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I.
“They said it’s a water nymph?” Jaskier asks the Witcher one evening.
A fire crackles in front of them, sparks shooting up into the night sky. Stars peek between the breaks in the forest canopy above them. Geralt glances at the bard, then sighs and turns his attention back to the fire.
“That’s what they said.”
“But you don’t buy it,” Jaskier says. It’s not really a question. He can tell from Geralt’s tone.
Geralt’s lips press into a thin line. “Rusalki and some bruxae share a number of similarities in terms of appearance. The rusalki they described has pale skin and dark hair.”
Jaskier’s fingers twitch with the sudden desire to grab his notebook. “And… rusalki don’t look like that?”
“They can,” Geralt replies, glancing at him, “but so can bruxae. They also have similar tastes in prey.”
Jaskier purses his lips as he remembers what the townspeople had told them. “Men.”
Geralt nods. “Which is why you’re going to stay here with Roach tomorrow.”
Jaskier glances over towards the horse grazing a few yards away, then looks back at the Witcher. “So what’s the difference?”
He doesn’t know if the question tumbles past his lips because he’s genuinely curious about the answer or because he just really likes hearing Geralt talk. The Witcher’s subdued cadence was stubbornly persistent. Often when Jaskier made a concerted effort to engage Geralt in conversation, his responses were brief, clipped, and straightforward. A staccato drum against Jaskier’s lilting melody.
But apparently, Geralt was a fountain of willing knowledge when it came to monsters. And Jaskier could listen to him for hours.
Geralt’s brow quirks in surprise at the question. “To start with, bruxae are of the vampire family. They lure men to their death so that they may feed on their blood. Rusalki are, usually, much more amenable. They lure men to them for procreation, and rarely intend death.”
Jaskier’s brow furrows. “Which is why you think it’s not rusalki. You think it’s a bruxa.”
“Hm.”
Jaskier feels something twinge in his chest. “How do you kill a bruxa?” He tears his gaze towards the fire as he feels Geralt glance at him.
“They’re susceptible to silver, like most monsters. Igni is also useful. Bruxa tend to hunt in packs, so its unusual that the villagers here have only seen one.”
“Have you fought them before?”
“Yes.”
“Are you nervous? About tomorrow?”
A pause. “No.”
Jaskier huffs and offers a faint, uncertain smile. “That makes one of us.”
“I told you you’re not coming with me.”
“Yes, but that’s quite beside the point, isn’t it?” Because Jaskier isn’t nervous about himself.
Geralt’s head snaps over to the bard in surprise. “Jaskier—”
Jaskier waves him off. “So tell me, dear Witcher,” he says, because he just wants to hear Geralt talk as much as he can tonight. “Why does silver work so well on monsters?”
II.
Jaskier watches him. The early spring air tugs gently at the loose strands of his white hair. Birds twitter happily in the canopy above them. The stream nearby is still. Mid-morning sunlight filters through the leaves and branches, leaving a mosaic of light around them.
Geralt breathes.
Kneeling in a patch of grass with his hands resting on his thighs, the Witcher has his eyes closed and just… breathes. Jaskier watches the steady rise and fall of his chest. The way it expands with each inhale, the way the ever-present tension in Geralt’s shoulders eases just the slightest bit with each exhale.
Jaskier knows he’s not asleep. Sleeping and meditating are different things. But he thinks that Geralt actually looks more peaceful like this. Jaskier had spent many nights in the bedroll near the Witcher and knew all too well that when Geralt slept, it was usually fitfully. But when he meditates like this…
Geralt is still.
Jaskier can’t help but feel like he’s getting a rare glimpse at who Geralt was—is—beneath the layers and layers of training and mutations. He knew Geralt didn’t regret what he went through to become a Witcher. At least… not exactly. Can you regret something that wasn’t your choice to begin with? Had been his rhetorical response when Jaskier had been brave enough to ask him one evening. But the bard knew that no amount of trials and training could erase the parts of Geralt that was still—sometimes painfully—human. Geralt held within himself a carefully balanced dichotomy that seemed, at least to Jaskier, to be a storm built on regret and guilt and (in his darker moments) self-loathing.
