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The summer sun is warm on what little skin Geralt has left uncovered by leather, although thankfully the heat is tempered by the breeze that also plays with Geralt’s loose hair. Hair that is, actually, quite annoying. While he usually took the time to tie it back, at least, he had been in a hurry that morning. The reason for which crinkles in his pocket at every bob and sway of Roach's trot.
He isn't worried, of course, and he will deny until his last breath the way that the fist clenched around his heart seems to relax as he catches sight of the village he has been riding towards.
As he gets closer, he is surprised to find there’s no smoke, no shouting, no scent of death coming from the village. In fact, as he rides closer, he realizes the things waving wildly from people's houses are streamers, and it is flowers that line their windowsills.
Eyes follow him as he rides up the street. The usual, mistrustful stares, and some outright glares. Not as many as he is used to, though, which is a sign that he’s come to the right place.
It’s the sound of the beginnings of a fight that catches his attention, out of place in a village that appears to be all dressed up and putting its best foot forwards.
“Hey! That’s cheating!”
“Please. It’s not my fault I’m better at this than you. Maybe you just need practice. I’d be happy to go another round,” a familiar voice retorts.
“I won’t play Pads with a thief!” There, by the side of the road- five boys and a man stand in a circle, playing what seems to be a game composed of coins and oddly shaped sticks. One boy pushes the man backwards onto the ground. Dirt sprays up around him. Geralt slides off Roach and draws his sword.
“Oh, come on, really? That’s not very good sportsmanship,” the man drawls, sitting up and brushing dirt off his shirt.
“I’m taking my money back,” the one who pushed him down proclaims.
“So you’ve gotten my clothes all dirty, and now you’re robbing me? I have to say, that’s quite rude. And I thought we were just playing a friendly game.”
The boy spits at him.
“I think it’s time you boys moved along,” Geralt growls, standing behind the fallen man.
Geralt feels them taking him in- the armor, covered in the strange stains he hadn’t been able to wash out, the extremely sharp swords, the yellow eyes that mark him as something other than human- and he can tell the moment when they decide that a few coins aren’t worth the possibility of being dismembered. They leave quickly.
Geralt looks down at the man in the dirt to find that his bard is already looking up at him. “Geralt!” Jaskier says, delighted, scrambling to his feet. “You came!”
Geralt reaches into his pocket and pulls out the letter. "You asked me to," he says simply.
"Yes, well, I thought there might be other things you considered more worth your time than me. And anyway, I certainly never thought you'd come so quickly. I only sent the letter yesterday!" Jaskier darts forward, throws his arms around Geralt’s neck, and presses a kiss to the witcher's cheek.
Geralt has to force himself not to flinch away. He's been alone for too much of his life, and finding himself once again near the bard and his careless affection is always like having a bucket of ice water poured over his head.
But not in a bad way , he thinks.
"What was that for?" he asks as Jaskier steps away.
Jaskier just laughs and shakes his head. "Nothing, of course. Just- thank you for coming."
Geralt frowns. "What's all this, then?" he says, gesturing to the celebration and decoration around them.
"Don't tell me you don't know," the bard teases. "It's Midsummer, Geralt! Although I suppose I can't blame you too much. I know first-hand just how hard it can be for you to keep track of the days when you're out brooding in the wilderness."
Geralt ignores the obvious insult. "Is that why you asked me to come?"
"Of course," Jaskier tells him. "It's a celebration. There'll be food, drinks, bedpartners, and I thought you might enjoy it. Besides, I'm here for a competition, and it would be nice to have someone cheering me on from the sidelines. Not that you have to, of course," he added, backtracking hastily.
"Hmm.”
"Really, you don't have to come if you don't want to," Jaskier assures him, misinterpreting his expression.
"No, not that- It's just-," He waves the letter between them. "I suppose I got a different impression from this, is all."
Jaskier snatches the letter from his hand and skims it. He grimaces. "Yes, well, I think we can both agree it isn't my finest piece of work. I was quite drunk at the time, and as we both know, too much alcohol tends to make me a bit... maudlin... Oh," he says slyly, smirking in understanding, "You were worried about me, weren't you? You thought I'd found myself in some sort of trouble again?"
Geralt doesn't bother trying to deny it.
His laugh is pleased. "The secret is out, my dear witcher. Now I know you care."
And before Geralt even gets the chance to deny that , Jaskier has given him back the letter and is dragging him along to the tavern he and the boys had been playing outside of. "It's been too long since I've seen you, and we really should catch up over drinks."
The tavern is more crowded than the places they usually end up in. Geralt supposes that people usually gather where the alcohol is whenever there’s a holiday. He generally tries to avoid civilization during times like these; he'd much rather spend a night curled up on rocks and tree roots than deal with all the smells warring in his nose, and the sounds utterly assaulting his ears. And besides, people don’t much like to be reminded of the existence of monsters during times of celebration.
But at least Jaskier had led them to sit down in the more secluded corner- as secluded as a corner could be, with as many people in the tavern as this- without him even asking.
"I haven't seen you in forever!" Jaskier exclaims, leaning too far over the table.
"It's only been a few months," Geralt reminds him.
Jaskier waves a lazy hand between them. "Semantics," he says, and takes another sip of his ale. Geralt can tell he's trying not to grimace, possibly as a point of pride. He had been the one to drag the pair of them here, and while the drinks taste worse than pig swill, Geralt knows the bard would rather force himself to drink it all than admit he had been wrong. "I was looking for you, you know."
"Hmm?" Geralt raises an eyebrow. It's not really a sound meant to mean anything, but he knows Jaskier will interpret it how he wants to.
"I'd heard you'd taken a contract up north, but you'd already vanished by the time I managed to make it up there myself."
He can't say that he remembers the contract Jaskier is referring to. He'd taken a lot of jobs up north. The creatures had been more restless than usual, for whatever reason. In fact, it was a northern job gone sour that had led him to take care to cover his tracks.
"Any particular reason you were looking for me?" he asks.
