Chapter Text
Jaskier’s voice is almost enough to cover the sound of the rain beating against the roof of the tavern. It is, if Geralt focuses on it. Jaskier is rosy cheeked with drink, merriment fueled by the thrumming energy around her which she in turn fuels with her expert strumming on her lute and clear-cut voice, amplified seemingly by pure will. She moves throughout the tavern as easily as treading air, and will continue to do so no matter how drunk she gets, Geralt knows. Geralt watches her, and pretends she isn’t.
The tavern erupts in boisterous hurrah as Jaskier finishes the last verse of Toss a Coin to Your Witcher. Several hands jostle her arms and shoulders, and a drink is shoved towards her, which Jaskier accepts with a gracious smile and coy little bow, laughing heartily when she accidentally bumps someone behind her in the process.
Geralt directs her gaze elsewhere when she sees Jaskier finally slip away and head back towards the corner Geralt had parked herself. The rain is louder now, and it matches the erratic thumping of Jaskier’s heart. The two sounds fill Geralt’s head as the bard nears. Geralt lets herself look up as though she’d just now noticed Jaskier. Jaskier flashes a wide grin, straight white teeth all in a row, and walks around to Geralt’s side of the table. She sets the tankard she’d been given down hard, the liquid inside sloshing over the rim. She drapes herself against Geralt’s back, arms splaying over her shoulders, like Geralt’s a thing that is owned. Like Jaskier is.
“And is our Mistress Witcher enjoying tonight’s entertainment?” Jaskier bats her eyelashes over Geralt’s shoulder, breath sweet and sticky, hairline damp with perspiration from her performance. “Any comments on the superbly talented, highly esteemed, divinely ravishing bard?”
Geralt can taste the ale and elation on her breath. She can smell it on the sweat dampening the nape of her neck and the fine hairs at her temples. She sips from the gifted drink, drowning her tastebuds in the alcohol in an attempt to drown out everything else, everything Jaskier . She offers a hum in response to whatever Jaskier had asked her.
Jaskier sighs against the back of Geralt’s neck, displacing her hair, alighting the skin in gooseflesh. Geralt clenches her fist tighter around the tankard in her hand.
“Always my most enthusiastic supporter,” Jaskier muses, and laughs at her own poor joke, shifting against Geralt’s back, lumsier now that she’s not performing.
Geralt stands abruptly, dislodging Jaskier from her space. Jaskier stumbles a bit, grabbing for Geralt’s arm to steady herself, laughing. Geralt lets her, then pulls away. She heads toward the rickety staircase against the wall. The stairs creek under her weight and she’s half-afraid the wood’ll give under her with each step. She pauses on those stairs, however, when she notices Jaskier isn’t treading on her heels. Turning, she scans the bar for the bard.
She’s sat on the edge of the table Geralt just vacated, drinking from the abandoned tankard with a fervor Geralt knew meant she was gearing up for another set. Jaskier notices her stare and waves a dismissive hand. She drops the empty tankard on the table and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Go, go, go,” she shoos, “I’ll be up later when I’m finished.”
Geralt glances around the tavern at the increasingly raucous drinkers who will only be aggravated further by the bawdy drinking songs Jaskier pulls out about this point in the night. When her eyes fall back on Jaskier, Jaskier only winks, laughs, and pulls her lute around where it had hung from it’s strap around her back.
Geralt hums again and leaves her to it.
For the next two hours, Geralt is unable to close her eyes for the sound of the thunderstorm outside and the one downstairs.
This is why Geralt waits until Jaskier is finished singing to go to bed. She doesn’t ask for a lot of things. Certainly she puts up with a lot of things, especially things from Jaskier, but the one thing—the one thing—she needs is to fucking sleep, damnit.
Geralt grumbles, practically throwing herself out of the bed and yanking on her boots. She bounds down the stairs. The whole bar is entraptured by Jaskier’s deafening performance of a song featuring frustratingly inaccurate selkie biology, and also so deep in their cups that the warble of their voices were having trouble wrapping their mouths around the word selkie. Geralt’s intention is to stand by the stairs, wait for Jaskier to notice her, and glower until the bard wraps it up. However, when she’s only halfway down and the room becomes visible to her she stops in her trek.