But watching Geralt meditate—the steady breath, the perfect stillness—makes the bard wonder if the storm metaphor isn’t quite accurate. Because really, when Jaskier thinks about it, Geralt’s humanity is perhaps more like the coastal waves. Relentlessly returning to the shoreline no matter how many times it’s sent away.
Jaskier watches Geralt meditate and feels something tighten in his chest. He’d follow that tide to the end of the earth, he realizes. He’d call the waves back to shore for as long as Geralt would let him.
Geralt’s eyes blink open and Jaskier unapologetically meets his gaze.
He arcs his eyebrow. “Composing, Bard?”
Jaskier offers a small, sincere smile. “Something like that.”
III.
“I’d rethink that move.”
If he’s being honest, Jaskier is almost as surprised as the patron when Geralt seems to materialize out of the crowd and grab the man’s wrist in a vice-like grip. The man’s other hand is still fisted possessively in the waistband of Jaskier’s trousers, uncomfortably close to his crotch.
“What,” the patron spits with a sneer full of rotting teeth, “unwilling to share your whore, Butcher?”
Jaskier grimaces. Butcher made his skin crawl, and he knows that Geralt didn’t take kindly to that term either. The bard had learned that very early, and very quickly.
Geralt growls low in his throat, his eyes flashing dangerously. “Call him that again and I’ll slit your throat.”
The threat makes Jaskier freeze instinctively. Call him that again… Him.
As in Jaskier.
The patron roughly lets go of the bard, who stumbles a step from the suddenness of the motion but still hasn’t taken his eyes off Geralt. In truth, Jaskier really hadn’t been particularly bothered by the term itself. He’d been called it before, and been called much worse than that several hundred times over. But Geralt took issue with it, evidently.
Geralt was defending him. He’d never had someone who’d done that before. Not even his own family.
“Not worth it,” the patron says gruffly. Geralt releases him with a shove to send him stumbling away from Jaskier. He staggers a few steps, muttering something under his breath. Jaskier doesn’t hear it clearly—something about his voice and screaming as pretty as he sings—but Geralt evidently does hear it, quite clearly. Something bright and furious ignites in his gold eyes.
“Geralt,” he says quickly but quietly. “Let it go. It’s fine.”
For a moment, the Witcher looks torn. Jaskier places a hand on his forearm, and Geralt levels a withering gaze on the other man. He rushes through the crowd and out the tavern. It’s not until the door closes behind him that Geralt turns his attention back to the bard. The hot anger in his eyes evaporates slowly into something that Jaskier almost wants to call… soft. His gaze flickers—quick and calculating—over Jaskier’s form. Looking for signs of injury.
Geralt’s gaze meets his again in a silent question. Jaskier offers a reassuring smile and slight nod in answer. I’m okay.
Geralt shakes his head, but Jaskier doesn’t think he’s imagining the tinge of relief under the veil of exasperation. “You really ought to learn some self-defense, Jaskier.”
Jaskier offers an affronted scoff. “I can defend myself perfectly fine, thank you very much.”
“Hmm.”
“I can! I’ll have you know, he is hardly the first over-enthusiastic fan I’ve dealt with.” Jaskier tries not to wince at the way Geralt’s expression darkens, and rushes of add, “And I’ve fended off unwanted advances just fine. He just happened to be particularly, ah, insistent.”
“Hm. And what happens when you can no longer talk your way out of such situations?”
Jaskier’s flippant smile wavers, then stays in place. “Are you offering to teach me, Geralt?” He’s mostly joking.
“Yes.” Geralt’s answer is immediate and unflinching. Jaskier tries not to think too long about why that sends a flutter through his stomach.
IV.
The kitchen of the small house on the outskirts of the town has barely enough room for the three of them. Geralt, beside him, reeks of death and decay and monster guts. In front of them, the young boy—who couldn’t be older than 16 by Jaskier’s best guess—hoists his baby sister up further onto his hip.
“Truly, Witch—ah, Geralt?” At Geralt’s slight nod, the teen smiles. “Truly, Geralt. Thank you. I, um…” he trails off, turning to rifle through a drawer behind him. The middle sibling, a young boy of about six, runs around the corner and nearly barrels straights into the two of them in the entryway.
“Oi!” the teen snaps. “Slow down, will ya?”
“Sorry,” the younger boy mumbles, and then is off like a flash the moment Geralt takes a step to the left to let him through.