"Ah, just searching for inspiration, I suppose." Jaskier wraps his calloused fingers around his cup, but doesn't drink. "It's been too long since I've written anything new, and I don't want the people to forget about either one of us."
Jaskier's always been a shit liar, but Geralt doesn't comment on it. "I think you forget that I don't actually care what people think about me," he says instead.
"Bullshit," Jaskier counters easily, as if he's swatting away a fly. "You're always less... growl-y when you're not thrown out on your ass for doing your job, and you can't tell me you don't appreciate having a fuller coin purse.”
"Hmm."
"You just hate that I'm right, don't you?"
Geralt doesn't grace that with a response.
"Come on, admit it, Geralt, you're just not-" Jaskier cuts himself off, his face falling into a frown. His eyes have caught on something across the room, and when Geralt follows his gaze, he sees a woman leaning against the door and staring at them. She raises a single hand in greeting.
"Excuse me, I have to go- I have to take care of something." Jaskier stands up from the table so quickly his hip hits the corner, jostling his ale. A few drops fly out onto his jacket before it settles, but he doesn't seem to notice. "I'll be right back."
Geralt watches Jaskier walk over to her and the pair of them slip out the door. Even with his enhanced senses, he can't hear anything they might be saying from so far away, especially with all the noise in the tavern.
So he's left to sit in the corner by himself, drinking the awful ale. Although he can't stop himself from wondering about the woman. After all, if Jaskier is in some kind of trouble again- and from the look on his face as he had left, Geralt would reckon that’s the case- he’s sure to make it Geralt's problem sooner or later.
She had been wearing plain clothes, more like Geralt's own than Jaskier’s. Not the armor, of course, but in terms of practicality. Whereas Jaskier's style has always been soft fabrics, jewels, and bright colors not dissimilar to certain species of poisonous frogs Geralt has come across, the woman wore a shirt loose enough to hide most parts of her figure and pants that looked like she could run in.
He has just about made up his mind to go make sure Roach has been brushed down properly- judging by the lazy way the boy in the stables had been sitting against a stall door when he had handed her over, he’s almost certain she hasn't been- when Jaskier comes back in, the woman nowhere in sight.
He slides back into the seat across from Geralt and gulps down the rest of his ale in a single sip.
"Who was that?" Geralt asks, raising a single eyebrow.
"Just an old friend. It doesn't matter," Jaskier says, brushing him off with a forced smile.
"Hmm."
"You know, you really are a lot more nosy than you let everybody else believe," he teases, rolling his eyes. "She's in the competition with me. If I'm being honest, she's the only one I'm worried about. She's probably the only one here besides me with any real talent."
"You're very sure of yourself."
"Yes, well, if you'd had the chance to hear any of the others, I'm sure you'd agree." He shakes his head in mock-disgust. "Anyways, it's getting late, and I'm sure you're tired from riding so hard to get here so quickly. We should head upstairs."
"Are you sure this place has any rooms left? It seems pretty crowded."
"Don't be ridiculous. I've been staying here for the past week already, and you're welcome to share. I'll even have them draw you up a bath. I'll bombard you with questions about all the monsters you've defeated in the time we've been apart, and you can give me unhelpful one-word answers, like always. Although you're welcome to go into more detail, if you wish," he adds quickly, his eyes glinting in the dim light of the tavern as they crinkle in mischief.
Geralt stands up, leaving behind what remains of his ale. "A bath sounds nice," he says, not promising anything.
Although the market is crowded, there's still a good few feet of empty space around the two of them as they move through the stalls. Jaskier doesn't seem to notice, too busy pointing out the different fabrics and trinkets that catch his eye- all well out of his price range.
"That necklace is just gorgeous isn't it? I don't think I've ever seen sapphires that bright. I wouldn't be able to do it justice, of course, but there's no harm in admiring it, is there?" Jaskier has been chattering on for the better part of an hour. Geralt does his best to tune him out.
He's looking for potion ingredients. His supplies have been running low lately, and he figures he might as well restock as long as he is here. But he had underestimated just how miserable it would be.
The smell is overwhelming- of people, of livestock, of all sorts of food. And the sun. He doesn't think he's considered before now just how much he hates the sun. There's no shade, nowhere to hide from the summer heat, and the air is thick enough to feel like he's being boiled alive. Sweat pours down his back and his neck, making his skin and hair sticky. He hates the sun and he hates the south. He's a creature much better suited to the cold. Dark caves, snowy forests, icy lakes that would've chilled and stopped his blood if he had been anything other than what he was. Or at least, he’s better suited to night time, with the moon and the stars keeping gentle, shimmering watch over him, instead of the fucking sun .
He sees a vendor who's selling something he actually needs and makes his way over, the crowd parting for him, and Jaskier following easily along. The few people who had been examining the different plants laid out on the counter have magically disappeared by the time he arrives.
"Ah, a witcher," the vendor says. Geralt can see her take in his white hair, his yellow eyes, the medallion on his chest, and especially the twin swords strapped across his back.
"Have you known many?" Geralt asks her.
"Not personally, no. Never unlucky enough to have need for one myself, and never lucky enough to have one grace my counter. But we learn to look out for your kind in my line of business. You're good customers."
"Oh, Geralt, look at this one! It's got spots on its leaves, and these tiny little flowers," Jaskier interrupts, reaching out to touch a thorny potted plant.
"It's also incredibly poisonous," Geralt warns him.
Jaskier pulls his hand back quickly. "Right, so no touching. Got it."
"Not unless you want to die a slow, painful death where you vomit up all your internal organs as liquids," Geralt says flatly.
"Not exactly my ideal way of spending an afternoon, no."
Geralt picks up a few dried leaves to inspect them for rot. "How much for the allspice root?" he asks.
"43 orens," the vendor tells him.
Geralt scoffs. "What, and an arm and a leg as well? I'm not some witless noble."
