It is like biting into a pie only to find it has no filling.

Those words haunt him in the lingering silence of Jaskier’s presence. They hang between him and the bard as heavily as any wraith might – leeching him just as much as actual conversations exhausted him. Jaskier, like the birds of the woods, was born to sing and talk and fill the world with the litany of his voice and his perspective and his life; and Geralt had taken part in shattering him.

Yennefer had, in her way, tried to heal him. They had released the Djinn – much to the mage’s dismay – and that should have been the end of it. Jaskier’s swelling went down, his bleeding stopped.

But when he opened his mouth to greet Geralt when finally he woke, nothing more than a wheeze passed his lips. In that moment, the witcher watched a part of Jaskier die. He saw it in the bard’s eyes – a small bit of the light that constantly filled him fading away like a cloud passing over the sun.

Jaskier stayed with him. Geralt doesn’t understand why. It was his fault, his words, his hasty and ill thought out wish that had crushed the bard’s vocal cords to dust. Jaskier should hate him, and yet he stayed. Geralt thought pragmatically that it was because alone, Jaskier would struggle. He was a man who had independently crafted a life and a career for himself off his voice, and now that was gone. He had his fingers, his lute, of course – but drunken pub-goers relished the bard’s songs, his lyrics, and with nothing to sing along to, it left Jaskier’s lute playing, while lovely, pale and hollow by comparison to what patrons expected to hear when they recognized who he was.

Geralt did that to him. So it was the least he could do to keep Jaskier by his side. To provide a safe place for the bard to sleep, coin for him to eat. And that must be why he stayed, he reasoned. Why else?

As they passed through villages, he asked for healers, for mages – anyone who might have insight into the bard’s situation. He even began to direct their travels in the direction of famous herbalists or sorcerers (or sometimes even creatures), all without ever making it plain, just in case they might stumble upon someone who might have a cure.

‘Sorry’ hung heavy on his heart, weighing it down between his ribs, pressing in on his lungs, strangling him. He spent his nights, already so prone to sleeplessness, on his back and staring up at the sky as though the stars might suddenly align and spell out the answers he sought. His eyes drifted to Jaskier, curled by the fire. Small and quiet. So fucking quiet.

Geralt was really beginning to fucking detest the quiet.

It made him admire Jaskier’s penchant for conjuring a conversation seemingly out of nowhere; particularly when he began to try and solve this problem of too much fucking quiet by doing what Jaskier could not: talking.

“Pleasant day,” he growled one morning, eyes on the meal he stoked above the fire as Jaskier silently worked on lacing up his clothing. Blue eyes sought him out over the fire. He could feel the weight of them, the surprise. But what else was there to say? His words had been efficient. The day was pleasant. What should he say next? Describe the color of the sky? Foolish.

He grit his teeth, hating himself for his blatant inability to provide even so much comfort as this. But he keeps trying. He practices. Only because when he does, Jaskier’s gaze falls to him – keen in a way those blue eyes had not been in some time since the silence started – and for a moment he feels as though his bard has returned again.

Jaskier, for his part, does not simply melt back into the stone of a garden wall like a shrinking violet. His voice was not what made him so lively, so vibrant; it was a side effect of all the life and sunlight and existence that the gods had seen fight to cram into a body as lithe as Jaskier. He learned how to speak with his hands and Geralt, a man who had only spoken through body language for so long, found it easy to listen. It was an act of communication that drew no end of curious looks when they went to villages. How could two men speak so silently? Some even began to suspect Jaskier was a familiar of Geralt’s – which made the bard wheeze silently, laughing.

Geralt couldn’t even be annoyed by that. It was good to see the bard laugh.

Jaskier’s hands grew more and more fluent as they travelled until he learned how to fill the silence in an entirely new way. And if Geralt’s attention were distracted, his eyes not on the bard, Jaskier found ways to grab his attention. A pebble to the shoulder, if annoyed. A hand to his side, to the small of his back, to his bicep if not.

But still, Geralt looked for a cure. He did not ask for forgiveness. He didn’t deserve it – not while Jaskier was still unable to say the words to pardon him for his wish. Wishes. How Geralt hated them, hated the word. His wish had driven Yennefer away. His wish had bound Jaskier to a life in which he could not do what he loved. Geralt didn’t deserve forgiveness. So he did not ask.

And then came the contract about the witches of the bog.

Ancient hags. Magical ladies. So old that Geralt wasn’t even sure if the word ‘witch’ truly befitted them anymore. He didn’t even know what to call them, what to research in his bestiary. Three witches of the bog. Complicated and powerful, hand in hand. Some of the village worshipped them. They kept the forest rich with game. They protected birthing mothers. They warded off those from foreign lands that might colonize their home, change it, urbanize it. It left the area like a capsule from another time; perfectly preserved.

Others hated them. Virgins tended to disappear now and then. Children too. Livestock would die, men would suddenly fall dead. Believers called it penance, divine and unknowable justice for deeds the public might never see or fathom. Nonbelievers called it terrorism at the hands of monsters. Geralt found himself stuck in the middle.

He insisted Jaskier stay in the village. This was beyond even his expertise. Even with normal monsters there was always the chance that he might fail, not protect Jaskier, however slim. Now? He would not tell Jaskier that he had a healthy fear for what laid ahead, but he made it known that for no reason should the bard follow him this time.

He approached the bog with his swords on his back but his hands nowhere near their hilts. Women as old as these, there was a chance he might be able to reason with them. Negotiate.

There was just as big as chance that he might offend them by trying.

His heart thumped in his chest as he kneeled in a dry spot in the bog. He set out the offerings the believers told him would attract the witches to him. He rested his hands on his thighs. Closed his eyes.

“Bog women,” he said, calling to them in a hushed, croaking voice, “Ladies of the North, Winter Women… I have no request but to parlay with you. I humble myself, I kneel, knowing I don’t deserve an audience. Would you speak with me?”

At first there was nothing. He wondered if the believers had lied, if the nonbelievers were far more stable by comparison. He was just about to stand, to leave, when a wind brushed the faint hairs not held back by his hair tie to wisp about his face. The willows around him swirled and sang a sorrowful tune. The fine hairs on the back of his neck and on his arms rose.

“What is a boy’s name?” A witch sung to him. A boy. Despite his years, he felt very much like a boy kneeling at the feet of those women.

He nearly responded. Nearly. But there was power in a name for folk such as them.

“You may call me witcher,” he said instead, careful in his wording. Another witch laughed, delighted.

“Clever witcher-boy,” the laughing witch chirped, stepping out of the fog. She was lovely. Her red hair hung down to her bottom. Her face was round like a peach, her cheeks pink like one too. She wore a gown unlike one he had ever seen before. She looked kind, her smile pleasant, but her eyes – if he looked too long, he could see the predatory glint in those eyes. Her glamor blurred around the edges and if he peered too closely, he could almost see—

His pupils dilated, huge and blown out as he tried to make sense of what he saw. Limbs, so many limbs. A body distorted with tumors; or what he thought might be tumors, but perhaps just did not know the right word for them. Too many mouths, eyes, faces. The punishing visage of those warped by black magic or simply the form of a god not meant to be seen or understood by mortal men? He didn’t know, but he did register something wet beneath his nose. Hot and dripping. His heart thundered. He wondered if it might burst when finally another woman came up behind him, bent over him, and gently rested a hand over his eyes.

“A strong boy with keen eyes,” the woman behind him hummed, “Few have seen past our glamor. Fewer still remained sane enough to tell the tale.”

The first witch cackled, having appeared from the fog as well, and sneered, “You steal our fun,” then said a name that made Geralt’s lashes flutter sickly. The name sounded more like the mad tumble of rocks down a mountain side that any human word. His stomach lurched. He was so fucked. “I wished to see how far a witcher-boy’s mind might bend.”

“A boy came to us in good faith,” the witch whose name sounded like falling rocks said. Her voice sounded like the voice of many women, but also, one woman. His mother. He wondered if that was part of the glamor as well. If that magic was seeping into his mind, collecting fragments and details that might sooth him, lure him into a false sense of security.

Too bad it was the voice of the woman who had abandoned him. It only served to wake him up.

He decided to call that woman Earth Mother. The name pinged something familiar in the far recesses of his mind.

“Laws of matronhood,” said the second to the first, naming her as well. He gritted his teeth against the sound of it – glass shattering, wolves howling. It made his muscles tense, ready to flee the jaws of a wolf. When the feeling passed, a human name appeared in his mind seemingly from nowhere: Beast Mother.

“Aye, I know the laws,” said the Beast Mother, then a final name. Geralt’s stomach dropped sickly like missing a step on a staircase. This name sounded like the wind – both tame as the first warmth of spring thaws the fields, and wild like the storm that punishes a village. Sky Mother, his mind supplied.

Geralt bowed his head as those final, hind-brain instincts washed over him and eventually dulled. He felt suddenly exhausted. Word thin by the mere presence of these women.

“What does a witcher-boy call to women such as we for?” Asked the Sky Mother.

“Does a witcher-boy come to kill us?” Laughed the Beast Mother cruelly, and even with the third woman’s hand over his eyes – cool and soothing and dark – Geralt knew the Beast Mother was grinning with too many predatory teeth. More teeth than any human mouth should have. Teeth and teeth and teeth—

“The village placed a contract on you,” Geralt forced himself to say. “But I’m quickly realizing this is no monster hunt.”

He was in the presence of gods, or at least as close to gods as reality might ever get. Every story, every religion, stemmed from something after all. These land spirits, these witches, these women – they were so much more than a contract to be hunted. They owned the land, the wood, the swamp, and all inside it. Fuck.

“If you know this, then why come?” The Earth Mother asked gently.

“Some of the villagers are suffering,” Geralt explained, “I’m here to help. To parlay.”

“Life is to suffer,” laughed the Beast Mother cruelly.

The Sky Mother said instead, “And what can a witcher-boy offer us? How can a witcher-boy help?”

The Earth Mother was against his back, matronly and kind. He felt like a boy hiding behind a mother’s skirts – or more accurately Vesemir’s legs. It felt both nostalgic and sickening at the same time, his mind peeled apart like an onion so easily in their presence.

“I am nothing and no one to you Mothers,” Geralt acknowledged, “But I cannot turn my back on suffering. If I do so here, I have no right to my namesake.”

“A witcher-boy wanted to be a hero,” cackled the Beast Mother, fangs gleaming in his mind’s eyes, pearly and wet with hungry spittle.

“A witcher-boy is kind,” whispered the Mother blinding him with her mercy, her hand.

“A witcher-boy is doomed,” offered the Sky Mother clinically, but not dispassionately.

“What did the village ask?” The Beast Mother spat, “Did they whine about their lost babes? Their disappeared virgins? Their dead men? Their cows?”

“The milk had spoiled in their udders, so we killed them,” the Sky Mother said simply.

“The men had raped and stolen and marred the virtue of our lands, so we removed them from the grace of our hospitality,” the Beast Mother growled.

“The virgins sought escape from abusive homes, sought freedom and peace, so we guided them to happier places,” the Earth Mother hummed.

“And the babes would have died a painful death from winter, from illness, from genetic deficiencies – so we lured them to that better place in peace instead,” the Sky Mother finished.

“Life is cruel,” the Beast Mother growled like the sound of hooves on earth, pounding in chase after the fox, “But we are not. A witcher-boy cannot fathom our motives, so we pardon him once, but question our intentions again and a witcher-boy will understand punishment for himself.”

Geralt bowed his head intentionally this time, hands in tight, humbled fists on his knees.

“Apologies, Mothers, I knew not what to expect.”

“As we said, a witcher-boy is pardoned,” the Sky Mother said simply.

“We know a witcher-boy,” the Earth Mother sang behind him, her voice the laughter of a babe’s first smile, the song of a mother kneading dough in the morning. “A witcher-boy withholds his name, but we know him.”

“White. Wolf.” The Beast Mother is grinning with too many hungry teeth again. Geralt shivered.

“You helped a Godling not far from here,” says one.

“Spared a group of trolls in the eastern mountains,” says another.

“Helped a succubus escape the fires of the cities and the purge of daft men who put their faith in nonsense,” says the last.

“The list is long,” the Earth Mother says, her other hand stroking through his hair now. She’s untied it, let it fall loose around his ears. She tsks and says, “At least a witcher-boy tried to bathe for us. You need fine oils for hair such as this.”

He feels disoriented, exposed. Unsure of his footing.

“I will explain to the village—” he begins, but clicks his jaw shut audibly when the Beast Mother howls, “We were not done, witcher-boy!”

He swallows dryly. His very bones shiver. The Earth Mother shushes his fears and continues to pet him like a dumb, beloved dog warming her feet. It feels… nice. He has to shake his mind awake not to fall for that glamor, that lulling sense of safety. There is no safety. Safe is an illusion.

“Clever witcher-boy,” the Earth Mother says proudly, fondly.

“You’ve helped people and creature alike on our land,” the Sky Mother said.

“But you’ve also taken justice into your hands, as if we were not suitable to maintain it,” snarled the Beast Mother.

“What are three Mothers to do with their witcher-boy, their kind hearted wolf, their man of stone?”

They might kill him. They were not wrong, he had taken their affairs into his own hands unknowingly when fulfilling contracts in these lands. If their territory extended as far as he thought it did, he had only done so twice perhaps. Maybe thrice. A werewolf that had gone mad, slaughter their family. A cockatrice that had been spoiling the hunt for another township, killing the best of their providers. A wraith left behind by a widow spurned.

“We would have gotten to them in our own time,” the Beast Mother said, answering his unspoken question of why, if they protected these lands, had they not handled it?

“Or perhaps we did handle it in our own right,” the Earth Mother offered with a chuckle. Working through him, he realized. A pawn in their ways just as he was a pawn to fate. He shuddered helplessly, a little flame of offense rising in his gut as it always did at the concept of ‘fate’. She brushed his hair back in apology, stroked his cheek. “You need a shave.”

Disoriented didn’t begin to cover it.

“Spoil sport,” the Beast Mother snorted. So that had been it, then. He had acted as unwitting representative for them and their will.

“You are a trustworthy wolf,” the Sky Mother said, “Good in intention, civil in mercy.”

“You will go to the village,” the Earth Mother continued. “You will explain the way of things. Those who cannot abide by those ways can flee freely or be dealt with accordingly… They will not pay you, witcher-boy. Their hearts are selfish and easy to see reason why they should keep their coin despite your bravery, despite how you put yourself between we women and their cowardly souls.”

“For this, for the works you’ve already done unintentionally in our name and for the works you will later do intentionally in our name, we women shall pay you instead.”

He stiffened. Every bone locked in his body like rusted hinges on a door, painful and tight. That was a dangerous offer. He could not deny it and live. But one wrong word would spell a world of pain unending. He swallowed.