His brother watches him with a certain fond exasperation, even as embarrassment colors his cheeks. “Too much energy for his own good,” he says. Jaskier realizes then that he has a small pouch in the hand that isn’t supporting his baby sister’s weight. He extends it out to the Witcher. “It’s not much. Certainly not nearly enough for disposing of the monster that took our parents, but...”
Geralt shakes his head, making no move to take it. “No payment necessary.”
Jaskier glances at him and feels something unexpectedly soft warming in his chest.
“Please,” the teen says. “I insist.”
“Keep it.”
“My father taught me to never accept charity.”
Jaskier thinks of the empty cupboards around them in the kitchen and feels a small tug in his gut. He remembers all too well singing for literal scraps. Barely surviving. He knew desperate times. And he also knew that some people still ranked their pride higher. The bard figures he can’t really fault him for it, and besides, the poor kid had just lost the very father he’d spoken of. Grief did funny things to people.
Geralt stares at the boy for a long moment. Jaskier sees the tension work in his jaw before he holds a hand out and lets him deposit the coins into the outstretched palm. Twenty ducats fall from the piece of cloth.
“It’s all I have—” he begins apologetically.
“It’s plenty,” Geralt interrupts, folding his fingers over the paltry sum. It does not escape Jaskier’s attention that he doesn’t slip the coins into his own pouch.
The infant in the teen’s arms shifts and makes a distressed noise. “I… I should put her down for a nap, I think.”
Jaskier can hear the uncertainty in the boy’s voice and offers an encouraging smile. “We’ll see ourselves out. I’m sure a bit of rest is exactly what she needs. As a matter of fact, I could use a nap myself.”
Geralt rolls his eyes, but Jaskier sees the relieved smile pull at the boy’s mouth. “Right. Well… Thank you. Again. I… thank you.”
He disappears up the rickety wood stairs. On their way out, Jaskier sees Geralt discretely drop the ducats into a partially-opened drawer by the entrance to the kitchen.
That soft, warm feeling in Jaskier gives an aching, happy tug.
V.
Jaskier watches, fascinated, as Geralt’s eye twitches. The music that fills the tavern is not coming from Jaskier, and while the other bard is clearly less experienced, Jaskier seems less bothered by the amateur display than the Witcher. Which is odd—really odd—to Jaskier. Because he had been certain that Geralt really couldn’t give a rat’s ass about music.
Jaskier looks at the Witcher over the top of his wine glass as he takes another sip. “What’s troubling you, Geralt?”
Geralt settles an irritated golden gaze onto Jaskier as the bard (the other one) starts another song. It takes only a few seconds for Jaskier to realize it’s the same simple, mundane chord progression and structure as the last song played. Jaskier doesn’t miss the way Geralt’s gaze flickers lightning quick to the lute beside him.
Jaskier stifles a grin. “Don’t tell me you’re already missing my serenades.”
Geralt isn’t looking back at him, instead watching the other bard parade around the room with a look that is very nearly a glare. “At least your songs have some… complexity.”
That sends a very unexpected surge of warmth through Jaskier’s chest. He sits up a bit more, leaning forward. “Musically or lyrically?”
“Music,” Geralt replies, almost absently. “The… chords?” The Witcher’s gaze flickers uncertainly to Jaskier, who can’t help but feel like he’s clinging to every word. He gives Geralt a slight, encouraging nod. Geralt shifts. “They’re better than this shit.”
Jaskier stares at him. Sure, the Witcher didn’t have the same musically-inclined vocabulary, but even that couldn’t hide the fact that Geralt listens to his music. Really listens.
Geralt tears his gaze away from Jaskier’s after a moment, taking a long pull of ale from the tankard in front of him. “Your lyrics,” he continues, “are little more than inaccurate stories.”
“Ah, my dear Witcher, ordinarily I would balk at such a baseless accusation—”
“It’s not baseless.”
“—but you cannot hide the fact any longer.” Jaskier cannot contain the grin that pulls at his lips any more than he can contain the surge of a warm, fluttery feeling in his chest. He points a finger at Geralt. “You listen to me.”
Geralt looks back at him and—though he knows Geralt would deny it—Jaskier swears he sees a twitch to the corner of his mouth. “Impossible not to,” Geralt replies dryly, “what with you filling every damn second with song.” He takes another swallow.
