Chapter Text
“You were right,” says the healer. “He’s definitely been cursed.”
She and Geralt look through the doorway and into the next room, where Jaskier is entertaining the healer’s children by singing them an improvised song about which animals fart and which don’t. Jaskier sees them looking, smiles, and blows Geralt a kiss.
Geralt looks back at the healer. “Hmm,” he says.
“I can’t lift it, I’m afraid – that’s beyond my skills – but I’m reasonably sure it’ll wear off in a day or two. You should see the mark begin to fade. It’s the kind of curse that’s intense while it lasts, but burns out quickly.”
Like all of Jaskier’s relationships, Geralt thinks. “And his…delusions?” he asks.
The healer looks embarrassed on Geralt’s behalf. “It would be safer to go along with them, since it’s probably only for a few days. As much as you’re comfortable, I mean. His mind may be in a fragile state.”
The healer’s children shriek with laughter, and Geralt winces.
“If possible,” the healer continues, “you should stay in town and rest, let it work its way out. If he’s still confused in a few days, come back.”
Jaskier walks into the room at this moment. “Confused about what?” he asks, ducking under Geralt’s arm, pressing himself to Geralt’s side, and placing one warm hand on Geralt’s right pectoral, which he squeezes slightly.
And this is how Geralt ends up spending a day or two in a small town with a cursed bard who believes they’re not only in love, but married.
*
When they arrive at the town’s only inn, it occurs to Geralt that the process of getting a room could be risky. Usually, he’d take Roach to the stables while Jaskier secured the room: after all, innkeepers tend to be more hospitable to pretty bards than they are to scarred witchers, and when it comes to stablemasters, the reverse is often true. But today, he’s not letting his ‘husband’ out of sight. He can’t have Jaskier announcing their marital devotion to the entire inn, after all. Even if it were real, Geralt would want to keep such a thing private.
But it is not, of course, real. Not that Geralt hasn’t thought about it. Not that Geralt hasn’t been secretly in love with his bard for some time now. But while Jaskier used to flirt with him shamelessly in the early part of their acquaintance, back when Geralt found him too young and ridiculous and annoying to be desirable, the bard hasn’t so much as winked salaciously at him for years. It’s perfectly clear to Geralt that Jaskier, who would once have been all for taking a tumble with a witcher, now sees him only as a payday and a travel companion. Or, as Jaskier would put it, as a ‘muse’ and a ‘friend.’
Until this morning, that is, when they met up, as arranged, at a convenient crossroads outside Rinde. They’d only been apart a few days. Geralt had needed supplies from a village Jaskier would rather avoid (“for reasons, Geralt, simply reasons!”); Jaskier had wanted to stay in Rinde, where he was guaranteed a paying audience. So Geralt had been to see his village herbalist (“No bard today, witcher?” she’d asked, and sniffed. “Probably just as well – the mayor’s been on the warpath since your visit last year”) and Jaskier had earned good coin in Rinde, and this morning they’d met up to keep travelling.
Geralt and Roach arrived at the pick-up spot first, of course, but Jaskier appeared not long after, looking deceptively wholesome in a cornflower blue doublet that matched his eyes. He’d practically thrown himself into Geralt’s arms, cried “how I’ve missed your grumpy face!”, and tried to kiss him.
While freezing with surprise, then contemplating violence, then gently prising the bard off – but gods, his lips were warm and soft – Geralt took note of the surprising fact that Jaskier smelled…well, he smelled chaste. He hadn’t fucked anyone in the past few days. Which would already have been surprising, even without the bard’s sudden tenderness. Even if the bard weren’t looking between Geralt’s mouth and his eyes with an expression of hurt confusion on his previously delighted face.
“What’s wrong?” Jaskier had asked, lifting one hand to Geralt’s cheek. Which is when Geralt spotted the edge of the spiral mark peeking out from beneath the sleeve of Jaskier’s doublet. Which is when the kiss and the caresses began to make sense: the bard had, once again, been cursed.
So here they are, in this little market town on the banks of the Ismina, because Geralt thought Jaskier should see a healer, even though the bard insisted that he felt fine. And Geralt is in a bad mood, because he’d planned to spend the next week or so on the road in a push for Mirthe, which is rumoured to have a griffin problem. And his bad mood isn’t helped by the fact that Jaskier spent the first half of the day being handsy and affectionate, and the second half being sulky because Geralt refused a blow job by a picturesque stream while they were stopped for lunch.
In reality, there’s nothing he’d like more than a blow job from Jaskier by a picturesque stream while they were stopped for lunch. But not like this. Not without Jaskier having any choice in the matter.
