Work Text:
“I have to admit,” Geralt murmurs, his voice as soft as the mid-morning light streaming in the windows of Jaskier’s bedroom, “when you proposed this idea, I thought it was ridiculous.”
Jaskier cuddles closer, buries his face in Geralt’s neck, presses a kiss to the soft skin leading to Geralt’s shoulder. “Oh, you don’t say.”
The smirk is audible in Jaskier’s voice, but Geralt pulls back anyway, and sure enough, there it is, tugging at the corner of Jaskier’s lips. It’s a smirk that begs to be kissed, and Geralt, well, he doesn’t even try to resist the temptation.
The kiss is slow, thorough, fitting for a Saturday morning in which the only thing on the agenda for the day is time in each other’s arms. He could spend hours this way; days, months, years of his life passing as he holds Jaskier tight to him.
It’s not the worst thought he’s ever had.
Eventually, reluctantly, he leans back. He considers the possibility of abandoning the conversation entirely, instead doing something far more worthwhile with his time, like losing himself in the ongoing catalogue of all the different shades of blue in Jaskier’s eyes. That idea has significant merit. Perhaps he’ll return to it later.
“I never actually said it, though.” Geralt feels as though he should offer some kind of protest. “That it was ridiculous.”
“You didn’t need to say it, my darling.”
Jaskier stretches, long and languid, and Geralt allows his eyes to wander down the length of him, the wild and messy hair, the glasses askew on his face, the rumpled and faded Juilliard t-shirt, the pajama pants with penguins in scarves and ice skates, the socks with neon colored ice cream cones. He looks ridiculous. He looks beautiful.
“Mmmmhmmmm, yeah, look your fill,” Jaskier continues, his smirk turning saucy. “It’s high fashion over here. Anyway, I’ve become well versed in all the things you say and all the things you don’t say, and when I said, two weeks ago, that I think that, for once, you should take a day off and we should spend this entire weekend here in this very room, curled around each other and cuddled up in bed, your voice said, ‘Sure, Jaskier, that sounds like a great idea.’ But your very eloquent right eyebrow, arched clear to the sky, and the side-eye that you gave Triss and Eskel that you hoped I wouldn’t see, and the ten-second-long pause before you answered all practically screamed, ‘Jaskier, what the fuck, that is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.’”
He leans in, so very close, so close that the tips of their noses almost touch, and his smirk widens. “Did I misinterpret?”
Geralt darts forward, quick as lightning, and presses a hard kiss to Jaskier’s lips, delighting in the way Jaskier tries to follow, to prolong the kiss. “You did not.”
It should alarm him, how thoroughly Jaskier can read him, how well he knows the things Geralt says, the things he doesn’t. He has spent so long hiding his heart. He should be terrified at how easily Jaskier has scaled the walls around it, at how he’s created a place for himself there, a corner of Geralt’s very soul to call his own.
It doesn’t alarm him, though. It doesn’t terrify him. Not even close.
He sinks backwards into the nest of blankets and quilts and pillows that have overtaken Jaskier’s bed on this cold January morning, his first day off that’s not otherwise a holiday in fucking years, and he pulls Jaskier with him, wraps his arms tighter around Jaskier’s waist, holds him close. Jaskier rests his head on Geralt’s shoulder, a comforting weight, and that’s the thing about Jaskier, the thing that Geralt doesn’t understand, doesn’t know if he’ll ever understand.
Jaskier is wild and unpredictable, and Geralt never knows what the next day with him is going to bring. He’s a constant mystery, a riddle Geralt is no closer to solving even after more than a year together, and yet somehow, while Jaskier leaves him wondering where their path is going to lead, Jaskier’s presence is a comfort to him. A reminder that if Geralt takes a leap, Jaskier will be right there with him. If they fall, they fall together.
But oh, there’s the chance that, with each other, they might soar, and the possibility of the heights that they might reach together far outweighs the fear that they will plummet to the earth.
He never used to think with such vivid imagery before he met Jaskier. It still shocks him sometimes, when his thoughts turn to poetry, and he tries to muffle a laugh at his own fancy in the wisps of Jaskier’s hair. He doesn’t quite succeed.
Jaskier shifts against him, presses his feet in between Geralt’s shins, and Geralt steels himself for yet another grumble over Geralt’s one tyrannical condition for their weekend of cuddling: that Jaskier, with his feet forever freezing cold, must wear socks at all times in which they are in bed together. This time, no complaints pass his lips. Instead, he presses a kiss to Geralt’s t-shirt-covered collarbone, walks his fingers along the bare skin above the waistband of Geralt’s pajama pants. “Something funny?” he murmurs.
Geralt reaches down, grasps Jaskier’s hand before it can commence any mischief, and holds it up, their hands resting together, palm to palm in front of their faces. “No, not funny.”
He lets their fingers entwine. He marvels, as he always does, at how well their hands fit together. At how well they fit together.
He presses a kiss to the back of Jaskier’s hand, to each one of his fingers. Jaskier’s lips part, an oh of wonder, and Geralt kisses them, too.
“Just amazed, as I always am, that you’re here with me. Bringing me light and poetry to my thoughts and a weekend of snuggles to keep me out of the cold.”
A rosy blush rises on Jaskier’s cheeks, and what can Geralt do but bestow kisses there as well?
“I think I’d like to hear these poetic thoughts of yours.”
“Hmmmm. No. No, I think I need at least thirty more minutes of cuddling before my reason has been overtaken enough to spout poetry at you.”
Jaskier leans in again, kisses him once more, lets his lips linger. Geralt allows it, welcomes it; they’re both loath to part.
When Jaskier speaks, he breathes the words into the tiniest of spaces between them. “I saw that volume of Shakespeare’s sonnets that Yen gave you for Christmas, you know. So I expect your poetry to be in proper iambic pentameter. Use this cuddle time wisely, dear Geralt. I expect to be wowed, and wooed.”
Years ago, such a challenge would have Geralt making a hasty and strategic retreat. Now, with Jaskier in his arms, pressed warm against him, the dare in his smile tempered with an almost overwhelming amount of fondness, Geralt feels the serenity that accompanies certainty wash over him: he will leap, Jaskier with him, and together they will fly.
“Wowed and wooed, hmmmm? I think I can manage that.”