Archive of Our Own ^beta

It’s the second of the year, and Jaskier’s still hungover from a raging New Year’s party two days ago when Yennefer tells him, “I need you to bring in Valdo Marx.”

Any city other than Miami would have the breeding and good sense to be thirty degrees in January, but Miami’s a disrespectful shithole so it’s about ninety outside and a hundred in here. The window-mounted AC unit’s been broken for as long as Jaskier’s worked for Yen, and the fan on the ceiling with the blades that look like palm fronds only makes it feel like a big dog is panting on the back of his neck; he opens a few more buttons on his shirt and debates the merits of rolling his linen pants up over his knees as he says, “You’re kidding. What’d he do?”

“Got pulled over with an illegal concealed carry,” Yen says, disinterested. “The bond’s small change, but that’s what you’re good at, right? Catching minnows.”

“I’m choosing not to take offense at that,” Jaskier tells her.

Yen gives him a look that says she wouldn’t care if he did.

“Right.” Jaskier shuffles in his seat, looking for cool air a quarter inch to the left. He doesn’t find it. “Look, I can’t actually bring in Marx. Sorry.”

“Well, I didn’t think you could either, but you’re the one who’s always trying to convince me you’re a real bounty hunter.”

“Hey,” Jaskier says, taking offense this time. “I could bring him in if I wanted! But he’s got connections, Yen. He’s in with every nightclub owner in town. I’ll never book an open mic again.”

“Tough shit,” Yen says, sipping hot coffee in her light cardigan like the underworld fire demon that she is. “You can either do the singing thing, or you can work for me. You can’t have both. Now scram.”

Down in the building lobby, where the AC in one of the back offices actually works and he can almost feel the crossbreeze, Jaskier puts his Ray Bans on and lights a cigarette, regarding himself unhappily in the reflection of the glass over a mass-produced print of some girls in bikinis.

He has to admit, this isn’t where he expected to be at twenty-four. He looks fabulous, of course, windswept hair, salmon shirt, white slacks, braided espadrilles — that’s got nothing to do with it. But he’s got no prospects, romantic or otherwise, he hasn’t had time to sit down and write a song in months, and to top that all off he’s fairly certain he forgot his gun on the bedside table when he left the apartment this morning. If Marx is still carrying that concealed weapon when he catches up with him, Jaskier might have to get creative with the spare guitar he keeps in the trunk.

The Ballade he’s driving right now isn’t exactly his pride and joy, but since his Nissan got t-boned he’s had to do the best he can with thousand-dollar lemons from the used car lot down the street from his place. The poor old bastard coughs and jolts all the way out to Miami Beach, but at least it waits to die until he’s in the parking lot of Marx’s club.

Vice, it’s called. Jaskier’s always sort of wondered why Marx would want to advertise that sort of thing to the good men and women of the MDPD, but then again Marx is the sort of guy who’s built his entire reputation on shock value — the big hats, the beard that looks like he modeled it off a Guy Fawkes mask, his occasional penchant for pulling his dick out and turning his DJ sets into on-stage pornos. He’s the sort of guy who’s all bark and no bite — Jaskier’s met enough people in his line of work who are bark and bite, he should know — so it’s tough to imagine he was doing anything with a concealed weapon except trying to impress his buddies.

Still, Jaskier keeps his guard up as he pushes through the doors. It’s just gone noon, so the place is empty except for a few staff, including a bartender that Jaskier vaguely remembers having had an encounter with in the men’s restroom, during his wilder teenage years.

“He’s not in,” the guy says, when Jaskier asks about Marx. There’s neither a hint of recognition nor of interest in his voice, which deflates Jaskier’s opinion of his salmon shirt in a mean and terrible way. “What’s this about?”

“Missed his court date,” Jaskier says — the usual bullshit. “I’m just looking to make sure he doesn’t forget to reschedule.”

The bartender looks skeptical for a minute, either decides he doesn’t care or accepts the bullshit as truth. “Try the sex shop over on Meridian. It’s his new venture.”

Jaskier thanks him, and after another futile minute where he tries to encourage the man with subtle hints and lip bites to remember the spectacular drunk blowjob Jaskier gave him when he was eighteen, gives up and leaves. His confidence is badly shaken. Is he not as good at blowjobs as he thought he was? Is his memory failing him? Does the bartender have an identical twin, also an employee at Vice? That must be it, he decides, as he tries to coax the Ballade to start. An identical twin. It must be.

Eventually the Ballade decides to cooperate, and even though it stalls on Meridian Jaskier manages to coast it down into the lower level of a garage. “If you want it in a proper space, you’ll have to push it,” he tells the garage attendant on his way past, but the man hardly looks up from Juggs.

Jaskier doesn’t find Marx in the sex shop (Vice XXX, because Marx is the epitome of creativity), but he does find rather a nice vibrating cock ring that he slips in his pocket for later. He hasn’t gotten laid in months, now — he figures he might as well start investing a little more in his personal private time.

On a whim, he stops to talk to the garage attendant on his way back to the Ballade. “Where’d you get that magazine?”

The kid blinks up from Juggs like a man in a stupor. “You’re not one of those Jesus freaks from the place down the street, are you?”

“Not in the slightest,” Jaskier assures him.

“I got it at Vice Triple-X,” the kid says after a minute. “Right around the corner.”

“Sure, sure,” says Jaskier, like he hasn’t just been in there perusing the cockrings. “I know the owner. Valdo Marx. Drives the most obnoxious car you’ve ever seen.”

“Oh yeah, that bright red Consulier,” the kid says, nodding. “He parks it in here all the time. Sounds like someone’s flying a B52 up the ramp. Hate that damn thing.”

“Has he been in today?” Jaskier asks, casually.

The kid shakes his head. “Not today. Sometimes he comes in at night, brings some ladies around to get a sneak peek at his product — if you know what I mean. Could try back later.”

“Thanks a mill,” Jaskier says, tapping the glass with his knuckle in goodbye. “Enjoy your jugs.”

The Ballade’s not interested in negotiating this time around, so Jaskier hoofs it down to the payphone on the corner and calls Shani. It’s not technically in Shani’s job description to drive Yen’s fugitive apprehension agents around, but she hates the desk gig and when she gets really deep in filing — like she is today — she’ll take any excuse to get out of the office. It doesn’t hurt that Jaskier wants her to come stake out a sex shop, either. Shani lives for this shit.

Granted, the bright yellow Firebird she drives isn’t exactly the most inconspicuous vehicle in Miami, but then again — it’s Miami. There are more conspicuous vehicles on the road than inconspicuous.

“Is that a cock ring in your pocket?” she asks, as soon as he slips into the passenger seat.

Jaskier boggles. “You can tell that? Through my pants?” He’s just been in a McDonald’s grabbing them coffees and fries — if the middle-aged woman behind the register knew he had a cockring in his pocket the whole time, he might go and die of mortification.

“Don’t worry,” Shani says. “I’ve seen a lot of sex toys in my life. I’m an expert. I’m sure no one else noticed. Since we’re on the topic, though — why have you got a cock ring in your pocket? Got a hot date later?”

“No,” Jaskier grumbles. “No hot dates in my future.”

“Really?” Shani prods, hungry for gossip and slightly bitchy in that way she gets when she thinks she’s being friendly. “Not even with that gorgeous homicide detective? What was his name — the one with the silver hair?”

“Geralt,” Jaskier grumbles, even more grumbly than before. “And no. He’s not interested.”

Shani makes a disbelieving noise. “How do you know? Did you ask him?”

“No,” Jaskier admits, settling in with his coffee. It’s still too hot for coffee, but his eyelids are drooping and sometimes you have to make sacrifices for your craft. In this case — sweating like a pig so he can stay awake long enough to catch Marx.

“Well,” Shani says haughtily, “you don’t really know then, do you? Maybe he’s carrying a secret torch.”

“I met his boyfriend,” Jaskier says. “That was a good clue.”

“Maybe they’re both interested,” Shani suggests, taking a handful of fries. “That’s in style right now, you know. Seems like too many cocks in one place, in my opinion, but — ” she shrugs. “I guess some people like it.”

“I don’t think Geralt’s the type,” Jaskier says, trying not to sound too miserable about it.

“You never know,” Shani comments mysteriously, and they lapse into companionable silence.

Jaskier does know, though. He knows Geralt pretty well by now, after all the times they’ve crossed paths, and therein lies the problem. He knows that Geralt is steadfast, and loyal, and he might be a bit of a shit sometimes but overall he’s a good guy — the rare sort of cop who believes in truth, justice, and punching the bad guys in the face. This has all been learned through osmosis and observation, of course, since Geralt can rarely be bothered to string more than two words together, but that’s beside the point. Geralt isn’t the sort of person who’d ever go for a guy like Jaskier, a fuckup bounty hunter with twenty bucks in his bank account, a tramp stamp of a dolphin, and a bad habit of getting fantastically, spinningly drunk during open mic sets. Geralt has higher standards than that.

