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This is how Geralt falls in love with Jaskier: like a blow to the head, the care and companionship they’ve been building together for so many years coalescing into something much more than friendship from one breath to the next, hooked in the corner of Jaskier’s smile.
This is how Geralt falls in love with Jaskier: he gets shoved off of his horse into a river.
He’s taken by such surprise that he doesn’t know what’s happened until he’s in the water. When he resurfaces gasping and spluttering, ready to battle whatever had the strength to unseat him, Jaskier doesn’t even try to pretend it was an accident, his blue eyes bright as summer starlight and creased at the corners with all the laugh lines of his joyous life. He’s laughing so hard he can’t speak, hanging onto Roach’s pommel to stay upright, and if it wasn’t so fucking cute Geralt would murder him and leave him for the wolves.
“Brat,” Geralt bellows. Glugs. Splutters.
“I’m sorry,” Jaskier hiccups with glee, like a liar, and Geralt growls from where he’s half-drowned in the mucky pond under the bridge. It just sets Jaskier off even more, from his literal high horse, perched atop Roach with his bandaged foot elevated in her saddle. “Hardly my fault the fair lady Roach lost her footing. It was you or Cecily, and I’m very sorry, but the priceless elven lute wasn’t taking a bath today, while you smell like a spoiled potato. It was a no-brainer.”
Geralt prowls up the river bank and there Jaskier sits in Roach’s saddle, like he belongs there, eyes wet with laughter, sure in his knowledge that Geralt would never hurt him. He’s right, of course he’s right. Geralt has spent two days tending to his wounded foot, fussing over it like a grandmother, but archespores are mean little shits when they start shooting their thorns and the poison could incapacitate, blind, kill. Granted, this archespore had been a juvenile, spitting mad at being a teenager more than anything else, but still.
He tries to glare, to be angry, but standing there, dripping river water and watching Jaskier laugh, it’s as if the world takes a step to the left, like he went into the river one man and emerged another. How else to account for the realization, as startling as cold river-water, that Jaskier had wormed his way deep under Geralt’s armor, his ribcage, tucked himself in right against Geralt’s heart and made himself as necessary as oxygen, as blood; made himself an extension of Geralt himself?
How else could Jaskier have shoved a twenty-stone Witcher off his horse unawares?
The feeling that suffuses him isn’t new, he realizes. It’s been there for years, the embers of it warm and tended like a campfire, waiting for a breeze, a spark to come to life. Not a sudden blaze, as it has always been with Yennefer, but something warmer, steadier, hardier, which wouldn’t go out in a sudden rainstorm, which could withstand the coldest winters.
No, this feeling isn’t new; what’s new is his awareness of it, the sweet flavor of it at the back of his tongue. His body’s reaction to it, heart picking up as he watches Jaskier giggle on top of his fucking horse, the swoop in his belly that he has no name for, but which abruptly reminds him of the simple pleasure of a warm meal and a warm bath in a warm inn with the promise of a warm bed.
It isn’t like with Yennefer, anxiety sick in the pit of his gut when he realized he loved her. Instead it’s like – like opening a door, and stepping into a home. A feeling so lost and forgotten he’d had no name for it until now.
He stares and Jaskier’s laughter slows into the warmth of a smile, delight etched into those features like it’s the only way he knows for his face to be. Not cowed in the slightest by Geralt’s everything, mischievous and trying not to be.
He snatches Roach’s reins with a glare for appearances sake, and Jaskier beams at him, adjusting the lute in his lap. “You pushed me into a river to save your lute.”
“I wouldn’t necessarily say ‘pushed’,” Jaskier says, as Geralt leads Roach over the rickety wooden bridge carefully, so she wouldn’t hurt herself or throw her rider from his perch. “More like tipped. ‘Gently nudged’ if you will – oh no,” he moans, as Geralt gets Roach safely to the other side of the bridge and then remounts, pressing his soaking front to Jaskier’s warm back. Jaskier squirms for a moment before relenting with a frustrated huff, glaring over his shoulder at Geralt’s self-satisfied smirk. “Why, though.”
“You know why,” Geralt says, taking the reins and holding Jaskier just a little tighter, much to Jaskier’s groans and Geralt’s mean delight.
He presses his cold nose there to the nape of Jaskier’s neck, just to hear him yell. Leaves it there until Jaskier stops squirming, until the scent of him, hydrangea and honeysuckle, mint and clematis, permeates deep. Roach sidesteps a thistle bush and Geralt holds Jaskier steady so he won’t fall off, fingers spread wide along his belly, gentle there against the divide between the laces of his trousers and his chemise. Possessive. Unmistakable for what it is. The logical next step in their evolution, and in many ways, a foregone conclusion.
He can just see Jaskier’s profile, the apples of his cheeks suddenly blushing pink, his lashes low.
That voice in him that says he would never be worthy of anyone is silent. In its place is a simple, steady promise, as steady as Roach’s hooves, as the tentative hope blooming over that cared-for face.
“Alright then,” Jaskier hums, fingertips tickling the lute’s strings to make her sing a sweet little melody. So brave, his little bard, even if Geralt can see the way his hands are shaking. “Should have thrown you into a river sooner,” he decides thoughtfully.
“Hmm,” and it’s not an agreement, but it’s not not an agreement. Vesemir always did say he was stubborn as an ox. This isn’t the first river he’s been thrown into, after all. “You called me a spoiled potato.”
“I said you smelled like a spoiled potato,” Jaskier says, and Geralt can feel the laugh in the hand pressed to Jaskier’s belly. “And now you don’t. A refreshing dunk to get the archespore guts off, even if I am now also damp. And wounded! A wounded damp, likely to catch a chill. We should definitely stop in Aldersberg and get a room, so I can be at my ease.”
“Should we.”
“As fully described in chapter three of the Care and Feeding of Wayward Bards,” Jaskier says in his noble voice, which never ceases to make Geralt snort with amusement. Jaskier’s eyes are bright with laughter, nose in the air in his most absurd Minor Lord pose, slightly ruined by how he’s plucking at the lute for ambiance. “A good Witcher must entreat to put his barker at ease following perilous undertakings most foul,” he declares, nasal and high pitched, “and cease their wanderings for monsters and coin at the first opportunity of a cleanly inn and decent ham soup. With bacon.”
“Bacon, huh.”
“Look Geralt, I don’t make the rules,” and when Jaskier looks over his shoulder at him, the dappled light coming through the tree canopy turns the auburn streaks in his hair ablaze. He’s grinning, warm and a bit tentative as his eyes drop down to Geralt’s mouth, and Geralt is strong, except when he’s weak.
It’s gentle in the way he always knew it would be. In the only way it could be. Gentle, when Jaskier tips his head and Geralt chases his mouth. Gentle, when Roach sways to a stop to munch on a roadside treat of cleavers and wild geranium, the line of Jaskier’s jaw rough along the back of Geralt’s fingers where he brushes that tender slope. Gentle, when he leans back to watch Jaskier’s eyes open, lashes damp from sunlight, lips rosy and pink and plumped from attention.
Jaskier looks at him, fingers wrapped softly around Geralt’s wrist there against his cheek, and Geralt allows himself to be seen. The understanding that blooms between them is as sweet as mulled wine, and isn’t that so like Jaskier – hearing every word Geralt doesn't know how to say.
Jaskier smiles in a way he’s never seen before. “Aldersberg, bacon, warm bed,” he declares, tapping Geralt on the chin, and picks up his lute once more.
“Hmm,” Geralt murmurs, and nudges Roach’s flanks onward.