Archive of Our Own ^beta

It was highly gratifying to be approached by not one, not two, but three beautiful women together who apparently just adored his music. Jaskier had as much of an ego as the next man – possibly more, depending who the next man was – and it would have been easy to buy them all a drink, enjoy the attention and see where it led, but he wasn’t totally naïve. He did buy them a drink (the tavern had been appreciative and he had plenty of coin and currently nobody to share it with), he did enjoy the attention, but when they suggested he accompany them back to their rooms at closing time he knew it was too good to be true.

They were very beautiful but they all three sat up extremely straight, and drank their drinks very slowly as if they weren’t used to taking wine without water. He tried to explain it away to himself by thinking they were perhaps very serious students of music, unused to the freedom of university life and confusing professional admiration with a more personal sort of appreciation, but they weren’t quite young enough for that.

It was his White Wolf songs that they wanted – he knew because they asked for the White Wolf songs, and while he played they listened appreciatively and appeared to be taking notes. Geralt got embarrassed when he played those songs around him so since he wasn’t here Jaskier took the opportunity to put on a proper performance, full of all the yearning the songs demanded. It was a performance, of course: they might be his songs and he might be singing them, but the singer was a character in their own right, and when he performed it was as The Singer. A fictionalised version of Jaskier just as the White Wolf was a fictionalised version of Geralt. He’d tried explaining the concept to Geralt, but he’d just got a “hmm,” for his troubles.

The three women, on the other hand, asked him several insightful questions about The Singer, what they might feel about the White Wolf and what the White Wolf might feel about them, the answers to which Jaskier had never actually articulated out loud before and left him feeling like he’d revealed more than he had intended about his artistic process. At that point he was still hanging on to his theory that these were students of music, potential rivals, so he shouldn’t give away too many of his professional secrets. That was why he was feeling a little exposed.

When the tavern closed they waited for him to pack up his lute, and on the dark street tried to steer him left when his accommodations lay to the right. Jaskier gently extricated himself, shaking his head with a smile.

“I’ve enjoyed talking to you very much, ladies, and believe me I would like nothing better than for this invitation to be as straightforward as it sounds, but I can’t help get the impression there’s something going on here. Are you alright? Can I help, at all?”

Which was the stupidest thing he could possibly have said, in hindsight, because it left him with the worst of both possible worlds: no sex, and getting involved in a great big mess when he could just have said good night and gone to bed.

The three of them looked at each other.

“We’re looking for Geralt of Rivia,” said Rina, the one he had already been thinking of as the leader even before he was consciously aware there was any leading to be done.

“What a coincidence! So am I, but I haven’t seen him since the autumn. He was supposed to be meeting me here, but as you can see, there’s no sign of him.”

They exchanged another look, and that was when Jaskier started to get worried.

But it was already too late.

He woke up to a splitting headache and morning light, in a stone room that was decidedly not his own, and a complete blank about last night.

Groaning for an audience of only himself, he sat up, and the chain on his ankle clinked.

He didn’t panic, exactly, but it really wasn’t a good way to wake up. It seemed particularly unfair that this should have happened when he’d been trying to do the sensible thing, and when Geralt wasn’t even around to get him into trouble and then out of it again.

“What the fuck. What the fuck,” he muttered, tugging at the chain and the sturdy manacle just in case it was somebody’s idea of a joke and not even fastened.

It was very firmly fastened indeed.

He scrambled out of bed – a comfortable bed, with plain but good-quality linens – and took stock of his situation. Somebody had drugged him, brought him here wherever here was, taken off his boots and doublet and laid them carefully on a chair beside his lute, and then chained him to the bed, and not in a sexy way. He could tell by the way he still had the rest of his clothes on.

It was a long length of chain, that would probably allow him to pace the whole room with ease, and when he inspected it more closely it turned out to loop under and behind the bed to an iron link in the stone wall. A wooden bedframe he might have stood a chance of breaking, but stone and iron not so much.

“Right. You know who I am, you know I know Geralt. You want me here but not dead or - ” he patted himself down for injury and found none, “or damaged. Therefore, I am…bait? I’m bait, aren’t I?”

The sound of the door unlocking made him jump out of his skin, and a woman came in carrying a tray.

“I’m bait, aren’t I?” he asked her. She was one of the women from last night, and she did at least have the good grace to look a little bit uncomfortable. She also looked like what she was wearing now were her usual clothes: the robes of a priestess.

“Amaia, wasn’t it? Or was it?” he asked.

“Yes. And you are Julian Alfred Pancratz, known as Jaskier the bard, who sings of and travels with the Witcher, Geralt of Rivia.”

“Ah, yes. Yes I am. At your service,” he bowed, because he still had manners. “And also at your mercy, it would appear?”

She put the tray down.

“Yes. And I most sincerely beg your pardon for it, but our circumstances are desperate and we saw no other choice. We are desperately in need of a Witcher – it is a matter of life and death.  Circumstances force us to take extreme methods to ensure that he will help us.”

Jaskier sighed and sat down on the end of the bed.

“It’s ironic, that you’ve gone to all this trouble to abduct me when the witcher you want is probably the only person on the Continent who would have helped you for free. Don’t go telling everybody, he still needs to eat, but if you’d just asked him nicely and looked desperate he wouldn’t even have charged you.”

“You have a high opinion of him.”

“Is that a high opinion? Plenty of people would call it soft-hearted and stupid.”

“But not you.”

It wasn’t even a question, so Jaskier just shrugged. “He’s my friend.”

“A friend who you sing about.”

“As I explained last night, the songs aren’t about the real Geralt – they’re about the heroic ideal of a Witcher, as seen through the eyes of The Singer.”

He had the feeling that perhaps he was protesting too much, but Amaia didn’t argue.

“Of course,” she agreed.

“So what is it you need him to do? Are you troubled by vampires? Got a kikimora in the forest out there?”

“Sister Rina will explain, now that you are awake. Rina!” she called.

Sister Rina must have been close by, because she appeared just a moment later, followed by the other woman from last night. Like Amaia, they were both dressed in priestesses’ robes.

“Ah, you are awake!”

Jaskier rose and bowed to them, which was possibly de trop under the circumstances. But on the other hand he was chained to a wall and these were his jailers, so keeping on their good side with nice manners was probably prudent. He wasn’t great at prudent, as a rule, but sometimes he surprised even himself.

“Jaskier, I must humbly beg your pardon for this indignity,” she gestured to the chain. “This is the Abbey of Iena, and I am sister Rina. This place and our High Priestess, the lady Etake, have fallen victim to a most cruel curse, the work of a sorcerer.”

Amaia’s fists clenched in anger.

“An arrogant pig of a sorcerer, who thinks he can take by magic that which is not offered to him!” she burst out.

“Yeah, I’ve met sorcerers like that,” muttered Jaskier.

“He wanted to lie with the lady Etake, but he did not please her and she refused him with all the courtesy due to his station. But he did not accept her refusal in a way befitting a man of his station, so she turned him away like the insolent dog he is. The sorcerer flew into a rage, and cursed her and this place, and all the priestesses within. All except the three of us, who were not within its walls at the moment when he worked his magic.

“Now Lady Etake lies in an enchanted sleep, and our sisters with her. He caused an impenetrable forest of thorns to grow up around the abbey that only we can pass – to bring you here, we had to carry you, and in that way the thorns were tricked into letting you through.”

“Yeah, Geralt’s a lot bigger than me, you’re going to have a hard time carrying him through that.”

The three women shared a look.

“We are counting on a Witcher’s strength being enough to fight his way through the thicket of thorns. If he is sufficiently motivated.”

Jaskier sighed. “Again, don’t spread this around, but he really doesn’t care that much about the coin.”

“But he cares about you.”

“Ah, well, I don’t know if I’d – he certainly wouldn’t – well, yes. Alright. He wouldn’t say that, if you asked him, but I suppose he does, in his own way. Yes.” Maybe sometimes he had his doubts, but sharing them with the people holding him captive in order to lure Geralt here didn’t seem like a very good idea.

