Chapter Text
Jaskier
Jaskier has a secret. As the matter of fact, he has several secrets, some better kept than others.
Firstly, and least secretly: He is utterly and hopelessly in love with his best friend. Most people with eyes in their head can see that. It is not an easily kept secret, when the friend in question is the subject of all his songs. Anyone with the slightest knack for interpreting poetry, can see that the heroic ballads and the tender love songs are about the same person. Anyone with no knack for interpreting any words at all, but who paid just a little attention, would eventually reach the same conclusion. And were he to perform some of his more private songs of longing, love and heartbreak, even a certain thick-headed witcher would not be fooled.
Secondly, and much more efficiently hidden: Jaskier is not entirely human. What he is, he doesn’t know much about. To preserve the pure image of his noble family, Jaskier’s father kept the details secret. All Jaskier and his sisters know, is the few things their mother told them before she died. And that was many years ago.
Thirdly, and most importantly kept: He was born in a female body. The evidence is carefully hidden under chest bindings and carefully tailored doublets. He knows people think him vain, but better considered vain, than seen as something he is not. He is a bard after all, so it fits his image rather well.
How Geralt never seemed to pick up on any of this, Jaskier has no idea, but he is silently grateful.
Geralt
In hindsight the djinn might not have been the best idea, but that’s easy to say with a well-rested brain. He should have just asked Jaskier for help when he offered, and all this would not have happened. The bard wouldn’t be in danger, Geralt wouldn’t have met Yennefer, and she wouldn’t have used him to get her revenge on the townspeople.
No use dwelling on that now – regret, or feelings in general, only serves as distractions. The only reasonable thing to do, in Geralt’s experience, is acknowledge the feelings exist and lock them in that little box in the back of the mind.
Choosing to seek out Yennefer for help might also have been less than ideal, but Geralt can’t bring himself to regret that part, as the result was inarguably effective. It saved him from a long life with the bard’s death on his conscience. He knows too well that might still happen, but if it does, it better be many years from now.
Finding Jaskier unharmed outside the djinn ravaged mansion, Geralt has never felt as relieved. He did consider that it might be better to “leave the very sexy but insane witch to her inevitable demise” as Jaskier suggested, but that wouldn’t be right. He had little to no positive feelings for the mage, but he owed her for saving Jaskier.
Hoping it would do the trick, his last wish was to “Leave us alone and don’t take your revenge.” It seemed like the djinn did just that.
Being alone with Yennefer quickly turned out to be… well something. Despite her attractiveness and strength of both magic and character, he was apprehensive. Something about whatever this was felt wrong. He still couldn’t find it in him to reject her.
When Geralt awoke in the broken mansion, she was gone. Leaving the empty ruins behind with a strange feeling in his gut, he found Jaskier waiting impatiently outside with Roach. Going by the bard’s colourful complaints and curses, he was pissed. Justifiably so, Geralt has to admit, though he would never say that out loud.
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The next time they run into Yennefer, she tries to blackmail him into taking care of a monster for her. Geralt complains but complies, while Jaskier leaves for the nearest alcohol vendor, yet again spewing colourful insults. Geralt wants nothing more than to follow his lead, but the sorceress has a way of getting under his skin. It is simply impossible to say no, when she asks something of him. Sensing no magical interference, he can’t make sense of that.
He had not intended for the events of last time to repeat themselves, but once again he finds himself in bed with Yennefer, and once again he wakes up alone feeling… off.
He finds Jaskier nursing a hangover in a haystack in Roach’s stable, and they leave town as soon as possible. Jaskier is more talkative and slightly more optimistic than his usual hungover self, and Geralt wonders why he doesn’t mention Yennefer. It is not like Jaskier to just let something like this go, but as soon as she is out of sight, it was like the bard forgot she was ever there. It doesn’t help Geralt’s sour mood, but at least it doesn’t make it worse, and for that he is silently grateful.
