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Chapter Text

Jaskier hiccups, a slosh of wine escaping from his cup at the movement. He curses but doesn’t bother mopping it up. The world is soft and fuzzy and unclear around the edges, and a little pool of wine on the table soaking into his sleeve seems small in light of everything else. In solidarity, his drinking companion pours half his own cup onto the table as well. Jaskier appreciates the show of camaraderie even as he’s distantly aware that the owner of this pub probably won’t appreciate the sign of friendship. 

“-and it’s-it’s-”

Jaskier focuses back on his companion then, realizing that he’s involved in a conversation he’s been tuning out on accident. He focuses very hard on looking attentive, keeping his eyes wide to show he’s paying very close attention. So caught up in his performance, however, he doesn’t actually catch what the man’s saying, the words moving over him in a wash of noise without meaning. It takes him a moment of silence to realize the man is waiting on him, and he scrambles a bit, trying to figure out how to respond. 

“Yeah!” He says emphatically, lifting his glass in agreement and pouring out another trickle of wine with the movement. He doesn’t know what he agreed to, but his drinking partner seems pleased. 

He’s quite happy with this drinking partner, all things told. He’d met the man–a fellow a few years older than him and in possession of a spindly beard painstakingly combed into a point–after his performance and dropped onto the bench beside him, recognizing a kindred broken heart in the man’s posture. 

(And in the eight or so empty mugs at his elbow). 

Now, three hours into it, Jaskier’s heard the man’s tale of woe of a lover scorning him and poured out his own sad story of the mountain, crying into his drink a few times. At one point he’d even leaned against the man’s shoulder and sniffled pathetically, and his companion had patted his hair consolingly. 

Lovely man, Jaskier’s drinking friend. 

“And why shouldn’t you?” Drinking friend demands with a slap to the table that topples his mug entirely. “This life is-is-it’s short, is what it is!” The man says, and Jaskier lifts his glass again in agreement. “Why shouldn’t we have love to fill it?”

“Here, here!” Jaskier proclaims. When he lifts his cup this time, he uses just a touch too much force and sends it flying across the room. Hopefully it was empty, but he’s not entirely sure. “What I wouldn’t give to be at his side once more,” he says wistfully to no one in particular, thinking that if nothing else, Geralt would have at least probably have known where his cup ended up. 

So focused on half-rising to peer about for his discarded glass, he doesn’t notice his drinking companion mumbling words under his breath that he doesn’t understand. By the time he looks back, the man’s hands are glowing, a tendril of light sneaking up to Jaskier’s wrist. The man beams at him, his smile beneficent as tears streak down his cheeks. 

“It’s too late for me, my friend,” the man says, clapping Jaskier on the shoulder so hard he stumbles back down, half sliding down the bench to the floor, “but you? Take this gift and regain your love, never to be parted again!” 

With that, the man claps his hands together, and Jaskier’s world dissolves into an eye-watering explosion of light before everything goes completely black. 

*

Geralt is on his feet at once when the portal opens in his room, reaching for his sword and unsheathing it in one smooth, practiced motion as he leaps from the bed. He squints against the light pouring into the dimness of the room, eyes stinging at the contrast, growling low in his chest on instinct at the invasion. His medallion hums like a bee against his chest, reacting to incredibly strong magic in the immediate vicinity. He shifts his weight, ready to attack-

Only to nearly stumble with the change in balance when a puff of orange smoke at his side causes something to wrap around his wrist. He snarls, turning and raising his sword for a blow. 

And then nearly drops the blade entirely at the sight of a painfully-familiar bard at his side, dangling from his arm with shining handcuffs joining their wrists. 

*

“Oh gods fucking shit,” Jaskier groans, his first awareness of the world a dizzying lurch in its orientation and a splitting pain in his head. “Fucking bitch of a cock,” he adds for good measure. 

He moves to press his hands to his aching head, only to have one restrained by what feels like metal. He tugs again, brow furrowed, eyes still closed. A quick series of jerks reveals that yes, he’s secured by one wrist to something immovable. He frowns at that, trying desperately to remember exactly what and who he did last night. 

Squinting against the light that stabs him like an icepick to the brain, he opens his eyes-

-and flails so hard he flips himself off the bed when he finds himself looking right into angry gold eyes. 

Geralt. 

Heart pounding, he tugs on instinct against the restraint around his wrist, ears ringing with the echoes of hateful words from the mountain. He doesn’t know why Geralt would do something like fucking handcuff him, but he’s not eager to sit around for another round of being told that he’s a curse to the witcher’s existence. 

All his struggle gets him, however, is one harsh yank against the binding around his wrist, sending him stumbling on his knees closer to the bed where Geralt still sits, scowling. The look of disdain is actually a boon, it turns out, as it provokes Jaskier’s temper enough to let him recover and also look past his vicious hangover, especially when he realizes exactly what he’s attached to, the cuff on his left wrist connected by a shiny chain to one on Geralt’s right. 

“What the fuck are you playing at?” He demands with a series of jerks at the binding that seem to rattle his brain in his head. 

“What the fuck are you playing at?” Geralt mocks, giving a yank of his own to the chain, the force of it nearly enough to send Jaskier face first against the mattress. 

That lights Jaskier’s temper even higher. 

“You’re the one who fucking-fucking kidnapped me!” Jaskier cries, outraged, ignoring the way his own volume makes his ears ring and his head throb. “What the fuck, Geralt?” He demands, shaking the chain again. 

The witcher rolls his eyes, and Jaskier has the mad urge to bite him like a feral dog. 

“You’re the one who portalled into my room last night and did whatever the fuck you did to lock us together with fucking unbreakable bindings.” The witcher’s expression is so viciously displeased that Jaskier thinks he’d likely be wetting himself if he didn’t both know Geralt better than that and wasn’t more pissed than he can ever remember being in his life. 

Before he can snap back, the full extent of what Geralt said registers, and he sits back, priorities rapidly shifted. 

“What do you mean unbreakable?!”

*

Geralt grimaces while Jaskier retches out of the window, pulled as far away as he can get with the bindings holding them together. The bard reeks still of alcohol, so the hangover and vomiting aren’t that surprising, but it’s frustrating, pausing from a fight to let the bard bring up what seems to be everything he’s ever eaten. 

It does give Geralt a moment to collect himself, however. 

His first instinct when Jaskier appeared last night had been alarm, the bard’s total stillness convincing him for a moment that he was dead, caught at last by an enemy or cuckold who sent his corpse to Geralt to make a point. His heart had dropped to his stomach at that, the idea that he’d left Jaskier as easy prey.

Then the man had mumbled something nonsensical and the scent of cheap wine had made its way to Geralt’s senses. 

He’d had to wait after that for long hours for the bard to finally sleep off the alcohol, pouring him onto the bed if only to give himself somewhere comfortable to sit as well. He’d simmered all night, glaring at the wall, annoyed and frustrated at being dragged into more shit he wasn’t even part of because of the bard. 

(He’d very carefully not thought about what Jaskier might do and say and return once he roused, given how quickly Geralt had left after the mountain before he had a chance to retaliate). 

Once the bard is done puking his guts up, Geralt hands him a cloth and a cup of water to rinse his mouth out if only to spare himself from the smell, and between dry heaves, the bard tells him what little bits of information he actually remembers. 

In all, it’s not much, most of it lost beneath a haze of heavy drinking. 

(Geralt resolutely doesn’t listen to the little voice in his head that points out how he never knew Jaskier to drink to such excess before and how the bard’s recitation makes it sound like it’s become a rather frequent habit recently). 

“-and then,” Jaskier says, gagging once before he recenters himself, breathing slowly and deliberately. Geralt stills the way his hand automatically wants to reach out and rub circles on his back, ruthlessly shoving down that impulse. “Then he said I don’t even fucking know what, then said something about lo-” he cuts himself off, the slightest hint of pink touching his cheeks, “and then there was light and then I was here.” He gives the cuff around his wrist a resentful side eye. 

Geralt forces himself to remain calm. He knows enough about Jaskier to realize that if he starts a fight, the bard is more likely to start “forgetting” more details just to be a petty bastard. 

“Fine. We’ll find this mage and get him to fix it. What’s his name?” 

Jaskier goes very, very still. 

“...something with a P, maybe?”