“So you will be the motivation that brings him here, Jaskier.”

“I’m not delighted with this role for me, but ok. Then what? How does a Witcher lift the curse? Isn’t that a job for another mage?”

The priestesses exchanged another look.

“To lift the curse requires a very personal service from the Witcher,” Rina hedged.

“Ah, and by personal you mean…?”  

“An…intimate service of the body.”

“Errrr, no that hasn’t really clarified? Because it sounds like you’re talking about some kind of – sexual…?”

Leire nodded.

“You can’t seriously expect him to agree to that!” Jaskier exclaimed, outraged on Geralt’s behalf.

“The curse can be lifted in a very specific way – the way this sorcerer calculated as the most insolent, the most degrading to our high priestess. Here - ” she held out a sheet of parchment to him. “Read it for yourself.”

Jaskier took the page, and read.

He could feel his eyebrows going up and up and up as he absorbed the few lines of spidery ink.

“This is – very specific. And very badly written! Where did he study Old Elder? It’s full of mistakes - never mind, not important – but if he’s placed her in an enchanted sleep how can she possibly…?”

“You see our dilemma.”

He’d personally witnessed more than one powerful noble try to insist that free use of Geralt’s person for the night should be included in the price, but he had yet to see Geralt accept those terms. He’d never taken offence, but no matter who asked or how much they offered, his physical services were limited to monster hunting and monster hunting alone. For somebody who professed to only care about coin, Geralt was very particular what he did to get it.

“The high priestess is unconscious, and I know Witchers have a bad reputation but I can tell you right now that he will not be up for, for – well, doing anything like that to an unconscious woman! Awake and consenting are two of his non-negotiables. He’s not an animal, you know.”

“No, no, no – you misunderstand. As you say, the curse and its remedy are very badly written. When we first read it, we interpreted it as you do. That the barren, white-haired bitch was our lady Etake, and the only way to save her was to let her submit to violation by some – monster who would not have the moral scruples that your Witcher does. But look again. The mage has written in the neuter case, and we might just as well translate the words as barren, white-haired bastard…”

“Oh,” said Jaskier stupidly, understanding coming all in a rush. “Oh I see.”

Leire glanced at Amaia. “One of us will perform the other role. We are awake and consenting, are we not?”

“We would be grateful for your guidance, Jaskier,” Amaia added. “You know him well. This is not a brothel, we would prefer to avoid the coarseness of asking him to choose between the three of us. What does he like in a woman? Which of us should volunteer, so that the duty might be as agreeable to him as possible?”

Jaskier didn’t want to be crude, but they were all but inviting him to assess them like horseflesh, and he couldn’t help the way his gaze travelled over the three of them, comparing them.

“Oh, you know. He’s got pretty broad tastes,” he hedged. “I’ve never heard him criticise anybody’s looks, so as long as you’re really willing he’ll be happy enough.”  

Which was true, but Jaskier could have been much more specific. Given the choice, Geralt preferred women who didn’t appear the slightest bit afraid of him – which made sense to Jaskier, because who can have fun in bed if the other person is terrified – and he also seemed to prefer women who talked a lot. This made less sense, given that Geralt complained constantly about how much Jaskier talked, but then he still fell happily enough into step with him every time they met on the road, and even answered the occasional letter with an update on his whereabouts so that Jaskier could find him, so Jaskier had decided to take those complaints with a pinch of salt.

“And what about him?” asked Amaia, glancing at Rina as if to forestall some objection. “What can we expect? Is he very monstrous, in his person?”

“No! Not – no! He’s not monstrous in the slightest!” Jaskier protested, stung on Geralt’s behalf. “The descriptions in my songs actually are based on the real Geralt. He’s sort of – big, and really muscular, which a lot of people go wild for - and imposing. You wouldn’t want to get in a fight with him, but he’s actually – well he has incredible bone structure, for a start. His face has this whole chiselled thing going on, and he’s got incredible golden eyes, like an eagle, and actually I’d say he’s – people say he’s ruggedly good looking. When he’s clean. That’s what I’ve heard women say, anyway,” he finished weakly, feeling that he might perhaps have shown his hand without actually knowing himself what cards he held.

Amaia’s lips twitched.

“And is he…forgive me – made like a normal man? In that way?”

Her gaze dropped to Jaskier’s crotch and then up again to meet his eyes. For all the delicate language, the priestesses were very matter of fact in their line of questioning.

“Of course he is! Like a very fortunate normal man!” he said, then immediately wished he hadn’t. Not that he had anything to hide. There was no need feign ignorance; they travelled together, why wouldn’t he know what his friend looked like, even in this particular? He’d noticed, that was all.

“He was here,” said the innkeeper, wiping tankards with a rag. “He took a room with old man Adamiec, but last I saw of him was three days ago, he was leaving here with three women. All over him, they were! Some men have all the luck…”

And wasn’t that just typical of Jaskier? He was either enjoying the much better offer made by the three women, or had been murdered by three husbands. Either way he was unlikely to be available to travel with Geralt, prior engagement or no prior engagement. One woman he might have been able to compete with for the bard’s attention, but three?

If Jaskier had been there to let him down in person, Geralt could have pretended it was a relief to be rid of him, but with nobody to appreciate the performance except an indifferent innkeeper it didn’t seem worth bothering.

“Oh! But one of them brought this letter for you – you are Geralt of Rivia, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Then here -” from behind the bar he produced a folded parchment and handed it to Geralt, shaking his head. “He seemed an energetic enough young fellow, your friend, but how can one man satisfy three women? Hardly seems fair on the rest of us.”

Geralt was wondering the same thing. Even for Jaskier, it seemed excessive. Not that he had ever lacked for female attention: women seemed to find him as irresistible as Jaskier found them, but three at once was something out of a bawdy tale, not reality.

He broke the seal on the parchment, and found that it contained two letters. The one in Jaskier’s hand, which he read first, said:

Dear Geralt,

I already know what you’re thinking and I’ve imagined everything you want to say to me more eloquently than you can, so let’s save time and skip all that. In my defence, I knew they weren’t all they seemed and I didn’t willingly go anywhere with them. They drugged me and brought me here where I woke up chained to a wall, so you’ll have to admit this isn’t actually my fault at all. They’re doing this to get you to help them so really if it’s anybody’s fault, I think you would agree that it’s yours.

Apart from being held against my will I am perfectly all right, but I would appreciate it if you could come and get me out of here. They’re going to ask something rather strange of you but it isn’t anything that will do you or anybody else any harm, as far as I can see.

All they want is your help, and they are convinced that you’ll give it in return for them letting me go, so it will be extremely awkward for everybody, and me in particular, if you decide not to. Not to put any pressure on you or anything, but if you don’t have any more pressing engagements I would be very grateful if you would come and get me out of this. 

Your friend, currently still alive and keen to remain so,

Jaskier

The other letter, written in a flowing, educated hand, briefly described a curse, indicated how to reach the Abbey of Iena, the forest of thorns that he would have to fight his way through, and included the writer’s deepest apologies for employing such extreme measures as kidnap. It finished:

Your friend holds you in high esteem and believes you to be a man who helps people when he can, even without the promise of great reward, (which was precisely what Jaskier hadn’t wanted them to tell him, but they hadn’t consulted him on the contents of this letter) and it is our fervent hope that his faith in you is not misplaced. We have no wish to do him harm – indeed, as you doubtless know, he is a charming guest – but we are desperate. Help us, and he will be returned to you.

This made Jaskier sound rather like a misplaced parcel, and Geralt found himself gritting his teeth at the indignity of it. Of course he would berate Jaskier for allowing it to happen when he saw him, but privately he was seething. The bard wasn’t to blame, he was, for letting it be so widely known who his friends were. And Jaskier, who wandered the Continent singing about him, talking to anybody and everybody, was both more vulnerable and more obviously his friend than anybody else.

