Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Can we please witcher in some vineyards next year?” Jaskier asks with a whine, kicking a stone. For all that it’s out of peevishness, however, he’s careful to direct it well away from being at risk of hitting Roach. Geralt looks to him briefly, the bard walking along as steadily as ever while Geralt rides. It’s getting close to when he should call them to a halt for the sake of Jaskier getting to eat something and rest his feet, but Geralt wants to get a bit more distance for the day.

“‘We?’” Geralt asks, and Jaskier rolls his eyes. 

“Yes, we. We’re a double act, you and me. And I think our double act deserves good wine next year between all of the witchering.” 

Geralt doesn’t respond, and Jaskier sets off on what sounds like it’s going to be a long argument about how bards who do excellent work deserve to be spoiled with tasty wine and food that Geralt tunes out. It still fills him with a wild sense of disbelief, Jaskier so casually referring to the fact that he’ll still be with Geralt next year; it has since their first fall parting, when Geralt had been convinced he’d never see the bard again, only to be jumped on in spring in a wild attempt at a hug that had ended with Jaskier backhanded into a table of cabbages entirely on reflex.

Their meetings since then have gone more smoothly each spring, even as Geralt has still had at least a little doubt about them even happening up until the very moment that they do. It’s fall now, and they’re due to part again within the month, Geralt to travel to Kaer Morhen and Jaskier to travel to wherever it is he goes when he’s not following around after a witcher and getting himself into mischief. The bard is always in relatively good spirits when it happens, insisting on a hug and sneaking in a kiss to the cheek the past two years, trotting off along the road with his usual good humor to wait until they meet again.

“So what’s the bet?” The change in the cadence of Jaskier’s voice is Geralt’s signal to tune back in. Even with his limited foreknowledge of the track of thought Jaskier’s been following in pushing his vineyard agenda, the question seems to be a non-sequitur, even by Jaskier’s standards, and Geralt doesn’t actually know what he’s referring to. The bard seems to sense this in the silence and continues. 

“Vampire? Fiend? Goblin? What do we think we’re going to find at this village you’re insisting we go to?” 

The ‘you’re’ of that question comes out a bit pointed. Jaskier hadn’t wanted to take on this contract that isn’t really a contract at all, uninterested in wandering far away from civilization for a problem they haven’t even been asked to handle, but Geralt had insisted. He’d heard vague whispers from a few villages over about disappearances, and despite the lack of details, he’s done this job long enough to have a sense for when it involves something he deals in. 

“I’ll know when we get there,” he tells Jaskier, who sighs and looks skyward, evidently in supplication to some deity. 

“No imagination on this one,” Jaskier tells the sky before he looks back to Geralt. “You’re just no fun at all, do you know that? You could at least play the game with me.” 

“What game?” 

“The guessing game. Keep up, Geralt. We’re going to a mysterious village with a beast we know nothing about other than the fact that it makes people vanish. Perfect guessing game material.” 

“Witchers don’t play guessing games.” Witchers know what they’re dealing with, or they die finding out. 

“‘Witchers don’t play guessing games.’’’ Jaskier says in a terrible impression of Geralt’s voice. “I would like to remind you, dear heart, of the lovely hour we spent playing ‘I spy’ at the harvest festival last fall. You, a witcher, most certainly do play guessing games.” 

“Only when drunk,” Geralt defends, and Jaskier laughs. 

“Well, you did bet yourself that you could down an entire bottle of schnapps without needing to take a breath.” 

“You bet me to do that,” Geralt corrects, and Jaskier gives him a cheeky smile. 

“Hm, not how I remember it. Or how I’ve told people about it since.” 

Geralt rolls his eyes and nudges Roach faster, leaving Jaskier behind in a cloud of dust and grumbling. 

It’s a relief, frankly, to be able to joke with the bard, even if he doesn’t want to discuss drinking games he may or may not have started. He’s felt tongue tied ever since fall set in in earnest, the leaves changing and the nights cooling down significantly. It’s going to be time for them to part soon, and Geralt feels every minute as it slips away, bringing them closer to when they’ll have to say goodbye. 

This year, he doesn’t want to say goodbye. 

It’s an idea that’s been dogging him for a few years now, the idea of inviting Jaskier to Kaer Morhen if he wants. It sends a mix of anticipation and unease through him, the idea of taking Jaskier back to the closest thing he has to a home, to see the bard interacting with the other Wolves, exploring the keep with what Geralt knows would be genuine enthusiasm. 

Now if he could just actually manage to ask. 

It’s been on the tip of his tongue a dozen times, even more frequently in recent weeks. 

He’s running out of time now, and it only makes the pressure feel worse. It doesn’t even make sense to be as worried as he is. This is Jaskier, for gods’ sakes, the one person in the world who Geralt knows better than anyone else. The one person in the world who knows Geralt better than anyone else. He’s seen the man naked hundreds of times and had the bard’s hands on his bare body washing and tending him hundreds of times in return. It’s beyond stupid to feel shy about inviting him back to Kaer Morhen. 

If it weren’t for the fucking feelings Geralt’s become aware of developing against his consent, it would be easy. 

He can’t place a date on when his thoughts about the bard had shifted from annoyance to fondness, but it had still happened without any effort on his part. With the years, they’ve only gotten sickeningly softer, to the point that his brothers now tease him each winter about mooning over the man. He absolutely does not moon, but he does miss Jaskier when they’re apart. Annoyingly, he’s at his happiest when Jaskier is at his side. The world somehow seems brighter when he has the chatterbox beside him, talking his ear off about any and everything the second it crosses the bard’s mind. Jaskier feels like home now, like there’s nowhere else Geralt should be than with him.

It’s fucking obnoxious, frankly.

It’s been on the tip of his tongue the past five autumns to ask Jaskier to come with him, but he always stops himself at the last minute. He worries about what Jaskier would think of Kaer Morhen, of the closest thing Geralt has to a home. He worries that Jaskier would find it lacking, and as much as he decries otherwise, the bard is not a good liar. Not to Geralt, anyway. He doesn’t want to have to look at Kaer Morhen through a critical eye, and Jaskier, connoisseur of the finer things in life, is sure to have a developed view of what a home should and should not be. 

He also worries, which he admits only to himself and only occasionally, that Jaskier will say no. 

He’d already set up the perfect opportunity to finally ask, letting Jaskier drag him along to a market to pick out some wine and foods to have as a picnic near some cliffs to watch the sunset a couple of weeks ago. It had been an ideal setting, the world painted in soft pinks and golds. Jaskier had seemed to almost glow in the light, his face happy and relaxed from wine and getting his way (as if he didn’t regularly). Geralt had even had his mouth open to finally give voice to the question, to get it off his chest one way or another. 

Still, the sun had set, and the question had remained unasked, Geralt too afraid of ruining a perfect memory with a rejection.

For all that the bard has always seemed enthusiastic about learning more about Geralt’s life, there’s a difference between adventuring with him across the continent and being snowed into a drafty keep for an entire winter. Geralt knows his brothers want to meet Jaskier, but he also doubts the bard would find them the sort of audience he’s accustomed to. He knows exactly what Jaskier would be giving up for a season in order to go with him, and he has a horrible suspicion that it far outweighs anything that could make him want to say yes. 

Even lost in thought, he immediately sees the shine of the sun reflecting on a smooth surface, a sparkle that seems to swing slightly. He squints in the hopes of getting a better idea of what it is before he gets too close, but the sun is facing him, and it limits how far he can see. He looks over his shoulder to Jaskier to find the bard animatedly talking to himself–insults to Geralt himself if the body language is anything to go by–and debates between waiting for him to catch up and going ahead to check on the potential threat. If the shine is something they should avoid, it would be helpful to know before Jaskier gets too close, but he also doesn’t want the bard too far away from him in case they do need to make a hasty retreat. 

Whatever the reflection is, it appears to be stationary in distance even if it’s swinging slightly, so he decides to let Jaskier catch up so they can investigate together. When the bard sees him waiting, he shifts into a jog to get to his side faster, well-trained enough to recognize when Geralt wants him close for something. 

“What’s happened?” He asks once he’s in range, and Geralt gestures to the reflection with his chin. Jaskier squints but doesn’t appear to have much luck. “To scare birds away?” Jaskier guesses, and Geralt shrugs. 

“Maybe,” he allows, and nudges Roach into motion again, keeping her pace slow enough for Jaskier to keep up easily. If they will need to make a quick retreat, he doesn’t want the bard already tired. 

He keeps one hand free to draw a blade in case he needs it, but when he finally draws close enough to see it, it’s more puzzling than threatening: a lantern. 

One lantern of many, he sees once he’s crested the hill, a long line of swinging glass reflecting light. He looks down to Jaskier, who observes the lanterns with a crinkled brow. 

“Is this for a festival?” He asks the bard, who has a much better grasp on which festivities require which rituals, but Jaskier just shrugs. 

“Not for any of them that I know of.” He walks forward to tap at the lantern with a finger, and Geralt allows him, not feeling any vibration from his medallion to suggest that it’s a bad idea. He turns back to Geralt, looking puzzled. “Maybe a local tradition? Something something welcoming light back something something darkness of winter?”

Geralt shrugs and dismounts to investigate the lantern himself, Jaskier moving back to stand by his side as if to offer a second opinion if needed. It’s a well-crafted lantern, the glass smooth and perfect, unmarred by bubbles or uneven blowing. It’s the work of a craftsman who knows their work, small etchings in the shape of apples around the base of it. It would have been expensive to produce. 

Which makes its current presence even more confusing. 

“It’s still full of oil even though the wick is burnt,” Jaskier observes, “so whatever it’s for, it apparently hasn’t been used yet today.” 

Geralt makes a noise of acknowledgement, rubbing his thumb along the curve of one of the glass apples. He walks with Jaskier to the next one and finds a nearly identical lantern, still expertly crafted and ready for lighting. 

“I vote we steal some, turn around, and sell them for a profit,” Jaskier proposes, a note of unease in his voice even beneath the joke. “Thoughts and feelings?”

“We keep going,” Geralt says, remounting Roach and giving Jaskier a look, knowing the bard’s tendencies around pretty things he wants. “Do not steal any of them.” 

“One?” Jaskier says hopefully, fingering the metal handle thoughtfully. 

Geralt doesn’t respond, nudging Roach into motion. 

Jaskier pulls an unhappy face, but he follows obediently, leaving the lantern swinging slightly in his wake.

*

They reach the village around twenty minutes later, a group of well-kept buildings clustered around a central square. It looks to be an unusually prosperous community for one so far from any other signs of civilization, the villagers well-dressed and cleanly kept, the buildings sturdy, their shutters neatly white-washed. Even the thatch of the buildings without tiles looks freshly laid and pristine. Jaskier exchanges a look with Geralt at the oddity of such a place so far out of the way of anything. Usually anything this far from other towns is ragged and destitute, suffering from a lack of traffic and trade. 

For all that their village seems well-kept, however, the people themselves don’t seem overly friendly. A few children run up to them with bright eyes and questions sparked by seeing a witcher–an occurrence they apparently haven’t experienced before–but the group is soon enough chased away by a woman leaning out of a window. She shuts it with a snap the second the children have been dispersed, and Jaskier wishes again that they could have just not come here. Of all of the places they could have ended up before winter, it had to be a village that hasn’t been influenced by his songs yet. 

Perfect. 

