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The thing about Jaskier was that he really didn't like to do what he was told to. Never had. Be it the laws of lands, norms of society, rules of his people… or even the very foundations of nature and chaos itself - he disregarded them all, whenever they didn't fit his will.
His nature was no exception.
Take his birth, for example. Even his hatching was a great defiance. Where the healers and sea witches took one look at the little, discoloured egg and they all claimed loud and clear he would surely die without ever bursting from his little bubble. His parents had more than enough hatchlings and sires for them, so they shouldn’t feel any bad if one single egg was defective - so said his father’s most trusted advisor. Jaskier, of course, didn’t listen and he hatched anyway, if only so Stregobor could eat his fucking words.
And from that very first rebellion, Jaskier soon stepped onto a path where rules and laws were interpreted more like gentle suggestions.
Merfolk didn't usually walk the land to become bards or decided to follow around beautiful Witchers for a very good reason. Acquiring legs was a tremendous hassle, sure, but once someone could pay the price of a sassy sea-witch, and accept the terms of their contract, it was only a matter of time to get used to the prickly feelings in places he had never felt before. It had been hell, those first few weeks and Jaskier screamed in tune more than sang from all the pain that had been so alien - every step felt like walking on shattered glass - but eventually, he got the hang of the whole walking-on-legs-thing. No, the problem had never been getting the legs. Young merfolk walked the shorelines as often as dry-folk did, if for nothing else than because it was a sort of coming-of-age experience. Drowners and water hags usually avoided them, and though kelpies tended to be more curious, they couldn't do much harm against those who could just as easily breathe underwater as above the waves.
No. The greatest inconvenience of the whole thing was the contract that tethered merfolk to the water and shorelines. Though the chains were more metaphorical and magical than actual chains, Jaskier has spun songs about heavy rusty anchors keeping him down despite his will to be free as a songbird. Granted, those songs could have been just as easily interpreted as talentless gloating assholes tying him and his mastery to the ground (or, at the very least Valdo Marx had always thought so.)
However, Jaskier had always disregarded rules that didn't benefit his will. He had rather endured the cold winds of winters than to hibernate below the waves, purely out of spite against his very nature. He had pushed and pulled the invisible chain of his invisible anchor as far as he could - laughing in the face of natural laws and chaos itself, whenever he had found himself further and further away from the shoreline. He had gladly and proudly worn the consequences of his bold decisions, land-sickness be damned and rapidly forming blisters on his brand new feet could kindly go and fuck themselves.
He would do as he pleased, thank you very much!
Jaskier had spent years walking among dry-folk, learning from them. Singing for them. His chaos-formed invisible chains sometimes tightened around his throat or fingertips or his feet as he were to take just one more step - but Jaskier was nothing if not stubborn and resilient like the precious little weed he was so enamoured with. He applied and then graduated from the University of Oxenfurt and Valdo Marx could suck eggs in hell if he thought Jaskier would ever waste breath on someone as deeply unremarkable as him. Then again, Jaskier had never stopped to explain something as delicate as his own nature to Marx of all people, let alone the vulnerable truth of his masterwork, called The Chains Pulling Me Down.
Then, Jaskier had met the Witcher.
If he had thought there were hardships with his chains before, well, he dared any merfolk to try and keep up with Geralt of Rivia. That invisible anchor tethering him to the shores was groaning with great effort as Jaskier pushed and pulled his physical limits to the point of risking serious injuries. Granted, becoming the travelling companion of a Witcher wasn't health insurance either.
At first, Geralt didn't make it easy for him, as if the silly Witcher tried to lose his own personal bard. As if Jaskier was anything but persistent and resilient like a weed, having very liberal understandings of laws and restrictions - be it the norms of society, or the rules of the Path. Witchers were supposed to walk it alone, and merfolk were supposed to be held by the shorelines… well, fuck all that!
Maybe it had been the easy way Jaskier fell in step beside Roach, or the deep understanding between them whenever their paths separated for a short while, only to find each other sometime later… or it could have been his songs and Geralt's image improving swiftly with the common folk… perhaps it was the numerous occasions Jaskier had patched up the Witcher's many wounds, quickly learning the order of potions he needed to tend to his every aches and pains… maybe even just the simple fact that Jaskier was beside Geralt for the better part of two decades.