“Very well,” Jaskier had said, sounding every inch the haughty viscount. “But this is not at all what I expected marriage to my best friend and the love of my life to be like.”
Which is how Geralt discovered that Jaskier doesn’t merely believe them to be in a sexual relationship: he believes they’re in love. He believes they’re married.
Hence, insisting Jaskier come to the stables with him, rather than go ahead into the inn to secure a room “for me and my husband”.
Jaskier doesn’t seem to mind being told to “stay put” while Geralt untacks and grooms Roach. He sits on a haybale and chatters about the former lover he bumped into and then declined to sleep with last night. He talks a great deal about her breasts, which are apparently freckled, and almost preternaturally high and full; he muses on whether or not her sorceress sister enchanted them for her (“Such buoyancy, Geralt! You’ve never seen anything like it!”). Then he recalls a long, tearful post-coital conversation in which she admitted to wanting to be an actress, which of course her husband would never allow. And then he returns to the subject of her breasts and sings a little ditty about them, expanding on earlier themes.
“So why didn’t you fuck her?” Geralt asks, relieved that sounding grumpy is such a natural state for him that Jaskier won’t think anything of this particular manifestation of it, least of all that Geralt is jealous.
Jaskier looks shocked. “Why? Why would I fuck her, Geralt, when I can fuck you?”
At which Roach snickers. Geralt lays his head against her flank for a moment, willing both his temper and his cock to remain dormant. There’s no possibility, of course, that Jaskier rejected this woman because he wanted to fuck Geralt, since a) Geralt wasn’t there to fuck and b) they’ve never fucked before, nor have either of them ever indicated that such a thing might be on the table (gods, imagine fucking Jaskier on a table…). But Geralt would really like to know the real reason Jaskier turned this woman down – or at least, the reason the bard gave her – because he’s almost certain she’s responsible for the curse. Probably via her sorceress sister.
It’s happened before: Jaskier cursed by a past lover to experience for himself the ache of unrequited love. Once, memorably, for a donkey, who was impervious to all the bard’s serenades and compliments, and shat on his favourite pair of boots. The irony of today’s particular curse is that Jaskier’s ‘love’ isn’t actually unrequited. Presumably, though, Lady Freckletits and her sister thought it would be funny to see Jaskier scorned and rejected by the stoic, emotionless witcher he insists on following around.
Ha fucking ha.
“You,” Jaskier says, surprising Geralt by being suddenly behind him and giving him a light slap on the arse, “look sour enough to sweeten arachas venom. Let’s go in and take a nap, hmm?” He runs his hands up Geralt’s back and begins to massage his neck muscles. Which feels fucking incredible. “We’ll nap and then we’ll eat and I’ll perform. And afterwards…”
One hand has suddenly slipped beneath an armpit and is on its way down Geralt’s torso, clearly intent on arriving between his legs. Geralt actually ducks beneath Roach and pops up on the other side in order to prevent this unfolding catastrophe.
“That was unexpectedly slapstick of you,” Jaskier observes, looking a little bemused but also slightly hurt. “Don’t you think, Roach?”
Geralt clears his throat and makes his way out of the stall and toward the pile of their belongings on the stable floor. “The…ah…the healer said we should take things easy. Just until the curse passes. Best to keep you rested.”
Jaskier crosses his arms. “Do you want to know what I think of this curse business?”
“No,” Geralt says.
“There is no curse. It doesn’t exist.”
Geralt shoulders both of their packs and scoops up a number of subsidiary objects – most of them Jaskier’s. “You’ve got the indelible image of a black spiral on your forearm, Jask, that says otherwise.”
Jaskier pushes up the left-hand sleeve of the blue doublet he’s wearing and inspects the spiral. “Or,” he says, “I simply fell in love with a sailor, took a quick trip to Skellige, got an uncharacteristically minimalist tattoo, and then forgot all about it?”
Geralt walks out of the stables, leaving Jaskier to grab his lute and catch up.
Crossing the inn courtyard, Jaskier says (in a blessedly low voice), “But seriously, darling, what kind of curse has absolutely no effect on its victim? The mark is my only symptom. I don’t feel any different. I’m just the same selfish, pompous brute I was this time last week. Not to mention just as madly in love with you. In fact, I’m possibly more in love with you than I was last week, which surely isn’t possible, since the love I felt for you last week wasn’t deficient in any way. Maybe that’s the curse? In which case, I don’t want to break it.”
Geralt stops in front of the inn door and looks down at his bard, aware that he’s frowning. Jaskier looks back up at him with merry eyes and a smile that hovers between insufferably smug and insufferably sincere. There’s a hint of apprehension behind it, though; a hint that only Geralt would notice.