Still, Jaskier understands his role, and he saunters over to a group of men gathered on the porch of what seems to be a tailor’s shop. He’s distracted briefly by the bright colors within, but he makes himself refocus, greeting the group with a winning smile that is not returned in the slightest. 

“Hello, my dear gentlemen,” he begins grandly with a little half-bow. “We’ve heard word of disappearances plaguing your fair village and have come to offer our aid. My name is Jaskier, famous troubadour and bard of the White Wolf himself, Geralt of Rivia.” He gestures grandly to his witcher, still mounted on Roach and looking as unfriendly around strangers as ever, which certainly isn’t helping with the current lack of welcome. “Do tell me, where might we find-” 

“We’ve no beasts and no need for you here,” interrupts a man with a thick mustache, the ends of it flicking up and down with every word. “You might as well be on your way now.”

Jaskier frowns. 

“Well, dear sir, I am glad to hear you’re unbothered by monsters, but we did travel a great way to get here. Surely it wouldn’t hurt to have a look around while we’re in the area?” 

“We don’t need strangers poking about where they don’t belong,” refutes a man with thinning ginger hair, the set of his lips suggesting a mean nature, or at least a stubborn one. 

Jaskier forces himself to keep smiling. It figures that they’d go on a wild goose chase instead of a grand adventure for their last contract of the year, and it’s only made worse by the unfriendly locals. 

“Well then, in that case, perhaps you could simply direct us to a place where we might find lodgings for the night. I dare say it will be too dark soon for us to brave the woods with winter’s chill coming so soon.” 

There’s a general noise of dissatisfaction at the idea of them staying, but apparently a consensus in their favor is reached. Mustache man, evidently the leader of the small group, steps forward, gesturing down the road, which appears to be the high street of the community given how many buildings face it. 

“Follow the road to the corner next to the oak tree, then take a left. We’ve a small inn.” He gives Jaskier a severe look before flicking his eyes briefly to Geralt. “Mind you’re gone soon as you’re able. We’ve no need for more mouths to feed this close to winter.” 

It’s a rude thing to say, and puzzling given how well-off the village seems to be, but Jaskier decides not to pick a fight about it. He wouldn’t mind a bit of verbal fisticuffs to blow off some steam, but he would mind having to camp in the woods, especially when Geralt would likely punish him for starting a conflict by not letting him sleep close to steal his body heat. He bows to the men again, jumping easily from the porch and returning to Geralt. 

“Thank you, my good men, for your warm hospitality and heartening good cheer,” he calls back, ignoring the low warning noise Geralt makes at him at the sass. 

“They started it,” he says under his breath, quiet enough that only Geralt can pick it up. 

The witcher just makes another warning noise as he guides Roach down the street.

*

The inn, a small white-plastered building painted over with flowers in a pattern that Geralt knows Jaskier must be delighted with, is easy enough to find, a sign dangling above the door with The Spring Blossom written on it neatly next to a painting of what appears to be an apple bloom. Geralt dismounts and ignores the looks they get from the people passing by. Thanks to Jaskier’s effort towards the issue, it’s been quite some time since he’s been to a village so suspicious of him, and it’s one of the even rarer situations in which even Jaskier doesn’t appear to be welcome. 

He’s hesitant to let the bard out of his sight given the general energy of the villagers, but he’s even more hesitant to hand Roach off to the wide-eyed boy who comes up to serve as stablehand. He nods to the inn. 

“Go get us a room, and I’ll meet you,” he says, trusting that he’ll be able to hear any trouble if it arises. Separating might also give Jaskier the chance to get some more information from someone not distracted by their mistrust of a witcher. It’s a technique they’ve used before, and he trusts Jaskier to fall into it without needing to be asked. 

Jaskier gives him a playful salute and moves to obey the direction as Geralt walks to the stable, pushing past the boy, who lets him go meekly. The inside of the structure is reflective of the prosperity of the rest of the community: clean, dry, and well-appointed, with a wall of sparklingly clean tack and brushes. The other horses are sleek and well-fed, looking over their stall doors with interest, ears swiveling to the new arrivals. Geralt greets one with a stroke to the muzzle as they pass by, and Roach makes a warning noise to let him know she doesn’t appreciate his acknowledgement of another horse, especially right in front of her. He strokes her neck in apology. The hay is fresh, scenting the air with its sweet smell, and Roach seems pleased to be led to a stall laid with a fresh cover on the floor and a wire rack of the grass for grazing. She starts eating before he even starts to untack her, and he gives her an affectionate pat at her greediness. 

“The bard’s rubbing off on you,” he tells her. “Soon you’ll be asking for a silk saddle blanket.” 

Roach dismisses him with a whinny and shake of her whole body as an indication that she’d like to be left to her meal in peace. Geralt obliges, removing her tack and the bags, setting the former in an appointed place beside the stall and slinging the latter over his shoulder after he brushes her out. The trough is already full of what looks to be fresh water, but he still brings a palmful to his mouth to check, confirming that it is perfectly clean and untainted by anything that could hurt Roach. He looks to the boy, who is lurking like a shadow at the door to the barn, cowed by Geralt’s presence but apparently too curious to leave entirely. 

“Is she a normal horse?” The boy calls, evidently finding the nerve to speak when there’s still a solid deal of space between them. 

Geralt nods, mildly amused, and the boy takes courage from the response and edges closer. 

“Is she friendly?”

“No,” Geralt tells him, “she likes to stomp children and eat their fingers.”

The boy’s eyes go wider at that, and Geralt resists the urge to snort. He passes the boy and leaves him to ogle Roach. 

When he gets to the inn, he finds Jaskier leaning over the bar, talking to a pretty woman in a bright green dress. The bard appears to be putting on his best effort at charming her, but the woman’s body language shows that she isn’t receptive. Jaskier looks over at the noise of Geralt’s entry, and he catches the flicker of frustration in the bard’s eyes. 

“Ah, and here’s the man himself.” He turns back to the woman, who seems to be a barmaid by the way she’s sorting glasses, scrubbing a few with a cloth before adding them to neat stacks. 

“We don’t need you here,” the woman says curtly, setting down a glass with more force than necessary. She smells nervous, for some reason, which is a new thing to smell from someone interacting with Jaskier. For all that the bard is tall and well-muscled, he dresses and carries himself in a way that makes him seem entirely approachable. It’s a rare person indeed who isn’t fooled by the performance. 

“Still, love, it couldn’t hurt to have a little look-see,” Jaskier says, clearly still trying to win her over. “Might as well since you’ve already got the skills of the best witcher the continent has to offer.” 

“There’s nothing wrong here,” the woman says firmly, moving the glasses onto a tray. Once he’s close enough, Geralt notes that even the glassware suggests the wealth of this town. Not a single one is chipped, and all are detailed with little vines of flowers around the rim. It’s a frivolous thing for a pub to have at all, let alone to have for all of their glasses. 

When the woman turns away to pick up a pitcher also detailed with flowers, Geralt looks from the corner of his eye at Jaskier, who tilts his head slightly in acknowledgement. So, the bard has picked up on the continuance of the strange energy of the town as well. Suspicion confirmed, Geralt turns back to the woman, who is studiously not looking at either of them when she speaks again. 

“So really, there’s no need for your services, witcher.” She pauses and looks to Jaskier. “Or yours, bard, truly. We’ve no monsters here and no need of their stories, either. We’re perfectly happy as we are.” 

Geralt sees Jaskier’s eyes narrow ever so slightly before his expression smooths out again into a perfunctory look of friendliness. Geralt steps back slightly to make himself seem less of a potential threat and lets the bard take over once more, Jaskier much more capable of ironing out whatever is happening here.

He accepts the key Jaskier tosses to him, seeing the number 4 inscribed on the tag and making his way up the stairs to find the corresponding room, the second one down the hall on the right. It’s a well-appointed space, the bed lush and the ropes beneath pulled tight, a pink basin and pitcher waiting on a washstand with a stack of clean linens beside it. There’s a mirror in one corner with floral chasing around the edge of it, and an armchair pulled beside the small fireplace has a pillow embroidered in bright purple blooms. 

It looks like a room Jaskier would design, frankly, and Geralt can’t help the way it makes him smile slightly, even as he sets out the bags to begin sorting through them. 

*

Jaskier makes his way up to the room around five minutes after Geralt goes up, giving up the barmaid as a loss for the time being. The woman had carried the same air of determined unfriendliness as the men, and Jaskier feels rather flustered about it, frankly. Even when he hasn’t been able to charm his way into a flirtation, he’s still always made friends easily, and having two failures in a row rubs at him the wrong way. 

Still, the interactions have at least made it clear to him that they should be able to leave soon. For all that villages may not like having Geralt in their midst, Jaskier has still yet to see one that wasn’t at least willing to immediately bombard them both with their problems and demands for them to be fixed. If the people here are that determined that Geralt doesn’t need to stay, then it must be all clear. 

He finds the room easily and steps inside, shutting the door behind himself and leaning against it in a performance of exhaustion. Geralt ignores his display and continues on his task, laying out his knives and testing the edges of them one by one. Jaskier tries sighing to draw his attention, but the witcher remains focused. Jaskier takes a moment to appreciate the room, charmed by its lovely decor. He eyes the pillow thoughtfully as a potential souvenir but sets aside the thought for the moment. 

“They really spare no expense on welcoming newcomers,” he offers dryly. 

Geralt grunts in acknowledgement.

“Listen, why don’t we just get out of here tomorrow morning?” Jaskier says in his most tempting tone. “We’ve only got a bit longer before we’re not going to see each other for an entire season. Why don’t we go do something memorable instead of hanging around a town that doesn’t even want us here?”

It’s a bit annoying, the idea of turning around and walking back the way they’ve just come and using so much of their time on travel, but he’d rather do that than watch Geralt grow frustrated at not finding what he’d expected to here, which is certainly what’s bound to happen. He doesn’t want the witcher to leave for Kaer Morhen when he’s in a bad mood and have time to simmer on it all winter without Jaskier there to make sure he gets back into a good one. Jaskier doesn’t want their parting for months to be soured by bad feelings when he already hates it enough as it is given that he’s going to miss the stubborn bastard so much. 

“There’s a job here,” Geralt says, not even bothering to look up from where he’s sorting through his bag, taking stock of his potions now. Jaskier is a little annoyed that he’s not even being granted the witcher’s full attention, and his sore feet and empty stomach certainly don’t help keep his voice sweet when he speaks again. 

“All evidence to the contrary, Geralt,” Jaskier says, plopping down on the bed. “If you got it wrong, you can just say so. You don’t have to try and find an evil beastie just to soothe your own pride. I’ll only tease you about it a little bit.” 

“I’m not wrong,” Geralt says, fixing Jaskier with a sharp look briefly before he returns to sorting through his things, opening a jar of White Honey to gauge how much remains. “If you’re so keen to leave, you can go.”

The dismissal hurts a little bit, and it makes Jaskier feel a little mean in return. He hates that Geralt won’t just admit that he likes having Jaskier with him, despite the fact that if he didn’t, he could have left him in the dust long ago. Jaskier has long given up on Geralt returning the way he loves the witcher, but it would be nice to at least have a confirmation of being liked.

“Look, I know you’re paranoid to your bones, but sometimes weird things are just weird things. People go missing all the time. There doesn’t have to be a monster behind it for it to happen.” 

“And you’re an expert on monsters now?” Geralt asks in a tone of dismissal. “I’ve been doing this job since before you were born, Jaskier.” 

