Chapter Text
The raven-haired mage paced the floor of her chamber as though she could walk into the land of dreams that way. Her room in the complex at the Temple of Melitele was sparse but comfortable, the bed warm and plush. And yet she couldn’t sleep. She caught her reflection in the mirror above the washbasin for a moment and startled.
Her eyes looked impossibly tired. Resigned. Where once there was fire and cunning and ambition and need was now something dull, like an old coin clipped too close, and she wondered if her heart was the same, cut away so far it no longer held any value.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a muffled thump outside her windows, followed by a pitiful, whining, “ Ow! ”
She rolled her eyes, went to the double-doors leading to a small balcony, and pulled them open sharply. A tangle of thick, silk-clad limbs tumbled in a heap at her feet, and the sharp blue eyes of the bard looked up at her.
“I had that well in hand, I’ll have you know.”
“Jaskier, why don’t you use the door? Your room is literally—“
“ Shhhhh shh shh shh, my dear witch ,” he said, somehow already on his feet and closing the doors behind him. “Although your honor is obviously mired, I have a reputation to protect.”
“An honorable reputation, bard?”
“Oh, absolutely not,” he said, brandishing his most roguish smile. “But I am known for being rather good at slipping in and out of bedroom windows. Ow!” he cried as she pulled off his ridiculous hat and grabbed his hair.
“ Ow! Ow ow ow! I just curled it, Ye-enn!!” he whined. “That’s it, you owe me a…magic curling, or whatever it is you do to get your hair like that.”
“You don’t want it,” she said, irritated at how despondent the words sounded, and flopped into the sole chair at the fireside. The bard immediately went to her.
“How was training with Cirilla today?”
“Fine.”
“Hmm, okay, wanna talk about it?”
“Not with you, ” she said, glowering.
“See, I think you do,” he continued, squatting beside her. “ I think… you’ve been hoping since dinner that I’d… steal away …” He watched as she fought to hide her smile. “ … hoping I’d sneak in here to talk, and then… for some… depraved tryst —“
“Bard.”
“Everyone already thinks we’re sleeping together anyway.”
“If they do it’s because you insist on sneaking in through the window every night instead of simply using the door,” she said, crossing her legs.
“Well, it’s a good thing we’re not. Sleeping together,” he said, and Yen noticed the pleasantly dazed look on his face, the one he got when he was alone in a room with her. Something about it made her chest feel fluttery, like a bird was trapped in her ribcage.
“You won’t even share a chair with me, you’d probably order me to, uh… to my knees,” he continued, eyes wide and breath soft and short. “Probably force me to do all sorts of horrible things,” he said, and his eyes danced.
Yennefer held his gaze and smiled. He was handing her a very familiar dagger, and there was a kind of power in the certainty of clutching it. She sat back in her chair.
“Like what?” she said, and delighted in the wide-eyed arousal that flushed across his face. “What could you possibly imagine I’d do to you?”
The air was still and tight for a moment, and the bard knelt before her, flicked his tongue over his lower lip.
“I’m not imagining anything, you dreadful witch,” he murmured, not bothering to keep the need from his voice. “ You’re imagining it—“
“Imagining what? ” she said, letting sharp menace into her tone, and raised her leg until the toe of her boot lifted his chin up. She could feel his throat bob as he swallowed and breathed.
“Imagining me…naked beneath your wicked fingers. Imagining the songs they could draw from me, desecrating this temple in praise of you.”
She felt him watching her closely. She’d had flirtations like this before, of course, and they had sometimes led to delicious, if fleeting, morsels of pleasure. The bard had been flirting with her like this since… since they’d escaped Rience. Never serious, always teasing.
“Imagining my mouth, what my famously talented fingers and tongue could do for you…”
Ultimately, it meant nothing. Could mean nothing. She was cut down to her core. In trying to regain herself, she’d lost almost everything else. Just as she’d begun to care for Tissaia, to get over the manipulation she’d felt at Aretuza. Just as she’d begun to set aside the pain Geralt had caused.
It was all gone.
“Imagining humiliating me, maybe have me on my hands and knees, ooh, maybe in front of a crowd! With how desperate you’d make me…”
And this was a very welcome distraction.
She pressed her foot to his chest and pushed him off-balance, sending him scrambling on his hands and knees. She raised an eyebrow and watched him shiver. He worked himself up so thoroughly, it hardly took a look to get a rise out of him. Sometimes literally. She couldn’t help but feel a swoop of warmth at how easy it was, how he responded to her.
“You’re seducing me,” he said.
“Am I?”
“Well I certainly would never…” he said.
“Wouldn’t you?”
They had done this dance many times now since leaving the witcher keep with Geralt and Ciri. And she knew they would again. And that she needed to. She was weary, worn, and this—whatever it was— it melded her back together until she felt sharp again. And with that sharpness, ease.
Jaskier caught her stifling a yawn, and his expression shifted. He got back to his knees.
“Here, let me,” he said, and grasped her boot, easing it and its partner off her feet. He looked up at her rather reverently for a moment before falling back on his ass with an exaggerated snarl. “Your feet smell horrible.”
“You don’t have to smell them, bard,” she said, and walked to her water basin to wash off her makeup.
“You probably imagine me smelling them, licking them? Okay that was a bit far. Unless…? I have had a lover or two with a certain adoration for… well I suppose that was actually my feet, not his, but—“
“I will not be touching your disgusting feet, bard.”
“Of course not, you probably imagine me worshiping yours, is all. Imagine them… poking at my, er, precious jewels or something, while you look down your nose at me, at your feet.” His eyes were dazed and his voice heated again, and she could see a small bulge forming in his trousers, or perhaps it had been there all along. “You imagine my place there,” he finished.
“ You imagine much,” she said, her face clean, and rubbed salve onto her neck and hands as he poured fresh water into the now-empty basin.
“Perhaps you imagine riding me while you levitate us a mile into the air— yes, he did mention you two…”
The bard trailed off, and Yen’s face fell at the mention of her former lover and their former love-making. She turned and snapped her fingers, replacing her clothes for a silk dressing gown.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to—“
“It’s alright.”
“He doesn’t know about us—“
“What’s there to know?” she said, a little too brusquely, and slid into the big, soft bed. The bard removed his shirt and trousers and slid in beside her, as he had every night since they came here, and one before that. He looked up at her.
“Nothing,” he said.
She could feel a tickle of disappointment in his thoughts toward her. He did want more, want this, want her . And the thought made her weary again. Weary of what she’d done, of trying to figure out who she’d become because of it. Who she was to him, to Geralt.
To Ciri.
She turned away and nestled down into her pillow and listened to him breathe for a long time.
“She won’t see me,” she said finally, and realized her voice was shaking.
Jaskier rolled toward her in the dark.
“Ciri,” she whispered, her throat thick with blocked tears, with the frustration and pathetic desperation of many days. “She refuses to even speak with me. She has, this whole time. And I don’t know… I don’t know… how to even… begin …”
She felt his hand, warm and tentative, on her shoulder, the one that had once arched painfully out of alignment. He couldn’t know. But she found herself pressing into that warmth. Felt his arm snake around her belly, felt him hold her. Like a bowl holds water. For just a moment, she let herself become tears.
When she woke, she found his eyes already open, his arms still holding her, as though if he moved this would shatter and she’d pour.