The thinly veiled deflection does nothing to diminish Jaskier’s smile. “And you like it.”
This time, Geralt can’t quite contain the tilt to the corner of his mouth. “Hmm.”
Jaskier knows it’s a hum of agreement.
VI.
Jaskier’s heart still hasn’t stopped pounding, even though they’d finished the treacherous part of the shortcut around an hour ago. The image of Borch, Téa, and Véa plummeting—their bodies disappearing into the mountain mist below—still leaves Jaskier with a slight roll to his stomach and an ache in his bones that had nothing to do with the long day of foot travel.
It’s close to dusk. The chill of evening mountain air begins to stiffen the bard’s fingers as he sets his lute down beside his bedroll. The dwarves busy themselves with setting up camp and starting to prepare a meal, but Jaskier can’t help the way he keeps watching Geralt.
Geralt, who hadn’t said a thing since Borch let go of the chain.
Jaskier kneels by his bedroll and pretends to adjust it, but he watches the Witcher sitting on a boulder a few yards away. He gazes out over the jagged terrain off the cliffside. He is still. But Jaskier feels his chest knot with concern.
Geralt was perhaps the single most selfless person that Jaskier had met in his 40 years of living. But that came with its pitfalls too—especially as it related to how Geralt tended to view himself. There had always been splintered shards in Geralt’s soul that Jaskier didn’t know how to begin to dig out. But he can still picture the way Geralt had stayed kneeling for a moment on those wooden planks, his head bowed like the weight of the world had—for just a moment—dropped on top of him.
Jaskier fears he knows that body language, and the weighted silence that had followed that moment. He fears that his 22 years of traveling with the Witcher means that he really does know Geralt. And that Geralt feels that he has let them down somehow, despite all he did to try to save them. Even at great risk to himself, Jaskier remembers with a bit of a wince, hearing the creak of those boards under Geralt’s feet.
The Witcher could never catch a break, it seemed.
With a sigh, Jaskier stands and crosses to him. Geralt makes no move to acknowledge his presence, not really, but his stillness is a sign of recognition in and of itself. The bard sets himself carefully, gingerly, on the boulder beside him.
“You did your best,” Jaskier tells him softly, the words managing to push through his slightly tight throat. “There’s nothing else you could have done.”
Jaskier looks at Geralt as he says it. The Witcher had spent more years constructing a mask of passivity and stoicism than Jaskier had been alive, but the bard knows him. And when he sees Geralt’s gaze drop by a few degrees, he knows he’d been right about where Geralt’s thoughts had been.
Something in Jaskier’s chest pulses with an ache that he cannot name. Geralt has carried too much for too long and Jaskier desires fervently to ease that burden. To find a way to let Geralt breathe and be and exist without quite so much heaviness.
“Look, why don’t we leave tomorrow?” he offers, his fingers fidgeting in his lap against the sudden desire to take Geralt’s hand. “That is, if you’ll give me another chance to prove myself a… worthy travel companion.”
It’s a weak, flimsy attempt for a smile. Geralt doesn’t, but there’s just the slightest tug at the corner of his mouth when he hums in response. Geralt glances at him briefly, and though Jaskier doesn’t meet his gaze, that aching in his chest gives a sharp lurch with hope.
“We could head to the coast. Get away for a while,” he adds softly. He’d never said the words aloud before, but they resonate with a certain familiarity. “Sounds like something Borch would say, doesn’t it? ‘Life’s too short. Do what pleases you… while you can.’”
Jaskier swallows, setting his hands on his thighs because they are only getting more fidgety with each pulse of that sharp warmth in his chest—more insistent now. Harder to ignore.
“Composing your next song?” Geralt rumbles quietly.
Jaskier looks down at his hands. “No, I’m just, ah—” I love you, he thinks without daring to look at him. “Just trying to work out what pleases me.”
VII.
They’re half a mile out of town when it starts to rain. The starting sprinkle lasts just long enough for Jaskier to think he’s glad he invested in a case for the lute before the sky opens up and it starts to pour. Then he’s also glad he bought some decent boots at the last town they were in.