“Which way to the Abbey of Iena?” he asked the innkeeper.

“Take the road east and you’ll come to it in no time. And if they need a third man, you can count on me, hey?”

By the time he had hacked his way through the thicket of dense thorns which surrounded the Abbey, tearing his left sleeve at the shoulder, his right trouser leg at the knee and acquiring a shallow scratch across his eyebrow that didn’t hurt but did drip just enough blood into his eye to need constantly wiping away, he almost wished he had brought that innkeeper as a third man.

He rested on his sword for a moment at the great door to the Abbey, catching his breath. The door stood open, and from within he heard the sound of light footsteps approaching.

In all fairness to Jaskier, he could see why the woman who appeared might have lulled him into a false sense of security.

Her bearing was noble, her movements graceful and unhurried as she bowed to him. She didn’t look at all like the sort of person who would drug and kidnap a bard, which just went to show you couldn’t trust anyone.

“Geralt of Rivia? I am Rina of Tarque. We are grateful to you for coming, more than I can possibly say. Our Abbess, the lady Etake, and all but three of our priestesses, lie in an enchanted sleep. We are desperate for your help.”

“Where’s Jaskier?”

“Please, come this way. I will take you to him.”

Following Rina through the abbey, signs of the curse were everywhere. Cobwebs stretched across the windows, and they passed several priestesses apparently asleep on the floor.

“We could not carry everybody to their chamber. We have done our best to make them comfortable, but some of our sisters sleep on where they fell,” she explained, and indeed all the women he passed lay stretched at ease, covered with a blanket, as if they had merely lain down to rest in an unorthodox spot.

There appeared to be nobody left awake in the whole place, and the magic of the curse hung heavy in the air.

At last she pushed open a wooden door at the top of a wide shallow staircase, and three people rose to greet them.

Two were women in the same priestesses’ robes as Rina, both as stately and beautiful as she, and the third was Jaskier.

“Geralt!” he exclaimed in obvious relief, crossing the large chamber straight to him.

It wasn’t that Geralt had really been worried about him, not really, but he felt some of the tension leave his shoulders at the sight of Jaskier whole and unharmed and apparently comfortable enough to be barefoot and in his shirt sleeves. Geralt hadn’t seen him since they had gone their separate ways for winter, and neither a season in Oxenfurt nor a few days forced stay in a cursed abbey had done him any harm. He was bright eyed and clean shaven, smelling of fine soap and strawberries.

Jaskier grinned up at him, smaller in his bare feet than Geralt in his boots. Geralt gripped his shoulders, gave him a little shake just to feel the weight of him under his hands, and the chain around his ankle clinked as he widened his stance to keep his feet.

“Why is he in chains?” he asked threateningly, just as Jaskier said, “You’re bleeding!” and reached out to touch his face.

The three priestesses exchanged a look.

“I’ll bring some water and a cloth,” murmured one of them, and slipped from the room.

There was no mirror, so after wiping off the blood he could feel, it was more efficient to let Jaskier do the rest. Three times he’d said, “You missed a bit – right here,” and indicated the spot on his own face, before Geralt thrust the cloth into his hand.

“How are you, anyway, apart from this?” he asked, dabbing gently at Geralt’s eyebrow.

“Fine. Got delayed by flooding.”

They were standing too close together for conversation to be comfortable. He could feel Jaskier’s breath on his face, and the weight of the priestesses’ scrutiny as if they’d never seen anybody wipe blood off anybody else’s face before. It wasn’t even that much blood, not compared to what Jaskier had wiped off him in the past.  

“Well. Thanks for coming. I’m fine, obviously, except for the chain thing, which is not as much fun as kidnapped by beautiful women makes it sound,” he stuck the tip of his tongue out in concentration before finally stepping back. “There. All done.”

Rina cleared her throat.

“Perhaps I could tell you about the job we need you to do for us.”

Jaskier cleared his throat too, and took another step back. Geralt glanced sharply at him. They’re going to ask something rather strange of you, he’d said.

“Perhaps you could,” Geralt agreed.

She held out a parchment to him. “Do you read Old Elder?”

Geralt did, a little. Probably not as well as Jaskier, but he could get by. He took the parchment, and reading aloud, puzzled out something along the lines of:

“The Lady Etake, frigid tease and High Priestess of Iena, will sleep enchanted along with all her acolytes, until such time as the barren white-haired bitch is fucked (fucks? Did Old Elder distinguish? Did it even matter?), willingly and with desire, someone who (some words Geralt didn’t know). Then and only then will that slut awake, to spend the rest of her days repenting ever having rejected the great mage Jakub.”

“Charming,” he concluded. “Sounds like a real prince among mages.”

“Indeed.”

Jaskier was rather pointedly not looking at him, and he had a fairly good idea where this was going now.

“And what do you want from me, exactly? Witchers kill monsters, not renegade mages. However badly they might deserve it.”

“It is a delicate matter…” she began.

“It doesn’t sound delicate to me. It sounds like you’re asking me to fuck an unconscious woman. Is that it?”

“No! No, that’s not it at all – your friend told us you would never agree to such a thing, and neither could we contemplate it. Jakub wanted this to be an unbreakable curse that would attract all the lowest men to this abbey to try their luck, but we hope the careless phrasing allows us some leeway. Lady Etake has very pale blonde hair, and she cannot bear children, hence the description. But the spell was cast in anger and haste, and leaving aside the pejorative implications of jehenel, we realised that it might just as well apply to any mage or witcher with white hair, male or female. We sent letters to all of our friends and sponsors, knowing it would be a long, slow search. But when your friend performed in the village, singing songs of a white haired witcher and expecting to meet him there, we realised that destiny had brought an ideal candidate to our very door.”

Geralt scowled at her, and she blinked back at him unperturbed.

“If you are willing to undertake the job, Sister Amaia has volunteered to be the other party,” she added.

Sister Amaia smiled gravely. Jaskier’s face flickered with something Geralt couldn’t put a name to.

“What?” he asked him.

“Oh, nothing. Doesn’t matter.”

“What. Is. It.” Geralt repeated.

“No, nothing, nothing – this just seems like the right time to remind you that I am fine, and if you don’t want to do this then you shouldn’t feel forced into it just because I have a chain around my ankle.”

The priestesses all spoke at once.

“Oh, we don’t want to force you!”

“It won’t work if you do it under duress!”

“It was only to make sure he’d stay until you got here! I can go and get the key right now!”

Geralt sighed and sat down, glancing at Sister Amaia. As far as he could tell she was of sound mind and acting of her own free will, if anybody could be said to have free will in a situation with a rapey curse and a kidnapped bard chained to the wall.

“It’s an unusual request, but I’m not unwilling, in principle,” he said.

Amaia smiled a little less gravely.

“I don’t speak Old Elder very well. Are there any other…more specific requirements?”

Amaia looked him right in the eye and tossed her hair. “Both parties must achieve satisfaction,” she said.

Jaskier started coughing.

“What?” hissed Geralt.

“I’m coughing!” he protested through coughs. Rina poured water into a goblet and handed it to him.

“Then if you are both in agreement, you can proceed whenever you are ready.”

At first it was quiet in the antechamber.

Then after a while, through the door they heard the sound of a woman’s moan. The good sort of moan.

“I think I’ll go and check on the High Priestess,” said Rina, getting to her feet in a rush.

“I’ll come with you!” said Leire.

“No, sister – one of us must stay here with Jaskier.”

Knowing a cue when he heard one, Jaskier reached for his lute. “How about some music!” he suggested, a little desperately.

“Oh god, would you?”

His first chord rang out almost in time to drown out the sound of bedsprings.

***

Geralt was fully dressed when he emerged: clothes, boot, belt, swords, everything. A flash of pale skin showed at the knee where his trousers were torn, but otherwise he was as put together as always. Amaia followed a second later, and Jaskier couldn’t help be annoyed by how pleased with herself she looked. He’s slept with hundreds of women, he felt like saying. You’re not special just because you did it to lift a curse. This probably isn’t even the first time he’s slept with someone to lift a curse!