Jaskier wanders off as Geralt haggles with the vendor. By the time he’s come back, Geralt's ended up buying way more than he'd meant to, and his coin purse is unnervingly light against his hip as he drops the coins into the vendor's hand.
"Poor Roach," is all Jaskier says as he sees the large bundle the vendor hands over to Geralt in return.
As they leave the booth, Jaskier shoves something towards him that Geralt takes with his free hand without thinking. "What's this?" he asks.
"It's a sweet roll," Jaskier says, taking a bite of his own. "Try it. I can almost guarantee it won't kill you."
"It's a stupid thing to waste your money on," Geralt says.
"Oh, of course, Mr. I-don't-eat-anything-unless-it's-sustenance-for-my-hunky-physique," Jaskier says, shaking his head. "But first of all, it's my money. And secondly, what's the point of having money at all if you only spent it on sensible things?"
Food. Supplies. Occasionally a roof over your head. Geralt doesn't bother saying any of those things. Instead of arguing more, he takes a bite of the bread. It's surprisingly... sweet. He doesn't exactly know what he had been expecting.
"So are you interested in going to the competition with me tonight?" Jaskier asks, seemingly content to jump off to another topic. "It's up at Lord Thibaut's house, so I'll need to find you something suitable to wear if you say yes. Although it's only the first night, and none of the truly awful musicians have been thrown out yet. Well, I'm not even sure they should be called musicians. People who have, through some devilish influence or another, managed to get their hands on an instrument. Regardless, it's going to be a long night, and a lot of it's not going to be very good. It would be better for you to wait until the second or third night, really, if you wanted to go- Not that you even have to go at all, of course!"
Geralt cuts him off before he can ramble on any further. "I'll think about it."
"Right. Yes. Of course."
"And Jaskier?"
"Yes?"
"Thanks for the bread."
Jaskier laughs and bumps against Geralt's arm. "It's a sweet roll, you animal."
Somehow, Geralt finds himself leaning conspicuously against the wall in the lord's dining room. He hadn't meant to come. In fact, he had actively planned not to. He'd told Jaskier not to worry about finding any clothes for him, and he had sat on his bed, sharpening his swords, as Jaskier had packed up his lute and his music and walked out the door.
Aside from the assurances Jaskier had made to him that the first night was sure to be poor musically, he hadn't wanted to come because he had been sure he wouldn't understand a thing that was going on. Jaskier had dragged him to competitions before, and he had always felt out of place among the musically inclined. The bard has tried to explain some of it to him, but it never quite sticks. It’s easier for him to understand the precise way to carve a beast's heart out of its chest than any sort of composition.
But for some reason, he’s made his way here anyways. He’d thought that he would enjoy a bit of peace and quiet for the evening, but the air in the room had quickly turned stale and stifling. He supposes that he just doesn’t know what to do with himself when he’s not on some sort of contract.
Of course, he's not exactly sure what to do with himself now that he's here, either.
It feels more like a party than a competition. The room is just a ballroom with a stage. Nobles, recognizable from their clothes and jewelry, mingle with each other. Servants weave through them with drinks and food on platters. The music feels like nothing more than a backdrop, and the people are themselves the main attraction. Although considering the quality of the man on stage right now, that might be a good thing. Whatever he's doing with his strings sounds more like two cats fighting than any sort of music. He's certainly no Jaskier.
And speaking of Jaskier, the bard is nowhere to be seen. Presumably, he's somewhere backstage with the other musicians.
Geralt lets his eyes wander around the room absently. It feels so different than all the other competitions he’s gone to, where at least the musicians are treated with respect. This whole thing feels like something Jaskier would say is beneath him, and it makes him wonder why they’re even here.
He stiffens when he sees someone staring straight at him. Sorceress, something in his mind hisses at him, as her dark eyes meet his own. Her mouth twists in a way that looks almost like a smile.
A red lipstick grin, hair up in a style that looks like it was popular a decade ago, features a bit too perfect to be natural. Geralt watches as she extricates herself from a cloud of preening and fawning nobles to make her way over to him. She wears a fur coat over her dress which trails behind her as she walks.
"Witcher," she greets him, inclining her head.
"Sorceress." He doesn't bother with the peacocking rituals of the court. If she knows what he is, she knows he has no inclination towards that sort of thing.
“My name is Lena.” She pauses, obviously waiting for him to introduce himself in return. He stays silent.
"Are you here for a contract?” she pushes. “Seeing you makes me worried that the lord may have forgotten to warn me of something, and I'd like to know if there are any particular streets I should be avoiding."
"I’m with a friend." Geralt looks away from the sorceress and back at the stage, where the awful string player is finally shoving his instrument back into his case clumsily. Geralt doesn't have any particular interest in continuing a conversation- although it's been a while since he's seen her, he remembers well enough how it had felt being around Yennefer, the way her magic had clouded his head as much as any drink could- but he doesn't think he can get away with ignoring her. No sorceress he's ever known has taken kindly to being snubbed, after all.
"I didn't think Witchers had friends." He can see her looking him over, measuring him up, from the corner of his eye. "I was under the impression that your kind was more in the adventuring business than the friend business."
"I wouldn't call any of what I do adventuring."
"Well, you must understand why someone like me would. I haven't left this little town in decades, after all, and you have to admit that the stories and songs I hear about your kind all sound rather…fantastical."
"It's a job." The next musician comes out to play, and to Geralt's relief, it's Jaskier who sits down on the chair and settles his lute across his lap. Geralt's beginning to regret the rash decision to come to this party, and hopefully, he can find a way to slip out after Jaskier has performed.
"Well," she says, placing a hand on his arm, "Perhaps you would be willing to do a job for me."
He shakes off her hand. "Not interested."
Her face maintains its courtly smile, but her eyes flash with annoyance. "And why not?"
"I'm not interested in your blood money."
"It seems that you may have a false impression of me and my kind."
"I don't think I do."
