#wsatm

Jaskier is roused from pleasant dreams by a yell. He winces and rolls over beneath the heap of furs, and realises with a little jolt that the bed beside him is bare. He sits up, rubbing his eyes, and peers around his room. 

It’s empty. 

Ah. Well, perhaps that was to be anticipated. He couldn’t have expected Geralt to stay with him all night, after all. Not when he had his own, larger chambers and blissfully unoccupied bed elsewhere. 

The noise, he supposes, was just a dream. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s dreamt of being shouted at, and nor will it be the last. He pulls the furs up to his chin and settles back against the pillow.

His eyes are drooping shut when he nears another shout - this one clear as anything.

“Fuck off you spooky fuck!”

Jaskier sits up, the furs dropping away. He waits.

“Fuck!”

With a sigh, he swings himself from the warmth of the bed, pulls on his clothes and boots, wraps one of the larger furs around his shoulders and strides from the room. He follows the sound of yelling through the keep and towards the balcony overlooking the training yard. He spots Vesemir standing there, silhouetted by the light of the moon.

As he approaches, he hears another yell - and that voice, he knows, belongs to Geralt.

“What’s going on?” He mutters, tugging the fur closer as the cold night air bites at his skin.

Vesemir shakes his head. “Young pups,” he says, as if that explains anything at all.

Jaskier steps onto the balcony, where snow is now falling, and looks down into the yard. Geralt and his brothers are down there, pacing back and forth. Every so often one of them pauses to shout again. Jaskier frowns, wondering what kind of weird witcher madness he’s stumbled across now, when Lambert cups his hands around his mouth and hollers -  “You alabaster fuck!”

“Are they… shouting at the moon?” Jaskier asks, turning back to Vesemir.

Vesemir nods. “They’ll tire themselves eventually,” he says. “You should return to bed, bard. They might be here a while.”

With that, he walks away, leaving Jaskier standing on the balcony watching the chaos below. Even Lil’ Bleater is down there, he notes with amusement, jumping over fallen walls and joining in with the yelling. He’s observing quietly when he’s suddenly spotted.

Geralt catches his gaze - does a double take - and falls silent. Jaskier extracts a hand from beneath the fur and gives him a little wave, eyebrows raised. Geralt looks embarrassed, which is delightful. 

It doesn’t look like the other witchers have noticed him, so Jaskier tucks his chilly hand back beneath the furs and winks.

Vesemir: how are you feeling, Geralt?

Baby Geralt: I hate the moon. I hate the moon, Vesemir. I want it to... to..

Vesemir: Yes?

Baby Geralt: I want it to fuck off!

Baby Eskel: >:D !!!

The other wolf-school witchers: O.O

Vesemir: ....who taught you that word?

(u r a terrible enabler)

It’s been several winters since Jaskier was last in the keep, and he considers himself well-prepared for whatever the season chooses to throw at him. Geralt has warned him several times to expect the worst when he’s around his brothers, but truly - how bad can it get? Jaskier is quite content, so long as no one throws him from a balcony. 

He’s sat with Vesemir, chatting about not much while the other witchers are outside doing whatever it is they do on full moon nights. They’re talking about past loves, somehow - and the way Vesemir talks about Mignole makes Jaskier quite sure that all Geralt’s huff about not feeling anything really is just tripe - when the trio of wolves burst unsteadily into the room, Geralt being virtually carried between his brothers, his eyes dark and a black bottle of something gripped in one hand.

Something is not right. They collapse onto the bench next to Jaskier, and Geralt slams the bottle onto the table. Jaskier takes the bottle and gives it an experimental sniff, but before he can take a swig Vesemir is gently pulling it away.

“I wouldn’t,” he says, quietly.

Jaskier frowns, but chooses not to argue with the veteran wolf, instead placing what he hopes is a comforting hand on Geralt’s shoulder. Geralt’s reaction is instant - his head snaps around, eyes wide, lips set in a defensive snarl until he realises who Jaskier is and relaxes almost as quickly, flopping bonelessly against him.

Utterly confused, Jaskier gives him a soft pat on the back. Geralt’s brothers, meanwhile, are laughing - laughing hard enough that there’s tears spilling down their cheeks and Eskel is nearly on the floor.

“I don’t - what-” Jaskier splutters, panic and range mingling, “You can’t just laugh at--”

“Ask him what happened,” Lambert cuts him off when he’s finally regained his breath, “Go on.”

Jaskier pushes Geralt away so he can look into his huge, fear-stricken eyes. “Geralt,” he says, using the soft voice he saves for children and Roach, “Tell me what happened.”

Geralt mutters something that Jaskier doesn’t catch, but judging by the uproarious laughter Lambert and Eskel certainly do.

“What was that, Geralt?”

“She shouted at me,” he mutters, horrified. “She saw me, Jask, she looked right at me, and she shouted at me. She said, she, she--”

He falters into silence, lip quaking.

