Chapter Text
When Geralt says, in not so many words, that he is going to Kaer Morhen for the winter, Jaskier… flounders. Just a bit. They’ve spent the last two winters together, slogging through snow and ice and anything else that wanted to befall them, and — it feels like being left behind in a way that waking up alone in a strange town never has.
And then Geralt says, again in not so many words, that he is willing to meet back up on purpose in the spring, and —
What that really means is that he has to find somewhere to winter, because of course he does but also because they need to determine where it might be reasonable to meet again. Or, he will, when he’s done internally cheering over the olive branch that Geralt has offered him.
There aren’t actually a great deal of options for places to weather the season. He could go back to Lettenhove, but that’s the worst idea he’s ever had. He could try to charm his way into some noble’s good graces to spend the winter at their estate in exchange for his lute and his voice, but that only has half a chance of working. It’s not his fault that so many of the highborn lords and ladies in Temeria and Redania both are bored of their lives and marriages, but —
Well, it doesn’t matter.
The only other real option left to him is Oxenfurt, and when he thinks back to his memories of the place — the buildings of the University, the sea so close at hand — it’s an easy enough decision to make. The city is large enough and bustling and there are surely at least a few of his friends from school that might let him stay for a little while. Or, if he has to, he’ll make his way playing in inns every day for the next several months — it is still a surprise to be in such demand as he is, even though it is also a point of pride.
When he tells Geralt his plans, the other man nods. Hums and thinks and eventually tells him to meet him between Murivel and Rinde, along the Pontar. It’s some village that Jaskier has never heard of, and that’s including that he spent a considerable amount of time with geography and history texts when he was still a student.
Still — he gets directions, or what counts for them when given by a man like Geralt — and they part ways for the winter.
Despite the few weeks he has spent traveling to get to Oxenfurt, Jaskier has not actually spent much time considering the specifics of who he might stay with when he actually arrives. He knows he will find somewhere, one way or another, but —
He could talk to the Dean that was his adviser when he was still a student and look into getting a winter appointment — that would come with rooms, and likely even a stipend. But he would have to actually teach — and he does remember being a student, remembers his classmates too — and it would be less than easy to leave when spring rolled around… And there is no world where he is going to leave Geralt, who offered to meet back up with him, waiting.
He could ask Shani, but for all that they have always gotten along well — her in her sharp way, him in his… own way — they have never been that sort of close.
…does he really have no other options? Has time made him remember his years at the academy more favorably than they were? He had plenty of acquaintances, he is realizing: people he got drunk with, or danced the night away with, or even fucked. But none of them would bear his company out of the blue, three years past graduation. The only reason Shani might put up with him would be because they never fucked, which might make their acquaintance salvageable in a way none of his other female acquaintances are.
Well…
She is an option, and the moment it occurs to him he feels like an idiot for forgetting her. How did he even manage? He decides, in that instant, as he passes through the gates to the city, that he will at least pay her a visit. Ask if she might let him stay the night, if nothing else.
Is she still with that boor Eryk? Are they married now? Is she even still in Oxenfurt? She’d mentioned taking a position as a scribe for her own adviser, but that had been years ago. Things change with time — just look at him; he’s famous now, more or less. Or at least more famous than when he left.
He’d never bedded her, either, though for different reasons than he and Shani never did. And gods, are there really so few people in his educational background that he liked but didn’t go to bed with?
Jaskier had liked her from — their first meeting, really. They’d both had the same professor for their grammar seminars that semester, and — Well, Jaskier has always been weak to the pull of a lovely woman. He’d not been quite so cocksure (hah!) at that stage of his life, though, and his initial move had been to — to take the desk next to hers, and hopefully strike up genuine conversation. It’s not as if he went over with the express purpose of getting into her bed, but it would have been (and would be today) a crime against his nature to see someone that appealed to him and not make at least some approach.
The seminar had begun before he figured out what to say, and perhaps he spent more of it listening to her monologue under her breath than he did listening to the subject material but —
She said something sharp and sarcastic about another classmate’s baseless line of questioning to herself, just loud enough for him to hear, and he’d laughed aloud without meaning to. The look they’d shared, when she turned to him with her eyebrow raised and clearly was trying to determine why a stranger was obsessing over her murmuring — it’d been piercing. He’s never been the same, since.
But their friendship — because it did turn into a real friendship — never turned into anything else. He would invite her out (sometimes with a bribe) to attend parties and performances, but she either never noticed the way he looked at her, or she was ignoring it. Eventually, he — well. Jaskier knows better than to push where he is not wanted, really he does, and their friendship was worth more than abating his libido.