Not that Jaskier doesn’t look great. He always looks great. (Or does he? whispers the part of his mind that’s still stuck on that bartender.) It’s just the rest of it that Geralt wouldn’t go for.

And besides — Geralt’s going steady. He’s got a big, scowly man at home with a wicked scar on his face, who looks like he wrestles sharks in his spare time. Jaskier couldn’t measure up to that if he tried. To Geralt, he’s nothing more than a pain in the ass, and that’s all he’s ever going to be.

Shani dozes off as the sun goes down, snoozing lightly in the driver’s seat. Jaskier gets out twice to put more quarters in the meter, and she doesn’t even stir at the sound of the door; he’s seen her asleep at her desk before, when not even Yen’s screeching seems to wake her. It’s impressive.

He can’t exactly join her, though; that would defeat the point of a stakeout. He steals her coffee to stay awake, polishes off the last of the cold, soggy fries, and keeps his attention on the sex shop across the street.

Near midnight, he’s turned to nicotine and a packet of Tic Tacs he found in Shani’s glovebox for energy. They’re the orange kind, and the taste is terrible in his mouth, but he figures beggars can’t be choosers, and seeing as he’s been up now since December 31st, he definitely qualifies.

There’s been no movement for hours — nothing more than the regular Miami Beach movement, anyways, women in bikinis and Daisy Dukes hanging off the arms of wannabe Tony Montanas, kids on skateboards and overdressed socialites spilling out of restaurants. Vice XXX has been closed since eight p.m., all the lights off except for the garish neon sign over the door, ADULT TOYS & VIDEOS, and Jaskier’s starting to get antsy sitting still. He could go back to Vice, see if Marx has showed up for the night, try to get a look at the apartment he knows Marx keeps upstairs, but something tells him not even Marx is dumb enough to go back to his own home address after skipping bail.

Instead, he decides to engage in Miami’s favorite pastime: breaking and entering.

This is the part of being a fugitive apprehension agent that Jaskier’s always been good at. He can’t take down a grown man unless he catches him by surprise with a can of pepper spray, but he can jimmy a lock with the best of them.

He leaves Shani snoozing in the Firebird and skips across the street, sunglasses on so he blends in. There’s no one around, now, most of the beachgoers dispersed, so no one sees as Jaskier picks the lock on the front door and slips inside. It’s too dark in the shop to keep his glasses on, so he pushes them up on his head to have a snoop. He’s not sure what he’s looking for, exactly — mail addressed to an alias, utility bills for another property, photos taped above the counter of Marx cozied up with his latest boy toy — but whatever it is, he doesn’t have a chance to find it, because a minute after he gets inside, he hears someone else trying to pick the lock behind him.

His heart lurches in his chest, and riding a sudden rush of adrenaline he slips into the employee bathroom and closes the door. The floor is very sticky under his feet, but he tries not to think about it — not hard, considering that whoever it is has got the door open and is now shuffling around inside the store.

A flashlight shines under the door, dust dancing in the blue beam. Jaskier wishes he hadn’t left his gun at home, and that he’d had the foresight to grab the guitar out of his trunk, for protection, and also that there were a payphone in here so he could call Lambert for backup.

He wishes the intruder — the other intruder — wasn’t coming over here, but wishing doesn’t seem to be getting him very far this evening, because that’s exactly what’s happening.

Jaskier looks around for something to defend himself with — Playboy centerfolds taped to the wall, bottle of hand lotion on the tank of the toilet, big decorative soap dispenser on the sink — picks up the soap dispenser, and readies himself for battle.

A second later, the door opens.

Before he can even gasp, something hits Jaskier hard in the chest.

His back slams into the wall, his head snaps back, and he’s unconscious before he reaches the floor.

When he comes to, minutes or hours later, his head is killing him.

He’s been knocked out before in the line of bounty hunting duty, and it’s never as pleasant as they make it seem in movies. It takes some time to get your wits back about you, after you’ve been knocked out, and even more time to stop feeling like you’re about to puke. Which is why Jaskier doesn’t feel all that bad when the first thing he does, after noticing the dead body he’s laying next to, is lunge for the toilet. Tic tacs, McDonald’s coffee, and cold fries come up in an acidic slop, and afterwards Jaskier clings to the cold toilet bowl, feeling somehow worse.

A minute passes. Jaskier chances a peek at the dead body. It’s still dead.

“Oh God,” he says, and pukes some more.

Once his stomach is empty, he levers himself up and makes his way on wobbly legs out of the bathroom. His head feels like he’s in a tilt-a-whirl, which is probably why he doesn’t think to check if whoever shot Intruder Number 2 is still here until he’s already out in the open, rummaging around behind the counter for a phone.

The guy must be long gone, though, because Jaskier’s still alive when the police get there.

He’s not overly responsive, sitting on the sidewalk with Shani’s arm around him and an unidentified criminal’s brain matter splattered all over his salmon shirt, trying to forget the sight of those dead eyes staring at him across the bathroom floor, but he is alive. At some point Shani murmurs something to him that he doesn’t really hear and dashes off — she’s got a thing about being around cops, as an ex-hooker he can’t really blame her, he’s surprised she stuck it out this long, but he doesn’t like being alone.

As it turns out he’s only alone for a few more miserable minutes. Then he becomes aware of someone crouched in front of him, saying his name over and over in a familiar monotone.

He blinks. “Geralt,” he says.

“Yes,” Geralt agrees. “Come on, I need to take your statement.”

Jaskier tries not to feel too safe and secure as Geralt bundles him into the passenger seat of his Bronco, but he’s in a weak mental state and he is, after all, only human. So he snuggles up a bit as Geralt goes through the usual questions — What were you doing in the shop, how did you get in, are you aware that’s unlawful entry, that sort of thing — thinking about how the car smells like Geralt and how he’d rather like to smell like that, too.

He answers on autopilot (You don’t know who the dead man is? No. You’re sure you’ve never seen him before? No — I mean, yes, I’m sure.) while his active brain focuses on little fragments of Geralt in front of him. The way his odd golden eyes catch the light from the streetlamps. How his hair’s a little sweaty around the temples and sticking to his forehead. The peeling sunburn over his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, just a hint of it peeking around the side of his neck, and Jaskier wonders very hard, with an intensity that he hasn’t used to wonder about anything since he was wondering about what was under girls’ skirts in high school, whether that sunburn goes down to his chest. Wraps around the back of his shoulder, maybe, so that his skin would still be midday-hot if Jaskier skimmed his lips down his back, if it would taste like salt and sand if he mouthed over the strong, muscular bend of his spine…

“I think your ride left,” Geralt says, snapping Jaskier out of it.

Jaskier doesn’t have to look to know the Firebird is gone. “Shani doesn’t like cops,” he says. “My car’s parked in the garage around the corner.”

It won’t start, but he neglects to mention that — he doesn’t need Geralt thinking he’s any more pathetic than he already is.

Geralt doesn’t tell him he can go, though. He just hums like Jaskier’s car being parked nearby is an irrelevant piece of data, and goes around the Bronco to get into the driver’s seat. “You still in Sun Tower?” he asks.

Jaskier nods.

Diana Ross sings breathily about how she’s been missing them as Geralt drives back over the bridge from Miami Beach, and Jaskier sings along under his breath, looking out at the pitch black water. Warm tropical breeze tugs at his hair; Geralt makes no comment about his singing, which is as good a sign as any that Jaskier must look pretty bad. Probably the blood and brain matter.

The Sun Tower Apartment Complex isn’t much to look at from the curb, but it’s got a big orange sign with a sun on it out front, and Geralt parks in front of that. Jaskier looks across the sidewalk into the empty lobby, feeling suddenly unsteady at the idea of going alone up to his apartment, and he’s about to do something stupid like ask Geralt to come up when his grumbly chauffeur grumbles, “Don’t leave town.”

Ah. So he’s a suspect — no matter that he was unconscious when the murder was committed. Jaskier wrestles down a swell of hurt and affects a jaunty little hop as he gets out of the car.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he assures Geralt. “Now, if you would excuse me, I’ve got a date with my shower.”

Geralt snorts in a way that means he thinks Jaskier really does need a shower, then peels away.

“Right,” Jaskier says, and takes himself upstairs.

He’s aware that his apartment is not exactly the abode of a mysterious and alluring bachelor — Phil Collins and Kate Bush on the wall, garish blue couch that he picked up off the curb out in Coral Gables, fake plants by the window — but it is his, and like all things that are his (except, maybe, that fucking Ballade) Jaskier loves it. Granted, he could do without the drip in the bathroom sink and the neighbors who most nights sound like they’re trying to break down the adjoining wall with their headboard, but nothing worth loving is ever perfect.

Jaskier takes a scalding hot shower, scrubbing until the water stops running red and his skin is bright pink, then stuffs his clothes down the trash chute.