There is Jaskier, held up seated on the shoulder of one of the town’s burly farmers. She strums her lute from her perch, above the heads of her merry audience, more exuberant and flushed as she was three hours ago. Jaskier laughs between lyrics, wriggling playful, gasping delightedly when it earns her a pinch high on her thigh through the fabric of her skirt.
Geralt’s gut clenches.
Surrounded by admirers, the epicenter of attention, Jaskier is resplendent. Feralt makes no mistake of assuming who’s in charge from the way Jaskier is swayed by the motions of the audience, and the man whose arm she’s cradled in. Jaskier controls the waves here.
It reminds Geralt of Yenn, though Yenn preferred her sea of worshippers to sway and croon at her feet, spread out before her where she could watch, approve, and judge.
Worshipped, though? That they both had in common.
Geralt turns around and slips back up the stairs unnoticed.
Eventually, the noise peters out towards something like a murmur. The tavernkeep cleaning up. The last drunks half-singing, half-snoring.
This is the part where Jaskier comes stumbling in, trying and failing to be stealthy so as not to wake Geralt. Though Jaskier should know by now that even the smallest sounds will rouse Geralt.
But Jaskier doesn’t come. The door remains shut.
Geralt knows it’s stupid to be concerned.
But the music had stopped more than twenty minutes ago and Jaskier still hasn’t come upstairs like she said she would .
Not that Geralt cares. She’s sleeping.
But if there’s one thing Jaskier excels at more than peacocking around a crowd, it’s getting into trouble. Detailed scenarios of the sordid sorts of trouble flash through Geralt’s mind like a witch’s magic show. And if Jaskier isn’t coming back to wherever they’re staying for the night, she lets Geralt know she’s not coming back.
Fuck. Geralt’s not going to be able to fucking rest if she doesn’t know where Jaskier is. Like an unsatisfiable itch in her side, or a woodspur in her boot.
So, Geralt sits up again, grumbling, cursing at her boots as she tugs them on.
Her irritation for the bard grows as she opens the door. Geralt is irritated that Jaskier can’t go ten minutes without falling into some sort of predicament that turns into a massive inconvenience for Geralt. And she’ll find Jaskier to express this irritation, and the fact that she will also be confirming that Jaskier is alive is just a coincidental side-effect of the chastisement.
But before Geralt can get two steps down the hall, she stops again.
She hears muffled voices beyond the thin tavern walls two doors down from the one she just exited. Fervent sounds of pleasure spill out from behind a closed door. Usually these are the sorts of sounds Geralt tunes out with practiced ignorance, but this voice is familiar and it catches Geralt’s ear. Unwittingly, Geralt takes a step closer. The muffle sounds grow clear and sharpened into comprehension.
“Ohh…Oh! Just there! Just—gods, that’s—fuck, your mouth—!” Jaskier’s breathy voice exclaims followed by her high, sharp cry.
Geralt spins around with a huff, slamming the door to “their” room behind her and shucking off her fucking boots. She falls back into bed, skin hot, and resolves to shut out the muffled sounds she is now faintly aware of thanks to now knowing their source, and go the fuck to sleep.
How could she have forgotten? This is Jaskier’s element. Her domain. Pleasure and wine and merriment, even in backwater towns where she’d be served safety to err on the side of caution. There is nothing here for Geralt to protect her from. Geralt snorts, recalling the easy way Jaskier swished about her, securing for them the room tonight and hot meals in exchange for her performance— despite the looming shadow of a Witcher at her side, stirring anxiety geralt could smell in the tavernkeep’s belly. Geralt rolls over, and, because she’s lived a very long time and has reigned in control over these sorts of things, goes the fuck to sleep.
Jaskier sneaks into the room before dawn.
Pointlessly, since Geralt is already awake. She’s pulling on her gloves, armor already donned, packs ready by the door.
“Oh!” Jaskier says, surprised, and straightens up. “Good morning,” She chirps good naturedly, shooting Geralt a grin before stepping further into the room. Geralt says nothing.
Jaskier sits down on the edge of the bed to pull on her boots, which she’d been carrying under her arm. She hums to herself as she does the laces up. How the hell she can be so chipper after what must have been less than two hours of sleep, and a night of buffoonery of several types, Geralt has no idea. Jaskier must have stamina to rival a Witcher—
Geralt stops fiddling absentmindedly with her glove cuts abruptly across the room to heft their packs over her shoulder.
