Work Text:
Julian Alfred Pankratz was born a happy, healthy baby, one misty November morning in the small duchy of Lettenhove. The Viscount glowed with pride, uncorking a bottle of brandy in the bouncing boy’s honor. He had, of course, not witnessed the birth, but reveled in the fact that he’d single-handedly created an heir. Julian’s mother, the Viscountess, though rather a mess (and who can blame her? The boy was neigh on ten pounds), inspected young Julian tip to toes, deeming him appropriate before handing him off to a wet nurse.
Strangely, the boy hadn’t cried once; he’d seemingly been born content, blinking blearily at the outside world like an old man who’d lost his spectacles and wasn’t quite sure whether he'd seen his grandchildren or an oddly-shaped boulder. He’d fallen asleep promptly after eating (drinking, rather) his first meal, the midwives reassuring the Viscountess that some babies were just quieter than others. She took this in stride, stroking a finger down the downy-soft cheek and settling in for a much needed rest. The Viscountess was a practical type; no use in forcing the boy to make a sound if he didn’t want to. He’d come around eventually.
Sure enough, by the time Julian turned two, his earlier silence had been all but forgotten. The toddler filled the halls of the Pankratz family estate with screaming, laughing, and sing-song nonsense, to the chagrin of his parents. And if his wails occasionally cracked a window, or his songs coaxed a furled rose into bloom, well. Nobody was quite stupid enough to bring it up. Glass quietly replaced itself, and the gardener saw rather more of young Julian than he’d counted on. Life went on at the estate, albeit a bit more, ah, colorfully than before.
When the young Viscount began to develop opinions , however, things fell rather sideways. The occasional broken windowpane became consistent, and the gardens overflowed with blooms even in midwinter. The elder Viscount and his wife had many lengthy talks about what to do with their, erm, blessed son, as the subject matter attempted to listen at the keyhole. Exorcisms were too intense, and any mage they spoke to turned pale at the question of how to remove chaos. As the Viscount rather wanted an heir to his estate (preferably alive), they elected to send the boy to Ban Ard, to hopefully train the chaos into some semblance of control. Control was key to managing an estate and a city, in the mind of the Viscount.
Needless to say, Julian did not go quietly. By the time they wrestled the ten-year-old heir into the portal, not a single shard of glass remained whole in the entire mansion. The cook swore the flames leapt high up the chimney, and the stable-boys spent the next hour desperately trying to calm the spooked horses. Julian Alfred Pankratz had left his mark on Lettenhove, and as he caught a last glimpse of his smiling, waving parents, he swore he’d never return.
Ban Ard (or bald arse , as the students called it) felt like something akin to hell. Julian found himself crowded into a dormitory with eight other boys his age and with an iota of his chaos. Classes were rigorous and often dangerous, with poisonings, burns, and flesh wounds not only common but considered part of the curriculum. If you didn’t return to your dorm at least a little bloody, you could be sure one of the other boys would give you something to bleed for. By twelve, Julian had risen to the top of his class, scars already accumulating on his milk-white skin. The windows at Ban Ard were shatterproof, and flowers can’t grow on stone floors.
After eight years, Julian had turned into the ultimate weapon. Swift, silent, lethal, like lightning in a bottle. Chaos in a bottle, like the Aretuza girls were taught. He’d been cut, burned, beaten, poisoned, stabbed, and crushed more times than any human should. His hands and arms consisted of more scar than skin, and he could withstand most major poisons with ease. Julian specialized in botany, taking a particular pleasure in reviving blooms and growing herbs, planting them outside the gates of Ban Ard. The other boys- men, now- stayed clear, something deep in his sky-blue eyes sending a message to anyone who dared to look.
I will fucking obliterate you .
He gave up his reproductive abilities for immortality in an instant. Children held no appeal for him; every sniveling inductee at the academy reminded him of his past, and at eighteen, Julian held firm in his promise to never return to Lettenhove. He’d ignored his parents every time they’d attempted a visit, holing himself up in the library until they eventually gave up. He let Andrejz the cosmetician put him to sleep without complaint. He’d been in enough pain to know he wanted the sedatives. Julian emerged from the fog a perfect specimen, smooth and young and whole . The only scar that was left was one he’d requested; a slice along his ribs, where a stray shard of glass had caught him on his way out of his childhood home.
Permanently young, permanently beautiful. Permanently lethal.
He’d been told he should’ve been a witcher, that his natural abilities would’ve aided him if the Path had called. Julian only laughed; as if he’d had a choice in what life-altering, traumatic events he’d be put through. Besides, he’d chosen to channel his chaos into botany for a reason. He’d much rather be reviving and growing plants than slaying monsters mercilessly. Healers had no place at Ban Ard, he’d learned. Scar tissue protects softer skin, and so the scar that was Julian protected his heart.