“It hasn’t worked,” said Rina, coming back into the room.

“What do you mean it hasn’t worked?” Jaskier’s voice went all high with outrage, though if pressed he couldn’t have said why he was quite so outraged.

Geralt’s expression didn’t change, but Amaia didn’t look quite so self-satisfied now.

“The curse is not lifted. None of them have woken up, and the forest of thorns is as thick as ever.”

“Did you both reach – completion?”

“Yes,” growled Geralt as Amaia nodded enthusiastically, a fetching flush on her cheeks.

“I think we all heard it, actually,” Jaskier added supportively.

“You didn’t…feign satisfaction, to encourage him?” Rina insisted. “You must be completely honest with us, sister. This is no time to tiptoe around male pride: if he didn’t please you, you must tell us now.”

“If you need us to try again, to make sure, I would be more than happy to oblige. But I can assure you that he pleased me quite completely.”

“See?” said Jaskier, not entirely sure why proving Geralt’s sexual prowess should matter so much to him. Geralt himself just scowled at him. You would have thought sex with a beautiful, enthusiastic priestess would have made him more cheerful, but it didn’t seem to have brightened his glower one bit. Jaskier chose not to question why he was pleased about that.

“Then we must have mistranslated something. Let me see it again…” said Amaia, her frustration clear.

The three priestesses bent their heads together over the parchment with the curse, comparing their translation to the original text in low, tense voices.

Jaskier muttered what he remembered of the curse under his breath to himself, sounding out where they might have gone wrong. He closed his eyes, tried to drag up declensions he hadn’t used for a decade – Old Elder was essential to gain a university degree, but a lot less important in the life of a travelling bard or even in his spells as a professor of music. It was all a bit hazy, but he had a bad feeling about where the subject, object and precise meaning of willingly and with desire were going – there was something familiar there, but it just wouldn’t come to him. It might be better to leave the grammar of his undergraduate years behind him and let the priestesses work this one out.

They seemed to be wrestling with an unwelcome conclusion.

“If it hasn’t worked, then perhaps vihjaime …”

“It would agree with the subject if – but we ruled that out early on!”

“You ruled it out. I said it was an equally valid translation!”

“Just say it,” Geralt said through gritted teeth.

“Jakub was more careful working his curse than we thought,” Leire sighed. “I’m afraid the spell has proved too specific for our work-around: it appears that the other party with the white-haired – etcetera - must be male.”

Geralt shrugged minutely. Jaskier very carefully didn’t react at all.

“Then it’s also possible – we thought it unlikely to be the correct interpretation of vihjaime I ehreden - but now it also seems that the two parties must proceed…”

The Chronicle of Isindrel, Jaskier realised with a sudden pulse of adrenaline. Of course. He should have recognised it right away - he’d known great swathes of it by heart when he was a student, translated endless stanzas, likely very badly. The lecherous mage was quoting the Chronicle of fucking Isindrel, which meant interpretation of vihjaime I ehreden wasn’t willingly and with desire, it was –

“Willingly and with love,” said Leire.

Jaskier was already looking at Geralt, which he felt was normal, under the circumstances. The conversation was basically about him, after all, and who he’d have to fuck in order to lift a curse – it would have been weird not to be looking at him. But that was when nobody was paying any attention to Jaskier, which abruptly stopped being the case.

Geralt’s head snapped up, and he looked right at Jaskier. Right at him.

A second later, with the same sense of inevitability, the sisters all turned to look at Jaskier too.

There was a heartbeat when he could still have played it cool. Said, well of course I love him, Geralt is my very good friend, we all love our friends, don’t we? But they’d caught him by surprise, all turning to him so quickly, as if it was obvious, and he didn’t have his first remark prepared, that was all, because he hadn’t been expecting it -

He breathed in and tried to speak at the same time, and ended up choking on air, pointing accusingly at Geralt but unable to say a word to smooth things over.

“Take the chain off him right now,” growled Geralt in his most menacing voice. “Nothing goes any further while he’s there like a human fucking sacrifice.”

The sisters didn’t scare easily, so perhaps it was the justice of Geralt’s complaint that did the trick.

Amaia nodded to herself and knelt to unlock the manacle. As soon as it was off Jaskier stepped sharply away in case she changed her mind, instinctively moving towards Geralt. Although perhaps he shouldn’t have done: he might have turned to Jaskier when the priestess said love, but the look he’d given him hadn’t been friendly, exactly.

“We’re going to talk in private,” Geralt announced. He grabbed Jaskier by the collar and all but hauled him through the double doors into the bedroom he’d just fucked Amaia in, slamming them closed behind him.

Jaskier pulled away, hard, and with only a faint sound of fabric tearing, Geralt let him go.

They stood glaring at each other from a safe distance apart, both breathing hard. The rumpled bed was very prominent behind him. It was the one Jaskier had been sleeping in for the last three days.

“Why did you look at me?” he burst out.

“Why did you look at me?” retorted Geralt, fists clenched.

“The conversation was about you! We were all looking at you!”

“Until they all turned to look at you!”

“Because you did!”

“You must have said something to them. What did you say?”

“Nothing!”

“That sounds highly out of character for you.”

“Don’t be an ass. I told them you were the only Witcher on this Continent who would probably have helped them without coin – no don’t deny it, I’ve seen you do it before, and an abbey of smart, good looking women under a sleeping curse is exactly the sort of lost cause you can’t resist. Which is what I told them! And they just exchanged a knowing glance and apologised for having to do this. So don’t blame me if your miraculous curse-breaking cock wasn’t powerful enough to -”

There was a knock at the door.

“What?” they both yelled at the same time.

Sister Leire stepped into the room and closed the door behind her. The priestesses didn’t really do apologetic, as a mood, but the look on her face seemed to have at least heard of it.

“I must beg your forgiveness, and explain,” she began.

“Please. Explain away,” said Geralt, venomously calm.

“I had heard you sing the song about the scars of the Witcher, in Revige, last spring. You seemed very – fond, when you sang it,” she said to Jaskier. “And then when you sang it again, in the village, I remembered.”

She turned to Geralt. “You were there, the first time, and did not take it amiss. So when this happened, we thought - it seemed at least possible that the man who knows another man’s body so well, and who sang of him with such warmth in front of him, that if it didn’t work with Amaia, there might be enough love between the two of you...”

Jaskier shook his head against a rising sense of panic. He’d been so careful, for so long – he and Geralt were friends, they knew where they stood with each other and everything was fine, he had made good decisions and stuck to them, and now -

“I’m not doing it,” he said. “No way.”

Leire turned pleading eyes on Geralt.

“Please. At least talk about it. Geralt of Rivia, we are counting on you - talk to your friend. Convince him. We are desperate. We must save our High Priestess. Please!”

Geralt showed his teeth in a poor imitation of a smile, as Leire backed out of the room and shut door behind her, leaving them alone together.

“You’re not doing it?”

Jaskier crossed his arms, shook his head again. “Of course not! What kind of fool do you think I am? No, don’t answer that.”

Geralt was completely taken aback. Not that this exact turn of events was a scenario he had ever predicted, but in all the 10 years they’d known each other, he had taken for granted that Jaskier would jump at the chance to sleep with him.

He’d never said anything and neither had Jaskier, but Geralt had eyes. He’d seen the way Jaskier looked at him and carefully looked away, the minute increase in pupil size when they were close together, and how he never let his gaze drop below the waist when they were bathing. He could smell the way Jaskier’s pheromones spiked around him, feel the rise in his body temperature if he stood too close. It was obvious that Jaskier was attracted to him.

For him to stand there now and turn down an altruistic opportunity to break a curse, earn the gratitude and admiration of beautiful women and do something he’d wanted to do for a decade - it was incomprehensible. 

