Chapter Text
The sun was starting to dip below the horizon, and Geralt still didn’t show any sign of stopping. Jaskier resigned himself to waiting his friend out for a while longer and muttered under his breath, trying out variations on ‘the wolf paces restlessly’ to find one with a good rhythm.
Finally, when the sky was thick with stars, Geralt threw the net aside with a snarl and stormed over to Roach, then paused to shoot Jaskier an irritated look. “What are you still doing here.”
“Well, I thought I was keeping you company through your obvious mental breakdown, but I’m not sure that still works if you didn’t notice me,” Jaskier said dryly, unfazed. “Have you thought about solving your little problem the old-fashioned way?”
“What.”
Jaskier took that as a ‘no.’ “Have you tried talking to someone, Geralt? If you can’t sleep, maybe it’s because something is bothering you.” Geralt was scowling in confusion. “I swear, you must have been raised in a barn or something. Let’s see, what could bother a stoic old witcher like yourself... You want to get laid?” Geralt frowned harder, trading all of the hostility for a double helping of annoyance. “You’re sorry for mocking me.” Geralt rolled his eyes. “No? Is it about your child surprise, then?”
Geralt looked away sharply, which meant that Jaskier was right on the money.
“So it is about your child surprise,” Jaskier concluded, fascinated. He wondered what Geralt would be like with a child. He would probably train them to fight bears with sticks, or something.
“I keep dreaming about training,” Geralt said to Roach, startling Jaskier out of his contemplation. Jaskier hummed curiously.
“What’s wrong with that?” he asked.
Geralt snorted, and then apparently some part of him surrendered, because he sat down beside Roach, stroking the reins with his thumb. Now that Jaskier was looking, he really did look exhausted, as much as Geralt ever did; there was tension around his eyes that spoke to strain, and Jaskier would almost say they looked glazed.
“Becoming a witcher isn’t pretty,” Geralt said, still without looking at Jaskier. All the same, Jaskier perked up, a childlike excitement flashing through him. Geralt was always so tight-lipped about his training.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asked, with probably too much eagerness to come off as altruistic as he’d intended.
Geralt didn’t seem to notice. He shook his head once, sharply.
“It isn’t pretty,” he repeated, voice rough. He picked his words with difficulty, taking three times as long to speak as another man might have. “You take a child, and you beat them, starve them, poison them, mutilate them until they’re unrecognizable. If they survive all that, you’ve got yourself a witcher.”
That took the wind out of Jaskier’s sails, and his lungs, too. It took him a moment to find his voice again. Geralt had a way of making Jaskier feel young and foolish, even now that Jaskier was a man grown.
“Oh,” he said lamely. “...Was that how you were made?”
“Yeah.” Completely without inflection.
“I didn’t know that.”
“Most people don’t.”
Jaskier tried to recover from this revelation, this streak of very human vulnerability in his invulnerable friend, and cast his mind back to the topic at hand. Understanding came to him immediately. “Are you afraid to have a child because of that?”
Geralt didn’t answer. He didn’t deny it, either. He just looked at his hands and rubbed the reins between his fingers.
He really did look tired.
“You know you can just... not do that,” Jaskier felt the need to point out. It wasn’t like Geralt was going to accidentally start training the child to be a witcher.
“Don’t be stupid,” Geralt snapped, raising his head just to scowl at Jaskier again. “I’m a monster; the child is better off without me. Anyway, kids need-” Geralt huffed, reaching up to rub his temple with the hand holding the reins. “Comfort, safety. Support. I can’t do that. I don’t even know what that looks like.”
Apparently Geralt had thought about this a lot more than Jaskier had realized, even if he was obviously working himself up into a frenzy over it.
“What if I helped you?” Jaskier asked without thinking. Geralt made a face at Jaskier that clearly depicted how fed up he was with listening to Jaskier’s voice. Jaskier forged on. “Goodness knows we’ve been friends long enough. If you like, I could- I could show you what those things look like.” It was depressing beyond measure to think that no one else had.
Geralt looked both skeptical and annoyed, but Jaskier was fairly certain at this point that the annoyance was... mostly a byproduct of his exhaustion. “And how are you planning to do that?”
“By being nice to you,” Jaskier said, more boldly than he felt. “Obviously.”
“Sounds like a waste of both our time,” Geralt snorted.
“I could start by trying to help you sleep.”
“...Fine.”
Here was the problem: Geralt was... Geralt.
Jaskier had known the man for sixteen years, nearly half his own life now, and he’d always been exactly as he was now – unyielding, rough-mannered, intense. The first time he’d met Geralt, the man had talked an enclave of resentful elves into letting them go. More recently, there had been the whole thing where Geralt defended a beast-man against a royal court’s worth of soldiers. Jaskier had been fairly certain nothing could faze Geralt.
