Chapter Text
1.
“What are you doing?” Geralt asked, once the bard had stopped playing that infernal, incorrect, damnably catchy song, lute banging softly against his back with every other step. The sound was of the sort that slowly drove one mad; just irregular enough that it wasn’t easy to tune it out, just loud enough to grate on one’s nerves. What a fool he’d been, wishing for the bard to stop the song; at least that he’d been able to let wash over him. But now he’d found something even worse — something in his pocket he was playing with, adding a different sort of noise at the edge of Geralt’s consciousness. It sounded like the trickle of sand through an hourglass, in a way, except coarser and less regular.
“What?” The bard looked at him, clearly startled out of his thoughts. His hand stilled in his pocket, but his lute kept banging against his hip. Still no silence. Dammit.
“Your pocket. What are you doing?”
“Oh!” The bard grinned, pulled his hand from his pocket and held it out for Geralt to see. In his palm were… grains, from the looks of it. Cold realisation crept up Geralt’s spine.
“Where did you get those?” His voice was steel, slicing the bard’s grin from his face. It fell slowly, like he’d expected Geralt to join in his amusement.
“I — it was just lying around, back where the — with the sylvan.” The bard tripped over his words, his heart speeding up at whatever he saw in Geralt’s face. Good. He could have had both of them killed after all, with this stupid little stunt.
“So you stole. From the people almost starving. After their king had gifted you his lute.” His voice came out softer than before, almost silky smooth, but the way the bard shrunk back told him that every word hit just as it was supposed to. “How… valiant. A true… hero.” He felt his lip curl in a silent snarl. The bard smelled of adrenaline and surprise, with a note of anger seeping into it the longer Geralt stared at him.
“I never said I was a hero,” the bard argued, and colour rose in his cheeks to mirror the anger in his scent. Geralt realised with a start just how young he was; human ages all bled together for him, but the bard — this kid couldn’t be older than Witchers when they were first sent out on the path. Twenty, maybe younger still. Old enough that he should know better, but young enough that it wasn’t surprising that he didn’t. He sighed.
“And I didn’t take it from the elves,” he went on, unaware of Geralt’s realisation. “There was a sack of grain close to where the sylvan knocked me out and I… may have slipped a handful or two. From the sylvan’s stores. On our way back.” He had the grace to look ever so slightly sheepish underneath his righteous anger, and Geralt sighed again, almost inaudibly. He had the strong urge to run a hand over his face.
“Same difference,” he said in a flat voice. “They might have killed us both had they realised the infraction.”
The bard blanched at that, anger draining from his face. “That wasn’t my intention…” He trailed off, looking even younger. Who had Geralt pissed off to be saddled with a fucking kid? “And, I mean, they did steal that first.”
“Hm,” Geralt hummed, and wondered for a moment if it really was his job to tell the kid that this didn’t make his actions right. It wasn’t. And it wouldn’t be his fault if he did it again and got punished accordingly. On the other hand, he was young, and Geralt so hated to see humans waste their very short lives.
“Yes, yes, I know,” the kid said before Geralt could make a decision either way, in a long-suffering voice that Geralt hadn’t heard in years. Like the brat he was. “Two wrongs don’t make a right, yadda yadda.” He sighed, much more theatrical than Geralt had. “No stealing from the weak and starving, even if they’ve been stealing things themselves.”
He sounded mocking, but there was a sincere note underneath. Geralt blinked. He hadn’t expected such quick acquiescence. Maybe the kid didn’t need his advice after all. If only he were so agreeable about leaving Geralt in peace.
But he wasn’t, and the next moment he had his lute in his hands again, strumming a melody that Geralt hadn’t heard before. He had a short, brief, beautiful moment of being relieved, but then the bard started warbling, “There once was a poor lad // Who could not have fed a gnat // And he saw someone steal …”
Geralt sighed again. At least this time he was loud enough that it was easier to file him away as annoying, if non-threatening, background noise. Small mercies. At least they were almost back to Posada.
2.
“What are you doing?” Geralt asked, and exhaled heavily. He’d been saying this a lot these past couple of months. Ever since an idiotic, optimistic, annoying kid had started following him.