“Why not? You’ll sleep with anybody except me?”

He’d only said it like that to get a rise out of Jaskier, but once the words were out he found that he sort of meant it. Jaskier was easy, everybody knew that. Slutty, even. He fell into bed and into love with somebody every other week, but the very idea of doing it with Geralt was out of the question?

“I do have some self-awareness, you know,” Jaskier said. “I know how my love affairs go and how long they last, and how they tend to end with somebody wishing me dead. And I’ve noticed how your love affairs go too, and it’s not much better than mine!”

“They’re not asking for a love affair. They’re just asking for us to have sex once. Nothing has to change.”

“Nothing has to change? Does that sound realistic to you?”

“Why not? We already sleep in the same bed because you’re cold all the time - ”

“Thank you for making something I took for granted sound like you’re doing me a favour -”

“You have sex with half the people you meet! Why would doing it with me make any difference?”

“Because we’re friends, Geralt! I know you like to deny it, but I promise you that we are friends.”

“According to you, you have sex with your friends all the time. I didn’t ask you, you just volunteered that information.”

“Ok, right, well, yes. Alright - I do have friends I can just sleep with, and not change anything. That’s true. But you aren’t one of them.”

“Why I aren’t I one of them?”

“You just aren’t, alright?”

“That’s not an answer. Why. Aren’t. I. One of them?”

“Because if I slept with you, then - ” he looked away from Geralt and blinked fast, several times. When he turned back again, there was a clear challenge in his eyes. “If I slept with you, then I’d probably end up falling in love with you, which is the last thing you want. No don’t deny it – even admitting we’re friends is too much commitment for you. You definitely don’t want me to be in love with you. If you think I’m too much now, just wait and see what I’d be like then!”

“Jaskier -”

“Unless you were deliberately bad in bed with me, I suppose. Or went out of your way to be really horrible to me while we were doing it...”

Geralt pulled a face. Fine, so he didn’t always make an effort to treat Jaskier particularly kindly, but he instinctively recoiled from the idea of some brutal sexual encounter where he would throw his strength around and actively mistreat him. The implication that for Jaskier, those might be just two points in the same sordid continuum left a bitter taste in his mouth.

“See? You wouldn’t even be able to do that.”

“Of course I wouldn’t!”

“Well then. There you go.”

“If you’re so set against it,” he forced out through gritted teeth, not entirely sure why he was dragging out this entire horrific conversation, “then why are you always flirting with me?”

“Flirting? Flirting? You think I’ve been flirting with you? Me, with you? Oh no, Geralt, oh, no no no no no. What I’ve been doing is being nice to you. I can see why you might confuse the two, since admittedly people aren’t nice to you very often outside of brothels, but they are in fact different things.”

Geralt didn’t even have time to speak before Jaskier continued:

“And if you ask me why I’m nice to you, then so help me god, I’ll - ”

“Why are you nice to me, Jaskier?” Geralt growled, taking three threatening steps closer. He had to say something, even if it was something deliberately provocative.

“You want to do this? Alright, let’s do this!” Jaskier cried, stretching out his arms as if appealing to an invisible audience. “I’m nice to you because we’re friends, and I like you. Which you know. In fact I do love you - and I am fascinated by your decision to pretend they never said the part about the love, truly, there’s a monograph about the human condition in there somewhere - because you already know I love you, of course I do! And if you want some more information that is general knowledge to everybody except you, you love me, too. In your own way. You even like me. You could get rid of me like that - ” he snapped his fingers in a dramatic flourish, swiping his hand right in front of Geralt’s face and making him blink. “But you never have.”

They glared at each other, both breathing hard. Jaskier looked almost surprised at his own outburst, and perhaps even more surprised that Geralt had heard him out. Geralt was a little surprised at that too, more than anything Jaskier had actually said.

For all that he avoided introspection as much as possible, when actually faced with the truth of what he felt there was nothing in Jaskier’s words he could even argue with, let alone deny. The priestesses had them bang to rights. Of course Jaskier loved him. Of course Geralt loved him back. Not like they loved the people they fucked, and who they fell in and out of love with, but he knew it was love all the same.

And on top of that, yes, fine, maybe he did like him too, which was almost worse.

He sighed, aware that it sounded halfway to a growl and also that Jaskier would understand he wasn’t trying to be menacing this time.  

“Yes. Fine. I - like you,” he forced himself to say. 

“Thank you, I know you do. But you don’t actually want me.”

Geralt shrugged, helpless. “I assumed you would be interested. But as you’re not…”

“I wouldn’t go as far as to say I’m not interested. I’m just – protecting myself. Protecting both of us. You don’t want to do it either, you’re just constitutionally incapable of not helping the noble, beautiful priestesses against the evil sorcerer. You don’t actually want to have sex with me, and I normally reserve this kind of attention for people who do want me. I categorically cannot provide the services requested for someone who’s going to be – lying back and thinking of…I don’t know, whatever it is you think about when you’re enduring things.”

That was Geralt’s cue to ruefully acknowledge Jaskier was right, that he had a weakness for helping the defenceless against the powerful even at great personal cost, and move on. It wasn’t even like he’d lose face to anybody. Jaskier would know he valued their friendship too much to push, and the priestesses would know that he had tried his best but could hardly force Jaskier into bed when he didn’t want to be there. Even if they did feel love for each other, that didn’t automatically translate into sex.

It ought to have been a relief. He ought to be seizing the out with both hands, but now that it was in front of him he found he was almost – disappointed? A guilt-free opportunity like this one would probably never present itself again, and he couldn’t bear to have it snatched away when all he had to do to hold on to it was be honest with Jaskier about what he wanted.

Jaskier was looking at him curiously, head on one side, when he dragged his gaze up from the floor after an incriminatingly long pause.

“Geralt?”

“What?”

“You don’t really want to have sex with me, do you?”

“I didn’t say that,” said Geralt, addressing the wall above Jaskier’s left shoulder through gritted teeth.

“Oh,” said Jaskier. “Oh, well that’s – that’s - ”

“But since you don’t want to, then that’s an end to it.”

“So you’re saying you do want to?”

Geralt clenched his fists and forced himself to unclench them again.

“I have – considered it.”

Jaskier’s eyes widened. “You’ve considered it? You? Having sex? With me? You’ve considered that?”

Geralt clenched his teeth harder. “Yes.”

“Wow. I didn’t – wow.”

“I take it you haven’t.”

“No, not – not in detail. I suppose I’ve – uh, I’ve - ” there was a slight flush across Jaskier’s cheekbones that was really very appealing.

Not that he looked any different from how Geralt might see him in any rented room or summer campsite, barefoot and relaxed, the neck of his shirt open and his hair a little dishevelled. The only difference was that rather than choosing to ignore how Jaskier looked, as he usually did, circumstances were actively forcing him to dwell on it. To ask himself what it was he actually wanted, albeit from behind the protective shield of undoing a curse. Which was his job.

“You’ve?” he prompted.

“No, I couldn’t think about it in detail, not once I got to know you – I’d rather go out and have actual sex with somebody else, than torment myself over sex I’m not having with you. But – I can’t believe I’m going to tell you this - do you remember that village where you killed the ghoul, and then they weren’t going to pay up, wanted to make us move on, but I talked them round and by the end they paid in full and offered us the biggest room in the tavern?”

Geralt nodded.

“And you looked at me like - it was probably just indigestion – do you actually get indigestion? I’ve never asked. Ten years we’ve known each other, and I don’t know if you get indigestion.”

“Jaskier.”

“Sorry, right, we can come back to that later. Anyway. You looked at me like I’d done something incredible, like you were actually impressed, and for a moment I did entertain an idle fantasy of you – melting into my arms in gratitude, or something.”