*

After Geralt’s predictable explosion about his inability to provide the name of his drinking companion beyond “something with a P or maybe an N or an O or possibly an A,” the witcher had packed up in short order, throwing things in a bag and dragging Jaskier along in his wake. Through some quirk of Nameless Drinking Companion’s magic, Jaskier’s own satchel and lute had made the trip as well, still packed from his arrival at the pub the day before. He scowls at the witcher’s back as he’s tugged around, feigning a gag at a few of the rougher pulls in a threat. 

Once they’re packed, they venture downstairs and ignore the sidelong glances they get at their handcuffs, downing some breakfast. Geralt–the prick–orders a large platter of fried eggs and greasy meats and toasted bread drowned in butter. Jaskier nibbles on his plain bread in careful little bites, glaring at the witcher from beneath his fringe as the man eats with relish, smacking his food far louder than he ever has before. 

Their next disagreement of the day comes when it’s actually time to leave. Still hungover, Jaskier wobbles more than he walks as they attempt to move, and the chain of their cuffs is too short to let Geralt ride and leave him to walk without putting him off balance and Jaskier at risk of tripping Roach. They’re either going to have to ride together or walk together.

Which is how Jaskier ends up perched behind Geralt, pressed tight against his back to let Geralt use both hands on the reins. In his day dreams, Jaskier imagines this sort of thing might be thrilling, but in reality, being pushed against a witcher’s hard armor while sitting behind a saddle is a lesson in suffering. For all of his attempts at adjusting his posture, there truly is no comfortable way to sit. 

“Stop squirming,” Geralt snaps, and Jaskier wriggles with greater motion to make a point. 

“I’d like to see you sit still when you’ve got a saddle crushing your cock,” Jaskier spits back, stilling only when the movement makes Roach prance anxiously. He uses his free hand to pat her neck in apology before Geralt swats him away. Dick. 

“Well you can’t walk, so…” Geralt trails off, and Jaskier contemplates the cost and benefits of going limp and falling out of the saddle just to drag the witcher with him. In the end, staying seated in light of his headache wins, and he keeps his peace. 

Barely. 

*

Geralt is relieved when they finally stop for the day, little progress as they’ve made. Unwilling to overburden Roach for long, they’d had to take repeated breaks throughout the day. As Jaskier’s hangover had faded, they’d been able to walk towards afternoon, but it’s a relief when they can finally just stop moving. 

Geralt had been hyper-aware of the bard’s proximity all day, pressed tight against his back or right at his side, hands dangling between them. The bard had tried repeatedly to swing his hands while walking as he usually does, and it had been a battle of wills to get him to stop, garnering him dirty looks and angry mumbling with every jerk to the chain. 

Even once camp is unpacked, however–a task made three times longer and four times more aggravating given the need for teamwork that doesn’t actually happen–Geralt realizes his trials aren’t over. 

He needs to go hunting. 

Jaskier is in disbelief when Geralt first says it, a gruff comment about needing fresh food for lack of road rations. 

“You cannot be serious.” 

Geralt just gives him a blank look. 

“You,” Jaskier indicates the everything about Geralt with a vague open-palmed gesture, “do the hunting business. I do not.” 

Geralt gives a tug to their tether in response, and the bard presses his lips together tightly, glaring at the metal as if he can sever the connection through sheer focus. 

He doesn’t succeed. 

*

Jaskier is currently entertaining thoughts of becoming one of the pious holy people who abstain from flesh as a practice of their devotion. 

(Well, flesh of the roasted rabbit variety at least). 

He only barely resists the urge to sigh or stomp his foot when he’s tugged into motion once again, a sharp look from Geralt serving as a warning as he snaps a stick underfoot and sends their quarry farther afield. Feeling petty, he snaps another one and soon finds himself scooped up and carried, thrown over Geralt’s shoulder like a sack of grain. He squawks with rage and pounds on the broad back in front of him. 

“Knock it off,” Geralt says with a movement that drives his shoulder into Jaskier’s stomach, knocking the wind out of him. 

“Put me down,” Jaskier wheezes, eyeing his proximity and wondering if he’d be able to reach enough to punch the witcher in the balls in retaliation. 

“You walk like a fucking toddler,” Geralt says. “If you want to eat tonight, shut up and sit quietly.” 

Jaskier more seriously considers his punch to the witcher jewels plan, but his hunger chimes in and reminds him that an attack on Geralt’s manhood–no matter how wildly well-deserved–is unlikely to get him fed. 

He keeps his peace as he’s bounced along on Geralt’s hunt, the witcher obnoxiously largely unaffected by having an entire man over his shoulder. He’s clearly a little off balance, but he manages to bag three rabbits within three quarters of an hour, and Jaskier is then blessedly set down, his midsection bruised. He rubs at it resentfully all the way back to camp, completely ignored by Geralt. 

The next element of his suffering comes when Geralt stops him halfway back to dress the animals.

The witcher always does this task away from camp to avoid scavengers, and so Jaskier has never actually had to watch it happen, always the happy recipient of perfectly-cleaned prey ready for cooking. He gags at the first sound of Geralt’s knife slipping beneath the skin of the first of the rabbits, and Geralt rolls his eyes, splitting up to the head with what seems like extra force just to increase the volume of the squelch. Jaskier heaves again, barely managing not to be sick. 

“You can poke around a kikimore corpse, but gutting rabbits is too much for you?” Geralt asks, gripping one end of the rabbit’s fur and peeling it off in one clean jerk. 

Jaskier dizzily contemplates just fully passing out until dinner is ready. 

“A beast that’s-” He cuts off with a cry of horror as a warm spray of blood covers his hand and arm, jiggling it ineffectually and only succeeding in Geralt giving their joined wrists a vicious tug to get him to knock it off. “Geralt, that’s disgusting!”

When the only response is a small smirk that says Geralt is enjoying being a dick, Jaskier resentfully begins considering the mechanics of skinning a witcher. 

*

Once the bard is done complaining about the process of attaining supper, he quiets down, which is a blessing. 

They return to camp in hostile silence, Jaskier opening and closing his mouth a few times, clearly wanting to start a fight but wise enough to recognize that he hasn’t been fed yet. Geralt would probably feed him regardless if only to not have to hear gripes about hunger later, but he won’t complain about some silence. 

After supper is finished, they settle down, tripping over each other in laying out their bedrolls more than a few times. It’s not as close as they’ve slept before on cold nights, but their enforced proximity lends no small amount of tension to the task. Geralt lays down stiffly, his arm half-extended with Jaskier’s to give them some slack, and he can sense the bard is just as uncomfortable next to him. Knowing that the bard is a habitual side-sleeper, he’s tempted to switch bedrolls for when Jaskier invariably rolls over, but the atmosphere between them is so tense that he’s wary about breaking it. 

Despite the discomfort between them, Jaskier falls asleep relatively quickly, and Geralt’s breathing comes easier as the bard’s evens out, relieved for at least a little while of peace with the bard asleep. 

He smiles just slightly despite himself when Jaskier starts turning as he knew he would, and for the sake of not waking him up and starting a fight, Geralt extends his hand to give the bard some slack as he moves to face away. After a moment of hesitation, he rests his arm on Jaskier’s side, the gentle up and down of it oddly reassuring to feel. 

Freed from the tension of dealing with an awake and attached Jaskier, he’s left for the first time to actually think about the tension between them. 

The tension that he knows he’s responsible for creating. 

It’s never been like this between them before, this anger, this frustration. Magical handcuffs notwithstanding, Geralt would have never imagined this sort of tension between them just a few months ago. They’ve had disagreements through the years of course, scuffles and disagreements and spats, usually solved through wrestling or ignoring each other for a day or so, but there’s never been this level of resentment between them. 

It’s one of the reasons he’d been so quick down the mountain, not wanting to face the consequences of crossing the lines he’d trampled over in a moment of blind anger. He’d known he’d gone too far the second he said it all. Even without knowing the bard as well as he does, Jaskier’s expression alone would have told him that he had gone after things he should have left alone. His descent down the mountain had been an effort to avoid facing his own mistakes, an attempt to get space between them before Jaskier had his wits about him enough to return the anger. 

How typical, that something like this would happen instead. 