“Fuck.” Jaskier knows that tone. Geralt is annoyed. The bard glances at the Witcher beside him, a faintly amused smile pulling at his lips and a teasing quip on his tongue, but… it dies on his tongue .
Because Geralt meets his gaze, and for a moment, Jaskier forgets how to breathe.
He doesn’t know why, really. The rain soaks Geralt’s white hair, causing some of it to fall into the man’s face in damp, loose strings. His dark shirt is quickly becoming plastered to his broad shoulders from the downpour, having left his armor to be cleaned during their quick trip to the woods to collect some medicinal herbs. Jaskier thinks it’s something about the Witcher’s eyes. Maybe it’s something to do with the way water droplets cling to his lashes. Or the way his golden eyes seem so much brighter in the downpour. Maybe it’s something else entirely.
Jaskier is a man of many words and many metaphors. But he finds words failing him entirely now, and he can’t explain why. Except that he’s left with the sudden, clear sense that looking at Geralt feels a lot like being called home.
Geralt tilts his head slightly, the way he usually did when he was about to ask a question, but Jaskier blinks and jumps in before he can.
“And you thought the lute case was a poor investment. Well, how do you feel now, Geralt? We still have half a mile to go before shelter, and such time for a lute to spend in rain like this…” Jaskier shakes his head. “It would be nothing short of an absolute, irrevocable tragedy.”
“Hmm.” Geralt looks away from Jaskier then, squinting briefly up at the sky. Not squinting, Jaskier realizes after a beat. Glaring.
“Not a fan of the rain?” he asks, mostly rhetorical. Geralt rarely vocally complained—usually Jaskier did it enough for the both of them—but the slight crease between his brows is a familiar look of displeasure. Jaskier pulls the lute case off his shoulders and shrugs out of his doublet.
“It will make it harder to track—what are you doing?”
Jaskier rolls his eyes as he slings the lute case back around his shoulder. “You left your cloak back at the inn, and I know, though you will adamantly deny it, that the real reason you hate the rain is because it gets into your eyes and makes it harder for your sensitive, Witchery eyes to see. So, here.” He hands the purple doublet out to him, looking very pointedly down the road where they can just barely make out the silhouette of the edge of the town.
“Jaskier…” A hesitation. A surprisingly heavy one.
“Honestly, Geralt, you’ll be doing me a favor. Wet doublets are dreadfully heavy, and as I am already saddled with carrying the weight of this lute and your reputation…” Jaskier looks back at the Witcher then to flash him a smile.
Geralt stares at him for a long moment, then takes the garment. As he does so, Jaskier swears he sees a twitch to the corner of Geralt’s mouth.
The bard quickly spins around and rushes a few steps in front of him, arms outstretched to welcome the rainfall, feeling a little breathless again.
VIII.
Jaskier jolts to awareness with a desperate, strangled gasp. Bile surges up his throat and he barely has the wherewithal to roll away from the person beside him—whose presence is more sensed than seen. Jaskier groans and shuts his eyes against the rolling nausea and the oddly briny taste it leaves in his mouth.
“Fuck,” he mutters, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand. He feels a hand rest between his shoulder-blades, so gently it almost seems hesitant.
When Jaskier takes a breath, it trembles. More bile—salty and acrid—rushes up his throat. When the second round of nausea abates and the coughing that wracks his lungs eases, Jaskier feels something cool and smooth pushed against his lips. He instinctively jerks away.
“Damn it, Jaskier,” snaps a rumbling voice. It’s weirdly familiar, even if the strain in it sounds foreign to the bard’s ears. “There’s not—”
Whatever the voice was saying is drowned out by a beautiful, echoing melody. It whispers promises of safety and warmth and love, and something in Jaskier’s chest gives a near painful lurch towards the sound. It’s also not until then that Jaskier gets a sense of his surroundings: the lake in front of him, the grainy sand sticking to his sopping wet clothes, the slate gray overcast sky above him. There are ripples in the lake and that song is calling to him from the water.
Overcome, Jaskier scrambles towards it.
“Fuck—”
Something thick and heavy grabs around Jaskier’s torso and pulls him back. The bard’s back hits something solid and firm but Jaskier’s chest is still pulling, pulling, pulling towards the water, towards the song.
The cool, smooth thing is pressed to his lips again. Jaskier wrenches his head away. But then he can hear something, barely, rumbling like distant thunder beneath the lilting song.