“Oh yes, because I certainly haven’t learned anything in my years at your side.” Jaskier is properly annoyed now and frustrated that they’re even having a fight over something so stupid. If Geralt would just admit he was wrong, they could leave this behind them and have a grand adventure before they have to say goodbye. “Just say you’re wrong, and let’s go.” 

“You’re being a brat,” Geralt tells him plainly. “If I say there’s a monster, there’s a monster. If you’re not happy, then you should go.” 

“Maybe I will,” Jaskier snaps back. “Maybe I’ll take myself off and find another witcher to follow around come spring. Maybe he’ll be a little more grateful.”

He regrets the words the second they’re out of his mouth, even before he sees Geralt’s face close over into the icy mask he presents to the world as he rises to his feet. Jaskier feels the start of tears stinging his eyes, immediately horrifically guilty at hurting Geralt just because he was in a mood. 

“Geralt-” He starts, crossing and reaching out a hand, but the witcher shrugs him off, turning without a word and leaving the room. 

Jaskier sways in the direction, wanting to follow as a course of habit as much as of a desire to make amends, but he’s also spent enough time with the witcher to know that a little bit of time to cool off will do them both good. He forces himself to cross back to the window seat, tossing himself down in frustration and tilting his head to look out of the window. His suspicions are confirmed after a few minutes when the clop of hooves precedes Geralt riding Roach out of the courtyard. As careful as ever with his horse, he doesn’t push her into a gallop on the cobblestones, but Jaskier knows him well enough to know that the witcher will be out for a while yet riding until he’s cooled down. 

Jaskier brings his knees up and drops his forehead onto them, wrapping his arms around his shins. 

“Damn it,” he says to the room at large. 

Geralt’s left behind most of his belongings and rode out only partially armored, as dressed-down as the witcher ever gets when he has to be in public, so Jaskier is at least reassured that he will be coming back. 

Please, gods, let him come back.

*

Once sure Roach is warmed up and the ground is clear enough to pose no hazards, Geralt nudges her into motion and lets her break into a gallop, the wind whipping through his hair and sending it snapping behind him. He leans low over her neck, feeling her respond with more speed, her body practically vibrating with excitement at the chance to run. Given how much he asks of her, it’s a rare opportunity that she gets to gallop at her full ability, and she’s clearly pleased by the chance. 

He knows from the conversation with the hostler he’d bought her from that she comes from a line of racers on her sire’s side, something he’d been pleased by with the thought that it would let her have an advantage at getting away from hunts gone bad more quickly. He’d once lost a Roach to being slightly too slow to get away from a griffin that had managed to knock him down, and he’s now careful to find horses with a balance of endurance and speed. This Roach certainly has no problems moving into a gallop, tossing her head briefly in joy before she manages to push on even faster. 

Geralt leans into the motion, moving with her easily after so many years on horseback. It’s tempting, the thought of letting her run until she’s taken him far beyond where he’s going to have to deal with Jaskier again, but he knows he’s going to have to go back eventually, and he savors the freedom while he has it. 

It had hurt more than it should, the childish threat of Jaskier seeking out another witcher, as if Geralt was simply interchangeable with any other man mutated from childhood. It’s true, in many ways, Geralt’s extra mutations not erasing the fact that he’d been through the same process and training as every other boy who had gone through the Trials, but it had stabbed a soft part of him that he’d thought had been lost years ago, the desire to be an individual. 

To be special to someone. 

He gives Roach her head even more, trusting her to pick a good path. With his mind in such a tangle, he’s likely to do something like steer her into a tree and doom them both in the process. 

He’s mad, at Jaskier and himself. He’s frustrated that the bard is so eager to discount Geralt’s own knowledge and read of the situation to insist on leaving, and he’s even angrier at himself for being frustrated about it. So what if the bard doesn’t trust him on this? He shouldn’t need him to. 

It’s just that he very much does need him to. 

“Fuck,” he says, the word lost immediately to the wind rushing past him. 

*

When the knock comes at the door around an hour later, Jaskier looks up hopefully. It’s sooner than he expected for Geralt to return, but this close to their annual parting, he’d like to flatter himself with the idea that the witcher wouldn’t want to lose more time than they have to. He sets aside the bit of bread he’d been nibbling at and makes his way quickly to the door, eager to make amends. 

“Geralt, I’m so sor-” is all Jaskier manages to get out before he finds a bag over his head, a heavy body tackling his to the ground. He kicks out immediately, catching someone in what feels like a groin with his knee. He has the briefest moment of enjoying a feeling of victory before a new body crushes him to the floor, pinning him even as he tries to buck like a horse. He snarls in rage and fear, managing to get one arm free. He gropes blindly for eyes, hoping to gouge them out. You can’t chase what you can’t see, comes Geralt’s voice in his head, one of many mildly concerning takeaways from the witcher’s lessons on self-defense that he’d insisted Jaskier take part in despite solid attempts at complaining his way out of them. 

His hand meets soft cheek, and he digs his nails in, hearing a howl of pain and rage. He wrenches his fingers upwards, hoping to hit an eye socket, but another hand grasps his arm, slamming it against the doorway until he thinks for a moment it might be broken. He cries out in pain before he resumes trying to twist his way to freedom, but there are two bodies over him now, pressing him to the floor until he can barely draw breath. He tries to get enough air to yell for help, but a cloth soaked in something vaguely chemical comes over his mouth and nose, cutting off his supply as he tries to hold his breath. A knee to his gut makes him suck in air on instinct, and then the world goes fuzzy, fading into black.

Chapter Text

Geralt arrives back after he’s sure he’s ridden all of his frustration out, the sun already set and the sky dark. Roach seems content enough, trotting along happily as he leads her into the courtyard and settles her back into her stall. He helps himself to some oats from a large barrel and fills a small trough for her. He takes his time untacking her, cleaning and oiling the leather in a way he wouldn’t normally bother with when it truly doesn’t need it. After a while, though, there’s no more he can find to keep himself occupied with. He’s going to have to face the bard.

He gathers himself once he enters the inn, feeling strangely ill at ease in such a quiet place. It’s bizarre, the silence of such a large building when in any other town, such a structure would be bustling. Even the pub area is dark and unoccupied, the glasses stacked neatly away. He shoves down his sense of unease and mounts the stairs, hesitating for just a moment at the door before he gathers his courage and opens it. 

“Jask, I’m s-” He stops when he takes in the empty room. 

There’s no lute, no bright clothing tossed over every surface, no oils and creams lined up in a row along the side table. 

The room is devoid of anything suggesting that Jaskier was ever there. 

“Fuck,” he grits out between his teeth, dropping to his knees and digging through the bags in disbelief. This can’t have happened. He and Jaskier have squabbled before, but the bard has never truly left. He’ll storm off occasionally and play angry songs about witchers and their shockingly small cocks, and then he’ll return, satisfied with his petty revenge and ready to make nice once more. 

Never, in all of their years of travel, has Jaskier ever left like this. 

As he looks through the bags, Geralt starts to doubt that he has this time, either. Everything bright and embroidered has been removed, but the remaining clothes have been left behind neatly in a way that Jaskier would never bother with. Geralt frowns as he picks up his own shirts, folded and set back inside. As much as Jaskier loves his outfits, he’s a nightmare when it comes to actually folding things, more likely to stuff everything in at random than ever refold a single pair of trousers. He certainly wouldn’t have bothered if he had packed in a mood. If he’d pulled out his own things because he was in a snit, Geralt would have been more likely to come back to his own clothing spread in an explosion across the room, if not tossed in the courtyard through the window. 

His sense of unease only increases when he finds the leather pouch of Jaskier’s oils and cosmetics and perfumes, his rosewood comb still tucked neatly inside. Given the weight of the glass containers, the pouch is one of the things he most often sneaks into Geralt’s bags so that he doesn’t have to carry it, but it’s certainly not something he’d ever leave behind. The cost aside, the bard is far too vain to go any length of time without his creature comforts. 

Uneasy still, but with the immediate panic of a rift between them abating, Geralt begins to pick up other smells in the room, the scent of multiple people in the space. He inhales deeper, brow furrowed. He’s used to tuning out most of the smells of the rooms they stay in–a necessity, given the level of cleanliness in many of them–but these scents are fresher, indicative of people in the space after he and Jaskier had already arrived. 

People who should not have been in the room.

He pushes himself to his feet at once and makes for the door. He inhales more deeply, tracing the scents, and he catches a waft of Jaskier amidst the same scents of the intruders. He follows it down until it reaches the door, and from there the smell gets lost in the mix of scents in the courtyard. He growls in his throat, frustrated, and stalks back inside. A clatter of noise from what seems to be the kitchen catches his attention, and he sees the dart of a shadow as someone retreats. He immediately makes for that direction, moving more quickly than a human could ever manage. 

He arrives in time to see the innkeep darting for the door to the yard, and he gets there first, slamming it back shut the scant inches she’d managed to open it. She looks at him defiantly, but he sees the shake in her hands and smells the scent of fear wafting off of her. 

“I’ll see you hang for that,” she spits, “trying to trap me in here for your own beastly desires.” 

“Where is the bard?” He demands, ignoring the dig. 

The woman starts to back up, clearly trying to appear unconcerned and unaffected. 

“How should I know? Bards are always fl-” 

She doesn’t get to finish her sentence or her retreat when Geralt grabs her by her upper arms, turning and pinning her against the door, lifted enough that her toes barely brush the ground. Her terror is sudden and overwhelming in her scent, and he imagines if she could catch her breath, she’d be screaming. He shakes her a bit to rattle her further. 

“The. Bard.” He grinds out between clenched teeth. 

“I-I didn’t-” The woman’s breath is coming in unsteady pants, her eyes filling with frightened tears. “I thought-thought you were gone! I heard you argue, and-and witchers! They don’t love! So I thought you would just leave.”

Geralt growls at this, low in his chest, provoked by the suggestion that he would ever leave Jaskier behind by choice, and that this stranger evidently took it as an opportunity. 

“Where is he?” He demands, not bothering to hide the rage in his voice. 

“I-I can’t-”

“Where?” He says again, louder, her entire body jumping at the volume. 

“I can’t tell you,” she whimpers, eyes squeezed shut as she turns her face away. “We don’t speak of Him.”

“Speak of who?” Geralt demands, dropping the woman to her feet to free one hand to jerk her head up to face him, making her whimper with fear even as she opens her eyes, apparently more afraid of not seeing him. Tears stream down her face as she trembles. 

“He’s…He’s our guardian. Our protector. He takes care of us. Makes the crops grow, keeps the buildings sturdy.” 

Geralt has a terrible feeling he knows where this is going, and he crowds the woman more until she flinches, trying to tug away. 

“We have to feed Him!” She cries, as if it’s a defense. “He protects us, and we feed Him!” 

“Feed him with what,” Geralt asks flatly, knowing the answer already but needing to hear it aloud. The woman tries to tug away again, and Geralt tightens his grip on her jaw. He’ll be ashamed of this at some point, probably, but for now his only concern is finding Jaskier. 

“Tra-travelers,” the woman whimpers. “We haven’t had as-as many, and you left!” 

“Where is he?” Geralt demands. “Where have you taken him?” 

“It’s too late!” She tells him. “They already rang the bell for him, he wouldn’t have-” 

“Where?!”

“The orchard! We take them to the center of the orchard, bound, and He-He does the rest.” 

The killing, she doesn’t say, as if not calling it what it is will erase it. He sneers as he drops her, disgusted. He forms the sign for Axii and casts, her face smoothing over as her mind empties, lost to his control. 

