#chrysa writes

Chaos, he thinks, has never looked more serene.

In another place, at another time, it would be beautiful.

Now Yennefer meets his eyes from across the hall and a sudden jolt shakes her whole and she runs, gods, she runs to him with such helplessness and relief that he knows he will welcome the most bruising hug, if it means it will keep her afloat. There is a weeping beauty in sadness, but not for her eyes. Never for her eyes.

As she buries her head in his shoulder, he feels her heart digging a hole in his chest. He holds her tight.

"Thank the gods," she whispers, as though to herself, "thank the gods you're alive."

In another place, at another time, he would make a joke, perhaps about the feeling not being mutual, just to steal a smile and a banter from her lips.

But he has no heart for that now. Not even for that.

He only has a chain clenched tight around his heart and gutting his voice in shame every time he opens his mouth to speak. "Yennefer, I–"

At once, she looks at him. "No words." As though she knows what he would say, as though she knows all he hasn't done, and mourns him anyway. She shakes her head, eyes huge and dark and pleading. "You can't stay here, it's dangerous. You have to go. You have to find Geralt."

"Yennefer, Yen– I know." His fingers dig into her arms and he can't bear to loosen his hold, he can't bear to let her go. Not yet. He smiles, soft. Leans to search for her eyes, for just a moment of peace in their turbulent current. "I just wanted to see my darling witch."

Yennefer stares at him for a moment, shoulders tense. Then, she huffs a laugh. Her expression softens, almost crumbles.

He feels her hands shaking where she holds him and the corners of her lips tremble as though with all the unspoken screams of the sea trapped into a single shell, wailing and weeping and waiting to be heard. He only wishes he had time to put her heart to his ear.

Her voice is quivering as she speaks. "I don't know where Ciri is," she says and it sounds like the complaint of a mother and a child crushed into one, like the world's cruelest crime, the earth's deepest regret, choked in swallowed tears. "I don't know where she is, I don't–"

His voice echoes like a lost melody in the quiet forest and makes Yennefer stop. Her lips form a short smile.

Truth is, she thought it would be better. Seeing the last of him in a far away part of her memory, because this was no time for weakness, no time to let him steal all of the strings left that hold her facade together, and make her face what's underneath. But oh, how her knees give in, relieved.

How about this then, a weakness welcomed, waiting for her with open arms.

She turns around. "No use, I'm afraid. You always pop up in my way like a stubborn sprout."

This, except it's him, here, once again, somehow still standing, perhaps the only one.

Jaskier laughs. He laughs at their old quip, but it's nothing like the way he used to, no bite or sharpness or preparation for a comeback. It's only breathy and fond, and tired. He is tired. His eyes, bloodshot under the moonlight, awake and waiting for something that will always slip through his fingers. His shoulders slumped and untouched, a wailing space hollowed in their place, his hands hung and soft and gaping, empty.

She takes pity in them as he opens his arms.

It's the same old thing. Unchangeable among everything, it makes for wretched comfort. For she can feel his arms wrapped around her back before they actually reach her, and his face buried in her hair before she has the time to settle in his warmth, and hold him close, closer still as he clings, as though by clinging he will rip away a part of her and keep it still on him after she's gone.

She feels the lump choking his throat as she presses herself against him. His hand, on her hair. On her head. Shaking.

"My darling, darling witch."

This time his voice is no melody. No, it crawls, writhes, dies on her shoulder where his head is buried, sobbing and voiceless and wrecked, and yet still tender, like a broken heart.

She bites her lips in a smile and hopes to carve it upon his chest. She can't afford no more tears. "Pretentious, foolish bastard." Jaskier muffles a chuckle in her hair, and she takes just a few more moments, just to memorize the bruises his desperate fingers leave on her back. Then, she pulls back slowly, looks at him. "Take care of–"

"You know I will take care of him," he interrupts, solemn like a vow, undoubtable. As though he was offended just by her thought of requesting.

Yennefer stares at him for a few seconds, a fond, vexed look in her eyes. "Yourself," she says firmly and watches as Jaskier's expression falls at once, and his eyes suddenly gleam just a bit foggier than before. With a sigh, she holds his head between her hands and places a kiss on his forehead. "Take care of yourself."

Somehow, she knows he will.

Jaskier holds her wrists like he would hold an injured flower, and presses his lips just there, above her pulse. "You too. Be safe." Then, as though knowing she was never one to make promises, he ties her to himself. "For me."

A clever move. She doesn't say her ties are already laid elsewhere. He knows, he always did.

