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When Jaskier gets out of the bath, he smells of cloves and pine. Sometimes, if he’s feeling particularly warm and relaxed and dead tired, cinnamon will creep in, too.
Geralt doesn’t even mean to label all these smells, to be quite frank; his treacherous subconscious keeps supplying them anyways, and soon enough he has all but written a whole godsdamned ballad about him.
Jaskier smells of academia, of something learned by heart and mind and soul; some kind of ancient warmth that his bones themselves know all on their own. After a while on the road, behind all the sweat and dirt, his scent becomes more earthen; like the very world has melted, creeping in just a bit.
It stays behind, too, and Geralt carries the hint of it up the Trail each winter, catching on a scrap bit of parchment and on broken quills left behind.
What he isn’t expecting is the full brunt of it, practically woven into a shirt of his own. As soon as it hits him, he remembers; not three weeks ago, Jaskier had borrowed the tunic to sleep in, because his were “frankly filthy, Geralt, they haven’t had the luxury of a wash in weeks,” and after a moment of staring like an imbecile hit over the head with a club, he climbed into the single bed they were to share without making a fuss, but spent the next several hours trying to slow his traitorous heart as it beat out of its chest, petulantly pounding as he smelled himself on Jaskier. Iron and pine. Leather and cloves. Salt and earth.
As he kneels with his pack in front of him, in the cold depths of Kaer Morhen, plain black tunic spread across his legs, Geralt does not cry. Witchers simply are not built for it. But his face heats, and his sinuses sting, and his throat closes around the breath that his lungs take in far too shakily.