He sleeps like the dead; in the morning, there are three messages on his answering machine.

The first is from Yen, asking him to come into the office first thing. The second is from Geralt, reminding him not to leave town. The third is from Shani, telling him he left his new cockring in her car and offering him a ride to work as long as he’s out on the street at eight a.m. sharp.

Jaskier checks the clock. It’s seven fifty-five.

Five minutes later, after ripping through his apartment like a whirlwind, Jaskier is down on the sidewalk looking quite dashing in a pastel linen suit and a v-neck t-shirt, Ray Bans on and his loaded Bren 10 in a concealed shoulder holster. Not that he thinks he’s in any specific danger, but when bodies start dropping around a ticket he likes to be prepared, and bodies have started dropping around Valdo Marx.

Shani throws his wayward cock ring at him as soon as he slides in the car, and he has to catch it before it can go out the open window. “You’re welcome,” she says.

“Thanks.” Jaskier tucks it back in his pocket as she speeds into traffic, Madonna screaming on the radio and wind tearing through the car. “Any idea what Yen wants to talk to me about?”

“I bet you didn’t need that last night,” Shani says, ignoring him. “Not after Detective Sexy drove you home. No marital aids necessary, I bet.”

Jaskier had less of a sexy self-love event and more of a come-to-Jesus moment in the shower last night, but Shani doesn’t need to know that.

“What does Yen want to talk to me about?!” he asks again, shouting over the wind.

“No idea!” Shani shouts back.

What Yen wants to talk to him about is, apparently, Valdo Marx. “Why the hell haven’t you brought him in yet?” she demands, as soon as he’s over the threshold. It’s humid today and her crimped hair is looking extra menacing. “I just heard they found a dead guy in his sex shop last night — if the cops get to Marx before we do, I don’t get any of my bond back. That’s ten thousand dollars, Jaskier.”

“It’s been one day!” Jaskier exclaims, indignant. “I’m not a miracle worker!”

“Don’t I fucking know it,” Yen snaps. She throws a file at him. “Here, pick this guy up while you’re at it. Should be easy enough — his girlfriend tipped us that he’s staying with her. The address is in there. Don’t fuck up again or I swear to God I’m giving Lambert your whole docket.”

“What about Marx?” Jaskier calls after her, as she stomps back to her office.

“Find him too!” Yen calls back. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re behind schedule!”

“Lovely,” Jaskier mutters, and opens the file.

An hour later he’s pounding on the door of an apartment that belongs to a man named Boholt who’s skipped on a $3,000 dollar bond, yelling, “Pizza delivery!”

It’s not the most subtle tactic, to be sure, but most people are amenable to open the door to a lost pizza deliveryman more than a fugitive apprehension agent — fugitives especially.

This one’s taking his goddamned time about it, though, so Jaskier yells, “Boholt! I know you’re fucking in there, I’ve got a fucking pizza for you!”

If that doesn’t work, he thinks, nothing will.

A moment later, he hears the distinctive sound of a shotgun pump inside the apartment, and dives out of the way a second before a round of buckshot tears the door to shreds.

Jaskier doesn’t wait around to see if Boholt’s willing to listen to his spiel about rescheduling his court date; instead, he hauls ass down onto the street and doesn’t stop moving until he’s put a good few blocks between them. It’s not very bounty hunterly of him, he knows, but Jaskier’s only been shot at a few times and he’s only ever managed to shoot back once, an experience which he truly, deeply does not wish to repeat.

He finds a beachside bar to shore himself up in, has a nutritious lunch of margaritas and shrimp, then uses the payphone in the back to call Lambert.

“Good morning, gorgeous,” he says, when Lambert picks up.

“Jaskier,” Lambert says. “What can I do for you?”

Jaskier leans against the wall next to the bathroom, the phone cradled between his ear and his shoulder. “I’m guessing since you’re still home you haven’t got anything on the docket.”

“Not today. I was going to have a lazy morning.”

“Sorry to interrupt, but I need some backup on a stakeout. Well, technically I suppose I don’t need backup, but the last time I staked this place out I ended up knocked out in a bathroom with a dead body, so I feel like some extra muscle might not be unwarranted.”

Lambert makes an agreeing noise. “I’ll be there. What’s the address?”

Jaskier rattles off the address of Vice XXX, then goes to see about a cab. He knows he’s going to have to go back for the Ballade eventually, or call a mechanic to come tow it, but right now the idea of having to find money for that sort of repair is more than he can deal with. Logically, he knows all these cab fares are going to add up to about the same, but for some reason shelling out five bucks at a time in small increments feels a lot better than writing a check for $200.

Lambert’s black Camaro is parked across the street from Marx’s shop when he gets there, and Jaskier tries to look inconspicuous as he slides into the passenger seat.

“Morning, buttercup,” Lambert greets, handing him a coffee.

Or at least, Jaskier thinks it’s a coffee, until he takes a sip and discovers it’s one of those awful health smoothies Lambert is always trying to foist on him. Still, he can hardly complain when the man has dragged himself across town on a day off just to make Jaskier feel better — and brought him food, to boot. Inedible, liquid food, but still.

“Thanks,” he tells Lambert, with a smile he hopes looks genuine.

“Oh, don’t pretend you don’t hate it,” Lambert says, and before Jaskier can protest, “Give it here, I’ll drink it.”

Jaskier does, and Lambert continues, “Now. Tell me why we’re staking out a sex shop covered in crime scene tape.”

He drinks his smoothie as Jaskier relates the entire sordid tale, short as it is, peering out across the sunbaked asphalt over mirrored aviators. Lambert’s exactly what you picture when you hear the words bounty hunter — leather jacket, stud in one ear, long red hair pulled back in a greased ponytail. There’s probably a grenade launcher in the trunk; that’s the sort of firepower Lambert tends to travel with. To him, Jaskier is small potatoes, a minnow, but he’s always been very considerate about taking Jaskier under his wing, showing him the ropes, even if he makes cracks about Jaskier’s previous career at the lingerie counter at Burdine’s while he does it.

Jaskier trusts Lambert, and feels safe with him, and also sort of wants to lick his neck, even though Lambert’s never shown any interest. He’s aware that this is becoming a running theme.

After a while Jaskier gets tired of sitting in the car, and in lieu of any closed storefronts to break into he decides to make the rounds again. The garage attendant has got a new copy of Juggs — complaining vociferously that he had to go to a news stand all the way on 16th and Lincoln to get it — but still hasn’t seen or heard Marx’s Consulier. In Vice XXX, he does his best to sweet talk a man called Det. Coen into giving him the latest on the dead guy, but word must have gotten around that Jaskier’s a murder suspect — that, or his sweet-talking skills have failed him along with his blowjob skills — because Coen wastes very little time in kicking him out.

The cops have made a mess of the place, so Jaskier has very little trouble pilfering a pack of condoms and a tube of lube on the way out; he doesn’t have any particular plans for them, but he figures it’s always best to be prepared.

On the way back to the Camaro, he gets the bright idea to try and compile a list of Marx’s girlfriends, so he can knock on their doors and see if he hears awful, off-key singing coming from their showers.

Lambert swings around to Vice and Jaskier trots in to talk to the employees. The same bartender he talked to yesterday is still here, and still doesn’t recognize him, and still doesn’t have any idea where Marx might be.

Jaskier manages to wheedle his way into talking to the manager, a woman called Priscilla who’s far too good to be working for a slimeball like Marx and who Jaskier has heard on more than one occasion slay a cover of “Purple Rain.” Priscilla’s most pressing worry seems to be who gets control of the bar if Marx goes to prison; Jaskier assures her it certainly won’t be the government, even though he has no idea, and that mollifies her enough to give him a couple of names.

“Oh, Jaskier!” she calls, when he’s on his way out, shoving his notebook back in his pocket. “I’ve just had someone cancel for one a.m. We’ve got an open slot on the mic tonight, if you want it.”

“Yes,” he says. “Absolutely, I’ll take it.”

Art, after all, must always trump the gruntwork of capitalist existence.

“No original stuff, alright,” Priscilla adds. “That’s not what people want when they’re smashed and trying to get lucky. It’s bad for business.”

“Copy that,” Jaskier says, though his heart sinks. Oh well, he supposes. Can’t win ’em all.

Twelve hours later, after an unsuccessful tour of Marx’s ex-girlfriends — none of whom are happy to have been woken before four but all of whom seem very amenable to the idea of Marx in prison — and a stop in at city hall to see if Marx has been paying utilities on any properties Jaskier doesn’t know about, Lambert swings back into the Vice parking lot and lets Jaskier out into a sea of scantily-clad glitter-smeared coeds.

Lambert leans over the center console as Jaskier slams the door. “You sure you don’t need a ride back?” he asks, raising his voice over the pounding music. “It’s no trouble.”