Only, with a smile, she nods.

A last caress on his cheek, a place to leave her weakness behind, and know it will be safe. One last admission of longing before they bury it in the ground. Then, they let their hands drop and she turns away without looking back.

Jaskier's face, buried into the crook of her neck, surfaces for a moment to look at her questioningly. Yennefer does not grant him a glance back. Only, her hand continues to stroke at his hair absentmindedly as she stares out the window, at the setting autumn sun.

He knows at once, of course. There are few things that torture him in his life, but few as they are, they leave little room for mercy.

He sighs. "Well," he mutters, somehow unwillingly, "it happens to be my full name."

Yennefer's eyebrows raise in amusement, the corners of her lips slightly twitching. He thinks of kissing them, the way he has done and will do, soon, but perhaps not now, for he has settled warmly in her arms and the curious scrunch of her nose is far too endearing from down here.

"Hm. You're a funny little thing..." Her fingers scratch playfully at his head and he feels himself blushing. Then, finally, she looks at him. Daring. "I want to hear it."

His heart drops to his stomach, just a little, and he suspects she feels its absence under her hand because she keeps on staring, waiting. Her eyes glint with unspoken thirst, gentle like that of a little kid discovering a shell buried underground.

A shell, maybe, of an old self. One that he shies away from now, before her. He shakes his head.

"Ah, it's not important." What's gotten into her now to unearth this, of all things? "It's ugly anyway."

Yennefer rolls her eyes, fond, insistent.

"Come, now," she prompts and her voice is oh, so soft that his heart almost crumbles back to its place, just to feel the sound vibrate on her skin. A cunning smile. "Do I not have the right to know my husband's name? I may even use it."

At once, he laughs. Silent, surrenderring, certain there is no escape and it's so unfair and so, so sweet, the way she forces his own hand to dig inside his chest.

His face returns to its hiding place into her neck.

"Julian," he says, a bitter taste. "Julian Alfred Pankratz."

She hums, satisfied. Now that she's seen it, the relic, she averts her eyes.

"Why use it, then?"

Jaskier muffles a chuckle against her skin, trapped. He considers not answering. But it's not like she will not know anyway. And maybe he has been alone in knowing for too long.

The images of another life flash before his eyes and he winces in distress.

"Perhaps," he swallows, shrugs, "it sounds more imposing." Fraudulent attention, false power, enough to feign importance. Reeking more than royal. He smiles. "At least, I thought so when they called me that. A bit scarier."

He thinks, the name of a flower is not always heavy enough to rock the ears, and this is why he chose it for himself. Only, perhaps other ears are more welcoming to what is heavy to the tongue.

Then, again, it didn't make much of a difference, did it?

Yennefer sighs, brows slightly furrowed as though pensive, working it in her mind. It's almost a relief, the lack of impression it's left on her.

"Julian..." she whispers after a while, not so much calling him by his name as feeling it on her tongue, letting it flood her mouth. His whole body shivers in her arms. Soft, light, like a feather's caress, she feels it, dusts it like she would a rare finding settled between her hands. She squints her eyes, picks apart every sound. "Julian, Julian..."

A lump is suddenly choking his throat, and he can't help but smile, let out a breath that has been weighting on his chest.

"Strange," he breathes, laughs. "It sounds beautiful when you say it. It sounds..."

"Important?" Yennefer smiles faintly and meets his gaze. He smiles back, grateful. Nods. "That's good," she shakes her head, lowers her look just a bit as a thought clouds her eyes. "It's good... to hear your name uttered like it's something precious."

Jaskier parts his lips to say something but forgets it at once. He stays there, still, staring at her face and the way the evening paints her eyes in a deep haze, and makes her look even softer than he could ever have imagined her. Glowing, like a gleaming stone. That's what it is, then.

He grins and sits up to look at her properly, to take her in.

"That's right, Yennefer of Vengerberg," he whispers, slow like a prayer, tender like a poem, and brushes her hair back, finds her eyes.

Then, he holds her face gently in his hands, and she leans into the touch to lay her own name between them in return. And he kisses, at last, the smiling corners of her lips.

Jaskier laughs as Geralt sits beside him on the pebbles and raises his eyebrows, not looking at him still. "Now you can tell the salt of tears from that of the sea too?"

A light hum. "Always could."

A red ray escapes the setting sun and hits the waves, making the tears in his eyes melt as they mirror it. He sniffles and wipes at the trails his previous crying had pathed on his cheeks, and puts on a brave smile. Not really a smile. A curve of lips, at least, because Geralt is here now, the warmth of his body resembling a lit hearth, and it's a kind of comfort. Always has been.