“You are too kind to someone as undeserving as me,” he managed to croak.

The Beast Mother laughed cruel and amused, high like a harpy’s screech and low like a bear’s roar. He shuddered visibly. The Earth Mother smoothed down the hackles that rose on the back of his neck like a master calming a spooked dog.

“Correct, we are too kind. Wise of you to notice,” the Beast Mother said.

“What does a witcher-boy want?” The Sky Mother asked.

Geralt clenched his jaw, feeling more like a mouse caught between a cat’s paws than a witcher. It was an uncomfortable, greasy feeling, and he hated it.

“I require nothing –”

“—Ha! A man says he requires nothing from gods!” The Beast Mother howled like a pack of wolves.

“You would spit in our eye and refuse our gift?” The Sky Mother asked diplomatically.

“Do not let them frighten you, witcher-boy,” the Earth Mother hummed, stroking his hair again. “We Mothers are unused to debt.”

He could ask for a token from them; small enough so as not to ask too much, but enough to appease their debt. He could ask for some tidbit of knowledge; the location of a cache in their lands, perhaps. He could ask for hospitality in their woods; safety and peace whenever he visited. But as their champion, which he was quickly coming to find that he was unknowingly, he inherently knew he need not ask for any of this. They had always provided for him, had always shown him the way. He never went hungry or thirsty in these woods. The birds called when anything deigned attack him, warning him. He slept here. To ask for what they already provided would be turning a blind eye onto their gifts – a dangerous thing.

He should find something else – something small, something humble. And yet…

“My friend… what would it cost for you to heal him?” Geralt finally asked.

“Aaah,” the Beast Mother crooned, “A witcher-boy does not love silence after all.”

“A witcher-boy did not know what he had until it was gone,” the Earth Mother said, her voice if possible even more fond.

“Witcher-boys tend to be clever, and yet dumb as rock trolls,” the Sky Mother said blandly.

“Please,” Geralt said, leaning into the cradle of the Earth Mother’s hand which blinded him, protected him. She hummed soothingly behind him.

“We women are powerful and old. We saw the mountains form and the rivers fill. We were there for the first storm, the first wind that graced the ground, the first sprig of grass, the birth of the first land beast,” said the Sky Mother.

“But alas, this boon you ask for is not as simple as you think,” the Earth Mother said sadly.

He nearly asked ‘so you can’t help’ before he caught his tongue. What a stupid way to die, offending gods. The Beast Mother cackled. She knew what he had almost asked.

“It is not that we are not capable. You ask for something more than what we owe,” the Beast Mother said, fangs glinting, her words the framework of a hungry maw in his mind’s eye, waiting for an excuse to eat him. A merry chase, a dangerous game. It thrilled her to chase him like a rabbit through their laws and customs and loopholes, waiting for him to trip and yet hoping he might not so the game would continue. “And you cannot afford a cure outright.”

“What is the cost of an outright cure?” He asked. He had to know. Maybe he could—

“Souls. Innocent souls. Blood. Flesh. Creation and death. You request to overwrite a Djinn’s will, witcher-boy. That sort of magic by human means, by the means in which you could pay us, would change you fundamentally. You’d no longer be worthy as champion of our will. We have no intention of warping a witcher-boy and losing a pawn such as yourself. Too dull, too boring. Too simple. A witcher-boy offends.”

He hung his head again. His debt to his friend was more expensive than his morality, the makeup of his being, than his use to the world and to these witches, these gods. His stomach became a stone inside him. There was no outright cure…

His head rose a little.

“What cost for his voice?” He asked. Not a cure. A voice. The Earth Mother stroked him approvingly. The Beast Mother smiled with impressed fangs. The Sky Mother considered him.

“A steep price,” the Sky Mother said, like spring rain.

“A generous price,” snorted the Beast Mother, like boars stomping in the brush.

“A fair price,” hummed the Earth Mother, like the sound of a gentle hands guiding a plant into fresh soil.

“Name it,” Geralt said, something unidentifiable to his knowledge of himself in the edges of the words, though he recognized it in others. Pleading.

They named it.

He agreed.

“But first,” said the women with too many voices, “What is a witcher-boy’s name?”

They already knew it. Geralt knew that they did. But he hadn’t given it to them. There was power in giving a name.

Geralt paid.

–

He returned to town feeling exhausted, hollowed out and reed-thin, and yet he held the light of dawn in his chest, weightless and hopeful. He carried it with him over the hall and down the path that led to the village, leaving behind him his Ladies and the offerings he had placed on their humble altar.

He followed their instructions precisely.

He went first to the village alderman – a believer – and the man who had posted the notice – a nonbeliever. He explained that this village was not in fact their home, but the home of the women, and it was by their mercy that their crops flourished and their lives went by in relative peace. When the nonbeliever questioned him, cheeks red with rage that Geralt had not done as he was tasked, Geralt merely offered precisely what the women had told him to say.

“If you do not like living in the lands of the Ladies, you are free to relocate somewhere with no matronage. But if you stay and presume to keep calling the lands your own, and living outside the laws of matron and guest, there’s nothing I can do to spare you from them. This was their land first. They’ve upheld every law, provided every mercy. Live by their terms, live somewhere else, or find out for yourself why men have disappeared from among you by becoming another face on a flier.”

They had bid him not over explain. There was no faith to be had otherwise, no trust, and the Ladies asked for little more than that from their guests. To explain would be to condemn these villages to eviction. So he left the nonbelievers’ fate to themselves. Heed, flee or perish.

They didn’t pay him, just as the women had warned. The nonbelievers accused him of solving nothing. They called him a charlatan and a cheat. The believers claimed that they had not asked for help in the first place – and honestly, that was fair.

He didn’t need their payment anyways, not now. He would not go hungry or thirsty while in their wood. They’d tide him over until he left their lands in pursuit of his next contract. That was more than enough.

He brushed off their accusations, their thanklessness, like kicking dirt from his shoes. He wondered if that was what endeared him to the Ladies, or at least part of it – for both he and the god women understood thanklessness despite service.

He went to the inn, carried himself up to the room he had left Jaskier in. He could hear his lute from halfway up the stairs. It was a pleasing sound, something cheerful to wake to – it’d have to be, not to received complaints from other patrons also guesting at the inn.

The moment he walked in, he found Jaskier seated on the window sill, face to the early morning sun like a plant soaking in daylight as he played with mindlessly fluent fingers. Geralt leaned against the doorframe and enjoyed watching the dance of those fingers over the strings, plucking, always searching for the next note. He let himself bask in that moment, in the portrait of his bard in peaceful domesticity. Then, knowing the Ladies would not wait forever, rapped two knuckles against the doorframe, drawing Jaskier’s attention.

The bard let his song lull to a stop, his face lighting up at the sight of him returned unharmed. There was relief there, plain and naked as Jaskier was in most ways; unabashed and quick to feel, to express. He set his lute aside with the same sort of care that Geralt might give one of his swords and immediately his hands went into action, his whole body speaking to Geralt as easily as he once did with words.

Well, what happened, don’t keep me waiting? Were they in fact witches or something more nefarious? Well? Come on, Geralt, these stories don’t write themselves!

He smiled. There was a weight in his chest he hadn’t realized he had been carrying until now as it slowly lifted, so close to resolution as he was. He stepped forward without a word, amber eyes locked on his bard, his traveling companion, his friend, his partner. It drew Jaskier’s hand to a stuttering motion not unlike ‘um’ or ‘uh’ or ‘what’s going on?’.

“Months ago, I stole your voice from you,” Geralt finally said, standing in front of the bard, close enough to touch him – but not yet. A puzzled look spread across Jaskier’s face.

I don’t understand.

“I wished for peace not knowing I already had something better. Already had peace in my hands. I was just to blind to comfort, to kindness, to know that I had it.”

Jaskier gave him a baffled look that both said ‘well aren’t you chatty today?’ and ‘who are you and what did you do with my witcher?’

Geralt did not know this language, this new tongue he was trying to learn: intimacy, apology, love. He reached to cup Jaskier’s jaw and paused nearly there feeling foolish, blushing, because words and intimate touches had never been a language of his. It felt foreign. Like a crude imitation, rusty and weak for what he was trying to convey. But Jaskier just watched him patiently, brows drawn into a curious frown as he met him halfway and nestled his jaw into his calloused hand.

‘Geralt?’

He brushed a thumb over Jaskier’s smooth jaw, freshly shaven and smelling of sweet oil. Memorized the lines of Jaskier’s face, the soundless paragraphs of his expression, and tucked it away in his mind for later.

“I am sorry knowing me left you silent,” he finally said, croaked, hushed, admitted.

Jaskier’s brows drew tight, his mouth a strange line. He shook his head.

“I understand if you cannot forgive me,” Geralt looked away. “I should have apologized the morning you first could not speak, but it felt wrong to ask when you could not answer. But now… Do you trust me, Jaskier?”

There was still that expression – anger, grief, confusion, all deserved. He’d leave him after this, no doubt. Geralt had pushed too far, presumed too much. But he pressed on. He had to see this through. Then he’d let Jaskier return to his normal life. Let him make his choice. Set him free.

He thought he heard a womanly sigh.

Jaskier’s hand came up to cradle Geralt’s on his jaw. In his touch and in his face, Geralt heard him: Of course I trust you, you daft excuse for a witcher.

Do or die.

He leaned down. Watched as Jaskier’s eyes widened. Watched until he was too close to see anymore. Got closer until their lips brushed – his so chapped against the bard’s meticulously cared for lips, soft and pleasant. The bard felt like a canary in his hands, all fluttering energy; fragile with hollow bones, more melody than flesh. He pressed, then swiped a tongue across trembling lips to ask permission.

Jaskier let him in. He sealed their lips together. Let his hand move from the man’s jaw to cup the back of his neck, crush him close without actually crushing him. Then he felt it. It began in his throat, behind his Adam’s Apple, and slowly crawled up – warm, not unpleasant but certainly not normal. It rose. When it met his tongue it tasted of night and bestiaries; earthy and deep. His voice. It passed by his teeth, slipped through their lips, then felt Jaskier jump in his hands. He leapt as though stung, or perhaps shocked like walking with socked feet and touching a door knob – surprising, sharp and fleeting. Then settled in his hands.

Geralt pulled away to mumble three words against Jaskier’s slack mouth, his own stomach twisting when no words actually bloomed despite his tongue and mouth doing what needed to be done to make words. He was mute. It had worked. The price had been paid.

He should have said it before he lost the chance to, and yet, there was a pathetic sort of comfort in murmuring the words soundlessly against Jaskier’s lips instead – like hiding behind a mask, bold because he could do so secretly.

Jaskier pulled away, speaking on instinct out of shock, “Geralt, what’s wrong with you—” then he stilled, eyes owlish. His hands shot to his throat. Patted and fluttered and searched for something that might give away what was going on.

Geralt smiled. His throat vibrated as it would if he had chuckled, but no sound followed.

“My voice,” Jaskier croaked, pale from shock and relief and all manner of emotions he wore as plainly on his face as he did his clothes. “How?”

Geralt felt relief bloom in his own belly: that weight lifting fully now that he had made amends, had fixed his wrongs. Relief that Jaskier’s voice was his own and not Geralt’s because that was a level of weird even the witcher couldn’t handle. He tapped his own throat with his fingers and looked at Jaskier pointedly.

Color leeched from the bard’s skin.

“You gave me yours?”

Geralt nodded, then blinked – confused – when Jaskier suddenly sprung to his feet, all pent-up nervous energy, and slapped faintly at Geralt’s chest with a sharp, “Take it back!”

Geralt’s brows drew tight, his lips pursed, utterly baffled.

“You lummox! Don’t you give me that look! You can’t—I can’t—this is too much!”

Geralt shook his head.

‘I had to make it right’ he said, using his hands, with his face, with his body; a pale imitation of Jaskier’s fluency.

“It wasn’t yours to make right! The Djinn did it, not you!”

‘My wish—’

“Was an accident! You thought the Djinn was under my control anyhow, it hadn’t been intentional. I honestly don’t recall if you even wished for it or said ‘I just want some damn peace!’ – you had warned me it was dangerous! If I had just listened—”

Wait. Wait.

Geralt shook his head. How had this spun away from him so quickly?

‘This wasn’t your fault.’

“It was no more yours than mine or mine than yours!” Jaskier pointed out, as if that had been his intention all along. He threw his hands out to his sides, pacing quietly – quiet, he hadn’t expected that, as if it had become a habit. He watched as the bard fluttered nimble fingers against his lips, eyes darting to Geralt distractedly, and mumbled, “Lovely kiss, by the way,” and when Geralt smirked he continued haughtily, “Which we will further discuss later, you oaf!”

Geralt chuckled without chuckling.

“You are,” Jaskier said slowly, finally stopping his pacing, “Insufferable. Your hero complex will see you into the ground one day, I swear, and no one will even know now because you can’t talk.”

Geralt gave him an obvious, deadpanned look. This? This felt right. Natural. Things had always been this way. Jaskier just hadn’t realized that yet.

‘You have always been my words.’

Jaskier stilled. In the lines of his body Geralt saw the quiet sway of wind through a garden well cared for; buzzing with bees, home to all manner of flowers, beautiful and soothing to its guests. So alive, so open. Jaskier was a garden. Geralt had merely returned the birds that had lost their way.

He waited. Waited for the inevitable. He had taken Jaskier’s voice, then made parlay for it without his permission. Surely the bard would leave him. He no longer needed the witcher, after all, and in his silent days had seen more than enough journeys to sing about for the rest of his life. Geralt waited.

“You bloody imbecile,” Jaskier breathed, his face going slack with subdued outrage and realization. “You daft man, you uncommunicative bastard!”

Geralt looked away. He didn’t need his voice. It was better suited in the bard. He didn’t need Jaskier. He had been on the road alone for years before him, and he could do it again.

But there was something in his chest – heavy, prickly and unfamiliar. Want.

He swallowed. He didn’t approach him, but also did not shy away when Jaskier stomped forward and reached for his face. He waited for the slap, for the slam of a door.

Jaskier guided his gaze back down to him.

“Don’t belittle my affections by presuming I stayed because you were convenient. I do not need my voice to live a comfortable or enjoyable life. I need you.”

He felt like shattered glass in a repair man’s palms, all his broken edges grinding together in wrong ways.

“What’s done is done,” Jaskier finally said, his hand reaching back to cup the back of Geralt’s neck as he had done to him not long ago. “And… you’re right. We’ve never needed words to speak and they have never been a tool you enjoyed using. I shall be your words. I’ve been with you long enough to know how to explain your creatures to townsfolk and gods above know I am a better haggler than you – you let that bastard swindle you into this contract for 250 crowns, for gods sake, Geralt! I was dying – ahh,” he shook his head, refocusing, “Nevermind. Point is, we’ve always made it work. We’ll make this work too. But for the record, I wasn’t broken, Geralt. Not with you.”

