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Jaskier’s late.
For someone so quick to preach the value of presentation and matching expectations Jaskier’s late surprisingly often, but, most years, when the snow’s started to thaw and Geralt leaves Kaer Morhen, he finds Jaskier waiting by the signpost at the base of the Blue Mountains. Sometimes idly strumming his lute, sometimes humming absently to himself, once, notably the first spring after Geralt had taught him about witcher potions and decoctions, knee-deep in mud collecting as much bryonia as he could carry.
The point, Geralt thinks, as Roach ignores his attempts to share a commiserating glance in favour of cheerfully grazing near the signpost, is that, no matter what he’s doing, Jaskier’s normally there. He sighs impatiently and wonders how long he should wait before he accepts that Jaskier won’t be joining him and makes his way to the nearest town alone.
He only allows himself a moment to contemplate the worst potential explanation; that Jaskier isn’t here because he can’t be, that he could be lost or hurt or even dead somewhere out in the woods, somewhere that Geralt might never find him. The road from Oxenfurt is one Jaskier’s had years of practice taking, and he’s a more resourceful traveller than he lets on. If he wants to make it, he can. That concern lingers, despite the wordless reassurance of Jaskier’s presence all through the warmer seasons; that one year Jaskier won’t want to make it back. Life on the Path is harsh and rarely rewarding and, occasionally, Geralt doubts Jaskier will keep choosing it over a safe and comfortable year-round position at Oxenfurt.
“Geralt! There you are!”
But the doubt grows a little duller every year.
Jaskier doesn’t bother offering an explanation for his late arrival, beaming widely as he quickly closes the distance between them with a bouncy half-jog and throws his arms around Geralt with a delighted laugh. He’s warm, despite the sharp bite of winter still lingering in the air. Somehow, Geralt always forgets just how warm he is.
Jaskier lingers, the solid press of his body against Geralt’s gently reassuring after weeks apart and the feeling of him in close proximity enough to remind Geralt of the other things he’d missed over the winter. As if picking up on his thoughts, Jaskier lets him go and bounces back on his heels.
“Well,” he says with a wide grin and a broad gesture back towards the road into town, “shall we?”
**
Sharing a horse gives Geralt the perfect opportunity to thoroughly check Jaskier’s scent without risking being questioned for it and he takes full advantage.
Reassuringly, Jaskier smells good. No heavy sourness to suggest he’s been going hungry and none of the unpleasant acidity that would be clinging to him if he’d spent too much time ill. Health is a gentle, unobtrusive scent and Geralt likes the way it settles comfortably around Jaskier like it belongs there. It mingles with the heavier frost-and-forest scent covering the bard and lightens the remnants of Oxenfurt’s distinctive city smell, still clinging to him despite the time spent travelling. He smells of inns and taverns and as if he’s spent plenty of nights performing. He smells content and happy.
And he doesn’t smell at all of Geralt anymore.
It would be unrealistic to expect him to, after so many weeks spent apart, but the realisation sends an unexpectedly sharp stab of possessive irritation through Geralt’s gut anyway. He’d allowed himself to grow used to his own scent, entwined thoroughly enough into Jaskier’s own that he’d long ago stopped concerning himself with distinguishing between the two, and now its absence is unpleasantly noticeable.
Still, it’s not a problem that will be hard to fix. He wraps a possessive arm around Jaskier’s waist in the guise of steadying him in the saddle and doesn’t miss the way the bard settles further back to rest comfortably against his chest. A few nights sharing a bed, a few days riding together, a few long fucks and Geralt’s scent will have worked its way thoroughly back into Jaskier’s.
And the best part, Geralt thinks to himself as he lets his hand drift a little lower, teasing along the fastenings of Jaskier’s trousers, just enough to make him squirm in the saddle, is that they have the whole night ahead of them to get started.
**
“...But, of course, none of it’s quite as inspiring as the things I’ve seen with you. I’m rather worried you’ve ruined me for every-ah!” Jaskier interrupts himself with a moan and his hips jerk eagerly as Geralt works a hand between his thighs.
