#magic synesthesia??

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“You are a strange creature, Jaskier.” 

The word creature hangs heavy in the air between them, and Jaskier tilts his head. If he listens, he can hear a noise like scales sliding against one another, a whispering accompaniment to the echoing drumbeat. “As are you, Borch.”

The older man’s eyes flash, and he tilts his head in polite interest. “Oh?”

“I have traveled the world, from kingdom to kingdom. I have faced monsters and men of all kinds, have seen miracles and curses and everything in between.” Jaskier pauses, staring directly into Borch’s eyes. He swears, for a second, they flash gold. “But I have never met someone like you.”

“Because of my philosophy - ?” Borch starts, but Jaskier cuts him off.

“I don’t know what you are.” Jaskier says firmly, quietly, and he has all of Borch’s scattered attention focused on him like a laserbeam. It’s almost uncomfortable, under those eyes, like a rabbit standing before a wolf. 

But Jaskier has spent many years traveling at the side of a predator. Too long to be scared of the one in front of him, no matter how stupid that might make him.

“You found Geralt and you asked him on this hunt. He came, not because of your dragon but because he saw someone he loved going into something stupid and decided that if they were going to do so, he might as well come along to soften the blow.” Jaskier informs the man simply. Though even he could tell Geralt that Yennefer did not need help, and that she was fully capable of getting herself out of (and into) trouble at her own pace. “He’s not a soldier for hire. He’s a protector.”

Borch is silent, still watching Jaskier carefully as though if he moved Jaskier would startle off. Fat chance of that, Jaskier was too stubborn for his own good.

“He’s a protector.” Jaskier says again, firmly, “But when it comes to watching his own back?”

There are words trapped behind Jaskier’s teeth, gritted back like sand in his molars. A fight song, a warning song, a battle cry. 

“He has a trigger happy witch on his side. And he has me.”

“I see no weapons here.” Borch says quietly, an echo to what was said to him when they had first met. Before a man had died with a snapped neck right in front of Jaskier’s eyes.

“Weapons can be more than steel, Borch Three Jackdaws. As well you know.” Jaskier replies, and then very purposefully places his hand against the body of his lute and taps with his fingers, matching the drumbeat of Borch’s magic.

Immediately, the man’s - if he is a man - magic responds, surging forward with the same whisper of scale against scale as it taps against Jaskier’s skin in pleased acknowledgement. On his part, Borch starts as though he’s been given a static shock, leaning back and widening his eyes in surprise.