It shouldn’t have hurt him quite so much to see her accept Eryk’s proposal. It seemed like he appeared on the scene and within a week had tied her to him. How did she even meet him? He doesn’t even know. But it had cut into him, just a little, to see her accept the advances of someone so — terrible. In personality and as a student.
Still, she found the time to hang out with him around seeing her boyfriend, and something about not having the option, even remotely, to pursue her, changed his perception of their friendship. It hurt, sure, to see her with Eryk — at first, anyway. But he got used to it, and she seemed happy enough with him that he kept his remarks about the man’s abilities in mathematics and dialectic to himself.
Even when they’d parted upon graduation — he’d set out the next morning with his lute and his pack and a yearning for stories that is only mostly satisfied by Geralt’s contracts — it’d been on good terms.
If she and Eryk are still together, he won’t ask to stay. Won’t put her in the place of having to either tell him no or put up a guest that will irritate her partner — and Jaskier has always, always gotten on Eryk’s nerves.
Jaskier is on campus and approaching the library without ever consciously deciding to take that path, but — if she is still at the academy, it’s the likeliest place for her to be. It’s where she basically lived when they were students, too.
There’s someone locking up the place when he approaches, but he knows even from a distance that it’s not her. It’s a young man — when did he get old enough to find anyone ‘young?’ — that he doesn’t recognize. When he asks after her, all he gets is a strange look.
“She left a while ago,” he says. “I would expect her to be at home. The way I would like to be.”
“Right, right, sorry—” Jaskier puts up his hands in surrender, apology. “I don’t suppose you could tell me where it is that she lives?”
Even in the low light — it’s getting dark earlier and earlier as winter approaches — he can see the sharp look he gets. He takes a step back, hands still up. “Please don’t mistake me; I’m an old friend, I just — haven’t been here in a while. I’m not looking to take advantage.”
The man scoffs, rolls his eyes. “It’d be more believable if you were,” he says. Jerks his head to the building across the way, closer to the gate. “Pretty sure she’s got rooms in the staff residential wing.”
They part ways before the man can get any further fed up with him, and even as he leaves, Jaskier wonders over what her peer had to say. More likely to have someone menace her than be her friend — that was the implication, wasn’t it? And he still gave Jaskier her whereabouts? It makes him uneasy, just a little, even though it has benefited him in this moment.
The staff wing is nice. Two stories and a place he had only stepped foot into a couple of times during his enrollment. He’d never had to fuck the professors for his grades, unlike some people. And in retrospect, he thinks a great deal of the staff had barely tolerated him, but — well, it’s not like he can hold that attitude against them.
He finds the matron of the place by accident — or she finds him, perhaps, though he invites it by walking around looking incredibly out of place. He knows he’s dirty from the road, and other things besides.
“Can I help you, young man?” she asks him in a tone that says, instead: ‘what exactly are you doing here?’
He tells her forthrightly and she looks surprise, but the expression is gone before he can remark on it or even think too much of it. He also has to promise her, three separate ways, that he means her no ill, but he does eventually charm the woman. It’s almost comforting to know that she is protected in such a way, on this level, with the juxtaposition of her colleague’s attitude before. Or maybe the matron is just proud of her job, but either way it does count.
He heads upstairs and finds the doors to be (thankfully) numbered, and it seems like people’s personalities have spilled out into the hallway besides. Potted plants sitting next to a mat against the wall, or a wreath on the door itself, things like that. Her door, however, is plain, undecorated in any way, and that, at least, seems in line with her personality. Or what he remembers of her — no frills, in most regards.
He takes a steadying breath before he knocks on the door — he may be a renowned performer, now, but he can still suffer from nerves and unfortunately he is suffering. There’s a long silence, a long wait of him shuffling in place in this clean hallway while he looks up at the peephole in the door, and then — it’s thrown open.
She jumps him. There’s no other word for it. He barely gets even a moment to look at her before she’s in his arms, pulling him into the tightest hug — the only hug — he’s had in weeks. If not longer.
“It’s good to see you too, darling,” he says, unable to keep the fond petname or the happy laughter bottled up. This is so much better a welcome than he could have hoped for.
She pulls back after a long moment — he’s not going to complain, about any of it — and as she looks at him, he looks in return. She’s dressed down, wearing a robe that falls past the knee. It’s a deep and lovely blue that brings out the color of her skin. She’s not wearing shoes, and he distantly thinks — oh, even her toes are cute.
She makes a noise before he can begin to kick himself for — for that out-of-place thought, because he is a better man than that — and she backs up into her rooms with an expression that tells him to follow.