His eyes are on the stage again, on Jaskier, on the way that his hands glide over the strings of his instrument, fingers aligning themselves into chords as lightly as the brush of a moth's wing before pushing off again. Words pour from his mouth, pausing at his lips before spilling out into the crowd. Geralt notices, something warm twisting in his stomach at the realization, that the nobles aren't ignoring him like they had the musician who came before. There is no loud, irreverent conversation, no drunken peals of laughter.
Jaskier's eyes meet his, slide to the sorceress beside him, and then slide away again. As if he’s nothing but a stranger. The warm feeling sputters out, replaced by something colder. Confusion? He turns away from the stage and back to the sorceress.
Her lips press together hard enough they look like slivers. "I have ideas of what you may have heard about my sisters, but I can assure you I only take select customers, and I never force an unwilling one."
"You serve a court," Geralt reminds her. "All money is blood money here, regardless of if you were the one who stained it."
"I’ve never wanted to serve it, though," she says boldly. Her eyes, which had seemed so court-clever just a moment before, are honest and angry now, and she reminds him, against his will, of another girl who had also burned with rage. He looks away.
"Then leave."
"I'm as trapped here as any serving girl. My power is just strong enough to make rich fools want me, but not strong enough to break me out of the gilded cages they seem so keen to put me in."
"And what do I have to do with that?" He makes himself look back at her face, at the rebellious jut of her chin.
"There's something I need, something I can't leave to go find. Something that might allow me to leave this endless game once and for all."
"I'm not an errand boy."
"No, you're not," she agrees. "An errand boy wouldn’t be able to help me. This is certainly something that would require your particular skills." She steps away. Geralt hadn't noticed that she had gotten so close.
"I won't bother you about it anymore, though. If you're willing to help me, come find me. You know where. I'm not leaving anytime soon after all." She offers Geralt a small, secret smile before slipping back into the crowd, cutting through groups of people that close ranks again behind her, swallowing her up.
Unable to help himself, Geralt turns again the stage to watch Jaskier play. But he’s gone, replaced by a girl with golden hair who’s playing a song he doesn’t recognize on a flute.
A hand grabs his shoulder and he whirls around. “Geralt! You came! I didn’t think you would!” Jaskier stands behind him, along with the girl from the tavern the day before.
“I- yeah.”
“It wasn’t my best, of course, but I’m saving that for later. Anyway, I’m done for tonight, and there’s no way I’d make you suffer through any more of these amateurs. Did you see the guy with the harmonica earlier? I am going to need to get horrendously drunk to get the sound out of my head.”
“But what about-” What was that? That moment before? He’s sure he hadn’t imagined it.
“What?” The bard stares up at him, confused.
“...Never mind.”
“Come on. Let’s go back to the tavern. I’ll pay for drinks. Nobles tend to indicate their favor with their wallets. Arin won’t be coming with us, of course. For religious reasons.”
“Right,” his friend says flatly.
“Let’s get out of here.” Geralt is too bewildered to protest when Jaskier grabs his arm and pulls him toward the doors.
Geralt opens his eyes as the door opens, the scent of lavender and salt water floating in to greet him, although he doesn't bother moving until a voice calls out, "Are you still sleeping?" and the blankets are ripped off of him in a rather dramatic fashion.
He growls, propping himself up on the limp pillows for the sole purpose of being able to glare at Jaskier more effectively. The effect is lessened by the fact that the bard isn't actually looking at him, and is instead trying to shove a blanket into a bag that is already overflowing with... something.
"I wasn't expecting you to be out of bed until at least noon, considering how much you drank last night," he says, watching Jaskier struggle, and only finding it slightly entertaining. In fact, he had fully expected him to spend the whole day whinging on about a hangover, completely forgetting that he was responsible for putting himself in that state, until the evening when he would make a miraculous recovery, because of course there was no way he wasn't going to the competition.
Jaskier grunts, and some god must be flashing a smile his way because he manages to get the blanket in the bag and the buckles closed around it. "Well, we do have plans today," is all he says, in a way that Geralt is sure he thinks is cryptic. The effect is basically ruined by the way that Jaskier is panting slightly from his fight with the bag.
Geralt thinks he's being rather gracious by restricting himself to a long-suffering sigh instead of pointing out, once again, that he was in no way involved in the formation of whatever "plan" has been concocted behind his back and against his will. He pulls on a pair of socks that have probably been cleaned sometime in the last few weeks, as well as his shoes, which have most definitely not been.
Jaskier holds the bag out to him as they walk through the door, a pleading look on his face, and Geralt takes it without protest.
There's definitely something sliding around in the bag that Jaskier is making him carry. Multiple somethings. He can hear them rattling against each other as Jaskier leads him down rocky and root-filled paths.
"We're almost there," Jaskier assures him for at least the fifth time in the last twenty minutes, although Geralt very much hasn't asked.
In fact, he hasn't asked on purpose, because he's sure that whatever reason Jaskier has for leading him out of the village and this far into the woods, it can't be good.
“Ah! We’re here!” Jaskier announces as they emerge from the trees and onto the rocky bank of a thick, rushing river.
"We're exactly as nowhere as we have been this entire time," Geralt points out, both reasonably and correctly. Jaskier, unreasonably, glares at him.
"Stop being grumpy," he commands, and takes the bag off Geralt's shoulder. He pulls the blanket out and spreads it across the ground.
"You're not really making those rocks any softer, you know."
"I am ignoring you. Don't even bother throwing any more of your baseless criticisms into my face, because I am not listening."
Jaskier reaches into the bag again and pulls out... food? Rations, really. Dried fruits, cured meats. "We're having lunch here."
Geralt doesn't comment on the food. He knows that neither of them is exactly swimming in coin. "By a river? Really?"
"You have us eat in your musty woods all the time."
"Not on purpose. I'm certainly not going out of my way to do so. And certainly not when we already have a perfectly good tavern waiting for us back in town."
"You know," Jaskier says, sitting down, "I'm starting to wonder what, exactly, this river has done to you. It's a perfectly fine river. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say I quite like it."
