Work Text:
“Julian!”
The noise is offensive. He’s sure he’s got at least two more hours before they’re due for lessons.
“Wake up!”
He swats the air, trying to shoo the girl away. “Few more minutes...”
She has the nerve to flick his forehead and he shakes off the last vestiges of sleep, surging upwards to tackle—
“Jaskier!”
His eyes fly open.
Jaskier flinches so badly, his joints pop ominously. For a second, all he can see is amber instead of the brown he’d expected, but then Geralt‘s face comes into focus, stony and unyielding.
“Wha- what happened?”
The Witcher frowns, hand hovering over the bard’s arm, uncertain. Something akin to suspicion makes his eyes flicker, then he stands, stepping back. “Get up.”
“Sheeesh, no need to bite my head off.” Jaskier grabs his precious lute, inspects it shortly for any scratches and, upon finding none, gets up to stretch. He’s already mourning the loss of the soft bed. Knowing Geralt, they won’t see one for the better part of two weeks. Probably longer.
“We’re heading out as soon as Roach has been fed,” Geralt says, slinging a bag over his shoulder before he exits the room.
“Good morning to you, too.”
Jaskier trudges over to a bucket of water, rinsing his face and mouth thoroughly. He stares at his reflection on the rippling surface, taking a moment to study the soft lines of his face.
Geralt is all sharp edges, he thinks. Sharp edges like shards of glass buried in the roots of an oak, embedding themselves so deeply in the ecosystem that he’s both dying and not dying to expel them.
Then again, Jaskier is the one who put them there in the first place.
After cleaning up and packing the rest of his belongings, the bard leaves his room with a wide yawn, making his way to the front desk to bid Kroer farewell.
The man already waits for him with a small plate of bread and cheese, pushing it into the bard’s hands as soon as he’s within reach. “My boy! I’m truly sad to see you both leave.”
Jaskier grins happily and begins munching on some cheese. “Thank you! It’s been a true delight. Well, not the getting stabbed part, but you know. Nobody’s perfect.”
Kroer laughs, clapping him on the shoulder. “Indeed. If you’re ever in need of lodgings and you’re nearby, don’t hesitate to throw me out of bed. You and your Witcher, both.”
“We’ll definitely remember that. But be prepared for Geralt to take it literally.”
“At least that will give me something to tell the others over dinner.” With that, innkeeper grabs some more plates to serve his other guests, leaving Jaskier to his own devices.
He truly likes Kroer. And Jaskier can see that his children adore the man, helping out all around the tavern with various tasks, receiving praise for every cleaned table. And, of course, he treats Geralt like a human being. That alone is enough to endear most people to the bard.
He also reminds Jaskier a little of his own father. Before he’d- before.
“It’s unfortunate to see you leave so soon.”
Jaskier blinks, not having noticed a man coming closer. “I beg your pardon?”
He’s slightly shorter than Jaskier, lean, with straw blond hair, dimples and freckles scattered over the bridge of his nose. He’s someone Jaskier would consider attractive were it not for the way he holds limbs almost mechanically, as if he were not quite used to being human.
“Oh, how rude!” The man exclaims, sticking out a hand. “The name’s Joe. Farmer’s son.”
“Uhm, hi, Joe.”
“Jaskier, right?”
“Yeah,” the bard says, shaking the proffered hand once before letting go. He’s pretty sure he’s never seen the man before. And there’s something unnerving about his eyes that is putting him on edge.
Especially when Joe steps closer, essentially trapping him against the counter. “Uhhhh, Joe, I-”
Joe’s smile isn’t malicious, but his skin seems almost papery up close. The high seated cheek bones too stark and the blue veins of his eyelids too protruding.
“Now that you’re leaving soon, I thought we could have some minutes for ourselves. From one artist to another...”
“Wow, uh, that’s flattering, Joe, but you see-”
A heavy hand appears at Joe’s shoulder, and the man jumps almost three feet high while Jaskier has to stifle a relieved sigh.