“You’d have dropped me,” Geralt said flatly to cover his confusion. His love life didn’t involve a lot of melting into anybody’s arms, as a rule, and he was oddly touched that this was the image that Jaskier had chosen as his fantasy. Jaskier had held him up plenty of times, in or after fights, but the thought of this low-stakes gratitude was affecting him more than he would have expected.  

“Ha. Probably. But in my head I was terribly smooth. It was a great imaginary kiss, actually. But I didn’t take it any further than that.”

“And then you disappeared off with that man. With the eyes and the - ”

“I didn’t think you’d noticed that,” Jaskier said faintly. “But like I said, I’d rather have actual sex than torment myself imagining it when it isn’t going to happen. I’m actually quite invested in remaining friends with you, you see.”

They looked at each other then, finally. Geralt made himself meet his gaze as Jaskier shrugged and let his arms drop to his side.

“But if you’re asking me to do this because you want me, and not because you feel like you have to, then…”

Geralt took a deep breath. If he couldn’t be honest with Jaskier, then there wasn’t anybody on the whole Continent he could be honest with.   

“I want you,” he said. It felt like stepping off a cliff. “I wouldn’t have asked you, but now that they’ve asked us to, I – I do want to. I want to help them, but I also want this.”

“And we’ll still be friends afterwards?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll still respect me in the morning, as they say?”

“That depends what you do,” he deadpanned.

He was rewarded by the flash of Jaskier’s teeth as he smiled. “I am extremely slutty. Maybe you’ll be shocked.”

“Maybe I will.”

“You never said – when you considered this, what did you consider, exactly? Is there some depraved sex act you’re convinced I’m a master of that you wanted to try?”

Geralt laughed, let his feet take a drifting half step closer to Jaskier.

“I’m a lot older than you. I’ve tried all the depraved sex acts under the sun.”

Jaskier matched his half step closer. “Well, you can have my full repertoire of not-depraved sex acts then. On one condition.”

“What?”

He pointed at the unmade bed behind them.

“Clean sheets. Slutty I may be, but I can’t have sex with you in the same sheets you just fucked somebody else in.”

It was on the tip of Geralt’s tongue to tease him for his delicate sensibilities, but then he didn’t. Jaskier was doing this because he’d asked, and the least he could do was change the damn sheets. They smelled like you the whole time I was with her, he thought, but he didn’t say that either.

There were a lot of ways it could have gone, once they were facing each other across the freshly made bed.

Obviously deliberately bad or treating each other brutally was out of the question, but it could have been rough and tumble, like the friendly wrestling matches he let Jaskier provoke him into sometimes even though the outcome was a foregone conclusion. Just two friends with an excuse to touch, casually getting each other off.

Or it could have been politer but colder, detached: get the job done and avoid eye contact, like you do with a whore.

But with Jaskier sitting back on his heels on the bed, close enough to touch, Geralt found himself more affected than he’d thought. Jaskier was the one claiming he might fall in love if they did this (Geralt knew perfectly well he’d only said it to try and put him off), but there was a great wellspring of tenderness bubbling up inside him that he was struggling to hide.

“Well, this is weird,” Jaskier said. There was a tremor to his voice but he sounded cheerful enough. “I thought if we ever did this, it would be more spontaneous. A spur of the moment impulse after too much to drink or one of us saved the other one’s life. Statistically that would have been you saving me, I suppose, but you never know. I’m actually a bit nervous now.”

“Yes,” said Geralt. He meant I can see that, but it came out sounding like me too.

“Shall we…I don’t know, shall we lie down?”

So deliberate, Jaskier asking him to lie down because they were going to have sex. He didn’t trust his voice with anything more than an affirmative, “Hmm.”

They lay on their sides, facing each other with their knees almost touching. He’d already taken off his boots and sword and knife belt, so when Jaskier reached out to put a hand on his waist there was only the thin layer of his shirt between them.

“Do you kiss? I mean, can I kiss you?” His fingers clenched on Geralt’s side. “Wait. First tell me if there’s anything you don’t like. Anything I shouldn’t do.”

Geralt thought about it for a second then pulled a face.

“No. Just don’t call me ‘daddy’.”

Jaskier pulled a face in return.

“Ew, gross. Really not my thing. Although I’m not surprised people looking for that are attracted to you. It’s the stern self-confidence that does it. Try looking shy, or giggling. That’ll keep them off you.”

Geralt rolled his eyes rather than answer out loud.

He’d looked at Jaskier exactly like this hundreds of times before. A shared bed in an inn, bedrolls close together in a tent or beside the fire. Logically his face hadn’t changed: the same bright blue eyes, dark hair falling over his forehead, but there was something soft in his expression that Geralt hadn’t seen before.

He shifted closer, brushed his nose against Geralt’s with a huff of breath.

Geralt could hear the smile in his voice when he asked, “So are we kissing, here, or not?”

“Yes,” said Geralt, not closing the gap between them.

Jaskier’s smile broadened.

“I see, you want me to do all the work,” he murmured. “You only have to ask, you know.”

“I’m realising that.”

There was a lot he could have had, if he’d only asked.

“I have to tell you, you asking me for something you want that I can give you is really working for me.”

He took Geralt’s hand then and drew it to his cock where he was already hard. Guided by his musician’s hand, Geralt rubbed at the hard length of him, learning the shape and heat of him through the fabric, listening to the tiny hitch in his breathing as he touched him.  

“I’m going to kiss you now,” Jaskier said.

“Hmm. Are you going to narrate the whole thing?”

“I don’t know, are you going to tell me what it was you considered doing with me?”

They were so close he was breathing Jaskier’s breath. His world had narrowed to Jaskier’s face and the feel of Jaskier’s cock in his hand. The familiar scent of his arousal. His own erection straining against his breeches.

What had he considered? Surely there was one suitably adventurous or athletic fantasy he could relate, something that emphasised his superior strength and prowess? But there wasn’t, and with Jaskier so close, that devastating honesty he wielded so lightly, Geralt couldn’t bring himself to lie.

“I think about – you rubbing salve into by back after the bath, and then. You’d keep going. You’d ask me if you could, and I’d say yes and spread my legs…”

“Oh, Geralt…” Jaskier breathed, grip on his hand tightening, making Geralt feel it as his cock got even harder.

“You’d put your fingers in me. Take your time. Say you couldn’t believe I was letting you do this. In that voice when you’re really pleased about something.”

“Glad to hear Fantasy Me knows when he’s onto a good thing. And then what?”

He rubbed his nose against Geralt’s, let their lips brush together in a not-quite kiss. Surely it was obvious, then what. But if Jaskier was asking, it was because he wanted to hear Geralt say it.

“And then,” he managed to say, voice like sand, “You’d fuck me.”

Jaskier surged against him and into his arms, pushing him onto his back as he finally, finally kissed him. Soft and light at first, feeling his way, just their lips together, a brush of tongues, and then deep and wet and sure of himself.

He’d always known Jaskier would be sure of himself in bed, but to know it in the abstract was quite different to experiencing it for himself, feeling the full force of it directed entirely at turning him on. He tightened his arms around Jaskier, shamelessly rutting up against the warm weight of him, feeling that lithe body against his cock.

Jaskier pushed up a little, reached between them to start undoing Geralt’s breeches one-handed.

“Take these off,” he said, then let all of his weight come back down to kiss him again so Geralt couldn’t, not without pushing him off.

“I will if you let me,” Geralt rumbled against his mouth, felt his answering smile.

They both knew he was strong enough to shove Jaskier off if he wanted to, didn’t have to wait for Jaskier to let him do anything. But he was waiting anyway. Waiting for Jaskier to come up on hands and knees above him, watch hungrily as he unfastened them and wriggled them down to his hips but not leaving him enough room to do more than that. It left his cock framed by the black fabric, hard and leaking against his belly, somehow more obscene than if he’d been fully naked. Look what you do to me, it seemed to say. I’m so hot for you I can’t even wait to take my clothes off.

Jaskier was looking alright, the weight of his gaze almost tangible. “And your shirt?” he said, licking his lips.