*

It’s a relief when they get to an inn the next day and are able to order a bath. Jaskier knows he still smells of alcohol, his one blessing that he’s in a darker outfit that doesn’t show grime and spilled wine, and he’s in desperate want of a wash. 

And then the bath actually arrives. 

The tub, which is small to start with, is certainly in no way equipped for two fully grown men to sit in it at the same time.

Especially two fully grown men barely on speaking terms. 

It’s an odd, tense dance between the two of them as they decide who’s going to go first, the other relegated to crouching beside the tub like a gargoyle. In the past, Geralt would usually let Jaskier go first as the usually cleaner of the two on account of “doesn’t gut monsters for a living” aspect of his life. This time around, however, they don’t have old routines to fall back on comfortably, and really, Geralt is the cleaner of them both at present. It takes a moment of stilted discussion, but finally Geralt acquiesces, stripping down and looping his shirt to hang on the chain of their handcuffs. From his place sitting at the side of the tub and feeling more than a little like a blatant lecher, Jaskier thinks with dark amusement that at least it’s one of Geralt’s nicer shirts given that he’s going to be stuck in it until they get their cuffs off. 

Geralt climbs into the tub and settles back, but he doesn’t go boneless as he usually does, and Jaskier knows it’s because of his immediate proximity. It hurts, the awkwardness between them. He remembers when such a thing would have been easy–well, the handcuffs would have likely still put a crimp in their togetherness, but the being nude around each other would have been easy, familiar. His fingers tingle with the urge to tend Geralt’s hair, and he balls his hands into fists to resist the urge to reach out like he wants to, muscle memory compelling him into tending he hasn’t done in months. 

In a moment of inspiration, he strains for a nearby bucket of water and slips his own shirt off, dipping his and Geralt’s in the bucket to soak. If he’s just to sit quietly and wait for his turn, he can at least make himself useful in the meantime. 

*

Geralt doesn’t think he’s ever been less relaxed in a hot bath. 

It used to be familiar, bathing around Jaskier. There had been a comfort to it, something to be reassured by: warm water and meaningless chatter, careful hands in his hair and a diligent cloth scrubbed over his back. In his most private thoughts, it had been something to look forward to, a reward at the end of a contract. No matter the bruises and breaks and scrapes, no matter the shitty pay and small-minded villagers, Geralt had at least known he would have the private sphere of a bath around Jaskier to look forward to. 

Now it just feels awkward, both of them stumbling over each other in places they never have before. 

Jaskier snatches his hand back when they reach for the same bar of soap, and Geralt grits his teeth, scrubbing it over a cloth to work up a lather before he sets it down on the little tray beside the tub again. The bard eyes it for a moment before he moves to snatch it up, as if Geralt is trying to trick him. 

It hurts, that mistrust. 

(It hurts more than he knows it isn’t entirely unearned). 

The most awkward thing of all is the silence. 

Jaskier doesn’t chatter, doesn’t sing little snaches of songs under his breath, doesn’t even hum. 

He also resolutely doesn’t look at Geralt the entire time. 

He’d been prepared to pick a fight about it, to pop the bubble of awkwardness with a snide comment about Jaskier using the chance to leer at him. 

The bard, however, has been a perfect gentleman. 

Now he sits at the side of the tub on his best behavior, scrubbing their shirts clean and wringing them out. Deciding to give up on anything approaching a relaxing bath, Geralt uses his free hand to scrub himself clean, hating himself for wishing that it wasn’t his own hands doing it. By the time he’s done, Jaskier’s finished with their shirts, and then ensues an awkward shuffle-dance of him getting out and the bard getting in without either of them slipping. He thinks about offering to heat the bathwater with Igni, but if their silence is uncomfortable, at least they aren’t fighting, and he’s loath to break the tense peace. 

He doesn’t look at Jaskier as he gets in, compelled by some strange impulse of returning the courtesy of not looking at him. Even without doing it, however, he can still picture the bard perfectly, years of togetherness making him as familiar with Jaskier’s body as he is with his own. 

For the first time he thinks about the fact that he’s never offered to return the favor of bathing Jaskier in turn, and he tries not to contemplate what it says about him that he would only think to do it when he no longer can. 

*

They linger for a while by the fire to dry their shirts as best they can before they slip them back on, sniping at each other a bit as they jostle each other’s hands with the movements. Still, they manage to get dressed without making an attempt on the other person’s life, and Jaskier is willing to take that as a victory. Jaskier snags his lute on their way down and pretends not to see the displeased twist of Geralt’s mouth when he does so. 

It’s a good crowd, which Jaskier can tell at once, and he knows already that he’ll be performing. 

When he brings it up to the witcher after they eat their supper, however, the witcher disagrees. 

“No.” 

“Yes.”

“No.” 

“Ger-” 

“No.”

Jaskier leans back against his chair, scowling. Peevish, he jerks at their handcuffs just to jolt Geralt’s hand enough to spill his ale, and Geralt gives him a dirty look before he gestures for a barmaid to come mop it up. Jaskier gives him a nasty smile. 

“Oops,” Jaskier says, batting his lashes and giving the witcher his best butter-wouldn’t-melt doe eyes. 

The kick he receives under the table in response sparks a flurry of under-table activity, and by the end of it, Jaskier’s only consolation is that he won’t be the only one limping away with bruised shins. Drawing a deep breath, he tries to calm. As satisfying as it would be to keep rabbit kicking Geralt, it wouldn’t help their current situation. 

“One of us needs to earn money,” he says, attempting to remain rational, “and it’s safer for you to stand up with me while I perform than for me to be dangling off your sword arm while you behead a nekker. We don’t know how long we’re going to be stuck together, and it would be better if we weren’t down to our last few coins before we’re free of each other.” 

Geralt’s stony expression tells Jaskier he’s already done this mental math and come to the same conclusion. 

It’s as awkward as he’d imagined it would be, trying to perform with Geralt glowering over his shoulder. The witcher doesn’t give him an inch more slack than is absolutely necessary and thus prevents Jaskier from using a few of his better money-making skills, but through a combination of fascination and intimidation, they still end up with a good pile of coin by the end of the night. 

“Well,” Jaskier says brightly, watching Geralt sweep the last few into his coin purse for safe keeping, “perhaps we should have debuted a double-act years ago.” 

Geralt doesn’t respond beyond an unimpressed hum and a yank on the chain, dragging Jaskier up behind him to their room. 

*

It takes them a week to get to where Jaskier remembered being before, and in that time, Geralt has been in front of more crowds than he ever has before in his life. 

(The fact that the entire ordeal has proven unexpectedly lucrative is the only thing that prevents him from refusing every single time). 

Any goodwill that manages to develop between him and Jaskier, however, evaporates entirely when they arrive at the village and find that not only is the mage gone, but no one even remembers him being there in the first place. 

Jaskier is very clearly blatantly avoiding making eye contact with him as he interrogates every villager they pass in an increasingly desperate search for any information about his erstwhile drinking companion. With each blank-eyed “no” he gets, the bard’s scent sours more and more with panic as the reality that he’s stuck chained to Geralt sinks in further, and it does nothing for his own mood, this clear dismay of having to continue to spend time with him. 

For his own part, Geralt is frustrated and edgy about what this doomed hunt means for his own immediate future. Winter is coming fast, and he doesn’t have time to go running about after any whisper of a mage if he’s going to return to Kaer Morhen before it becomes impossible to do so. After the disaster his year became, he’s been near-desperate for the sanctuary of a winter safe in the keep, and this threat to that plan is an unexpected–and deeply unwelcome–complication. 

He manages to keep his peace until the thirty-seventh person claims no knowledge of Jaskier’s mythical mage, and now Geralt is beginning to become suspicious of the entire story. It wouldn’t be the first time the bard has toed the line of a lie for the sake of a story, and it occurs to him for the first time that it’s possible that Jaskier made up the entire thing to waste time in order to get back at him. 

“What now?” He asks the bard, the words coming out like a challenge. After multiple nights of ill rest, he’s already primed for a bad mood, and the events of today have certainly done nothing to improve the situation. He sees Jaskier’s shoulders go tense where the bard is a step in front of him, leading the way back to the inn. 

The bard doesn’t respond, and something about the silence gets under his skin even more. 