However controlled his chaos may be, Julian was impulsive. He loathed the idea of being shipped off to court, to be an advisor to a generation of kings for the rest of his life. Stagnancy didn’t suit him, and he rather didn’t want to be a pawn in the hands of the Brotherhood, thank you very much. And so he left. Middle of the night type deal, with nothing but the clothes on his back and a lute stolen from the music room. Traveling bards were gaining popularity across the continent, and Julian had enough trauma to compete with even the most grizzled. He changed his name, for good measure. Jaskier , like the flowers. Symbols of charm and joy, according to his botany classes, and they just happened to be his favorite color. It was always so fucking rainy at Ban Ard, and the yellow of the buttercups reminded him of the seldom sun.
And so Jaskier set forth, stealing a horse on his way out for good measure. He struggled with the poetics, the lyricism of song-writing, at first; putting his experiences into saccharine language seemed about six different types of wrong. How to get paid for singing about the time he’d fallen off a cliff and then had to drag himself back to the academy, where they used his battered body in an anatomy lesson? Or the time he’d managed to coax a single snowdrop out of the ground, his first winter there, only for the headmaster to step on it as a lesson?
He met, fucked, and fell out with another bard, by the name of Valdo, and oh, did that ever kick-start his career. Jaskier hadn’t been exactly sure he still had a heart to break, but the man’s betrayal hurt far more than he’d expected. He began to gain some local traction, innkeepers hiring him for a night or two before kicking him out when he eventually fondled the wrong person. He’d made his way up to Posada, fresh face and bare-bones talent getting him that far before his luck gave out. People rather loved a starving artist, it seemed (emphasis on starving ).
Shoveling bread into your pants as tavern-goers wish you’d been aborted isn’t the best feeling, but. Jaskier had faced much worse for much less, and Posada was notorious for their delicious bread. Or so he hoped.
It seemed that destiny had other plans, however. There, in the corner, brooded an absolute mountain of a man, with two swords strapped rather sexily to his back. A witcher , he realized, and the thought sent a thrill up his spine. Another, unbidden thought rose: immediately, I love him . No, he didn’t. This was to be firmly an economic opportunity.
“I love the way you just...sit in the corner and brood.”
Melitele, had he left all his charm up Marx’s ass?
“I’m here to drink alone.”
Mmm, a sexy voice, too.
“Good. Yeah. Good.”
The man had eyes the color of his name, and, really, who was Jaskier to ignore destiny?
He fucking wished he would’ve ignored destiny. Twenty-two goddamn years of his life, traveling the Continent until his feet bled and his near-death-experience count had reached a whopping fifty-five. Economic opportunity, my ass . Did “Toss a Coin” earn him enough coin (cumulatively, over twenty fucking years ) to buy back Lettenhove and Ban Ard? Yes. Did his bastard of a witcher just destroy him entirely because he lied to a mage about tying his destiny to hers? Also yes, and Jaskier rather wished he hadn’t fallen quite so deeply into buttercup-yellow eyes. He’d been a weapon at Ban Ard, and he told himself he was a weapon still, just one rather blunted by time.
Maybe he ought to pay a visit to his, ah, alma mater. See if they’d be amenable to opening up a teaching position for a former star pupil. It was worth a portal to find out, at least. After twenty years of cramming his chaos down until it leaked out of his ears, the portal sprang open without effort.
Unsurprisingly, Ban Ard welcomed him back with open arms. Much like witchers, mages were dying out. Their numbers had barely risen since Jaskier left, and they agreed to let him teach on the condition that he work without pay for one year, for “reparations” or some shit. Seems making every mage immortal rather flooded the market, after a few hundred years.
Jaskier agreed. He requested a greenhouse as his classroom, and as botany-slash-poisons master he received one. Now that he no longer had to leash his chaos, pretend he was normal, flowers bloomed where he trod. Trees that hadn’t given fruit in centuries ripened at his touch, and his greenhouse burst at the seams with his emotions. Roses and dandelions slowly replaced thistle and belladonna as he healed, and the boys he taught reminded him so painfully of himself there was a permanent patch of snow-white lilies near the back. Mourning, for who he used to be.
The first time Yennefer visited, petunias crawled the walls, blacking out the sun. She offered only apologies and friendship, however, and slowly he found himself trusting her. Much like himself, she’d returned to Aretuza after the mountain. Small sanctuaries, she’d said, the smile she gave only half-forced. The flowers receded, leaving only his carefully cultivated demonstration plants in their wake. Yennefer’s visits became regular, stopping by for tea in between classes and getting drunk with him on weekends. Drowning sorrows in a bottle became a competition, the two of them swapping horror stories from their academy days and after.