"Hmm," Geralt grumbles. He sits down too. The rocks, as predicted, are hard.
"This river flows into the sea a few miles down, actually," Jaskier tells him. "They say that all sorts of creatures wander in here by accident."
"Not a good river to go swimming in, then."
"No," Jaskier agrees. He picks up a rock from beside him. It’s flat, and he tosses it at the river. It skips three times before landing with a splash and sinking. "For other reasons, too. The waters are deeper than you’d think."
Geralt frowns. "Have you been here before?"
"Once, a while ago," Jaskier admits. "Before I met you. I had a wonderfully torrid romance here, which then ended extremely badly, as all of mine seem wont to. Haven't been able to come back here since."
He reaches into the backpack and tosses Geralt an apple. “Now come on. I got up before you for this. The least you could do is appreciate my sacrifice.”
Someone's dragged logs around the fire to serve as makeshift chairs, and the wood digs into Geralt's thighs as he polishes one of his knives. This afterparty-ish affair that the musicians had put together is entirely not his scene. He would be back at the inn polishing his swords, except that Jaskier had "convinced" him to leave them behind when they had gone to the lord's manor for the second night of the competition.
Also, there has been a lot more downtime than there had been monster-fighting for the past few days, and he doesn't know if his swords can take much more polishing.
"Geralt," Jaskier calls out to him from somewhere in the crowd. The fireside is crowded- with noise, with people, with the scent of smoke rising from what is surely more than just wood- but Geralt's eyes snap to him immediately. He pretends to himself that it isn't because he's been keeping track of the other man ever since he left his side.
"Geralt," Jaskier says again, and this time the voice is thin, wheedling, and louder because the man it belongs to is making his way over to plop himself down on the log beside him.
Jaskier swings his arm around Geralt's neck. "Geralt, I am very drunk," he announces.
"I can see that," Geralt replies, a single eyebrow raising in amusement.
"No, don't make that face." Jaskier reaches out a hand in an attempt to shove Geralt's eyebrow back down, but he seems to give up halfway through and ends up leaning against Geralt's shoulder instead. "It's a very judge- judgemin- judgemenial face."
Geralt can smell the wine on his breath, a mixture of alcohol, honey, and spices, so sweet he has the strange urge to taste it. It's an absurd thought, he realizes as soon as it crosses his mind. He already knows what the wine tastes like. He's already had some, and while it had been as good as it had smelled- certainly better than the swill they sold back at the tavern- he'd made the decision to put it aside. Someone has to make sure they didn't end up passed out in a ditch on their way back to their rooms.
"I don't think that's a word."
"Of course it's a word. I said it, didn't I?"
"That doesn't make it a word."
"I think I would know. I am a master of words, after all. Even if you don't always appreciate me." He pushes himself off of Geralt's chest and stumbles to his feet. "Now get up. I want to dance," he demands.
"I don't see what I have to do with that."
Jaskier rolls his eyes. "I want to dance with you ."
Geralt sighs. "You seemed to have been doing fine dancing with other people until now."
"Yes, but I am extremely drunk, Geralt, and if I fall, you are extremely capable of and kind of likely to catch me in your very muscular arms."
"I can't dance, Jask."
"I’ll teach you," Jaskier declares, reaching out to tug on Geralt's hand. Geralt lets Jaskier pull him to his feet and closer to the fire.
“You just gotta wiggle. Like this, see?” Jaskier demonstrates, thrusting his hips forward in a manner that can technically be described as “wiggling”- although it’s more similar to a worm writhing on a fishing hook than any sort of dance Geralt’s ever seen.
“I am absolutely not doing that.”
“Come on, it’s fun!” Jaskier “wiggles” again to demonstrate. Geralt has half a mind to check to see if he’s having a seizure.
“I don’t think my body can even do that, Jask.”
“Fine, you don’t have to.” Jaskier lets out a soft sigh and lays his head on Geralt’s shoulder. His shoulder- and his chest- warm at the contact. “I don’t mind if you just stand there. I am confident in my ability to embarrass myself enough for the both of us. You can be the stoic one.”
Geralt holds Jaskier up as his friend sways against him, entirely out of time with the music, a fact that would’ve annoyed him to no end if he had been in any condition to notice it.
Geralt hadn't been sleeping, but the scream wakes him up anyway. He gets up from the bed where he had been barely dozing, Jaskier snoring weakly next to him, and walks over to the window- open, letting in warm air and the occasional buzzing bug. He can't see anything, but he can hear voices from a few buildings away.
"-found her behind the pig shed- blood everywhere-"
"Geralt? What are you doing up?" Geralt looks over his shoulder to see Jaskier staring up at him from the bed, his eyes still lidded with tiredness.
"I think someone’s been killed." Geralt leaves the window, instead moving over to the chair where he had set down his bag and his swords the night before.
"You're going?"
"You should go back to sleep." There is a rustle of blankets and the creak of old wood. Calloused hands reach up to pull tight the buckle across his chest.
The traces of sleep and wine have vanished from Jaskier's features, his face resolute as he meets Geralt's gaze and says, "Let me get dressed."
The pair of them are down by the pig shed less than five minutes later. Jaskier is wearing clothes that are more subdued than Geralt had assumed he even owned. Just a plain dark shirt and a pair of pants so loose on him they might actually be Geralt’s. They make him look smaller than usual.
Geralt crouches down next to the body. He’s trying not to get any blood on his clothes- it’s so hard to get the stains out, after all, and the smell lingers on for days- but the ground is slick with it. His boots sink into the mud under his weight. It hasn’t rained in weeks.
He brushes back the girl’s long, dark hair from her face. Her nose is broken, her eye and cheek darkened with bruising. She is unmistakably the girl he had seen Jaskier talking to the first day he had arrived here, the one he had been so friendly with at the competition.
“Arin,” he says, turning to look over his shoulder at the bard.
“Yeah,” Jaskier replies, his face pale, his voice tight. “She was a, uh, family friend. An old one.”