“So,” Jaskier sighs, sitting up finally after finishing her laces, “where are we headed?”
“Mairen.”
Jaskier raises her eyebrows.
“A town?”
Geralt grunts.
Jaskier rises and stretches, pushing the palms of her hands up towards the ceiling and arching up on her toes.
“How far?” She asks through a yawn.
‘Day...or two,” Geralt says, glancing towards the open window and the solid grey of the sky promising some sort of atrocity of weather later in the day.
Jaskier follows her gaze to the sky and hums.
“Wonderfull…”
Jaskier is a lot quieter in the rain.
Possibly it’s because Geralt can’t hear her as well over the din of water hitting the ground in sheets, the wind rocking the trees, and the occasional rumbles of thunder unfurling across the sky.
Jaskier keeps up beside her and Roach, wrapped up in a cloak that protects both her and her lute case, strapped to her back underneath it. The hood covers her face as she walks with her head down, only knowing where she’s going by watching Roach’s feet beside her. She looks pitiful, at mercy to the elements, soaked and diminished. Geralt can’t help an amused scoff every time she looks over at her. It’s not as though she’s not just as wet.
Evening is nearing, and much to Geralt’s irritation, it’s already been raining for hours.
Finally, she pulls Roach short and reaches down for Jaskier’s hand. Jaskier looks up at her, blinking in the rain, and takes her hand with a little furrow in her brow. Geralt pulls her up onto Roach behind her with little fanfare.
Jaskier lets out a strained breath, helping to pull herself onto the horse once she recovers from the shock of the unexpected action. Once she’s seated, Geralt pulls Roach off the road and into the trees. They’re still a couple hours’ walk from Mairen, and Geralt has no desire to keep going, or keep trudging Jaskier along in the mud beside her. Jaskier leans against Geralt’s back, and she feels her hands squirming underneath her cloak, settling on her middle over her armor like they belong there.
Geralt quickly finds a place to stop and dismounts, Jaskier grumbling at the jostling before following to the ground.
Of course, the very spot she decides to stop in, she scents the unmistakable miasma of drowners on the air not five minutes later.
“Fuck,” she bites.
Jaskier looks up, frowning.
Geralt shoves her down by the large boulder that was going to act as a half-assed shelter for the night, and throws their packs off Roach’s back onto the ground.
“Stay here,” she says through grit teeth, and doesn’t look back behind her to check that Jaskier obeys before she stalks off in the direction of the sound, unsheathing her swords as she goes.
The bog is barely a five minute walk. Geralt stops, narrows her eyes and falls to a crouch. The rain complicates things, which is aggravating, but it’s hardly the first time Geralt’s had to fight a swamp monster in a storm. So it’s really aggravating when the fucker gets the jump on Geralt.
She growls, and dodges out of the way just in time.
A drowner is a drowner is a drowner. Geralt can kill one holding her breath with her eyes closed. She often does.
The fight is familiar, a clanging, sticky thing—until she slips.
Just after casting Axii, sending the drowner back ten yards, body bouncing off thick trees with roots digging deep into the water. And the force of it makes Geralt slip in the slick mud underneath her feet.
Her chin hits the ground hard, and she sees stars for all of a second before she’s watching the beast get its legs back underneath it. It’s a familiar dance. Hit the monster; monster gets back up again.
Inexplicably, with the stars still spinning in her vision, Geralt thinks of Jaskier. She’s reveling in the middle of her rowdy followers, throwing her head back, neck bared and soft and she’s laughing.
The monster hisses, rears back, screeches to the sky about the injustices done to it. Geralt pushes herself out of the syrupy mud, forcing her boots to retain traction and charges forward again. The beast sees, and lunges for her as well, and for a moment, they’re caught in time like that. Geralt, sword raised high over her shoulder, both hands gripping the hilt so tightly her leather gloves crack. The beast, claws raised and maw bared, inclined toward her. Poised to devastate.
This is Geralt’s element.
It’s sickeningly easy, how Geralt separates the thing’s head from its body.