Except. Geralt is staring at him.

Geralt is waiting.

And it's nothing, it really is. Jaskier likes to convince himself it is trivial, because how else could he mend a broken heart, if not with lies. The truth just seems too far out of reach.

But maybe now he is tired. And maybe in another time he wouldn't talk about it, he would only smile wider but now Geralt's stare is so gentle, and his eyes so safe like the sun on a spring's day.

"I feel like I've been missing, you know," he says at last and looks at him straight, soft, because Geralt really does know. "On love. And it's been too long."

What Geralt doesn't know, perhaps, is the way his heart clenches inside his chest and curls on itself like a child punished in the corner. So he frowns. "You? Jaskier, you can have anyone you want. I've seen you." Then, a smile, almost fond. "You fall in love with everyone."

Everyone, everyone. Anyone. Anyone there is. Anyone who looks like maybe, maybe, they will stay, or he is just too careless at this point that he tries anyway. A heart that never has too much. He knows they won't stay. And he knows the one who will stays for a different reason. So, so close.

He smiles, bittersweet, and lowers his look. "Yes, indeed. Everyone." Everyone, she sent a letter today. Never to meet again, never to be seen. Jaskier shakes his head. "And me? Who of all them has fallen in love with me, Geralt?" As if to answer his question, a seabird cries along. The sea, too, a cruel mistress. His voice quivers. "I feel like a desperate dog chasing love, while running from it all the same."

With the corner of his eye he sees Geralt parting his lips and a fake hope blooms in his chest, fading at once when he holds back, and stays silent. And he can only bask in the imagined possibility of what he intended to say.

The tears are done with him now. Only numbness remains.

Eventually, Geralt speaks. "If it is any helpful, no one has ever been in love with me either." The lightness in his voice sounds exactly like the pained strings mending Jaskier’s heart.

But oh, what a foolish man. Jaskier can't help but smile and turn at him, and for a bit he remembers that lonely as it is, he can't stop loving. "Well, that's just not true. I'm in love with you."

As though he doesn't know, as though it's not as simple as it was uttered, Geralt flinches. Jaskier chuckles and averts his gaze again, a little happier than before. Love, it is simple. It's what he does.

Just not something that happens to him.

"Well, then," he hears after some moments, "that makes us even."

He laughs before he thinks. "It does?" And then.

His head spins at once, eyes wide as they meet Geralt's, almost afraid. No, not afraid. Unbelieving. It's been so long, you see. But Geralt only rolls his eyes, oh so fondly, and before Jaskier manages to splutter any words sweet lips are on his, and a hand holding his nape. And it's not like other times. Not like everyone else. It's certain and terrifying and deep like a promise, like two stray roots finding each other through the earth and keeping their living hearts bound forever. Like what he has been craving for so long he forgot he may one day have it. Like Geralt.

And then, as though to seal it, this promise, Geralt pulls back and looks at him like he always does and Jaskier wonders, wonders how this that he never caught stands right here, catching itself. Geralt smiles, voice soft as a feather. "I'm in love with you, Jaskier." And that's it. Simple as that.

His eyes are burning again and Jaskier can only nod, and smile back. And it's almost funny, almost tender how love happens to be so close, so close he can taste its kiss without even trying, just for once.

She feels Jaskier's soft breath on her stomach and shivers as his lips curve on her skin. He shoots her a questioning look as though he's too occupied tasting the night off her body to hear her. "Forget about what?"

A sigh.

She closes her eyes for a moment. Swallows the pain down to her heart. It doesn't matter. It's the last night. "This." A twitch of her lips, and she doesn't dare look at him now. Instead, she looks out the open window. "Us. These past months."

At once, Jaskier stops paying all his attention to the poems he is stroking and looks at her, a frown between his eyebrows. He lays his head on her belly, and it's so warm, so heavy with tenderness. What will she do with all this tenderness, all this poetry?

His voice sounds a little hurt as he speaks. "How can I?" Before his certainty has time to echo, Yennefer's tongue turns again to blade, and she laughs.

"You're lying."

"Yennefer..."

"Don't."

Her body is tense under his head, his touch, but he doesn't move, as though insisting on the softness. And his eyes, huge and staring and, oh, the complaint. Did she already forget about the softness?

She keeps her lips from quivering, her voice from trembling. Shakes her head as though pleading. "You don't fool me, bard. We aren't in the keep anymore. You're leaving tomorrow." His hand is lying between her breasts, and she tries to rebuild the wall they had so desperately wrecked. "You will be sleeping around again. Never staying afterwards."