He pressed a chaste kiss to the witcher’s mouth, smiling and soft at the sight of Geralt’s baffled look, his inability to collect himself to react in the face of such an unexpected confession. Jaskier was the one to whisper into his lips this time between kisses, “Not that I don’t appreciate your sacrifice. The songs I’ll sing about the gift you’ve given me, Geralt – gods above, I’ve missed singing.”

‘I’ve missed it too,’ Geralt thought, perhaps said with his touch and the way he leaned into every peck Jaskier gave him, every breath against his lips.

“Fucking knew it,” Jaskier said, grinning against his mouth, “Filling-less pie, you emotionally constipated dog. And don’t think for one moment I didn’t hear you. We’ve been talking without talking for too long for me to have missed it, you know.”

Geralt felt heat rush to his cheeks and crawl up his neck, making a home in the tips of his ears. He turned away to hide it as Jaskier pulled back, but it was too late. The bard chuckled fondly and when Geralt finally chanced looking back at him, he grumbled embarrassedly – silently.

“It’s not the first time you’ve said you love me, Geralt,” Jaskier said, smiling with all his teeth, skin aglow like dawn breaking the night. “You’ve been saying it for ages.”

Jaskier drew his face back to him when Geralt tried once more to look away, bristly and unsure of himself and self-conscious that all this time he hadn’t been half as secretive – or aware himself – as he thought.

Jaskier took his time looking him over. Memorizing his face, Geralt realized, as he had memorized the bard’s when he found him on the windowsill. He felt exposed as he had at the Mothers’ feet. Known.

He leaned into Jaskier’s hand. Enjoyed the brush of a thumb over a sore scar on his cheekbone.

“I don’t need words,” Jaskier said gently, “But I am grateful to have them. Thank you, Geralt. I’ll use your voice wisely.”

The witcher leaned in, loose like a puppet with his strings cut now that it was finally done, and pressed his forehead to the bard’s. Power thrummed between them, the magic of being known and kept.

iorveth has 3 main stages of his living situation

the first was before he joined the scoia'tael. he had a little three room house by the edge of the forest, right where he could have privacy from hunters and still shoot a few rabbits without going far.

he had a little living area with some pillows on the floor by the hearth, and kept plants he grew himself by the windows

there was a little kitchen in the back, always filled with herbs and spices that made the entire house smell nice

iorveth wouldn't necessarily call himself sentimental, but there are a few things he really needs to have to feel safe.

namely his bow, a blanket he received as a gift, and the tea kettle that made the most delicious tea he'd ever had.

iorveth really loved making his living space his, although this became a luxury after that home was burned to the ground by a human mob.

the second place was his cave in the woods near flotsam. he couldn't have the same comfort as before, but could keep some things the same.

namely the way he slept right in the warm spot right between the fire and the wall and all the stuff he refused to throw out

iorveth claims to hate clutter, but does tend to collect random shit

it's not clutter if it has a purpose!

besides, isn't it better to have a few extra things you don't need than to realize you got rid of something necessary?

that being said, he would never keep anything that places fashion over function. each one of the thirty-seven jars he owns has a distinct purpose and fulfil that purpose better than anything else could.

his third home was with vernon fucking roche in vergen. of course living with the ex blue stripes commander was surprising change, but so were a lot of the new behaviours he adopted with peacetime life.

he finally stopped hoarding food and weapons in case of disaster and allowed himself to keep personal belongings, the kind that he was previously afraid could be used to blackmail him

he even started to sleep without barricading the door every night

“Thought you didn’t like my flavor of pie?” Jaskier asked pointedly before taking a swig. The liquor makes his voice rough. Geralt didn’t quite know why that incited a protective flare in him; a desire to spare the bard’s voice lest it break and weaken. Never the same.

He grunted because aye, he had said that. He knew that well enough. Dreamed of it. Just one more stone picked away from the mountainside, one more trigger to the rockslide of tragedy that was his constant companion in life. He rubbed at his face and searched for the words. Even after days of having decided that this conversation needed to happen, he found the message elusive. Jaskier plucked narratives and flowery diction from the air as easily as Geralt could find flies on Roach’s ass - it felt oddly unfair to feel so inadequate by comparison when it counted most.

Perhaps it was a muscle… Muscles required practice… He would have to think on that later.

“Why did you stop?” Geralt asked.

“Because you wished for me to,” Jaskier murmured, a touch sour beneath his usual bardly enthusiasm, the edge of his voice made sharp by the booze and by the hurt Geralt had been too slow to realize had burrowed into the man’s skin like puss in a wound. Infected and aching, unable to heal.

“I also wished to sleep,” Geralt mumbled defensively, “I’m not exactly a good problem solver.”

“But that’s exactly what you are though, Geralt!” Jaskier said, hands exploding out, “What do you mean? People literally hire you to solve their problems!”

“Their problems,” Geralt said, “Not mine.”

That quieted the bard, the merry crackle of the fire rising to soothe them both in the silence. Out of the corner of his eye, Geralt saw Jaskier work his jaw. He felt a little pang of pleasure to have rendered the man speechless - albeit not exactly under admirable circumstances.

“And what was your problem, Geralt?” Jaskier finally asked, hushed and somber - and more and more, Geralt came to recognize this man as Julian. The man behind Jaskier. The human, not the entertainer. “Is my company truly so burdensome? Why did you allow me to tag along then? You could’ve run Roach at any time, I wouldn’t exactly have been able to keep up on foot before I got Daisy.”

Geralt blew out a breath. This was uncomfortable. Incredibly so. The words he needed felt so far away - fine and hard to hold, like sand slipping through his fingers. The more he struggled to gather them, the more time passed. Finally, Julian snorted - his mask as an easy-going entertainer enclosing around him again - and Geralt knew his window was closing. A window that may not open again.

He knew firsthand the weight of a good mask, afterall. How hard it was to remove it. How dreadful, to reveal one’s face. Let alone to have that trust go to waste. He knew. It just took the witcher far too long to realize he himself had been wearing one as well.

“The Path is lonely. I can count on less than the fingers of one hand how many people would be willing to travel with a witcher. Less so, to happily agree to it. I allowed it, because you… truly appeared to want to travel with me.”

Julian’s gaze was piercing, expressionless and guarded, yet strangely patient across the flicker of the fire. 

“And my singing?”

The witcher’s gaze darted meekly to the fire even as it hurt his eyes to stare. It felt like penance.

“I… I didn’t wish for you to stop singing. I wished for peace. I used to think peace was what I had before. Before you… I just didn’t know that what I had then hadn’t gone by ‘peace’ at all. It was loneliness, and I was merely too used to it to know better.”

His eyes darted up to Julian’s. Caught hold of those cornflower blue eyes and held them in case this was the last time. There was something subtle behind the man’s gaze. Something surprised; as though Geralt was a road he had traveled many times, a path he thought by heart, and yet had found something new.

But the bard didn’t speak, didn’t move, so Geralt continued.

“And I think, well… Few ever agree to travel with a witcher. Even less stay. I thought perhaps… if it were on my terms… it wouldn’t hurt so badly… That if I could just go back to that sense of ‘peace’, I wouldn’t ever have to miss you,” he sucked in a breath, hitched and broken, and admitted softly, “And yet I’ve missed you ever since.”

Julian watched him for a long time. Geralt awaited his response. Expected his meager words to be blown away by the bard’s counter. Instead Jaskier simply stood, and Geralt looked away, his stomach cold as it sank inside him. The bard was leaving. It was finally done. There was nothing left to fix. He had shattered it all, doing what witchers did best: destroy.

He startled when he found two boots come to stand in front of him instead.

“You’re right,” the bard said, astonished, “You are a terrible problem solver. How you’ve maintained such a successful career in the art of it is quite frankly astonishing to me now.”

Geralt looked up, eyes wide, to find Julian still staring down at him. Smiling - the hurt not gone, but not so piercing anymore. Like light coming in through cracked stained glass, filtering not as planned, yet ever more beautiful because of it.

“You’re right. I can’t promise I won’t be gone one day. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned about love, it’s that you can’t have it without pain… I’m mortal. There’s a bit of a looming expiration date on our relationship. One of these days, I’m going to be too old to follow you. Or I’ll be called away for a gig. Or to teach. Or maybe I’ll die, like men do… But I’m not going to just disappear without reason if you don’t make me. We’ll make plans. We’ve got decades to figure it out. Gods above, I can’t even begin to form the words to tell you how utterly mad it is to drive someone away because you’re afraid that they’ll leave. That’s a self-foreseeing prophecy, my dear witcher, and here I thought you hated Fate and any word associated with it.”

Julian smiled. Brought a hand down to brush a white lock back from Geralt’s stunned eyes and tuck it behind his ear. 

“What would you like for me to sing?” He asked.

“Anything,” Geralt whispered.

“Alright,” The bard smiled, taking the spot beside him to curl himself into Geralt’s every crevice. As though he were a being made of water rather than man, made to fill any container, if only one offered him the opportunity to do so. Waiting for it, Geralt realized.

Waiting to come home.

“I’ll sing,” Julian said, leaning into him, “But only because you asked nicely.”

He plucked the fluffiest bits of his bread from within the hardened crust of the loaf he had in his pack and moaned as that first tuff nearly melted in his mouth – too stale from riding to be properly soft, but hunger had blurred that line of reasoning into something far more fantastical and pleased.

“Gods above, I love bread,” Jaskier all but moaned, slumping on his log as if the taste alone had rendered him useless. He fluttered his lashes. Geralt grunted.

“Come now, Geralt. Even you with all your witcherly stoicism can’t deny that there’s nothing quite as good as bread after days of starving,” Jaskier pointedly out, plucking another chunk of bread and placing it on his tongue with another lewd moan – now purposefully so.

Geralt rolled his eyes, face canted down toward the fire as he stoked it with a stick, ensuring that the logs lay just right for the best flame. Jaskier continued on, too merry from his meal to stay his tongue.

“Food’s always best when drunk or starving,” he mused.

He remembered lectures about that, at some point in Oxenfurt. His studies, while fundamentally focused around literature in general, had varied. A good writer needed to know a little of everything, after all, and he was nothing if not thorough when it came to his craft. He could still remember an old bore of a professor going on and on about a human’s instinct to survive and that, when starving, food was often times described by patients to be far richer or more delicious than normal – even if that food was in fact bland or stale or generally something the patient might detest in regular circumstances. The body recognizes the necessity of eating, numbs the mind of any factors that might keep them from eating, and therefore everything tastes as if it had been delivered from the heavens themselves.

“Agreed,” Geralt said, setting his stick aside to stand. Jaskier watched him with childish passivity as the witcher went to Roach, filled a feed harness with grain or whatever it was he tended to give the ol’girl, and went about attaching it to her head so she might eat – obviously reminded of the task by their conversation. Then he attended to Jaskier’s horse as well, Daisy. That made something fond prickle in Jaskier’s chest.

“It’s stale and I don’t even care,” Jaskier continued to babble, breaking the hard crust off piece by piece now as he continued to consume his meal. Geralt grunted again, crouched by his pack again, and despite Jaskier’s assumption that the man was now finally fetching his own meal, the witcher instead returned to his place at the fire with his sword, a rag and some oils – and surprisingly no whet stone.

Jaskier rose his brows.

“Really, Geralt? I know you witchers have a frankly unhealthy relationship with your swords, but it can wait. Aren’t you hungry? Tired?”

Amber eyes met his overtop the brilliant flames of their fire. They seemed paler somehow, but the fire made it quickly difficult to hold the man’s gaze; even moreso to make out fine details. Otherwise Jaskier might have seen the hollows of Geralt’s cheeks beneath his riding stubble, or the dark circles that had made a home of the space beneath his eyes. Might have noticed he was paler than usual.

But he didn’t.

“Hmm,” Geralt said, eyes dropping back to his sword as he oiled his rag and began the lengthy process of cleaning it with the meticulousness of a witcher.

That gave Jaskier pause. He had seen the man fight. Geralt had described the Churt as a young adult, even though Jaskier couldn’t have imagined a larger Churt in his life. The point being: the Churt had been no babe, and while Geralt was a witcher of immeasurable skill, the beast had done its fair share of harm in turn. With the bend of its wing it had struck such a blow on Geralt’s right shoulder blade that it had tossed the witcher across a small clearing and into a try. Jaskier hadn’t imagined the wet pop he had heard at the time, nor had he imagined the gash the thing had landed on Geralt’s thigh and hip when it swooped down from above, talons first.

Geralt had excused himself to wash the worst of the fight off in a river, leaving Jaskier to settle Roach and start the process of picking up flammable tinder for the fire – something that once upon a time, he never would have trusted the bard to do. It made a little bloom of warmth grow in his chest at the thought even as dread slowly but surely began to curl in his gut.

He hadn’t seen Geralt take any salves or wrappings to the river. And if Jaskier was tired from riding without food, he could only imagine how ravenous he might feel after riding and slaying a Churt on just as empty a stomach.

“Geralt, come on,” he repeated, the cheer he had felt from his bread now weak in his tone. “You should really eat something.”

“M’fine,” the man said, focused on his task.

Jaskier felt his brows pucker into the slightest frown and not for the first time cursed Geralt for the wrinkles he would no doubt get because of the stubborn witcher and his stupid concepts of logic and reason – aka, his utter lack of either when it came to simple matters of health, wellbeing and general comfort.

Witchers, honestly.

But not for the first time Jaskier tried to quell his sharp tongue if, for no other reason, because he himself was not a witcher and sometimes they were able to do extraordinary things due to their mutations. He tried to keep his tone light as he asked, “Are witchers able to digest their food more slowly or something?”

Geralt snorted, but under the crackle of the fire Jasker could not tell if it was the white wolf’s attempt at a chuckle or not. Jaskier plucked another bit of bread from his loaf, stuck it in his mouth and looked at the witcher pointedly – expecting a real answer.

Geralt grunted, cleared his throat in a manner Jaskier might describe as ‘uncomfortable’ in witcher-speak – a tongue of body language rather than words – and when it became obvious Jaskier would not fill the silence for him or move on, surprisingly answered.

“In a manner,” he admitted.

“In a manner,” Jaskier repeated theatrically, as if this in fact explained all the secrets of the universe, and nodded his head sagely, “Ever a man of many words you are, Geralt. In what manner?”