Whatever the reason, when Geralt invited Jaskier to winter with him and his brothers in Kaer Morhen, he wanted to cry. Perhaps he did, but only a teeny-tiny bit. Geralt made this face, the one he usually made whenever he was deeply concerned but tried to pretend he was entirely unaffected by whatever decision Jaskier was about to make. Jaskier wanted to kiss the silly man.
He also wanted to accept the invitation more than anything in the world.
However…
However.
Kaer Morhen was high up within the Blue Mountains, far far away from any dryland settlements - and further away from the sea than Jaskier had ever pulled his chains before. Who knew what would happen to him? Nevertheless, he was Master Bard Jaskier; but more importantly Geralt's bard, and he never cared about the consequences of his decisions.
“I’d like that, yes,” he smiled warmly, and his heart fluttered with too many emotions swelling to a crescendo all at once.
“It’ll be cold and dark most of the time,” Geralt looked deep into the flames of their little campfire. “Hard work and sometimes even harder drinking. Hmm.”
“Are you trying to talk me out of it?”
“Hmm,” Geralt made this face that he never knew Jaskier could read as easily as his bardic notes - the expression Jaskier had long associated with blushing, but without the physical reddening of his cheeks. “Maybe. Once the passes get snowed in, there’s no way out.”
He said it with a certain finality to his tone. Somehow Jaskier has the distinct feeling that Geralt was talking about something infinitely more than simple wintering and being snowed in for a couple months.
“I assume the road is treacherous,” he grinned and turned the pegs of his lute to find the perfect tune for a melody swiftly forming in his mind.
“We call it the Killer,” Geralt said as he looked at Jaskier, raising a single eyebrow, as if asking a question.
“Charming,” Jaskier nodded, as he strummed the strings, if only to do something with his fingers. “Well, I’m sure by spring I can come up with a lovely ballad so its reputation could be salvaged.”
Geralt snorted, “That’ll be like teaching a fish to walk.”
“Oh!” Jaskier chuckled warmly. “That doesn’t sound hard at all.”
“It’ll be like making a Witcher into a folk hero,” Geralt replied softly, looking back to the flames.
“Well, look at that.” Jaskier hummed a few notes to find the harmony in the newly hatching song. “You say that like that was difficult at all, darling.”
Geralt took a slow, deep breath like he was getting ready to slay some great monster before he tore his golden gaze away from the fire. His eyes were soft, and Jaskier’s breath hitched, and his fingers stumbled against the strings. Geralt looked open and vulnerable in a way Jaskier had never seen him before, and for a single moment, time seemed to stop. “It’ll be like loving a Witcher.”
Jaskier’s mouth was already moving, sound already coming to his lips, heart trembling, and fingers clutching to his lute as he replied, “What, like it’s hard?” It was silly, and his poor poet heart wanted to slap him across the cheeks for such an embarrassing statement, yet… Geralt was smiling. Soft and tiny in the corner of his mouth with a tentative gentle smile, and by Melitele’s sweet tits! Geralt was made to be smiling! His handsome face morphed into something akin to a god’s, his eyes golden and glinting in the firelight.
Was it any wonder Jaskier’s fingers mindlessly resumed playing his newest love ballad? Was it any surprise his fingers stumbled and trembled and finally slipped and let the lute gently be removed from his hands? Geralt bent down, gently cupped his cheek like Jaskier was made of glass and kissed him so softly that a single soap bubble wouldn’t have popped from the pressure - and Jaskier’s heart was soaring free and untethered as if he had never been chained to the water or shoreline in the first place.
He was soaring and singing, free like a songbird for days on end after that, not caring about rules and laws, regulations or constraints of the world one bit. The chains of chaos snapped and tightened around his throat, fingertips and feet more and more as they got closer to the mountain pass, but Jaskier only played it off as being nothing more than clumsy and love-sick. Sounded a lot better than being land-sick anyway. He had composed poems and songs and sonnets - and whole speeches only in prose form - of how he should gift Geralt the knowledge of his true self. Though Jaskier considered himself more like a bard than anything else, it seemed important to let Geralt know certain specifics of his nature.
In the end, though, he didn’t need any of that.
The thing about Jaskier was that he really, really hated rules. And though he had proudly worn the consequences of every broken rule, law or social norm on his skin, on his reputation or even as criticism of his music… everyone and everything had a limit. The tethering chaos’ limit came at a village at the foot of the Blue Mountains. From this nameless little settlement, it would have only taken two days to enter the infamous Killer pass, and based on their luck and Destiny, they would have reached Geralt’s home after another six days of climbing from there.
