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Jaskier knows he’s a placeholder.
A warm body and nothing more, someone familiar and comforting who’s responsive (too responsive) to Geralt’s advances. It’s a matter of convenience, when Geralt takes him to bed.
Jaskier knows.
And he’s totally, definitely, absolutely okay with it.
--
Jaskier understands the story of how they began this new phase of their dynamic, it’s written into how they began. A little town after a long time on the road, a brothel that wouldn’t serve a witcher, Jaskier offering almost as a joke, waiting for Geralt to shove him away. He didn’t expect to be allowed to kneel there in that dingy room they shared. Never could have dreamed of the gentleness of Geralt’s fingers in his hair, the weight of him heavy with wanting in Jaskier’s mouth.
And again, when he and Yen are swept in the vicious hurricane they are when they are together, Geralt drags Jaskier from her premises and he’s the closest willing thing, and when Geralt presses him against rough bark and licks his way up Jaskier’s bare thigh, Jaskier can almost pretend it’s because Geralt wants him.
A placeholder. When no one softer, sweeter, better would have Geralt, Jaskier’s there for him.
And Jaskier takes it, as it escalates from hurried hands, to eager mouths, to Geralt fucking him hard and devastatingly well in a little inn, after a particularly long winter apart.
They don’t talk about it.
--
Jaskier knows not to take it as more than it is, even as years pass. Geralt breaks his heart more than once, shoving him away only to stumble back into his life and his bed, and Jaskier knows, he knows he’s a placeholder. A surrogate, a proxy. It’s not really about him, it’s not he who Geralt wants. He recognizes he deserves better, deserves to be someone’s first choice—Essi and Pris make sure he knows that, when they ask after him in the spare winters he doesn’t spend at the keep.
But Jaskier doesn’t want anyone else.
And now it’s been years since either of them have been with anyone else, and they still haven’t talked, and Jaskier knows it must only be a matter of time before he’s pushed aside again. He can’t help but take everything he’s given, savoring each touch and kiss and gasp like pressing dry petals between the pages of a book. When they’re apart, he revisits them, basking in the gift of their sweetness even as the want of it twists him to pieces.
Until one soft spring morning, in the pearly light of dawn.
Geralt’s got him on his back, opening him, though Jaskier’s still pliant from the mess they made of their bath the night before. He clasps Jaskier’s thigh to his chest, fucking him slow and deep with three thick fingers as he sucks another bruise into Jaskier’s throat.
He pulls back to watch as Jaskier writhes in his pleasure, gasping and scraping his nails desperately over Geralt’s scalp.
“You awful tease,” Jaskier moans, “come on and fuck me already!”
“You’re so beautiful.”
For a moment Jaskier thinks he’s imagining it. A fever dream, a sorry projection of his own tormented desires, the too-tender words he bites back every day so they don’t spill forth and send Geralt from him once and for all.
But no, not a dream—Geralt’s grinning, half-incredulous and terribly soft, his fingers are moving tortuously slow and he’s grinning at Jaskier, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to say.
“What?” Jaskier manages, sputtering somewhat.
“It’s not fair,” Geralt rumbles, laving his wicked tongue over Jaskier’s sweaty throat, “that you should feel so fucking good, when you look so beautiful too.” He partners these words with a particularly deep thrust of his fingers, and Jaskier feels rather like he’s floating, the warmth of his pleasure nearly buoying him off the bed.
“What’s come over you?” he can’t help but ask, loath as he is to break the spell. “Next you’ll be saying —ah!— you like the way I sound—”
Geralt chuckles, grinding against Jaskier’s thigh.
“I’d never.”
Jaskier gives an affronted noise, though it trails off into something lower, hungrier, as Geralt flexes his fingers.
“Well,” Geralt amends, as casually as if they were discussing a day’s journey, “I do like those sounds. Quite a bit.”
Jaskier’s thighs are trembling, his fingers tangling in Geralt’s hair as he fights not to touch himself.
“Fuck me and I’ll make whatever sounds you like,” he gasps, trying to bring the conversation back to a field he understands.
“All right,” Geralt brushes a kiss to Jaskier’s cheek, “beautiful.”
And Jaskier can’t help but let out a hysterical little laugh. “You’re one to talk, you know!”
Geralt’s eyes darken, though he doesn’t let up his pace.
“You don’t have to—”
“I mean it, are you kidding?” With great self-control, because this suddenly feels too important to be lost in hazy pillow talk, Jaskier squirms off of Geralt’s fingers, snuggling into his arms instead. He brushes his thumb over the cut of Geralt’s jaw. “What, you think it’s possible I’d want to fuck you every imaginable way for years if I didn’t find you the most desirable person on the Continent?”