“Thanks!” Jaskier shouts back. “But it’s been a bit of a dry spell lately! I’m hoping I can find someone to take me home!”

He shoves away from the Camaro and turns back to the door, thinking that’s done with.

A moment later, a car door slams, and Lambert runs up behind him, snagging him by the arm. Jaskier looks up at his eyes. He’s not that much taller than Jaskier, really, but there’s something in how he holds himself that makes him feel taller, as if he could press Jaskier back against the wall and cover him entirely with his body. Jaskier tries to swallow his heart back into his chest, and fails.

“Buttercup,” Lambert says lowly, “you’ve already got someone to take you home.”

Jaskier might whimper a little before their lips actually connect. As far as he’s concerned, that’s neither here nor there.

Lambert bears him back against the wall, knocking a couple of loitering coeds out of the way to get there. Jaskier goes almost boneless in his arms, fists tight in the front of Lambert’s shirt, mouth so full of Lambert’s tongue that when he inhales sharply through his nose barely any air gets to his lungs. It’s 85 degrees and 99 percent humidity and somehow the feeling of Lambert’s body pressed against his is making Jaskier hotter than he’s been all day, hot enough that he feels like he might burst into flames, but he doesn’t even remotely care.

It’s amazing. Lambert is amazing. Jaskier wants to climb him like a tree, so he sort of does, wrapping one leg up over his hip and tugging so that the half-hard bulge in the front of Lambert’s jeans is nestled right up against Jaskier’s own cock, which is already hard enough to cut steel, Jesus, it really has been a dry spell. Lambert tears his lips away for just a second to comment, “Fuck,” then falls on Jaskier like a starving man.

There’s a hand down the back of Jaskier’s pants, and things are feeling like they’re about to get seriously inappropriate for so public a setting when a window opens above them.

“Jaskier!” Priscilla shouts down, shrill. “It’s two minutes to one, get your ass in here!”

Lambert growls and bites Jaskier’s chin when he tries to pull away. Jaskier stops him with firm hands on his chest. “I’m not any happier about this than you are,” he tells him, “but I’ve got to go sing very quick, and after that maybe we can find somewhere with slightly less of an audience.”

“Less of an audience sounds good,” Lambert agrees. “I like a private show.”

He grins. His hand palms Jaskier’s bare ass, one finger dangerously close to his crack.

“Hng,” Jaskier says, and pulls him back in for another filthy kiss.

“JASKIER!” Priscilla screeches.

“Right,” Jaskier says, forcing himself out of Lambert’s arms. “Right. I’ll see you in a bit.”

“I’ll be here,” Lambert assures him.

Inside, among the sweaty crush of beach-kissed bodies, Jaskier acquires two shots of tequila on his way to the stage. It’s looking to be a big night and he figures there’s no harm in loosening up a little in preparation, but it does mean that by the time he warbles through “Take on Me” and starts “Like a Virgin” things are looking a little fuzzy.

He closes his set by picking out the first notes of an original song on the piano and getting escorted summarily offstage by Priscilla, and is on his way out into the parking lot to pick up where he left off with Lambert when he’s hit with a spell of dizziness and has to duck out the side door for some air.

Unfortunately, this presents the perfect opportunity for some thugs in ski masks to jump him.

Thug 1 grabs him and shoves him against the wall while Thug 2 holds a gun in his face. This is, Jaskier thinks in some small corner of his mind, not his favorite wall-shoving experience he’s had tonight. He puts his hands up and tries to look like a man with an empty wallet.

“I haven’t got cash,” he tells the thugs. “I’m extremely, embarrassingly broke — ”

“Shut up!” snaps Thug 1, jostling him hard against the wall.

Jaskier shuts up.

“We heard you was looking for Valdo Marx,” Thug 2 says. His voice is lower and more dangerous; of the two, he’s the one who makes Jaskier afraid. “Why?”

It takes Jaskier’s brain a moment to compute the question. When it does, he says, “He skipped out on his bond. I just want to escort him to re-schedule his court date.”

“You fucking serious?” Thug 1 says.

“Shut it,” Thug 2 snaps at him, then turns back to Jaskier, jamming the gun barrel under his chin. “I don’t give a fuck what the real reason is, but you better stop looking for Marx, if you know what’s good for you. Or next time I find you, I’ll put a bullet between your eyes.”

“Got it,” Jaskier says quickly. “Stop looking for Marx, copy that.”

Thug 1 lets him go, slamming him against the wall one more time for good measure. Jaskier’s head snaps back against the brick, and he sees stars as he slides to the dirty ground. Thug 2 puts his gun away so he has more range of motion to kick Jaskier a couple times in the stomach.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” he reminds him. “We’re watching you.”

Jaskier curls forward around his smashed ribs and whimpers pathetically as the thugs disappear out of the alley. After a minute, he manages to get onto his hands and knees. After another minute, he makes it to standing, leaning against the wall for support. He’s had a very love/hate relationship with this wall tonight, but right now he thinks he loves it, because it keeps him upright as he staggers out toward the parking lot.

The Camaro is parked way off in the shadows, but Lambert must be watching through in rearview for Jaskier to appear, because he’s only made it halfway across the parking lot, stumbling and clutching his middle, before Lambert is out and running towards him.

“I’m fine,” he says, before Lambert can say anything. “I just got jumped in the alley, I’m alright — ”

“Jesus, Jaskier.” Lambert holds his head carefully, turning it so he can look at Jaskier’s eyes. When he pulls his hand away from the back of Jaskier’s hair there’s blood on his fingers. “I leave you alone for five fucking minutes…” but his voice is tight and concerned, not teasing. Not annoyed.

“I’m fine,” Jaskier says again, mustering a smile. It feels off, and judging by the look on Lambert’s face it looks off, too, but he feels better for having tried it.

Lambert puts an arm around him and steers him towards the Camaro. “Come on. Let’s get you home.”

Jaskier’s glad he doesn’t suggest a hospital, which Jaskier can’t afford, or the police station, where Geralt’s just as likely to arrest him under suspicion of something as help him file an incident report, but he isn’t much looking forward to the idea of an empty apartment. Empty, because he figures sex is probably off the table for tonight — nothing like a bleeding head wound to kill the mood — at least until he realizes that Lambert isn’t heading towards Sun Tower. He’s heading out of the city to the north, towards Miami Shores.

“Where are we going?” Jaskier asks, though he doesn’t really care. Lambert could take him anywhere, and he’d go.

Lambert only says, “Home,” again.

As far as Jaskier knows, Lambert’s registered home address is an empty lot in Hialeah — he and Shani got curious once a few years ago and tried to track him down with his DMV registration — but he supposes Lambert has to live somewhere, so he just gives a mental shrug and sinks lower in his seat.

It’s not until they’re coasting past the stately, silent houses with their immaculate lawns and three-car garages that Jaskier remembers Geralt lives in Miami Shores. And then Lambert pulls into the cobblestone driveway of a house that looks very, very familiar, and Jaskier thinks, Oh, shit.

“Lambert,” he says, as Lambert kills the engine and opens his door. “Are you colluding with Geralt?”

Lambert ducks back in the car to give him a quizzical look. “Colluding? With my brother?”

Brother.

“Fuck,” Jaskier says, and slams his head back against the headrest. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck — ”

“Lambert?” calls a familiar voice, from the warm light on the front porch. “I told you to stop bringing hook-ups back here.”

“Fuck off, Geralt,” Lambert snaps, rounding the car to open Jaskier’s door. “He’s hurt, come help me with him.”

“I don’t need help,” Jaskier protests as Lambert gets an arm around him and lifts him out of the car.

What little dignity he has left at this point goes out the window as soon as he’s in the open and Geralt sees him. He figures there’s not much lower he can get than limping sadly to the house of a detective who suspects him of murder after getting jumped in an alley, leaning hard on that cop’s brother — so he gives Geralt a jaunty little wave and surrenders to Lambert’s manhandling.

He’s not expecting, as Lambert gets him up the stairs onto the porch, for it to turn into a joint-manhandling situation, but the day he complains about Geralt’s hands on him is also the day he should check himself into a mental institution, so he surrenders to that, too.

Doesn’t mean he’s not still himself, though, so he tosses out a teasing, “They didn’t break my legs, you know,” as they move him over the threshold into the house. Geralt makes a sound Jaskier can’t interpret with his skull splitting the way it is, and Lambert’s hands tighten. Jaskier thinks they’re Lambert’s hands, at least — it’s hard to tell.

Inside, the AC is on, the windows are open to the cool of the night, and there are palm-frond fans on the ceiling circulating air lazily through the breezy, meandering rooms. It looks like something out of a Tommy Bahama magazine, and Jaskier can’t imagine that it cost anything less than a million dollars; he suddenly feels frighteningly, humblingly out of his depth. They take him into the kitchen, where the countertops are granite and the appliances are stainless steel, and as soon as they’ve got him situated in a kitchen chair, Geralt goes to the sink for a wet cloth and Lambert ducks out, calling, “Eskel!”