“Go get the bard’s things from wherever you’ve hidden them and pack them with mine. Bring them to the courtyard.” 

He pauses for the briefest moment to ensure the Sign will hold before he turns on his heel, stalking out to the stable to saddle Roach. 

He has a bard to find.

*

Jaskier has the worst hangover of his life, he thinks. 

He dry heaves once but blessedly brings nothing up given the fact that there’s material over his face. Choking on his own vomit is not the way he’d prefer for his story to end. 

“You’re sure that big white-haired bastard won’t be coming for him?” Comes a nervous-sounding voice from beside him. 

Geralt, Jaskier thinks distantly, head still muzzy, they’re talking about Geralt. He’s not sure about a lot of things at present, but he does wish he could get his tongue to work and let them know that he’s going to laugh when his witcher does come for him, and Jaskier gets to watch his kidnappers get tossed around like ragdolls. 

“Nah,” comes another voice from Jaskier’s other side, and he realizes he’s being dragged between the two, his feet trailing uselessly on the ground as he’s moved forward by grips on his arms, his hands tied behind his back. “Brede heard ‘em fighting. Said they were going at it like angry cats. Saw the witcher ride off myself. He’s not coming back.” 

This isn’t true. It can’t be true. Jaskier rather desperately needs it to not be true. 

His head is starting to clear a bit, and he tries to dig his heels in. His captors curse and kick at his ankle when he tries to get a leg beneath himself. 

“Yer…” he starts, his tongue feeling thick in his mouth, “yer…so…fucked.”

It’s all he can manage at present, and he wishes he could do more. He’s going to enjoy watching Geralt crack their skulls open like eggs, he thinks. First voice speaks again and sounds even closer to shitting himself than he did before. 

“I don’t know. I just think-” 

“And where the fuck do you think we’re going to get another one?” Snaps the second voice. “They’re the first ones in months, and besides, what the fuck do you think is going to happen now if we let him loose? Huh? No, He needs to eat. If we don’t keep feeding Him, he’s going to turn to us. Is that what you want?”

First voice doesn’t respond, but Jaskier gets the distinct sensation that he still isn’t happy. Jaskier knows he certainly isn’t thrilled with where he’s found himself. 

He tries to get some sense of where he is, but the bag is totally opaque. From the leaves crunching beneath his feet, he gathers that they’re in a place that isn’t developed and has a surplus of trees, but that’s not exactly a great foundation for figuring out how to get out of whatever he’s managed to get into. It’s unfair, really. He didn’t even do anything this time!

He stumbles when they suddenly lurch to a halt, and he has only the scarcest moment to try and recover his balance before he’s roughly shoved against what feels like a pole. He hears muffled whimpering from somewhere near him, but his focus is mainly consumed by trying to make a run for it when the ropes binding his wrists are cut, before a blow to his gut punches the air out of him, and he crumples to the ground. New rope binds his wrists behind him, tying him to the pole. Anger clears his mind beautifully, and he gives one good jerk against his bonds to make a point. 

“My witcher is going to fuck you up,” he grits out, before the bag is snatched off of his head, and he comes face-to-face with ginger man from their arrival in the town. The man drops to one knee, his face arrogant. 

“Your witcher left town,” the man tells him. 

“And you think he won’t come back?” Jaskier challenges, forcing himself to match the arrogance. 

The man just shakes his head with a grin. 

“Even if he does, he won’t find any of your things. Far as he knows, you left town, too.” 

A little shiver of fear shoots through his gut at that, the idea that Geralt won’t know to miss him, but he forces himself to calm, keeping his face smug. Geralt will come for him. He has to trust that. 

“He’s going to snap you like a toothpick,” Jaskier tells him confidently, but the man just shakes his head once more, rising to his feet. The movement draws Jaskier’s eye to a young woman, bound like he is, head bowed and mouth stuffed with a gag tied behind her head. He realizes she’s the source of the whimpering he heard before, her shoulders shaking as she cries. He looks back to the ginger man and his assistant, glaring. 

“You’re fucked,” he says, but the man just picks up a lantern and turns to leave. 

“We’ll see how confident you are in that once He’s done with you.” 

Jaskier watches them walk away, scowling, until they’re both out of sight. He turns to the girl. 

“Hey, hey love,” Jaskier says, fighting back his own panic and trying to sound gentle and reassuring. “It’s going to be alright, do you hear me? You’re going to be alright.” 

The girl keeps crying, the noise muffled behind the cloth tied around her mouth. The sound cuts through Jaskier like a knife. His own panic aside, the sheer misery and terror behind those noises makes him wish desperately for Geralt’s strength. He wishes he could snap his bonds like trussing string and get them both out of this. 

His lack of witcher ability aside, however, Jaskier still has plenty of tricks up his sleeves. 

He works his way upwards until he has space to bring one leg up underneath him, contorting until he can reach his boot, his fingers fumbling blindly until they brush against the hilt of the small knife that had been a gift from Geralt three years ago at their spring meeting, a steel blade inlaid with silver details along the center of the metal. He grins when he feels it and manages to get it in hand, sawing blindly at the ropes around his wrists. The blade is sharp and manages the task in short order, although he can’t help but flinch slightly each time he manages to slice himself in the process. When his hands are free, the sight is gruesome, with little cuts to his forearms, but there will be time to deal with those later. 

He immediately moves to the girl, cutting through her bonds as carefully as he can given the panic he can feel beating in his chest, and he manages it without nicking her. He immediately has to shove the blade to the side when she launches herself at him, clutching at him like a drowning woman to a rescue boat. He keeps the weapon in hand but uses the other to rub firmly against her back as he makes soothing noises and says nonsense words of assurance. There isn’t time for this, not really, but time will just have to be made. 

After a moment, he pulls the girl back and carefully brings the blade up to saw at the knot keeping her gag in place. She remains still, shivering at the feeling of the blade near her cheek, but she still lets out a shudder now and then until it’s finally free. 

“Thank you,” she whimpers, and Jaskier manages to give her a smile. 

“C’mon,” he says, standing and extending a hand to her, realizing too late that it’s bloody. 

She takes it, evidently undeterred, and he pulls her to her feet. He pauses then, unsure what his next move is meant to be. He doesn’t completely fancy running off into the darkness where murderous villagers and/or villager-created-monsters are lurking, but he also doesn’t think that staying in what is essentially the beasts’s food dish is the way forward, either. He wishes desperately that he had more information on whatever is meant to eat them besides it being large and people-eatey. After enough years with Geralt, he knows a fair deal about monsters. If he just had a little more information on what exactly he needs to evade, he’d feel a great deal better about their chances. 

As it is, it’s looking pretty fucking grim. 

Come on, witcher, he thinks into the general vicinity. This would be an ideal time for Geralt to show up looking noble and heroic.

Fuck, at this point Jaskier would take Geralt looking grumpy and covered in monster guts. He wouldn’t even complain about the smell. (Much). 

Still, no Geralt of any appearance shows up through the mist, and Jaskier finally steps back from the girl, smoothing her hair from her face and cupping it in his hands, making sure he has her attention. The girl trembles still in a way that vibrates into his hands, and her face is pale beneath the shine of tears on her cheeks. 

“We are going to get out of this, alright?” He asks, nodding his head at the girl in prompt until she responds. “But I need you to stick close and do as I say, alright? Can you do that, love?”

The girl trembles, still, but she nods, her lips setting in a determined line. 

“Lovely. You’re being very brave.” He hopes his sincerity shines through and doesn’t read as pandering. After enough time in the company of a witcher, he’s fairly used to creepy-crawlies, and he’s still scared mildly shitless. He can’t imagine being in this situation with no desensitizing travels beforehand.

The girl sticks close, grabbing blindly for his hand, eyes still wide and moving rapidly back and forth as if they stand a chance of piercing the darkness. Jaskier knows he should probably keep both hands free, but he’d feel like a righteous dick shaking off a girl trying to draw some kind of comfort from him. 

(And, well, he’s not immune to feeling better with a hand in his). (He’d prefer it to be leather-clad and attached to a White Wolf at present, but needs must). 

He picks his direction on the flimsiest sort of logic. He knows which way the villagers went and rationalizes that he does not want anything to do with them, but he imagines they would likely choose to go the opposite direction as whatever they were leaving him and the girl to be eaten by, so that leaves either direction adjacent as the least likely to lead directly to their grisly deaths. He doesn’t think flipping a coin would inspire confidence in his fellow sacrificial victim, so he has to rely on picking the direction that looks the least lush with the hopes that it means the monster isn’t in that direction. It occurs to him a few dozen steps in that perhaps the least-thriving area of the orchard is where the monster would be to strengthen it, but he also can’t bring himself to pull an about-face when he’s already committed to this direction. 

“I thought he loved me,” the girl says, her voice quiet and eerily nearly toneless. Jaskier looks back to her briefly and sees tear tracks streaking down her face once more, but she seems more concerned on keeping her gaze on their surroundings than wiping her face off, so Jaskier decides to leave it be. He squeezes her hand in support, and she gives him a tremulous little flicker of a smile before she refocuses her attention. “He said I was the only one for him.”

“Men,” Jaskier says in commiseration, and the girl snorts slightly. 

“Men,” she says in agreement. 

Jaskier would love to bemoan an entire gender with her, his own nebulous participation in it making him immune from the condemnation of course, but he’d rather not die because a monster heard him cursing his exes too loudly. That sounds a little too embarrassing, even for him. He makes a mental note to buy a bottle of wine and set aside some time to bitch with her later. 

They certainly deserve it, after this. 

Every snap of a twig and rustle of leaves make them both jump, his own attempts at imitating how Geralt looks on a contract notwithstanding. He’s trying to look reliable for the sake of the girl, but non-witcher senses in a dark grove at night make for an ideal setting to scare the shit out of someone. They both yelp when a rabbit cuts across their path, clutching each other. He can’t speak for the girl, but he knows that he feels terrified enough to be nearly giddy from it, hysterical laughter threatening to burst forth at any second. 

Geralt, if you don’t get your ass here soon, he thinks desperately, you are washing your own hair for the next year. He’s had more than enough of playing a hero and would desperately like to hand it over to a professional. 

When a crashing noise comes from the left of them, Jaskier lets himself believe that perhaps it’s just a deer, drunk on fallen apples. Regardless of his desperate hope for a sauced stag as the source of the noise, he still tugs the girl behind him. He can feel her gripping his doublet and reaches one hand back to tug her loose. If they need to run, they can’t afford to get tangled up with each other. With his other hand, he clutches his knife tightly, moving to hold it in a reverse grip, his preferred form when he has to wield a blade instead of letting Geralt do it for him. 

Please be a wasted deer. Please be a wasted deer. Please be a wasted deer. 

The creature that bursts through the trees is not, in fact, a deer, sloshed or otherwise.

He’s not sure what in the fuck it is, but even given his limited knowledge of wildlife, he can tell immediately that it is absolutely not a deer. 

It looks like an ancient apple tree, of sorts, its body made up of grey, gnarled wood and leaves. Apples bobble across its form with every movement in a way that would be comical if it weren’t for the fucking scythe claws.

“Run!” He shouts to the girl, reaching behind to give her a shove and forcing himself to remain in place. The creature starts to dart in her direction, apparently drawn by the movement, but Jaskier stoops to grab a rock, hurling it at the beast. “Hey, fucker! Over here! Right here!”

He has approximately thirty seconds to enjoy feeling successful when the beast turns to him and leaves the girl be. 