Jaskier had blushed, stuttered and fidgeted his way through negotiations with the innkeeper, half-dragged Geralt up the stairs to their room and chosen the exact moment Geralt had him splayed out under him on the bed to decide that fucking could wait until after he’d verbally recapped his entire winter. After an entire horse ride spent purposefully working Jaskier up without ever touching him properly, Geralt suspects the decision may have been vengeance-motivated.
He smirks to himself as he loosens Jaskier’s breeches enough to get his cock out and the bard visibly fights back a whimper. Aside from his racing heart and lust scent so strong Geralt doubts even human senses could miss it, he’s been doing quite well at pretending Geralt’s touch isn’t driving him frantic.
Geralt seizes the brief moment of silence to distract Jaskier with a hungry kiss, growling to himself when Jaskier only indulges him briefly before pushing his head aside in playful dismissal.
“And you’d have been shocked by how little some of my students have seen of monsters. Shocked.” He pauses in consideration, hand lingering to card aimlessly through Geralt’s hair. “Though I suppose what that really means is that you’ve been doing your job rather well.”
Geralt barely pays attention to his words. With Jaskier like this, right here and smelling so good and eager, a scent that could only be improved if he smelt more of Geralt, it’s hard to keep his… other urge in check. The one that he’s never talked to Jaskier about that lurks in the back of his mind during moments like this, the one that’s too unacceptably animalistic to let himself indulge in. He’d spent one too many nights at Kaer Morhen with his hand on his cock and images of Jaskier desperate for him and drenched in his piss dancing through his mind and it’s difficult now to remember all the reasons why he shouldn’t.
“Still, it was pitiful. When the class started half of them couldn’t have told you the difference between a drowner and a ghoul.”
Distracting impulses aside, that’s the kind of implied boast that Geralt can’t allow to pass unacknowledged. He pulls back far enough to eye Jaskier with a disbelieving scoff. “If they learned from you, they still can’t.”
“Geralt! I-”
Without waiting to hear the offended rant Jaskier’s clearly building to Geralt grips the bard’s wrists tightly together and presses them into the mattress above his head, resting just enough of his weight against the length of Jaskier’s body to hold him firmly in place.
“W-where was I?” Jaskier mutters dazedly, flexing his wrists against Geralt’s hold without any real intent.
“Here.” Geralt growls into his ear, feels Jaskier’s pulse jump as he swallows and it’s perfect, Jaskier is perfect, and he’s here and needy and all Geralt’s for the claiming. And fuck Geralt wants to claim him, as badly as he’s wanted anything, so badly he feels lost in it.
It’s only when Jaskier’s eyes snap open wide and he lets out a high, wordless, startled sound that Geralt truly registers the heat spreading between his thighs and pooling between the two of them and realises, with a stab of incredulous horror, that it’s happening. He’s pissing.
On Jaskier
Fuck.
Instinctively he freezes and the room grows still and quiet as he holds himself tensely in place. Trying to hold back a piss he’s already started is difficult, especially when the scent has already started to blend so perfectly with Jaskier’s. Gods. His piss, soaking through Jaskier’s clothes, marking him, still warm with the heat of his body. He shifts his hips involuntarily and Jaskier squirms underneath him.
“Could you, um..” Jaskier’s cheeks burn red and his wide blue eyes dart awkwardly around the room, looking at everything but Geralt. “Could you just… not wait?”
It’s said in the carefully measured tone of voice he uses when Geralt’s done something distinctly abnormal and he’s trying to determine how much of it he’s supposed to take in stride. Geralt’s not even sure Jaskier notices himself doing it anymore.
Humouring or not, it offers him an escape. He could lie. It would be mildly embarrassing and probably bring the night’s activities to an uncomfortable halt, but it’s not like it would be the worst thing Jaskier’s ever heard from him. Or seen from him, for that matter, he’s had to return from more than one hunt with piss soaking through his trousers and he has no doubt Jaskier’s noticed. So he could lie and they’d put this whole night behind them and ride on tomorrow as if nothing had happened.
“It’s not that.”
He just doesn’t really want to lie to Jaskier anymore.