“Was there even a mage in the first place?” He asks, knowing full well that his tone will rile Jaskier up. “Or is this yet another one of your stories about a fuck up you’re trying to-” 

“I don’t fucking know!” Jaskier exclaims, spinning on his heel on what appears to be reflex and snarling as he then has to twist the other way, hindered by their handcuffs. The spin clearly stokes the fire of his temper higher, and Geralt half-expects that they’re going to come to blows. “There was a magical fucker here, alright, and I was drunk, and I don’t remember all of it, but I know it was here, and I know he was real, and I am trying to fucking fix it! It’s not like you’ve done anything to help besides glowering at everyone!” 

“I shouldn’t have to fix it,” Geralt snarls back, responding to the scent of anger in the air and his own frayed nerves. “It was your fuck up, Jaskier, and here I am, cleaning up your shit once again.” 

*

Jaskier can’t help the way he flinches at that, a clear echo of Geralt’s last complaint about his affect on the witcher’s life. It’s just as bad as it was last time, the angry harshness of Geralt’s voice, the clear blame. 

This time, however, he can’t even fucking walk away. 

The realization takes the wind out of his sails, and he turns away when he feels the slightest wobble of his lip, overwhelmed and frustrated and angry. 

He starts walking again and Geralt follows him in tense silence, clearly still angry at him. It makes him hunch his shoulders self-consciously. 

It’s all he can do not to cry in frustration, stuck in an impossible situation with the worst person in the world to be stuck in it with. It’s made worse that before that godsdamned mountain there is no one else Jaskier would have rather ended up in this mess with. It might have been fun, even, without so many broken edges between them, something they could have maybe laughed at one day over some drinks. 

As it is now, Jaskier’s going to be surprised if they fix the problem before they end up killing each other. 

They make it back to their inn in the same fraught silence, getting ready for bed with resentful tugs at the chain linking them and climbing onto the mattress without a word spoken between them. Jaskier is hungry, having been too nervy to eat much at supper earlier, but he also gets the sense that expressing this might tip Geralt over into another shouting match. 

“You’ll have to go to Kaer Morhen with me,” Geralt says into the silence between them an hour later. “My trainer, Vesemir, he’ll be able to fix this, or he’ll know where to look for a solution.” 

Jaskier feels his eyes sting at this, at the extension of an invitation he’s wanted for years. He’s been curious about where Geralt goes in winter since the start, hopeful each fall that it would be the year Geralt finally asked him to go with him. Now he’s gotten it. 

All because Geralt has no other fucking choice. 

“...okay,” he says quietly, turning away as best he can, trying not to cry. 

*

The tension between them doesn’t get better as they leave the village and pick up supplies on their way to Kaedwen. Jaskier–despite the way he puts on a show of being meek and quiet–is clearly displeased that he’s going to be stuck with Geralt in a keep with no adoring crowds for an entire season, and he’s half-tempted to tell the bard that if they manage to get themselves apart in time, he’ll take him down the mountain himself. He’s not sure he can make that promise, however, and he’d rather not get Jaskier’s hopes up and hear about it all winter if he fails to deliver. 

Terse, bitter tension it is. 

The longer it goes on, the more frustrated he grows in turn. He’d thought about it before, asking Jaskier to come with him. He’d opened his mouth half a dozen times over the years with it at the tip of his tongue, but the surety that Jaskier would be uninterested had always stayed him. What could he offer the bard in a cold keep in the middle of nowhere, after all, that he couldn’t get in plenty at any manor he cared to find himself a place at? 

In his wildest daydreams about it, he’d thought that Jaskier would perhaps thrive in Kaer Morhen. He’s always hungry for more stories, after all, and he’d surely be delighted at more people to get them from, all of them more loquacious than Geralt. It had made something warm and pleased spark in his chest, imagining Jaskier happy in the closest thing Geralt has to a home. 

Now, however, the foolish dream is ruined, Jaskier’s foul mood plenty of evidence that being stuck in a witcher keep is the last thing he would ever want. 

The confirmation makes him angry for reasons he doesn’t fully understand, and compounded with his ongoing frustration of their mutual captivity, he isn’t the least bit accommodating when they begin their ascent. Jaskier stumbles more than a few times, always lagging behind, but he keeps his silence, and Geralt figures he can’t be struggling too badly if he doesn’t speak up to advocate for himself, something he’s never been shy about in their years together. 

Additionally, the only thing Geralt can offer is resolving this entire shitshow quickly and freeing Jaskier to go on his merry way down the mountain before the snow falls in truth, trapping them for the season. If that means pushing Jaskier a bit faster than he’d like, at least it’ll mean the bard will have his freedom sooner rather than later. 

(Even thinking about watching Jaskier walk away the moment he can makes Geralt’s stomach turn in flips). 

(It drives him to push on even faster, wanting to get it over with already). 

Geralt’s bad mood and single-minded focus on getting up as fast as possible lasts until the third day when he catches the first whiff of blood and turns at once, wondering what trouble Jaskier has managed to find while fucking attached to him. 

Jaskier, panting, looks around with wide eyes, sure that he’s missed some danger that Geralt’s become aware of before him. When he turns to check behind his back, the movement tugs his sleeve up, hand held in place by the taut chain between them. 

His wrist looks horrific, raw and bruised. The source of the smell is apparent when he sees the smears of blood where it’s begun seeping through the abraded skin. It’s painful even to look at, and Geralt feels sudden guilt so acutely it’s like he swallowed a stone, settling heavy in his stomach. 

The bard is still busily looking around for what he thinks is coming for them, and Geralt steps towards him to relieve the rubbing of the manacle against the sore skin, Jaskier turning back towards him, heart rate too high. 

“Everything’s fine,” Geralt tells him. 

Jaskier looks behind himself one more time before he believes him, and then he tilts his head. 

“Then are we just spinning in place now recreationally?” 

“Your wrist,” Geralt says with a nod to indicate it. “You should have told me.” 

Jaskier looks away then, lips pressed together, a flush of color rising to his cheeks. 

“Like it would have made a difference,” he says softly, his volume so low that no one without a witcher’s hearing would have picked it up. 

The resentful confidence in the statement just makes the guilt in his stomach feel heavier.

He guides Jaskier up around the next bend, careful now not to tug at him and adjusting for his slower stride when the path goes sharply vertical again. The bard stumbles on a few of the loose rocks in the path, and finally Geralt clasps hands with him after a slip makes him go down with a cry, his handcuff scraping harshly against his wrist. Jaskier blushes so hard his entire face goes red, but he doesn’t pull his hand from Geralt’s, letting himself be helped up the incline. 

As he’d known there would be, there’s a small clearing next to the path with a spring, and he sets Roach to refresh herself with some of the last of the grass nearby as he retrieves his medical kit from the saddle and guides Jaskier over to a rock, pushing at his shoulder until he sits. Geralt kneels at his side, dabbing at the angry skin with a cloth soaked in antiseptic, Jaskier hissing a few times from the sting but otherwise maintaining his silence. Geralt murmurs a sorry as he starts working a balm into the skin, and Jaskier sits quietly through the tending until Geralt begins winding a bandage around his wrist, making it extra-thick to provide a little cushion from the metal. 

“I’m sorry I can’t keep up,” Jaskier says, eyes fixed firmly to the ground in front of him. “I know I’m holding you back.” 

Over the past few days, Geralt’s first instinct would be to agree, if only to vent his own foul mood, but now with evidence of how he’s hurt Jaskier with his thoughtlessness, he desists. For all of his frustration with the situation, he had no call to be so careless with his safety. Outside of that single punch when they first met, he’s never intended to hurt the bard, and his failure at maintaining that now weighs at him. 

“The trail is hard, and you’re not a witcher,” Geralt says, trying not to make it sound like an insult. “I should have been more careful.” 

It’s not an apology really, not in so many words, but Jaskier’s shoulders lose some of their tightness, and he finally looks at Geralt then, giving him the faintest flicker of a smile. 

“I could complain more to make sure you remember,” he offers, and Geralt rolls his eyes. 

“Like you wouldn’t do that anyway,” he says, and Jaskier grins. 

It feels like a step forward, that smile. 