“Hmm.” He turns back to the body, his hands moving to her neck- the source of all the blood. Unlike the face, which has been brutalized, the cut across her throat is straight and clean, almost clinical. “Magic,” he mutters to himself.
“Shit,” says Jaskier enthusiastically from behind him.
“That mean something to you?” he asks, not turning around.
“It means the bitch who did it wants me to know it was her.”
Geralt grunts in response to that. A statement that should really be followed up on, but he’s distracted. There’s something on her neck. It might just be a trick of the light- but no, there it is, underneath her ears and covered by her hair. Slits in her skin, not made by magic or even a blade. He stands up, wiping his hand on- well, he would just wipe his hand on the girl’s shirt, since it’s already ruined, but considering she used to be Jaskier’s friend it just feels disrespectful. He wipes his hand on his pant leg instead. They’re probably already dirty anyways.
He turns around to face Jaskier fully. “Gills?” he says, and the one word is enough to make the bard wince and look away, his arms coming up to cross defensively (distractingly) over his chest.
“I should probably explain that, shouldn’t I?” Jaskier says. He sighs, then shakes his head. He turns his gaze back to meet Geralt’s own. “Fine, just not here, though.”
“Back at the inn?”
“Alright. There’s probably as much privacy there as we’re going to get in this town.”
Geralt looks down at the girl’s body. “And what about her?”
“Right. Her. Do you think you could help me carry her?”
Jaskier closes the window when they enter the room, covered in mud, and stays there, pulling himself up to sit on the windowsill. He stares out the window, his gaze blank, as Geralt strips down and wipes off what muck he can with a washcloth and a bucket of water filled at the faucet outside. He 's dressed again before Jaskier finally decides to speak.
"I'm sorry for inviting you here," he says, without turning around.
"You didn't invite me here for a competition," Geralt says to the back of Jaskier's head.
"No."
"So why did you?"
"It was...selfish."
"What, did you want my help?"
"No," he snorts. "You weren't supposed to know about all this. I wanted to keep you out of it."
"So why, Jask?" Geralt demands, his voice slipping down into a growl without his permission. A girl dead, his friend obviously terrified. He can’t help the tightness in his chest.
Jaskier stands up and whirls around. "It was supposed to be a goodbye, okay? I tried to tell you this spring, but I couldn't find you. And then you were here, and I have tried to tell you every single day, but I just couldn't do it. I didn't want to have to tell you I might never be coming back, and I didn't want to have to tell you why."
"You’re like her. You're a siren." The gills. An old family friend , he had said.
"I'm glad you think so highly of my singing, but no." He lets out a harsh laugh.
“Then what are you?”
“I’m a selkie.”
Geralt’s brain stalls to a halt to process that information. It was not what he had been expecting to hear. “So you’re part seal?”
Jaskier sits back on the windowsill, facing Geralt this time. With the way the moon stains his hair white and casts shadows across his face, he barely looks like himself. “Not anymore. Or- not right now. It’s complicated.”
“And the reason you didn’t tell me- it’s because of what I do?”
“No! It wasn’t that. I didn’t want to tell anyone, because of what happened, and after awhile, it just felt like it was too late to say anything.” He runs a hand harshly through his hair. “Look, just let me- let me explain it.”
Geralt considers him for a moment. “Fine.”
“I left the ocean young, and Lena was the first one to find me.”
“Lena?”
“You met her, up at the manor. The sorceress. She made me believe that she loved me, and then she stole my coat.
“She thought she could make me stay with it, but that’s just a myth. I could run, and I did, but I couldn’t go back home. She trapped me on land. And… she’s why I’m here. Why I invited you here to say goodbye. It’s been seventy years, and I thought that would be enough time for her to forget me by now. Not to mention the fact that I look quite a bit different now. But I guess she hasn’t. She killed Arin for trying to help me.”
“And what was it all for?” Geralt asks him.
“Selkies are immune to magic. And she had made a lot of powerful enemies.”
“So what are you going to do about it now?”
“What am I going to do? The only thing I can do, Geralt. The same thing I did seventy years ago, because I was a coward then, and I’m a coward now. I’m going to run.” Jaskier’s hands shake as he runs them through his hair.
Geralt raises an eyebrow. “So you’re just going to leave without me?”
“We could both leave. Be out of this town before the sun comes up. Get the fuck away from the coast and never go near the ocean again.”
“Is that really what you want?” Geralt presses. Do you want to live in fear? Do you want to wake up knowing that part of you belongs to someone else everyday for the rest of our life? What do you want ?
Jaskier shakes his head. “What I want- What I want won’t matter if I have to die for it!”
“I’ll make sure you don’t die then.”
“I don’t think that’s your decision to make.”
“I’m making it anyways.” How many times has he saved the bard’s ass before, after all? What’s one more time. “If getting your coat back is what you want, I’ll help you do it.”
Jaskier buries his face in his hands. “It would be extremely stupid to try to steal from a very powerful sorceress when she already knows I’m coming,” he says, but there’s something like hope in his voice.
“Extremely stupid,” Geralt agrees.
“But we’ve survived extremely stupid before.”
“We have.”
“And you really think we can pull this off?”
It’s a promise when he says, “I do.”
Geralt feels again for the knife on his hip. It's a comfort, and obviously better than nothing, but he wishes, not for the first time, for the familiar weight of his twin swords strapped across his back.
But they would've been too conspicuous, too out of place. It was the same with taking any of his potions. He wasn’t meant to be that kind of distraction. And besides, if he ends up needing either of them, they’ll already be screwed.
Jaskier has a matching knife, shoved inside his boot. He'd refused it at first. "Please, Geralt," he had said. "If I was the type of person who got caught sneaking in through other people's windows, there's no way I would've lasted this long. And besides, knowing me, I'm more likely to cut myself than anyone else." But it had comforted Geralt to know that he would have it, so he took it in the end.