The thing falls dead, the crux of Geralt’s glory, the height of everything she was meant for. The monster, having committed the crime of existing, must die by Geralt’s sword. And there is only rain in the bog. No worshippers for the mighty warrior. No writhing, shouting humans; revering, unthinking, singing.
Geralt’s chest heaves as she stares down at the dead thing at her feet.
Jaskier is quiet when Geralt returns, sitting back against the boulder Geralt had left her against, Roach hovering nearby. Jaskier’s wrapped in both her cloak and her bedroll now, sitting up for lack of wanting to lie in the wet earth. She’s holding both their packs in her lap. Geralt can just make out the glint of her eyes in the dark.
Geralt sits beside her, and Jaskier jumps. Geralt remembers that Jaskier probably didn’t see or hear her approach.
“Geralt ” she breathes.
“Hmm,” Geralt grunts.
"Are you alright?” She asks, louder now.
Geralt breathes out, leaning her head back against the boulder and letting her eyes fall shut, swords resting over her lap, pointing away from Jaskier.
Jaskier starts rifling around, and pulls Geralt’s cloak from her pack.
“‘M already wet,” Geralt mutters.
“Aren’t you cold?”
Geralt’s eyes open, blinking several times into the rain. She lifts her arm, and wraps it around Jaskier’s shoulders, pulling her close. While she herself wasn’t cold, or didn’t think she was, anyway, if Jaskier is bringing it up, she certainly must be.
Jaskier makes a small noise, resting easily against Geralt’s side.
“What was it?” Jaskier whispers.
Geralt breathes out heavily, more growl than breath.
“Mm, I know, I know, ‘shut-the-fuck-up-and-go-the-fuck-to-sleep’ ,” Jaskier says, voice dropping in poor imitation of Geralt.
Geralt snickers, despite herself. She feels Jaskier smile a bit.
“Are the packs heavy?”
Jaskier shakes her head, “‘Keeping me warm.”
Geralt hums again. Jaskier burrows further into her side.
In the morning, it is no longer raining, but everything is still so soaked, it might as well have been.
Jaskier stretches as deeply as she does every morning, and pulls her cloak off, shaking it out.
“Good lord , sleeping with your cumbersome pack on my legs all night was certainly a choice,” she complains, rubbing at the muscles in her thighs.
Geralt snorts, twisting her damp hair into a knot at the base of her skull, checking on Roach while Jaskier takes much more care in running her fingers through her long hair and wringing it out.
“My boots will never be dry again!”
“Hm.”
“I feel waterlogged, Geralt, like an old abandoned library left to rot at the bottom of the ocean.”
Geralt grunts, adjusting the straps of her swords.
“And the mud, Geralt, you would not believe the mud that managed to sneak it’s slimy little way under my cloak and skirts. I have mud on my thighs, Geralt, look! ” Jaskier exclaims, and, casting a glance in her direction, Geralt rolls her eyes to find a speck of dirt on the outside of Jaskier’s thigh where she’s hiked her dress up to her hip, revealing bare skin and inappropriately short undergarments.
“Stop complaining. Come on,” Geralt says, taking Roach’s reins and starting to lead her back towards the road.
Geralt pretends like she doesn’t see Jaskier mimicking her childishly off to the side as she drops her skirts and follows after her.
Later, Jaskier seems content to bask in the returned sun, pleased to be able to toy with her lute after an entire day of being unable to in the rain. Geralt is half-listening as she prattles off words and lyrics interchangeably, as inconsequential as the buzzing of a persistent bumblebee.
Geralt slips off Roach and walks in front of her to give her a break, holding on to her lead.
It takes her a moment to realize Jaskier is saying something worth paying attention to.
“—Oh, sure, you’re big and strong and carry scary, scary swords, but I bet with all that armor and those impressively heavy biceps of yours, you couldn’t catch me if you tried .”
“I’m faster than you,” Geralt grunts as she catches up to the conversation Jaskier was having. Something about how Jaskier could outrun her in a race because she’s more aerodynamic.
Jaskier grins.
“Wanna bet?”
Jaskier swishes her skirts around her ankles, taking delight in the way Geralt’s face is twisted up.
Geralt comes to a stop and turns to Jaskier, eyebrow raised.
Jaskier mirrors Geralt’s expression, but exaggerates it comically.
“Bet?”