“Jaskier,” Geralt says gruffly, shoving Joe aside without so much as looking at him. “I said hurry up.“
“Yes! Of course!”
Jaskier slips away from Joe, eager to escape the unnerving feeling of wrongness, and brushes his side against Geralt’s in thanks before he hurries out the door, giving a last wave at the frowning Kroer.
The scathing look Geralt pins the blond-haired man with goes unnoticed.
Jaskier considers the number of times he can repeat touching Geralt like that without the Witcher catching on.
Roach looks very much done with them both when Jaskier offers her a carrot. She eats it, though, and doesn’t even try to kick the bard when he pats her neck.
——
Geralt, growing up in Kaer Morhen, had never wasted much thought on how to fit in with humans.
Of course, after leaving, he had to make do with what he could still remember from before the alchemy. The mutations. Before the witcher-beast-animal-monster instincts had begun roiling beneath his too tightly stretched skin.
But in Kaer Morhen, among his kin, it’d been easy. Words hadn’t been necessary to convey approval, surprise, discomfort, or anger. Communication among them had mainly consisted of glances, body language, scent, soft growls, and the occasional snapping motion. Dominance had been asserted through fights, defiance through prolonged eye contact, and right now Geralt longs desperately for this simplicity of beasts.
Because Jaskier is driving him increasingly mad.
“But then I was like sir, you don’t understand, your wife was in dire need of consolation and he had the audacity to-”
“Jaskier!” Geralt snaps, and the bard looks at him owlishly from where he’s perched on a log, absentmindedly plucking a tune on that cursed lute of his. If Geralt hadn’t seen him knocking a ghoul over the head with it once, he’d consider it useless.
“What? Are we under attack?”
Geralt rolls his eyes, taking the bridle off Roach. The mare chews a few times, adjusting her jaw, then she dips her head down to munch on a green patch of grass while Geralt pats her neck.
He goes to spread his bedroll a few feet away, mindful of any objects that might obscure his view of either his horse or the bard.
There’d been no hiccups since their departure the day before yesterday, and the lack of even the faintest trace of something inhuman is making the Witcher restless.
Jaskier huffs and continues playing, fingers jumping between strings with a finesse borne from years of practice.
Not for the first time Geralt wonders where the bard had acquired his knowledge of song and verse. He deliberately doesn’t keep track of Jaskier’s age, but when they first met, he’d been so very young that Geralt had felt compelled to at least somewhat look out for the stupid boy. Which brings him back to the question how and where Jaskier had learned to play in a professional fashion at such a young age.
Of course, he’d seen the children of nobles be educated in these arts, seen ambitious (and arrogant) young men attend universities in a quest of fame and wealth.
But Jaskier had been too young to have graduated from such a place when they’d first met, and he absolutely doesn’t strike Geralt as someone from noble birth... apart from his theatrics and flamboyant clothing... which, ok, might be half the deal already.
Jaskier hums softly, head tilting backwards until it’s resting against the bark of an oak tree he’s leaning against.
The notes stretch and linger in the air, twisting and merging with the sound of leaves rustling and birds trilling.
For humans, it’s noise. A blind clash of disharmonious tunes converging into sounds of nature and songs.
For witchers— and every other species with more sensitive hearing— it’s vibrations and a whole other spectrum of sounds the human ear isn’t capable of processing.
And although Geralt won’t admit it for the life of him, most of Jaskier’s songs are quite calming.
“You know I was thinking maybe we should stop by Aretuza,” Jaskier says. “Pay Ciri a visit.”
Geralt grunts, scanning the woods behind the bard for any signs of movement. Upon finding none, he sits on his bedroll, taking the silver sword out of its sheath to sharpen and polish it.
Jaskier eyes the blade warily, but his posture remains relaxed so Geralt resumes his work with slow, deliberate movements.