Jaskier feels suddenly afloat, without Lambert next to him, without anyone’s hands on him. But a moment later Geralt is back, dabbing carefully at the back of Jaskier’s head with the cloth.

He’s very close, and his hands are very warm. Jaskier can smell whatever shampoo he uses, something plain and manly, as if he’s just washed his hair — and he must have done, because it’s still just a bit damp. That sunburn he noticed last night has faded a bit, and because of the t-shirt Geralt’s wearing Jaskier can see that it does go down onto his chest, freckled and pink over the hard line of his collarbone. Jaskier wonders if the live-in boyfriend — Eskel, he bets — has tasted it. If he was in the shower with Geralt, just now. Probably it’s none of Jaskier’s business.

“Who did this,” Geralt says after a long minute, at the same time Jaskier blurts, “I didn’t know he was bringing me here.”

Geralt’s golden eyes go to Jaskier’s. Jaskier swallows, and says again, “I didn’t even know he knew you. Let alone that you were brothers.”

“Foster brothers,” Geralt corrects. “Adopted.”

“I didn’t know,” Jaskier reiterates.

Geralt opens his mouth to say something more, but before he can there are thundering footsteps on the stairs and Lambert returns, accompanied by the boyfriend. Eskel.

The last time Jaskier saw him was at the Miami-Dade station downtown, flying high on a wave of triumph after delivering a fugitive and collecting his ticket. He’d moseyed on down to the homicide bullpen, intending to find Geralt and use this newfound wave of confidence to ask him out, and instead had found Geralt tongue-deep in a growly, ruggedly-handsome man with a wicked scar and a Salt Life tattoo to match. Before Jaskier could retreat with his tail between his legs, Geralt had spotted him and made an unhappy face, then for some reason decided to introduce them without ever using his man’s name. Basically, it amounted to him saying, This is Jaskier. He’s a bounty hunter — after which Jaskier shook Salt Life’s hand and got out of there as quick as humanly possible, to hide his mortification. He’d felt like they could both tell what he was down there for, what he’d wanted, and it was humiliating.

This isn’t really much of a step up, except that the two shots of tequila and the possible concussion are doing a lot to numb his ability to think about tomorrow.

“Fuck,” Eskel says, when he sees Jaskier in his kitchen. “What the hell happened?”

“Nothing,” Jaskier says, just as Lambert says, “He got jumped outside Vice, down in Miami Beach.”

“Valdo Marx’s place?” Geralt asks.

“He skipped on his bond,” Jaskier protests, not liking his tone. “I’m well within my rights as a fugitive apprehension agent to loiter around his properties. Besides, they had a spot open up on their mic.”

“I don’t think fugitive apprehension agents are a protected class,” Lambert teases, but he kneads Jaskier’s knee in his hand as he crouches at his feet.

Eskel takes over the wound-tending from Geralt, hip-checking him out of the way and ignoring his boyfriend’s grumble. “I was head lifeguard down at South Beach, back in my twenties,” he tells Jaskier. “You would not believe the level of medical training we get.”

“I’ve been in South Beach at spring break,” Jaskier says. “They should train you as brain surgeons.”

Eskel chuckles. He has a nice laugh, Jaskier thinks, and then thinks, Oh, no.

Well. In for a penny, in for a pound, he supposes. Might as well fall hopelessly in love with all three.

Jaskier’s never been gently nursed by three large and beautiful men before, but he probably could have guessed that it would be just the thing to get him cranked again after a good scare and a couple of cracked ribs. By the time Eskel finishes his examination and herds Geralt up to bed, leaving Jaskier to Lambert’s tender mercies, Jaskier’s so turned on that the light touch of his linen pants is almost doing it for him.

As soon as they’re through the door to Lambert’s bedroom, he says, “Can we — ”

“Yes,” Lambert growls at once, crowding him back toward the bed. “Yes, Jaskier, fuck.”

If asked in a court of law whether he got hotter faster knowing that Geralt and Eskel were just down the hall, Jaskier would have to refuse to answer on the grounds that it might incriminate him. He does, though — he really, really fucking does, especially when Lambert palms him through his pants and he moans so loud he gets a hand clamped over his mouth, a low voice murmuring in his ear, “Quiet, buttercup, or they’ll come running.”

He does his best to be quiet after that, as Lambert peels him out of the mint green suit, tossing his Bren 10 to the side with an amused snort, but Jaskier’s a very vocal person and it’s a losing battle. Another noisy moan tears out of his throat as Lambert kisses down his chest, leaving a trail of saliva, but this time Lambert only laughs, soft and rumbling against his stomach, and continues on. He’s so achingly careful of the bruise blooming on Jaskier’s side that Jaskier’s filled with a sudden rush of affection; he can’t help sinking his hands in Lambert’s hair, big and messy now that it’s out of the ponytail, and saying, “Baby.”

Lambert makes a shattered sound against his hip. He drops a kiss on Jaskier’s hip — close-mouthed, affectionate, like he’s kissing him hello — then moves lower, shouldering between Jaskier’s bent legs. At the first touch of Lambert’s mouth on his bobbing cock, Jaskier gasps and pulls him away by the hair. “No,” he says, “no, I’ll come too fast — ”

“I want you to,” Lambert says. “I want you to come in my mouth.”

He seals his lips back over the head of Jaskier’s cock, his hand moving on the shaft. Jaskier turns to bury his face in the pillows, biting down, and comes with a muffled shout.

The only consolation to how quickly he comes is that Lambert doesn’t take that long either. He braces himself above Jaskier, still mostly-clothed, and they work together to jerk him off; Jaskier tells him how hot he is and how much he likes his cock and how he’s never been with a natural redhead before, where the carpet matched the drapes, and Lambert comes laughing over their twined fingers.

Jaskier doesn’t sleep much, even plastered up against a big beefy bounty hunter. He would, he feels safe enough to, but his head is still killing him and he can’t stop thinking about Valdo Marx.

He must doze off at some point, though, because he comes awake to the sound of Lambert’s pager going off.

Lambert blinks awake beside him, face creased from the pillowcase, and hauls himself butt naked out of bed — pausing to drop a kiss on Jaskier’s nipple — to go to the phone. Jaskier lets himself drift, coming awake by degrees. He vaguely recognizes Yen’s dulcet tones over the line, but he can’t hear what she’s saying, and he doesn’t try to hear Lambert’s half of the conversation, either. The jobs Yen gives Lambert are the real deal, not the sort of thing Jaskier wants to stick his nose in. Contrary to popular belief, he does actually know what’s good for him, and going up against the sort of fugitives where you need to bring a grenade launcher is not it.

He comes fully awake again as Lambert clambers back into bed, crawling over him on his hands and knees. “Mm,” he says, burrowing his face into the crook of Jaskier’s neck. “Morning, buttercup.”

Jaskier turns sleepily to kiss him. “Good morning.”

He feels Lambert’s mouth curve into a grin. “Look what I found on the floor.”

Jaskier looks.

It is, of course, his vibrating cockring.

Five minutes later, Jaskier is balanced on the knife edge of overstimulation, spine arched off the bed, hips fucking spasmodically into open air, desperate for friction. Lambert seems content to let him suffer, hands pinning Jaskier’s wrists to the bed as he kisses him — open-mouthed, languid, stubble burning the skin around Jaskier’s mouth. “Please,” Jaskier tries to say, but he feels like he’s running a marathon. He can barely draw breath, and every time he does he gets hit by another spine-melting vibration from that goddamn ring, and why, why did he think this was a good idea, why did he buy such an evil little device, why couldn’t he leave well enough alone?

Lambert’s fingers brush his cock as he reaches down — Jaskier arches into the fleeting touch, but as soon as it’s there it’s gone. There’s a soft pressure on the ring, nearly enough to send his eyes rolling back in his head, and then the vibrations stop. Jaskier makes a hurt sound.

“Shh, buttercup,” Lambert murmurs. “Not yet, yeah?”

Jaskier sobs. “You’re mean,” he says. “You’re an awful person.”

“Trust me.” Lambert kisses the messy tears on his cheek. “It’ll be worth it, when I take this off you later.”

Like the awful tyrant he is, he takes his sweet time buttoning Jaskier back up in his mint green suit from yesterday, gentle with his weeping cock. Jaskier nearly swallows his own tongue at the tightness of his briefs with the cockring still nestled in against his pelvis, and he is not mollified at all by the soft kiss Lambert gives him as he helps him into his suit jacket.

“Remember,” Lambert says, “don’t take it off until I do it for you.”

Jaskier bites him a little for good measure.

Luckily they don’t run into Geralt or Eskel on their way out of the house; Jaskier’s not sure he could hold a conversation with either of them while he’s got a vibrating ring around his cock, even if it’s not currently vibrating. They stop at a diner for coffee and donuts on their way back downtown, and Jaskier gets Lambert to drop him at the garage near Vice XXX, so he can deal with the Ballade.