As he bolts in the opposite direction as her, however, his only feeling is f uck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

He runs faster than he thinks he’s ever managed before, terror lending him speed until he imagines he must be able to give a hare a run for its money. As fast as he moves, however, the monster stays in close pursuit, the noise of crashing branches and groaning like tree limbs in a breeze remaining behind him and slowly sounding closer and closer. He doesn’t know if it’s fear that makes him paranoid of it being right on his heels, but he pushes himself faster. Breathing is a struggle, and he imagines his legs will be useless for a week, but it’s all lost beneath the desperate will to live of a creature in flight from a predator. There is no reality in the world beyond the next three feet in front of him, the farthest he can see. 

I’m going to die, he thinks clearly. I argued with Geralt, and now I’m going to die, and he’s never going to hear me say, ‘I love you.’

He could cry, if that wouldn’t risk disrupting his vision and bringing on his death even faster. It feels stupid, so, so stupid, that he’d let fear keep him back from just saying it. Even if Geralt never returned it, Jaskier wishes desperately that he’d at least gotten to hear it. Geralt hears hateful things all the time. He deserved to hear someone say they love him. He deserved to be left with something beautiful, something to keep him company when Jaskier himself no longer can. If Jaskier had just-

He feels a sharp, burning starburst of pain across his back as a blow takes him to the ground. He cries out before he hits, giving himself half a second to try and regain his breath until the position of a shadow beyond him prompts him to turn over, just in time for claws to sink their way deep into the ground where his head was only moments before. 

“Fucking tits,” Jaskier curses, trying to control the terror that makes him feel like a trapped animal, senseless and wild. He can’t lose his head. He has to keep control of himself. 

He’s got someone to protect, after all. If the monster finishes him off, there will be nothing to stop it from going after the girl. 

He’s off again before the creature manages to free its claws from the ground, tearing towards the trees and begging any gods listening to free his path from any roots and stones. He can’t go down again, he thinks wildly, as he feels a horrifying wetness overtaking his back, the hot scent of copper filling his nose. If he goes down again, he does not think he’ll be getting back up.

The monster is on him again soon enough, this time side-swiping him with its version of a palm, knocking him into a tree. He thinks the next sensation he’s going to register will be the pain of impalement, but the monster just watches him with glowing eyes the color of a harvest moon, body tensed and poised like a cat’s. Jaskier makes to dart away again, and the monster hits him once more, sending him tumbling across the ground. Again, the monster lets him get up before another swipe, and Jaskier realizes he’s being toyed with, allowed the illusion of escape so that the monster can attack once more.

He is, abruptly, fucking furious. 

It’s bad enough to be killed, but to have the beast play with him first?

He has somehow kept his knife in hand, and when the beast swipes again, he tosses himself onto the limb, stabbing with his dagger in a flurry of anger as the beast attempts to whip him away. The stabs sizzle faintly from the reaction with the silver. He bares his teeth in a feral sort of grin as the creature howls with pain as he stabs even faster. If he’s going to die, he’s going to take at least part of the fucker with him. 

Eventually, the blood from his back slips down over his arms, sticking the material of his doublet to his skin and eventually making its way down to his hands. It makes his grip slick, and eventually he loses his hold, flying through the air until he hits the ground once more. It knocks the wind out of him, but he gains a few precious seconds when the beast curls around its injured arm, which is already blackening from the injuries from the silver. He pushes himself to his feet once more, suddenly inspired when he sees the slightest spots of light in the distance. 

The lanterns. 

He realizes now that they had likely been used to lure unwary travelers in to be sacrificed, but he suddenly has a much better idea for a good use for them. 

The creature is still howling with agony, rocking slightly over its limb. Jaskier doesn’t give it a chance to gather itself before he’s off again. There’s sharp sparks of pain all along his sides, and his breath is coming harder, but he can’t stop to take stock of the laundry list of injuries he’s sustained. He can’t let himself stop, even for a moment. He keeps his eyes locked on the light, pushing himself faster and faster. He hears the beast recover, taking off in pursuit, but evidently its injured limb has slowed it at least slightly, and it pursues him with less speed. 

He lets out a disbelieving laugh when he finally approaches a lantern, one in a line of many. He gets his fingers around the wire of the handle and spins, grinning at the beast as it approaches, planting itself and growling. 

“C’mon, fucker,” he taunts. “Hungry, are you?” He holds his arms out to either side in offering, the lantern swinging in his hand. “Come and get me. Juicy bard, right here. Prime monster feed.”

The creature gathers itself for a pounce, and Jaskier readies himself as well. He’s got one shot at this. He can’t afford to waste it. 

When the beast is at the arc of its leap, he swings the lantern, which hits it in a burst of shattering glass and oil, the flames consuming it at once with the fuel. He tries to move out of the way, but the monster hits him on its way down with a rogue flail, sending him into the ground until the roll of his body sends his head against a tree. 

One of the last things he registers before darkness claims him is the beast trying to struggle to its feet before it collapses, the movement sending a waft of burnt apple smell as it lets out a few raspy shrieks. It tries to belly-crawl away but soon desists, shuddering in the flames that snap and crackle. 

This had better be a song, he thinks. In the distance, he sees a flicker of white moving closer in the darkness, approaching until it’s right beside him. As blackness takes over his vision, he feels hands on him that are familiar, their touch like homecoming. 

He must have managed to trick his way into a beautiful afterlife after all. 

*

“Jaskier,” Geralt says, keeping half of his attention on the beast dying in the flames and focusing the rest on the bard. “Jask, c’mon.” 

He taps a hand gently against the man’s cheek, but it just sends his head lolling. There’s a deep cut along his hairline, slicking his hair and half of his face with glistening scarlet. He runs his hands carefully over Jaskier’s limbs and back, confirming a lack of more serious injury other than a few broken ribs. The other bones all feel whole and in the right places, but his hand immediately hits the slick heat of fresh blood on Jaskier’s back, and he practically jerks the bard upright, leaning him forward to rest against his shoulder while Geralt examines his back. 

He hisses through his teeth when he sees the damage, scores deep into the flesh, the silk of his doublet a dark crimson from shoulders to hips where the fabric has soaked it up. He needs to bandage the wounds desperately, but they also can’t afford to stay here. Even with the monster defeated–the how of that is mystifying, but he can question it later–it won’t be long until a few of the bolder villagers come to investigate the bonfire Jaskier has made of their patron beast. 

“You’re alright,” he tells Jaskier, letting himself press his cheek to the bard’s temple for one brief moment. The words are meant to be soothing if the man can hear him, but they’re also an order. Jaskier will be alright because there is no other option. 

Geralt’s medallion is vibrating like an angry beehive against his chest, apple trees sending up sickly odors of rot as they topple over, the spell keeping them alive and thriving broken and leaving them to fall apart without it. The repercussions of holding such a spell over the town are revealing themselves immediately, and he imagines the town itself is likely already noticing them. 

They need to leave. Now. 

Geralt stands and gathers Jaskier carefully, trying to avoid ripping his flesh more on the way up, jostling him slightly until he’s settled more comfortably. He whistles the series of notes Roach is trained to respond to, and soon enough the mare is galloping through the trees, her nostrils flaring at the blood but her nerve holding. The girl on her back looks less put-together, but she’s managed not to fall off, which is something. Geralt had put her there for safekeeping after she ran headlong into him through the trees, and he hadn’t bothered staying longer than absolutely necessary to make sure she could actually sit a horse well enough to not immediately fall off. 

“Can you hold him on?” Geralt asks, lifting Jaskier slightly to indicate who he means. 

The girl flinches and whips in the saddle to face a bird fleeing the branches of a nearby tree, but when she turns back, she nods, her face set. Geralt carefully drapes Jaskier over Roach’s withers, not releasing him until the girl has a good hold on the back of his belt. It’s not the most comfortable position, but Geralt doesn’t have the luxury of adjusting him more. He waits for the scarcest moment to make sure the girl has a good hold before he takes Roach’s reins in hand, beginning to lead her away at a quick jog. He sends a few blasts of Igni towards the beast to speed its destruction further, and in a moment of petty vengefulness, he sets the trees around it alight, too. 

Given the way he feels wrathful enough to burn the entire fucking village to the ground, he hopes they’ll know enough to count themselves lucky. 

*

He leads them onwards for around half an hour at a quick clip before he stops them, needing to bandage Jaskier’s wounds. They’ll absolutely need stitches, but that will have to wait until they’re in a place where they can afford to stop longer. The girl leaps down from the saddle after he’s gotten Jaskier free, stumbling slightly on the dismount but managing to catch herself. Without needing to be asked, she helps work Jaskier’s shirt off, the material sticking to him and making removal difficult. 

“Hold him up,” he instructs, lifting Jaskier and bending him forward to rest with his arms around the girl’s shoulders. The girl grunts slightly at the weight, absolutely dwarfed by Jaskier, but she just lifts her hands to brace around Jaskier’s biceps to prevent him from sliding. Geralt empties a skin of water over his back to wash away at least some of it, although more blood seeps out immediately. He withdraws rolls of bandaging, packing the wounds and wrapping them tightly. The material immediately begins darkening with spots of red, and he growls in frustration. Jaskier is getting paler by the minute, but they can’t afford to stop here any longer than they have. 

“I can run,” the girl says, the first time Geralt’s heard her voice. He raises an eyebrow in question. The girl flushes slightly, but she continues. “It’ll be faster if your horse can carry less weight. I’m training to be a messenger. I’m a good runner, promise.” 

Geralt studies her for a moment, trying to judge the veracity of her words. The last thing he needs is to have to stop for a human overestimating her own ability. When Jaskier lolls slightly, Geralt decides to trust her. With the girl’s help, he gets Jaskier in the saddle, tying him in place. 

“Tell me when you need to stop,” he tells her, and she nods, setting off into a jog even before he starts moving. 

*

To the girl’s credit, she clearly wasn’t lying. She does have to stop him eventually, but by then, they’ve made excellent distance. It’s still within what a horse could ride if they do in fact have pursuers, but Geralt also knows what tends to happen to towns who make trades like this one had after their covenants break. 

There is always, always a cost. 

“What’s your name?” He asks the girl as she piles wood together for a fire. 

“Magda,” she says tightly, frowning when two of her logs refuse to stay where she’s put them. She manages her stack, and her eyes flick to Jaskier. “Is he going to be alright?”

Geralt grunts, digging his suture supplies out of his bag and sparing a moment to light the fire with a blast of Igni, making the girl jump and scramble backwards before she recovers herself. She curls up after that, chin resting on her knees. Geralt largely ignores her, focused on keeping his stitches small and even. It’s more care than he would ever use on his own wounds, but Jaskier deserves nothing less than Geralt’s utmost effort. The girl watches him in silence for a while before she speaks, her voice quiet, her eyes still focused on Jaskier. 

“He saved me,” she says. Geralt hums a response before he ties off the final knot on the first slash. The girl watches him in silence again as he works. It’s slightly unnerving to have such an intent audience, but he makes himself focus. “You love him, huh?”

The words make him fumble for the briefest second before he recovers, and he keeps his eyes fixed on his needle. 

“We’re friends,” he says gruffly, which is still more than he thinks he’s ever said to Jaskier’s face. 

The girl exhales a huff of air through her nose, tilting her chin to indicate Geralt’s hands, one still pressed to Jaskier’s back in a gesture of comfort, the other frozen with the needle. 

“You don’t touch someone like that unless you love them,” she says, and Geralt suddenly becomes very absorbed in his work. 