“Make yourself at home, won’t you?” she asks, and Jaskier won’t argue that, ever. He takes his lute and his pack off, leaving them next to the door on the other side of a surprisingly large pile of shoes and, after a moment of deliberation, removes his own boots. He’s filthy all over, but he won’t track road dust all over her clean floor.
There’s a fire crackling in the fireplace and a glass of wine on the table, amongst a pile of books and papers. She’s already walked off with the bottle — is she going to pour him a glass? Oh, this is why she was always his favorite — but there’s a book laid open on its face that catches his interest. Curious, he picks it up, careful to keep her place.
It’s called Cryptanalysis, by Sabella v Rocayne, which — is a name and a title that don’t mean anything to him. Or, don’t mean anything beyond the knowledge that her passion for ciphers hasn’t faded with time. They used to encrypt messages to one another for the sheer fun of it; it feels good to know that some things have stayed the same.
She returns with the wine, holding out a glass that he gratefully takes, and it is easy like breathing to fall into conversation.
She’s not shy about asking why he’s here, which — well, he can’t blame her. They haven’t seen one another in several years, and he hadn’t even bothered to send word. He really should have, now that he’s thinking about it.
He mentions that he has a few friends he hoped might let him stay with them and she suggests the same thought he’d had before — taking a position as a professor for the winter. He loves the way her mind looks at a problem, any problem.
Jaskier is feeling a bit nervous when he carries on, says: “if you would rather I go somewhere else, it’s no offense to me, of course. You were just—”
“Did I not just say that I missed you?” she asks, talking over him as he says “—the first that came to mind.”
And sure, she had said she missed him, but he is not unfamiliar with frivoloties of speech. They parted on well enough terms that even she — who he has seen get more than testy with peers and strangers alike — would not immediately turn him away.
Still, it seems as if the matter is settled. Apparently she truly has missed his company, considering the amount of ill-advised (in her words) shenanigans they got up to over their years of schooling. He can vividly remember at least one occasion where they went to a party, he drank entirely too much, and she rubbed his back while he threw his guts up in a flowerbed.
Conversation changes routes — she wants to know about his travels, which does not mind to talk about, really, ever, except he has been walking so long and so far that he does not particularly want to relive any of them, not currently. It’s just as he’s redirecting their conversation that he remembers — fuck. He doesn’t know if she and Eryk are still together or not, and he had promised himself he wouldn’t —
“How is life as a kept woman?” he asks, feeling tense all over even as he considers what her answer might be. She’s not wearing a ring — had Eryk given her one, last they’d seen one another? Or has she never worn a ring? Why can’t he remember?
When she reveals to him that she’s no longer with Eryk, something loosens in his chest. Good, he hasn’t put her in a tight spot, that way. When she reveals that he had the nerve to cheat on her, a fire blazes in him. She says “I may have made a scene,” though, in that shy proud way she has, and he is minutely soothed — and very proud of her, himself. She’d always had a tendency to internalize slights and inconveniences, willing to say sharp things but only to herself.
Still — “I knew I taught you well,” he says instead of asking where Eryk might be staying, so that he might go give the man a piece of his mind. It’d be out of line and he’s years late anyway. He presses his shoulder to hers in nice, platonic solidarity, and they move on to other topics of conversation.
As a concept, ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’ has not always made a great deal of sense to Jaskier. He has left scores of people behind, mostly on good terms, but he does not particularly miss the specifics of any of them. Can’t even remember most of their names, most of the time, except for a handful of significant nobles — and that’s just so he doesn’t walk into the wrong court.
Perhaps, he thinks, as they drink and talk and a once-dormant flower blooms anew in his chest, it is the returning that matters. He hadn’t realized how much she made him smile, or laugh, or feel, before he saw her for the first time in three years.
It is good to talk to her, in every possible way. They talk about the taste of the wine (fruity, the sort of thing he’s pretty sure she has always liked), the work she’s been doing (lately, several translations of magical texts from the Elder language into something more readable by someone who doesn’t speak the language), even some of his travels (mostly about places he has been, because he may not miss the people particularly but he does deeply love Novigrad.)
It is only in the back of his mind that he twists his thoughts around this renewed crush on her, and he resolves to keep it to himself — most especially if she is going to let him stay for any extended amount of time. Even he can be sensible enough not to endanger his lodging, though the idea is suggested by a voice in the back of his mind that sounds remarkably like Geralt.
Still, it’s not as if her feelings regarding him could have changed. She was never interested before — even people that he didn’t end up going to bed with had a — a way that they looked at him. A way their manner changed when they caught him looking. And she has never had either of those things. He wasn’t interested in doing it before, and it holds true now — he will not impose his feelings where they are not wanted. Even if they could have a very romantic winter together.