None of that included such traits as ‘insecure,’ ‘jumpy,’ or ‘in dire need of kindness,’ and Jaskier was struggling to reconcile these things with the towering figure of his oldest friend. That left Jaskier to do what he did best: forge blindly ahead with bullheaded determination.
The first thing Jaskier did was put Geralt in a bath, since as far as he knew, baths were just about Geralt’s favorite thing in the world. As usual, Geralt’s body was covered with a light smattering of injuries – mostly bruises, in particular some nasty purple-blue gradients all the way from his left shoulder to his elbow, but there was also a bandage around his right forearm, lightly speckled with blood.
Taking care not to nudge anything sore, Jaskier knelt down behind him and started combing out his hair; it looked like it hadn’t been touched in at least a week, and probably longer, knowing Geralt.
“I can do that myself,” Geralt said tersely, tilting his head enough to frown at Jaskier. Jaskier felt like sighing.
“That’s not the point,” he said, carefully working through the knots and tangles in Geralt’s silky snow hair. Very dirty snow. “Making you presentable isn’t actually the point right now. We’re trying to make you comfortable, remember?”
“Why?” Geralt demanded. Jaskier ran his fingers through Geralt’s hair and ‘tsk’ed when his fingers caught, getting back to work.
“Because it’s easier to sleep when you aren’t wound up tighter than a watch spring, Geralt,” Jaskier said, exasperated. “I’m not demonstrating how to wash yourself here. I’m trying to-” Remembering why he’d committed himself to this sobered Jaskier up quickly, and he was glad Geralt wasn’t looking at him to see it. “This is about comfort, remember? I’m showing you how to comfort someone. Dunk your head.”
Geralt dunked his head under the water, and Jaskier started scrubbing soap into his hair. Geralt actually squirmed under his touch and complained, “I don’t understand the point.”
Clearly. “The point of comfort is comfort. It’s supposed to, I don’t know, make you feel better. That’s it.”
“It’s weird,” Geralt mumbled, turning his head one way and then the other, as if halfheartedly trying to get away from Jaskier’s hands. It gave Jaskier the vague impression of attempting to bathe a wild beast.
“It’ll be less weird if you stop complaining about it,” Jaskier scolded, pushing his fingers into Geralt’s hair. “Seriously, I’ve done this for friends plenty of times before. Most of them love it.”
Geralt grumbled quietly, and then subsided, visibly forcing himself to relax. Something occurred to Jaskier.
“You don’t dislike it, do you?” he asked, concerned. “Being touched, I mean.” He’d always taken Geralt to be fairly apathetic toward it, but it was so difficult to tell with him.
“...No,” Geralt muttered, sinking down in the bathwater. Jaskier relaxed, scratching gently at Geralt’s scalp. Usually he did this with the people he bedded, but he’d make an exception for Geralt.
“What about raised voices?” he asked, following that train of thought. Geralt grunted dismissively. “People standing behind you?”
Geralt craned his neck to squint at him, wet and sudsy hair plastered down his neck. “It’s fine if it’s you.”
That was... surprisingly touching, actually. Jaskier softened.
“Why do you want to know?” Geralt asked suspiciously, ruining it. Jaskier hummed, hesitated, and then focused a little too hard on thoroughly washing Geralt’s hair.
“I didn’t know you were beaten as a child,” Jaskier said at last, and then, forestalling Geralt’s inevitable rebuke, “I’ve had friends who were left... shaken, by the severity of their childhood punishments. Most of them aren’t too fond of raised voices, so I thought I’d ask.”
Geralt grunted and then went quiet. He was still tense under Jaskier’s hands, but he seemed to be trying to force himself to relax, with obvious difficulty.
“Dunk your head and hold it,” Jaskier said at last, and ran his fingers through Geralt’s hair to rinse it out when the man obeyed. When he was done, he tapped Geralt’s unbruised shoulder, and the man sat up and shook his head, scowling.
“I don’t see how this is supposed to keep me from dreaming,” Geralt grumbled, holding his bandaged arm at an awkward angle to keep it away from the water.
Jaskier laughed nervously, and without answering right away, he stood up to towel dry his hands, and held out the towel as Geralt pulled himself out of the tub.
“It’s supposed to make you feel safe,” he said at last, watching Geralt unselfconsciously scrub the water off of himself. Geralt snorted derisively. “Geralt, where do you feel safe?”
“Never,” Geralt dismissed, turning away to grab his clothes from his saddlebag like he hadn’t just knocked the wind out of Jaskier, again.
“That’s just sad,” Jaskier told his back, and then went to change clothes himself.
