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Geralt flinches when something comes at his head, but when his hands fly up to catch it, he finds he’s got one of Ciri’s wrists in each hand, and a string of bright colors laced between the two. It’s too close to his face to focus on properly.
“Aw, come on,” Ciri entreats, laughing even though she’s caught, “Have a little bit of spirit!”
“What is that?” Geralt smells something sweet and sugary over the smell of sweat and bodies and leather, asphalt and hot streets. Ciri herself smells like Yen’s perfume and motor oil from fixing up Roach before they headed out this morning.
“It’s just a necklace,” Ciri says, like a liar. Her eyes are so bright in the sunshine though, green as the summer leaves and shining brilliantly. She always smiles like that at Geralt when she knows Geralt will give in to her. The way her cheek creases around her scar always makes his heart soft.
Geralt frowns but releases her sweaty wrists, because he’s a sucker and a fool, and the necklace goes up and over Geralt’s head. That’s the thing that smells like sugar, something fake and fruity, or maybe Ciri's hands are what smell like that, as they carefully tug Geralt’s ponytail free and adjust the lay of the necklace on his collarbone. It's on a stretchy band, something elastic that holds it close to his throat, which is extremely uncomfortable, but Geralt has put up with worse for Ciri’s sake, so it’s not too dreadful a sacrifice.
“Come on,” she says, snagging his wrist as soon as she’s done. Her fingers are sticky on his skin as she pulls him along, dragging him away from Roach and into the crowds. Geralt fumbles with his keys, shoving the motorcycle keys into his back pocket, and tries not to step on anyone's toes in his heavy boots. Most people here are not wearing very much, and there are a lot of flip flops visible— prime real estate for crushed toes.
“Where are we going, again?” Geralt calls over the sound of the crowd. There are so many people here it's overwhelming to his senses, but Ciri keeps holding onto him and doesn't let him fall behind.
“We’re marching with the Bi Brigade,” Ciri yells back, “You’ll recognize them by how loudly bisexual they are!”
“Right.” She had told him that, he just didn't understand what it meant so it had slipped away again.
Geralt is not well up on all the flags and identities the kids have these days. He is too old for that shit, but he knows the bisexual flag colors, at least.
Mostly by dint of Ciri wearing them all on the unicorn hoodie she has on, a shimmery, opalescent pink with blue and purple details. She's painted her cheeks with it as well, little rectangles of three stripes on each side, and her nails are done up the same, each nail save the first two fingers on each hand a different color. Blue, purple, pink, pink, blue. Purple, blue, pink, pink, purple.
They match the enormous flag over the Bi Brigade, a milling crowd of similarly dressed people, but not the one immediately behind it, which Geralt doesn't recognize except that the yellow is the same as the one on his own cheek, smeared on with little waxy sticks just after they’d arrived.
The things he does for his daughter.
He shoves his hands in his jeans as Ciri cheers, bouncing on her toes as she greets her friends, some he’s seen before and others he has never met. He waves awkwardly when Ciri gestures back at him, black jeans and black t-shirt soaking up the sun like a well of heat, but he’s never been one to show off like these young people. He’s 65 for god’s sake, he's old.
“Geralt?”
He turns.
And blinks.
“Jaskier,” he says dumbly, and then tries to come up with something witty and clever to follow that, but he has nothing at all.
“Geralt!” Jaskier crows, triumph in his voice. He springs from the crowd and wraps himself around Geralt like it's been no time at all since they last saw each other, and he is sweaty and hot in the endless summer sun. His arms go around Geralt’s neck like it's no big deal, pulling Geralt down slightly to fit him under Jaskier's arms, and then he twists and turns, rocking their bodies together in unadulterated joy. “Oh, it's been ages, hasn't it?” he cries into Geralt’s ear, still not letting go. “It’s brilliant to see you!”
