral expression before it passes him.
"Jaskier," he says casually, almost bored, as the cart slowly passes.
"Geralt!"
The bard's facing backwards, feet dangling off the end of the cart, and so Geralt gets to see all the expressions that pass over his face -- surprise, delight, something that might even be fondness, something else that he can't quite put a name to.
Jaskier scoops up his belongings and drops himself off the cart into the middle of the road, spinning to wave at two small staring children and an indifferent pig. "Again, my gratitude knows no bounds, kind sir!" he calls, and the carter lifts a hand without looking back.
"Making friends?" Geralt asks, and Jaskier turns back to walk alongside Roach.
"Only everywhere I go," he says, grinning. He pats Geralt's knee and says, "But fear not, dear witcher, your place in my affections is unassailable."
Geralt gives a neutral hum -- technically, Jaskier didn't specify what place that was -- but Jaskier eyes him as if he'd heard the thought.
"Fishing for compliments is beneath you, Geralt," he says loftily.
It's a sharp not-quite-pain, like regaining the use of a limb that's been asleep. He'd missed this, and now it's nearly overwhelming to have it back. "Says the man who once complained for three days about losing a 'best-dressed bard' competition."
"The jury was rigged." Jaskier rejoins immediately, with a dismissive sniff and not a hint of irony, and Geralt can no longer hide his smile.
-----
Jaskier spends the entirety of dinner regaling Geralt with tales from his summer. Geralt suspects he spends the entirety of dinner looking besotted, but Jaskier seems not to notice, and no one else draws close enough to see it.
When they return to their shared room, Jaskier's mood shifts -- and his choice of topics, as well, becoming truly inane, his stream of consciousness so tenuous that Geralt can hardly follow it. He's sitting on the bed, fidgeting with the strap on his bag and only fleetingly meeting Geralt's eye, until Geralt can stand it no longer and steps up to loom over him.
"Geralt." He's acknowledged with another there-and-gone-again look.
"Out with it, bard," he rumbles, and draws a brief smile from Jaskier, as if the epithet were an endearment.
(It is, these days, but he doesn't think Jaskier has picked up on that.)
Jaskier sighs, and rubs the back of his neck, looking up at Geralt through the fringe of his hair. "That obvious?" he asks, and Geralt tilts his head at him. "Right, yes. Um… I picked up something on my travels? Not entirely sure how you're going to react, and we've had such a nice night and I don't want to ruin it, but it's going to eat at me until I give it to you, clearly, so I might as well just get it over with, probably."
"Or you could talk me to death instead," Geralt says, without any ire in it, and Jaskier flashes him a look that's half rueful and half mutinous.
"You've always been a rip-the-bandage-off type, haven't you," Jaskier mutters, and he opens his bag to pull out a small parcel, wrapped in cloth. He hands it up to Geralt, and the look in his eyes is one Geralt can't decipher.
Inside the cloth is a thin leatherbound book, with a round depression on the cover. Scratch marks seem to indicate that something was embedded there at one time and subsequently pried out.
"I found this buried in the library at Oxenfurt," Jaskier says softly, and Geralt glances down at his solemn face before carefully opening the cover.
On the first page is inked an image, a circle enclosing the snarling head of a wolf.
He looks back at Jaskier for a moment. Jaskier's gaze is steady and steadying.
The text is handwritten, broken up by more illustrations: plants, creatures. His eye catches on snatches of text, basic lessons learned a long lifetime ago. Flipping back to the first page, he stares at the wolf, a twin to the medallion on his chest.
"This was looted from Kaer Morhen," he says, his voice thick in his throat.
There's a warm pressure on his thigh, just above his knee, the size of Jaskier's palm.
"I suspected as much," Jaskier says, and his voice is husky as well. "I didn't read it." His hand tightens. "Once I realized what it was, I stopped looking," he says, and Geralt meets his eyes again. "It felt… too personal."
Geralt turns away, blows out a harsh breath, the taste of old grief in his throat. He wraps the book back in the cloth, and tries to hand it back to Jaskier, but Jaskier doesn't take it.
"Oh, no no no, that's not going back to Oxenfurt," he says, standing up, a defiant set to his jaw. "I stole it fair and square."
"Why?" Geralt asks. What was done can never be undone. Too much has been lost, in lives and knowledge both. There are no secrets in this book that will bring either back.
"Why?" Jaskier says hotly, stepping into his space. "Because someone stole it from you, from the witchers. It wasn't theirs to take, and it's not theirs to keep. It's yours." He wraps a hand around Geralt's, the one holding the book. "I know you, Geralt. I know you don't have a lot that's… yours," he says, and shakes Geralt's hand with his own, firmly but gently. "This belongs with you."
Jaskier's eyes are a burning blue, his jaw set, nostrils flaring. His hand on Geralt's is trembling.
And something inside Geralt gives a final, fatal crack.
He ducks his head to capture Jaskier's mouth, and Jaskier surges into his arms, his hand snaking around Geralt's neck. Together they fumble the book onto a chair before getting to the business of seeing how much closer they can get to each other once their clothes are out of the way.
Jaskier is lithe and lively in his hands, and once he's panted out, "oh, fuck, Geralt, please," with a world of need in his voice, Geralt is sure he'll never be able to bring himself to silence him again.
Afterwards, he holds Jaskier's sweat-slick body close, and marvels that while the urgency is sated for the moment, the wanting is stronger than ever, and not just for physical pleasure. He wants terrible jokes and off-color songs and gentling hands, arguments and reconciliations and traded favors.
He wants Jaskier, when he was never meant to want anything at all.
But his very foundations have shifted under the bard's relentless, gentle pressure, the way water carves away stone. He has become something new and strange, something his creators never planned for, something he was never intended to be.
But destiny, and the plans of men long dead, can go fuck themselves.
He shifts closer still, and Jaskier hums, nuzzling languidly into his neck. Then he freezes, pulling back to shake his head. "Shit," he says, without any immediacy to it.
"What?" Geralt thumbs over a mark he sucked into Jaskier's collarbone, and Jaskier shimmies agreeably.
"Should've put Valdo Marx's name on the checkout card," he says, waving in the vague direction of the book. "Oh, for a missed opportunity."
Geralt chuckles into his skin, and Jaskier makes a pleased noise. "I like that sound," he says, and wraps himself around Geralt. They trade slow, soft kisses until sleep comes for them, Jaskier's breath fanning easy and even across his shoulder.
This belongs with you, Geralt hears again in his head, and this time he allows himself to believe it.
"Weapons, armor, alchemy, magic, and a good steed. These are the tools a witcher needs to walk the Path, and the only things that a witcher can rely upon in this world."
-- The Path of the Wolf, author unknown