It’s another of the subtle changes he’d noticed after Jaskier had started tagging along again. He used to never so much as flinch when Geralt drew a sword, now he seems on edge whenever the witcher touches the hilt.
It’s a puzzling change. Jaskier appears to be afraid of his weapons but not of Geralt himself. He shies away from blades, but not Geralt’s hands. (Barring the incident in the woods, where his instincts had gone absolutely haywire following the fight.)
On the other hand, Geralt is absolutely terrified of touching Jaskier.
What he touches, he breaks. And he breaks it so fantastically and with such precision that it’s impossible to mend.
It’s bad enough that he’s been giving into the urge to touch the blue-eyed bard too much in the last few days. Though he can’t deny it has felt good.
He allows himself to touch Roach, to pet her, lean against her, trust her. He allows it because she’s his... pack. And this touch, this affirmation of kinship and safety, he needs it. Thrives on it.
For all that Kaer Morhen had stuffed monsters and beasts inside him like it’s the newest trend, they’d also made him much more susceptible to loneliness.
The lone White Wolf... with a ragtag pack.
Not all of the witchers are like Geralt, of course. In fact, he suspects that’s where his mutations had screwed up worse than Calanthe when she’d tried stabbing Pavetta’s lover.
And it would have been fine if+++++++ it were only Roach, but Ciri has wormed her way into the crevices just as surely as Yennefer did, and it is only the knowledge that the mage is unfathomably powerful that Geralt is able to stay relatively calm in the absence of them both. Especially the child.
Then there’s Jaskier, and that’s a whole other territory in and of itself. It’s bad enough that Geralt had very nearly lost his damn mind when he’d been stabbed, but the increasing urge to be closer, to touch, to feel the steady thrum of a pulse beneath his paper-thin human skin... it costs every ounce of self-restraint not to give in and never let go.
And the worst part, that self-restraint is wearing thinner and thinner by the fucking minute.
And Jaskier, the idiotic fool, keeps pushing all his buttons.
“Aretuza is more than two months from here.”
The bard shrugs. “Yeah, but you always get so tetchy when you’re away from her for more than half a cycle.”
Geralt doesn’t answer. He knows it’s true.
“Which is exactly why,” Jaskier jumps to his feet to strike a silly pose, “We can stop in a lot of cities along the way to get even more famous!”
At Geralt‘s incredulous look he amends, “And get you some beasties to maim.”
“I don’t think there are enough monsters to compensate for all of that,” he grumbles.
“Oh come on, Geralt, live your life a little!”
“You’re making me want to un-live it.”
Jaskier huffs, pulling his own bedroll from the stack of packs by the small stone circle he’d constructed earlier to light a fire within once it’s dark.
The bard spreads it only a few feet from Geralt’s own. “Less likely to get attacked with you there,” he mumbles. And the monster-beast-thing purrs in satisfaction beneath Witcher’s skin.
He quenches the voice mercilessly.... only to become aware of the humming coming from his medallion.
There’s barely a beat between the moment he notices and the moment where he’s standing over Jaskier, poised and alert with the silver sword gripped in his right hand.
“HOLY F- What’s wrong!?”
Geralt ignores the question, scanning the rapidly darkening woods for any movement. There’s nothing in the air except the faint odor of deer and the mingled scent of his little company.
It makes his hackles rise even more, because how dare something try to sneak up on them. How dare something try to sniff out the weak link with him right there— as if he’d let them be taken.
Fuck it, maybe he’s an abomination, but the world had been taking things away from him since the day his mother abandoned him at the steps of Kaer Morhen, he’ll be damned if it takes Jaskier, too.
A low growl climbs up his throat and a lark bursts from the tree branches, emitting a sharp warning cry.
But there’s nothing to fight, and even Roach looks at Geralt like he’s crazy. His medallion has never been wrong before...
