#sharing warmth

Hiccup cannot believe just how warm Eret is. He has a broad chest and shoulders, big arms, he’s perfect to cuddle up against in the cold and that is currently all that he can think of doing.

He was outside in the snow and freezing wind all day, taking care of his village. Which was so great for his stump and scars and definitely did not make them hurt or stiff at all. Winter is his favorite season by far and nothing proves that more than the migraine he comes home with almost every evening. So whenever he leaves the cold of the outside behind him to welcome the warmth of his home and finds his boyfriend waiting for him, he is so happy.

They’re in bed now, in a state of undress with Hiccup’s nightshirt and Eret’s sleeping pants the only layers between them. Hiccup’s migraine is slowly diminishing after a willow bark tea and a good meal. Eret is dozing off on his back and an arm around him, with the other’s head on his shoulder.

He adjusts, snuggling deeper into his armpit to throw his arm further around the former Trapper’s broad chest, where his head will rest next. His hand consciously settles away from the brand on his chest. For good measure, he throws his right leg around Eret’s for good measure. He wants to be so close to him, smiling and his heart pounding as sharing the bed with him just makes him so happy.

Hiccup adjusts again, sighing happily and placing a kiss on the side of Eret’s neck before settling his head down again. Eret huffs in amusement before he gets the message; just one arm isn’t enough.

“Why yes, Geralt, that is one way to look at it. Now then, two and a half days, well, two and a half days is nothing. The storm may not be that bad, you know? Despite all the,” he gestures, and he could mean the grey sky, the cold wind, the chill in the air, the darkness in the distance. “Well, you know all this. Could push through this grey and, ah, wind, and I bet at a good speed we could be only two days away from the next town… in fact,” Jaskier strode forward, arms sweeping ahead with flair, “in fact this wind is nothing! One might imagine that there might not be—ah, fuck!”

The wind picked up, then, and Geralt is smirking when Jaskier is shuffling back to Roach, arms tucked back to his sides, hands under his armpits.

“Well then,” Jaskier nudges into Geralts leg. “Four or five days to a town when there’s a storm like this brewing isn’t as impossible as one might expect, you know. I mean, it’s not entirely impossible we might encounter a… portal, of some sort. One we could reasonably and reliably assume would bring us, say, even a days’ ride away from the next town, and we’d certainly beat the storm with that sort of time on our hands.”

“And I’m sure you could recognize one such a portal, as well as the location it would bring us to?”

“Ah,” the man looks off to the side of the path, humming in a considering manner. “I… I do have many skills, as you well know. While that is not one of them—that I know of—it’s not unreasonable to assume that there are some skills I do not yet know of, but am perhaps born with. Perhaps I’m also a man with the skills to unconsciously put off very bad storms until after four or five days?”

“I suppose we’ll see.”

It would perhaps be annoying, all this hypothesizing, if the bard didn’t come up with consistently different ridiculous ways they might escape the inevitable. He’s been writing an ongoing maybe-it-would song for the past three years now, with familiar verses repeated with every bit of bad weather they encounter, the tune catchy even without an instrument. A quick beat to walk to, steps naturally falling in quick-time.

It’s not something Geralt has heard at a tavern, yet, so it likely hadn’t reached some milestone of completion Jaskier had set in that fool head of his—some of his songs were done in days or weeks, fine tuned to an audience well oiled with alcohol.

Then some of his songs, like this one, were worked over the course of months and years; Geralt could admit that the one about the nightwraith was both factually correct and catchy, but if he got it stuck in his head one more time…

The sky got steadily darker as more verse was added to the song, Jaskier repeating the established bits he’d gotten down the last time they’d been caught out in an awful rain storm. Geralt had caught two rabbits and a grouse in the meantime, hanging them from his saddle.

It could be the wind will come sweep us ahead

Skip days of this trudge—off some cliff, and we’re dead!

The clouds are so dark who’s to say night or noon

To be out in this cold must be truly a l-loon!

The d-damp it sinks in, soaking deep in my cl-lothing

So s-soggy I ssay, soon a Drowner be roaming—

“No,” Jaskier interrupted himself, shaking his head and following to where Geralt was leading off the edge of the path, only barely visible in the snow. “N-no, it’s no longer happy maybe’s, I’m afraid this bit of lyric has gotten away from me.”

Geralt got off Roach and led the two further off the path, listening to the faint whistling of the wind against an opening.