Jaskier nods.
“Bet you Roach-riding rights for a day that you can’t catch me.”
Geralt scowls.
“And if I win?” She asks.
Jaskier clicks her tongue, excitement growing by the second, a slow smile spreading across her face as she thinks of something Geralt will never be able to refuse.
“Absolute quiet for a day.”
Geralt stares at her blandly in disbelief.
“You’re not capable.”
Jaskier makes an indignant sound, pressing a hand to her offended heart.
“Your lack of faith is hurtful , Geralt! I can be quiet if I want!” Jaskier persists, “I just don’t often want ,” she says.
“Hmm,” Geralt hums, still standing still, holding Roach’s reins.
“What, scared to lose, Witcher?” Jaskier inquires, bouncing a bit back and forth in place.
Jaskier doesn’t care about riding Roach, or being faster than Geralt. She knows she’s not, and she knows she’s going to lose. She wants Geralt to chase her.
Geralt glares at her. Then lets go of Roach’s reins and crosses her arms.
Jaskier takes that as agreement.
“Right, I suppose we should go over there and start at the tree line,” Jaskier says, pointing at the trees lining the opposite side of the road, “—and run toward that field. I win if I make it to the bank of that stream,” she finishes, and gestures to the field on the opposite side of the road and the stream, maybe a hundred yards away, the picturesque view which she’d been staring at for some time as they’d been passing it.
Geralt grumbles, but turns towards the trees.
As soon as she turns away, Jaskier takes off in the opposite direction towards the stream.
She hears Geralt’s indignant huff, and her giving chase immediately after.
“Jaskier!” She barks.
Jaskier laughs, and leans forward, pushing her feet faster, eyes focused on her dazzling finish line. As she runs, she hikes up her dress, tying the length of it in a knot at her hip.
Exhilaration pumps through her veins as she hears Geralt’s boots thump the ground behind her. Her own dig into the soft ground and spring off it easily.
She makes it almost halfway to the stream before Geralt catches up with her, an arm slinging around her waist with all the force of colliding into a tree trunk.
“Oof! ” Jaskier exclaims as she’s collected against Geralt’s armored chest and they both hit the ground forcefully.
Jaskier pants hard, legs and lungs burning with equal ferocity. She pushes up on her elbow and stops, her nose inches from Geralt’s. Geralt lies sprawled on her back underneath her, one arm still wound around Jaskier’s waist, while her other hand cradles the back of her head. Her golden eyes meet Jaskier’s.
“I won.”
Jaskier huffs, but can’t help the small laugh that bubbles from her lips in between labored breaths.
Geralt glances down, and then back up to her face.
“Jaskier,” she grunts.
Jaskier looks down as well, finally realizing the extent of her position atop Geralt, straddling her torso, bare knees digging into the dirt on either side of her, chests pressed together. She’s probably giving Geralt quite the eyeful, actually.
Jaskier sits up, grinning, adjusting the top of her dress. The skirt is still tied up around her hips. Her short shift pools around her upper thighs.
Geralt’s hands have fallen to her sides. She’s staring up at Jaskier, and Jaskier doesn’t know how to read the look in her eyes, which is frustrating since she’s named eighteen of Geralt’s vague, unreadable looks in her head since they’ve known each other. “Witchers-don’t-have-emotions” my left arsecheek.
“Thanks for saving my face from an unfortunate collision with the ground. No one wants to toss a coin to a bard with an ugly face, you know,” Jaskier says.
“Hmm.”
Geralt tosses a handful of grass and dirt in her face.
Jaskier shrieks, falling over into the grass beside Geralt in an attempt to dodge the earth being thrown at her. Jaskier wipes dirt from her cheek, and flicks it toward Geralt in pathetic retaliation.
“Not fair!” She exclaims.
Geralt sits up, grunting. She turns briefly towards Jaskier.
Jaskier’s stomach tightens as she watches Geralt’s gaze rake over her. She thinks she sees a tinge of pink in Geralt’s pale cheeks. Then, Geralt pushes herself to her feet, and starts walking back towards Roach as though it never happened .
Right, Witcher...We can just pretend you weren’t just admiring the view.