“Is there a monster?” Jaskier hisses quietly, lute pressed protectively against his chest, his body curling into Geralt’s armored leg.
The medallion stops humming, vibrations subsiding into faint tremors until they eventually fade completely.
“...no,” he says slowly.
Geralt frowns deeply, inspecting the wolf‘s head on its chain suspiciously.
The bard dusts himself off, getting to his feet while watching Geralt closely. “But you thought there was,” he points out.
“Yes.”
“Because of your,” Jaskier gestures. “Witchery-sense?”
Geralt rolls his eyes and lets the sword sink.
“No,” he says. “My medallion.”
“Your- come again? Wait, it’s not for the aesthetic?!”
Roach snorts so violently there’s snot flying out her nostrils. Geralt gives her a dark look. The horse just looks at him innocently and nickers.
“Geralt, I need to know this! I composed a fucking song about that aesthetic!”
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“This is my career we’re talking about!” Jaskier exclaims, indignant.
And then he’s suddenly right in Geralt‘s personal space and the Witcher forgets how to breathe properly because his entire senses are flooded with Jaskier’s scent and his presence and-
“So, this little thing alerted you or what?“
Geralt breathes in through his mouth, the hand that’s still clutching the sword closed so tightly around the hilt that it bites through the glove.
“Yes,” he presses out, keeping his eyes firmly on the tree at the other side of the clearing, standing stock still while the bard keeps examining the crest of Kaer Morhen.
“Fascinating. How does it alert you then?“ Jaskier‘s fingers hover over the enchanted silver reverently and Geralt has to focus on breathing because this monster-beast-inhuman-abomination is twisting and purring beneath his skin, straining against its confines to be closer.
“It vibrates.” Fuck, Geralt’s voice sounds strange even to his own ears. Internally, he’s begging the bard to step back, lest his brain shuts down completely. He’s terrified of what he could do to Jaskier. Humans are such fragile, breakable things. He does not want to break his bard.
And Jaskier, the blithering fool, is already suicidal enough.
Somewhere, some god cackles but shows mercy, because Jaskier‘s curiosity has him touch the medallion briefly before he jerks back as if burned, eyes comically wide, and Geralt can breathe, thank fuck.
The sudden influx of oxygen makes him so lightheaded he almost drops the sword.
His fellow witchers would so have a field day with this. And none of them would live long enough to tell about it.
He needs to get a grip on this. Jaskier is just human. He wouldn’t understand. Much less welcome or indulge this thing roiling and scratching underneath his skin.
Geralt plops down on his bedroll as soon as he trusts himself to move, completely missing Jaskier’s horrified stare.
He goes back to checking his bag, counting the remaining potions and ingredients as a sort of alibi to not pay attention to the bard.
They sit like that for a long while.
At last the sun dips below the horizon, covering the forest in a bloody sheen. Geralt’s eyes dart to the cautious movement of a deer looking for food, then back to his task.
The medallion lies still and cold against his chest.
Jaskier is blessedly quiet, (which would have been alarming to Geralt on any other day, but he’s distracted, dammit) getting up when Geralt is in the middle of inspecting a few of the dried plants in his pack.
“’m getting some firewood,” he murmurs, vanishing behind the trees.
The Witcher doesn’t look up, as much for Jaskier’s sake as for his own, but he does shift his focus to their surroundings. Listening to the soft sway of trees and the crackle of dry leaves underneath the bard’s shoes.
And so Geralt doesn’t notice the reddened pads of Jaskier’s fingers where he’d touched the medallion, nor the fear shining brightly in his eyes.
Roach neighs, pawing the earth with her ears twitching. She’s stopped nibbling on the grass in favor of looking accusingly at her owner.
“What?” Geralt asks, stubbornly refusing to try and reason with her.
The mare narrows her eyes, then turns around to show Geralt her butt in a clear message; I’m ignoring you for the foreseeable future.
“You’ve spent too much time with the bard.”
Roach whinnies.