#jasker

🐍 - His Body is a Temple (Geraskier modern-with-magic flower shop/tattoo parlor au)

Yayyy Geraskier! Have a good chunk of the next chapter!

The latter certainly seems more likely, given the increasingly-loud music he hears emanating from the tattoo parlor. Some kitschy pop ballad Geralt remembers hearing from a few decades ago; time is… strange, when you don’t age much.

He still ages, though. Vesemir’s loss is evidence of that.

Besides that, it seems… very correct for what little Geralt knows about Jaskier. If he makes the effort, he can hear another voice overtop the recording, a little sibilant but perfectly in tune, harmonizing with the chorus as it comes around again in a way that shouldn’t work but does.

As it so often is, the truth seems to be somewhere in the middle. Just as Geralt is hyping himself up to knock on the shop's door, as he's squaring his shoulders and bracing himself—or maybe as he’s about to turn around and head home to his own shop, his own preparation, who can say—the door swings open of its own regard to reveal the object of Geralt’s… something. Bleary-eyed, yes, but surprisingly put together, eyeliner sharp as a pin, though it looks like he’s missing some of his usual glitz. The dimples and cheekbone dermals where his piercings are missing are surprisingly endearing, though as Geralt traces the lines of his face, he realizes Jaskier looks as if he’s lost weight, his cheekbones standing out under dry, scaled skin. Is Jaskier doing alright? Geralt frowns in concern.

New model plus all I currently have for DAZ3D. 

Geralt glared. 

A pair of barmaids in the corner tittered. Strange. They had tensed up and gone quiet when Geralt and Jaskier had come in, as people usually did when they encountered a Witcher. 

“Performers are superstitious about being wished good luck,” Jaskier explained, seeming unbothered by Geralt’s thumb pressing against the soft skin and the delicate tendons beneath his palm, by Geralt’s callused fingers curving tightly around his carpals.   

Geralt could break Jaskier’s wrist with an easy change of an angle, the kind of mathematics that didn’t get taught at Oxenfurt. He lowered his hand. “Wasn’t going to,” he said. 

Jaskier’s eyes narrowed. “Because you are absolutely confident in my success, as a friend should be, of course, and you know that I have no need of luck. Right? Right, Geralt?” 

It was his third time hearing Jaskier sing. Jaskier currently had a fifty-fifty rate of being told to abort himself on stage, he was idiot enough to call a Witcher his friend, and he was delusional enough to think that they’d be traveling together for much longer. “Hmm,” Geralt said. 

“Are you skeptical? Was that a sound of disbelief I hear? Surely a Witcher who has the ears and eyes of a wolf can appreciate,” Jaskier gestured to himself, “all of this?” 

The opening was too good to remain silent. “All of what?” Geralt asked, deadpan.

The barmaids laughed a little more openly now, and Geralt even caught some grins from other patrons in his peripheral vision.

Jaskier winked at him. “I’ll show you all of what, never fear!” he said, and he bounced to an empty table and strummed his lute. 

He sang songs, starting with “Toss a Coin.” He flattered specific patrons in the audience. And when the tavern-goers started to flag, he made his way over to Geralt with a line that was easy to reply to. 

“Now you have heard me, friend White Wolf! Which do you think I sound more like, the lark or the nightingale?” 

“Dying wyvern,” Geralt said, hating the attention and wishing he could paralyze Jaskier with the power of his eyes. He earned himself a roomful of snickers and even a bark of laughter from a man in his cups. 

“Alas, I shall have to work harder to convince people that I have the song of a siren instead,” Jaskier said. He then sang an incredibly inaccurate song about sirens, popular when Geralt had first gone hunting, and had the people in the tavern chorusing with him.

“She’ll fuck him in the air / She’ll fuck him in the sea / and she’ll always pluck his guts out / Afore he can fuck himself freeeee.”  

“A monster song for our monster hunter, the White Wolf! Can I hope that I was more of a siren than a wyvern, this time?” Jaskier asked afterward. 

“Definitely sounded like someone was plucking his guts out,” Geralt said, his eyes on Jaskier’s lute, which had begun to sound well-used. 

This time he got actual laughs from the crowd.

Jaskier clutched dramatically at his throat. “The White Wolf’s words have almost slain your siren bard, dear audience, but fear not, I still have one or two songs more left in me!” He hopped in place as if to demonstrate his energy. 

 “Oi, Witcher, not a very efficient kill!” the laughing man from earlier shouted, his face red. 

Geralt shrugged. “No contract for peacocks,” he said. 

Jaskier whipped out a ridiculous feathered hat from under his doublet and preened self-importantly, to general amusement. 

“He may not slay peacocks, but you are free to hire him for devils and other beasts, if you so choose!” Jaskier said. He led the room through “Toss A Coin” again, this time passing the hat around for pay in the age-old style of musicians.

They left soon afterward, before people had time to regret giving them any money. 

“What was that?” Geralt asked once they were out of town, interrupting Jaskier’s self-congratulatory exposition. 

“Now, I know you’ve heard music before, I’m not going to fall for that ‘Witchers are raised in monastic silence’ bullshit again---”

“No,” Geralt said. “The...” He gestured and Roach flicked her ears at him. 

Jaskier smiled. “The technical term is a double act. I thought it would be more fun for you than yesterday, when I was singing and you didn’t get a chance to insult me.”  

It...had been. “Hmm,” Geralt said, suspicious as always about being given something he liked. 

“It wouldn’t work all the time, of course,” Jaskier said. “But sometimes, when the mood is right, the audience wants a little roasted peacock for supper.” 

“Roasted wyvern,” Geralt corrected, suppressing his smirk at Jaskier’s outrage. 

“We’re not double-acting now!”  

“Roach always needs a good laugh.” 

---

It wasn’t the next tavern, or the one afterward, but in the aftermath of a long and tiring contract, Jaskier---still, ridiculously, traveling with him---bounced towards Geralt again before his performance. “Don’t say it!” His fingers landed on Geralt’s lips this time.

Geralt gripped Jaskier’s wrist.  

“Wishing performers good luck makes for ill fortune!” Jaskier said loudly, his eyebrows raised in a silent question.

Geralt had been planning to eat quickly and then recuperate with Roach, but a meal of roasted peacock might be energizing. His lips quirked up just a little, in a way that Jaskier must have felt on his fingertips, before Geralt tugged Jaskier’s hand away. “Not luck,” Geralt said. “Singing lessons. Surely I can wish you had those.” 

Behind them, someone choked on their drink. 

Jaskier’s eyes widened. “You---! Calumny! I shall prove to everyone that the White Wolf’s expertise lies in monsters rather than music!” He bounded towards an empty space at the front of the room.

Jaskier was high-strung, ignorant, and obnoxious, but he fed Geralt lines to rebuff the same way Eskel might use a Sign to drive a griffin towards Geralt’s sword, like he and Geralt were on the same team. Like he cared if Geralt had fun. 

You expect me to believe you're just spending hours alone thinking, daydreaming, and writing poetry going into great physical detail about a strong, charming, caring, passionate hero to spread they're glory so everyone can know how amazing they are and you don't want to fuck them?