Geralt blew a breath through his nose in a heavy huff, his eyes darting up in that way he did whenever he was gauging whether or not something was worth sharing with Jaskier. It appeared his distate for being badgered outweighed his dislike of talking about himself, because he kept his eyes pointedly down on his sword as he said, “Mutations.”

“Ah. I see.”

Amber eyes darted to him for a fraction of a moment – almost, dare Jaskier say, nervous; but he couldn’t be certain with the firelight. No, not nervous exactly… but without a doubt Geralt was anticipating something. Bracing himself, one might say.

His sword was already positively gleaming, but the man continued to focus on it as if it were rusted. When Jaskier threw a stick at him, staring at him pointedly, mouth full of bread, Geralt sighed – haughty and on edge.

“Witchers,” he said slowly, drawing it out as if unsure of how to proceed, “Adapt easily. Our bodies can speed or slow our metabolisms as needed.”

The bread in his hands felt suddenly too rough, too heavy. He had a terrible, awful feeling he knew where this explanation was headed, but he needed to hear it. Needed to know for sure.

“Geralt,” he said just as slowly if only to show Geralt that any cheerful playfulness in him had passed and that there was no escaping this conversation now. “What precisely are you trying to tell me? That you have an on-off lever for your hunger?”

Geralt blew out a breath through his teeth that stirred his messy silver hair. It was like pulling teeth, Jaskier thought, frustrated.

“We can starve a long time before it becomes a problem,” he finally said, clinical and blunt, as if he had said something mundane like ‘witchers are more flexible than most’ rather than ‘I can suffer starvation longer than mortal men before I’ll ever die’.

“Geralt,” Jaskier snapped, unsure of what he was even trying to say. The word had slipped past his teeth in a snap, unfettered and unabashed and wholly horrified. Geralt might have flinched, it was hard to tell past the fire, and finally Jaskier had had enough of the man’s cowering. He stood and rounded the fire – loomed over the witcher – and saw the nearly feral glint of the man’s eyes as he pointedly did not look at him. Eventually, words returned to him. “Tell me this is some utterly terrible version of a witcher joke. Humor really does not suit you, you know.”

“Sure, it’s a joke,” Geralt deadpanned, something tight about the way he held his shoulders.

“Geralt!”

“What?” He finally snapped, the word nearly a hushed snarl when his eyes finally darted up to meet Jaskier’s and finally – finally – he saw it. Geralt was thin. It showed in his face, scant of even so much fat as to fill his cheeks, and from this angle the fire cast dreadful shadows in those hunger hollows.

Gods above, his gear. That’s why he hadn’t noticed, at least not yet. They had not exactly found a tavern in some time – sleeping outdoors provided little opportunity to disrobe or enjoy one another’s company in comfort. He had thought it surprising that Geralt had kept his armor on for more, if not all, of the trip. Now he knew – it was just as much a cover as the fire had been.

“Take it off,” Jaskier said.

Geralt blinked slowly, caught off guard. Slow from hunger, Jaskier realized. Something no doubt made worse by the witcher’s difficult relationship with sleep.

“What? No.”

“Geralt.”

“I already did it.”

He meant his wounds, Jaskier realized, and for some reason that made him angry.

“Another lie!” Jaskier said in an explosion of hand movement, too wound up to settle his tendency toward the theatrical as he gestured at Geralt’s shoulders – at the way he was obviously favoring one side over the other, and continued, “I saw you go to the river. You didn’t bring a single salve with you!”

Geralt rolled his eyes – not so much a dramatic gesture as it was a minute flutter of his lashes – and said, “I’m a witcher, Jaskier. It’s fine.”

He had heard the story before. Witcher, in Geralt’s mind, appeared to be synonymous with ‘immune’. But even so, the man was generally good about salving and bandaging himself. His body was, after all, his greatest tool. And yet he hadn’t this time.

“You don’t have any food, do you?” He finally accused, catching on, “Or salves? Gods above, Geralt, why did you take this contract without those things!”

“Because I needed the contract to buy those things,” Geralt said through his teeth, nearly baring them like his namesake might.

It was an argument that was quickly going nowhere, and Jaskier could not exactly pin point why exactly there was a kernel of fury growing in his stomach, searing him from the inside out in a rising tide. Instead he just made an utterly exasperated sound at Geralt, took a step forward – ignoring the tension that bloomed in Geralt’s body in reaction – and shoved the rest of his bread into the man’s hands before stomping off to his pack with a frustrated, “Why didn’t you say you utter oaf!”

Geralt’s brows shot up.

“Jaskier, I can’t,” he said, eyes on the man as he held the bread loosely, his rag haven fallen to the ground. “This is yours.”

“And now it’s yours, you bloody idiot of a witcher,” Jaskier said back just as quickly, his tone almost lilting as he fell back into the comfort of jesting words to hide the anger in his gut that made him want to – he didn’t even know! Kick a tree, maybe? Punch a man? Tie Geralt down until he understood how to better take care of himself? Yes, that one. He busied himself with digging through his own pack on Daisy. His horse whickered at him cheerfully as he shuffled things around. He found another chunk of bread – this one smaller but better than nothing. He also pulled out a tin of cured meat he kept for emergencies, as well as a leather wrapped kit – crude at best – of what scant medical supplies he had come to find necessary during his trips with Geralt. Bandages, cheap salves, thread and needles. He turned back to Geralt, his findings in either hand, and nearly barked out a laugh at the sight of the witchere. The man had never looked more uncomfortable or out of his element, staring at him like Jaskier were a lion that might make of a meal of him rather than a wispy bard with bread, meat and medical items.

“You look as if I’ve revealed myself to be another Churt in disguise,” Jaskier said, coming closer now. Geralt moved, perhaps to stand, to flee, but not quickly enough – and that, in and of itself – convicted Jaskier on his path even more. He pressed a hand onto Geralt’s knee, cautious of where he thought the man’s wounds might be, and urged him back down onto the log as he took a seat beside him.

“Surely you’ve been without coin before,” Jaskier said as he delicately places the second loaf onto the cleanest bit of bark that he could manage, then the tin and medical supplies. Geralt looked like a cornered dog but Jaskier just kept talking, as if his babbling might ease the witcher into some modicum of familiarity and comfort. “I’ve seen you hunt. So why not hunt?”

He asked even as he knew why. Geralt had already hinted at it. With a metabolism that sped and slowed as needed, it meant that his body had burned most of its energy in the fight. Now it was slowing again, drawing the warmth from his skin as his heart beat dropped to an almost unnatural rhythm. Hunting took time and energy. It meant Geralt was now in league with most wild predators – better to wait for an ample opportunity that promised success than to blindly waste it looking for an animal in the woods at night. Better to bide his time, even if that meant a gnawing stomach.

“No point right now,” Geralt said, confirming his suspicions. It was strange to simultaneously see the man as a predator and yet realize that meant that, in this moment, he was vulnerable for the very same reason that he was dangerous.

“Right, of course,” Jaskier said idly, more focused on the task at hand now that he understood the problem, “Not to rush things along because I generally prefer to take my time disrobing my partners, but let’s go, Geralt. Eat your bread, off with your armor and such.”

Geralt stiffened, then held the husk back to him with a murmured, “It’s yours. I don’t need handouts. M’fine.”

The words ‘I’m used to this, it’s not a big deal’ went unsaid – and wisely so. Jaskier might’ve given him a motherly wallop for it. Instead he shoved the bread back toward Geralt with a quick, “Yeah, well, if it’s mine then that means I can do whatever I want with it. And I want you to eat it.”

That, in combination with hunger, seemed to finally cow the witcher into some semblance of obedience. He pulled a tuff of soft, white bread flesh from its stale husk and went about eating it with far less drama than Jaskier had. But the bard didn’t miss the way the witcher’s fingers nearly – nearly – trembled. For the first time he realized the problem might be far worse than a day or two without food. There was no telling how long the witcher had gone without before Jaskier had arrived to join him on his trek.

He realized with a start that he didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to know how long Geralt could go. He’d much rather focus on ensuring he didn’t ever go that long ever again.

Jaskier pressed into Geralt’s space with long arms and clever fingers, unfastening buckles and straps around Geralt as the witcher ate. He pulled off his chest armor and had to bite his tongue not to hiss. The witcher’s shoulder was a mass of purple – masked except for where it peaked out beneath the hem of his collar, but telling nonetheless. It’d heal, Geralt always did, but it didn’t mean the man needed to suffer while he did. He tugged at Geralt’s shirt, easing it over his head as he sighed, “For a man as adept and trained for survival as you are, Geralt, you’re an astoundingly huge idiot.”

“Wow, thanks,” Geralt mused, a chuckle blurred around the edges of the words, muffled as the shirt slipped over his head and—

Jaskier had to bury his teeth into his knuckles to avoid spitting out the first, dramatic invective that sprung to his tongue. But by Melitele’s tits, the man was deceptively built looking for a man as thin as he was at the moment. With his armor on he looked like a brick wall – tall, broad and built for tasks no normal man could handle. But beneath all that, even as muscled as he was, the truth remained that the white wolf was thin as a rail almost. He tried to remember the last time he had seen the witcher, the last time they had shared a room, shared each other’s company. He was a surprisingly lithe man for someone so accustomed to a job like witchering – but he hadn’t been this thin. He must have been decently fed, last he saw him, because now Jaskier could almost swear that if he had a hand on either side of Geralt’s hips, his fingers would nearly touch. An exaggeration, and yet, he didn’t want to try in case he was right. He could see every rung of Geralt’s ribs, every knob of his spine. His stomach curved inward, even the musculature of his abdomen less prominent that he remembered. And his hips; the way they jutted even while sitting…

Gods above, how long did he starve this time?

Even faced with so much suffering, Jaskier held his tongue firmly between his teeth until he was certain he would not badger the man. Geralt knew how thin he was. There was a reason why he had kept his armor on with Jaskier. He had known the bard would fret. He had tried to hide it. Hounding him now wouldn’t reverse the effects of Geralt’s stint with hunger – but it would drive the wolf away, keen as he was to avoid confrontation and care like a Labrador unwilling to be bathed.

“You put even my boyish figure to shame, Geralt. Going after my job, are we?” He joked because he couldn’t bare the silence. If it were silent for so much as a moment longer he’d babble. He’d babble, and that would devolve to nagging, and he needed the witcher to sit still, to trust him. To finally, finally allow someone to care for him despite his conceptions about what was or was not his, and how far he could push the limit of witcher mutations before he pushed too far. Geralt snorted, back shivering like a horse shoeing flies when Jaskier ran two fingers lightly over his bruising. It was swollen, puffy; hot to the touch. Dark as pitch, made worse by the flickering light of the fire. He opened one jar of salve, coated a few fingers liberally, then went about rubbing it into the man’s skin as gently as possible while still working it in to the muscle and damage before. Geralt moaned – Jaskier couldn’t tell if it were pain or relief, but he continued regardless.

“Hardly about to start singing in pubs,” Geralt mused, evidently just as eager to settle back into some semblance of normalcy. Unused to being the one being taken care of rather than doing the protecting. It rankled him something fierce, muscles tight under Jaskier’s hands.

“Yes, well, maybe you should consider it,” Jaskier said lightly, dipping his fingers back into the jar for more, “With a voice like yours, you’d be quite exotic for the trade. Women would swoon at your feet – if you can hold a tune, of course, very important. Pubs tend to feed their bards. Pay’s good, too. Better than…” he trailed off. It felt too raw, too cruel to take a shot at Geralt’s profession now when the wolf was so bare and vulnerable. Here Jaskier had taken his armor and his wrappings, both physical and metaphorically, and exposed the witcher for what he was: mortal, self-abused and exhausted. To go on felt like a moot point, like kicking a man while he’s down. It felt wrong to acknowledge once more that witchering was a thankless trade. Painful, even, when Jaskier knew Geralt risked his life often, protected thankless assholes that tried to fleece him often – and he starved himself to do it, too.

Geralt made a sound Jaskier couldn’t quite navigate.

“Eat the meat in the tin as well,” Jaskier guided the conversation away, tone light despite the way his breath hitched in his chest seeing Geralt like this.

“Jaskier, this isn’t necessary—”

Jaskier’s hands drew still on Geralt’s back. Something swollen twisted his chest and throat into something thin and strained as he said, “Please, Geralt… if for no other reason than to appease me. I may not have a witcher’s metabolism, but I’m tired as well.”

The tin squealed lightly when Geralt opened it. The same of dried pork wafted up lightly – stronger when Geralt took a slice and held it over his shoulder with a gruff, “At least eat some, too.”

Jaskier would have laughed if the whole situation wasn’t so fucked up. Instead he just hummed a pleased, “How thoughtful,” and took the morsel directly from Geralt’s fingers with his mouth, unwilling to touch it with his salve-greasy fingers. Geralt was more comfortable with that gesture than being taken care of, and Jaskier decided then and there that he’d have to work on that.

Geralt ate the jerky and Jaskier sent a quick halfhearted prayer of thanks to the gods on the off chance they were real even though he was pretty sure they weren’t and mainly enjoyed referencing them for how colorful they made his curses. Once the worst of Geralt’s shoulder was handled, he ran a hand over the rungs of his ribs down to the – sharp, too sharp – jut of his hip and asked, “Did you actually attend to those gashes or do I need to strip you completely?”

“They were shallow enough. Nearly healed,” Geralt grunted around a strip of meat. Jaskier looked at him pointedly, brows raised, and Geralt offered a grumbly, “Truly. It’s fine.”

Jaskier waited another beat for added affect before capping the jar with a soft, “Alright, Geralt. I trust you. But if they’re not gone in the morning, please put salve on them?”

Geralt grunted at that, and Jaskier took that as a sign of victory.

Much of the tension had eased from Geralt’s shoulders now, but there was still a great deal of exhaustion under his eyes and in the shadows of his cheeks. Jaskier wiped his hands clean on a rag, watching the witcher eat with a strange fondness in his gut he couldn’t quite name. He was unused to this, he realized. Not just with Geralt, but in general. In brothels or taverns or even with the witcher, his relationships had been centered around passion and drive. The need to fulfill his desires with lips and fingers and teeth. He had shared meals and treats after with maidens and men alike, of course, and had even himself been cared for some. But had never really done the caring himself and mostly certainly not in a context as benign as this. He had never felt the urge to. No one ever stuck around, after all, and both parties were only ever fulfilling the same selfish desires only…

This was difficult. Geralt was different. Jaskier wanted to help. They wouldn’t lay together, not tonight. There was no ulterior motive, no benefit other than… Well, other than Geralt’s comfort and safety. Jaskier’s hands stilled in his rag, gaze caught a bit wide-eyed on the snacking witcher when suddenly Geralt’s own amber eyes lazily caught his, no longer as edgey as he had been.

“What?” The witcher asked, the idiot.