Usually, what the kid — Jaskier, as he’d finally caught his name — was doing was … bizarre. He’d been so eager to follow Geralt, and yet so ill-equipped. He hadn’t had a bedroll, but clothes fit for court. No cloak, but intricately stitched doublets that even Geralt knew weren’t cheap. No waterskin, but several blank bound books and some charcoal. No food or money beyond the fucking bread in his pants, but oil for his lute and replacement strings. How he’d even survived to find Geralt in Posada was a mystery, though not one Geralt had particularly wanted to unpuzzle.
There he’d been, perfectly happy — well, okay, content — to walk his Path; slay monsters, try to get most of what money he’d been promised for said slaying, avoid humans whenever possible. And then this kid had appeared, attached himself to Geralt like a limpet, and refused to be shaken ever since. Geralt deftly ignored that he hadn’t tried very hard — the bard didn’t have a horse, so Geralt could have left him somewhere, ridden off — but the bard was a menace, and Geralt was quite sensibly worried that if he did so, the bard would do something stupid and die, and, well. Geralt still hated humans needlessly cutting their lives even shorter. Not that he was convinced that following a Witcher was much better for a bard’s survival.
“Hm?” Jaskier asked and stilled, with an expression like — what was the saying? Ah, right — like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, eyes wide and startlingly blue. That, together with the uncharacteristic silence, set off warning bells in Geralt’s mind. They — no, he — had been having a string of bad luck recently, with several jobs in a row suddenly finding the contract giver surprisingly out of the promised coin. Oh, so sorry, Witcher, but you must be misremembering, we said thirteen crowns, not thirty. It was topped off tonight by the inn they’d hoped to get a warm meal in claiming to be too busy for a Witcher and his companion, very sorry, like Geralt couldn’t smell the lie on the innkeeper from a mile away.
So. He was already in a pretty shitty mood, even before he’d had to drag Jaskier away from the inn, almost kicking and screaming. It would have been touching, if it wasn’t the bard fighting an already lost battle, a clear sign of him losing his mind further. And now this expression? The bard had done something, and Geralt tried not to dread the revelation.
The silence stretched between them.
“What — have — you — done.” Geralt paused after every word and didn’t make it a question, inflecting his voice with as much quiet malice as he could. It changed neither the bard’s expression nor his scent. Somehow, he’d grown immune to Geralt’s growling in the past weeks, and Geralt had no idea how or why. It was, however, rather inconvenient.
“Nothing, dear witcher, nothing at all.” Jaskier grinned, all teeth and fake mirth, and for his own sanity, Geralt dropped the subject.
That night, as they made camp, Jaskier pulled out a bowl from his pack; a sturdy, earthen dish he’d bought — like his bedroll and a flimsy cloak that was fine for early summer but wouldn’t last him a day once autumn fell — from coin he’d made on the back of his inaccurate song about their adventure in Dol Blathanna. Really, it was only self-preservation that Geralt let him tag along further, in the hopes that he might come up with a new, more accurate (or less grating) song.
“Are you alright, dear fellow?” Jaskier asked, and with a start Geralt realised that he’d been staring at the deer he’d been in the process of butchering without actually doing any butchering for way too long.
“Hmm,” he said, and went back to his task, keeping an eye on Jaskier in his periphery.
There was a soft splash as Jaskier added water to the dish and then scooted it close to the edge of the fire. As far as methods for heating up water went, it was a fairly inefficient one, but Geralt held his tongue. What are you doing? he wanted to ask but didn’t, mainly because he’d tried that question once already today and had been ready to tear out his hair as a result. No need to repeat the experience.
Jaskier was silent as he waited, presumably for the water to boil. It chafed at Geralt, this sudden taciturn nature of his travel companion, and then his mood soured further at the fact that he was bothered. He wanted to bask in the quiet, dammit, but he couldn’t when clearly, something was off. He just couldn’t tell what. Jaskier’s scent was normal — maybe a hint more anger than he usually carried, undoubtedly left over from the confrontation at the inn, and something a little like smug satisfaction that Geralt didn’t want to examine further, because surely, that way lay madness.
Geralt had carved up the deer by the time Jaskier’s dish with water reached its boil, and he chanced another glance at him as he got out the salt, to preserve what they wouldn’t eat straight away. Jaskier would undoubtedly complain about the thus-cured meat, but he never refused to eat it.