Jaskier leans closer. “Who shouted at you?”

Geralt’s eyes dart around the room, looking for invisible assailants. He swallows, tongue licking at his dry lips.

“The moon,” he says, finally.

sdjk yes (from this, if anyone’s missed it)

Jaskier has learnt that during the full moon he needs to either hide or tie down his more valuable items after catching Geralt, vibrating with Moon Anger, about to chuck his lute into the sky.

When the moon is really bright, or if there’s some sort of event like a lunar eclipse or a blood moon, the witchers have way more trouble reigning themselves in. 

While they’re travelling together in mid autumn, word reaches Jaskier that there’s going to be a supermoon that night, so he goes through all the usual business of locking away his lute, hiding his bags, moving the chairs out of their shared room before night falls...

...and is then woken up, still wrapped in his blanket, being carried by Geralt out onto the balcony. With amazing presence of mind given his precarious position, he gently prods Geralt with a finger and says - “Ah... Geralt?” - and Geralt suddenly snaps back into himself and peers down at Jaskier like he didn’t even realise he was there.

“Were you about to throw me at the moon?”

Geralt, obviously, isn’t about to admit that yes, he was very much going to throw Jaskier at the moon, for reasons only known to him, but he also isn’t about to lie to Jaskier either.

So what he does is silently return Jaskier to the bed, even going so far as to re-spread the blanket across him, and then - without a word - quickly and quietly leaves the room and proceeds to spend the next six hours stomping about in the woods hollering.

(it is the moon’s fault, he decides, that he nearly hurt the bard)

“Geralt.”

“What?”

“You’re doing it again.”

“Doing-- doing what?”

“I’m sure this habit of yours is very useful in the bedroom, Geralt, but I am trying to sleep.”

“But it’s out there and I know its there but I can’t fucking see it!!”

“Your choices are shut up, calm down, and go to sleep or wear yourself out in the forest and sleep on your own damn bedroll when you get back. Up to you.”

“Hrm.”

“Thank you.”

“...Jaskier?”

“What?”

“What do you mean by useful in the bedroom?”

This is really lovely but all I can think is

Uh-oh, it got long.

The moon is high and mocking above the treeline, and Geralt feels as if it’s watching him. He’s vibrating with energy, like there’s static in his blood, like his veins are glowing with just as much intensity as the moonlight itself. At least the energy had come in in useful, for once: monsters are always more powerful on a full moon, and the one he’d set after this evening he’d taken down with ease.

Thankfully, he has time to spare. The hunt had finished quicker than expected, and Jaskier will be back at the banquet, getting pissed and earning gold off of the back of another song about the bloody moon. That thought sends a low growl rippling through Geralt’s chest, and he knows: it’s time.

The forest is now thankfully free of monsters, and the trees will muffle his yelling, so he heads further in, away from the lights of the city. 

This little routine is so easy that he barely even thinks about it before he’s shouting. Sometimes he wonders how many times he’s done this, tries to work it out, but the number is so staggeringly high that he’d rather forget.

He’s kicking his way through a pile of leaves, enjoying the satisfying explosion of debris, when there’s a shout from behind him.

“Hey!” 

There’s a tart mixture of smells in the air - beer, vodka, chamomile. Jaskier. The man himself comes stumbling through the trees, quick on the heels of his own scent, doublet long-lost and hair tousled.

It’s a rare occasion indeed when Geralt runs into not one, but both of his brothers on the Path. It's the eve of Belleteyn, and the Mayor of the sizable town they find themselves in had been so desperate to solve their little monster problem before the festivities began that he’d managed to hire three separate witchers without any of their knowledge. 

Usually, Geralt would be annoyed at this - but the panicked, red-faced Mayor has insisted on giving them each full pay and, well, who is Geralt to argue? With three of them, it’s a job quickly finished for more pay than he could have expected otherwise.

This year’s festivities are blessed with the encroaching Blood Moon, which according to the Mayor is a good omen for the year to come. The witchers share a knowing look as he invites them to the celebrations and thank him, but turn down the offer. 

They’re sharing a meal in a camp just outside the city when the twitching starts. All of them, in their own way, have developed certain coping mechanisms for what Lambert mockingly calls that time of the month, but with a lunar event so spectacular and in the presence of two highly enabling brothers, none of them can maintain their cool for long.

Things are progressing as usual - or as usual as it gets when you’re a furious witcher hurling insults and objects at the moon - until Lambert chucks a bomb just as Geralt throws a stone and the two collide a good thirty feet in the air in a booming explosion and shower of sparks.

All three of them freeze and then, from beyond the city walls, they hear a cheer.

Well, then. The bombs make less mess than anything else they could hurl, as long as the explosions remain above the treeline, and the ingredients wasted can be easily restocked with the cash from the Mayor’s reward.