Geralt never looked relaxed, even when he was sleeping, so Jaskier wasn’t surprised when he returned to find the man arranged to keep both the door and window in sight, eyelids heavy with obvious exhaustion but body still tense – though Jaskier entertained the idea that he was looser than he had been before the bath.
“Do you need to change your bandages before you sleep?” Jaskier asked. Geralt grunted and shook his head. “Alright...” He hesitated, and cleared a little bit of embarrassment from his throat before he said, “You can ask me to stop if you need.”
Then he took his lute from where he’d carefully set it on his side of the bed – further from the door, as always – and started to lightly pluck at the strings.
Geralt hated it when he practiced before bed; something about the incomplete music made him toss and turn without drifting off. But Jaskier wasn’t practicing tonight. He didn’t play them often, but he knew a few lullabies from his lessons. Everyone did. He chose one of those at random and picked through it, one soft note at a time, watching Geralt.
It took three quiet songs before Geralt’s breath evened out. Jaskier cautiously patted himself on the back for a job well done, set the lute on a table with care, and climbed into bed beside Geralt.
He fell asleep listening to Geralt breathe, and bobbed around in the dark waters of sleep for an unknowable amount of time before he was unpleasantly yanked back to wakefulness by the violent jostling beside him.
He blinked the sleep out of his eyes, pushed himself up, and then woke up completely when he realized that Geralt was upright, panting like he’d fought off a bear in his sleep.
Geralt snarled at him as soon as he realized Jaskier was awake.
“It didn’t work!” Geralt snapped, which would be aggravating if it weren’t code for ‘I had nightmares of children being beaten to death.’ He climbed off the bed and started pacing; Jaskier could barely make out the shape of him in the dark, his fingers running through his hair and his eyes gleaming like a cat’s. “Fuck. Damn it. I just want to sleep.”
His voice cracked. Jaskier wondered how many people had ever heard Geralt’s voice crack. Then he rubbed his eyes, wracking his brain for anything that could help, and scooted toward the edge of the bed.
“It was just a dream, Geralt,” he said, pitching his voice soft and even, like he was soothing a child. “It was a dream of something that happened a long time ago, and no one was hurt by it. Everyone is okay tonight.” Geralt was still panting like a gladiator. “Hey- Geralt, hey, remember where you are. It’s just you and me here, and nothing happened. You remember that?”
Geralt made a choked sound, paced from the window to the door to the window, then hit the corner and slid to the ground, so all Jaskier could see of him was the shadow of his shoulders and the flash of his eyes.
Jaskier took a chance and slid off the bed, and cautiously prodded his way through the darkness while Geralt watched him like a hawk. When he thought he was close enough, he knelt down beside Geralt and reached for his hand, patting his way down the bandaged arm, and Geralt let him take it.
“It’s okay, you’re okay,” Jaskier murmured, much more confidently than he felt with Geralt’s eerie eyes locked onto him. “Are you with me?”
“...Yeah,” Geralt rasped, leaving his hand limp in Jaskier’s. Jaskier exhaled, feeling out of his depth. Geralt’s hand was hot and callused.
“You remember where we are?” Jaskier asked quietly, and then, without waiting for an answer, “It’s an inn. You took a bath here, and you let me wash your hair. You left your armor under the window, and your swords by the bed.”
“Yeah,” Geralt repeated. He sounded more like himself this time. Some of the tension eased out of Jaskier as well.
His eyes were starting to adjust, too, just enough that he could see more of Geralt’s huddled shape – the shape of his face, the outline of his arms, the glimmer of what Jaskier was startled to realize were tear tracks on his face. Geralt was still breathing heavily, but nothing like he had been.
“Yeah,” Jaskier repeated. “Are you ready to go back to bed?”
“I’m going to dream,” Geralt growled, hoarse and strained. Jaskier took a breath.
“And then you’ll wake up, and you’ll remember exactly where you are,” Jaskier said, as confidently as he could. “Because the dream is very far away, and I’ll be asleep right next to you. So you’ll know exactly what’s real.”
Geralt stared at him for a few more seconds, and then, stiffly, he said, “Fine.”
As far as Jaskier knew, Geralt woke up twice more that night, and Jaskier woke with him, because despite the man’s best efforts, he still woke noisily. But both times Jaskier was able to talk him down again; the second time he didn’t even climb out of the bed, though Jaskier could feel him shaking.
The next afternoon (Geralt had slept through the morning) Geralt paused while he was saddling his horse. “Hey.” Jaskier hummed in question, and Geralt glanced over the meet his eyes. “Sorry for insulting your voice. You sound good.”
Then he went back to saddling his horse, leaving Jaskier blinking in surprise. After a moment, though, a grin broke out across Jaskier’s face.
“About time you admitted it!” he snapped with exaggerated pompousness, and Geralt rolled his eyes, tugging at Roach’s reins to lead her out.