Magda lets him work in peace until the last stitch is done, and then she helps prop Jaskier up to smooth a salve against infection onto the wounds and wrap his torso in bandages once more. Job done, he digs out food from their saddlebags and shoves it at her, moving back to Jaskier and trying to get some water down his throat. He’d like to make a broth, something to get some nutrients into him, but that would involve hunting, and Geralt absolutely cannot leave the two alone for the time that would take. 

The girl is careful about the food, eating only half and leaving the rest of it for him despite his attempts to get her to finish it. He sets out his own bedroll for her to curl up on, and she does so immediately, pulling the blanket almost over her head. After a while, he hears quiet crying. 

He sits awkwardly as she weeps, wishing desperately for Jaskier to wake up for many reasons but at present so that the bard can handle something so far out of Geralt’s depth. Jaskier, however, remains asleep, his face pale and slack. 

“Are you hurt?” He asks at last, hoping against hope that there will be something easy for him to fix, and then she’ll stop crying. 

The blob of her head under the fabric shakes, and he hears her try to get her breathing under control. 

“Do you want to…talk?” He asks awkwardly, hoping that her answer will be no. 

“...I thought he loved me,” she says after a long, tense moment, and Geralt resists the urge to curse. He should have stayed quiet. He scrambles for something to say to make her feel better, tries to think what Jaskier tell her. 

“With the bond broken, he’s probably going to die soon,” he says, pausing awkwardly, desperately trying to will Jaskier into picking now to rouse. “...if that…helps.”

The girl makes a choked snort noise, and the blanket dips low enough to reveal her eyes, teary but with what seems to be the faintest hint of amusement. 

“You’re better with swords, huh?” She asks, and Geralt looks down to Jaskier again, brushing the hair away from his eyes needlessly. 

“Words are the bard’s skill, not mine,” he says honestly. 

“Hm,” the girl acknowledges, pulling the blanket back up over her head. She’s quiet so long that Geralt lets himself think that he’s been saved from having to continue the conversation, and he resists the urge to curse when she speaks again. “Will it be painful? His death?”

The tone of her voice and the lack of facial expression make it hard to decide if she wants to hear yes or no, but he thinks about what he would want to hear. 

“Probably,” he tells her. “Those bonds are a bitch when they’re broken.” 

“Good,” she says, and then she’s quiet, until Geralt eventually hears her breath even out into sleep. 

He remains awake through the night. 

Chapter Text

Keeping the same pace, they reach a town the next day, a different one than he and Jaskier set out from before. Magda’s legs are shaking slightly by the time they arrive, but two women who seem to be her mothers are immediately there, arms around her in a hug, holding her up between them. They turn big, teary eyes to him, and overwhelm him with gratitude he doesn’t want, especially since he wasn’t even the one who defeated the godsdamned thing. 

“Do you have an inn?” He asks, waving off any more thanks. “My companion is the one who saved your daughter, and he was injured. I need a place to tend to him.” 

Magda, trailed by her mothers, shows him the way to the inn. He’s only peripherally aware of her ordering food for him and Jaskier, but he manages a thanks as he pushes past her into the room. Once inside, Geralt drives everyone else off with attempts at politeness that land more at gruff dismissal. He hears that someone will send for a healer, but he has no patience with which to wait. 

He settles Jaskier carefully on the bed and unwraps the bandages, growling in frustration when he sees the red, puffy flesh that speaks to infection in the wounds already. A healer arrives soon, and Geralt helps the woman with her supplies, holding Jaskier steady when she tips a vial of acrid-smelling disinfectant over his back, making the bard arch with a cry of pain even as he remains unconscious. The woman smooths on an ointment that makes Geralt’s nose sting with its sharp smell and then rewraps the cuts. She walks him through the medication she leaves behind, more of the disinfectants as well as tinctures to aid Jaskier’s body in fighting off the infection and more to manage the fever that already burns beneath his skin. 

Geralt attempts to pay her, but she waves him off. 

“I think Magda’d skin me if I tried to take money from her hero and his witcher,” she says with a wry smile, and under other circumstances, Geralt might be flustered by the word choice, but as it is, he has no concerns other than Jaskier’s recovery. 

*

It’s late the next day when one of Magda’s mothers knocks on the door, bringing a basket of food and some more tinctures, briefly explaining the use of each. Although he doesn’t like the idea of anyone else touching Jaskier, he does let her help him apply some more salve to help with healing of the stitches, rewrapping the bard’s bandages and settling him down carefully again. Jaskier is terrifying still throughout the entire process, his face barely even crinkling with discomfort. Geralt feels the briefest little shiver of hope when Jaskier’s eyelashes flutter, but the bard settles down again without ever regaining consciousness. 

Magda’s mother, whose name Geralt has already forgotten in the face of greater concerns, kneels by the hearth and heats some broth, sprinkling in some feverfew while she does. She’s quiet for the most part, but after a while she speaks, still watching the small pot with the broth in it. 

“We sent people to the village,” she says, voice controlled. “The idea was to decide who was most responsible and should face punishment for their crimes.” There’s an edge to her voice, a barely-controlled fury. Even before she tells him, Geralt already has an idea of what might complicate such a plan. As he suspected she would, the woman tells him the small party had found the town already in collapse, animals dead in the street and sending up a miasma of putrefaction throughout the streets, joining the scent of rot from produce in kitchen gardens. Hollow-eyed people had peeked out of windows and around doorways, the structures already tilting and crumbling with rot, as if the village had been abandoned for decades. 

Geralt is tempted to let the whole lot of them suffer and die for their sins, but he also knows there are people in the town who might not even know what they owed their success to. Even if the adults were all culpable, the children don’t deserve to pay for their sins. With this in mind, he tells the woman that the curse is almost certainly tied to the land and that anyone who chooses to flee beyond the bounds of it will likely be outside of the influence of the collapse. What she chooses to do with the information once it’s been given to her will be up to her. 

Geralt has more pressing concerns. 

*

Jaskier’s fever continues to burn, even as Geralt attempts to keep him cool. It sets his nerves on edge, his helplessness against the things happening inside the bard, beyond anything he can fight or fix. 

Geralt’s biggest frustration with the entire mess they’ve ended up in is that it wasn’t even Jaskier’s fault. The bard hadn’t wanted to go, hadn’t wanted to stay, and hadn’t even ventured out of what should have been safe a place to wait.

It is, frankly, fucking inconvenient to have no easy target for his frustration other than his own insistence at being in the town in the first place.

Jaskier whimpers, his face scrunched in pain or distress or both, and Geralt rewets a cloth and dabs at his skin, making low, soothing noises that he’ll deny once he’s sure Jaskier’s not going to die on him. The bard settles slightly at the first touch, and Geralt carefully runs the cloth over his skin, leaving behind a sheen of moisture on flushed flesh. Geralt can smell the infection in his body, and it makes him want to break something or storm back to the village and figure out who would be the most satisfying to toss around as a responsible party, if there’s even still anyone left whole enough to be conscious at this point.

As it is, though, his place is here with Jaskier, and Geralt finds himself at a loss. 

He’s tended the bard a few times through the years, but Jaskier is a convenient combination of lucky and hardy and has rarely gotten injured or seriously ill. Even when he has been out of commission, it had always been brief and required little more of Geralt than keeping them in place for a day or two extra and making sure the bard had something to eat and something warm to curl up under while whining. For all that he’ll complain as if death is near, Jaskier has always recovered quickly and been back to bouncing about brightly and chattering like a mockingbird in no time. Geralt had let him ride Roach occasionally until he was absolutely sure of the bard’s recovery, but he knows now he’s gotten very lucky throughout the years that Jaskier has been so easy to care for. 

Now, Jaskier looks horrifically fragile, pale and sweat-soaked, and it makes Geralt feel prickly in response. Each sound of footsteps near the door has him tensing, as if each person is a threat when Jaskier is already vulnerable. 

Jaskier whimpers, and Geralt sets aside the cloth to take one of the bard’s clammy hands in his own, rubbing a thumb along the soft skin there. It makes him smile, a little, the evidence of the bard’s religious regimen of lotions and oils and salves. Geralt traces his touch up the delicate musician fingers to the calluses at the tips, even those carefully buffed into smoothness and moisturized to ensure they won’t catch on material. Jaskier had made a brief attempt at bullying Geralt into letting him smooth his sword calluses, but a threat of tossing the bard’s pumice stone into a river had made the insistence fade into low grumbling until it was given up completely. 

Geralt wishes now he would have let him. It would have been such a simple thing to allow and would have made Jaskier happy, the way he’s always strangely pleased when he washes Geralt’s hair or combs it or scrubs away gore and dirt. He doesn’t understand why the bard enjoys it so much, but Jaskier has never been anything but keen to jump into Geralt’s bathing and personal hygiene regime. 

Then again, he supposes he can understand it in a way. It’s likely similar to how Geralt feels when Jaskier pats his full stomach after a good hunt and talks about how stuffed he is, or when he sees the softer lines of the bard’s body that speak to his being well-fed by Geralt’s efforts. It’s something he can’t entirely put into words (nor would he want to try), but there’s something to be said for the joy and satisfaction of seeing someone cared for because of your presence beside them.

If Jaskier will just wake up, Geralt decides he’ll let the bard take a pumice stone to his hands. 

(If Jaskier will just wake up, Geralt will let him do whatever the fuck he wants, frankly). (Jaskier just has to wake up). 

(He has to). 

*

Geralt remains by Jaskier’s bedside in the days that follow, as Jaskier’s fever spikes higher and higher, his wounds growing puffy and red with infection. Geralt religiously cleans them, smoothing fresh salve over and rewrapping them multiple times a day. For all of his efforts, though, Jaskier still burns, rousing only enough to shift fretfully and make low noises of pain and fear. Geralt tries to soothe him, to say soft words and use gentle touches to deal with whatever haunts Jaskier in his sickbed. He clasps Jaskier’s hands in his own, pressing them to his lips and his heart, as if he can lend Jaskier his strength just through the touch.

Geralt makes wild, impossible promises during this vigil. Promises of devotion and honesty and affection, promises to get his head out of his ass and speak, consequences be damned. He’s almost lost the chance to do it forever. He can’t keep assuming Jaskier will always be around to hear them. 

It feels absurd, absolutely asinine, to have held so much back from the bard, who had always given of himself freely. He has an entire hoard of words stuck in his chest that he can only grant to Jaskier when unconscious, all of the things he should have said to the bard in the years before.

“I love your laugh,” Geralt tells him one morning after Jaskier has a convulsion from his fever, as he sponges the bard’s forehead while waiting for maids to bring up water for a cooling bath. “It always makes me want to smile, even when you’re laughing because you’re being a dick.” 

“I never thought someone like you existed,” Geralt tells him as he lowers the bard into the bath, Jaskier already thinning, the lines of his ribs visible in the way they usually only are in the early spring. “When I first met you, I thought you might be a trick.” He lowers his head down to press his forehead to Jaskier’s, which burns with fever enough to feel hot even against Geralt’s warmer skin. “I didn’t know you were a gift.”

“You saved me,” Geralt whispers to Jaskier as he changes him back into loose trousers and tucks him away in bed once more. “From my darkness, from my mistakes,” he presses Jaskier’s palm to his lips briefly. When he speaks again, his voice is strained. “You can’t leave me, Jask. I don’t know how to be without you anymore.” 