“Nothing,” Jaskier chirped quickly, eager to cover the sudden revelation before he had time to properly turn it over in his mind and understand it. He tossed the rag at his pack and for once he was the one avoiding the witcher’s gaze as he said, “I was merely thinking about how lucky you are to have such a handsome and selfless friend such as me. Talented, charming and capable in the woods – you were born beneath a lucky star to have met me. What would you do without me?”

Geralt snorted again and that, Jaskier could tell, was a laugh. He grinned in return, back on familiar footing, and came to sit thigh to thigh with his witcher. Geralt hummed, curiously close to a cat’s purr, and Jaskier had the oddest urge to run his fingers through the man’s hair just to hear more of that sound.

“Starve a little longer, I suppose,” Geralt said, playfulness dulled by the truth in it. Blunt, daft ass of a man. Jaskier stretched his legs before him, forced himself not to go off on another tirade unless the witcher – too used to doing things only on his own terms – shut down after all the work the bard had done to loosen him up that evening.

“Yes, well, from now on what’s mine is yours, Geralt. I’ll pack accordingly.”

Geralt stilled.

“—Jaskier, you needn’t trouble—”

“If you’re starving you can hardly protect me or perform those heroic acts of inhuman deeds I do so love to sing and profit off of, can you? Consider it your cut in the fame you’ve brought me with your witchering,” Jaskier said cheekily, eager to cover his own vulnerabilities like the coward and hypocrite that he was. Something stole across Geralt’s face, something unidentifiable, and Jaskier felt his gut curl ever so slightly.

“Of course,” Geralt said. Jaskier felt the slightest bit of distance grow between them suddenly, their comradery turning the littlest bit stale. Guilt stabbed him lightly. The fire crackled. “That is why you come, isn’t it.”

It almost… almost seemed as though Geralt was disappointed by that – mildly, as witchers tended to be, and yet more poignantly because of that.

Well… he had stripped Geralt of his manly pride, his clothing and his illusions of not being a twig. The least Jaskier could do was offer some boon in turn. Even the playing field, so to speak.

He sucked in a breath, let it go slowly, catching Geralt’s attention because of it.

“It started that way, yes. Though not wholly for the stories or the songs… But now… Geralt, I would follow you even if there were no story to sing about in some pub,” he admitted. “If one of our trips just comprised of us dozing under willows by the river, I’d join you. I’d keep the songs just for myself. Sing them to you. Maybe it’d help you sleep.”

Geralt watched him for a long time. Jaskier began to fidget, his neck burning and no doubt red as the silence made his words sound more and more ridiculous. He was just about to say, ‘forget it, I’m just daft with exhaustion, you know how it goes,’ when finally, Geralt spoke.

“What would you sing about then,” Geralt asked slowly, carefully, “If not about whatever I killed?”

Geralt was staring at him, his face a blank sheet, and Jaskier felt prickly all of sudden, frustrated that the witcher could so easily hide while he was weak to expressing himself at the drop of a hat. But the moment felt important to Geralt regardless, somehow the bard could just tell. Perhaps it was his increasing fluency in the wordless speak of witchers. The worst of that dazed, hollow hunger-glaze had retreated from those amber eyes. Still there around the edges, but otherwise focused on him in a manner Geralt rarely allowed himself to do.

“I’d have plenty to sing about,” Jaskier said softly, his protective, charming mannerisms falling away layer by layer under those eyes. “I’d love nothing more than to sing about the white wolf finally enjoying himself for a moment – even if that moment were as benign as enjoying an apple freshly plucked from the tree. Even if it detailed only the litany of your snoring or the way the wind dances in your ridiculously white hair.”

Geralt snorted, a wry twist of amusement to his lips as he looked out into the night and said, “Enough. I’m not one of your conquests from some backwater village or high court function. Stop blowing smoke up my ass.”

He should joke. It was his cue to joke. Geralt was offering him an out. He should joke.

“I could sing even about this,” he said instead, his eyes traveling to the dark bloom on Geralt’s back – proof of his mortality despite the legends Jaskier had hand in crafting.

“Some song that would be,” Geralt grunted, “No one wants to hear about a half-starved witcher. Sour the mood immediately.”

“Don’t be so shallow, you’re cleverer than that,” Jaskier chided.

“I’m daft, I’m clever – which is it?”

“Believe me, the contradiction frustrates the hell out of me too, witcher,” Jaskier chuckled, the littlest bit of a frustrated grumble in the tone as he leaned in, crowding the man. “But I stand by it. Perhaps that should be the next song I sing: how to take care of your witcher. Help some other fool bard out there who also fell head over heels for their witcher.”

“Your witcher?” Geralt asked, brows raised.

“Ears like yours, I know you heard me, Geralt. A mouse farts and you wake up. Don’t play coy with me.”

Geralt actually let out a soft huff of a laugh at that.

“How to care for your witcher… you think you know how?” He mused, too weary to fight or snap, it would seem – made soft by the salve and Jaskier’s hands. Steadier than the witcher from those early days, so skittish and closed off.

“You’re still here, aren’t you?” Jaskier said, puffing up, proud. Geralt shook his head, exasperated, and Jaskier pressed, “I’ll start with feeding you properly, since you can’t be trusted to make sane choices. And anything after that, well… I’ll learn as I go!”

And that was as close to saying ‘I love you’ as he could get for now. The witcher too easily spooked, and he himself unfamiliar with this version of himself that loved beyond the first fuck. It wasn’t ‘I love you’, not yet. But if the witcher could show him his wounds, trust him with his back, well…

He plunged the knife into her neck without a single word, his own teeth bared and white as marble against his dirt-streaked face. What began as a shriek to incapacitate him in a last-ditch bid for freedom became a howl of pain, then grew wet, her teeth marred by her own blood. Black, shark-like eyes stared at him, enraged. Afraid. He anticipated that she would pull away. Anticipated one last grapple to the ground to finish what he had started. Instead she clenched her hand into his side more viciously and pulled him in. Despite drowning in the weeping of her own wound, his knife still in her throat, she bit him. Carnivorous teeth dug into his shoulder. Venom pushed into his veins. Geralt let out a strangled yowl before yanking his knife through the rest of her throat. Blood poured down his front as the Alp let him go, stumbling back. He let her, the hand he had used to pin her to his side now rushing up to check the worst of the bite.

Surprisingly superficial, he realized. But death likely hadn’t been the intention. He could feel venom threading through his veins already, black ichor spreading like a spider’s web beneath his skin – promising suffering ahead.

The Alp fell into the underbrush of the forest around them, body writhing as her heels dug into the dirt and her hair tangled in the twigs. Her ribs heaved. She gasped wetly. Slowly, her thrashing stilled.

Finally, naught was left but the hum of Midsummer’s approach in the wind and Geralt’s breathing – sharp and thready – as the venom began its work. Not for the first time, Geralt cursed his foolishness for not taking another night to brew Black Blood as he should have. But another night would have meant another innocent death, and so he took the job without it. At least then the death might only be his own.

He curled an arm around his wounded side and with shaking fingers, he whistled for Roach. His hands were nearly numb with venom as he dug into her saddlebags. He wouldn’t be able to take much, lest he trade one ailment for another. Half a vial of Swallow to stem the worst of the bleeding from his side and neck. Half a vial of Golden Oriole to dampen the venom coursing in his veins. The last of the vial fell numbly from his fingers not long after. He leaned into Roach. Felt her snuffling at his hair.

“Jaskier,” he tried to tell her, to ask her to fetch him, but all light began to wink out of his vision. Beneath his skin Alp venom sang and nightmares beckoned. Midsummer kissed his cheek with a pleasant, warm breeze. It reminded him of the homage he had yet to pay. He grasped that thread like a lifeline.

But it was too late. Between one shuddering blink and another, he was gone.

- ˑ༄ؘ -

Jaskier was grateful that – for once – their travels brought them to a sizable village right in time for actual civilized festivities. Midsummer was upon them and there was no mistaking the fact that the village was prepared to celebrate it in style. While it would by no means be an affair like the ones in Oxenfurt that he held so close to his heart, the town had a healthy population of villagers and appeared to be enough of a trade hub to have allowed the town to celebrate a little more lavishly than most. Kegs were being set up at stands in the streets. A wide range of summer wildflowers had been woven together by the women and children to wreath the town’s buildings and signs in floral drapery. Candles dotted the edges of the roads and vendor tables, all ready to be lit at dusk that night. It was an attractive enough scene at noon, but Jaskier knew that once night fell, the light of the candles and the fireflies would cast their cheery party in a beautiful, ethereal glow. It appeared there might even be a wedding planned for the night. It wouldn’t be an uncommon affair. Midsummer was known to be a celebration of life and love; how better to celebrate than through consummation?

He could already imagine the pleasant heat of the bonfire. The way it would tickle his cheeks as he drank beer and enjoyed slices of cured meats and cheeses, and danced among the townsfolk, learning the steps common to their dances here, whatever they might be. Maybe he’d even be able to coax Geralt into joining, if he were lucky. While they had known each other for years, this would be the first opportunity to spend the occasion of Midsummer together. He wondered if witchers celebrated it, or if Geralt would see it as an opportunity to rest in the inn without harassment after his hunt – not that Jaskier would blame him.

He hoped they could spend it together, though. The mere thought of Geralt beside the Midsummer bonfire, his creamy skin alight with warm oranges and yellows, sent a prickling up his spine not unlike the feeling that looking at a masterpiece painting might inspire.

Maybe he could even sneak a few flowers into the man’s white hair. Bursts of forget-me-not blue and dandelion yellow entangled in snowy locks, all cast in the flickering shadow of the bonfire’s glow—

—Jaskier visibly jumped when his thoughts were cut short by nosy lips snuffling at the back of his collar. Nearby the children giggled at the way he shrieked. He scowled at them, then whirled to find Roach pushing her long snout against his chest with a great, heaving sigh. She had been running, he realized.

Running without Geralt.

“Where is he?” he asked, all ire crushed beneath the great weight of dread falling in his stomach. She took him by the collar again and tugged, careful to mind her teeth. Jaskier needed no further prompting. He climbed into her saddle and let her take him away – all too aware of the blood smeared on the clasps of the saddle bag and the unmistakable red handprint on her neck, large and familiar.

- ˑ༄ؘ -

Jaskier found him face down in the mossy underbrush of an old tree, the sort of tree that spiraled high into the sky. He was mere feet away from a woman, her face twisted into the ugly grimace common to Vampires. Her throat was nothing but a bloody maw, open and wrecked. Already she had begun to stink of rot and death. Jaskier covered his nose and felt a weak shiver thread down his spine, nearly stealing the strength to stay in the saddle from his bones. Beneath him, Roach stamped her hooves impatiently, pawing at the ground. Jaskier gave himself but a moment to gather himself – just long enough to ensure the sight and smell alone wouldn’t make him fall disgracefully from Roach’s back – before he dismounted.

He forced himself to ignore the dead Alp. Forced himself not to take in the long red train of her hair, or how normal she had probably looked among the other villagers before Geralt had coaxed out her true nature. Instead he went to his knees beside the witcher, his name on his tongue as he reached for those broad shoulders and flipped him over.

He was paler than normal. Jaskier didn’t think that was possible, yet here they were. He looked as white as a crisp royal sheet, bleached like a bone in the sun. His neck was a mess of punctures, and with a shiver that shook him right down to his belly, Jaskier plucked a tooth from Geralt’s flesh and flicked it across the clearing. Worse yet, there was a gash in his side. No, not a gash – more punctures. Punctures where clawed fingers had made a home in his flesh. Both wounds had slowed to a sluggish bleeding, however, and a quick look confirmed his suspicions. Not far away two bottles lay forgotten in the grass. One empty, one still the littlest bit full – their contents puddled into the earth. Potions. Two of them.

At least he wouldn’t die of blood loss, Jaskier thought as he started the long, arduous task of trying to settle Geralt over Roach’s saddle as safely and harmlessly as he could. So much for celebrating Midsummer in style. Though even as that thought struck him, he found it to be more a muted old ghost than any true regret. An echo of selfishness from lonely days.

Instead Jaskier whispered a soft plea of gratitude into the air as he took Roach’s reins beneath her chin and began to lead her away.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you for getting me here in time.”

- ˑ༄ؘ -

Jaskier had wanted to return to the inn. He wanted a roof over their heads, and a tub of water to clean his hands with rather than the river, and a bed to let Geralt rest. But the thought of parading Geralt’s limp body through the village gave him pause. And furthermore, the promise of music and partying that was sure to fill the streets that night nixed the deal entirely. There would be no rest for his fickle sleeper of a witcher even if he weren’t injured. Add in potion-intoxication and fevers from his wounds, and he’d be miserable without reprieve; on edge, instincts flaring, and unable to do a thing about it.

So instead he took him further into the woods, away from the Alp’s corpse or anything the bloody battle might attract. Finding a spot to camp was second nature to him now after years of traveling at Geralt’s side. Not too close to water where prey animals and predators alike gathered. But not so far away as to make fetching water impossible. A dark, nestled nook of trees that were out of sight most ways you looked at it. There was little he could do to hide Roach, but she was – in her own right – another layer of security. She’d sense if something was wrong long before Jaskier ever would. And she’d never failed to protect herself before. So he removed her saddle, bit and bridle, and let her graze at her leisure with a soft promise to wash the blood from her coat as soon as he could.

He took Geralt’s tent from her saddle and set up a slanted covering using the trees. Something to provide a little security and buffer from the wind that night without limiting too terribly his ability to tend to Geralt. He rolled an old shirt into a tight ball and tucked it under Geralt’s head. He made sure the witcher was as comfortable as possible before he took a spare water skin and trudged to the river to wash the worst of any filth from his hands, then to fill the skin in preparation for cleaning Geralt’s wounds.

It was thankfully a far tamer affair than usual, with Geralt unconscious. No half-hearted embarrassment to make the witcher growl and sit stiff as a board as Jaskier tended to him. No self-depreciation for needing care. Geralt’s muscles didn’t fight him as he lifted his arms, legs, chest or neck to remove what clothing needed removing to do what needed doing.

Jaskier cleaned the wounds as delicately as he could. He mopped the sweat from Geralt’s brow as the man twitched, and tossed, and turned, plagued as though in the grip of a nightmare. And the reality was not far off, Jaskier realized. He had heard Geralt explain the dangers of an Alp’s kiss to villagers before. He knew the nightmares their venom could induce. He could only hope one of those vials the witcher had taken had subdued the worst of it somewhat.

He wrapped the wounds. Stitched what could be stitched and left the rest for the witcher’s biology to handle. Then he helped the man back into his clothing, left his armor aside, and shifted Geralt’s head until he had it cushioned in his lap, fingers threading through his hair.