She yawns in the middle of a sentence about the transitive cipher in the book she was reading before and draws his attention back to her. It’s growing darker in the room now as the fire dies down, and she does look rather tired. Her empty glass is hanging loosely from her fingers; her arms are crossed over her chest as if to keep herself upright, or possibly warm.
“Looks like it’s time for nice young ladies to get to bed,” he says, feeling instantly a bit like a creep for wording it in such a way, but he carries on. He’ll have to work on his brain to mouth filter later — this is important in a way that his only other regular relationship is, and there are all sorts of things he doesn’t say to the Geralt, no matter what the man thinks.
To avoid disaster, he takes the wineglass and puts it on the table, and she yawns again into the palm of her hand but doesn’t otherwise move. “C’mon, up we go,” he encourages, taking one and then both of her hands, levering her to her feet. It’s muscle memory, mostly — he’d put her to be more than once in their carousing days.
The time really has gotten away from him — the moon is high in the sky through the crack in her curtains, but at least they hadn’t gotten completely out of control with their drinking. Perhaps that’s because he wasn’t egging her on; he’s always been the bad influence of the two of them.
Jaskier sits her down on the mattress, reaching behind her to pull back the blanket, and she puts a hand on his shoulder. Her grip is firm and when he looks back at her, she is already staring up at his face.
“I don’t have a guest room,” she says seriously, voice hushed. He had — sort of assumed, considering the layout of the place.
“I’ll sleep on the couch,” he assures her, and when he says it’s nicer than sleeping on the ground outside, he means it.
She’s still holding on to him, but her eyebrows are furrowed like she’s thinking, and he watches her do it. Tomorrow — tomorrow, he’ll tamp down this crush. For now, for this long moonlit moment, he is going to look at the shadowed line of her brow and yearn to place a kiss there.
“Or,” she says, drawing his eyes to her mouth. “You can sleep in here. If you want.” What? She pats the bed behind her with her free hand, and he schools his face as best he can to hide his surprise. Is she truly so trusting of him, or does she feel obligated to offer?
“You don’t think that’s a bit improper?” he asks, trying to give her an out and leaning back out of her personal space. He’d rather die than pressure her into anything that might lead him to be near her unwanted — but she snorts at him.
“As if you have ever been concerned with propriety, Julian,” is her retort, and he can feel the way she said his name in his chest. The pained noise he makes as he clutches his heart is only half-dramatics.
She kicks him — admittedly gently — when he blusters something about her impugning his character, but mostly words are coming out however they want to right now. He says, though, with purpose: “if you want, I will warm your bed.” That he tacks a ‘my lady’ on to the end is to just play into the way she has clearly perceived him as being as over the top as he ever is, and he is willing to wear that guise right now.
Gods above, she’s inviting him into her bed, and whether it is platonic or not (it is) he has so many vivid memories of the way she’d used to curl up against his side when they’d stayed the night together. He really has never been concerned with propriety, and though she was never so blatant as he was, he doesn’t think she much cares either.
He encourages her down into the sheets, to get comfortable, and steps out of the room. There’s just enough light that he can navigate the den, crossing to the table against the wall where there is a basin of water and a few folded rags. He’d seen them when he came in, but —
No matter the circumstances, if he is going to share her bed, he is not going to be covered in stinking road dust to do it. It takes some time to wash up, and he uses it to try and calm his heart and his mind. It doesn’t mean anything romantic for her to offer to share her bed — it didn’t before, and it surely does not now. He won’t make more of this than it is — she has always been a good friend to him, and he would not impugn that by trying to make it more when her feelings are not reciprocal. He will take the romantic manner he views his entire life with and turn it off in her presence, so that he does not misread any situation that they might find themselves in.
He changes into his cleanest pair of trousers, unwilling to dress down to his braies, but he does leave his doublet with the rest of his things. Jaskier steadies his nerves as he returns to the bedroom, feeling, almost, as if he has his silly heart under control.
Of course, when he climbs into the empty side of the bed and gets comfortable — facing away, because if not he may give in to the urge to watch her sleeping face and that is monumentally creepy — she messes it up for him. The press of her body against his back warms his outsides and his insides, a blooming heat that starts in his chest and pools in every empty space in him. Melitele preserve him, he’s doing his best.
She snuffles against the back of his neck and he stays as tense as he possibly can, to keep from — reacting, or making a noise, or anything. She seems to be well on her way to sleep again, but despite his tiring day, it takes him much longer.