Jaskier is almost out of breath now, out of words, and until now she had never taken pride in stealing his voice with pain, only with pleasure. Something wet on her skin. His lashes brushing against it, she realises. But he can't speak. Not to say anything of importance, at least.

He knows she is right.

And yet he doesn't seem to admit it. A silent chuckle. "You know a thing or two about leaving, don't you?"

He means it as an insult. Still, Yennefer smiles and looks him in the eye, deadly. "As well as you do, bardling, yes."

"Why wouldn't I stay?"

"Because you can't." He parts his lips to speak again, but suddenly, oh, she is so tired. She lets herself slump and lets him look, and the sharpness in her voice breaks. He knows how it's supposed to go. There is no point in arguing over it. "Because I can't. I have somewhere else to be right now." Then, a whisper, a plea. "You know that."

Slowly, she threads her fingers through his hair, and as though she pulls loose a thread, he lets out a breath and closes his eyes. The line between his eyebrows now runs deeper. "I know."

He catches her hand and places a kiss on the inside of her wrist. Then he crawls up to her, up to her lips, like a worshipper who thinks he is forsaken by his god, while he himself has forsaken his faith. He kisses her.

He kisses her.

Then, he hides his face in the curve of her neck and breathes her in. "Can a heart forget a love?"

Can you pass by an empty room without remembering the time it used to be full of life? Does absence grieve for its present or its past?

A sigh, broken. "If it can't afford otherwise."

She feels his smile against her skin, his muffled voice. "You don't really believe that."

The breeze blows in the room, and the curtain shivers like an awakened ghost.

They couldn't even if they wanted. Not after everything, standing before nothing, their sides digged up and empty and lost and all that remains close being each other, crumbled and less than half of themselves, trying to form something less than a whole.

But Jaskier insisted, faint as it sounded, because she was stumbling on her feet and her shoulders were dragged by the earth and her eyes hadn't gone a second without flooding throughout the day. So much that he knew he had to save some of his tears to give her, in case hers ever dried up. Not letting her hurt bereft of tears, at least he could give her that.

The bed is fit for two whole people. Broken, hidden from her, a smile.

They won't sleep tonight.

They will say it's only for a few moments of rest, if rest could ever be so agonizing. They will say it's no use to roam the continent now, in the dark of the night, holding themselves from collapsing onto each other only for the sake of the names constantly hanging from their lips, now by so weak a string they almost let them drop. They will say it's only for rest.

And this is what it is.

This, and also the way he takes off his coat and his vest and suddenly his shoulders appear so shrunk under the worn-out shirt that she rests her hands on them without thinking, because they look like hurting. She caresses more than rubs them, and hopes it's enough. It's love, she won't say. It should be enough.

This, and also his hands coming up to unlace her shirt and help her peel it off her body, and then her skirt, and then, she stands still in her undergarment, and waits for him to also strip to his shirt. And then they face each other, hands on their sides, tired and empty, and they stare.

He affords a smile, faint. She smiles back. It's all they can afford.

This, as they slip under the thin blanket and they haven't done it for quite a while, but it feels so familiar now, like slipping back into their older broken molds, only they don't fit quite right anymore. This is a different kind of broken.

How gentle, then, how kind, to crumble again together.

His arms are open, forever open and waiting, and she thinks none of it as she crawls inside and wraps her body around his, clings tight and brusing. He happily welcomes the bruising. It's proof she's still here.

Her nose nuzzles into his shoulder and he buries his face in her hair, and breathes in the ashes and the exhaustion and the pain and the lilac and everything that makes her. Deep breaths, nonstopping. So that he memorizes the scent.

He only pulls back just a little, just to take a look at her eyes. Swollen and cut and bloodshot, and he suspects his are not much different as they're mirrored. But there's comfort, too. There, pooling between the crinkles along with the tears, carved between her eyebrows.

At least, at least.

He knows he's not much. At least, just enough. Enough to find the faint wave of hope between the flood of her eyes. Enough to mold a little dimple on her cheek where his thumb strokes, and make her eyes flutter close.

Less than whole. But holding her, just enough.

They will not sleep tonight.

Only, in a moment of despair, similar to so many other moments, she will kiss his lips. And he, he will kiss her too. Softly, barely there, for reassurance. He will kiss her lips, and then he will kiss the side of her neck. And then her shoulder, bare and slumped, and she will cling tighter on him because she has to cling somewhere, even just for a little bit. Just for tonight.