He sat back on Geralt’s thighs to let him unbutton it, that blue gaze sending heat across his skin everywhere it fell. Jaskier’s hands followed in its wake, stroking across his chest and down his belly, and then it was his mouth. Tongue flicking across one nipple, sucking kisses into the sensitive skin of his abdomen, making him shiver. The shocking heat of his mouth on Geralt’s cock, there and gone again, his grunt of frustration ignored.

Jaskier looked up at him, lips poised almost exactly where Geralt wanted them.

“You’re watching me,” he said, mischief all over his face.

“Should I not?”

“Oh no, watch all you like,” and he sat back again and pulled his own shirt off over his head, fluid and unselfconscious, as if he’d known all along that Geralt liked to watch him. He had always relied on the way he could see in the dark and Jaskier couldn’t to steal the occasional glimpse, but now he was wondering if he’d really been as discreet as he thought.

But nothing he was wondering was very coherent. Jaskier sitting in his lap and taking his clothes off was all he could focus on: he could manage to lift his hips so Jaskier could pull his breeches right off, and he could stare stupidly as Jaskier stood up to take off his own, but that was it.

Jaskier was back in his arms, kissing him, wrapping one hand around his cock until he groaned with pleasure.

“I liked what you were doing before,” he mumbled, and that was all it took. Jaskier smiled at him like Geralt had given him a wonderful gift, and slid down to take his cock into his mouth.

Geralt watched that too; it was his cock, after all, and Jaskier seemed to like knowing he had his full attention. He was a performer at heart, even in this, but as his cheeks hollowed as he sucked, and his eyes drifted closed, it all started to look dangerously sincere. The little choked off sound he made at Geralt’s involuntary thrust wasn’t loud enough to be anything but real. Geralt had spent enough nights with only a thin wall between himself and Jaskier’s lovemaking to know what was genuine and what wasn’t.

What Geralt’s own body wanted seemed to hold no mystery for Jaskier either: right before he opened his mouth to warn him he was about to come, Jaskier lifted his head and let his spit-wet cock bounce back against his belly.

“Turn over, will you?”

“You don’t have to…” Geralt began.

“But I want to. It’s not all about what you want, you know,” Jaskier teased, leaning up to kiss him. “I’m already retrospectively enjoying those massages I gave you even more after your revelation, but you have to let me bring my work to fruition. Well. No. You don’t have to at all, but I thought you might want to?”

How could he possibly say no to that, when Jaskier already knew what he wanted and was asking only to give it to him?

It felt both achingly familiar and sharply strange to spread himself out on his belly in front of Jaskier. Even the nakedness wasn’t totally new, and Jaskier’s hands moving across his shoulders and back definitely weren’t. It was only when he leaned forward to kiss down his spine and Geralt felt his hard cock brush against his thigh that the strangeness hit again and he shivered in anticipation.

“If we were somewhere with a bath, I’d put my mouth on you right…here,” he murmured, pressing his fingertips against Geralt’s hole.

Geralt was almost glad there wasn’t a bath here – not that he wouldn’t physically enjoy the act, but it was too intimate, would have left him too vulnerable, to be spread open on Jaskier’s tongue with nothing to do but take it. But then maybe this whole thing made him too vulnerable: Jaskier sweetly slid oiled fingers inside him, and Geralt heard his own hoarse cry of pleasure with something like astonishment. Was I the one who made that sound? Is that really what my voice sounds like, unravelled and wanting?

It had been a long time since anyone had put their fingers inside him and now he remembered why. There was something unbearable about lying still and accepting it, knowing that there was nothing in it for Jaskier. It was all for him, for his pleasure, because he’d told him he had thought about it and now Jaskier was giving it to him, and giving it to him, and giving it to him, and Geralt was afraid that he wouldn’t stop unless he told him to. He’d keep going until Geralt came just from this, would watch him fall apart, and the thought of it made him go hot all over and grind his cock into the bed.

“Like that?”

“Yeah,” said his treacherous voice, shamelessly pushing back for more.

Jaskier gave him more, and still more, gave him everything and all he’d ever had to do was accept it.

“That’s enough,” he panted. “Jaskier - ”

Jaskier was kind to him, Jaskier was always kind to him and he didn’t make him say it. His fingers withdrew and then the blunt tip of his cock was pressing against Geralt’s hole. Not pushing in, just resting there, holding him slightly open in a tantalising promise.

“Like this?” he asked, so that all Geralt had to do was say, “Yes.”  

Jaskier’s cock felt huge inside him, like he couldn’t catch his breath, so he gave up trying. He just gasped into his slow thrusts, got his knees under him so he had some leverage as they found their rhythm.

“Oh that’s good,” Jaskier breathed. “Geralt, that’s so good, you feel…”

How did he feel? He wished Jaskier could tell him. Pain was something he knew, could deal with, and often Jaskier was there to help him through it, pin bandages and bring him food and offer inconsequential chatter to anchor him until he came down from his potions. But he didn’t know what to do with pleasure like this. He could only give in to it, drop his head and watch Jaskier’s strong right hand wrap around his cock, stroke him in time with the movement of his hips, and trust that Jaskier would take pity on him and help him through this, too.

He heard himself crying out when he came, hoarse and desperate, holding nothing back, and Jaskier said, “Yes, yes, yeah go on, oh - ”

“Come inside me,” he choked out, and holding him tight, so tight, Jaskier did.

Geralt didn’t move right away when Jaskier finally pulled out.

He lay exactly as he had been while Jaskier fucked him, just let his hips drop and lay in a sprawl across the bed, face down and legs open. Jaskier had only just finished fucking him and looking at him like that, he already wanted to do it again.

He flopped down on his side beside Geralt, one hand on the scarred expanse of his back. He wasn’t ready to stop touching but he didn’t know how to read Geralt’s stillness, his silence. His face was hidden in the pillows, so Jaskier rubbed meaningless shapes over his skin with his palm and fingertips, soothing him like he would a horse. Until Geralt gave a sigh of pure animal contentment and pushed up to face him. Jaskier got the briefest glimpse of his soft, open expression before Geralt reached for him, wrapping his arms tight around him and burying his face in Jaskier’s neck.

If it had been anybody else Jaskier would have said he was clinging – he was clinging, but it seemed such an un-Geralt like thing to do he hardly knew what to call it. Nothing out loud, at any rate. He returned the embrace, holding him close, continuing to rub up and down his back. He felt close to overwhelmed himself, unmoored and shaken with pleasure, with the joy of his body with Geralt’s.

“Geralt? Are you alright?” he asked after a while, making his voice as gentle as he could.

He craned his neck to kiss the top of Geralt’s head, the only place he could reach. Geralt just grunted and didn’t look up or loosen his grip.

“Oh I see what’s happened here: you’ve fallen in love with me. Don’t be embarrassed, it happens to a lot of people – I’m very lovable, and as you’ve just experienced, I’m amazing in bed - ”

He liked the sound of Geralt’s incredulous snort a lot better than his silence.    

“Well don’t worry, I won’t hold it against you,” he continued, fingertips tracing the length of Geralt’s spine, up and down. Up and down. “I won’t tell if you don’t - I can pretend not to have noticed. We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

“Finally, something you won’t talk about,” Geralt muttered.

His voice was lazy, sated, but he yelped when Jaskier pinched his arse.

“It’s terrible sex etiquette to insult someone when you’ve just made love to them, you know,” he complained, slipping two fingers into his hole where he was still wet and fucked open.

Geralt made a soft, surprised sound and pulled his top leg forward to give him better access. Inside he was hot and slick, taking Jaskier’s fingers so easily that he slid them deep, all the way to the knuckle and felt him shiver. I came inside you, he thought. That’s my come trickling out of you. You came with my cock inside you, calling my name.

“…but I’m going to forgive you, because that was amazing.”

“Hmm. Wasn’t bad.”

If Geralt was teasing him, then he must be ok.