One Monday, grey and dreary, Jaskier made his way to his greenhouse only to find a familiar broad back blocking his path. Oh, fuck no . Normally Yennefer warned him when Geralt wandered into the area, so he could fuck off to his home on the coast until, ironically, the coast was clear. He knew Yen had made her peace with the witcher, and occasionally had custody of the Surprise. Cirilla . He’d met her; a lovely child, eager and bright. He’d grown her a magnolia, watching her eyes light up with just an itty-bitty twist of his heart. She’d adopted some of Geralt’s mannerisms, and moved through space exactly like the witcher had.
Mmm, and he’d thought he’d gotten over things. It’d been what? Six years? If Yennefer could make her peace, he supposed he could too. Geralt’s words echoed in his head, that final rejection ringing clear. If life could give me one blessing, it would be to take you off my hands. Well, Geralt hadn’t had to wait for life, or destiny, or whatever , to intervene. Jaskier had taken himself out of the man’s hands personally, and stitched his heart together with the care the other man hadn’t shown him.
“We should go inside.”
Jaskier smirked as Geralt startled. Witchers had a habit of not listening when there was nothing to listen for.
“Inside. Yes.”
The greenhouse doors opened with a wave of Jaskier’s hand, and he felt Geralt’s eyes on his back as he stepped into the humid air. New flowers brushed at his fingertips as he turned to face the witcher; carnations (red and yellow), gardenias, geraniums, and yellow tulips. So much for subtlety, then, mother above. At least Geralt couldn’t speak flower. Though, if the blonde and brunette blobs that had conveniently appeared just outside the building were anything to go by, his feelings would not remain secret for long.
“Jaskier, I’m- sorry. For...for what I said. It wasn’t fair to you, or to Yennefer.”
“Mmm, no, it wasn’t. Did you know that the first time I set foot in this greenhouse, the only thing that I could grow was cyclamen?”
Geralt didn’t know what cyclamen even were, by the look on his face. It shifted as Jaskier coaxed a tulip into bloom, something questioning and soft and...fond. Open, sweeter than Jaskier had ever seen him. Melitele, maybe Ciri really had changed him. He realized that Geralt never saw him use his chaos, though from the look in his eyes Yennefer had explained at least some of it.
“You never said you could..do this.”
“You never asked,” and Jaskier put just enough teasing in his tone to blunt the accusation. He wasn’t angry, anymore, really. Just...resigned, maybe. It’d been almost thirty years of this, of loving someone who believed himself so incapable of love he refused to accept it. The eighteen-year-old boy who’d seen destiny in the eyes of a witcher was still there, curled around his heart. Aching, just as he ached now.
“Geralt-”
A pounding, as Yennefer and Ciri seemingly were unable to continue waiting. They had their faces pressed against the glass, the younger girl’s eyes going wide as she took in Jaskier’s bouquet. She opened her mouth, taking a breath in before Yennefer clapped a hand over her mouth. Jaskier soundproofed the space, just to be safe. His feelings, while unfortunately expressed in flowers, were his to express in words. He turned his back on Ciri’s gesticulating, catching Geralt squinting and trying to read her lips.
“Anyway. Geralt, I have to say this, and I don’t care if you never speak to me again. I have loved you, since I was eighteen, and-”
Geralt crossed the space (infinitesimally expansive, somehow) in three steps, settling his hands on Jaskier’s waist and pressing their foreheads together.
“Please, can I kiss you?”
Jaskier didn’t deign to respond. He was too busy fulfilling a wish thirty years in the making, pointedly ignoring the women banging on the walls of his greenhouse and cheering. Coral honeysuckle climbed his legs, twining through his fingers and reaching into Geralt’s hair. He pulled back, trying to disentangle the vines as Geralt chuckled.
“ THAT ONE MEANS UNITED IN LOVE!”
“Cirilla, darling, while I’m glad the botany teacher at Aretuza is doing her job, now is not the time!”
Geralt only laughed harder, plucking a leaf out of Jaskier’s hair before leaning down to kiss him again. They could go to the coast, maybe. Jaskier could have a garden, and Geralt could retire.
“My favorite flowers are dandelions,” Geralt murmured, head tucked into Jaskier’s neck.
Dandelions, for hope and healing. Fitting, really. And as Jaskier tucked a sunshine-yellow bloom behind the other man’s ear, he felt a kernel of that same hope begin to take root in his chest. Flowers can’t grow on stone floors, but they always manage to find cracks in the foundation.