Work Text:
He'd disappeared.
Geralt returned from gathering up a brace of rabbits to find camp as he'd left it.
Minus one mouthy bard.
There was no sign of a struggle and yet something wasn't right. His bedroll was there. The lute. Roach was nibbling clover in a patch of waning sunlight.
Perhaps he'd wandered off somewhere, lured away by some shiny thing that caught the man's flighty attention.
But he'd never done that before.
The witcher finished gutting, cleaning, cooking, keeping his hands occupied while his mind raced. He salted the hides, intending to dry them until he could have them fashioned into warmer gloves for Jaskier's often freezing fingers.
And still he hadn't returned. There was no ignoring how he'd been spirited away somewhere. No track or sign or bent twig to indicate a step in any direction. It was as if he'd been lifted from the face of the earth.
The panic rising in his throat choked off his breath and he could barely think. Jaskier could be--
No. Jaskier always found him.
Now he just had to find Jaskier.
Geralt thought back to the bard's behavior earlier today after leaving the inn and how he seemed so glad to put it behind them when usually he'd be begging for just more moment under an actual roof. Jaskier was quiet on the road, nervous enough that Roach picked up on it, knickering softly and lipping at his doublet when he came so close Geralt could have kicked him from the saddle.
"What is wrong with you today?" He'd been irritated with the human and how his lute case kept bumping his thigh. "You're more infuriating than usual." The growl was low and threatening, something Jaskier would normally laugh at and demand he stop his posturing. Instead he edged away a mere fraction.
"Nothing, dear witcher." Fingers swept through his bangs, repeatedly, messily. "Only a desire to remain close to my one true love."
"Hmm."
"Don't be jealous of Roach, darling. You're a very close second."
"Hmmm." Strawflower blue flicked away from him and then back to the path.
"There was a man." He laughed, sour and sharp. "There are many men, I know." Geralt tried to be patient and will away the spike of jealousy that had no business beating in a witcher's heart. There were always men. And women. And Jaskier could have any he chose. "I've seen them too often for it to be coincidence."
"Have they threatened you?" Jaskier jumped.
"No, nothing like that." Strong lungs filled audibly and he exhaled through his nose. Geralt could hear the pounding of his heart and the struggle it was to calm it. "Just something unsettling about them. The way they stare at me." It unsettled Geralt too. More than his training wanted him to admit.
"You bring that attention upon yourself, Jaskier." The bard's booted feet skittered and stalled and he jogged the few steps between them as Geralt kept going at his steady pace. The witcher looked down at him from a now impossible height, the distance nauseating as he realized the implications of what his need to be territorial made him say. But the seed of doubt was now planted and growing swiftly, watered and fed by insecurity and fear both. Blue like a sky consumed with storm clouds darkened with the sorrow filling them up and the pain clotting Jaskier's voice struck him to the core. Pride and guilt kept him stoic.
"You must know the only feelings I have are for you." He did. Of course he did. Jaskier was everything to him. Coming back to his embrace after a hunt was the only thing keeping him trudging relentlessly forward on his worst days. On his best, it was like coming home even when camped in the damp woods with Jaskier's loud complaints scaring off all the game.
"Hmm." Unnecessarily cruel and the bard's hurt expression twisted his stomach up into a sickening knot and they spoke no more.
Geralt was impatient, waiting for Yennefer. He'd packed and repacked the camp only to set everything back out again, sharpened and polished every weapon in his possession, oiled Jaskier's lute and plucked the dissonant strings as he tried not to imagine all the horrible scenarios his love could be facing. Roach's coat shone in the firelight, curried and combed within an inch of her life, tack glimmering and spotless.
He knew Yen would receive his summons and need time to prepare, but the moon was already too high in the black and he needed her now.
Because he had nowhere to begin. Nowhere to start. No clue what to do and sick with waiting.
She found him pacing, wearing a path in the leaf litter, chin in hand and arm wrapped around his middle. When he turned to her he knew his eyes were wild because even she took a step back.
"He's been taken." In two strides he was gripping her shoulders, "he's been taken and I don't know where." Gently Yennefer placed one slim hand over his where it was still squeezing, shaking, and lifted it to hold in both her own.
"We'll find him. He's a stubborn, irritating twit so I'm surprised he hasn't been returned already." She pushed him towards Roach. "Stand there out of the way and let me work."
"Jaskier told me someone was following him."
"Mhm." Affirmed distractedly as the witch concentrated on the energies still in camp.
"I told him it was his fault."
There. A thread of chaos. Just a trace.
"Almost sounds like you were jealous, Geralt." She fixed him with a stern eye. "No matter what someone's actions may seem to imply, it never gives anyone the right to them." She softened, lips turning up into a sad smile. "Your lark is infatuated with you. It's absolutely disgusting. Trust that next time."
"Hmm." Yen dropped it knowing the message was heard.
"I've found a trail." She sighed. "Whoever it was, they were clumsy in their haste."
"They were watching him."
"Watching you most likely, for the chance." Growling filled the clearing, low, angry, so much so that even Roach stamped uneasily.
"I'll take you there and return you both."
They met resistance.
Geralt knew they would if they had half an understanding of his songbird's value but he only had eyes for the quaking figure dressed only in breeches tied to the lavish bed centered in the ostentatious room. The witcher let Yennefer dispatch of the paltry mage, not caring what she did to or where she deposited the body, only moving slowly to cut Jaskier's bonds, wincing at the abrasions wrapping each wrist and ankle. Geralt wrinkled his nose; the bard smelled of the man who'd taken him, covered in perfumed soaps and scented oils that had no business being there on his skin, put there by someone else. The clawed hand colliding with his face took him off guard and in the span of a heartbeat the human was pressed against the headboard.