Only, in a moment of love, similar to so many other moments, she will bare her lungs in sighs and he will find shelter there, inside her as though to replace the lost warmth, or try to.

Alright, everything will be alright. I love you, everything will be alright.

Just for tonight, just for their lips to whisper each other's names too, the ones they so discreetly cover up in daylight. As though they could ever hide.

They will not sleep.

Not tonight, not for many other nights afterwards.

Instead, he will place one last kiss on her lips, and then rest into the crook of her neck, as she rests into his chest, and the gaping holes by their sides may prevent it from being whole, but for now, it's just enough.

It could never be more than that, anyway.

And if the lullaby he mutters and the soft vibration of his chest makes her eyes droop after a while, she will never admit it. If her lips tremble on his skin moments before her lashes do, to slowly fade his voice in a dreamless sleep, later, he will speak none of it.

Later, they will say they did not sleep that night.

On need and want, and the failures of sight.

2.1k, T, angst [ao3]

A flick of fingers.

Jaskier has not taken more than two steps outside the shed, just enough to feel the absence of Radovid’s hungry stare, when he freezes. It’s not the sound, not that alone. No, the way his knees suddenly go numb is because he knows what follows just a little too well, and that he catches with the corner of his eye, still hidden behind the corner, and a sudden sob gets caught in his throat. A flame. A flick of flame.

“Is there another way?”

Lips still fervent, touch still burning. Somehow he has managed to count the lashes of his eyes one by one, golden under the moonlight as is fit for a prince, and leans to kiss them. “What do you mean?”

“For this. For us.” A complaint. As though he doesn’t know already. “Maybe you could come with me.”

A laugh. “In court? Right. We can stroll in the throne room and duet on Song of the Seven.” The prince has no time to answer, for his lips are captured again in a kiss. Mostly to savour, mostly because of the knowledge that looms over their heads that there is no time for savouring. Mostly that, but also because he can’t bear seeing the look in his eyes, that of a hidden truth, of a grief he is not ready to admit to himself.

He doesn’t admit it. Not yet.

His first instinct is to run, and only after he has stepped back on shaking feet and hidden in the shed does he remember to curse his cowardice. Ciri. He has to get to Ciri.

Yet the screaming in his mind has a different voice, one he has not managed to forget even after all this time, one that makes him wince with an invisible pain, that paralyzes his legs and weighs down on his chest like a rock, cutting his breath. A voice then, behind him.

“Jaskier?"

And how foreign the name suddenly sounds on his lips, how distorted.

Fighting to regain his voice, he turns at him. Stutters. “He’s here. Rience.” And then he meets his eyes. And then, the shreds of his heart cutting bloody through his chest, he admits it. “Oh. But you knew that already.”

It's only like this. Geralt, despite all, will never be alone and Jaskier, despite all, will stay.

for my dear @moonysrz i wish you the happiest of birthdays and all good things in life ♡ || 1.1k, G, emotional hurt/comfort [ao3]

Jaskier is lingering in front of the room's door before he knows it.

Habit, it's a cunning thing. For habit it is. What else, he thinks, lying to himself, what else could lead him up the stairs now, when Geralt barely spared him a look as he entered the inn and walked past him to the room. What else, for he doesn't know if he can bear it anymore, admitting the love.

It is always lacking anyway.

Only, the habit. The way Geralt's eyes, in their momentary glance, were full blown black and his face pale and his hands, no matter how he tried to hide them, were trembling. Jaskier knew better. He knew it was too loud, staying around people, and he knew the shoulders Geralt brushed with a patron almost had him breaking down.

He knew all that because once he used to hold him while the potions faded out, and sometimes he can still feel Geralt's body flinching in his arms, and what a painful comfort, what a loving pain that was.

Now he is touching the door knob and thinks it is the closest he has gotten to touching Geralt the past weeks, after everything.

He closes his eyes, breathes shakily. He can almost hear Geralt's strained breathing on the other side of the door. And his heart clenches, wails, what about it, it won't be like then again, not in the way you want, but oh well, he was never one to walk away, damn his loyalty. He was never one to hide the love.

Slowly, silently, he opens the door.

He knows the sight. Has seen it a thousand times before. Geralt hunched at the side of the bed, shoulders tense so as not to betray their shaking, back turned so as not to betray the pain. Only he never managed to hide from Jaskier.

And now Jaskier doesn't know if he wants to remind him that. Still. He enters the room, and closes the door behind him.