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“Can I talk to you?”
“I’m in the bath.”
Geralt almost smiles. “Yes I can see that.”
Jaskier shrugs, “It’s a free country. At the moment anyway.”
Geralt can’t see where he might sit near the empty tub (well the nearly empty tub as it was currently occupied by a fully clothed Jaskier pouting into his knees as if he were 7 not 47). He’s not sure he’d be welcomed to sit close enough to settle on the lip of the tub. So he leans against the tree, feeling not a little dejected when Jaskier remains firmly staring at the meadow dipping below them.
“Priscilla said I would find you here.”
Jaskier nods. “Well that’s her nameday gift forfeited.”
“It’s beautiful up here.”
“Yes I know.”
Geralt was hoping for more of a response than this. “Jaskier-“
“Shut up,” Jaskier says, turning in the tub to face Geralt, leaning against the other side as if he were soaking in one of his frou frou scented and bubbled baths. It’s not loud or harsh or joking. It’s tired, resigned. “Geralt, darling, please just… shut up.”
Apologies and declarations are crowding at Geralt’s tongue, but he obediently bites them back.
Jaskier sighs. It’s genuine and Geralt hates the sound of it.
Usually Jaskier sighs for the melodrama as he announces that he’s tired and cold and demanding they stop in the next town or so help him Meletile he will steal Roach while Geralt meditates and they will sleep under roofs while Geralt picks leaves out of his own thrice-damned hair. Sometimes he would sigh like a lovesick fool as the love of his hour smiles at him or invites him back to the nearest horizontal (and sometimes vertical) surface). Now he gives that sweet sigh (and many others of spicier notes) to Geralt since their handfasting four years back. Four years and Geralt still hadn’t perfected the art of not hurting Jaskier without meaning to.
Geralt studies Jaskier’s face when no other sounds or words are forthcoming.
“I’m sorry.”
Jaskier’s mouth ticks up slightly before dropping again. “I know you are.”
“Is there anything I should… be doing or saying?” Geralt feels so out of his element. He doesn’t do apologies often. And he can’t fuck this up with Jaskier. He can’t risk not having Jaskier in his life, when he has vowed in front of their motley family and any god that might have cared to hear that Jaskier IS his life.
“Well, listening to me when I said I was going to take some time and to not follow me might have been a good start, but we’re past that now.”
Geralt hangs his head and Jaskier sighs again.
It’s fond, exasperated and angered more than anything else, but a little fond. “You great fucking idiot. I can be cross at you and still love you. I can hold resentment and sympathy for Yen at the same time. I can think of Ciri as at least a little my daughter too while knowing when to step back and let you do the parenting. I have grown up, you know.” Jaskier looked up. “My worldview was knocked entirely off kilter when I was eighteen.”
“By meeting me,” Geralt nodded.
Jaskier rolled his eyes. “By the elves, you truly spectacular moron.”
Geralt remembered now. An eighteen-year-old boy tied to a Witcher and staring death in the face, yet he still felt concern for the elf woman who had kicked him in the chest not moments earlier. The same moment Geralt decided if they survived and Jaskier still wanted to follow him on the Path, full of danger as it was, Geralt would let him.
“I’d thought them to be… I mean, gods, the way humans spoke of them as kings and treated them as beasts. Do you know why I made them out to be bandits in ‘Toss a Coin’, my love?”
Geralt’s too relieved to be called Jaskier’s love to think deeply. “Because it made a better story?”
“Because it kept them safe.” Jaskier shakes his head. “If people had known they were trying to rebuild, they would have done exactly as Filavandriel feared and killed off the rest of them. He wouldn’t even have to dig that mass grave, he’d in it. He gave me the best lute I’ve ever touched. He gave me my life and yours when he didn’t have to. They were better than the stories said they were. Like a certain Witcher I’d just met.” Jaskier looks up at Geralt. “When I said respect doesn’t make history, I didn’t mean mine. I meant yours and theirs. Painting you as the hero made people think differently about Witchers, pretending the elves were some ragtag band of cruel incompetents kept people from seeking them out. After all, The White Wolf had already defeated them.”
Geralt dared to sit on the tub lip, hand on his thigh as it itched to touch the bard.
Jaskier shook his head. “I am melodramatic, not a fool. So yes, when you ignore my advice and feelings for the hundredth time in the day, yes I will stomp off and go sit in an empty bath in a field of flowers and sulk like I am a fucking child again. Because I need to have feelings and you seemed bound and determined to not let me.”
“I didn’t… mean to.”
“You never do, darling,” Jaskier smiles slightly but it’s a weary thing. “That’s why I haven’t left.” He leans forward, closer but not touching still. “I only ever left you once and that’s because you finally broke my heart.” He sees Geralt’s mouth open and cuts him off before he can speak. “It was seven years ago and I have long since forgiven you that. So tell me, Witcher idiot of my heart, why you can’t just let me have two damn minutes to scream in an empty meadow and cry in an empty bathtub?”
Geralt bent low, as if in supplication. “I hate seeing you hurt. Especially when I am the cause. I hated it with the djinn. I hated it on the mountain once I calmed. I hate it every time I cannot… find the right way to react and your eyes go cold.” He lifted his head to meet those cornflower blue eyes he adored. “I fear I will break your heart again, so I came to see if…”
“If I was leaving? Finally fed up with you? Ready to blame you for every shitty situation in my life?” Forgiven is not forgotten, clearly. ”I know you try, my love, but you have to try harder sometimes. Instead of shutting down and shutting me out.” Jaskier’s hand twitches like he means to touch Geralt’s face, but he clenches it into a fist instead. “First thing you can do is stand up, walk back across this field to Priscilla’s house, and leave me in fucking peace for an hour or two. Then and only then will I walk back in, let you apologize, tell you how to handle the situation better in the future and you best be taking notes, Geralt. I want a quill in your fucking hand. Then next time I’m trying to help you can either fucking let me or have faith that I will need to say some very unkind things about your parentage, your relationship to farm animals, and your general state of hygiene and emotional health. But I will come home to you. Believe me. You have a lot of making up to do later, so y’know I’d get a start on thinking how you’re going to do that.””
Geralt couldn’t help the small smile.
Jaskier’s lips slipped up before he hardened his expression. “Okay fuck off now, Geralt. I’ll be back later.”
Geralt left, hearing the small sobs interspersed with swearing in a staggering number of languages. It made his heart ache and his teeth clench to not turn around and offer apologies. He wanted to beg Jaskier’s forgiveness, wanted to say the right words, wanted to know what those right words were. He had to trust Jaskier would do as he said and come back to tell him.
Back at the cottage, Priscilla and Ciri looked up from their game of Gwent.
“He’ll be back,” Geralt said, putting all his faith in the words. No, in his husband.
Sure enough a little over two hours later, Jaskier walked back into their friend's home.
Geralt was waiting with a quill and parchment.