She sighs and rolls over onto her stomach, resting her chin on her folded arms, uncaring of the dirt beneath her or the way her dress and chemise are twisted up underneath her stomach, the sun gentling down delightfully on the back of her thighs. A vast improvement from being miserably wet and cold all night.
Finally, Jaskier gets up. She unties the knot from her dress, and adjusts her clothing so it all falls back where it should, before following Geralt’s trek back through the field.
“You know, you’re a lot faster than you look like you should be,” she says as she nears Geralt and Roach again. Roach is not much moved since their brief abandonment of her. Geralt pats her flank.
“Mm.”
Jaskier stretches her shoulder out.
“Tackling me might have been a bit gratuitous,” she comments.
“Thought the deal was you’d be quiet if I caught you,” Geralt says, glancing over her shoulder at her.
Jaskier huffs. She wants to retort somehow, but a bet’s a bet...and she got what she wanted, hadn’t she? So, Instead, she sticks her tongue out at Geralt while her back is turned. When she does turn around a second later, Jaskier looks away quickly, putting on an air of innocence.
Geralt climbs on to Roach, getting a grip on the reins. Jaskier is about to start walking again, ready to put on the loudest pout she can manage without uttering a word, when—
“Come here.”
Jaskier frowns, and looks over to see Geralt staring down at her. She doesn’t understand, as she steps closer and Geralt leans to the side, reaching out towards her. Towards her cheek? Is Geralt about to touch her cheek? Then Geralt reaches past her cheek, pulling a small twig with a little green leaf attached to it from her hair.
“Hmm.” Geralt lets the twig fall to the ground before righting herself on Roach and urging her forward.
Jaskier reaches up, and touches her own hair, staring off after Geralt and Roach for a moment as she attempts to process what just happened. She glances back toward the field briefly. Gooseflesh raises on her arms as she remembers the scrape of Geralt’s armor against the soft skin of her thighs, and then feels a heat, not unlike that of the sun warming the back of her legs, pooling in the pit of her stomach.
“Jaskier! ”
Her head snaps up in reaction to her name being oh so familiarly barked at her. She grins and finally trails after them, jogging to catch up. In her vow of silence, she dreams up the words to a poem that ends with getting fucked in the dirt in a sunny, dew-wet field.
Geralt didn’t think Jaskier could still be annoying without her voice. However, she was sorely mistaken in underestimating her bard. She won’t make that mistake again.
“Jaskier,” she snaps when the bard stops for the fourth time in half an hour to hop around on one foot, pulling off her boot to try and dig an imaginary fucking rock out of it before shrugging, pulling it back on and taking her sweet fucking time lacing it back up again.
Each time, Geralt hasn’t stopped for several yards, until finally, she’s pulled Roach to a halt, fuming all the while and waiting.
Jaskier looks up at her, wide eyes blinking unknowing innocence at her.
“This was your idea,” Geralt says through grit teeth.
Jaskier shrugs, and pulls her boot on again.
Geralt waits for her to finish lacing it, and then urges Roach into a trot.
At this point, they may reach Mairen by the solstice.
Jaskier’s also been trying to ask what they’re doing going to Mairen through a series of increasingly incoherent mimes and gestures that Geralt pretended not to understand at first, but now genuinely has no idea what they’ve evolved into.
In the tiny tavern on the outskirts of Mairen, Geralt takes pity on Jaskier.
“We’re here for the Count de Mairen.”
Jaskier raises an eyebrow, slowly chewing the last bit of chicken she’d stolen from off Geralt’s plate.
“I’ve been invited at the behest of the Count to attend a dinner, and see to a problem.”
“Invited? By...what? Smoke signal?”
“A letter. Along with a forward of coin with the promise of more.”
Jaskier hums, and pulls her lute into her lap, looking around like she’s surveying for the best place to begin her set.
Geralt gives her a pointed look.
“Thought you weren’t supposed to be using that voice.”
Jaskier looks back at Geralt with a grin.
“Oh, dear, it’s not daytime anymore.”
Geralt rolls her eyes, and takes a drink. Jaskier pushes herself out of her seat, strumming forcefully on her lute once, and gartering the attention of the bar patrons.
“Good evening, fine people of Mairen! My name is Jaskier and I come with tales of the White Wolf of Rivia!”