“So…” Jaskier squirms again, as if he’s adjusting to the feeling of Geralt’s piss against his crotch. His cheeks are still hotly flushed but Geralt takes some comfort in the fact that he still hasn’t started to smell of disgust. “Is it a sex thing?”
It’s not that either, not entirely. It’s about Jaskier and it’s about sex but mostly it’s about travelling with Jaskier and picking up the faint traces of him clinging to the bard, knowing that anyone or anything with sharp enough senses could sniff out Jaskier and know he’s Geralt’s. He’s never known how to explain the animalistic possessiveness he sometimes feels burning through his body in a way that Jaskier could understand. He grunts, not a no but not quite a yes either, and hopes there’s enough there for Jaskier to piece together.
The bard twists, shifts his hips, and Geralt’s ready to pull away and let him go, just for the night if he’s lucky, longer if this… urge proves too unsettling for Jaskier to accept. And then Jaskier’s pressing the hard length of his cock against Geralt’s thigh and smelling of pure heat and Geralt forgets how to think for a second.
“Geralt…” Jaskier urges, pleading and quiet. A voice meant for only a witcher to hear. “Don’t stop.”
Some part of him seems to understand the request a moment before he processes it properly and he leaks another long spurt. Jaskier’s cock twitches where it’s still pressed against him.
“Fuck, Jaskier,” he growls, “you…”
If he shared Jaskier’s gift for words maybe he’d be able to describe it, what Jaskier’s doing to him, what it means, but action suits him better anyway, so he pushes himself up to rest on his knees, one leg either side of Jaskier, frees his cock from his pants just a little faster than humanly possible and lets go.
As soon as he lets it, it comes out in a fast, hissing rush, splattering messily against Jaskier and smelling better on him than Geralt had ever let himself imagine. It’s marking and claiming made all the better because of how blatantly Jaskier wants to be marked and claimed, still rutting against Geralt’s thigh and keeping up a constant litany of tiny, eager noises. His trousers are dark with Geralt’s urine, his sodden undershirt clings heavily to his chest and every inch of him smells like Geralt.
The last of it comes in inelegant bursts and sputters as his cock thickens in his hand but, with Jaskier already soaked and needy under him, he can’t bring himself to care. He fists their cocks together and Jaskier whines.
“Yours,” he pants, writhing as Geralt jerks them both off, giving up any semblance of rhythm as he thrusts frantically into Geralt’s hand. “You know that I’m-”
The end of the sentence is lost as Jaskier throws back his head and comes with a cry.
The sight’s nearly enough to push Geralt over the edge there and then. He fucks into his own hand, so hard he’s aching with it, Jaskier satisfied under him, flushed and panting and soaked in Geralt’s piss and his scent, his scent, his scent...
With a desperate groan, Geralt marks his bard again.
**
If Geralt had ever allowed himself to picture how Jaskier might behave after he would have guessed that, at the very least, he’d insist on a bath immediately. Next to him Jaskier stretches, slow and sated and comfortable, and Geralt abruptly remembers why he’s tried to stop making assumptions about Jaskier.
“Gods, I’ve missed you,” Jaskier sighs contentedly, sounding entirely too wistfully romantic for a man covered in piss and come. “Winters feel far too long these days.”
Geralt hums and rearranges himself on the bed so it would be easier for Jaskier to press in closer, if he wants to. Jaskier had laughed and called it cuddling with deniability once, but he always seems to accept the implied offer when it’s given. Geralt’s tempted to make a blunt remark about how fast the seasons go by when you’ve seen each pass a hundred times over, but something about the warm weight of Jaskier’s body against his when he smells like that is enough to stop him.
Besides, he admits to himself, in thoughts quiet enough he can almost deny them, as he remembers just how often Jaskier had unexpectedly entered his mind during their time apart, it’s not like he’s entirely wrong.
Soon they really will have to concern themselves with bathing and cleaning up the worst of the mess they’ve made. For now Geralt closes his eyes, breathes in and imagines how he might ask Jaskier to spend next winter at Kaer Morhen.