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Geralt is eating in a secluded corner of the tavern the first time he hears the song. It is one of Jaskier’s slow and tender songs about one of his numerous flings. Jaskier rarely performs songs, that Geralt has not heard him compose, so this one catches his attention.
“The fairer sex, they often call it
But her love’s as unfair as a crook
It steals all my reason, commits every treason
Of logic, with naught but a look
A storm breaking on the horizon
Of longing and heartache and lust
She’s always bad news, it’s always lose, lose
So tell me love, tell me love, how is that just?
But the story is this
She’ll destroy with her sweet kiss
Her sweet kiss
But the story is this
She’ll destroy with her sweet kiss”
Geralt’s mind wanders to Jaskier’s past relationships. He wonders who this nightmare of a woman could be. He can’t remember there being anyone who could inspire this kind of song. He is sure he would have noticed Jaskier being moody about it, even if he never noticed the woman. Jaskier never has been very subtle, and Geralt pays a lot more attention to the bard than he cares to admit.
“Her current is pulling you closer
And charging the hot, humid night
The red sky at dawn is giving a warning
You fool, better stay out of sight
I’m weak my love, and I am wanting
If this is the path I must trudge
I welcome my sentence, give to you my penance
Garrotter, jury and judge”
The song feels familiar. Well, most Jaskier’s songs do, as he has heard most of them being composed, but this is different. It’s the energy and the feelings in the song that feels familiar. It somewhat reminds him of Yennefer, which he does not like.
The mage has shown up (or asked him to come to her) at least every few months during the years that passed since the djinn. Every time passes similarly, and leaves him with an unidentifiable feeling, not unlike the song.
Every time Yennefer leaves, he tries to figure out what that feeling is, but every time he gives up and locks it away in the little box in the back of his mind where keeps all his feelings. Eventually it will either go away or let itself be known.
He hopes.
Jaskier
Jaskier is a travelling bard. And as a travelling bard, he knows exactly how much more difficult it is to travel alone than with a companion. Alone it is expensive, unsafe and lonely. Travelling with Geralt is neither of those things.
Despite the monsters, he has never felt safer. Despite Geralt’s aloof attitude and one-word answers (and that is on a good day), the witcher is good company. And when they are two to share the expenses, travelling becomes much easier on the wallet. Of course, it is easier to hide his secrets when he was alone, but Geralt’s company is well worth the trouble.
And that is even before taking his feelings for the witcher into account.
All this and more, makes Jaskier feel like travelling with Geralt eases the struggles of life, or at least makes them feel simpler and a bit easier to bear. So, he keeps following Geralt whenever he can. Even when a certain mage comes into their lives to fuck it all up.
He absolutely loathes when Yennefer crosses their path. She is annoying, arrogant and way too powerful, but that he can live with. He reluctantly has to admit that he admires her strength, his main issue with her being what she does to Geralt. She has a kind of control over him, that Geralt is either too blind to notice or just too meek to resist. Geralt’s lack of response to Her Sweet Kiss, indicates that it’s the former.
He tries everything to make their lives return to how it was before, but she keeps showing up thwarting his efforts. Geralt never tells her to fuck off, even when Jaskier can tell he wants to. All Jaskier can do, is trying to lift Geralt’s spirits when Yennefer leaves him all moody and… no not moody. It’s more than that. And Jaskier thinks he knows exactly what it is, though he wishes with all his heart that he is wrong.
As long as they keep running into Yennefer, life is not as simple and easy as he has grown accustomed to over the many years he has travelled with Geralt. Life is difficult and frustrating again. He tries not to let bother him though. No point worrying about what you can’t control. No point worrying about what you can control either for that matter – that is the secret to Jaskier’s optimism.
It’s different when he is not the one hurt, though.
Someone will have to fix this. He is well aware that that someone can only be himself. Preferably before he loses his temper and tries to fight the sorceress. He knows too well how badly that would end.