Jaskier was kneeling in front of the fire, close enough that sparks surely had to catch the pretty and too colourful fabric of his doublet, but he paid it no mind. Geralt fought back the urge to pull him away to safety. Instead, he watched as Jaskier poured something into the bowl, quickly but carefully, before yanking his hands back. It sounded like a stream of… grains? Geralt sniffed, concentrating on the finer scents almost overpowered by smoke and freshly butchered venison. Oats. Jaskier had poured oats into the dish. Which he hadn’t had this morning, and he sure as hell hadn’t bought because Jaskier’s last bit of coin had been spent on a new stick of charcoal the other day.
Before he was consciously aware of it, he was by Jaskier’s side, hand gripping his shoulder. Too hard, judging by the way Jaskier winced, and Geralt had to force his fingers to relax. Fuck. The bard would, undoubtedly, have a bruise on his shoulder come morning.
“Where did you get that?” he growled, and Jaskier grinned at him, the same mirthless, toothy grin he’d had that afternoon. He smelled not one iota afraid, even with Geralt looming over him and having bruised him.
“From that lovely innkeep,” he said, and Geralt could almost taste the venom in the words. The smug satisfaction increased tenfold.
“You stole. Again.”
Jaskier’s face sobered abruptly, nothing but banked fury in his eyes. “He was neither weak, nor starving. Instead, he sent you away for nothing but your profession. He should be glad I didn’t do anything more… drastic.”
Geralt sighed, his anger draining away. Madness, indeed.
“I will make them change their minds,” Jaskier said, a promise like steel in his voice as his hand came up to Geralt’s arm. He was strangely mesmerising like this, intent and driven, and still an edge of anger simmering underneath. His hand burned, even through Geralt’s shirt. “I will. But in the meantime, I will eat their oats. Oh, don’t look like that, it’s nothing serious, just some harmless… spite cereal. He won’t even notice a handful or two missing.”
Geralt sighed again. “More meat for me, if you have your supper sorted.”
“What?” Jaskier cried, jumping to his feet with a wounded expression on his face. He was suddenly close enough to Geralt that his breath feathered over Geralt’s chest, strangely intimate. “You can’t do that! I — it’s barely enough for a breakfast, much less supper, and —” Jaskier kept babbling, but the smug satisfaction and anger faded from his scent, until all that remained was happy contentment.
It was that, probably, which made Geralt share his meat, after all — no need to douse their sleeping quarters in more sour notes from unhappiness and disappointment.
3.
Geralt knew something was wrong even before he made it into the village, hearing sharp cries and clamouring wafting towards him on the breeze half a mile before the gates. He sighed. He’d left Jaskier in this tiny, sleepy backwater village for the duration of his hunt, figuring it was safer than an encounter with a hungry alghoul. The sinking feeling in his gut told him that maybe chancing Jaskier against the alghoul might actually have been the safer variant of the night. The village hadn’t seemed particularly hostile towards either of them, but who knew what trouble Jaskier had found in the couple of hours he’d been there alone.
“Thief!” someone shouted, and Geralt’s stomach dropped all the way into his shoes from the feeling of it. Fuck. Fucking bards, more trouble than they were worth, seriously. He suddenly wished he hadn’t turned a blind eye to Jaskier’s wandering fingers. Maybe, then, he could have had just one normal contract hand-in for once.
“Leave her alone!” another voice yelled — and this one rather familiar, if unexpected. Jaskier. Geralt found himself urging Roach on, trying to make sense of the snatches of indignant and upset yelling he could make out. It wasn’t much.
The scene, when he finally reached the alley that counted as the village’s main street, was… unfamiliar, to say the least. Parts of it weren’t: there was a stern matron — the innkeeper’s wife? She looked faintly familiar — with a broom raised threateningly at Jaskier, who was a couple of paces away from her with his arms shielding his head, while onlookers ringed the two, with further heads poking out of windows. So, nothing he hadn’t seen before, though usually it was enraged husbands, fiancés, or lovers doing the broom wielding. But Jaskier wasn’t cowering, half-dressed at best, wasn’t trying to weasel his way out of the situation the way he usually did. Instead he was holding his ground, standing tall and broad even in the frilly clothes he wore to make himself seem smaller and slighter than he was. Behind him, curled into a ball and whimpering, was a small child, no older than ten. In its hand was a loaf of bread that smelled distinctly past its prime even from a couple of houses down.