“Hmm,” Geralt says. “Let me do the talking.” And he pushes open the inn door.
Jaskier does not, however, let Geralt do the talking. The bard takes one look at the innkeeper – the kind of smart, energetic middle-aged woman who wouldn’t mind if one of her sons had turned out exactly like Jaskier – and lays on the charm. But he’s discreet, Geralt notices, offering his bardic services in exchange for a room for “me and my companion”. If part of Geralt is disappointed not to be referred to as “my husband”, as he was at the healer’s, it’s a part he’s not currently on speaking terms with.
The innkeeper drives a smart, energetic bargain and they end up with a room for half price, free food, and two free drinks each for every night Jaskier performs. She’s amenable to them staying for at least two nights, and even offers Geralt some work splitting wood for the coming winter. Jaskier’s final negotiation involves the free use of a bathtub so long as they haul and heat the water themselves, which he insists is no trouble at all (no trouble for him, maybe, since he’s not the one who’ll be doing any of said hauling and heating).
As they walk up the stairs and into their room – clean and simple, with a sloped roof, low beams, a fireplace, one stingily double bed, two chairs and a table, and a view of a vegetable garden – Geralt reflects that getting the room hadn’t been as agonizing as he’d expected.
Being alone in an enclosed space with Jaskier is, however, fairly agonizing. And it’s only the late afternoon, which means that Jaskier is fully dressed, sober, hungry, moderately grubby, and in need of a nap. So the fact that being alone with him now is agony doesn’t bode well for later on, when Jaskier will be clean, tipsy, high on performing, half naked, and in the bed beside him, absolutely convinced that they’re married.
The first thing the bard does, of course, is to flop face first onto the bed, his arms spread out and the delicious swell of his rear extremely prominent. He wriggles a little in satisfaction, and Geralt has to look away.
Jaskier, face still smothered by the blankets, says something that sounds like an invitation to join him in bed. Geralt ignores it, choosing instead to begin unpacking his potions bag onto the room’s table. He may as well take advantage of a few quiet days to make use of the ingredients he just bought from the village herbalist, after all.
He hears Jaskier roll over and kick off his boots. “Come to bed, darling,” the bard repeats, and Geralt clenches his jaw at the endearment, which Jaskier only uses with people he has fucked, is currently fucking, or is planning to fuck. He does sometimes call Geralt ‘dear’, a term he otherwise uses only with children – not a promising sign.
“Just for a nap,” Jaskier says, his tone warm and wheedling. “The healer can’t possibly object to two husbands taking a completely innocent nap together.”
Geralt says, “I’m making potions.”
“Make them later. I’ll be busy later, and you can stink up the room to your heart’s content. For now, I need to rest my voice and sleep off these dark eye circles. And I’d quite like to do it in the warm embrace of your frankly colossal arms.”
“What dark circles?” Geralt asks, turning to look. There are faint blueish shadows beneath Jaskier’s eyes, a sure sign that he’s had a bad night’s sleep. Why hadn’t Geralt noticed before? Because, he supposes, he’s spent the day trying not to look at Jaskier, just in case the bard blows him another kiss.
Jaskier, who’s sitting up now, shrugs before stripping off his doublet and throwing it over the chair beside the bed. He leans back to sit against the headboard. The sleeves of his chemise are pushed up, revealing the curse mark.
“Missed you last night,” he says, and sighs. “You know I only really sleep well if you’re with me. It was a revelation, that first night we shared a bedroll. Remember the snowstorm? I’d never slept better in all my life.”
Was that true? They had first shared a bedroll because of a snowstorm. Jaskier had lain quietly in Geralt’s arms while the fire jumped and the storm raged outside their sheltered cave. Geralt hadn’t slept at all. He’d stayed awake all night, watching over the fire, watching over his bard, listening to the steady beating of Jaskier’s heart and inhaling his warm, summery scent. That had been a significant night for Geralt: afterwards, he could no longer ignore his feelings for this absurdly beautiful and idiotically brave human. Maybe it had been significant for Jaskier, too?
No. Ridiculous
“Look!” Jaskier cries, holding his arm out toward Geralt. “It’s started to fade.”
Geralt stands up and goes to sit beside Jaskier on the bed. He holds the bard’s arm in both of his hands and inspects the mark. It is fading: the outward point of the spiral is now less defined than the rest of it, as if it’s beginning to dissolve.
“Do you feel any different?” Geralt asks, looking up. Their faces are very close together, and Geralt can’t help glancing at that lovely mouth. He has some idea of how it tastes, now.
“No,” Jaskier says. “But I told you, I never have.”
Geralt drops his arm. “You wouldn’t know,” he says, standing up and going to his pack.