As soon as the Camaro drives off, Jaskier feels jumpy, like every noise is out to get him. He knows he should probably have told Lambert that the thugs who jumped him last night were after him because of the Valdo Marx case, and that he should probably listen to their warning and drop the whole thing, but he’s still stuck on how Yen said, small change — that’s what you’re good at, right? and he’s got an itch to prove himself.

The itch to prove himself is only slightly stronger than his fear, at this point, but he figures that’s all he needs. Slightly.

Sometime in the last two nights, someone’s stuck a bunch of pamphlets in his car for something called Friends of Jesus Light and Savior Healing Church, which seems to be in a strip mall down the street. Jaskier rips them out from under the windshield wipers and stuffs them in the passenger seat, then settles in to try and talk the Ballade into starting. It takes some swearing and a liberal application of his hand slapping against the dashboard, but eventually he wins the argument; the persnickety old car stutters to life with a cough of dust and a roar of REO Speedwagon from the radio, and Jaskier is back in business.

He’s got plans to revisit Boholt, but on the way down Meridian he spots the Friends of Jesus Church wedged in between a nail salon and a party store and makes an abrupt decision. The Ballade sways as he bangs a uey in an empty intersection and screeches into the parking lot, parking right in front of the church’s facade. An offhand comment the garage attendant made the first time he talked to him has just come back into Jaskier’s mind, and he thinks he might have another angle on finding Marx.

Inside, the church looks rather more like a high school theater than a church, with folding chairs and a stage up front with a blue skirt. The pastor is up front when Jaskier comes through the door, stacking Bibles in a cardboard box. He straightens when he hears the door open, and for a split second Jaskier’s gut lurches — he still has a cockring on, and it’s black and his briefs are white and his slacks are pale green — but then he pastes on his winningest smile and blusters his way forward. “Hello!” he calls. “I’m — ”

“You’re that bounty hunter looking for Valdo Marx,” the pastor finishes, with a friendly smile. He grabs Jaskier’s hand and pumps it, pulling him deeper into the church. “Come in, come in. You’re doing a service to society, getting that man off the streets. Anything I can do for you, just say the word.”

“Right,” Jaskier says, slightly off-balance. “Well, I was wondering if you’d seen him, that’s all.”

“Seen him?” the pastor echoes. “I’ve seen what he’s doing to our youth, son, so I’ve seen enough.”

“Right,” Jaskier says again. “I agree completely. Truly terrible, the state of the youth.”

What follows is the sort of conversation Jaskier has not had since his mother forced him and his sisters through two unhappy years of Catholic high school, a futile exercise which resulted in two out of three children coming out as gay and getting temporarily kicked out of the house. The pastor — Stregobor, he says his name is, Father Stregobor — sits Jaskier down and tells him all sorts of nonsense about how teens in Miami Beach didn’t know what sex was until Vice XXX opened up and started corrupting young virgin minds, how he’s not surprised Valdo Marx got picked up for murder (not accurate, but Jaskier doesn’t bother correcting him), and how it’s such a relief that good, Catholic men like Jaskier are out on the street mopping up Florida’s Godless society.

Jaskier leaves feeling as he always does leaving a church — slightly slimy, slightly guilty, and mostly mad — but with no further leads on where Marx might be. He leaves Stregobor with his card, though, and a promise to call if he sees anything.

Back at Boholt’s apartment, Jaskier’s prepared to try his pizza delivery angle again, this time without addressing Boholt by name and standing well clear of the door, but when he gets there he finds the door has been replaced mostly with strips of cardboard, and that it’s open.

“Shit,” he mutters. Open doors are never a good sign.

He draws his gun, holding it low by his side, and nudges the door.

It swings in. He follows it inside, bringing his gun up, turning his torso like Lambert taught him at the shooting range to present a smaller target as he advances down the hall.

It’s dead silent in here, the only sound his own breathing and the muffled noise of an argument on the floor below. Jaskier thinks of calling out Boholt’s name, but when he opens his mouth to do it he finds it’s too dry to form words, so instead he tries to keep his head on and keeps going, into the living room.

Boholt has very nice views, Jaskier has to admit. It’s a shame he won’t be able to enjoy them anymore, since he’s hanging from an extension cord above his coffee table.

Jaskier puts his gun away, goes over to Boholt’s phone, and calls Geralt.

He’s sitting in the hall when Geralt arrives, back against the wall, trying not to think of splattered brain matter all over his shirt and bloated necks wrapped in orange wire.

Geralt swears under his breath when he sees him, crouching to set his hand on Jaskier’s shoulder. “Jask?”

“I’m alright,” Jaskier assures him, but the smile he musters feels somewhat lackluster. “He’s in the living room, you should take a look. And remember that murder suspects aren’t usually the ones to call the police.”

“Shit,” Geralt mutters — about what, Jaskier’s not sure — and draws his gun, shouldering into the apartment.

Geralt must call the cavalry from inside, because droves of MDPD minions start arriving after that, CSUs in their white coveralls and detectives in various states of business casual and uniforms armed with crime scene tape. Jaskier gets taken a few floors down and stashed out of the way, watched by a uni in a stairwell until a door opens somewhere above them and Geralt comes thundering down, a tight frown on his face.

“I’ll take it from here,” he tells the uni, and then they’re alone.

Jaskier fights down a swell of emotion — nervousness, frustration, the strange urge to bury his face in Geralt’s chest and cry — because it has been, genuinely, a very long couple of days, and he doesn’t appreciate being a suspect for murders he had no reason to commit. “Look,” he starts, tetchy, “I didn’t — ”

“I know you didn’t kill him, Jaskier,” Geralt interrupts, sounding tired. “I’m not an idiot.”

“Oh,” Jaskier says, deflating.

“Yes, oh,” Geralt agrees. “Whatever you’re mixed up in, though, it’s bad. Boholt and Zigrin — the guy who was killed in Vice Triple-X — they both knew Marx. They ran drugs through his club.”

“You think the murders are connected?” Jaskier asks, feeling sick. Two dead bodies, threats from anonymous men in ski masks…he doesn’t like where this is heading.

“Maybe,” Geralt says. “I think it would be best if you left this one alone. Let the police handle it.”

Geralt should know at this point in their relationship that that’s the absolute last thing that would ever work — suggesting that Jaskier drop it. Jaskier’s never dropped anything in his life.

Apparently Geralt does know it, because he says warningly, “Jaskier. I mean it. You’re going to get yourself hurt.”

Jaskier resists the urge to point out that he’s already gotten himself hurt, because even though it’s true he doesn’t think it will help him win the argument. “I’m going to drop it,” he lies. “I’m dropping it.”

Geralt doesn’t look overly convinced by Jaskier’s acting, but after he gives his statement a few more times — to Geralt, to a stone-faced suit, to a nosy old woman who lives on the first floor — he’s allowed to leave. He jogs to the diner across the street (crawling with cops) for a cup of coffee and uses the payphone in back to check the messages on his home phone.

There are three again: one from Lambert, threatening even more delayed gratification on top of the already-delayed gratification if he senses Jaskier’s taken the ring off, one from Shani asking for a call back, and one from a sharp, raspy voice Jaskier recognizes as Thug 2, saying, “I’m disappointed, Jaskier. I thought we had an understanding about Marx. Now the next time I see you, I’m gonna have to kill you.”

Jaskier puts his coffee down shakily on the shelf above the payphone and leans hard against the wall. Normally he likes to think of himself as a very resilient person — incidents that would cost most people hundreds of thousands of dollars in therapy only cost him two pints of Ben & Jerry’s and a visit to his favorite masseuse — but this most recent series of events is testing his ability to bounce back. How do they know he’s still snooping around Marx? Are they following him? Are they watching him right now, in this diner?

The urge to run back across the street to Geralt is so strong that Jaskier almost doesn’t fight it, but then he stops and makes himself think what will actually happen, if he does. He’s not going to get bundled home to Miami Shores, like he was last night; Geralt’s not going to take him back to Eskel to be gentled and fussed over. No, he’s going to take Jaskier straight to the police station, where he’ll take his statement for the millionth time today, and interrogate him about why he didn’t come clean about the threats sooner, and then Jaskier will be sent home with a couple of unis as babysitters out on the street. And when Valdo Marx finally does show up, he won’t be there to make sure Yen gets her bond back, so he’ll lose his job and he won’t be able to pay rent and Lambert will never take this damn cockring off, and — fuck.

“Fuck,” Jaskier says out loud, pressing his hands over his face. “Fuck, fuck, fuck. Fuck.”

When he’s had his little freak out, he shakes himself, picks up the phone and calls Shani.

“Took you long enough,” she accuses, as soon as she answers. “Swing by the office and pick me up, will you? We’ve got a live one, and I want to ride along.”