Jaskier had never been so far away from the sea, and he was getting sicker and sicker each passing day while Geralt became more and more worried. With those horrible chains choking and suffocating him, he pushed and pulled on his limits until the very end. The very end, as it seemed, was at the local inn, where he took one last step, and then he fell over.
He never hit the floor because Geralt swiftly caught him, but he didn’t quite perceive anything from the world anymore. Darkness came around him, and the only thing he could feel were those tethers and the heavy weight of an imaginary anchor. He imagined dry-folk felt like this while drowning - and though the sensation was novel and hilarious in a way (him being merfolk and breathing through water was his very nature) he didn’t like it one bit.
It was a shame, he thought. Geralt deserved better than this. An explanation, at the very least, so he would understand the dead being lying before his boots. Would his charm be broken, and his hard-earned legs disappear with his death? Would this horrible chain and anchor finally let up from dragging him back to the shoreline, or would he forever feel like being pulled and drawn and dragged back to the water?
Would Geralt forgive him?
These were his last thoughts as darkness enveloped him. When Jaskier came to, he was still choking, and his fingers and feet were still snapped tightly with those horrid chains - though the pull was infinitesimally less than before. He was alive. He could breathe. He could feel cool air around him and even cooler ground, though it was somewhat softened by a very familiar bedroll. Despite the cold, Jaskier felt a lovely warm heat against his back, and it pulled him closer, tethering him to a scent that meant protection, heartbreak, heroics… and onions.
“I know you love drama, Jaskier,” Geralt rumbled low and soft against his ear, and a shiver ran through his spine. “But this is a bit too much even for you, don’t you think? When did you want to tell me you are cursed?”
“Not cursed,” Jaskier croaked with effort, still gasping for air. Geralt’s arm minutely tightened around his waist as if to offer comfort before he let up. “’S a contract.”
“Hmm?”
“For my legs,” Jaskier breathed softly.
He tried to ignore the unpleasant tightenings of chaos around him and the even more unpleasant nervous flutterings of his poor heart. This was not at all how he imagined this very moment.
“For your…” Geralt mumbled before he took a deep breath as if he had just solved some great puzzle, and he breathed, “Fuck.”
“Yeah,” Jaskier agreed weakly, his voice tiny and choked for more than one reason. “You could say so.”
“You’re breaking a contract with chaos?!”
“Never liked rules.”
“Jaskier.”
“Like you more.”
“If I’d known I wouldn’t have asked you to come to Kaer Morhen,” Geralt said, and Jaskier's heart broke in two.
Well… disregarding rules and laws and decrees and whatnot had always had their consequences. He had just never assumed this one would cost his heart too. His life, sure, he had expected that… but his heart?!
“Fuck,” Geralt grunted, and for some inexplicable reason, he pulled Jaskier closer. “I didn’t mean it like that. Had I known, I’d helped you break the contract.” And with only so little, a poor poet's heart could be easily mended.
“A Witcher,” Jaskier choked half amused, half drowning with his tears, “breaking a contract?”
“You like breaking rules,” Geralt hummed softly against his hair, even nuzzling the back of his neck. “Consider it my courting present.”
A strangled, stunned little laugh tore itself out of Jaskier’s abused lungs. The chains were still tight around his whole being, but Geralt’s hold was tighter, warmer and infinitely more pleasant to focus on.
“I accept,” he breathed with effort, forcing his voice to be steady, and one of his trembling hands found Geralt’s. “I accept.”
“Go to sleep,” replied Geralt gently, leaving a tender little kiss against the back of his neck. “We’ll head to the shores tomorrow.”
“It’ll be cold,” Jaskier warned weakly. Geralt only chuckled softly against his hair. “And dark, most of the time. The sea is not the ideal vacation spot for winter.”
“Neither is a crumbling fort,” he said. His arms tightened a tiny bit around Jaskier, and he basked in the feeling like a lizard under the sun. “You are your own. And mine. Not this contract’s.”
What could Jaskier even say in the face of all that? He was humbled by the fierce disregard against Destiny and chaos itself in Geralt’s simple declaration - and a tiny bit aroused by it. It was a certain disorderly declaration, a sort of lawless law of their own fate… and Jaskier took laborious breaths and commanded his heart to heed Geralt’s words and sleep. If only so they could start their journey all the more sooner in the morning.
It was much more appealing to be tethered to Geralt’s heart than to the ugly, rusty anchor of the water.