Chapter Text

When they start out the next day, Geralt is far more careful in how fast he pushes Jaskier, riding with him on Roach’s back in a few places he wants to get through quickly but otherwise adjusting to his pace. To prevent tugging at him when they walk side by side, he takes Jaskier’s hand in his to make sure he won’t make his wrist worse. They don’t talk about it, these stretches of time, but he hears Jaskier’s pulse increase each time, and he wonders what it means, that little signal that he feels something about them holding hands. In the past, Geralt might have thought it was a sign of a crush, an interest that he’s felt from the bard off and on since that day in Posada, but after the mountain, he doesn’t see that remaining as a possibility. 

Perhaps it’s simply anxiety, Jaskier’s longstanding fear of being seen as a burden. 

(A fear Geralt had hit on mercilessly in that one foolish moment of anger). 

“Oh, f-” Jaskier gasps, a rock rolling beneath his foot and sending him down. Geralt grabs him immediately and pulls him up, one hand resting on his back and one on his hip until he gets his feet under himself. 

“I’ve got you,” he tells him, and Jaskier turns a fascinating shade of pink and looks away. 

“Ah, um,” he says, pulling himself back. “Yes, thank you. Very good bard catching. Top marks.” 

Geralt tilts his head, fascinated by the increase in Jaskier’s heart rate. Such a small stumble shouldn’t have been anywhere near enough to cause such a reaction. When he steps forward, however, Jaskier takes a step back, like they’re performing an absurd dance. He lets it go and leads them on and tries not to think about it. 

(In consequence, he ends up thinking about it a great deal, all the way up to the keep). 

*

Jaskier’s first encounter with the other witchers is a mixed experience. They aren’t hostile and don’t make demands for him to leave at once, which feels like a victory. 

Although that might have something to do with the fact that they take one look at the handcuffs binding him and Geralt together and start laughing too hard to speak. 

Beside him, Geralt glowers at them, but catching a glance at his expression just sends them into a renewed round of laughter as soon as they manage to contain themselves. 

“Are you two done?” Geralt growls after a good ten minutes of this response, and the witcher with a scar across his face manages to stand upright, propping one elbow on the other witcher’s back and wiping tears of mirth from his eyes. 

“If you wanted to bring your bard,” the scarred witcher says, voice breathless from laughing, “you could have just brought him, Geralt. We’ve told you for years you should. There was no need for this.” Waving a hand at their handcuffs sends him into a renewed round of laughter, and Jaskier can hear Geralt growling, a deep, displeased rumble in his chest. 

The other witchers seem wildly unconcerned about it. 

Geralt scowls at them and Jaskier can feel his face flushing. Of all of the ways he had imagined meeting Geralt’s family, this had certainly never occurred to him. In his best dreams about the scenario, he would still have arrived hand in hand, but as a beloved life partner Geralt would be proud to present to his kin. He would have been charming and friendly and fit in at once, and his witcher would have known he had made the right choice all along. 

The reality is wildly more embarrassing. 

Eventually the other two manage to get themselves under control, and Jaskier makes their acquaintance. Lambert keeps looking at the cuffs and snickering anew, but Eskel at least manages to contain himself, even as he glows with delighted amusement at their expense. 

“You couldn’t just had a regrettable night with a stranger?” Eskel asks him, not unkindly. “You had to get cursed instead?”

Jaskier flushes, kicking at a rock in the path and then stumbling, Geralt catching him by the arm before he actually falls. It feels like little zips of lightning, the touch, and he’s so busy pretending he doesn’t know that the witchers can hear and smell his interest in the ideas such a thing inspires that he nearly forgets to answer Eskel completely as the witcher heaves a bag over his shoulder and falls into step beside them. 

“I do hate to be predictable,” he says with a wink, in what seems to him an admirable attempt at being very normal about the whole thing. 

His arm feels cold when Geralt releases him, and he hates himself, a little, that he’s disappointed when his hand isn’t claimed once more. It had been a pretty little slice of a fantasy, Geralt holding his hand and leading him up to the closest thing he has to a home. 

Jaskier presses his lips together to prevent any hint of a wobble when he contemplates how much Geralt must hate it all, forced to drag him up like baggage and made a target for teasing from the other witchers. He knows Geralt has a sense of humor–godsawful as it often is–but even the best-natured man would probably harbor more than a little resentment at being tied to someone he’d already tried to leave behind on a fucking mountain. 

The thought has his shoulders drawing in with self-consciousness, even as he manages to perform a few smiles for the benefit of his audience. 

He catches sight of Geralt from the corner of his eye looking at him and frowning, and his smile feels even more brittle. 

*

They escape Lambert and Eskel in the hall, and Geralt glares his brothers away until they back off at last. His own annoyance with them aside, he can smell how embarrassed Jaskier is, and even amidst the trial of being chained together, he can’t quite stand by and let him be mocked by people he doesn’t know well yet. 

Jaskier follows him with foreign meekness, even though Geralt sees him perk up with interest and look around with wide eyes as he leads him through the halls. It’s satisfying, in a way, that interest. He’s thought idly of inviting the bard for years, and he feels an odd sense of satisfaction that he was right in thinking he’d be interested. He pauses at the doorway to his room. 

“Geralt?” Jaskier asks tentatively, and Geralt doesn’t respond. 

It’s absurd, this hesitation, but it feels…intimate, in a way, inviting Jaskier into a place that’s exclusively his. For all that they’ve shared beds and even baths for years, it’s never been in a place that’s his. 

“Hm,” he hums more to himself than to Jaskier as he opens the door. 

Vesemir’s been here since he left in spring, straightening things up and dusting and airing it out. From the smell, there’s fresh sheets on the bed, and he can still detect the scent of beeswax from furniture polish. Still, it’s undeniably his room with all of the little things it’s collected of his over the years, and he’s painfully aware of Jaskier’s keen interest as he steps inside. 

He resists the urge to fidget as Jaskier takes it all in, but finally the bard seems to take stock of himself and desists with a little shake, giving Geralt a wan smile. 

“You wouldn’t know where to get a bath around these parts, would you?” 

Geralt gives him a flicker of a smile in response before leading him back into the hall–blessedly free of brothers–and down to the hot springs, stopping only to fish out a cake of soap and some drying cloths from a closet. He senses Jaskier’s displeased little nose wrinkle at the obvious lack of quality of the soap, but he doesn’t verbalize a complaint, and it stings, somehow, the bard being unwilling to whine. He hadn’t realized he could miss such a thing before, but the absence of it now pulls at him, reminding him of how deep the wedge he’s driven between them is. 

Their shirts, caught on the chain, float like jellyfish between them, and he can practically hear gears turning in Jaskier’s head at the sight of the black and white floating side by side. He’s never had a mind for music, but he’s read a few poems in his life–from books kept carefully away from Lambert for the sake of not being teased into an early grave–and half-melted from the drowsy heat of the water, he toys with the idea. 

Something about light and dark intertwined, perhaps, suspended in the waters of life? The line is so godsawful he snorts at it, and he catches Jaskier’s curious little look after the bard jumps at the noise. He shakes his head just slightly to indicate he doesn’t intend to explain, and Jaskier doesn’t press. 

Geralt almost wishes he would. 

Jaskier goes first washing himself, and he keeps his silence on the subject of the soap, but Geralt resists the urge to knock his head back against the side of the hot spring. 

Sensitive skin, Jaskier had told him once in a bathhouse, too-strong soap, and I itch something awful. 

He can’t think of a way to fix it, now that Jaskier has used the soap without complaint, and he’s afraid that pointing it out now would make the bard think he remembered it earlier and just chose to be a dick anyway. 

He doesn’t come to a resolution by the time he’s done bathing himself, and he knows his facial expression must be stony, but it’s yet another thing he doesn’t know how to fix between them. 

So many broken things. So many more than he expected. 

He can already tell Jaskier’s skin is uncomfortable by the way the bard doesn’t seek to linger, quietly asking once Geralt’s done if they can leave. He hates the meekness of it, the way Jaskier clearly doesn’t want to reveal discomfort and expects to be ignored either way. 

Geralt doesn’t respond, but he does gesture for Jaskier to precede him. 

The bard moves with clear gratitude, but in his enthusiasm, he misjudges one of the steps and starts to go down with a cry of surprise. Not even thinking about it before he’s moving, Geralt grabs him at once. Once he manages to get Jaskier’s feet under him, he realizes they’re pressed close together, chests touching and faces mere inches apart. 