The “live one” is, as it turns out, one of Yen’s old school buddies, a woman named Fringilla Vigo who skipped on a $100,000 bond after getting brought in on fraud charges. Apparently she was running some sort of coupon scheme out of her garage in Coconut Grove, caught the attention of the FBI and called Yen when she needed help getting out of the federal pen. Yen usually wouldn’t take a bond that high, but she did it for a friend, and now she’s on the warpath and liable to skin Fringilla for a lampshade when she finds her.

Jaskier and Shani have the dubious honor of hunting Fringilla down and trussing her up for delivery.

Or rather, Jaskier has the dubious honor. Shani’s just a spectator. A spectator who’s sitting in his passenger seat with her bare feet on the dash and her hair crazy in the air from the open skylight, saying conspiratorially, “Coen told me you found another dead body this morning.”

“Oh, Coen did, did he?” Jaskier mutters, feeling uncharitable.

Shani doesn’t seem to pick up on his foul mood. Or if she does, she doesn’t comment on it. “That’s got to be some sort of record, doesn’t it? Most bodies discovered in a single weekend?”

“It’s only two,” Jaskier says. “That’s not so many.”

“Two so far,” Shani corrects. “We’ll count again when we find Fringilla.”

Jaskier really, really doesn’t want to find another dead body. He’s still having enough trouble mentally processing the first two. But he supposes Fringilla will be easy to apprehend if she’s dead, so at least there’s that.

“So did you use that cockring yet?” Shani asks, as they zip past Vizcaya.

“No,” Jaskier lies.

Shani hums knowingly. “Was it Detective Sexy? Or Lambert? Or both in quick succession?”

“Shut up,” Jaskier begs, tired.

“It’s just, I can’t help but notice that that’s yesterday’s suit.”

“Shut up.”

Shani cackles.

Fringilla’s current place of work is listed as a shoestore in a mall in Coconut Grove, and happily her truant tendencies don’t seem to extend to her 9 to 5. Jaskier posts up at an Orange Julius across the concourse and sends Shani in to look at shoes and scope out the back exits. He doesn’t exactly trust Shani not to whip a revolver out of her purse, but he figures if he sees things starting to get spicy he can make it in there in ten seconds flat.

Shani keeps her lid on, though, and after a few minutes she gives Jaskier the all-clear, no-exit-out-the-back signal, a subtle tug on the ear. Jaskier ditches the rest of his smoothie and makes his leisurely way across the concourse into the Payless.

“Fringilla Vigo?” he says, as he reaches the counter.

She looks up from the returns she’s scanning. “Yeah. And who are you?”

“Jaskier Lettenhove,” he says. “I’m a bond enforcement officer, I work for Yennefer.”

“Aw, hell,” says Fringilla.

“Yeah,” Jaskier agrees. “Please don’t run, I’ve had a long couple of days.”

Fringilla, probably because whatever school she and Yen went to specialized in producing hateful women, doesn’t listen to him. Instead she pulls an entire display of women’s sneakers over on him, and he has to chase her out into the concourse and into a KFC, where she steals a family sized chicken bucket from a group of teenagers and starts pelting him with fried poultry.

“Really?” he shouts, dodging drumsticks. “What do you think this is doing?”

Fringilla yells wordlessly and throws the empty bucket at his head. It catches him square in the face, but luckily that’s the exact moment that Shani tackles her from behind.

Jaskier gets a lot of laughs when he marches Fringilla into the police station to pick up his ticket. He figures he deserves it, seeing as he’s covered in ketchup and bits of fried chicken, so he takes it all with a wave and a good natured smile. As long as Geralt’s not here to see it, he always says.

Unfortunately, Geralt’s boyfriend is here to see it.

Jaskier is in the MDPD men’s room, dabbing delicately at the ketchup stains on his blazer and wondering if he left clothes in the car last time he went skinny dipping, when the door opens.

“Jaskier?” Eskel says. “Jesus, what happened?”

“It’s ketchup,” Jaskier tells him.

“I can see it’s ketchup,” Eskel chuckles. “Come on, I’ve got some shirts in the Jeep.”

He does, in fact, have some shirts in the Jeep, and pants, and a pair of Birkenstocks.

“I like to be prepared,” he explains, when Jaskier gives him a look. “Geralt gets shot a lot.”

Jaskier picks up a Birkenstock. “In the feet?”

Eskel shrugs. “Sometimes.”

Jaskier takes a blue button-down and a pair of gray slacks that are definitely going to swamp him, and does his best while he’s changing not to think about how he’s wearing Geralt’s clothes. It’s not as if Geralt even knows he’s wearing them, he reasons, and it’s not as if he would care if he did.

He’s expecting Eskel to be gone when he gets back to the parking lot, but he’s not; he’s waiting just outside the entry with a cigar stuck under his lip like he’s got a minor speaking role in The Godfather. It shouldn’t go with the Quicksilver tank top or the flip flops, but somehow the whole ensemble works pretty well. Or at least it’s working for Jaskier. He’s sort of surprised how much it’s working for him, actually, the whole fought-a-shark-and-won look.

It’s like a terrible, sexy feedback loop, Eskel in front of him and Geralt’s clothes all over him, smelling like Geralt and Eskel both, and to top it all off Jaskier can still feel where Lambert’s hands gripped his hip last night. As a result it takes rather a lot of his willpower to put on a casual smile as he passes out through the vestibule.

“Alright?” Eskel asks, around his cigar.

Jaskier taps out a cigarette and lets Eskel light it for him. “So are you here for Geralt, or do you just enjoy loitering around police stations?”

“Geralt. He left his wallet on the bedside table. Badge and all.”

Jaskier smiles. “No kidding. I wouldn’t have guessed Geralt was the forgetful type.”

“He’s not, usually,” Eskel says. “Just when it comes to leaving the house. The idiot never got used to the idea that he can’t just walk around naked.”

“Raised by wolves, huh?” Jaskier jokes, mostly to keep his mind off the mental image of Geralt prowling around the Miami Shores house in the nude.

Eskel laughs. “The man who raised us owns a wolf rescue in Montana,” he says. “So you’re not that far off.”

Raised us.

Jaskier guesses that’s why Geralt was so adamant about the adopted part of adopted brothers. Wouldn’t want Jaskier to think he was dabbling in incest behind closed doors. But that means — is Lambert part of this, too? Has Jaskier stumbled onto the fringes of the hottest threesome in human history? And if so, does that mean he’s out of his depth with Lambert, too? Or worse — God, is he a homewrecker?

The thought makes him feel sad more than guilty, because Lambert is about the one good, steady thing he has right now, and if he loses that…

Well, then he’ll really be alone. Real alone.

“Hey,” Eskel says, when Jaskier’s been quiet for too long. “I know I haven’t known you all that long, but I’ve been hearing about you for a while, and if you’re family to Lambert and Geralt — “

“I’m not,” Jaskier interrupts. “I mean, I think you’ve got the wrong idea, about me and Geralt.”

Eskel watches him searchingly through a cloud of smoke. “I don’t think I do,” he says, “but I guess I’m not the right person to convince you of that.”

Jaskier doesn’t know what the hell that’s supposed to mean, but before he can figure out a good angle to drill down on it, the Ballade’s horn screams from the other side of the parking lot. Shani hangs out the passenger-side window and shouts, “Jaskier! Come on, I have to pee!”

“You know,” Jaskier says, “for someone who’s so afraid of cops, she sure is making a lot of noise in the station parking lot.”

He leaves Eskel chuckling around his cigar and jogs across the parking lot, shouting to Shani to stop laying on the fucking horn, because he hears her, the whole damn city hears her, he’s coming.

Shani insists on being driven back to the office to empty her bladder, since she doesn’t like using public restrooms unless they’re in nightclubs or concert venues and there are no nightclubs or concert venues open and in driving distance.

Jaskier’s got every intention of leaving her there and driving into the sunset, but the Ballade kips out on him when he tries to put it in reverse, and he has to run up to beg a ride home. Shani breaks at least ninety percent of the traffic laws in the state of Florida ferrying him back to Sun Tower, and Jaskier breaks out in a nervous sweat halfway there and has to ditch his shoulder holster in the back seat.

Most of Jaskier’s mind, as he rides up in the elevator to his apartment, is on Lambert, and how fast Lambert might be able to get to his apartment once Jaskier calls to tell him he’s home. The bed hasn’t been made in a while, but somehow Jaskier doesn’t think Lambert’s the sort of guy who will care, and even if he does there are plenty of other horizontal surfaces in the apartment for them to avail themselves of — kitchen counter, couch, floor. Shower, if they’re feeling creative or sweaty, though that’s not horizontal; Jaskier can do vertical in a pinch.

He’s thinking more about verticality and Lambert’s big fingers, humming “Careless Whisper” under his breath on his way down the hall, so that’s probably why he doesn’t realize he left his gun in Shani’s car.