Geralt has missed Jaskier’s hugs. He hasn't thought about them in ages but now that he’s back in that embrace he remembers how genuine and encompassing they are. Jaskier isn't a small man, for all that he dresses like a twink, and his arms are thick with muscle that fit so nicely around Geralt’s back and shoulders, like there's nothing better to do with his hands than play music and give hugs.
“You too,” Geralt says, feeling a something big and irrepressible bubble up somewhere in his chest, something like a laugh or a well of tears that he doesn't know how to let out. He raises his hands tentatively and puts them on Jaskier’s waist as the hug continues, feeling the slick skin of his lower back, already sweaty beneath the little tank top he’s wearing.
It’s hot pink and looks like it had once been much larger, before it had been strategically attacked by scissors.
“You look good,” he says, breathing in. It's been a few years since he last saw Jaskier and he’s filled out recently, put on some weight and grown his hair out. He smells like sweat and baby powder and sunscreen, chemicals and coconut that are distinctly off putting, but underneath that he smells just the same as he had the last time they’d seen each other. Then Jaskier had left the country and Geralt had gone back to work, and that had been that— the usual routine, on and off for years now.
It always feels like coming home.
“Me? Look at you, fuck, you look good,” Jaskier says into the side of his cheek. He slides his hands down Geralt’s back to grope his ass with a quick squeeze. “Are you still working out, fighting monsters in your old age?”
“What’s this?” Ciri interrupts brightly, a note of curious suspicion in her voice. “Giving away free hugs?”
Geralt pulls away with a laugh and a smile, helpless on his face because that's how he thinks of Jaskier these days, helplessly when he least expects it, and here he is— least expected. “Where they're needed,” he says around the lump in his chest.
“He does, admittedly, give the best hugs known to humankind,” Jaskier says. He leaves his hand on Geralt’s upper arm and squeezes, looking impressed. “Saints, Ciri, is that you?”
Ciri fits herself under Geralt’s other arm, wrapping a surprisingly possessive arm around his waist, and looks at Jaskier with a sharp smile, mostly teeth. “It’s me,” she says, “You know my father?”
Geralt gives her a shake, wrapping his arm tighter around her shoulders and giving her a squeeze. She’s met most of his partners in recent years, long term and not, but she has always been highly skeptical of his taste.
That’s her problem though— he has excellent taste, thank you.
“Do you remember Jaskier? He’s been on tour, hasn't been back to Touissant in ages.”
Ciri goes stiff, calculating. Abruptly, Geralt realizes that Ciri had been a teenager when Jaskier had left the last time— it must have been three, maybe four years since she’d last seen him. That had been before Geralt had tried to explain the whole his-wife-their-boyfriend-his-girlfriend-her-queer-platonic-best friend-their-theatre troup dynamic they’d been navigating for the past— fuck, thirty years. No one else has been quite as steady as Jaskier save Yennefer, but Jaskier has always wandered in and out of Geralt’s life, especially since Ciri had come to live with them. Eskel maybe, when they meet up.
The tension in Ciri’s body tells him that she’s still waiting for Jaskier to comment on the scar, the way people always do— especially if they haven't seen her since it happened. Luckily, Jaskier has never met a social convention he didn't ignore, or an opportunity for small talk that he hasn't turned into a deeply intense personal conversation without letting on that he’s doing it.
“You have grown up so beautifully,” he says with delight, so genuine that Ciri blinks. “Gods, what, you're twenty? Twenty-two, now? I am loving the outfit, and the nails, haha, very clever.” He holds her hand in his, admiring the paint job, and then winks. “Geralt has no idea, does he?”
“Idea about what?” Geralt frowns.
“Nothing.” Jaskier laughs and Ciri cracks a sly grin, too. “Speaking of fathers, how’s Emhyr?” Jaskier asks, flitting through the conversation with his usual acuity. “Is he still mad about his crush on you? He was foaming at the mouth last I saw. Couldn't have you for himself and ready to blame you for it, wasn't he. Do you still talk?” That last one is to Ciri, whose eyebrows have ridden high on her face when confronted with Jaskier’s utter inability to stay casual.