Geralt’s eyes opened. Soft flickers of hazy gold peeking out from beneath sooty lashes. Sweaty brows furrowed and creased. The witcher moaned – a sound that was as much reaching out for Jaskier in confusion as it was reacting to the pain. Beside them, their little campfire leapt and popped merrily, painting Geralt in relief with yellows and oranges, and for a moment Jaskier nearly laughed as he thought perhaps he would get to see his witcher beside a bonfire after all.

“Jaskier?” Geralt croaked, looking up at him from his spot in the bard’s lap.

Jaskier weaved his fingers through sweaty hair – the knots long worked out – and said, “How kind of you to join us, sleeping beauty.”

Geralt frowned, but the ire melted away the pain that had contorted his face, and if Jaskier had to deal with a little ire to soothe those wrinkles away, he’d gladly do so. The bard smiled.

Weakly, Geralt lifted a hand, asking without words for water, and it was a testament to their time together that when Jaskier helped him sit up enough to drink, Geralt did not snarl or pull away. The bard held the water skin with Geralt as the witcher drank, urging him to slow when Geralt forgot to be mindful of how quickly he quenched his thirst. Geralt didn’t begrudge him the help. Communication so personal and second nature that neither had recognized when they had become so fluent in that language; only that they were grateful that they had.

When Geralt had drunk enough to soothe his throat but not so much as to upset his stomach or the delicate blend of potion and venoms therein, Jaskier set the skin aside – Geralt’s fingers trembling over his.

“The Alp?”

“Dead,” Jaskier said, “I just didn’t think we should camp near it.”

He knew Geralt would want to go and find it tomorrow when he felt better. That he’d want the head as a trophy to prove to the town he had done what he had set out to do, lest they try to swindle him. The Alp might be devoured by then. Jaskier knew that thought rankled Geralt something fierce. But he didn’t regret his choices, and he knew that while annoyed to potentially lose out on payment, Geralt didn’t begrudge him the decision either.

“Good thinking,” Geralt rasped. Jaskier felt a little plume of warmth unrelated to the fire fill his chest.

“Believe it or not, I have picked up a trick or two from you on our travels,” Jaskier preened.

Geralt’s fingers brushed over the wrappings that concealed his side, his throat, and said, “I believe it,” the words acknowledging, and the tone grateful. As close to ‘thank you’ as witchers tend to get. Once upon a time, Jaskier would have harped on the man for more. Now, it felt like everything.

“I fed and cleaned Roach. Your pack is fine,” Jaskier rattled off, this not having been the first time they’d had this conversation – nor would it be the last. “Afraid we don’t have much in the way of food, however. We’ll need to go back to town in the morning.”

“Surprised you didn’t go tonight,” Geralt said.

“Ah, yes, well… It's Midsummer’s Festival tonight. I didn’t think you’d appreciate the noise,” Jaskier admitted. He longed for a hot tub to soak in, fresh clothing and a pitcher of ale to watch the festivities with – but even so, none of those desires made him regret where he actually was or what he actually was doing. The thought of staying behind to celebrate, oblivious to Geralt lying wounded in the woods, made him shiver. It must have shown too, because Geralt’s hand closed over Jaskier’s free one on the witcher’s shoulder and squeezed.

Another unspoken pearl of gratitude.

“You said you had my pack?” Geralt asked, eyes fixed on Jaskier as though he were in the middle of deciding something.

“Yes,” Jaskier said, his own brows drawing ever so slightly tighter as his free hand moved from Geralt’s hair to his forehead, “You didn’t forget I said that, did you?”

Worry bubbled in his gut.

“Just making sure,” Geralt said, squeezing his other hand again. “I… It’s Midsummer tonight.”

“Yes, I know. I told you that. Are you sure you’re alright? You don’t feel feverish, but—”

“M’fine,” Geralt said quickly, cutting him off before his worries could spiral too transparently. “Truly. I just… there’s something I have to do tonight.”

Jaskier leaned back a little at that, surprised. He blew out an amused little breath and said, “I didn’t take you for the celebratory type, Geralt. We can just have our own party tomorrow night, if you’re that keen on it. I’ll braid flowers into your hair, and we’ll have our own little bonfire when your side looks more like flesh and less like holey cheese.”

“Lovely imagery,” Geralt deadpanned.

“Thank you,” Jaskier said beatifically.

Geralt searched his face for a long moment after that. Between them, the fire crackled innocently. Insects chirped. The moon filtered in pleasantly through the pines. But all of that paled in comparison to the look Geralt gave him. It was all at once unidentifiable, but also perhaps one of the most intimate things Jaskier had ever shared with the man. It stilled the breath in Jaskier’s lungs and left him as attentive as a deer in the field, waiting – always waiting.

“It can’t wait, Jaskier,” Geralt finally said.

“What, are you cursed to celebrate Midsummer or you’ll self-combust?” Jaskier joked, trying to ignore that lingering sense of dread that was snowballing dangerously in his gut. This was entirely unlike Geralt. Jaskier could count on fewer than the fingers of one hand how many times Geralt had sought his permission in situations like this. If he wanted to do something, he’d do it. He’d pick himself up from their makeshift camp and he’d limp off into the night, and the best Jaskier would be able to do was follow and hope he could help.

Even as their fight from the mountaintop rang in his head – long forgiven, but still haunting – he’d try to help.

And yet Geralt was not lifting himself up. If anything, the man looked as though he were on sleep’s doorstep. Jaskier brushed white locks back from Geralt’s sweaty brow and felt fear clench in his breast when Geralt closed his eyes at his touch and didn’t open them again right away.

“I’m too tired to explain, Jaskier,” he finally admitted. “And I’m… I don’t think I…”

Geralt choked on the words, still unable to admit his weaknesses after all this time. Some habits were rooted too deep to conquer and weed out altogether. But what the witcher had weeded out made Jaskier proud. So in this, he couldn’t begrudge them. They all had their flaws. Nothing was ever conquered in just a day.

“What do you need me to do?” Jaskier asked instead.

Geralt swallowed.

“I’m supposed to do it,” he said.

“And you will. Just help me help you do it,” Jaskier affirmed.

The witcher let out a slow, whistling breath through his nose. Then, after a moment, he nodded. And he told Jaskier what to do.

That’s how the bard found himself opening Geralt’s pack – not his large, more often-used rucksack of equipment and medical items, but instead a smaller pouch he hadn’t noticed had been attached to Roach’s saddle. Inside was a small saucer with a curved lip, a handful of candles, and a pouch of recently plucked flowers. It echoed the festivities he had seen in town, but without much effort it was obvious to note that this was different. Through his studies he had a rudimentary knowledge of flowers and their meaning. Of candle colors and scents and wicks. Each and every item in the pouch had a meaning. Flowers that promised blessings. Scents that paid homage. Colors that prayed for forgiveness. Little blooms that helped the dead find their way beyond the veil. And at the bottom of the pouch a small bundle wrapped in cloth. He had nearly unfolded it when Geralt said clearly, “Don’t,” from across the camp.

Plagued by curiosity, Jaskier looked to Geralt, fingers paused. But at those eyes – so amber and dazed, yet so keenly worried – Jaskier simply nodded, and stood to place it in Geralt’s hand, still wrapped, instead. He heard Geralt swallow thickly. Felt their fingers brush gratefully.

Geralt had a lovely voice, when he deigned to use it. He spent the early hours of the night listening to Geralt explain how to weave the flowers. Which colors and blooms to use when. What to lace over what. Which to tuck where and when. Without any description of what final result to expect, Jaskier followed him on faith. Something warm stoked a fire in his chest as he realized the more they went along just how personal this must be to Geralt. He had never quite heard of anything like this. With a quick pang he realized it must be a well-kept tradition of witchers – or at the very least of the Wolves of Kaer Morhen. And he – Jaskier – was helping Geralt do it.

Once upon a time he might have thought of it as a very boring, and perhaps even demeaning, way of helping the witcher. It wasn’t heroic or theatrical. He was so much more talented than a mere man with ten fingers to weave flowers with. But as Geralt narrated him through the process and his tone turned steadily nostalgic, Jaskier was struck with how much more this simple act meant to Geralt than any wound Jaskier had ever sewn.

He made a wreath of flowers and when it was done, he held it up for Geralt’s inspection.

“Like this?” he asked.

A little bit of the tension in Geralt’s brow softened, making him look younger as he breathed, “Yes. Just like that. Set it on the plate.”

Jaskier did so. The little blooms ringed the curved lip of the plate beautifully, leaving the pale center of the dish exposed plainly.

“Now set the candles inside. First the tallest along the inner edge of the crown of flowers, then the second tallest, then the third. Leave room in the middle.”

Jaskier did.

“Good,” Geralt said between heavy blinks, “Now light a match to melt the bottom of the candles to the plate and let it cool… We can’t let them fall.”

Jaskier did. It took a few matches and a few burnt fingertips and a few curses, but he did.

“Now what?” Jaskier said after he had waited for the wax to cool, gently poking the tallest candle of the three to ensure it wouldn’t budge.

“The part you won’t like,” Geralt finally said, beginning to force himself to sit up.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait now!” Jaskier said, delicately setting the plate aside so he could scramble up beside Geralt. He had half a mind to ease him back down, but the look in Geralt’s eyes was sharp and telling. He had allowed Jaskier to do as much as possible, but there would be no persuading him to lay back any longer. Not at this point.

“It’s midnight, Jaskier,” Geralt said through clenched teeth as he forced himself to his feet – swaying all the while. “I must do this.”

The bard caught him by his elbow when amber eyes drifted, and it looked as though he might fall. Geralt leaned into him for only as long as it took for the dizziness to pass before drawing in a deep, steadying breath, his gaze falling on the bard pointedly.

“I must,” he repeated.

“Then we will,” Jaskier said simply, but he kept his grip on the witcher’s elbow tight and just as pointed. He waited, jaw clenched and shoulders set, for Geralt to argue. Instead, after a brief moment of searching Jaskier’s face, the witcher merely nodded.

Jaskier held the plate in one hand and Geralt’s elbow in the other, and together they slowly made their way into the dark with nothing but the moon, Geralt’s uncanny eyes, and the sway of Midsummer’s breeze around them to guide the way.

“Where are we going?” Jaskier asked only once, but Geralt did not answer. They paused when they needed pausing, pacing themselves by the rasping of the witcher’s heaving breath. Occasionally Geralt would turn his nose to the wind, sniff, and change their course accordingly. Side by side, Jaskier followed his witcher into the dark until finally the trees parted and the moon rose high above to light the clearing that Geralt had found.

It was a lake, vast and wide, at the mouth of the river Jaskier had been using for water. The lake was wreathed in trees, and in the center of its glassy surface the moon above shone brilliantly. It lit the water in a fiery glow of pale opalescence, enchanting and so much more than any pool of water Jaskier had ever seen before.

“Help me down,” Geralt said, drawing Jaskier’s attention.

“Down?” Jaskier asked. “You don’t mean…”

But Geralt just leveled him with a patient, if unyielding stare. With a little sigh of resignation, Jaskier tested the solidity of the bank and plotted a course to ease the witcher into the water. The water was freezing. His clothing would be ruined. Mud squelched beneath his boots. Water sunk into his shoes. His back arched like a cat and with his shoulders up against his ears, he tottered around to offer Geralt a hand and help him in – only to pause, hand halfway between them.

Geralt looked otherworldly. Despite his damaged shirt and muddied pants and his bloodied flesh torn asunder, he looked beautiful. In him the moonlight seemed to catch and grow – not from any magic, but from the sheer significant focus in the witcher’s face. Whatever this was, this was important to Geralt. This was no party, no night to dance to. This was tradition in a sense that most people no longer understood. This was decades of beliefs passed down by calloused hands and grizzled, spoken words. A small moment of peace and mercy in a lifetime of ungrateful, dangerous work.

Jaskier sucked in a little breath, then steeled himself. He took a squelching step forward and raised his hand for Geralt to take. He bade his body maintain its balance as Geralt’s weight made him sink further into the mud, but for once the thought didn’t even cross his mind that he had likely ruined his shoes beyond repair. Every trivial worry, every materialistic concern – all of it disappeared as Geralt took his hand and let the bard guide him into the water.

The water rose first to their knees, then just below their hips, until finally Jaskier stopped Geralt with a firm hand against his sternum. He wouldn’t let the wound get wet. That was the line he wouldn’t cross, and in the moment Geralt looked at him, the witcher seemed to recognize a fight not worth having when he saw it.

“Hold out the plate,” Geralt finally said, his hair a halo of moonlight. When Jaskier did, he formed a quick sign with his free hand, and one by one the three candles sprung to life. Then he paused.

Jaskier looked between the plate and Geralt once, twice, then asked softly, “Is that it, or…?”

From a little pouch tied around his neck, Geralt removed the bundle he had asked Jaskier not to open back at camp. He swayed in the water, tired and aching, but remained steadfast as piece by piece, he revealed a silver medallion emblazoned with a wolf’s head. It looked just like Geralt’s, only older. Older and scarred, a jagged groove slashed right across the width of it, its chain dangling weakly from Geralt’s fingers.

“We give thanks for the lives we saved,” Geralt said, the words sounding like the echo of a prayer said dozens and dozens of times across the span of centuries, “and we beg mercy for the things we couldn’t change…”

Jaskier stilled, the candles flickering delicately between them, and waited with bated breath. Afraid that any inhale too loud, any flinch too jarring might shatter the moment.

Geralt’s gaze lowered to the medallion in his hand. He ran a rough thumb over the scarred metal, licked his dry lips and said, “We pray for safe passage for our brother, and plead that his sacrifices weigh more than his sins. For he was good, and in this hard world he tried to be just.”

Jaskier’s fingers tightened on the plate. He felt the lake sway around them comfortingly, as though it were a presence all its own. This is what witchers did on Midsummer while humans drank and danced. And while he hardly begrudged the town their making merry and celebrating, it made this moment all the more painful to bear. They could celebrate because of witchers like Geralt, who saved their fathers and mothers, their daughters and sons.

So why didn’t witchers get to dance and make merry?

Instead they prayed for peace, and grace, and mercy – knowing that when they returned to the hunt the next day, that the people they protected would widely never truly thank them for it. Jaskier felt suddenly choked by the contrast. His lashes burned, but he bit his cheek and forced himself to bear it. The plate felt suddenly so heavy. No wonder Geralt couldn’t carry it alone.

With a sharp breath – a sound that struck Jaskier as resigned and weary – Geralt placed the medallion into the halo of flowers and candles.

“And finally, we ask for blessings in the coming days,” Geralt said softly as he brought his hands over top of Jaskier’s instead of taking the plate away, “so that we may walk the Path until it ends, and another prays instead.”