“Wasn’t bad? Wasn’t bad?” he echoed, sending his voice up an octave in performative outrage. “Letting you tap this is like throwing pearls before swine! I’m wasted on you…”

He pushed himself up to jab Geralt in the ribs, one side then the other, not hard enough to hurt and just hard enough to tickle. He’d touched Geralt enough in the past to realise that whatever he might say about it, he absolutely was ticklish, and Jaskier wasn’t too proud to use that insider information against him now.

Geralt finally moved then, grabbing him and pinning his hands down.

“If you wanted me to stop, you only had to ask!”

“I am asking.”

“This isn’t asking me, Geralt. This is making me. It’s different.”

Geralt frowned at him, shook his head. “Explain it to me again,” he said, and leaned in for a kiss.

Jaskier let him have it, and when he would have pulled away gave him a slow, earnest kiss of his own in return, looping his arms around his neck to hold him there.

Geralt let himself be held, until he tensed and cocked his head, listening.

“That sounds like more than three women out there,” he said.

It sounded like a whole abbey worth of women, to Jaskier’s ear. He’d been tuning it out, too focused on Geralt on top of him to spare a thought to anything outside the bed. But now that he’d consciously acknowledged it, he couldn’t ignore it.

“Should we get dressed and go out there? I’m a little worried that that door doesn’t lock, and I’d rather not meet them quite like this.”

He also meant, I’d rather they not meet you quite like this, because you’re pleasure-soft and irresistible and I’m going to need a day or two before I can bear to share you again. But he didn’t say that.

“Hm,” grunted Geralt, rolling off him and up out of bed.

Jaskier took a second to drink in the sight of him, naked and open, before he began to disappear under his protective layers of Witcher black again. Then he sat up and started pulling his own clothes back on.

They were met by a rousing cheer when they stepped through the doors into the antechamber. Jaskier was used to working a crowd and he immediately plastered on his public smile, but he didn’t miss Geralt’s minute flinch. Normally when a room full of people roared at a Witcher it was a prelude to throwing stones, so it was a remarkably restrained reaction all things considering.

Thirty or so priestesses, one or two still with cobwebs in their hair, were gathered around a woman he assumed must be the Lady Etake.

He’d imagined an insipid natural blonde, but she turned out to have flashing black eyes and if her hair was almost white it was thanks to a very sophisticated tincture rather than nature or age. She probably wasn’t much older than Jaskier himself, and her image was every bit as curated as his.

“My two saviours. Our saviours,” she said, smiling and holding out one hand to each of them.

Jaskier took her hand reflexively and kissed it before he noticed that Geralt hadn’t. He was perfectly capable of being polite when he wanted to be, so for some reason he didn’t want to.

“My lady,” he said, glancing at Geralt again, just to check. “We are proud to have been able to help you.”

Lady Etake looked them both up and down in one of the most blatant once-overs Jaskier had ever received, and he found himself turning to Geralt again, just to check he was seeing this.

“I owe you everything. Please, stay a while. Let me thank you properly. Both of you.”

Geralt stiffened as she stroked his arm, and his eyebrows shot up.

“I’m – we’re both honoured to have been of service – the first time I’ve ever been of this kind of service to someone who wasn’t even in the room - ”

Geralt kicked him.

“ – but I’m afraid we really can’t stay. Can we, Geralt? If we want to be back in the village by nightfall, we need to get going now. Don’t we?”

Turning down offers of sex wasn’t something he did very often, and he had a second of breathless panic that Geralt knew that and would read too much into it. It wasn’t that he had any moral objections to rolling out of bed with one person and into bed with another, but this kind of turnaround time would have challenged even a Witcher’s stamina. There was something a bit tacky about entering into a new liaison still smelling like the last person, surely.

But Geralt just turned that golden stare on him and then away without saying anything, letting Jaskier’s polite refusal speak for both of them.

He didn’t say much as he hacked their way through the forest of thorns surrounding the abbey, either. With the curse lifted they were just trees and ordinary brambles that Jaskier could have hacked his own way through, but Geralt was the one with the two swords and superior strength so Jaskier let him lead the way, providing stream of consciousness chatter like he always did. It was an excellent performance of nothing-has-changed-between-us nonchalance, if he did say so himself.

And nothing had changed, obviously. So that was fine.

It was growing dark by the time they got back to the village. The sort of gathering twilight that Geralt loomed out of and looked extra menacing, so Jaskier made sure to keep talking just in case anybody got alarmed. Geralt’s silence intensified, but that was still within normal parameters for him. More or less.

The innkeeper seemed pleased enough to see him back, and he had sung his whole White Wolf song cycle at the request of the three priestesses in disguise just a couple of days ago so nobody made any pointed remarks about Witchers either.

“Had yourselves quite the adventure at the abbey, did you?” he asked jovially.

The question was so innocent and so loaded that Jaskier couldn’t risk even a glance at Geralt.

“Oh, yes! Quite an adventure. We’re both exhausted now – I don’t suppose there’s any accommodations left in the village where we could sleep tonight?”

“Adamiec still has the luggage you left behind and nobody’s taken your room, that I’ve heard. Why not try there?”

Adamiec also seemed happy to see Jaskier alive and in once piece, and if the old man eyed Geralt’s unspeaking glower with some trepidation then at least he was polite enough not to make any objection to his sharing Jaskier’s room. He just gave Jaskier the key back and let him make his own way down the long corridor to the room he had already paid for.

Geralt followed him, silent but for his footsteps echoing on the stone floor, making the back of his neck prickle.

Jaskier was starting to realise that he’d made a horrible mistake, letting Geralt talk him into bed. Geralt was often silent and he’d never thought anything of it, but now he was leaping to a different, terrible conclusion every other minute. Geralt regretted it, Geralt was about to head back out and sleep in the forest rather than share a room with him, Geralt thought he really had fallen in love with him and would never let him live it down, Geralt was annoyed at his constant conversation, Geralt had let his own guard down and was going to be cruel to him to make himself feel better, Geralt was going to give him a gentle brushoff for his own good -

The one conclusion that he didn’t reach was the right one.

“Here we are, then. I present to you, rooms fit for a – alright, not a king. Fit for a down-on-his-luck duke? For a -”  

He broke off in surprise as Geralt’s arms came round him, shortly followed by a great deal of Geralt’s weight, so that all he could do was try to control their fall to the bed conveniently right behind him.

“Geralt, what - ”

“I’m melting into your arms in gratitude,” he said dryly, blinking down at Jaskier and only crushing him slightly. “Couldn’t you tell?”

“Ohhhh, I see! I’m afraid that only having experienced it in fantasy I failed to recognise it at first, but now you point it out I can see that’s absolutely what you’re doing. Good. Right. And as you can see I didn’t drop you, so that’s that question cleared up.”

“Hm. You didn’t tell me what came afterwards, though.”

“Ah, no, I didn’t, did I?”

“Are you going to?”

“I don’t know, are you asking me?”

“Obviously I’m asking you.”

Jaskier smoothed a strand of Geralt’s hair out of his face and tucked it behind his ear, and breathed around the treacherous pounding of his own heart.

“Well…” he said, pretending to think hard. “First of all I’d start by kissing you. The sort of kiss that would really sweep you off your feet.”

Geralt raised one eyebrow, and then suddenly understanding, rolled them over so that Jaskier was on top of him.

The last conscious thought Jaskier had had in this village, right before the three priestesses drugged him and carried him away through a forest of thorns, had been this is too good to be true, and he’d been right. He was thinking something pretty similar as Geralt sighed into the deepest, most feet-sweeping kiss Jaskier had ever given anybody in his life, and he’d given a lot of kisses in his time.

But they had just broken a curse with the power of their love, or their sexual prowess, or some magical bollocks like that; Geralt was still speaking to him, and apparently they were friends after all. Friends who also had sex now. None of which sounded remotely plausible either.

So maybe it was just good enough to be true after all.