Geralt pauses in the driveway. Jaskier takes a few steps before realizing that Geralt isn’t following him, pauses, and looks at him over his shoulder. "What?" he asks.
"How long do you think it's going to take you?" Geralt asks.
Jaskier shakes his head. "I have no idea. I don't know where she's hidden it, and I don't know what she might have in there protecting it. And a coat... it likes to hide itself. It looks like whatever you'd least expect it to look like."
"But you'll recognize it, right?"
"Maybe." He doesn’t sound convinced. "It was a part of me once, but I was so young when she stole it from me, and now... well, she's had it for far longer than I have. I can't be sure."
“How do you know it’s even in her rooms?”
“Something like that? There’s no way she’d leave it just lying around. She’ll have it somewhere close to her, somewhere she can keep an eye on it.” He shakes his head. "It doesn't matter. I'll find it somehow." He reaches back to grab Geralt's arm in his and pull him along. "Now come on. You should get inside. The competition should be starting by now."
It doesn’t take long for the sorceress to meet his eyes through the crowd.
The room is a lot more full than it had been for the last two nights. It doesn’t seem as though it’s only nobles here now; there are people he had seen down in the village here as well, listening to the music and eating the food that has been laid out on a large table that stretched across the back wall.
The sorceress makes her way through them all to his side again, just like she had that first night.
"Witcher," she says, once again, her quirked eyebrow betraying her amusement.
"I thought about what you said," he tells her, barreling over her greeting.
"And?" she presses.
"I've decided I'll help you. I shouldn't have turned you away that first night. You were right. None of us choose our masters, and it's not fair to hold you to the misdeeds of yours."
The sorceress looks at him consideringly for a moment, and then turns to the stage. "Which one is your friend?" she asked, after a moment.
"What?" Her response throws him off balance, leaving him wrongfooted in the conversation.
"Your friend," she repeats. "You told me, the first night, that you were here to see your friend. I was just wondering if you could point him out to me."
"He's the harp player," Geralt blurts out. He remembers seeing a harp player the night before who had done a pretty good rendition of The Mountain in the Clouds . He doesn't think he had been eliminated yet, so it will hopefully be believable enough.
"Hmm," she says. "Interesting choice."
"Choice?"
"Yes, for a lie."
"It's not a lie-" Geralt says, but she cuts him off with a wave of her hand.
"Please. After that little message I sent, your friend must've known I've been watching him close enough to see through this charade." Her voice is cold. "Besides, I've been lying too."
She holds her hand up, and he notices them then, hidden between the folds of the crowd- guards. They look at him, their eyes blank.
"I've never been good at playing helpless," she tells him. "Luckily, I didn't need you anyway. He came running right for me. Now come on. I think it's time to say hello."
But she had needed him. He’s the one who convinced Jaskier to stay, after all.
"What have you done?" His heart trips inside his chest.
"To him? Nothing yet. I have plans for him. But you, I don't need. Or at least you're too big of a threat to keep around. Now, I would suggest you start walking. I have no use for any of the people here, either, and if you keep testing my patience, I will have my guards slit all of their throats. And you wouldn't want that on your conscience, would you, Geralt of Rivia?"
She takes hold of his arm and smiles as she leads him out of the room.
She only lets go of his arm once they reach a thick iron door. She reaches under the collar of her thick fur-collared coat to pull out a key on a chain around her neck. The sight makes the hair on the back of his neck rise to attention for a reason he can't quite name.
When she opens the door, his eyes find Jaskier immediately- kneeling in the center of the room, two guards holding him down. Geralt's blood thrums hot with anger at the sight of the bruise forming around his eye and the blood at the edge of his lip where it had been split open.
Jaskier bares his teeth at the sorceress, the tips of them slightly sharper than they should be. In that moment, he looks more like a wild animal than Geralt has ever seen him. It makes him wonder how he could have ever thought the bard was human.
"Oh, don't look at me like that. You were the one who came back." She walks over to him and bends down close to his face. "For seventy years I couldn't find you. Until you showed back up on my doorstep."
"Fuck. You," Jaskier tells her, calmly and clearly.
"I'm just not that interested in animals, I'm afraid." She whips around sharply to face Geralt and mutters something he can’t make out.
It starts in his chest. At first, it almost feels as though he's been impaled by something. But when he looks down, there's no wound, no blood. Just the feeling of something cold wrapping around his organs, rubbing sandpaper along his lungs, poking at his heart with tiny claws.
A blizzard has made its home inside his chest, and it makes his knees crumple with the force of it.
"No!" a voice shouts. Jaskier. Geralt turns to look at him, held in place by the two guards and a sorceress between them. He wants to help; he can't make his limbs move.
Jaskier twists back, viciously, and bites the arm of one of the guards holding him. The guard lets go of his arm, and Jaskier doesn't waste any time. He reaches down with his free arm and pulls the knife out of his boot.
He slashes the second guard across the chest, and then he's moving, stumbling to his feet, bringing the bloodied knife up to the sorceress's neck.
"Whatever you did to him, undo it now."
The guards take a step towards them, but the sorceress holds up a hand, and they stop.
"Even someone like me can't bring back the dead," she whispers, her throat pressing up against the blade.
"He's not dead yet!"
"Semantics. He will be, in a few minutes."
She's right. Geralt can feel it- the cold spreading from his chest, into his arms and legs, slowing his blood.
His vision fades out, going dark, and when it comes back in, Jaskier's hands are empty. The knife is gone. Faintly, he hears it clatter to the ground somewhere in the room.
Something clicks in his brain. A thought that had started with the conversation on the walk up to the manor, with the key outside the door.
One of the guards moves forward to kick the back of Jaskier's knees, and he falls to the ground.
The sorceress doesn't do anything, just watches in disgust, as Jaskier crawls to Geralt's side, and falls across him.
"You can't kill me, mutt," she says. Jaskier's ear is right by his lips. They brush together as Gerald whispers two words into them.
She comes to stand over the pair of them, her voice mocking. "I'm the only one who can save him now. And I will. I'm willing to bargain."