“You know, I don’t suppose it’d be very, ah, good to put the thought of a drowner d-down ones pants either, so—ah! A c-cave! Are we certain that it’s an unoc-c-cupied one?”

Geralt led Roach into the protection the cave’s narrow opening offered, checking the ground just beyond there for any recent markings. Theirs were the only tracks leading in or out of the cave, and that meant exactly nothing with this type of wind.

He checks deeper into the cave and finds nothing but dried brush blown in form years past and old, old bones. He comes back to a shivering bard and the beginnings of a puddle from where Roach shook off snow.

“Hmm.”

“Oh th-thank f-fuck.”

Geralt humms again and heads back out into the blistering cold and wind, heading further into the scrub and trees in a hunt for wood that should still be fairly dry—there was snow, yes, but with the sudden cold snap he’s hoping there’ll be enough just encrusted with snow that they can get a decent fire started.

He brings back what he finds that’s dry, nodding when he finds that Jaskier’s already looked after Roach, her things laid out over one of the rocks, her coat tended to, and sets his pile down next to where Jaskier is setting up rocks for a pit. Heads back out for more wood to put in a pile to dry out.

By the time he’s done Jaskier is still shivering, but has managed to coax a fire into existence; Geralt sees a pile of the dry brush from further in the cave in a heap to the side, more tinder should the fire get low.

They divide preparing the rabbits and cooking in relative silence, Jaskier’s shivering abating to a fine tremor. It’s never completely silent around Jaskier; even now the bard was peering at where he had set his lute, case protecting the instrument form the cold and damp. He’s humming, low and melodious, and every time he glances to his lute he’s flexing his too-pale fingers, and then putting them closer to the fire. Geralt doesn’t recognize the tune. They eat in that same relative silence, colour returning to the bards cheeks… the shivering doesn’t go away.

“Take off your jacket.”

“T-that—oh.”

Jaskier had looked up with a frown that cleared at the sight of Geralt pulling open his own jacket, undoing the ties. Jaskiers hands are still stiff even after the warm meal and the fire, so in the time it takes him to wrestle off his jacket Geralt has his open and has moved to open his bedroll close to the fire. Has pulled both their blankets nearby.

When Jaskier finally frees his last arm from the damp clutch of his sleeve, he seems surprised when Geralt plucks it from his hands, draping it over one of the rocks near the fire.

“D-d-damn it Geralt h-humans need a b-bit more than th-that… w-what are you d-doing?”

It takes very little effort to pull the shivering bard down into his lap and arranging stiff limbs to his satisfaction—tucking his arms into the warm cocoon within his jacket, and using one hand to pull that hunched back into his chest. Geralt arranged the blankets around them and over Jaskiers legs until just his feet were out, propped next to the fire, and pulled the rest around them into a barrier against the cold.

Having access to warmth seems to make Jaskiers shivering worse, chattering teeth just a mess of sound rather than any words Geralt could actually pick out. He hummed in response anyway, and that seemed to satisfy the bard that he was heard enough to settle down in Geralts lap.

That didn’t stop the humming from coming back—Geralts sigh at the sound only has Jaskier wiggling back even further, tilting and turning his head until it was pressed back to Geralts shoulder, and Jaskier was pressing a cold nose to his jaw. The humming was clearer, louder, and Geralt could feel a smile pressed against his neck.

He adjusts how Jaskier is sitting and happens to give him a squeeze, coincidentally pushing all the air from him and halting the noise, if only temporarily—when it starts up again it sounds distinctly fond pressed up against his skin.

The things he does for his bard.

X

Geralt has slipped into a meditative state by the time he realizes that the humming has petered out into even breathing, Jaskier having curled further in his embrace, face tucked into the hollow of his throat.

He’s been adding to the fire as needed, an ear to the howl of the wind—listening for the howl of anything else on the wind.

He’s not looking forward to hearing about a cricked neck from Jaskier however, and makes the decision to shift him; using one arm to prop him and the other to swing his legs first to the side, and then further manoeuvring him around…

Once the hard part is done, Jaskier adjusts himself well enough, tucking his face back into Geralts neck with a sigh, arms going around him and hands up his shirt to press against his warm back. It takes a bit of shuffling but the Bard settles more into his lap, seemingly happy enough to wrap his legs around behind him. Geralt readjusts the blankets to be sure that Jaskier is entirely covered in this new position straddling his lap, and settles back down to monitor the fire.