Jaskier’s cheeks pink beyond the flush of the hot water, and the scent of arousal swells up for a mouth-watering moment, thick as honey on his tongue, but before he can do anything as foolishly animal as moving forward for a kiss that will almost certainly earn him a kick to soft places, Jaskier jerks away, coughing to clear his throat. 

They don’t speak as they get dressed. 

*

Supper is at least a little easier, even though he’s hard-pressed not to itch at his skin where it pulls at him, feeling too-tight and prickly. He desperately wants to ask for some oil or a balm to put on it, but if Geralt’s goal was to be an ass about the whole thing, he doesn’t want to risk giving him the satisfaction. 

The other witchers are welcoming enough, even though Lambert still snickers each time he catches sight of the handcuffs. Eskel is kind, and Jaskier can’t help but feel a bit flattered when the witcher passes him the rolls without his even having to ask. Despite the scar twisting across his face, the man has a nice smile, and there’s a certain light to his eyes that tells Jaskier he’s a gentle soul beneath his forbidding appearance. 

(The flex of his hands around his mug of ale also tells Jaskier that he’s likely an excellent lay as well, but there’s the little problem of being actively handcuffed to his brother at present). (A pity). 

“Well, bard,” Vesemir says, and Jaskier jumps a little at being addressed. He sees what he hopes is the faintest flicker of amusement at his reaction, and he tilts his head ever so slightly in acknowledgement. “What do you think of our keep so far?” 

He thinks that he has a hundred questions and a thousand songs already stirring within him at the morose majesty of a giant keep so empty, full of so many stories and ghosts, but almost the moment he puffs up with a breath to launch right in, he registers the tension of Geralt’s body next to him. He wavers for a moment, enthusiasm warring with caution. Geralt’s listened to him chatter for years, after all, and it’s not like his excitement would be out of character when the witcher knows how much he’s wanted to come here all these years. 

Then he thinks of Geralt’s anger on the mountain and wonders how much of it came from Jaskier being unable to control himself. 

He settles, pulling his shoulders in slightly and giving Vesemir a small smile. 

“It’s lovely,” he says with admirable restraint. 

Beside him, Geralt’s posture doesn’t relax. 

*

If he’d had any doubts about Jaskier not wanting to be trapped in Kaer Morhen with him, the stunted conversation at supper would confirm them. He’d been expecting excitement and wonder, had braced himself to answer a deluge of questions and to play intermediary for the others, who were unused to Jaskier’s enthusiasm. It would have been a single high point, not that he would ever admit to such a thing, seeing Kaer Morhen through Jaskier’s perspective. 

Instead the bard had been quiet and restrained, barely commenting at all unless directly asked. He’d been polite, but it had been the same politeness he used in social settings when he wanted to leave but couldn’t say so. 

It had been a relief when they finally got to leave the table. 

They hadn’t spoken on their way back to his room or as they’d changed into sleep trousers. Their shirts they could do little enough about, but they could find some sort of comfort for the evening. 

Throughout it all, Jaskier remains silent, even as he crawls onto the mattress. 

It’s odd, sharing a bed in what’s been only his room for years. 

It’s a mix of familiar and strange. Jaskier next to him is something familiar from years together, but he’s wildly out of place in this setting. He feels hyper aware of the heat of Jaskier radiating to him across the scant distance of the mattress between them. He has a fairly large bed here, but it seems absurdly small to him now, even though they’re not touching. 

Jaskier inhales half a dozen times like he’s going to say something, but he drifts off to sleep hours later without saying a word. 

Geralt doesn’t follow him for a long, long while. 

*

Despite Jaskier’s best hopes, the awkward tension between them hasn’t broken in the morning. He thinks about making a joke or even picking a fight to snap the weight of it between them, but being chained to Geralt and in the witcher’s home territory doesn’t stack the odds of a confrontation between them in his favor, and he resists. 

After breakfast, he wanders out behind Geralt as the other witchers file out for their morning training. He’s itching to get to work researching how to get the fuck out of the damn handcuffs, but apparently training comes before anything else. 

How typical. 

As the other witchers move into their own routines, Eskel and Vesemir pairing off to spar while Lambert goes through some forms, he catches Geralt eyeing the obstacle course, eyes alert and muscles tense the way a collie’s are when it sees a group of sheep in want of herding.

“Absolutely not,” he says flatly, and Geralt cuts his eyes to him, seeming to size him up contemplatively. “Geralt, if you try to make me get on that fucking thing, I will leap off and drag us both to our deaths.” 

Geralt narrows his eyes, studying him with more intensity. 

In a gesture of pre-emptive protest, Jaskier drops to the ground like a ragdoll. 

*

No amount of dragging Jaskier around the courtyard like a recalcitrant dog on a leash makes the bard give in, and eventually he admits to himself that trying to drag him on the obstacle course would be asking for trouble. Jaskier is clearly suspicious as he slowly rises to his feet, but he relaxes when Geralt leads them over to a bench to watch the others train. 

Despite his attempts to be still, he knows he’s twitchy without any exercise at all, and after a world-weary sigh like he’s lifting a great weight, Jaskier rolls his head to look at him. 

“I will give you some running,” he offers, and Geralt is on his feet so fast that the bard stumbles after him. 

It’s more like a jog for him, but Jaskier is already grumbling under his breath as they take their first few strides out of the gate and around the keep. It feels good to push his muscles to any degree, small as it is, and he feels some of the tension loose from around his neck and shoulders. He doesn’t go for nearly as long as he could, but to the bard’s credit, Jaskier does appear to give it his all, not complaining until he trips over a rock. When he stops to let him gather himself once more, he can see the bard’s legs shaking slightly. 

Sword practice is its own form of learning. Using his left hand, he can move relatively freely, Jaskier just having to keep up the pace with his footwork and stay out of the way. For his right, however, Jaskier has to observe enough to know when and when not to move. To his surprise, Jaskier’s actually pretty good at it. Seeing the surprise in his face, Jaskier rolls his eyes. 

“What, like I haven’t watched you swinging swords in camp?” He asks dryly. “I do pay some attention, you know.” 

After a while, Jaskier even picks up a training sword to join, bored with simply watching. After a swipe that’s part playful and part peevish from the bard, they start to spar. Geralt holds back a significant amount, but Jaskier gives a fair enough account of himself. 

There’s something pleasing about seeing Jaskier flushed and panting, his color high, his eyes bright. His shirt slowly gapes more and more open as they go–quite a feat given that he already normally has it open almost to his navel–and a sheen of sweat highlights his collar bones, the smooth column of his neck. In a mad moment, the thought of what it would be like to press his tongue to that expanse of skin flickers through his mind, and he’s so alarmed by it that Jaskier gets a hit in that knocks him to the side, the bard dragged down as well by their cuffs. 

Jaskier’s eyes are wide and alarmed when they settle, the bard prone over him, hands on either side of his head and legs straddling his hips in an attempt to not squish him. Without thought, he opens his mouth to better taste the wall of arousal-scent that crashes over him when Jaskier takes stock of their position, and he sees the other man’s eyes dart down. He flushes dark crimson in a way that clearly has nothing to do with their exercise. He draws in a slightly shaky breath, clearly about to speak, but before he gets the chance, Lambert calls out. 

“No fucking in the training yard,” he drawls lazily, leaning on his sword and smirking. “You know the rules, Geralt. Go get bent over some furniture in your own room.” 

Jaskier scrambles off of him with such alacrity that he appears to forget their bindings, pulling himself back to his knees when he tries to dart off, one hand punching Geralt in the stomach when he tries to catch himself. 

Lambert bends double under the force of his own laughter. 

*

After the fucking catastrophic disaster of training, Jaskier thinks for a foolish moment that research might be an improvement. 

It is not. 

He never thought that he would have cause to complain about being close to Geralt, but he’s still so embarrassed over accidentally mounting Geralt in front of everyone in the yard that he desperately wants to curl up in a closet somewhere until the last of the flush fades from his cheeks. He’s never been a shy, maidenly flower, but given everything between them, he knows how much Geralt must have hated it, and he’s ashamed of his own traitorous excitement in response, his body responding without any need for his input. 