Geralt chuckles under his breath. “He’s still around, yes. Better these days.”
Jaskier throws his head back with a laugh, clapping in delight. “Oh, you gave him a proper seeing to, didn't you? Gods what I wouldn't have given to be there to watch.” He eyes Geralt up and down, more heat in his gaze than the sun beating down on them, and Geralt feels an answering flush rising in him.
Good thing he can't blush. Ciri is already watching him with wide, delighted eyes.
No one else in the world quite like Jaskier. Geralt had missed him.
“The parade’s starting!” Someone yells, and the people around them start to flurry like ruffled pigeons, jostling for their places in the crowd. Music strikes up around them, someone with a speaker in another group, just loud enough to carry. Jaskier whips his ukulele around to start playing along as Ciri drags Geralt along with her into position.
The air is hot and dry, the barest measure of relief in the day, because the sun is brutal as they start to move, a cool breeze stirring occasionally but not enough to really cut through the crowd. It’s not a fast moving parade, a few dozen people in the group with them, and piles and piles of people on either side of the street cheering them on as they walk through packed streets, waving back. Someone tosses necklaces, another person throws condoms. “Don't pick those up,” Geralt says before he thinks about it.
Ciri scoffs and Jaskier looks offended and together they protest the idea of floor condoms.
“I know you both,” Geralt says. He wraps his arm around Ciri’s shoulders and pulls her in to kiss the side of her head. “Gremlin,” he says against her ash grey hair.
Something bumps into his side. Jaskier's eyes were always pale, almost colorless, so that they reflected the world around them. The sky is so blue in Jaskier’s bright eyes, and he stares at Geralt plaintively as he plays his ukulele unceasingly.
Geralt leans out, still holding Ciri, and gives Jaskier a kiss high on his cheekbone, nose pressed into his sweaty temple where he smells like salt and shampoo and honeysuckle. When he pulls away, Jaskier pushes back in and gives Geralt one in return, right where Ciri had painted his cheek. Then another at the corner of his mouth.
Geralt closes his eyes and turns his face into the kiss, letting their lips meet for the first time in four years. It's familiar, hot and sweet, and Jaskier’s chapstick tastes like maraschino cherries.
He’s too old to feel so young.
“Gross,” Ciri laughs over the noise of the crowd, pinching Geralt’s ribs.
“Oh, won't somebody think of the children?” Jaskier shouts, tipping his head back and playing a complicated little fingering pattern on the ukulele. Ciri laughs again and shoves him with one hand, already pulled into Jaskier’s impossible orbit, jostling Geralt between them.
“Oi,” he says as the three of them tumble into the next group of people, “Settle down, kids.”
Jaskier cackles again and gives him a wink, ostensibly settling down. He's always enjoyed the age difference between them— and all the more so since Jaskier aged out of his twinkish early twenties. Twelve years of on-and-off hasn't changed that a bit.
Geralt waves at someone who whistles at them from the sidelines, getting into it as they walk, and Jaskier tells them about a retired witcher in Montecalvo who had recognized some obscure verse in one of his shows, and had come back stage to talk nerdy to him about it, Geralt, some people appreciate the craft he puts into his work, that's how he’s been on tour for two years and a dozen contract offers besides, yes, thank you, Cirilla, his single In a Winter Wood was a delight to write, based off of Geralt’s adventures with a nightwraith in the mountains of Kaedwen.
Ciri disappears from under his arm for a moment and Jaskier takes her place unrepentantly, sticking his hand into Geralt’s back pocket in a casual intimacy that Geralt’s missed as much as Jaskier’s bright smiles and keen, observant eyes. His hand cups around Geralt’s arsecheek and squeezes, making Geralt rise just a little bit onto his toes, tingles in the small of his back through his belly.
“Excuse me,” someone says tentatively at Geralt’s elbow, slung over Jaskier’s shoulder to hold him close and keep him from getting any ideas about even more public displays of affection.