Geralt, leans back in her chair, and kicks her boot up against the edge of the table. Though many of Jaskier’s songs are about her, she usually remains ignored through any set she sits through, which serves her quite well. She leans her head back against the wall and rests her eyes.
The Rose tavern may be on the edge of town, but the wine is sweet, and the people hungry for entertainment. It helps that most of them are tired fishermen, hankering for no more than to watch her bounce around the room around them.
She stops after a few songs by the bar, ordering another drink. A few of the patrons are still singing the lyrics to her last song, and she grins.
“I bet I can get you to sing for me, sweetheart,” a drunken voice says, full of brash arrogance and self-satisfied smugness.
Jaskier turns to the speaker, a man holding a tankard of ale and smirking in a manner he probably thought sly and cool.
Jaskier only grins at him.
“I’m sure you think you can, good sir,” she replies easily.
He takes another step forward, pressing into her space and curving his shoulders to crowd her in.
“Why don’t you find out? ” he asks hotly against her ear.
Jaskier takes a step back, only to be stopped by the bar cutting into her back. She stops, leaning away as far as possible and reaching a hand up to wipe at her ear as though she can brush away the words. Of all the people in the tavern she might have considered bedding tonight, the arrogant drunk man breathing stained, wet breath into her ear was not a top contender.
“Ah, I think I’d better not deprive the people of The Rose their entertainment,” she says good-naturedly, turning away from him, hoping to squeak by in the space between him and the bar.
The man grabs her bicep and turns her forcefully back towards him. Jaskier’s stomach drops at the harsh touch. She glances to her left and right. No one is paying much attention. Anyone glancing over would just think them to be drunk and flirting.
Jaskier laughs uneasily.
“I think you may have indulged a bit too much in the lovely ale, my friend,” she says.
The man laughs, but doesn’t respond, only tightens his grip as he leans in, planting his hot, wet mouth against Jaskier’s neck.
Jaskier struggles to pull away, pressed between the bar and the man, her arms held bruisingly in his hold.
“Okay, get off,” Jaskier snaps, her voice losing the forced amicability that she’d shoved into it in an attempt to resolve the situation without fuss.
“Get off!” Jaskier repeats, louder, urgent, when the man doesn’t, and instead starts moving his damp, musty, mouth down Jaskier’s collarbone. Panic is wound tight in her stomach. She looks around, unable to see much past the man that is completely boxing her in, enveloping her in his awful, fishy, alcoholic scent.
“Geralt! ”
The name only barely has the chance to leave her mouth when the man is suddenly yanked brutally away from her.
Jaskier shoves away from the bar, and crosses her arms tightly.
Geralt holds the man by the back of his shirt, taller than him by a couple inches. She presses her face close to his, a low noise like a growl leaving her throat.
“She told you to get off.”
The man just laughs, barely able to hold himself up on his own feet.
Melitele, this guy must be even more shit-pissed than she thought.
“Well, I was trying.”
“I’m sorry, are you in possession of a big fat deathwish?” Jaskier comments, disbelief written into her words.
Geralt has gone tense. She lets go of him to punch him in the stomach, followed by a swift and brutal knee to the crown jewels , as it were.
The man groans, clutching at his groin as he drops to his knees. Geralt takes the opportunity to bring her knee into the side of his face with a sickening crack , sending him sprawling to the ground.
“Oi! Witcher! ”
Jaskier and Geralt both turn. The tavern owner has come out from behind the bar, rage clear on her face, hands in fists on her hips.
“Get out if you’re gonna make trouble!”
“This man attacked me!” Jaskier shouts in Geralt’s defense, feeling her own anger rising.
The woman scoffs. She eyes the unconscious man on the floor, face twisting into a snarl, then turns to two other men at the bar.
“Joshia, Luca, drag Marce out to the steps.”
The two men get up and do as they’re told. Geralt watches them with narrowed eyes, face still twisted into a dark scowl, as the two men grab the drunk under his arms and around his ankles and start dragging him towards the door.
The tavern owner turns back to Jaskier and Geralt.
“You two…” She says, face red, lips pursed tightly.
Jaskier raises an eyebrow at her. They both know she’s made double the coin she usually would have tonight thanks to Jaskier.
“No more trouble, alright?”
She doesn’t wait for a response, and goes back around the bar, muttering something about “bastard Marce” and “ought to be gutted like his puny fucking fish."