“She didn’t even do anything,” Jaskier cried, and his upset hit Geralt like a horse’s hoof against his chest.
He sighed again.
“What is going on here?” He kept his voice even and low, the perfect pitch to cut through the upset humans like a knife through butter.
“This — this scoundrel,” the matron spat each word like it was a piece of mouldy bread as she pointed her broom towards the child, “stole from me!”
The child whimpered again, and Jaskier’s brow furrowed further.
“It came out of the garbage bin,” he said, voice tight. He still had his hands raised, but he looked a lot more composed than he had a moment ago. Less like he might take the child and run for it, in any case. “Are you trying to tell me you would have sold something to the villagers that had already been in the garbage bin?”
The matron sputtered for a moment while a murmur ran through the crowd.
“I find it hard to believe that a child taking a loaf of mouldy — mouldy! — bread out of a garbage bin would impact your business enough to warrant a beating with a broom.” Jaskier was growing more agitated again, his fingers clenching and unclenching at his side.
With another silent sigh, Geralt dismounted Roach and made his way over towards the scene in front of him.
“Jaskier,” he said, putting a hand on his arm. Jaskier stilled immediately, body taut but obligingly silent.
“How much for a loaf of bread?” Geralt asked the still sputtering matron. Part of him could hardly believe that he was doing this, getting involved in such needless affairs. But he needed to hand in the alghoul head and couldn’t very well do that while the main road was blocked with this scene.
“Ten coppers,” she answered, clearly caught off-guard. Geralt reached into the pouch at his belt, fished out twenty copper pieces, and dropped them into the matron’s arms.
“Here you go,” he said. “For her loaf, and a fresh one, if you please.” He smiled at her, careful to keep his teeth covered.
She stared at him, wide-eyed, before turning on her heel like she was in a trance and walking back towards the inn. Geralt kept his eyes fixed on her retreating back even as he listened closely to the way the humans around him lost some of their tension. Jaskier’s heartbeat, still rabbit fast underneath his hand, slowed with every breath he took, while the child was still whimpering and sobbing.
“I — I’ll go look how — the girl,” Jaskier said, his voice shaking with leftover adrenaline. Geralt nodded, eyes tracking the matron as she returned, the promised loaf of bread in her hand. It was smaller than the one Jaskier had purchased off her for their dinner, and slightly burned on one side, but it was fresh, without a trace of mould. In her other hand she had a familiar case and pack.
“Here,” she said, disgust in every line of her body as she thrust the loaf at Geralt. “I’m afraid your room was… otherwise occupied on short notice.” She dropped the case and pack at Geralt’s feet, and then turned without another word and left. Jaskier gasped at the mistreatment of his items, but didn’t protest out loud. What a wonder; a chatty bard who suddenly knew when to hold his tongue.
“Miri!” a woman’s voice came, and a moment later a gaunt and thin figure broke through the ranks of gawking spectators. “Oh Miri, what have you done?”
She sank to her knees next to Jaskier, reaching for the child, who threw herself into the woman’s arms, sobbing loudly now. It reeked of sadness and despair and disappointment, mingling with the odour of alghoul, and Geralt had to take shallow breaths to avoid most of the assault on his senses.
Jaskier looked up at him, and whatever he saw on Geralt’s face was enough to make him leave the child with the woman and come over to him. He gently took the loaf from Geralt’s hand. “Thank you, my dear Witcher,” he said, and the emotion in his voice was backed by his scent, clear cedarwood and lavender with only the mildest undertone of pepper. Geralt took a deep breath and let it fortify him. “Go turn in your monster; I don’t think we’ll be welcome here tonight.”
Geralt nodded, silent, and reached back into his pouch. “For the mother,” he said, and dropped ten or so crowns into Jaskier’s hand. Jaskier’s eyes shone dangerously in the moonlit night, and Geralt turned back towards Roach before Jaskier could voice whatever theatrical drivel his mind was coming up with.
He handed in the alghoul head to the alderman, collected the reward — fully, without even having to convince the man — and accepted the bundle the alderman’s wife pressed into his hands. “Old Rosy can be quite temperamental. But you were so kind, so please, share this with your companion.”