“Geralt, this is my friend Morvran.” Ciri pops out from behind the horse-faced young man shuffling awkwardly at the two of them. He looks Ciri’s age, maybe younger, and like he hasn't grown into his nose quite yet, tall and coltish and a little pigeon-toed. “He could use a dad hug?”
“I, ah—” the boy stutters, looking very put together for how nervous Geralt can tell he is, pale blue eyes like crystals holding the light of the rainbows all around them. “Only if you don't mind, sir,” he says, shuffling his feet. He’s got his hands clasped behind his back like a soldier at rest.
“Uh. Sure?” Geralt says when Jaskier pinches him.
He opens his arms and after a long, hesitating moment— as the parade moves slowly around them, people pausing to watch, elbowing their friends, clapping along with the music— he folds the boy into his embrace. The kid is as tall as Geralt and well built, but as Geralt holds him close to his chest, Morvran shakes and trembles until his arms finally unlock enough to hold Geralt back. Morvran buries his face in Geralt’s shoulder, trembling like a leaf, and clutches him tight, fingers knotted into Geralt’s t-shirt.
“You’re okay, kid,” Geralt says into his dirty blond hair, scraped back from his face, and tightens his arms until he feels the tension fully leave the boy’s body. “You're gonna be okay.”
Something like a sob shakes Morvran to his core, moving Geralt’s arms with it, and he sighs heavily against Geralt’s neck. When he pulls back his eyes are red rimmed but dry, full of a tremulous strength, and there is a bright rainbow imprinted into the skin of his cheek.
“Oh, oops, what's—” Geralt says, and unthinkingly he lifts his hand to wipe the shiny little marks from Morvran’s cheek. They smear, sticky under his thumb, and Morvran’s face goes shocky and fractured in an instant. “Fuck, kid,” Geralt says, pulling him back in for another hug. “I’m your dad now.”
Morvran holds him back just as tightly, choking a laugh into Geralt’s shoulder, and his eyes are brighter and less hollow when he finally lets Geralt go. “Thank you, sir,” he says, shakily, wiping at the marks on his own cheek like he’s wiping away tears that haven't fallen.
“Call me Geralt,” he says, clasping Morvran on the shoulder. “Any time, kid. Seriously.”
“Are you giving away Dad Hugs?”
That's a much younger kid, barely up to Morvran's elbow, watched over by a lean, rangy man who eyes Geralt with narrow suspicion. The girl bounces on her toes, hands behind her back too but like she’s trying to restrain herself from throwing her whole body at him.
Geralt looks at the man and raises his eyebrow, but the man just shrugs, crossing his arms over his tattooed chest. “If she wants.”
They're definitely holding up the parade now, though most people are moving around them, splitting like a river around a rock, but several keep standing to watch with growing smiles and eager eyes. Geralt shrugs it off. He’s here to have a good time, this is as good as any.
He crouches to be at eye level with the girl, her fingers playing with the mousy brown ponytail pulled over her shoulder now that she’s got his attention. She just about tips into his arms when he holds them out to her, wrapping her skinny arms around his neck and clinging like a monkey. He stands, reminded so much of Ciri as a little girl, and swings her weight around until she laughs, high pitched and delighted with the world. The breathless joy in that voice is like a balm to him. He loves the way his own girl laughs, and this girl deserves to laugh just as much and just as freely.
“What's your name?” He asks when he finally puts her down. He’s sweating like a pig now, no mutagens strong enough to beat out the heat of Touissant in the summer surrounded by so many people.
“Anaïs. I'm nine. This is Vernon, he’s my friend.”
The tattooed man doesn't look like much of a father figure, but Geralt has never looked much like one either. He nods at Vernon, who squints back at him.
“Did you want a hug too?”
That gets a cracked grin out of him, sarcastic maybe, but still there, breaking the tough facade and brightening his craggy face.
“Give one to that guy,” Vernon says, nodding over Geralt’s shoulder as he accepts Anaïs' hand back in his own, bare inked shoulders shifting under his tank top. “They deserve it more, looks like it.”