“Drink it, Jaskier. Please.”
The “please” sounds… odd to him. Strained and choked.
Jaskier lets his lips part in response, and a cool liquid floods into his mouth. It tastes of honey and cotton, washing away the briny taste that had been lingering in his mouth. He swallows it down.
A second later, the song fades away. So does the sound of the lake and the dusk breeze brushing past his ears. Just… silence. Jaskier feels the pulling in his chest release and the bard nearly goes boneless from the sudden relief.
He blinks a few times as clarity starts to trickle back into his thoughts. He’d been… traveling. Tracking a siren, or a mutation of one anyway. Yes, that was right. But he’d been with someone. Specifically…
“Geralt?” he asks, his own voice sounding odd in his head with the rest of the world muted. He realizes as soon as the name leaves his lips that Geralt is the thing that’s holding him in place. Jaskier cranes his neck to look at the Witcher, who still hasn’t relaxed his grip. Bright gold eyes meet his blue ones, then flickers over his form with panicked speed.
The stoic, collected look the Witcher usually wore has splintered, just a bit, and Jaskier thinks he can see a glimpse through the cracks that Geralt is frantically trying to piece back together.
He’s… afraid, Jaskier thinks. Or he had been, a moment ago.
“I’m okay,” Jaskier tells him, if only because he has the feeling that maybe Geralt needs to hear it.
The Witcher doesn’t reply, instead swallowing thickly and sinking his head to where Jaskier’s neck meets his shoulder. And if Jaskier traces Geralt’s arm around him to find his hand and lace their fingers together, well. Geralt doesn’t seem to protest.
IX.
Jaskier is about halfway through the song about the vampiress when the door to the tavern ricochets open with a loud crack. Geralt staggers a step into the room—and it’s the fact that he staggers that makes Jaskier stop mid-song. The Witcher’s entrance is less than graceful, but Jaskier watches closely as Geralt grits his teeth, straighten his spine, and step fully through the threshold. Geralt’s eyes flicker over the room like he’s looking for something, or someone—perhaps the woman who had hired him—when they settle on Jaskier.
Oh.
The bard gracefully, if quickly, jumps to his feet and slings the lute in his hands around his back. Geralt is hiding it now behind sharp eyes and a rigid posture, but something is wrong. Jaskier can tell.
“I hate to cut a performance short,” he says to the crowd as he maneuvers through them towards the Witcher, mostly in an effort to break the sudden silence in the room, “but alas, I must bid you all adieu for the evening. Geralt, shall we?”
Geralt doesn’t argue. Doesn’t even hum. But he follows Jaskier as the bard carves a path through the crowd towards the stairs. Jaskier flashes patrons reassuring smiles despite the way his own throat is tightening with concern.
They make it to the room—barely—before Geralt’s steps falter again. Jaskier steadies him by grabbing his arm and bracing a hand against Geralt’s chest.
“Easy,” he says softly.
“Fuck.”
“Here. Let’s get you sitting before you end up face-first on the floor, because if that happens then we’re both out of luck because—Melitele’s tits—” Jaskier yelps when he staggers for a second under Geralt’s sudden weight. “Okay. I’ve got you. Here we go.”
Jaskier is rambling as they cross the small room to the bed. He helps Geralt sit, kneeling in front of him as the Witcher sinks to the edge of the mattress. Geralt grimaces tightly and pitches forward into the bard, his head landing on Jaskier’s shoulder. His weight sinks a bit more, as if too weary to pull away. This close, Jaskier can feel the echoes of faint tremors wracking through his body.
Jaskier swallows the rising panic down. “Potions?” he asks in as level of a voice as he can manage.
“Out,” Geralt answers. “The venom isn’t lethal just—” Another shudder and a tight grunt. “—hurts like a fucking bitch.”
Jaskier releases a faint breath. He supposes he should feel relieved that it’s not lethal, but he can’t help that the tightness in his throat doesn’t quite ease. “What can I do?” he asks, because of all the things Geralt could have done and all the places he could have gone, he chose to find Jaskier when in immense pain. He wants to live up to that display of open trust.
He feels Geralt fist a hand in his shirt. “Just… stay.”