Geralt leads Jaskier's hand across him, to his hip. A look of understanding passes between them.
"I'm not going to sell my soul to you again, you bitch," Jaskier growls as he sinks Geralt's knife into her chest.
She lets out a small gasp as she falls. The guards tumble to the ground with her.
Fur coat . The two words Geralt had whispered into Jaskier's ear. Jaskier eases it off the sorceress's body, and it shifts in his hands, into a fancy embroidered jacket that looks like it belongs as part of quite an expensive ensemble. Jaskier pulls Geralt up to drape it around his shoulders.
"Come on, you bastard. You can't die on me now," he mutters, buttoning up the jacket frantically.
Geralt lets out a strained, breathy laugh. "And why not?"
"Because it's not fair, Geralt."
"The world isn't fair."
Jaskier's fingers still. His hands tighten around the last button. "Maybe not. But you want it to be, don't you? All those people you help, even when you don't have to, even when they give you nothing in return. Simply because they don't deserve what's happened to them. And we both deserve to live through this. It isn't fair otherwise. So make it fair. For me."
Geralt doesn’t say anything. He forces his arms to move, for his freezing hands to rest on top of Jaskier's cool ones. And when he leans forward, Jaskier meets him in the middle.
It tastes exactly how he had expected it to, all the times he had been wondering about it when he thought he had been thinking about something else- like summer, like honeyed wine, like every word in every song Jaskier has ever sung.
And the last thing he knows is Jaskier, repeating, “You bastard,” against his lips, before he’s falling down a dark, dark hole, so deep he doesn’t even know if there is a bottom.
At some point, he stops falling. And at some point, he wakes up.
He doesn't remember where he is at first. The last thing he remembers is the sorceress, the cold overtaking his body, Jaskier- Jaskier, who sits on a chair by his bed, the bed that he now recognizes as the one from their room in the inn.
The bard is sleeping, slumped over onto the bed, his breath coming out in small puffs against his arm.
A bolt of pain lances through his side, and he shifts, biting back the hiss of pain. When he looks back down, Jaskier is blinking up at him, his face twisting up.
For a moment, Geralt thinks that he might shout. Instead, he throws himself forward, tossing his arms around Geralt's neck. "Oh, you absolute prick!" he says against Geralt's neck.
"What happened to your hands?" Geralt says stupidly. He can feel the bandages, rough against his back.
Jaskier leans back to stare at him aghast. "Three days," he says. "Three days I've been sitting here, waiting for you to wake up, hoping you're going to wake up at all. And the first thing you do is ask about my hands."
He shakes his head. "What happened to my hands is I burned them carrying your sorry hide out of that bitch's lair. You know, because you were freezing to death, and touching you felt like plunging them in a vat of acid."
"Hmm."
“Oh, is that all I get? You weigh about as much as a gryphon, you know. Really, I only managed to make it to the ballroom before I thought I might collapse. I had to threaten some nobles with my knife to get them to help me. Of course, I was just about covered in blood, so they came to help me pretty quickly. They helped me drag you back here, and I managed to shove one of your potions down your throat. And then I got to wait. For three days. Terrified you were going to-” He cuts himself off. He’s twisting the blanket covering Geralt’s leg between his fingers. Geralt doesn’t think he even realizes he’s doing it.
There’s a beat of silence. And then, “Why aren’t I dead?” Geralt stares at Jaskier. “I was almost there. I could feel it. Even for someone like me- there’s no way I could’ve survived. Not long enough for you to bring me back here.”
Jaskier swallows. Geralt traces the movement of his throat. “I gave you my coat, remember?” He reaches out to touch the cloak draped around Geralt’s shoulders. “I told you, selkies are resistant to magic. I couldn’t heal you, but I could slow the spell down. I could give you just enough time.”
The fur coat. The fancy jacket. He remembers. But this isn’t the fancy jacket Jaskier had buttoned him into. Instead, it’s a black, almost shoddy cloak, warm enough he had mistaken it for another blanket at first. “Why is it different?” he asks.
Jaskier looks away. “I gave it to you,” he says. “Like, actually gave it to you. It looks like that because it belongs to you now.”
“Can’t you take it back?” Geralt asks, alarmed, reaching up for the clasp around his throat.
“No, don’t!” Jaskier grabs Geralt’s hands to stop him. “I don’t want you to.”
"Why not? I thought that was what you wanted?"
Jaskier bites his lip. Then he says, slowly, "You know, the first time I came on land, my coat was this big, trenchcoat looking thing. Lots of pockets. Definitely not in style. It made me look like a fisherman or something. A little bit of home, I guess. After she stole it from me, I used to go down to the ocean every night, hoping that somehow, I'd be able to go back.
"But if you give me that coat, I'll have to go back. And the sea will wash everything away. All my memories of my time on land, of you. And I don't want to go back if that's the price I have to pay for it."
"What changed your mind?" Geralt still feels wrongfooted somehow. Hadn't the whole point of getting back his coat been so that he could go home?
"This did." Jaskier leans in slowly, giving Geralt enough time to turn away if he wants. Instead, it's Geralt moving in to meet him this time.
Their mouths meet, and it's like hunger. There is no music on his tongue this time; he tastes purely of salt. Of sweat, of blood. Of the sea.
Jaskier laughs breathlessly against his lips. "And other things too, of course. But you know, mainly this."
Geralt's already forgotten their conversation; his words now are just an interruption. He growls and weaves his fingers through Jaskier's hair to pull him back in.
They don't stop until they're both panting, just to catch their breaths.
Jaskier reaches out a hand to play with Geralt's collar. "You know, I left home because I wanted to be free. But I haven't been free in seventy years."
"And you are now?"
"I am. Because I know if I wanted to leave, you'd give my coat back in a second. Not that I'm planning on leaving anytime soon," he adds hastily, leaning in close. "I think I'm planning on sticking around for a while, in fact."
Geralt surges up to pull him in for another kiss.