The bundle smelled of hard cheese and sausage and bread, and Geralt took it when it became clear that the woman would otherwise let it fall to the floor. “It would be kinder to look after the mother and child.”
Grief was clear in the woman’s face and scent. “It’s been hard, what with old Terrance — her husband — having… fallen to the alghoul. We’ve been trying, but dear Dana was so convinced she could make it on her own. But you’re right, we’ve been abysmal.” She was wringing her hands, and as far as he could determine, her anguish was genuine. She turned to her husband. “Gerret, I’m gonna go and ask poor Dana and little Miriam to share our supper tonight.”
The alderman didn’t look happy, but he agreed easily enough, and Geralt felt something strange well up in his chest.
“Now, come, don’t keep your young man waiting,” the wife said, and ushered him out of the house. It was a testament to the roiling emotions in his chest that he didn’t even protest her wording.
Leaving the village went surprisingly smoothly; the matron collected the mother and her child, bustling them back the way they’d come from, while Geralt collected Jaskier and Roach, continuing onwards until they left the village behind.
“What’s that?” Jaskier asked after a while, much longer than Geralt had expected him to accept the silence.
“Supper,” he said, curtly. Jaskier’s happiness washed over him like a wave, and it steadied something within Geralt that had been unsettled ever since he’d been greeted by shouts after his hunt.
“I’d been sure they were condemning you,” he said, in the middle of Jaskier babbling about something inconsequential Geralt had been half-listening to. Jaskier made an attentive noise and didn’t pick his monologue back up. “Came back to shouts of thievery. I was sure your magpie tendencies had gotten you in trouble. Seems like I was wrong.”
Jaskier shifted, suspiciously silent next to him.
The silence stretched between them for several heartbeats — Geralt’s heartbeats, at that.
“Jaskier,” he said finally, aiming for scolding but landing somewhere between exasperation and fondness.
“It’s not like they caught me,” Jaskier said defensively. “And she was such a horrid woman!” He was back to fuming, suddenly, but with less acute heat behind it. “I swear, this poor child — and did you see her mother? I don’t understand these people! And —” Geralt sighed, patting Roach as Jaskier gave in to a rant that had clearly been building since they left the village.
He watched Jaskier out of the corner of his eye, talking animatedly and gesturing wildly, and felt even more fondness wash over him. It suited him, this much emotion, this aftermath of a confrontation resolved happily.
And even Geralt couldn’t deny that the cereals Jaskier had nicked, prepared as porridge and seasoned with some leftover sugar and the last of the cinnamon Jaskier had indulged in several towns ago for some inane reason, tasted delicious together with the supper the alderman’s wife had given them.
4.
“Jaskier,” Geralt growled in warning as he dragged the man in question along after him, before his displeasure could grow to actual kicking and punching. Jaskier’s anger, pepper sharp and once again on behalf of Geralt, was almost enough to drown out the fear-hate-resentment oozing from the townsfolk. “Don’t you dare let your fingers wander.”
Jaskier scoffed, even as he stumbled along with Geralt. “They don’t even deserve you,” he hissed, trembling under Geralt’s firm hand in his impotent rage. Geralt seriously considered picking him up and throwing him over his shoulders, both to quicken their escape before the rotten vegetables came out and to prevent Jaskier from worsening their situation with his foible for nicking grains from unhappy townsfolk.
But Jaskier made no move to break away, keeping pace with Geralt well enough that Geralt migrated his hand from the back of his doublet to his arm. It certainly lessened the stumbling.
For a serial thief who had not yet passed up even a single instance of taking a handful or two of grains of some sort from a town who had disappointed him — and his metrics seemed rather… loose, in that regard — Jaskier was surprisingly docile as he followed Geralt. It was almost suspicious, if Geralt weren’t too busy trying to untie Roach without letting go of Jaskier’s hands.
“Here, let me—” Jaskier said, shouldering Geralt out of the way. It, of course, only worked because Geralt let himself be shouldered out of the way, but that was neither here nor there, was it? The salient point was that Jaskier managed to undo the knot in Roach’s reins with minimal delay, and then he was dragging her and Geralt along, to where the men guarding the town gate were watching them, clearly unimpressed.