Geralt gives a hug to everyone who comes up to him after that, slowly moving along with the parade but having wholly lost their place in line. The more people he hugs the more people line up for it, cheering and clapping as people sigh into his embrace, hot and sticky and increasingly sweaty as the day continues. Jaskier opens his arms too when the hugs start to pile up. Sometimes they hug adults— a man older than Geralt who cries into his shoulder as Jaskier pats slow circles over his back, and a woman with long black hair that reminds him of Yen gets a swift one, barely darting into his arms before she retreats. Sometimes a kid gets two hugs, one from each of them, and then Ciri hugs them to top it off, and they send people off to spread the love, while others march slowly along with them, collecting themselves and their overwhelming emotions. Some of those offer their own hugs to the crowds as they swell and recede in time.
The reach the end of the parade before Geralt realizes it, and Ciri is loudly flirting with a young blonde woman in a similarly styled dragon headed hoodie, shimmery yellow and teal, with pink spikes down the back of it, and knee high snakeskin boots, when Jaskier pulls him aside and away from the bulk of the crowd.
“How did you get even more handsome while I was away?” Jaskier asks, shoving himself into Geralt's arms to take his own hug once they're out of the main public eye. “Fuck, you’re so fucking sexy when you're doing dad things.”
After all the touching today, Geralt might well have expected to be averse to the sensation, overwhelmed and overstimulated by so many strangers, but he feels breathless with enthusiasm for the act, and he holds Jaskier to him like he never wants to let go. He doesn't, as a point of fact.
Jaskier has a rainbow mark on his face when he pulls away too, and Geralt finally has time to actually look at it. “What the fuck is that,” he asks, wiping at it. They're round marks in a line and they trace from his temple to his jawline, more uneven than some of the marks he’s seen on people today, but just as present.
Jaskier throws his head back and laughs with his whole body, arms still wrapped around Geralt’s soft waist. “It’s you, you great silly wumpus,” Jaskier says, face split in the cheesiest grin Geralt knows. “Your silly bloody necklace.”
“My what?” He’d forgotten. He lifts a hand to his collar, suddenly reminded of the too-close sensation of elastic and beads around his throat, but Jaskier catches his hand and holds it away before he gets there.
“Allow me,” Jaskier says with a leer. He leans in, tilting his head to fasten his mouth on Geralt’s throat, breath hot and wet and sweet on his skin. Summer heat and fiery arousal courses through Geralt, all of a sudden let loose. Jaskier’s tongue scrapes over his stubble, wet and slick, burning through Geralt’s defenses.
Geralt groans, tipping his head back into Jaskier’s grip as Jaskier’s teeth scrape over his pulse, sparking pleasure settling in his belly. He sucks at Geralt’s throat, and every long slow lap of his tongue drives Geralt even more insane.
They're pressed together from knees to chest and he wants to be closer, to be pushed into the wall somewhere behind him and devoured by his young lover who comes and goes and always comes again. He could fucking come today if they ever get around to it. He could take them both back to his and Yen’s place on Roach, the roar of the motorcycle beneath them and Jaskier plastered all along his back just adding to the curling arousal in him, cock thinking about getting hard to meet the thick length he can feel push against his thigh. Jaskier's tiny shorts don't hide much.
Jaskier bites.
There’s a disconcerting crunching noise, and Geralt feels the necklace snag and pull against his skin, until it snaps back with a wet slap, and Jaskier lifts his head, crunching away merrily. He’s got brightly colored rainbow smears across his lips.
“Mmph,” Jaskier says around his mouthful. “Skittles. Highly appropriate given the occasion.”
“What?” Geralt is breathless and horny and maybe not tracking as well as he had thought he was.
Jaskier grins that toothy grin, dyed with a dozen colors, and leans back in to suck at the places where the candy necklace had pressed, leaving behind smears of sweet, sticky colors on Geralt’s skin.
“Tasting the rainbow.”