Geralt’s face goes unreadable, and Jaskier’s heart feels like it’s been packed in ice. Why did he have to say anything, they’re naked and Geralt’s fingers were just inside him, he could have just chalked Geralt’s words up to a slip of a sex-loosened tongue, now he’s gone and done the one thing he told himself he wouldn’t, talked about it, and he’s going to lose what little he has—
“Jaskier,” Geralt says, his voice strangely serious. Jaskier braces himself to be shattered once again, his mind racing for something, anything to say to talk himself out of this.
“Jaskier,” Geralt says again, “I love you.”
Jaskier’s mouth falls open. The ice in his chest dissolves at once, replaced by so much hearth-fire warmth he must be blushing from ear to toe. His heart is thunderously loud, and he blushes even deeper because he knows Geralt can hear it.
“Oh,” he says, weakly.
“I’ve been—” Geralt pauses and hmms, and it’s so him it makes Jaskier realize this is real, this isn’t a dream, this is happening. “We never…we don’t talk. About this.” He gestures at their naked bodies, tangled as they are upon the bed. “And I know I’ve fucked up with you before, but I’m done with that and I want you to know. So, I’m talking,” he says, by way of explanation, and it’s so maddeningly cute Jaskier nearly laughs aloud. “Because I love you,” Geralt continues, squinting at Jaskier, as if to be sure he understands, “and I don’t want to stop.”
Jaskier swallows, hard.
“Me?” he can’t help but ask. Geralt flinches.
“I deserve that,” he says ruefully. His hand finds its way to Jaskier’s hip, big and warm and steady, and Jaskier helplessly arches into the touch. “I shouldn’t be surprised you don’t believe it.”
“It’s not that I don’t—it’s just that I thought—” he swallows again, his voice small. “I don’t know, I thought I was a placeholder. A surrogate, a waystation. and I would’ve taken it, because I’ll take anything of you you’ll give me, but I never—I never—”
“You idiot,” Geralt says fondly, his thumb petting absently over Jaskier’s bare waist.
“Hey now—” Jaskier starts indignantly, but then he’s being kissed, gentle and deliberate.
“Not a placeholder,” Geralt murmurs, his breath warm on Jaskier’s mouth. His next words come matter-of-fact: simple, straightforward. “You’re the love of my life.”
“Oh,” Jaskier says again. He’s gone dizzy and rather light-headed. His mind’s gone blurry, a wreck of want and hope and sweet shock, and all he can think to do is fling his arms around Geralt and kiss him and kiss him and kiss him.
“I love you,” he says breathlessly, “oh, fucking gods, Geralt, how good it feels to say it aloud! I shall never stop, I hope you know. You’ve opened the door now, you’d better be prepared for the full brunt of my adoration.”
Geralt chuckles, pressing him into the bed.
“I am,” he says, and enters Jaskier at last.
It’s nothing they haven’t done a thousand times before, but it feels different now, remade, reimagined. The warm weight of Geralt’s body, the clever work of his hands, the sweet spread he makes of Jaskier—it’s all so much better, more real, with the unearthed truth of those words heavy in the air at last.
Jaskier no longer has to find what beauty he can in the pressed flowers of his memories. He gets to have a garden now, alive and ever-growing.
“I love you,” Geralt murmurs, hitching Jaskier’s knee back to better hit the spot he knows makes Jaskier light up from within. Jaskier sobs, incandescent with pleasure and love, his hands going over his head to clutch fitfully at the headboard in helpless, blissed-out surrender.
“I love you,” he manages. Geralt grins, letting his warm palm trace down Jaskier’s chest, rubbing his sensitive nipples, threading through the hair there. It’s reverent, and terribly sexy, the way Geralt maps Jaskier’s body with his palm as if he’s learning it anew, even as he fucks Jaskier out of his damned mind. And then he wraps his strong hand around Jaskier’s desperate cock, strokes him in time with his powerful thrusts. The bed shakes beneath them, crashing against the wall in a fierce rhythm, and Jaskier bites his lip, bearing down on Geralt as best as he can to take everything he’s given.
“Does it feel good?” Geralt asks. Jaskier moans in assent, drawn-out and shaky. Geralt chuckles, a warm rumbling thing. “There’s that sound I love. You’re gorgeous, Jask,” Geralt husks, muscles gleaming with sweat, his hair falling from its tie.
Jaskier shakes his head as best as he can, gazing up at his lover with glassy eyes.
“You are,” he whispers, “you are so, so beautiful, love.”