“It’s been a great day, so nice to meet you,” Jaskier gasped as they ran for the safety of the open road — and oh, wasn’t that ironic? — showing a smile that was all teeth to the guards. The guards grumbled, their armour clanking, but they didn’t give chase, and neither did anyone else from the town. Small mercies.
They rounded a bend and finally slowed. Geralt’s pulse was mildly elevated, but he could hear Jaskier’s heart thundering in his chest, heat and sweat rolling off him in waves.
“What the fuck is wrong with people?” Jaskier asked once he had his breath back under control.
Geralt grimaced. “Some towns just are like that. You should be used to that by now.”
Jaskier’s eyes blazed and he took a step towards Geralt that almost bordered on menacing. Only almost, because Jaskier, with his hair plastered to his forehead with sweat, looked scarcely older than when Geralt had first picked him up a couple of years ago, baby-faced and harmless. Didn’t humans usually age a lot faster when they were this young?
“That doesn’t mean it’s okay!”
Geralt scoffed, thinking back to the town he’d been chased out of on his way to meeting up with Jaskier this year. If Jaskier thought this was bad, then Geralt was glad he hadn’t been with him for that cluster fuck. It had taken him over an hour in an icy spring stream to get the stench out of his hair. But Jaskier tended to get … irrationally upset, still, at the way Geralt was treated by humans, and it seemed safer not to mention how much worse it was whenever Geralt was travelling on his own, without Jaskier there to soften the townsfolk for Geralt. Surely the bard knew how much he’d influenced public opinion.
“You may scoff, but I swear, I will make them see.” Jaskier’s eyes were still so intent, so fired up that Geralt had trouble meeting them.
“I have no doubt,” he said, and turned to Roach, because that was safer.
Jaskier huffed a laugh, the fight draining out of him. “I think there is little you do not doubt about me.” It was said lightly, but there was an edge to it that Geralt wasn’t sure what to do with. There were many things he did not doubt with Jaskier: that under normal circumstances, he would never shut up, that he would stick with Geralt beyond what a sane human should endure, that he would try to coax out the softness in Geralt he’d gone to such great lengths to bury, that he was inconvenient in both his presence and absence. It seemed cruel, though, to say those things, when he wasn’t sure he could articulate that it wasn’t meant negatively.
“Hm,” Geralt said, instead, and Jaskier laughed, all traces of the edge in his voice gone. He smelled of cedarwood and lavender, the pepper-sharpness of his anger a faded remnant.
“Be that as it may,” Jaskier said, and smirked. It was a dangerous little thing, this smirk; not as terrible as Jaskier’s smile with nothing but teeth, but up there. An omen of things to come that would grate on Geralt’s nerves. “I think I have a mighty need for some cereal.”
And before Geralt could say anything, really, Jaskier had veered off into the field, and suddenly Geralt understood why Jaskier had followed him so willingly. The first crops of the season, summer-sweet wheat, were ripe for reaping, and Jaskier returned several long minutes later having done exactly that, his pockets bulging visibly.
“You know they won’t even notice it gone,” Geralt said, refusing to think about why he hadn’t simply left Jaskier to his thievery and moved on.
Jaskier tsked. “It’s not about that,” he said, even as he carefully held out a handful of additional grains for Roach. “It’s about the principle of the thing.”
Roach, the traitor, didn’t even try to nip at him, gobbling up the grains with quick and soft lips. Jaskier was unreasonably delighted by that, even after almost a year since his sharing his spoils with Roach had finally endeared him to the horse.
“Sure,” Geralt said, and Jaskier laughed, freely and happily, and fell into step beside Geralt like this was all he wanted from life: pockets full of stolen cereals and a grouchy Witcher with his horse by his side.
5.
There were many things that could be said about Jaskier — on par with the inanities he uttered even in a single day — but, above all, he honoured his promises. He’d promised Geralt, all those years ago, that he’d make people see, and with every performance, every song that spread beyond his hands and voice, every town he charmed, he chipped away at the hostility.
It made Geralt feel warm, when he thought about it — as long as he didn’t think about Jaskier’s vengeance when people refused to be swayed by them. Then, his fingers would still wander; never in towns that were too poor to afford the full price for a witcher’s services, never in villages where they could barely afford to feed the two of them for the night. But if a duke or count or city council member suddenly didn’t have the promised reward? If a town chased them out before they could bed down for the night? If a tavern didn’t want to sully their business with a Witcher, nevermind that he was in the company of one of the most renowned bards of the Continent? Then, all bets were off, and it did not make Geralt feel warm. Definitely not. If anything, it burned underneath his skin, an itch he scarcely knew how to scratch, a hunger that had nothing to do with food.