Jaskier lets out a breath. She reaches up, and wipes her hand across her neck, trying to rid herself of the feeling of the drunk’s mouth on her.
She turns when she feels Geralt standing right behind her, staring without saying anything. Jaskier raises an eyebrow.
“Are you alright?” Geralt asks finally.
“Just peachy,” Jaskier responds, looking up to shoot Geralt a forced little half-grin.
“Hmm.”
Jaskier knew that disbelieving hum. She sighs, looking around. The panic she’d felt has solidified into a molten nausea she’s finding difficult to swallow around.
“Really, I’m fine. Curse of the performer, you know?” she says, still trying for the light-hearted tone. Trying to pass it off like it doesn’t bother her. It doesn’t . It’s fine. Nothing happened. Geralt was there. “Everyone thinks everything’s for sale.”
Jaskier takes a step closer. She’s surprised when Geralt reaches out and puts a hand on her shoulder.
“Thank you…” Jaskier says quietly, meeting Geralt’s eyes for a moment before she feels compelled to look away. “For stepping in.”
Geralt hums again in response. She slips her arm down, hand settling on Jaskier’s lower back.
“Are you ready?”
Jaskier nods, and they slip out of the tavern, side-stepping Marce, unconscious on the ground.
Jaskier looks down at him, but is nudged onward by Geralt, her hand curling briefly around Jaskier’s waist.
The inn whereby Geralt stabled Roach is only a short walk away, their room already paid for. Jaskier lets Geralt guide her to it, her hand still a reassuring weight on her back. Jaskier works on untightening her arms from around her torso. She’s clamped her fingernails into her biceps, left little half-moon shaped marks underneath the marks left by the drunk’s fingertips where he grabbed her arm.
Finally, when the door shuts behind them in their room for the night, and she finds herself alone with no one else but Geralt, she feels tension bleed out of her shoulders. She sighs, and goes to sit on the edge of the room’s one bed, beginning to unlace her boots.
Geralt doesn’t relax until the door is shut safely behind them in their room, and she is alone with Jaskier.
Curse of the performer.
It was true it wasn’t the first time Geralt’s pulled a miserable sod who can’t seem to take a hint away from a deeply uninterested Jaskier. A reminder that you can get bit even in the waters you’re most comfortable in. It still sets Geralt’s teeth on edge like nothing else. Those types of honorless bastards always do, but when they converge on Jaskier ...
Geralt understands as well as anybody that the bard is alluring in her swishy, low-cut dresses, and charming, easy-going smiles. Geralt also understands that nobody else’s body is hers to just fucking touch without asking .
Geralt’s fuming is interrupted by Jaskier’s drawn out yawn as she pulls the laces at the back of her dress and pulls it over her head.
Oh, now Geralt gets to be mad at herself for being even vaguely interested in Jaskier right now as she goes about just trying to put on her night things, and put away her dress and boots and run a comb through her hair—
“Are you ever going to move or are you just going to stand there all night like a gargoyle?”
Geralt’s fists clench and unclench at her sides.
“Hmm,” she says, and finally starts moving, starting with the top layer of her garb and working down.
They move around each other with the familiarity of having done this a hundred similar times before. Geralt keeps a careful eye on Jaskier, because as much as the bard acts unshaken, they both know she’s not. It’s proven the minute Geralt gets into the other side of the bed next to her, pulling her half of the blanket halfway up her torso. Jaskier turns toward her and curls closer than she would on a normal night of unpurposeful bedsharing, her loosely closed fist brushing Geralt’s arm.
Geralt turns slightly toward her, reaching up to find Jaskier’s palm. Jaskier’s grip curls around three of Geralt’s fingers, and she breathes out shakily. Geralt remains still, watching as the furrow that’s been present in her brow since they’d left the tavern smooths out slowly, the panicked and afraid scent she’d been so startled to suddenly become so aware of when that man had been harassing her finally fading away and giving to something softer.
It’s not until Geralt’s sure Jaskier’s asleep, her lips slightly parted, breaths evening out to something deep and weighted, that Geralt lets her eyes fall shut. All she can feel is Jaskier’s smaller hand wrapped around her fingers.
Foolish fucking Witcher.