Jaskier sucked in a shuddering little breath, his eyes only darting up when Geralt rubbed a thumb soothingly over the backs of his hands on either side of the plate.

“Lower it down,” Geralt said softly, and as though they were lowering a man into his grave, they set the plate atop the surface of the lake. With a gentle tap, Geralt urged it on its way and they watched it drift, side by side.

It was a long moment before Jaskier could find the words to speak.

“I thought witchers burned their dead,” he croaked, his hands trembling from the weight of it all. Even as Midsummer blew a warm, soothing breath across the back of his neck, he shivered. Geralt didn’t take his eyes off the plate as he thought over that, leaning into Jaskier the longer they stood in the lake – the mud slowly giving way beneath his feet.

“We do,” Geralt said. “But we do this too.”

“You deserve better,” Jaskier said.

Geralt hummed.

“Perhaps,” Geralt said, voice trailing away as the plate became a pinprick of light in the night. “But doesn’t everyone?”

Jaskier looked at him then. Took in the profile of this man – this man who had his childhood stripped from him to protect the very folks that abandoned and condemned him daily. Felt the weight of that injustice. The beauty of that sacrifice. The urge to write swelled within him. Ballads to convey the witcher’s plight. Rich, round words to even the scales and turn the tides.

And yet he knew that Geralt would not want that. That Geralt would not want to share this rare glimpse of peace with the world. This moment was for witchers and their tiny found family. And so the ballads faded, and the songs bled into silence, and instead all Jaskier could think to say was this:

“Thank you for sharing this with me, Geralt.”

“I’m sorry it’s no feast,” Geralt said weakly, wryly, as though he had been afraid of what Jaskier would think about this witcher’s tradition in comparison to the parties he was used to.

“Midsummer is a celebration of life and love,” Jaskier said, holding Geralt’s gaze. “There is no wrong way to do that, Geralt. It only matters that we do.”

Geralt nodded at that, not blinking as Jaskier wove an arm beneath his own to help take some of the weight off his wounded side.

“This is how the Wolves of Kaer Morhen pay homage to Midsummer,” he said softly.

“I hope they won’t mind that I imposed,” Jaskier went for charming, but an apology drifted anxiously at the heels of the sentence. Geralt hummed.

“You don’t have to be a witcher to be a Wolf of Kaer Morhen, Jaskier,” Geralt said. He stood stiff in the bard’s arms. Anxious, Jaskier realized. Even as his own heart soared, he realized the significance of what Geralt was suggesting. The fear of rejection that corded his muscles tight.

“Noted,” Jaskier said, turning Geralt just slightly so they might press their foreheads together and simply breathe. “Then I suppose I’ll have to mark the occasion on my calendar from now on, won’t I?”

Geralt’s breath shuddered against his lips. An exhale that emptied him of all fear until nothing was left but two men standing in a lake, family found in suffering. A consummation of love beneath the moon, a promise made in the curve of two bodies holding one another up despite the hardships that awaited.

There had been a fight, that much was clear. If Geralt was here, the man would have been able to read the scene as easily as Jaskier might read a book – every scuffle in the snow and each broken branch in the surrounding treeline spelling out a story that Geralt would have narrated in short, succinct statements beneath his breath. But Geralt wasn’t here, and while Jaskier knew he’d no doubt miss a good deal of information from the scene, he tried his best to fill the witcher’s shoes. It was almost like the man was there with him. He’d seen Geralt do this so many times, the witcher’s own words echoed in his head as he bent at the waist to look at the story Geralt and his target had written into the snow.

“Must be the monster’s lair,” Jaskier murmured, his own sentences becoming short, mirroring the witcher. “Large prints, at least twice as large as Geralt himself. Claws, if that bit over there is anything to go by. And blood… hopefully not his,” his stomach sank, but he continued. He followed the arching paths in the snow, sometimes getting lost in them. Here, something had slid across the snow, clearing the ground all the way down to the grass from the force of a jarring blow. There was a short depression in the snow, clearly a spot where Geralt had done a tight dodge roll to escape from a swipe of deadly claws. On and on the twisting messages went until finally Jaskier had a decent understanding of what had happened.

They had gone on to the left of the cave, fighting and dodging and making use of the terrain until a high arch of red spread across the snow and the bark of a nearby tree – the sort of splatter a strike from a sword would make, thankfully, meaning it was Geralt who had gotten the upper hand – and Jaskier could see from the footprints that it had taken a lot of effort. It would have been a slow, powerful blow; the sort of attack that would have needed Geralt to brace himself entirely. But the print in the snow was long and messy. He had lost his footing. Hadn’t seen that the ground – covered in thick snow as it was – had given way to a cliff edge far sooner than it appeared to. Jaskier approached the marks in the snow slowly, careful not to slip himself, and looked down its steep slope.

There were two long, deep, tumbling lines stretching all the way down the side of the cliffside – one far larger than the other and streaked crimson in great bursts – and at the bottom he spotted them: a werewolf and a witcher. Both still as death. The world fell silent, or perhaps it had always been silent and it was Jaskier that had been stunned to quietness in every sense of the word. He could see wind stir the grey, metallic fur of the beast even from as high up as he was, but he couldn’t hear the wind. Couldn’t feel it. His skin felt tight and staticky with dread, clammy and cold. His heart beat so fiercely against his breast that he could feel it swaying him minutely on his feet.

“Geralt,” he gasped, barely more than a whisper. It couldn’t be. He couldn’t be dead. Not him. He survived everything. He couldn’t have died, not to something as stupid as uneven footing. It couldn’t be. The urge to slide down the mountain was great. So great in fact that Jaskier nearly did just that. But he looked at the deep line that marked Geralt’s descent. Noted the stain of red that began halfway down, right after a rock that just ever so slightly peaked out of the deep snow. There were dangers hidden beneath all that fluffy white powder. Rocks, deep pockets of missing cliff face. Jaskier would be of help to no one if he ended up face down right next to the witcher, just as broken if not more so what with his human constitution. 

His eyes lingered on Geralt’s dreadfully still form in the snow. The man’s legs were practically buried. He was flat on his belly, his face mercifully tipped to the side. A halo of blood bloomed at the crown of his head like some martyr in a painting.

“Gotta get down,” Jaskier muttered, babbling words into the air in an effort to do something, anything, instead of just standing there. He lost track of what he said. Mumbled nonsense – for Geralt, for himself. Cursing the werewolf. Cursing the mountain and the snow and the gods that brought them there. It took time to navigate a path down to Geralt safely. Time that Jaskier felt passing keenly, every second sluggish and dragging. How long had Geralt been in the snow? Was he even alive? How much time did he have? Was it too late?

He reached the jagged landing, nearly falling face first into the snow. He held his footing though, took a moment to steady himself with a breath, then finally went to Geralt’s side when he was certain he wouldn’t fall. He kept his eyes on the werewolf as he approached – eyes fixated on the open maw of the beast and its fangs the size and girth of his own fist, yellow and dry. It had had its mouth open for some time then, its tongue lolling into the snow in death. Dead. It was dead. He was decently sure it was dead at least. Surely even a beast couldn’t lose that much blood without dying. But even so, he kept a wary eye out in case it moved. Not that he would know what to do, but it felt foolish to ignore it altogether.

“Geralt,” he said in an urgent hush, turning the witcher over so he could see the man’s face properly. “Geralt, wake up! It’s me, your favorite bard, your most lovely rescuer. Maidens would pay to awake to a face like mine. So stop being so melodramatic and wake up!” He babbled senselessly.

The man felt cold as death even through Jaskier’s gloves, and the sight of grey veins that threaded out sickly around his eyes nearly made Jaskier shriek before he remembered that was normal for a witcher. Just the remnants of a potion. Were he to open the man’s eyes, no doubt they would be black – and sure enough when he pried them apart briefly to look, they were black as pitch. A potion that did not stay active in the body for terribly long at that. It meant Geralt hadn’t been down here for hours, at least. Maybe just one or two, if it was only just beginning to fade from his system. It also meant he had no chance of gauging the man’s welfare from his pupils.

It was likely what had kept Geralt alive. Witcher constitution or no, a man could only lay in the snow so long before death came for him like it would anyone. 

Jaskier slapped Geralt’s face lightly, patting those pale, gaunt cheeks in an effort to rouse the man. But the witcher merely groaned – just the shortest, barest murmur of discomfort – and did not stir. There was a gash above his right brow that stretched from halfway through his eyebrow, across his temple and just above his ear. The whole thing was a bloody, crusty mess that oozed sluggishly. Beneath all the blood Jaskier knew the man’s brow was bruised an ugly purple, grey veins spreading lightly from the wound as the potion worked to close it. So he was likely dealing with a concussion at best, and of course, hypothermia. Lovely.

“I can’t wait to sing you the ballad about the stupid witcher who dragged his poor bard out into the snow,” Jaskier grumbled weakly, too worried for the words to truly hold any heat as he looked around for something to make sense of what to do next, “Where he couldn’t bring a horse to help him, and how it was the bard who saved the day.”

When it became obvious that Geralt would not wake and that no miraculous sign would come floating down from the heavens, Jaskier huffed, hands on Geralt’s still – but breathing – chest, and forced himself to think. It was hard though, when he could feel the snow eating through the knees of his trousers. It was freezing. Already he felt chilled to the bone. He couldn’t even imagine what the meant for the witcher…

He had to warm him up. Without a horse, he had no chance of dragging the witcher through the snow back to town. It’d likely just get them both killed. And despite what Geralt might think about the bard and his survival instincts just because of his profession (and admittedly sometimes his decision making in general), Jaskier had picked up a thing or two over the years; if not from the witcher or from Oxenfurt University, then from his stint on the streets before he had found a way to get people to pay him for his songs. He was no stranger to seemingly hopeless situations. It wouldn’t be the first cold winter night where he had to find shelter outside of the normal inn or tavern.

The clawing cold in his ankles and calves and knees reminded him of those days. Reminded him of how easy it was to end up homeless, belly empty and curled in some alley with nothing but crumbled up posters and notices stuffed in his clothes to keep him warm. He scowled.

Jaskier would never follow Geralt into the mountains again, he vowed, even as distantly he knew he’d never not follow the man into the mountains now – the memory of this, of Geralt face down in the snow, would haunt him too keenly for him ever to let the cold dissuade him again.

He needed shelter. The closest shelter, unfortunately, was the very cave that started this all. A cave that sat just above them, protected by a steep cliff face. It was a daunting task, but dragging the witcher up to the cave was far more realistic than getting him back to town. Jaskier gave himself a moment to bow his head, exhausted already by the task that laid before him. He had helped steady Geralt before – and while Geralt was a broad man, he wasn’t a terribly heavy man. The work of witchers didn’t pay consistently enough for the wolf to truly hold any sort of burdensome weight. But he was still a big man. Tall, broad in the shoulders. Muscled in that tight, corded, almost misleading way that men who fought in light or medium armor tended to be. Lithe and dangerous.

Jaskier drew in a deep inhale, held it, then exhaled it, his eyes trailing down to the witcher nearly in his lap. Sooty lashes frosted over, so dark against the contrast of his pale skin – skin made only paler by the cold and the snow. Jaskier brushed a bit of hair from the man’s brow, wincing when it broke free of the wound on his brow in a manner Jaskier imagined couldn’t be comfortable. Then, blessedly, the witcher’s lashes fluttered. What followed made Jaskier’s stomach flip. The black eyes common to his potion had faded – that small saving grace now gone – and now Geralt was trying to lock onto him with hazy, disoriented amber eyes. The man appeared incapable of truly catching sight of him, pupils dilating and contracting in sluggish, sick little stuttering lurches.

“Geralt? Are you with me?” Jaskier asked. The witcher merely grunted. The bard couldn’t tell if that meant the man recognized him or not. Did he even know where he was? Was he truly even awake at all or just reacting to stimuli? The witcher’s gaze drifted constantly, looking at him, then trailing over his shoulder slightly before jerking back to his face. Like he was tracking multiple things. Or multiple Jaskiers.

“I’ll take that as a no,” the bard muttered with a huff. He stood, still bent at the waist as he dipped two hands under either of the man’s armpits and eased him up. “Of course. Why make this easier and miss out on the thrill of carrying your very lovely ass up the mountain? You know, I think I will write a ballad about this. Why sacrifice this tale of my heroics to spare your dignity?”

He grunted as he hefted the witcher into an upright position. Then just sort of stood there, awkwardly holding Geralt up as he realized he had no idea how he was going to drag the witcher up to the cave. Jaskier suddenly understood the man’s fondness of for the word ‘fuck’ as he realized nothing quite summed up the situation like that one word did in that moment. Tight and hissed through his teeth, resigned and exhausted. Efficient.

He got Geralt onto his back eventually. Distantly he knew it wasn’t the best way to get the man to safety. It compromised his balance, for one thing. Made him walk with a hunch that cramped his shoulders and lower back viciously not even five minutes into the journey. But it felt important to keep Geralt out of the snow, and the thought of dragging the man over rocks and jagged cliff edges as he precariously navigated the path he had used to get down there just felt cruel. So he got there. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, but he did it – and all the while the witcher’s chin dug limply into his shoulder, his breath short and weak against his neck, heating and cooling his jaw in little bursts. He still hadn’t properly ‘woken’ yet, and while the man had never been one of many words, his utter silence left Jaskier with a greasy feeling in his gut. ‘Hmms’ and grunts had never felt like much of a conversation until they were gone.

Although Jaskier could not help but admit that an unconscious Geralt was a much friendlier, easier patient than conscious Geralt. While the witcher was by no means a complainer, he was not exactly a good sport when it came to injuries either. They tended to frustrate him, make him terse and surly. Lord help the fool who tried to offer any sort of medical help in those situations either. Unless it was grave or something Geralt literally couldn’t do himself – like cleanse a back injury, he’d sooner take up another monster fight than accept help. It was as if he viewed triaging himself alone just as vital as upkeeping his training. So no, this wasn’t the first time that the bard had seen the witcher wounded – but it was the first time he had seen the man accept help, consciously or no, without so much as a grumble. And that scared him. It scared the absolute hell out of him.

He babbled to the witcher, of course, on the off chance Geralt might answer. It was an effort to establish normalcy. Weak and ineffective, but irresistible nonetheless. Jaskier complained about the man’s weight even though he was worryingly light for a man who had to fight werewolves twice his size. He told Geralt about how he had found the man because of what he had learned following the witcher around, how maybe he could be a decent tracker now, all things considered. 

“Perhaps next go around,” he panted heavily, “I’ll do the monster hunting… I’ll track’em down… lull them into peaceful surrender… with naught but my… lute strings… and unmatched way with… words—godsabove,Geralt,I’mgoingtothrowyourarmoroverthebloodymountain.”