“My dear Witcher,” Jaskier says thickly, and if his voice breaks just a little, at least Geralt doesn’t seem to notice. “I’m not going anywhere.”
X.
Jaskier doesn’t think about it. He sees the mage thrust a hand out in Geralt’s direction when the Witcher’s back is turned and Jaskier lunges on nothing but instinct and the acrid taste of fear on his tongue.
A bolt of sharp green slams into his chest. Something cracks when Jaskier hits the forest floor, something that the bard doesn’t think is magic. His head snaps against the ground, his vision swimming. Heat and sharpness tears through his chest.
Someone screams. Maybe it’s Jaskier. He thinks he hears his name shouted, but it sounds far away.
He is drowning. Can you drown without water?
The bard gasps, desperately, searching for air that he can’t seem to drag into his burning, burning, burning lungs.
His eyes sting. He doesn’t know how much time passes.
There’s a hand on his shoulder—and Jaskier tries very hard to let that tug him from his haze of thoughts. When the hand pulls at him, rolling him onto his back, Jaskier can’t quite contain the choked whimper that releases in the back of his throat. He grimaces, his eyes squeezed shut.
“Jaskier.”
He definitely knows that voice. Jaskier blinks his eyes open, setting squarely on Geralt above him. It occurs to him that he’s never seen Geralt’s eyes quite so wide.
“Fuck,” Jaskier wheezes. He grimaces again. Is he dying? He doesn’t know.
“What the fuck were you thinking, you goddamn idiot?”
“My dear Witcher,” Jaskier replies, pretending he doesn’t notice the way Geralt’s voice very nearly breaks. Jaskier voice is tight with pain—his lungs are throbbing—but soft. Unapologetic. “You’re quite lucky I love you, or else I might be insulted.”
He’d never said those words aloud before—I love you—but he means them. He thinks perhaps he’s meant them for quite a long time. Long before even the thought had occurred to him on that mountain all those years ago.
And he thinks Geralt knows this, from the way his eyes widen, and then his whole expression crumples.
“Jask,” he says, a hand cupping the bard’s jaw, his thumb skimming Jaskier’s cheekbone. “You can’t—you… fuck.”
Jaskier takes a breath to reply but cuts off with a wince at the sharp jolt it sends spiking up through his ribs. But he realizes then that the burning in his lungs is easing—gradually, but quickly—and the bard’s next exhale trembles with relief, even as his vision blurs with tears. Whatever spell the mage had sent at Geralt, it seems like one meant to briefly incapacitate and not kill outright. With a quiet grunt of effort, Jaskier presses a hand against the wet leaves beneath him and pushes to sit up.
Geralt looks startled, but he helps nonetheless. The hand on Jaskier’s jaw slips back to cup the back of his neck and the other grabs his free hand to ease him up. The bard sees Geralt’s gaze flicker over his form.
Jaskier tosses him a shaky, wan smile. “Not a lethal spell, it would seem.”
“You didn’t know that,” Geralt snaps, like that should have made a difference in Jaskier’s decision to jump in front of it.
“A moot point, really, Geralt.”
Something bright and pained flickers through Geralt’s gaze. He takes a breath as if to reply, then stops. A crease appears between his brows a second later. “You’re still hurt.”
“Some broken ribs,” Jaskier replies dismissively. The fact that Geralt is still gripping him like he’s afraid Jaskier might just dissolve into smoke in front of him doesn’t escape the bard’s attention.
“Hmm.” He sees Geralt swallow. Watches the way his pupils flicker over the bard’s chest and refuses to meet his eyes.
“Geralt.” The gaze snaps to his own, wide and splintering. Jaskier takes a shallow breath, his gaze as steady as the words that leave his lips. “I meant it, you know. I do. Love you, I mean.”
Though Jaskier can’t be sure—his ears are still ringing a bit—he thinks he hears Geralt’s breath catch.
“Jaskier,” he says, and the bard doesn’t know why his name sounds choked in Geralt’s throat. The Witcher leans forward until his forehead rests against Jaskier’s, and he’s clutching the bard’s hand to his chest like it’s a lifeline. “I… fuck. Fuck.”
And then Jaskier feels Geralt’s lips brush against his own—soft and careful, warm and asking. And Jaskier kisses him back with answers and promises on the edge of his lips.
It feels like coming home.