Geralt hasn’t taken his hand in his since they got here–not that he can blame him–and so they end up tugging on the chain as they move. His wrist has healed some since they got here, Geralt tending it with attentiveness he doesn’t know how to read into, but it’s still sore. When he sees him wince when it grates against the sore spot right above the bone, Geralt moves closer, and Jaskier doesn’t know if he’s ever felt more pathetic in his entire life. 

After a rough start, they end up working out a system, Jaskier climbing up on the ladders and handing books down to minimize how many times they have to climb together, Geralt hovering at his back so close that Jaskier misses a rung and nearly sends them both crashing to the floor. Geralt is easily able to hold them all in one hand, and Jaskier is grateful for the brief reprieve even as he crouches and stretches to retrieve the tomes just out of his reach. 

They end up settling together on a rug before a hearth that Geralt lights with Igni, and after a while, things seem to relax a bit between them, the awkwardness abating a bit with something else to focus on. The other witchers wander in and out between chores or their own personal tasks, but for the most part, it ends up being just him and Geralt, eventually laying side by side on their bellies before the fire. 

Were it not for the sharp-edged metal about his wrist, it might almost feel companionable. 

*

To his own surprise, Geralt ends up looking forward to their morning trainings together as the days progress. He can’t push himself nearly as hard as he can when he’s not trailing a bard from one wrist, but Jaskier has more stamina than he expected, and he’s a quick learner. He ends up imitating his movements with a training sword, able to move more easily when he’s mirroring the motions. 

Despite his best efforts, his focus keeps splitting to catch on the lines of Jaskier’s body, made plainer by the movement. For all of his pretty frippery and dainty behavior, the bard is solid muscle beneath his pretty clothes, a fact that Geralt has never properly noticed before and wishes he didn’t now. 

When a thrust forward makes the bard’s shirt ride up and reveal a pale expanse of flesh at his hip, Geralt nearly makes Jaskier drop his practice sword in surprise when he lurches them into motion. A snort he hears from across the yard suggests that his brothers are able to smell his dilemma, but Jaskier just makes wordless noises of complaint as Geralt tugs them into a sprint in an attempt to cool his own baser impulses. 

It’s absurd, he thinks as he leads them up stairs despite Jaskier’s groan of protest, to behave like some green lad like this. It’s just Jaskier, he tells himself firmly, the same bard he’s seen covered in mud and hung over and puking his guts out of a window. It’s just Jaskier. 

Just Jaskier, who’s been by his side for years, who laughs at his jokes and smelled of delight when he was allowed to press close. Jaskier, who turned him into a hero of legend and never laughed at Geralt’s drunken confession of wishing to be a knight when he was a boy. 

Jaskier, who has been by his side for years, whose presence had become as comfortable as an old shirt without his quite realizing it. 

Jaskier, whose unbuttoning of his shirt after the first twenty minutes of their run to reveal more flushed skin and dark hair means that Geralt pushes them faster with something rather like desperation. 

*

Their days pass with a bit less awkwardness between them, and it’s such a relief that he’s almost able to forget the how and why of his presence in Geralt’s home. 

And then it starts snowing. 

It had hurt before, Geralt’s gruff assurance that he would be free to leave as soon as they were done. It had felt like the rejection it was and had stung, but it had been something to look forward to at least, the possibility of finally having an end to this entire farce. 

Now he watches Geralt looking at the snow, absolutely expressionless, and feels his stomach sink right down to his toes. 

He can already tell that it’s going to be a heavy snowfall. 

Certainly heavy enough to trap bards for the season, handcuffs or no handcuffs. At least before Geralt could console himself with the promise that he would be rid of Jaskier soon enough, but now with the heavy flakes drifting down, he knows the witcher must be simmering with resentment that he’s now going to have to put up with him for the entire season, even after they’re free. 

He doesn’t know that he’s ever been more aware of being a burden. 

*

As the snow thickens on the ground, he can smell how anxious and miserable Jaskier is to be stuck at Kaer Morhen. 

With him. 

He had thought they were getting somewhere. Even without the ease of before, he had thought they were in some way moving past the sharp edges of the many broken things between them. In his most foolish moments, he had even begun toying with the idea that they would be able to move past the mountain entirely and set out in the spring together. 

(In his dreams, where he has no control, his mind had supplied plenty of things they could do to pass the time until then, his subconscious fully attentive to what he’s always ignored and now can’t seem to stop noticing). 

After it becomes clear that Jaskier will be stuck with him for the season even after they’re free of their chain, all of his stupid fantasies dissolve like mist. 

In response, he doesn’t push Jaskier to speak anymore than he absolutely has to. He stops making the jokes he’d begun offering again, suspecting now that each laugh is more out of a sense of obligation than genuine amusement. He tries to remove himself as much as possible in all respects. He can’t give Jaskier space physically, but he can give it to him socially. With his silence, he tries to encourage Jaskier to speak with the other witchers as much as he can. Their own issues set aside, he knows Jaskier wants to learn more about witchers than the information he’s been given throughout the years. 

(He resolutely ignores the confusing way it makes him feel to imagine Jaskier singing songs about people other than him). 

(It’s not as if he ever wanted Jaskier to sing about him, after all). 

(It's not as if he ever deserved it, in the end). 

*

His suspicions after the first snowfall prove correct, in the absolute worst ways. 

He grows more and more miserable with each day he can see how much he’s getting on Geralt’s nerves. The witcher retreats as much as he can given that they’re still chained together, and Jaskier tries to give him the courtesy of not pressing, but a bitter part of him can’t help but notice the irony of feeling so fucking lonely when he’s never had more consistent close contact in his life. 

On the day Vesemir finally exclaims a soft noise of triumph, both he and Geralt look up sharply. (He pretends it doesn’t hurt, Geralt’s clear enthusiasm to be done with him. It shouldn’t still hurt, after all, not after the witcher already made his feelings quite plain on that fucking mountain). The older witcher shows them a passage concerning unbreakable bonds and points to a recipe for a potion poured over the metal of a sword that claims to be able to sever any binding. 

Jaskier is nervous throughout the preparations, not entirely in love with the idea of a sword being swung with force near his hand, but Geralt seems entirely unconcerned, and for all that he lacks basic self-preservation on his best day, Jaskier doesn’t think he would so placidly accept the risk of losing a limb. Surely Geralt can’t be that desperate to be free of him, no matter how trying he finds Jaskier’s presence. 

Still, when the potion is made and applied to the sword, he can’t help but slam his eyes shut and look away, praying for it all to be over soon. 

*

The sword and potion don't work. 

Of fucking course they don’t. 

The next three solutions don’t work either. 

With each day and attempt that goes by, he can smell Jaskier’s anxiety getting stronger, and they both start to creep back to snapping at each other, his own frustration rising in the face of such clear evidence of how miserable Jaskier is to be forced to stay with him. It’s foolish, to pick fights when they have no chance of storming away from each other, but both of their nerves grow more frayed by the day. 

“It’s not as if you’ve offered anything,” Geralt nearly growls after a bitchy comment from Jaskier about the worth of witcher books for anything that doesn’t involve stabbing monsters 

“Oh, and you have? Tell me again how y-” Jaskier cuts himself off when he catches sight of Vesemir watching them, both eyebrows raised. 

With only a glance towards each other to form a wordless agreement, he and Jaskier both excuse themselves to take their fight elsewhere. 

*

Back in thei- Geralt’s room, Jaskier turns on the witcher the moment the door is shut. He imagines the other witchers could hear them with little enough effort if they felt like it, but the illusion that he can snap at Geralt without an audience is soothing. 

It’s about the only fucking thing that is. 

“What do you want me to do about it?” He demands. “I already fucking told you I’m sorry. It’s not like I meant for it to happen.” 

“You never do,” Geralt scoffs. “You just act, and then I get stuck digging you out of-” 

“Oh, shove it up your ass,” Jaskier cuts him off. He’s had more than enough of being reminded of the many ways he’s inconvenienced Geralt in trying to be a part of his life. He doesn’t need a review. “Besides,” he says nastily, “it’s not like you’re so fucking innocent.” 

“And what is that supposed to mean?” Geralt asks, narrowing his eyes. 

Jaskier gives him a mean smile. 

“Heard from your child of surprise recently?” He asks with fake sweetness, and the twitch of a muscle at Geralt’s jaw tells him he’s poked at a sore spot, just like he wanted. 