*

Jaskier’s fever breaks that night, and Geralt sends vague thoughts of thanks to gods that may or may not exist as the bard shivers beneath a sheen of sweat. He changes the bard into dryer clothes and dares to lay down beside him at last, offering some body heat to combat the chills now that his temperature is lowering. Tracing a gentle hand over Jaskier’s face, his throat, his chest, Geralt decides he needs to tell Jaskier at least some of the things once he’s conscious. 

He’s still aware that he and Jaskier last spoke on angry terms and that the bard could still choose to leave. If he does so, however, Geralt doesn’t want to have left anything back, held any cards to his chest. If he has to learn to be alone again, he doesn’t want to have to carry around “what if”s and “could I have”s. If Jaskier is to leave, Geralt wants to know that there’s not a single thing more he could have done to make him stay. 

*

Jaskier wakes and becomes aware of three things in quick succession: he is cold as fuck, his body hurts, and he would gladly commit murder for something to drink. Beyond those realizations, he gains awareness as he opens his eyes that he’s in a room he doesn’t recognize, and he frowns at the ceiling. His head aches faintly, and his back screams with pain when he shifts slightly, and he’s not sure exactly whose fault any of that is, but he is definitely going to make them pay for it. 

Before he can gather his strength enough to yell for Geralt in the hopes that he’ll fix whatever the fuck has happened, he becomes aware of a long line of warmth against his side, and he manages to turn his head to investigate, even as the movement makes his headache throb behind his eyes. He barely resists the urge to jump when he finds himself suddenly face-to-face with Geralt, the witcher’s eyes closed in what is apparently sleep while his body is pressed close, one heavy arm thrown across Jaskier’s belly but the rest of him held at a cautious distance. The witcher looks like a wreck, his hair in a wild disarray that clearly speaks to Jaskier not tending to it and dark circles beneath his eyes. The lines of his face are strained in a way that tells him Geralt’s been stressed. 

After a moment, Jaskier remembers why exactly that might be.

He grips the arm across him entirely on reflex as he inhales sharply with a kneejerk fear response, and Geralt jerks awake immediately. His movement as he attempts to rise and reach for his sword leads to him dragging Jaskier partially off of the bed with his grip on the witcher’s arm, and Jaskier chokes on the surge of fiery pain the motion sparks in his back. He squeezes tighter, making a mental note to apologize to Geralt later for what will absolutely be bruises but too busy trying not to vomit and/or pass out once more from the pain to worry about doing it now. 

“Jask?” Geralt asks, moving carefully until he’s kneeling by the bed, his arm still in Jaskier’s hold. “Are you with me?” 

Jaskier, eyes clenched shut, nods, breathing in and out slowly before he can manage words. 

“Tragically, yes. Fuck.” He thinks passing out might actually be desirable at present, but he really would like to know what the fuck happened after he hopefully burned the apple monster–which he will have to heavily doctor in the song he will be writing about this experience—to a toasty crisp. 

He’s barely opened his eyes at all when Geralt’s face is suddenly his entire field of vision, and a giant hand is cupping the back of his head, pulling him into a kiss that Jaskier can’t even respond to. Before he even has a chance to try and move his lips in return, Geralt is pulling back, ducking his head slightly in the way that Jaskier knows means he’d be blushing if he could. 

“Sorry,” Geralt says gruffly, looking away, clearly flustered by his own actions. 

“The fuck?” Jaskier asks intelligently before the situation fully registers, and he groans. “Damn it. Fuck. Shitting fuck damn it. I’m dead, aren’t I? I died and ended up getting eaten by a fucking apple monster of all things. Oh, this is just great. Fucking Valdo is going to have a field day with this.” 

“You’re not dead,” Geralt tells him, his tone torn between heated and amused. He gives Jaskier a look that he usually only gets when he tries to pick fights in pubs. “You gave it your best shot, but you didn’t quite manage it.” 

Well then, Jaskier now has less than no explanation for things. Before he can investigate further, he remembers the girl who had been monster food with him, and he starts to sit up in a panic before Geralt restrains him with gentle but implaccable hands on his shoulders. 

“The girl,” he says, eyes wide. “Geralt, there was a girl with me. Is she-”

“Sh,” Geralt tells him, moving a hand to brush over his hair. Jaskier thinks distantly that he’s being soothed in a manner suspiciously similar to the way Geralt calms Roach, and he might be in a bit of a snit over it if it didn’t feel so damn nice. “She’s fine. This is her village. She’s back with her mothers now.” 

Jaskier’s eyes prick with tears at the relief, and he shuts them, letting his head go lax against the pillow. 

“The creature?” He asks, eyes still closed. He dares to turn his head until it’s pressing against Geralt’s hand, and to his delight, the witcher keeps it where it is, letting him enjoy the contact. 

“Dead,” Geralt confirms. “Congratulations, by the way. Not bad for your first contract.” 

Jaskier snorts. 

“First and last, dear witcher,” he says, opening his eyes. Geralt’s face looks drawn still, but there’s humor in those golden eyes, too. “I believe beast wrangling is much better suited for me as a spectator sport. That was horrifically terrifying.” He winces when he tries to shift. “And the aftermath seems rather shit as well. What exactly happened?”

Geralt gently helps him sit up slightly, propped by pillows. Jaskier desperately wants to tease him about being a mother hen, but he also very much needs the assistance at present and decides it’s better not to test his luck. 

Immediate concerns about safety and dependants aside, he also very much has a new line of inquiry he needs to set off on. 

“Not for nothing, darling,” he starts carefully, picking at a loose thread on the blanket and winding it anxiously around his finger. “But I don’t normally get a kiss when I manage to defeat death.” 

He’s not complaining, exactly, but if that’s going to be a new greeting between them, he will need time to gather himself (and to lie facedown on the floor and scream about it). 

His fidgeting with the thread is stopped by Geralt taking the hand in his own, and when he looks up, the witcher is carefully looking only at their joined hands. Geralt looks nervous, suddenly, and Jaskier feels hopelessly fond. His mighty witcher, brought low by having to use words of all things. He squeezes Geralt’s hand gently in reassurance. 

“If it was a spur of the moment, ‘oh gods you’re not dead after all’ sort of thing, I understand.” He makes himself laugh once, even as the words hurt to say. “We can put it behind us. What’s a kiss between friends, after all?” It’s something he’s going to think about until the day he does end up in the grave, personally, but that’s his issue and not Geralt’s. 

“I’m sorry,” Geralt says, and Jaskier frowns. 

“So you said. But really, Geralt, one little kiss isn’t-”

“Not about the kiss,” Geralt says, cutting him off. He looks up briefly before he refocuses on their hands, and Jaskier resists the urge to press a hand beneath his chin so he can read his face without its protective fringe of white hair. “I left you, Jask, and you could have-” He cuts himself off, and Jaskier sees the flutter of motion between a break in the strands when the witcher clenches his jaw. 

“Died?” Jaskier fills in, making a guess that’s confirmed when it makes Geralt twitch slightly. “You’re forgetting our many years together if you think it takes you leaving me to my own devices for me to find trouble.” 

That makes Geralt snort, and Jaskier smiles, slightly. 

“Besides, I’m not entirely blameless. You were right, I was being a brat-” 

“No-” 

“Yes,” Jaskier says, squeezing Geralt’s hand. “I was mad we were going to waste time in a boring town, but I should have listened to you.” He feels himself flush. “...I would never want to follow another witcher around. I said it to be mean, and it was wrong of me. I’m sorry.”

“I should have listened to you, too,” Geralt says, ever the spirit of generosity, and Jaskier wishes the kiss wasn’t looking like a one-off because the humility makes the witcher seem ever so kissable. He moves suddenly, sitting up straight and squaring his shoulders. Jaskier raises his eyebrows in surprise and allows it when Geralt moves to hold both of his hands. It raises faint alarm bells in his head, this show of seriousness, and he has the briefest flicker of panic that this is going to be a ‘It’s been fun, but we should go our own ways now’ talk, but nothing else about their conversation makes it seem like it’s going to be. 

“Well, that’s an alarming posture,” he jokes lightly, but Geralt doesn’t rise to the bait, his golden eyes boring into Jaskier’s in a way that would be absurdly intimidating if he didn’t know how soft the witcher was beneath all of his bluster and grumbling. 

“You’re my best friend-” Geralt tells him, and Jaskier’s ears ring slightly from surprise and disbelief. Something in his face must alarm the witcher because Geralt releases one hand to brace his shoulder. “Jask?” 

“Sorry,” he says, slightly breathy. “You’re not usually so…direct with these things.” 

It makes Geralt feel worse, hearing that and knowing that it’s true. He studies Jaskier’s hand in his for the sake of something to focus on for a moment before he looks up again.

“I thought you were going to die,” Geralt tells him, and Jaskier’s face goes soft. The reaction gives him the courage to keep going, even as his stomach rolls slightly with nerves. “I thought you were going to die, and then I would never get the chance to say something to you that I need to.” 

Jaskier looks a little nervous at that, shifting until it makes him wince and then stilling. Geralt gathers himself. 

“I love you,” he says, voice admirably even in his opinion. 

Jaskier blinks. 

“Fuck, I must have scared you,” Jaskier says, voice slightly flat. 

It is, as responses go, not entirely encouraging. 

“Geralt,” Jaskier says, sounding tired, “I already told you I forgive you. You don’t have to try and butter me up more.” 

“I mean it,” he says, frowning slightly. After so much build up in his head, the reality of finally confessing it is not going the way he had either feared or wanted it to. “I was always too afraid to say it, but it’s true. And if you don’t return it, that’s fine, I swear. We can move on and never mention it again, but I almost lost the chance to tell you, and you deserve to hear it. I love you. What you do or don’t do is up to you, but I just wanted you to know.” 

Jaskier’s eyes are piercing now, and Geralt fights the urge to squirm. 

“Damn,” Jaskier says, face completely unreadable. “I should have let an apple monster maul me years ago.” 

Before Geralt can process that, Jaskier has pulled him into a kiss, and he shifts himself carefully, heeding the tug to lean in closer while still carefully keeping his weight off of the bard. Jaskier keeps pulling until Geralt is completely on top of him, held up only the scantest inch on his elbows, his legs braced on either side of Jaskier’s hips. He makes himself pull back to let Jaskier breathe, and he can’t help but feel a little swell of pride at how dazed with pleasure the bard looks when he does. 

“I love you,” he says again, unable to stop himself now that he’s popped the cork on the words. 

Jaskier smiles and brushes the back of his knuckles along Geralt’s cheek. 

“I love you, too,” Jaskier says, studying Geralt’s face like he’s trying to memorize it. “More than I’ve ever loved anyone, if you can believe it.” 

Geralt can’t, not really, not yet, but the words are too pretty for him to do anything other than kiss Jaskier again. 

*

At Jaskier’s insistence, they share the bed that night. He helps the bard turn on his side to rest against his chest, and he rubs slow circles against the back of his shoulder, the only part of his back he can touch without risking hurting him. Still suffering from the injuries and blood loss, Jaskier is near to dozing almost immediately, his blinks getting longer and longer. He wiggles slightly, a muted version of the way he usually flops around to get comfortable, and Geralt smiles, leaning down to press his lips to the top of the silky chestnut hair, freshly washed and smelling of orange blossom. 

With the bard safely tucked away in his arms, sleep takes Geralt faster than it has in years.