“Because I’m cursed?” Jaskier asks, and Geralt grunts. “That’s not necessarily true. I know what it’s like, darling. You know I’ve been cursed before.”
“Don’t remind me,” Geralt grumbles. He pulls a ball of twine and a jar from his pack and returns to the bed.
Jaskier is studying the mark. “Yes, yes,” he says, “I’m tremendously curseable, apparently. The point is, there were times I knew I was cursed. I just couldn’t help doing the things I did. You don’t think that donkey didn’t horrify me? Thank fuck it didn’t let me anywhere near it.”
He shudders.
“The point is, I don’t feel that way now. Everything I’m doing and saying and thinking – I feel entirely myself. What are you doing? What is that?”
Geralt has opened the jar and is now smoothing a sticky substance over Jaskier’s mark. “It’s an adhesive paste,” he says. “I use it to hold wounds together if they’re awkward to stitch.”
“Ew,” says Jaskier, but he doesn’t pull his arm away.
Geralt is enjoying the feeling of rubbing Jaskier’s arm too much. He stops. “It’ll wash off,” he says. Now he unravels some of the ball of twine and starts to guide the string along the spiral, beginning with its very centre. The twine sticks to the skin, exactly as Geralt hoped it would.
“You’re measuring the mark,” Jaskier says. “So we can assess the speed at which it’s fading. And that way we’ll know when to expect it to be gone.”
Geralt nods, his head still bent over Jaskier’s arm.
“How clever you are,” Jaskier says, then leans down and kisses the top of Geralt’s head. Geralt is quite proud of the fact that he doesn’t startle.
The act of winding the twine along the spiral and pressing it into Jaskier’s skin feels, it turns out, more intimate than Geralt expected. Jaskier’s arm is resting along Geralt’s thigh, his hand dangerously close to Geralt’s groin. Their heads are so close that he can feel Jaskier’s breath on his forehead. The soft skin of the bard’s inner forearm feels incredibly vulnerable. Geralt could break every bone in it before Jaskier had even blinked, but he won’t, and Jaskier knows he won’t. Jaskier trusts him entirely. The room is very quiet.
It's a relief to complete the spiral, pull out the dagger he keeps in his boot, and slice the twine – quick and clean – exactly at the point at which the spiral’s line has begun to fade. He stands up and takes the dagger, twine, and jar over to the table.
“Do I leave it on?” Jaskier asks.
“Up to you,” Geralt says. “We can keep it there to gauge the changes, cutting it as we go. Or we can do a new string every few hours, and judge it against the last one. Before you pull it off, though, I’d – ”
“Ow!”
“ – I’d get it wet, or you’ll take your arm hair with it,” Geralt concludes dryly.
“Mother of Melitele,” Jaskier mutters, rubbing his arm. “You couldn’t have mentioned that earlier?”
A knock at the door announces the arrival of the big wooden bathtub, which the inn’s servants set down in front of the fireplace along with two empty buckets. Once they’ve left – as quickly as humanly possible, Geralt notes – he takes the piece of string from Jaskier and tells him to take his nap. Alone.
“Where will you be?” Jaskier pouts, already shimmying down so that he’s lying flat on the bed. The movement of his hips is…distracting.
“I’ll fill the bath. Will that disturb you too much?”
“No…” Jaskier says, propping himself up on his side. He pats the bed. “Come here, Geralt, please.”
Geralt, who would rather not come here, comes here. He sits on the very edge of the bed, only half facing the bard.
“My darling,” says Jaskier, “I can see that something’s wrong. I know you’re worried about me. You’re being honest with me, aren’t you? Is there anything you’re not telling me?”
Geralt looks down and sees that Jaskier is picking at a bobble on the blanket. It’s the kind of fidgeting he does when he wants to touch someone but doesn’t feel he can.
Geralt doesn’t want to lie. But it could be dangerous to tell Jaskier the truth. He turns to fully face his bard and pushes gently on his shoulder until he’s lying flat on his back. Then he leans over and kisses the top of his head, very quickly, exactly as Jaskier had done earlier. He hopes Jaskier will forgive him, once all of this is over. The bard’s hair smells a little dirty and a little like rosemary. It’s perfect.
“Everything’s fine,” he says. “Sleep now. I’ll wake you when the bath is ready.”
He holds Jaskier’s eye for longer than is comfortable, but the bard seems to find that reassuring. He smiles a little and says “thank you, darling.”
Geralt stands and picks up the buckets. Just before he leaves the room, he hears Jaskier’s sleepy whisper: “I love you.”
When Geralt turns back to look, Jaskier’s eyes are already closed.