Chapter Text
Jaskier falls in love with a witcher. It’s a bad idea, of course, but he falls in love with a lot of bad ideas. He’s always longed to have things he can never have, to go places he can never go. This isn’t something new.
The witcher kills a siren in the water. Jaskier watches from a distance, hidden behind the craggy stones in the depths. That’s not enough to make him fall in love, of course—he’s easy, but not that easy—but it does make him intrigued.
The siren takes the witcher’s silver sword to her gut, but clips his head with her tail and knocks him off his little boat. They both sink, bleeding. Jaskier’s been avoiding the siren, but he swims in closer. He thinks the siren’s dead, or at least dying. The witcher, though . . .
The witcher’s still sinking.
Jaskier swims closer unthinkingly, and then he finds himself grabbing the witcher under the arms and swimming towards the surface with him. He’s heavy in all his armor, but Jaskier’s a strong swimmer. They break the surface, and the witcher stirs weakly, a hand grasping at the side of his little boat. Jaskier lets go of him quickly and darts away and downwards. The witcher will think he imagined it, if he remembers.
Jaskier’s not the sort to leave someone to drown, so . . .
Besides. It’ll make for a much more satisfying story if the witcher lives.
He follows the witcher’s little boat to shore, careful to stay out of sight. The witcher disembarks groggily and trudges out of the waves, his medallion flashing brighter than Jaskier’s own scales in the moonlight, and his black armor and white hair drip with seawater.
He’s very handsome.
That’s still not enough to make Jaskier fall in love, though.
“The siren is dead,” the witcher says to the lantern-carrying fishermen awaiting him on the dock, his voice carrying across the water. It’s a lovely voice, Jaskier thinks, peering out from behind a convenient rock. Nearly as lovely as his own, which is saying something for a human.
Well—a witcher.
“Both of them?” one of the fishermen says. The witcher’s lip curls.
“Both of them,” he says. Jaskier blinks. He hadn’t seen a second siren.
“They won’t be singing around here anymore, then, the vicious things,” the fisherman says, and Jaskier blinks again. He hasn’t heard any siren song. The only one who’s been singing around here is—
Oh.
Jaskier ducks beneath the water, covering his mouth with his fingertips. He hadn’t realized the humans were hearing his songs. He’s just been trying to avoid other merpeople, lest someone tell his parents where he’s wandered off to this time. He wasn’t thinking about humans.
He doesn’t understand, though. Why did the witcher lie?
Jaskier resurfaces and peers out from behind his rock again. The fishermen hand the witcher a coin purse, and the witcher tucks it into his armor. Then they turn away and leave him on the dock.
Jaskier is almost stupid enough to swim closer, but not quite. The witcher turns towards the water, and he hides behind his rock.
“You should move on,” the witcher says, his voice echoing across the water again. “Your songs are pretty things, but these people can’t tell the difference between your kind and a monster.”
So that’s when Jaskier falls in love.