He wanted to drop to his knees once snow gave way to cold but wonderfully dry rock. He wanted nothing more, actually, than to fall face first onto that dark, smooth cave floor and sleep, hypothermia and responsibilities be damned. Which wasn’t a good sign, he acknowledged distantly. But he ignored it. He had to.

If there was one saving grace about the fact that Geralt had collapsed so near a monster den, it was that it had been a werewolf’s den. Had it been anything lesser, Jaskier may have worried about what else live in the cave – but in the times he had followed Geralt on his adventures, they had never once come across a werewolf den that had anything else co-inhabiting that space. Not when they were like this: mad and bloodthirsty and far too gone for Geralt to even consider sparing.

So he set the witcher down as deep as he dared to go without losing sight of the entrance and the feeble light it offered. And then, much to his distaste, he left Geralt there. Only for a moment, only long enough to gather as much dry kindling as he could find – digging under the heavy bottom layer of pine trees where the snow could not reach – and returned. Part of him wanted to go deeper into the cave, but he remembered Geralt’s words about fires and smoke. He knew to stay close to the entrance, to give the smoke a place to travel. He stacked it the way he had seen Geralt stack kindling a hundred times. Carefully, putting the drier tinder in a little alcove of sticks and twigs and anything he could find that he thought may even remotely burn. He took the flint he had stuck into his pack and managed to coax the little bundle into a small but hearty blaze. His fingers were so cold, even despite his gloves, that his bones felt more like shards of broken glass beneath his flesh than anything remotely human. His knees ached, he couldn’t feel his toes. Even so, he forced himself to open his pack and continue on. Because if he stopped, if he gave in, then that would be the end for both of them.

“Right about now I wish you were a white wolf, Geralt,” Jaskier said, prattling on mindlessly, the words more a habit than any proper intention, “You’d be so warm and fluffy. Gods, I have to stop thinking about it, it’s just making me horribly depressed.”

He hadn’t brought much, unfortunately. A pack with minor medical supplies. A skin of water, a knife. A little book and a pen and ink, of course, because gods above forbid that he bring a blanket and miss out on the scant opportunity that he had some enlightened epiphany of literary genius. Then he stilled, book in hand. It was no blanket, but it was not purposeless. Insulation. Tinder. His eyes drifted to the fire heavily, his heart already swelling painfully in his chest. Better to burn it, though, than freeze to death. No scribble of feigned creative breakthrough was worth dying over. So, he set it aside for when the fire would eventually grow low, resigning his notes to their fate. Scarce supplies laid out before him now, he knew there was only one saving grace left that might spare them. Had the werewolf left supplies in the cave? 

And blessedly, thankfully, he had: a thin bedroll, a set of blankets, a ratty pillow. Liquor and water, a few scant scraps of food. Jaskier took the blankets in hand, heedless of any fear of fleas or smells, and breathed out a soft, “By the muse’s tits, thank the gods,” before gathering it all and dragging it limply to Geralt.

Which left the final step, one he had been largely avoiding – albeit any other day he would have found it enjoyable. It was time to strip, and while it would be damnably cold in the beginning, it would be worth it in the end. The few times he had shared the alleys with other wayward souls had proved as much to him. Those rare moments burned in his mind’s eye, a discrete promise that what held true in the past during those worst nights would also hold true now, mountains or no.

But gods above would it sting to lose what scant layers and heat he had now to do so… Better to rip it off like dried bandages than procrastinate any longer, however. The blankets and bedroll would be useless if wet anyway, and their soggy clothing was more a comfort of the mind than any true measure of warmth.

He went about stripping them both as quickly and efficiently as possible. Normally he’d be loath to rush through an opportunity like undressing his stoic witcher, but the paleness of Geralt’s skin and the bloodless look of his nails urged him to forego sightseeing. Jaskier’s own fingers fumbled on the man’s many clasps and ties and fastenings, but piece by piece he slowly divulged Geralt of his armor, then his shirt and trousers, until finally he had the white wolf naked at his feet. He went about getting the man comfortable first. He rolled him gently until his back was firmly on the thin bedroll, then covered him with the blankets he had found. His lack of shivering was worrisome, but there was nothing more to do for it but continue as quickly as possible to the next step. Which meant it was Jaskier’s turn to disrobe. Joy. It smarted horribly to lose his shirt, his pants even worse. But as he removed his boots, the pale blue of his own toes was impossible to ignore. It was worth it, he knew, but his animal hind-brain writhed with every article of clothing lost until finally he was bare in the cave, skin crawling like a spooked horse from the chill. 

“Alright, Geralt,” he muttered, teeth clacking, “Scooch over, you overgrown mutt.”

He hopped from foot to foot, the cold touch of the rock floor unpleasant and unkind to the soft souls of his feet. He lifted the blankets and slipped in as quickly as possible, eager to drop them again and seal any holes that might let cold air in. He tried to ignore the fact that there was no immediate difference, tried to ignore the gibbering voice in his head that said this was a dumb decision and they’d freeze to death because of it. He knew it would work. He’d lived it before. It was all a matter of time now. Time, and warming Geralt as much as he could. He pressed himself flush against the witcher’s chest, easing the man onto his side as gently as possible so that he might embrace him. Hands around his sides, he vigorously began to run them up and down Geralt’s back, encouraging bloodflow and frictious heat while using skin to skin contact warm as much of Geralt’s torso as efficiently as possible. His torso and those rows of ribs and vertebrae that protected the man’s heart, thumping so slow beneath his hands. Witchers naturally had slower hearts, he reminded himself, trying his best not to count each beat. It wasn’t too late. It wasn’t.

He had Geralt’s head tucked awkwardly in the space beneath his chin, and between his jaw and the pillow. It left the man breathing softly against his throat, mouth somewhat open against his skin. Jaskier shivered and forced himself not to focus on it even as he buried the memory away. He had never held the wolf, not like this. Geralt was not one for allowing himself to be vulnerable, and while the man had opened up throughout the years, this was still uncharted territory.

Slowly, like spring sneaking in to thaw the last lingering frost of winter’s hold, Jaskier felt the man begin to warm against him. Their skin sang a chorus with one another, exchanging heat, building upon one another as together they warmed the small, tight pocket the blanket had formed around them – legs and feet curled together to keep the blanket’s ends pinned in a way so that no air could escape. Pale, blueish skin began to pinken. Jaskier could feel pins and needles begin to crop up in his fingers and toes – and knew it was working for Geralt as well when the man finally, blessedly, began to shiver. It started in short, soft little titters that steadily grew stronger, bolder, until the man was properly wracked with them. Jaskier could not tell if the witcher was then propelled by them or driven by instinct, but he found the man pressing closer to him – head curled into his neck and shoulder, arms shifted to curl in tight in the space between their chests, legs entangled. His breathing became stuttered as the shivers caught up with his jaw and teeth, and for all the world the witcher – larger than life as he was – seemed strangely small in Jaskier’s arms.

The fire lasted longer than he had thought it might, and Jaskier couldn’t help but feel grateful, loath to leave this moment as he was. He knew what it was like to be held. He knew the feel of a person’s arms wrapped around his hips or slung across his chest. The joy of being gathered close and wanted. Knew what it was like for Geralt to hold him like that. But never had Jaskier been able to return the favor. Geralt seemed to have a preference toward being the one doing the holding and Jaskier – more than willing to be held – didn’t ever think to argue. But this was… nice. It brought a strange, unidentifiable warmth to his chest, knowing that for once it was him that had done the protecting. That when they ended up with their backs against the wall, he had proven himself useful despite Geralt’s constant huffing about him tagging along. He kissed the side of Geralt’s neck while the man was still too lost to so much as grumble about it. Enjoyed having the wolf soft and sleepy in his arms. Enjoyed knowing this side of him existed.

“We are going to have to talk about your cuddling habits when this is over, Geralt,” Jaskier said into his hair, brushing fingers through it, ridding it of a few scant leaves. “Because for a man as grumpy as you are, you are secretly quite talented at the art of being the little spoon. It almost makes me wonder if all this time your general grumbliness has just been a ruse. I should have cuddled you years ago, honestly, I’ve never met a man that nuzzles as much as you do, gods above, has no one ever held you?”

“Hmph,” the man huffed, open mouthed and breathy against his shoulder; his first reaction since opening his eyes in the snow. Jaskier craned his neck to try and get a look at him.

“Geralt, witcher-dearest, are you awake?” If anything would get the witcher to react, it would be a horrible pet name. But Geralt’s lashes just flickered against the naked span of his shoulder before falling closed again, and Jaskier just had to trust that a witcher’s constitution was enough to heal what he could not. He faintly remembered something about not letting people with head wounds sleep – but that ship had long since set sail.

Eventually Geralt’s arms went from between them to wrapped around Jaskier’s waist, holding him tight just as he would when they normally spooned. Jaskier wondered if Geralt held so tightly to stop himself from twisting in his sleep, from seeking his partner’s arms to hold him instead. It was a theory he’d have to investigate – if he could ever manage to shift without waking his usually light-sleeper of a witcher.

They stayed like that for some time, and it was only just as Jaskier was watching the fire dim – wondering if he should finally get up and tear paper from his notebook to keep it alive – that the witcher stirred.

“Jaskier.”

That was it. Just his name. Jaskier. As if that one word, made of scant vowels and syllables, spoke volumes. To anyone else, it was just a name. But one did not spend as much time with the witcher as Jaskier had without picking up on the man’s language – namely, the art of speaking as little as possible. A craft that largely rested on the heavy shoulders of monosyllable communication and body language. The man really was a wolf, Jaskier swore it often.

“Hmm?” Jaskier asked, mimicking the witcher’s token manner of replying by not really replying at all, just to see what he’d do. Because he knew what the man was trying to ask: What in the bloody hell is going on?

And it was a legitimately fair question, considering the fact that the witcher – a man used to taking care of himself and waking up alone unless coin paid for company otherwise – had just woken nestled under a blanket that smelled fiercely of wet dog, naked, curled into his bard’s chest. Did Jaskier mention naked? They were very naked.

“Jaskier,” Geralt repeated meanfully, just the slightest hint of a growl rounding out his name. Jaskier felt relief bloom in his chest. It was not a full out surly response, nothing like Geralt’s usual moodiness when being looked after whilst injured, but it had more spunk to it than when Jaskier had found him dazed, pupils blown, face down in the snow next to a werewolf’s corpse. And yet, despite his disorientation and his ire, he hadn’t precisely moved away.

“You didn’t come back to the inn,” Jaskier finally said, and when he leaned back to give Geralt a little space, he had to stop himself from smiling when Geralt followed. “So I followed the direction the townsfolk said they saw you wander off in. Found your trail, followed your prints – I was practically you, squatting down in the snow, grumbling observations under my breath—”

“Jaskier.”

“—You slipped,” Jaskier cut to the chase, his cheery tone fading somewhat as he remembered the piercing shock of seeing Geralt crumbled at the bottom of the cliff. “Fell down a cliff not far from the cave. Werewolf’s dead, by the way, you did a lovely job. I’d just appreciate it if you didn’t go trying to kill yourself next time, if you don’t mind. I’d rather not have a repeat experience of carrying your handsome ass up the mountain on my back again.”

Geralt laid silently in his arms. He was still so close that Jaskier could feel his lashes sweeping against his skin with each blink. Jaskier waited for him to pull away. Waited for him to bark grumpily about being taken care of. Moments ticked by slowly, and yet it never came. He was still awake, Jaskier could tell by the man’s breathing.

“Geralt?” He asked, uncertain of what to do.

“Hmm.”

“Are you alright? Warm enough? Dizzy? Any trouble with the light, or—”

“—M’fine,” Geralt murmured, the words tinged with a sort of sleepiness Jaskier wasn’t used to hearing from the witcher. Not so much something worrisome as it was simply, well… unexpected. Something lazy, like the tone you might expect from a lover after a rousing night in bed. The sort of tone a person got when they felt at ease, confident in their safety, loath to leave the comfort of their sheets.

Jaskier blinked, his stupidly shocked expression slowly melting into a grin.

Geralt liked being held. He wasn’t about to ask for it. He’d deny it if it was offered. But waking to it? Unable to resist as he had been, unconscious and all – he didn’t want to stop. It was an opportunity where he didn’t have to resist because there was pragmatism and logic in sharing body heat here, out in the middle of nowhere in the middle of winter.

For once, Jaskier kept his mouth shut, no more keen to ruin the moment that Geralt was.

“Werewolf’s den?” Geralt finally mumbled.

“Yeah. It was the closest shelter I could find. Not the nicest inn we’ve ever spent the night in, but it’s most certainly the cheapest. Better than the snow, certainly. It almost has a sort of primitive charm to it, don’t you think?”

“Werewolf’s blanket?”

Jaskier paled a bit and said, “Don’t tell me the curse is transferrable through fleas or something.”

Geralt snorted against his shoulder, so similar to normal it made relief melt Jaskier’s limbs around him. “No. Stinks.”

“Ah,” Jaskier said sympathetically, nodding lightly, “Of course. Yes, we’ve borrowed a bit of supplies from the werewolf. I don’t think he’ll miss it. I apologize for not having more fragrantly pleasing items with which to prevent us both from dying.”

Geralt snorted again.

“S’fine.”

“S’fine. M’fine. Really putting me at ease here, Geralt,” Jaskier prattled on, unable to stop now that Geralt could finally hear him. Exhaustion was buzzing around his eyes. Now that he had confirmation that the man was okay, it was like it hit him in a stampede, no longer able to ignore how utterly tired he was. He yawned over Geralt’s shoulder before pressing a sleepy kiss into the man’s nape before he could stop himself. He held still, waiting as he realized what he had done but Geralt just… let it be. If anything, Jaskier thought he might have pressed in the slightest bit closer. But surely not…

“You found me,” Geralt finally said – not so much unsure as just cementing facts, like when he’d observe footprints in the mud, following them until he found what he was looking for. Jaskier wondered what he was looking for this time.

“Yes, I found you,” he said, simple and succinct, just the way Geralt preferred. He felt the man press further against his neck, as though he needed nothing more than confirmation that he was safe, and fell back into a doze against him. Allowed himself to be held. That was probably as closed to ‘thank you’ as Jaskier would ever get – and yet it felt like so, so much more. It felt like trust, like a bridge that they hadn’t quite been able to close the gap on until this moment. While Jaskier had never doubted Geralt’s trust in him in the ordinary, this felt uniquely distinct – trust beyond what he had been given before. Trust that Geralt could sleep peacefully and let go, and Jaskier would watch his back. Keep him safe. Be capable of keeping him safe.