Geralt smiles at him for one shining moment before it shifts slightly into a smirk.
“You’re also a little brat,” Geralt says, his eyes crinkling with affection.
“Hmmph!” Jaskier smirks right back at him, gritting his teeth through a smile. “Bite me, then.”
“Okay.”
And he digs his teeth into the curve of Jaskier’s shoulder, fucking him in a steady, filthy rhythm as he does, and Jaskier goes taut as lute-string beneath him, his body tensing with a rush of ecstasy. Through it, he hears Geralt, murmuring words he’s never spoken to Jaskier ever before, as if his confession has unlocked a rush of praise he’s been keeping back.
“That’s it, there you go,” Geralt says, his voice rough and soft as crushed velvet. “Look at you, taking my cock so well. You feel so fucking good like this. I love this tight little ass of yours, Jaskier. Think about it when I’m not having it. A lot.”
Jaskier moans, the world gone blurry with bliss.
Geralt nuzzles close, his lips brushing the shell of Jaskier’s ear. “And your pretty cock gets so, so hard for me,” he murmurs, squeezing deliciously. “Like it when I fuck you like this, don’t you?” He gives a particularly deliberate thrust and Jaskier’s vision nearly blanks.
“Yes, you bastard, you know I do!” Jaskier gasps, brimming with wild, reckless pleasure.
“Gonna come for me, sweetheart?”
The pet name does it, something that could’ve been plucked out of Jaskier’s most desperate fantasies. Jaskier comes with a cry, half-laughing, half-sobbing Geralt’s name. His orgasm feels honeyed and molten at once, flooding through Jaskier’s body in waves and shaking him to pieces with fierce, hot pleasure as Geralt fucks him roughly through it.
“Too fucking gorgeous,” Geralt says hoarsely, and Jaskier whimpers, clinging to him. Geralt hums and nuzzles his cheek. Then he shifts, and Jaskier realizes he means to pull out, still hard.
“Don’t you dare,” he whispers, digging his heels into the small of Geralt’s back to keep him.
“You’re sure?” Geralt brushes his lips with the gentlest kiss. “Seem pretty done to me.”
“I want to feel you,” Jaskier sighs into his mouth. “Want to make you come.”
Geralt’s eyes crinkle in the corners again.
“All right,” he hums. “Love.”
That word alone is enough to make Jaskier weak, he’s never going to tire of it. And then Geralt’s fucking into his spent body, an easy, needful pace, shallow thrusts as Geralt chases his own pleasure, and Jaskier’s lost in the joy of it.
Jaskier’s always loved getting fucked by Geralt when he’s come already. There was something in the overstimulation that felt something like a punishment, something like a revelation: I’ll take whatever you give me. But now this feels different too, something closer to I’ll give you anything you need. Jaskier doesn’t have to be desperate for scraps of attention anymore—he knows, for the very first time, that this is not the end. This is a beginning instead.
“Love,” he repeats breathily, running his trembling fingers through Geralt’s sweaty hair. “Love.”
He smiles into Geralt’s messy kiss and watches in awe Geralt’s expression as he nears his peak. The gleam of candlelight on his muscles, the twitch in his jaw. That stern face twisted into something soft and vulnerable with pleasure and love, all for Jaskier.
They both moan when Geralt’s hips quicken, his thrusts turning frantic, and then he spills so, so deep inside Jaskier with a great groan of relief. It’s hot and obscene and his, and if he weren’t held so tenderly in Geralt’s arms, Jaskier thinks he could float away for the bliss of it.
Every other time, in the aftermath, Geralt would turn over and fall asleep, and Jaskier would be left to clean himself up and begin the process of pulling away as quick as he can.
But now, Geralt lingers. He pulls out carefully, and Jaskier notes with worn, feverish delight that Geralt blushes as he watches his spend drip from Jaskier’s ass. He goes to the basin, mutters a witcher sign to heat the water, and dips a clean cloth in it as it warms.
“Was that...good?” he asks gruffly. He parts Jaskier’s thighs and gently cleans him, before turning the cloth roughly on himself.
“Oh, fuck, Geralt,” Jaskier says breathlessly, opening his arms for Geralt to fall into. “Best time yet.”
Geralt huffs a laugh, curling his body comfortably into Jaskier’s.
“I’ll make it even better next time,” he promises. “Somehow. Dunno. I’ll think of something.”
Jaskier holds him tight, marveling at the way the daylight spills in through the inn window, casting everything in warm, lovely gold.
“You still want me to be yours, then?” he can’t help but ask.
Geralt reaches for him, and kisses him until he’s breathless.
“Mine,” he growls, grinning, and Jaskier beams back.