“The child of surprise I only ended up with because of you?” 

Jaskier grits his teeth in a near-snarl. 

“I didn’t make you invoke the law,” he spits. “That was your own fucking fault. You could have asked for a barrel of ale or a horse or a-or a shiny new sword or something, but nooooo. Can’t put any fucking thought into it. The mighty Geralt, above pedestrian things like asking for a-” 

“I wouldn’t have even had to ask for anything if you hadn’t dragged me there. That’s what you do, Jaskier. You shove your nose where it doesn’t belong, and then you sit back and wait for other people to fix your mistakes.” 

“Mistakes?” Jaskier asks, hearing his pulse beating in his ears. His eyes are stinging, and he knows even before his lips form the words that he’s about to regret what he’s going to say. “You’d know plenty about that, wouldn’t you, Butcher?”

It’s satisfying, the way Geralt jolts slightly like he’s managed to land a punch. He can already feel the guilt welling in his stomach at the low blow, but fuck if Geralt doesn’t know exactly how to wind him up. 

“And yet you’re the one who chose to follow me, no matter how many times I told you to leave,” Geralt says, lip curling slightly in a snarl. “What does that say about you?” 

Well. 

Fuck. 

Jaskier takes a shuddering breath, feeling like he took a kick to the stomach. It’s amazing, he thinks distantly, that a man who claims to have no emotions knows just how to bring the pain when he feels like it. He staggers back reflexively but is brought short by the handcuffs. 

His rage deserts him, leaving him feeling empty but for the same desolation he felt when he realized Geralt left him behind. 

“You were right, is that what you want to hear?” He says, choking a bit on the words. His vision clouds with tears that he swipes away with angry motions. He doesn’t want to be crying, doesn’t want that kind of weakness, but it’s not as if he can leave and get any fucking space at all, and he can feel his anger bleeding from him like he’s been stabbed. He grits his teeth in a futile attempt to stop the fucking tears. “All I do is shovel shit on your life. Is that what you want me to say?” His voice breaks. “I ruin things, that’s all I ever do! I get it! I’m a burden and y-”

“You’re not.” 

He almost misses the words, quiet as they are. When he blinks in surprise and focuses, Geralt isn’t looking at him, jaw tight and expression unhappy but not actively angry. They’re still as far as they can get from each other, the chain pulled tight, but Geralt isn’t actively tugging on it. A throb from his wrist prompts Jaskier to step closer to relieve the pressure, and Geralt steps closer as well. 

“You’re not a burden, Jaskier,” Geralt says, still not looking at him. The words are soft, no trace of the frustration of before, and it feels almost like a trick. Jaskier studies him mistrustfully, and when Geralt notices it, he sighs, bringing one hand up to scrub over his face. “Fuck.” 

Well, that he can agree with.

*

Recognizing the wary hesitance in Jaskier’s posture, he leads them over to the bed and takes a seat, the bard hovering for a moment before he sits as well, perching on the edge like he can make a run for it if it all goes badly. 

It hurts, that mistrust, but it’s not as if he doesn’t deserve it. 

“I should never have said what I’ve said to you,” he says quietly, looking away. He can’t look at Jaskier for this, and he gives himself permission to be a coward about it. 

Jaskier, at his side, remains silent. 

“You didn’t deserve that. Any of it.” He risks a glance in the bard’s direction from the corner of his eye and finds he has his full attention. “I’m sorry, Jaskier.” 

The silence between them stretches so long that it’s physically painful. 

Finally, Jaskier speaks. 

“Are you saying that just because we’re still chained together?” 

Despite the fragile edge of the words, Geralt can’t help but snort, even though he regrets it when he sees Jaskier’s lips thin in response. 

“No,” he says with a shake of his head. “I’m saying it because I should have said it before.” 

It feels like setting down a burden, the confession, like dropping all of his armor at the end of a long day, a weight removed from his shoulders that he hadn’t realized was pulling at him until it’s gone. 

“And I know I fucked up, and you don’t want to be here. With me.” The words sting, but when he imagines how he left Jaskier feeling on the mountain, it’s likely the least of what he deserves. 

“Why’d you say it?” 

He can tell that Jaskier is trying very hard to keep his voice even, and it hurts, the clear strain in the words. 

“All I ever do is break things,” he says, looking only at the wall. “That’s all I’ve ever done.” He glances at Jaskier. “After Yen-” He swallows, the name leaving his throat only with effort. “I didn’t want to break you, too. I thought it would be easier if I sent you away first.” He pauses, considers, but after everything, Jaskier deserves the full truth from him. “And I was angry.” 

“Did you mean it?” Jaskier asks, voice barely a whisper. “Any of it?” 

“No,” Geralt says without hesitation. In the moment, he had thought he did, but even as he walked away on the mountain, he knew he’d been lying to them both. 

“I do pull you into shit.” 

Geralt snorts and gives Jaskier the faintest hint of a smile. 

“It’s only completely your fault 60% of the time.” 

Jaskier punches him on the shoulder for that, and he moves with the blow. 

“You didn’t come back for me,” Jaskier says afterwards, the brief levity lost once more. “I waited for so fucking long, and you didn’t come back.” 

“I didn’t think you’d want me to. I thought you would find someone else, and I…” He had thought Jaskier would move on and didn’t want to see someone else living his life, but he can’t bring himself to say it. 

“You’re the only one I ever want to be with,” Jaskier says, voice quiet. Slowly, he reaches out for Geralt’s hand, and he obliges to the contact, squeezing gently. “Bastard,” he says without heat. 

“You have horrible taste,” Geralt feels compelled to announce, and Jaskier snorts. 

“Incurably,” he agrees. 

“I missed you,” Geralt offers, and he hears Jaskier inhale. His hand squeezes his. 

“What happens now?” Jaskier asks, and Geralt shifts back to lean against the wall before he looks at him. Jaskier mirrors his posture. 

“Whatever you want to happen,” Geralt says, making himself shrug nonchalantly. “I know you want to leave-” 

Jaskier sits bolt upright at that, brow furrowed. 

“I don’t want to leave! You want me to leave!” He sounds offended, and Geralt frowns at him. “I’ve wanted to come here for ages. You were the one upset when it started snowing.” 

“But you’ve been miserable,” Geralt points out, and Jaskier rolls his eyes. 

“Because you wanted me to leave,” Jaskier says, like Geralt is missing something incredibly obvious. 

“I don’t want you to leave,” Geralt says, and he sees a fragile sort of hope start to creep across Jaskier’s face. “I don’t ever want you to leave, Jaskier.” 

The bard studies him for a long, long moment before he sits up straight, squaring his shoulders like he’s going into war. Geralt copies him, partially to make him smile, which he succeeds at. 

“I love you,” Jaskier says, voice more than a little tremulous. “And I know you don’t feel the same way, but you should know that I-”

Geralt cuts him off by pressing his mouth to his, and Jaskier melts into him at once, one hand moving up to press at his chest. He tilts his head to deepen it, and it feels like absolution, this kiss, like forgiveness and a new start. 

They both jerk apart and blink down at the floor at the sound of a clink. 

In near-unison, they bring their arms up to study their newly-freed wrists, the handcuffs lying innocently on the floor. 

*

When he sees the manacles lying on the floor, he’s seized by the mad fear that Geralt is going to take it all back, that the witcher was just telling him what he wanted to hear for the sake of peace with them chained together, that-

When Geralt kisses him this time, it’s with enough force to push him backwards. He goes after only a moment of resistance. He lets himself be guided back against the pillows, and he feels shivers when Geralt’s thumb brushes over the bandages around his wrist, stroking gently. 

“We should tell the others,” he gasps between one kiss and the next, and Geralt nods, the strands of hair tickling his face where they drape down. 

“We should,” Geralt agrees, nosing down along his jaw to press his mouth to the soft skin of his throat. 

“Very- oh,” Jaskier says, distracted by the careful little nip Geralt gives the juncture of his neck and shoulder. “Very important.” 

“Mmm,” Geralt acknowledges, freed hand making full use of its liberty to slide down his body in a slow, teasing path. “Should go right now.” 

“Right this moment,” Jaskier gasps, pressing up into the touch. 

*

(They do tell the others of their newfound freedom). 

(Just not for the next several hours).