"No!!" Jaskier hugged himself tightly, trembling fit to shake apart. "No, don'touch me!!" Next he clutched at his hair, curled impossibly tighter and keened in despair.
"Ah, gentle, bardling, hush little lark." Jaskier was out of his mind with terror and likely a bad head wound judging by the split, bloody skin and dark bruise spreading from his temple. "Jaskier." Soft, as the softest of prayers whispered in the dark so the disappointment of knowing it went unheard stung a bit less. Pleading for the bard to come back to him. "Yen?" Fear he was incapable of hiding shook his voice.
"Give him a moment." She spoke quietly, not wanting to frighten him any more than he already was. "Keep speaking to him." For several moments, long as ages, Geralt mumbled nonsense for the sake of the man he loved until the sharp scent of panic faded somewhat and he edged closer, allowing his weight to sink into the mattress to announce his presence.
"Jaskier, my dear sparrow, please." The bard shook his head as if to clear it and reeled, blinking hard and looking beyond tangled bangs toward the familiar voice. Even from the distance he was away, Geralt could see sluggish pupils expand surrounded by a ring of dazed blue. The blood matting his hair and tacky on his cheek made Geralt want to bundle him safely up into his arms and run. But the dread was still there, the distrust in his posture, and rushing him would do more harm than good. He'd be patient. For Jaskier he could be patient and wait for him. He wouldn't mess this up too.
When the bard lunged, they were all caught off guard, and Jaskier went down hard and dizzy on one elbow before using Geralt's clothes to pull himself up until he was level with eyes of liquid gold. He sat back on his knees, face cradled in his palms, back heaving.
"M'sorry." The hysterical edge to that normally dulcet voice broke Geralt's heart in two. "I d'didn't want to go, I didn't wan'im to take me!" Stuttered and slurred, breath stopping somewhere in his chest and choking him. Catching him up, Geralt pressed him gently to himself, cradling his head and inhaling deep and easy, murmuring for Jaskier to do the same.
"Calm, dove, breathe with me." Lost in the throes of his anguish, Jaskier didn't seem to hear, and with the wound to his head Geralt didn't want to try any signs. Instead he ran careful fingers tenderly through the dark strands, swallowing down the guilt tangled around his lungs and creeping up his throat like strangling vines. He'd accused Jaskier of wanting this when he knew, of course he knew, that much of his flirtatious personality was an integral part of his stage presence. An act. An act that, this time, attracted the wrong kind of attention. And Geralt had failed to protect him from it.
"I didn't mean to, I didn't mean to, I didn't mean to…" whispered feverishly into the span between neck and shoulder, hot tears punctuating each syllable.
"I know, my lark, my sparrow. Hush now, I know, hush, hush." Geralt lifted him as if he were made of spun glass, delicate and fragile and beautiful, nodding to Yennefer who had his doublet folded neatly over one arm.
They went together.
Yen left them alone after reassuring Geralt that Jaskier's wounds would heal with rest and time.
"He needs caring for. Be kind." She settled a palm on the witcher's face, "even if you don't understand. Be kind."
With a soft cloth and softer touch Geralt cleaned away the dried blood, the sickeningly sweet perfumes, examining the gash beneath his hairline and determining that it would heal on its own without much of a scar to remember it by. Jaskier had gone quiet and tense, pressed close and still.
"G'rlt." Choked, weak, curling trembling fingers into the fabric above his heart and pressing one hand to his face to hide, but Geralt heard him sobbing all the same. The witcher could smell blood. Could smell pain, fear, shame, everything that Jaskier wasn't and shouldn't be and Geralt slipped him into a spare shirt so at least he smelled familiar. The black was stark against pale, translucent skin, delicate blue mapping the rivers that lay beneath. Rivers that still ran. Jaskier was still here.
The bard burrowed closer, relaxing in a hold he trusted, sighing deeply before looking up at him through fluttering lashes. Geralt pressed trembling lips to Jaskier's forehead, lingering there until his lark relaxed another degree.
And he breathed.
Later, dozing in a real bed at the inn Geralt insisted taking him to and after a proper bath, Jaskier refused to part with the loose dark linen, bundling it close and over his hands so he could press it to his face. It was a comfort, immeasurably so, the scent of loam and petrichor anchoring him to here and now instead of there and then. The mattress dipped and a large palm swept over his aching head. He didn't remember being struck, but the stranger had spared no strength it seemed.
"How are you feeling?" This wasn't a conversation Jaskier wanted to have right at this moment, even if his white wolf was being so forthcoming with his words. He was embarrassed for putting them in this position to begin with. If he could just reign it in and stop acting like such a, such a--racing thoughts interrupted with a gentle kiss pressed to his brow. "None of that, little lark. This wasn't your fault and I'm so sorry I ever said it was." Oh. Geralt slipped beneath the quilt and tugged Jaskier close, until he was resting on his chest, ear pressed to that unnaturally slow, grounding heartbeat. Lulled, intoxicated by the pulse below and the gentle hand running the length of his spine over and over Jaskier let slip his confession, silver tongue tripping over words in his exhaustion.
"Thought you didn't want me anymore. Like on the mountain…" Geralt wasn't surprised, even just now beginning to embrace conversation.
"I was. Jealous." He dropped kiss after sweet kiss to the top of his head. "I was wrong."
"Oh." When Jaskier could remember again Geralt knew he'd face no end of teasing. It would be worth it. "Took you a long time." Quieter still and the witcher could hear his breath deepen and slow, could feel him tug the black shirt, his black shirt, even tighter to him.
"I'm sorry, dear songbird."
"Din't think you were coming." Geralt crushed him close enough that it forced the air from his lungs and Jaskier's tired cornflower blue eyes glanced up at him naked with worry. Worry for him.
"I will always come for you. Always."