*

Geralt knows he’s being nearly smothering in his tending in the days after Jaskier’s release from his sickbed, hovering as if Jaskier will shatter if left unattended. But the bard still moves stiffly, cautious with every movement as it pulls on the stitched wounds on his back, and he remains pale from his blood loss, and Geralt really just can’t help himself. 

“Geralt,” Jaskier says, sounding both exasperated and fond as Geralt lifts him into the saddle as the bard moves to pull himself up. Jaskier settles himself before he looks to Geralt. “I appreciate the attention, I do, but you’re going to get me used to this, and then I’m going to have to do things on my own again for winter. I’m going to be out of practice.” 

The words are non-accusatory, clearly a joke, but Geralt thinks about them all through the day as he leads Roach, as he lifts Jaskier down, as he sets up camp and pushes the bard back down when he tries to get up and help. He thinks about it throughout preparing supper and through Jaskier’s performance of a new–highly embellished–tale of a brave bard fighting three ferocious beasts at once to save a house of young unmarried maidens. He thinks about it as they settle down for the night, Jaskier rolling carefully towards him to rest his head on Geralt’s shoulder, wincing a bit as he moves until the heavier pain reliever he takes at night kicks in, making him drowsy. 

“Come with me,” Geralt says, as Jaskier’s blinks get longer and slower. The bard looks up at him, brow crinkled slightly. 

“Come where?” His voice is slurred slightly, the draught clearly close to dragging him under. 

Geralt inhales a slow breath, shoring up his courage. Somehow it’s easier with Jaskier not entirely in his right mind. He can think later about what that means about him. 

“To Kaer Morhen. For winter.” He pauses, nerves increasing with each second that Jaskier doesn’t respond, staring at him with wide eyes. “If you want.” 

Jaskier moves to sit up but hisses in pain, and Geralt immediately helps him lay back down, hovering until Jaskier finally opens one eye, one still squinted shut. Despite his clear discomfort, he still smiles, reaching up to cup Geralt’s cheek and pull him into a kiss. 

“I would love nothing more, darling.” 

*

Jaskier makes a despairing noise when he pulls out his outfit from the night of the attack, picking at it without much hope and examining it to see if anything can be saved. Geralt leaves him to it, sharpening a few of his daggers along with the bard’s, Jaskier resting against him but not impeding the motion. Geralt’s been trying to make up lost time to get them to Kaer Morhen before the weather makes it impossible, and he knows it’s exhausting the bard. 

“Well fuck,” Jaskier says, tossing the shirt to the ground in a sad flutter of rust-stained silk. 

Geralt grunts a sympathetic noise, and Jaskier moves to toss the trousers as well, evidently to make his dramatic point, but this garment lets out a soft clink when it hits a stone, and Jaskier reaches for it. He winces at the extension when it pulls on his stitches, and Geralt pushes him back gently with one hand, grabbing it for him and passing the material over. Jaskier gives him a kiss of thanks on his jaw, and Geralt manages to change it into a proper kiss. When they part, Jaskier tucks a strand of hair behind his ear, grinning. 

“What a soft puppy dog,” he teases, and Geralt growls in warning before he thinks about it, making the bard grin wider. 

Geralt ignores him and goes back to his sharpening, and Jaskier holds the trousers above the ground and shakes, looking for what made the clink. Something shiny drops to the ground, and Jaskier tosses aside the clothing and picks it up, making a soft noise of surprise when he examines it. 

“Look,” he says, passing it to Geralt for inspection. 

It’s a chip of glass from the lantern Jaskier had shattered, an apple on the center of the piece. Geralt handles it carefully to avoid cutting himself and tilts it to examine the details before he passes it back. Jaskier accepts it with care and raises it up to study it further. 

“I bet I could make this into a pendant,” he muses, turning the glass to examine the thickness. 

“Why would you want to?” Geralt asks, still focusing on his blades. 

“This is very important glass!” Jaskier tells him. “It’s my souvenir of my heroism.” 

“It’s a piece of broken lantern,” Geralt corrects, unimpressed. 

“No,” Jaskier says, nudging him carefully with a shoulder. “It’s a keepsake from when I got to be the one to save someone.”

“You don’t need a shard of glass for that,” Geralt tells him. “You already saved me.” The words are out before he fully thinks about them, and he wishes immediately that he could take them back, embarrassed. 

Jaskier, though, just pockets the glass, shoving lightly at Geralt’s wrist to move the blade so he can straddle his thighs with careful movement. Geralt lets go of the dagger and his whet stone, resting his hands lightly on Jaskier’s hips, squeezing to feel the bard rock slightly at the sensation. 

“You’re a soft little stuffed animal inside,” Jaskier tells him. “Squishy down to the center.”

Geralt disagrees, but the harder parts of him have better ways to make Jaskier forget the words than arguing would. 

*

The hike up to Kaer Morhen is as difficult as it ever is, even though Geralt is at least glad that they’re early enough in the season that they shouldn’t have to deal with any snow until they’re nearly to the top. Still, Jaskier has yet to fully recover, and there are portions of the path too treacherous to let Roach take them with a rider. The bard, to his credit, never complains, simply setting his jaw and pushing onwards, even when Geralt catches him leaning against rocks and tree trunks trying to catch his breath. He goes as slowly as he dares, but he also knows that the trek will only get harder if they delay too long and snow really sets in. 

He attempts to carry Jaskier along a few sections, but the bard evades him, giving him a tired smile even as Geralt can see his legs trembling slightly with exertion when his body isn’t really ready for it. Jaskier pats him on the cheek specifically to get a reaction, and he succeeds, Geralt pulling his head back immediately and scowling, slapping the hand away with carefully measured strength. 

“Mind your own, witcher,” Jaskier tells him with a grin. “I think you’ll find I’m more than capable of getting up to your special secret fortress on my own two legs, thank you very much.” 

Geralt worries that this isn’t strictly true, but it seems important to Jaskier for some reason to be able to say he’s done it on his own, and so Geralt is left simply to watch and fret. He keeps Jaskier on Roach as much as he can, but the bard never stays on longer than he absolutely has to. 

“I really don’t mind carrying you,” Geralt tells him one night, the bard curled loosely against him. 

“Where was this energy when I was ready to drop in our first year together?” Jaskier teases, eyes still shut. 

“I was trying to get rid of you then,” Geralt tells him, receiving a pinch to his side for it. 

“And yet here I am,” Jaskier says with clear pride, opening one eye halfway to give him a smug look. 

Geralt pulls him in and presses a gentle kiss between his eyes, lingering afterwards.

“And yet here you are,” he agrees, and Jaskier presses closer. 

*

Even with the delays, they’re still the first to arrive from what Geralt can smell, and he stops at the trailhead and looks up at the walls of Kaer Morhen as Jaskier struggles up the final stretch of ascent, Roach staying by his side and allowing him to hold onto the saddle for support. Geralt knows Jaskier would be self-conscious at being watched while he’s sweaty and panting, and so he makes himself keep facing the keep. As he studies it, he’s worried, suddenly, at what Jaskier will think about it. 

He’s only passed Lettenhove a couple of times in his life, but even from a distance, he knows the mansion that was Jaskier’s home for his formative years is grander by far than anything in Kaer Morhen. The fortress has withstood the years and the assaults against it, but Geralt is suddenly keenly aware of every crack, every crumbling section of mortar. He grimaces at a streak of white against the stone where he knows ravens like to roost along the wall of one of the abandoned towers. He knows Jaskier won’t be impressed by this. The bard has likely spent each winter apart in castles four times as grand as this keep. Surely he’s going to regr-

“Oh, Geralt,” Jaskier breathes, reaching him at last and leaning in for support while he catches his breath. Geralt obliges, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and taking as much of his weight as he’ll allow. 

Geralt tenses, ready for a snicker or a comment born of an aristocrat’s upbringing. Jaskier’s certainly never been shy about sharing his opinion. 

“Oh, love, it’s gorgeous,” Jaskier says, turning and pressing an excited kiss to his cheek before he stumbles forward. “C’mon, slowpoke. I want to see inside!”

Geralt smiles and lets himself be tugged into the courtyard. It’s a relief that his brothers haven’t arrived and won’t see him letting a human tug him around so easily. 

Still, as Jaskier bounces slightly on his toes and lets out a muffled little squeak of excitement, Geralt can’t help but pull him into a quick kiss, unable to stop his smile. 

For this, he thinks, he can put up with a bit of teasing. 

(He still plans to beat Lambert around the training field as soon as he arrives, just to make sure he understands that Geralt could still fuck him up if needed).

*

Jaskier wakes to gentle fingers following the ridged scars along his back, still red and a bit tender but healed over and not at risk of opening anymore. Eyes still closed, he arches slightly into the soft touch, smiling when gentle lips press against his temple. 

“Mapping the terrain?” He asks, and he hears a soft exhale of a laugh from Geralt. 

“There’s a good deal of land to cover,” the witcher says seriously, and Jaskier smiles wider, slowly turning onto his side and opening his eyes to look up at Geralt, propped on an elbow above him. He’s stunning in the morning light coming through the window, reflecting off of the snow outside and shining into the keep. Jaskier had hated it at first, the way their east-facing window meant the sun poured into the room far too early; now, however, with his witcher painted in soft golden light, Jaskier has learned to appreciate it. (Even if he still hates mornings as a point of principle). He reaches up and tucks a sheet of white hair behind Geralt’s ear, the witcher leaning into the contact. Jaskier traces the slight tension around the witcher’s eyes, wrapping his fingers behind Geralt’s neck and pulling him down into a kiss, speaking only after they’ve parted. 

“Stop with the guilty thoughts.” Geralt’s face goes carefully blank, and Jaskier rolls his eyes, poking the witcher between his eyebrows. “I can read you like a book, darling. And not a difficult book. A child’s book. Mainly pictures.” 

Geralt huffs a laugh again before he leans in, pressing a kiss to Jaskier’s throat before nosing up under his jaw, inhaling deeply. Jaskier closes his eyes again, humming slightly in pleased satisfaction. 

“I’m sorry you have them,” Geralt says, his low voice quiet. 

“I’m not,” Jaskier says easily, and Geralt pulls back, frowning down at him. 

“You wanted to get maimed by an apple monster?” He asks, arching one eyebrow judgmentally.

“Scars are very sexy,” Jaskier informs him seriously. “Very sexy.” 

“Is that so?” Geralt asks, the slightest hint of a smile at his lips. “So that was your goal all along? Nearly bleed out to death for the sake of seduction?” 

“Obviously,” Jaskier says archly, laughing when Geralt ducks down to rub his morning stubble against his throat in reprimand, knowing exactly how much Jaskier hates the sensation. He pushes the witcher back, grinning up at him. “I got to be the hero,” he informs him. “It’s only fair I get a souvenir from the experience since I will absolutely not be doing it again.” 

“You’d better not,” Geralt tells him seriously, and Jaskier can’t help but boop his nose just to watch him pull his head back, flustered. 

“I guess you’ll just have to keep me too busy to get into mischief,” Jaskier says significantly, shifting to slip one thigh between Geralt’s and pressing upwards until the witcher inhales sharply, eyes flashing with desire. 

“You’re a tease,” Geralt says, before he presses Jaskier into the mattress and keeps him very occupied, indeed.

*

“So…” Jaskier says around an hour later, the word distorted slightly by his lazy stretch as he rolls to his back. Geralt presses a kiss to his chest, and Jaskier makes a pleased noise before he continues his thought. “I was thinking about our spring route, and I have a few vineyards in mind that I think we should visit first.” 

After all, he’s owed at least a few glasses of wine.