Work Text:
Geralt opens the first letter the night he arrives at Kaer Morhen.
By the time he finally has a moment to himself in the privacy of his chambers--Lambert had arrived at the old keep a mere half hour later, and it had taken little prompting on his part to draw Geralt, Eskel, and Coen into round after round of his special homebrewed ale as they sat around the hearth with Vesemir and a hearty stew and a tender roasted lamb and swapped stories about their latest adventures on the Path--it’s well into the early morning hours, dawn not creeping up on him so much as it is racing.
He stokes the fire in the corner of the room, a flare of heat cutting through the pervasive chill, and sorts through his pack. There they are, tucked under his battered bestiary and wrapped in one of his old shirts. A shirt that Jaskier likes to wear to bed on nights the hunt keeps Geralt away from their lodgings.
It’s soothing, he had murmured, burying his face in the worn black fabric to hide the blush rising as inexorable as the sun on his cheeks. I like being surrounded by your scent when I cannot be surrounded by you.
Geralt had just smiled, a soft thing that slipped onto his face and settled there, as if it had always belonged, as if it was how his face should always be, smiling because of Jaskier. Wear it as often as you like, he had whispered back.
Jaskier had. He had worn it all the time, in fact, and now, as Geralt lifts it and the bundle it protects from his pack, he is glad for it. It smells like Jaskier now--cinnamon, vanilla, a hint of sandalwood--and it’s soothing indeed, being surrounded by his scent, the smell of him here, somehow, in Geralt’s cold chambers in Kaer Morhen when Jaskier himself is clear across the Continent in Oxenfurt, mentoring the next generation of bards during the winter term of classes.
Geralt buries his face in the shirt, as Jaskier had, so long ago, and he nearly loses himself in the memory of the last time he had seen Jaskier wearing it. Three weeks ago now, in that room they had rented in an inn along the Pontar, Jaskier wearing the shirt and a saucy smirk and nothing else, their last night together before parting for the winter.
It’s a good memory. Of course it is. It’s a comforting one, one he wants to stay in, live in, and it takes effort for Geralt to pull himself from it, to redirect his attention to the treasure the old shirt holds.
He parts the folds of the shirt, his fingers reverent, and there they are, as Jaskier had promised, a stack of parchment, the one on the top bearing words in Jaskier’s scrawling hand: For Geralt, my dearest, to be opened the night you return to Kaer Morhen.
The sight of the words brings him solace, as Jaskier had surely intended, a way to keep you company when I’m far away, he had whispered as he placed the letters, wrapped with care, wrapped with love, in Geralt’s pack the morning they parted. He unfolds the first letter, and he doesn’t think he imagines the way Jaskier’s scent fills the room anew, the pages covered in his honeyed words and his untidy scrawl imbued with his very essence, his soul.
Geralt settles into the heaping furs and blankets on his bed, the flickering firelight casting its shadows over the pages, over his face as he devours Jaskier’s words, lets them surround him as though Jaskier is there to whisper them directly into Geralt’s ear himself as they lie entwined, curled around each other, their own tiny little universe of nothing but them. He murmurs aloud as he reads, his voice adding weight, substance, and he feels the words, feels them slip through his veins, seep through his bones, becoming part of him, warming him, setting him alight from within.
Geralt, my love,
If you’ve followed instructions, you’re reading this in your chambers at the keep. (If you’re reading this before that: stop, darling, good things come to those who wait.) I can see the image in my mind as I write these words: the fire burning low, the snowfall piling up outside your window, that one fur--the softest of the lot, the most luxurious thing you own--draped across your shoulders, that adorable furrow between your brows as you try valiantly to decipher my handwriting in the waning firelight.
Would that I were curled up with you!
I write this while sitting across a campfire from you in Aedirn, weeks before we are to part, but I can see you as you read this and I long to be there with you. I would be humming in your ear, pressing my freezing cold feet against your calves, mussing the delicate strands of hair framing your face with my breath as we lie so close we become practically indistinguishable as separate beings. It would be bliss. But ‘tis not to be, not this winter.
I leave you with this gift: my words, instead. A poor substitute, I know! But the only one I can offer this winter, as my presence at the academy has been nigh-on demanded. Well. You know. You saw the letters from the department and the leadership when their messengers found us in Vizima, in Velen, in that tiny town on the coast, even. Insistent, weren’t they? Apparently, these courses simply could not wait to be taught, and not even a famous bard and his Witcher beloved could convince them otherwise.
(I know you will have looked away when you read that word, as you likely did at the opening salutation, so I have no choice but to say it again and again and again--Geralt, love, beloved--until it becomes second nature for you to apply the words to yourself without my prompting. I am Geralt and I am loved.)
As I cannot be there with you, I give you my words instead. Read them as directed. Some are for specific dates. Some are for days when you love your brothers, but you’ve been shut up in the same keep as them for weeks now, and there’s only so much relieving aggression and irritation through the guise of training you can take before you snap and run one of them through. Some are for the days when you’re missing the way we move together. Some are for when you feel certain feelings--the loneliness creeping in--and you need comfort, comfort that you definitely, definitely, deserve, and you are to read my words and know that you are not alone.
I cannot be there with you, but you are ever in my thoughts, dearest one. I will think of you often, and when you read my words, it will be like that feeling I get when I’ve been tuning my lute and twisting the pegs back and forth and suddenly oh, there it is, the perfect pitch. Read my words and I will become attuned to you, Geralt, our bodies apart but our souls meeting in that ephemeral place that souls dwell, embracing each other and reminding the other than we are not alone.
I cannot be there with you, but at the same time, I am always with you. You have a piece of my heart, Geralt, as I have a piece of yours, and those pieces call out to one another, connected, distance no obstacle. They will not be torn asunder. We will not let them.
If I know you--and I do--you’re reading aloud, your voice speaking my words reverberating through you. I am there with you, always.
It’s late, I’m sure. Sleep now, love. There will be more words for you tomorrow. The world around you is cold; allow me to keep you warm.
Yours, forever,
Jaskier
*
Geralt reads the letters, day after day after day, over and over and over again, and Jaskier is right: the cold is bearable when he has the words, Jaskier’s love given shape, manifested, sending the tendrils of their blazing light through him, illuminating the furthest reaches and darkest depths of his heart.
*
Spring rounds the corner, the world comes out of the darkness, and the mountain passes closing off Kaer Morhen from the rest of the Continent unfreeze.
Geralt guides Roach into the closest town in Kaedwen to the keep and requests the fastest messenger available. He has a letter of his own to send.
Jaskier, beloved,
It will be but weeks before we meet again . . . .