As much as he wanted to deny it, as much as he tried to push it down, there was something heady and intoxicating in the way Jaskier, with little regard for his own safety, would defend Geralt.
“I should have burned down their entire grain stores,” the man in question muttered beside him, mostly to himself. “Fucking assholes, deserve to starve.” The pepper in his scent hadn’t faded, mingling nauseatingly with the reek of sex and dulled satisfaction. Grains filled Jaskier’s pants, like so often, and there was a suspicious rattling coming from his lute case that Geralt carefully did not think about.
Geralt raised an eyebrow at him. “I thought you used your time to tumble that girl,” he said, and his voice was gratifyingly steady. Jaskier had disappeared with the waitress’s daughter for an hour or so, while Geralt was still hoping the evening could be salvaged.
The satisfaction brightened in Jaskier’s scent, and Geralt had to swallow around an ugly feeling in the back of his throat. “I mean, I did do that,” Jaskier said, giving Geralt a cocky grin. He got the urge, suddenly, to pull Jaskier against his side until he stopped smelling of some random village girl and went back to smelling like himself, and maybe a little like Geralt. It was almost overwhelming in its intensity, and Geralt counted it as a blessing that he was sitting atop Roach, which put Jaskier well out of reach. “But I may also have used the time — and dear Melissa’s help — to… let some little friends loose in the grain storage.” His grin turned into the vicious, all-teeth thing that had no business looking so attractive on his face.
“Hm,” Geralt said, for lack of something more fitting.
Jaskier’s face softened. “Geralt,” he said, and his hand was suddenly on Geralt’s knee without him breaking his stride. “You must know that I would burn the whole world down for you if I thought it would help.” There was no trace of jest in his voice, just calm earnestness in every line of his body.
Geralt had to swallow again, but this time the feeling wasn’t ugly. It was just. Big. Too big, maybe. “I don’t think that would help,” he said, his voice hoarse.
Jaskier laughed, sudden and bright. “Of course it wouldn’t. But a man can dream, can he not?”
“You vicious, vicious bard,” Geralt said, and Jaskier laughed again.
“Just for you,” he promised, and it did things to Geralt’s stomach. “And don’t even deny it, I know you love me for it.”
It hit Geralt like a kick to the chest. Love. The word seemed to ignite that itch under his skin, made it spread through his veins like wildfire. Love. Jaskier, damn his chatty mouth, had hit the nail on the head of something Geralt had been — maybe wilfully — blind to for too long. He loved him. Loved that damn annoying bard, who was still smiling at him, unaware of the turmoil he’d caused in Geralt’s head.
“Whatever helps you sleep at night,” Geralt managed, before the silence turned into awkwardness. His voice came out gruff, but not abnormally so, or at least Jaskier gave no sign that anything was off.
“Of course,” he said, the grin still obvious in his tone, and then dropped his hand from Geralt’s knee. He tried not to feel bereft. Jaskier was a sight to behold, besides him. He had a jaunty spring to his step, humming Toss a Coin under his breath.
“In any case,” he said, after a while, “Roach will eat like a queen tonight.”
Geralt snorted, that absurd fondness spreading through him again. Part of him was still stuck on the fact that, somehow and against his better judgement, he’d fallen in love with his companion. He examined the feeling for a long moment, letting Jaskier’s voice wash over him. It was nice, in a way; comfortable. Like it had taken up residence in his chest a while ago. But it came with a bitter aftertaste, too.
He knew Jaskier. Jaskier lost his heart, at least a little, with every single person he met. Maybe he’d done the same back when he’d met Geralt for the first time. But that had been years and years ago, and Geralt had little patience for lying to himself. If Jaskier had fallen in love with Geralt, back then, there was no way he still felt the same way now, and Geralt would surely have noticed his affections — wouldn’t he? So he savoured that feeling for a long moment, before burying it inside himself, deep down where it barely brushed against his conscious mind. He had some experience, burying feelings, and it seemed like it would come in handy now.