The door to his apartment is open when he gets there.

He stops, keys dangling from his outstretched hand, heart in his throat.

His fingers twitch for his gun, which is, of course, not there. Shit, he mouths. He knows he should turn around and go down back to the lobby, call Lambert or the police or even Shani, but before he can decide on a course of action something slams him in the back and forces him over the threshold.

There are three of them this time — thugs in ski masks. They force Jaskier to the floor in the kitchen, kicking him roughly on the way down, and then one of them gets a knee on his chest and holds a gun in his face.

“You should have listened to my advice,” says Thug 2. He helps himself to a seat at the kitchen table and opens a shoebox in his lap. “Now we have to have a very unpleasant conversation.”

Jaskier’s heart feels like it’s trying to race sideways out of his chest. He feels hot and blurry with adrenaline. He can’t think straight. He can’t even thing squiggly. He can barely rasp enough air into his lungs with Thug 1’s knee on his chest, but he doesn’t dare try and hit the leg, in case he catches a bullet in the face.

“I’m — ” he tries to say.

Then Thug 2 fires up a blowtorch, and Jaskier stops trying to say anything at all.

“Why don’t we dispense with the theatrics?” says Thug 3. Distantly, Jaskier thinks something about him is familiar, but he can’t calm the panicked gyroscope of his brain long enough to zero on in what. The man, dressed in dark clothes and a ski mask like his associates, runs his fingers lightly over Jaskier’s kitchen appliances, proprietary, casual, in a way that makes Jaskier feel sick. “Just kill him. We’ll plant some heroin in his cookie jar, the police will think it’s a drugs thing. No one will ever bother looking into it.”

That’s true, Jaskier thinks. No one will bother looking into it.

Homicide will be called, and Geralt will stand in his apartment and look sadly at his dead body and say, Well, I did try to warn him. Yen will hire another under-qualified fugitive apprehension agent, and Lambert will forget about his sexy but ultimately casual one night stand. Eskel barely knows him so one good night’s sleep and he’ll be right as rain, and Jaskier hasn’t seen his family in ages, so really the only person at his funeral will be Shani, and she’ll be drunk. He supposes that’s alright. One drunk friend is better than none. Assuming anyone bothers to arrange a funeral at all.

The blowtorch burns blue. Thug 1 wrestles one of Jaskier’s hands out flat on the linoleum, forcing his palm open.

“We’re gonna kill him,” Thug 2 promises Thug 3, “but why not have some fun first? Think of him like a blank canvas. All the things you’ve been wanting to try…”

Thug 3 sighs, but doesn’t argue any more. Jaskier’s not sure if he wants him to or not — if he’s going to die, he supposes he’d rather do it without being a blank canvas first, but when it comes down to it, he doesn’t really want to die at all. So he doesn’t beg, No, wait, kill me — instead, he turns his head away and closes his eyes.

Unimaginable heat sears his palm.

It’s the worst pain Jaskier’s ever felt. He screams.

A gunshot splits the noise. Blood splatters his face.

The blowtorch shuts off and skitters across the floor. Jaskier watches it through a haze of tears, then turns to look as the thugs open fire on the door. Shani stands firm and shoots back, Jaskier’s Bren 10 in her hands, and she’s not taking cover at all but none of them hit her.

They’re amateurs, Jaskier realizes in some distant corner of his mind. They haven’t done this before. Not this part, at least — they were pretty comfortable jumping him in the alley and threatening to torture him in his kitchen, but now that things they haven’t planned are happening, they’re falling apart.

Shani clips Thug 3 the shoulder, and the shout of alarm is enough distraction for Jaskier to flail out and kick Thug 1 between the legs, leaving him keeled over and gasping for air on the floor next to Thug 2’s corpse.

“Shit, Jask.” Shani shoves his gun in her waistband and rushes across the kitchen, crouching next to him. “It’s a good thing I noticed you left your gun in the car, huh?”

Jaskier tries to laugh, but somewhere in his throat it turns into a sob. Shani shushes him, holding his face against the side of her thigh with one hand while she feels around on the counter for the phone. “It’s okay,” she tells him, “it’s okay, Jask, you’re okay, you’re gonna be okay.”

He’s not sure he believes her, but he’s a master of denial, so he latches onto that. I’m okay. I’m okay. He figures, as long as he doesn’t look at his hand, it isn’t horribly burned. As long as he doesn’t look at the bodies on his kitchen floor, they aren’t really there. As long as he just puts his face against Shani’s leg and breathes…

Some part of him registers that something is off — there are only two bodies on his floor, not three.

A minute later, as sirens wail in the distance, he drops like a brick into unconsciousness.

When Jaskier was a kid, he used to run away a lot. Day trips, mostly — hopping a bus downtown, hoofing it to the movie theater so he could spend all day sneaking into showings of Cabaret and Godspell and Man of La Mancha — but as he got older he started staying gone overnight, shelling out for motel rooms and train tickets, stretching his wallet as far as it could take him before he let himself bungee home. Even in the later years of his childhood, he was always waiting for that moment when his parents would find him and drag him home by his ear, shrieking What were you thinking?! We were so worried!! But it never happened. His parents never remarked on his absence; his sisters never asked where he’d been, why they hadn’t seen him for three days.

As far as Jaskier could tell, no one ever noticed he was gone.

When he wakes up in the hospital, he’s alone.

He stares at the ceiling for a few minutes, feeling sorry for himself and prolonging the inevitable, then looks down at his burned hand. It’s swaddled in a thick wad of bandages, but he can feel the wound pulsing faintly inside, like a raw nerve. He assumes they have him on some pretty serious painkillers, so the fact that he can feel it at all means it’s going to hurt like a sonuvabitch once those wear off.

Oh, well. Jaskier sighs and starts pulling monitors off of him, making the machines go wild. No use lying around fostering a morphine habit while Valdo Marx is still in the wind.

Despite liberal application of his most charming smile, the ER nurse doesn’t seem interested in letting Jaskier check out AMA, especially once the uniformed officer who’s meant to be guarding his door comes back and inserts himself into the discussion. Jaskier gets the nurse and the uni distracted and arguing against each other by suggesting that one of them is going to catch flak for leaving him unattended, and is making a break for the fire exit, doing a three-legged jog with his IV pole, when a familiar voice calls from the other end of the hall, “Jaskier!”

It’s Geralt. Geralt, stalking towards him and looking distinctly murderous.

Jaskier’s not sure whether to make a run for it, throw up his hands in surrender, or try to use the IV pole to cover the very obvious outline of his cock through the hospital gown, so instead he just stands there while Geralt gets closer and closer.

This is it, probably. This is how Jaskier goes. Geralt’s going to get within grabbing distance, and then Jaskier’s going to try and hug him, and Geralt’s going to strangle him with his own IV tube. Here he comes. Almost there. The nurse and the uni have stopped arguing and are watching with abject interest, like Jaskier’s impending doom is a light spot of entertainment to break up their night, and now Geralt is here, and — oh.

Geralt pulls him into a crushing hug.

“Is this you restraining me?” Jaskier asks, when his brain comes back on line. “Am I under arrest?”

Geralt pulls back far enough to frown at him.

“You have to tell me, if I’m under arrest,” Jaskier reminds him.

“You’re not under arrest,” Geralt says, bewildered. “You scared me.”

“Oh,” Jaskier says.

“Yes, oh,” Geralt echoes, tugging him back in. Jaskier allows himself, charitably, to be pressed into Geralt’s shoulder, and does not do anything embarrassing or pathetic like bury his face in Geralt’s shirt and sniffle.

He does mumble, “I should probably tell you about the threats I’ve been getting.”

Geralt pulls back to frown at him again.

Unanimously, they decide to get out of there. Jaskier thinks it’s got something to do with Geralt knowing he’ll make his escape the second the detective’s back is turned and/or not wanting to be liable for what might happen if Jaskier gets blowtorched again while under (incompetent) police protection. Either way, he’s not about to look this particular gift horse in the mouth, because he hates hospitals on a good day and hates them even more when people are out to get him, Shani has his gun, and he’s tied down to a bunch of machines.

The nurse brings him a plastic bag with the clothes he was brought in wearing — Geralt’s. Jaskier dresses clumsily with one hand. The sleeve on his injured side has been cut all the way up to the shoulder, and the split fabric hangs down around his arm in ribbons, but all in all, considering the circumstances, he thinks he cleans up remarkably well. He’s mystified and a bit chuffed to discover that they’ve left the cock ring on. Maybe the paramedics thought it was a medical device.

Geralt’s waiting for him at the check-out desk, where it seems flashing his badge around has convinced the hospital it’s not in their best interests to keep Jaskier any longer. Thank God for Eskel, or Geralt would be trying to make do with his pecs and his intimidating stare.

Thank God for Eskel as well, because when Geralt sees Jaskier — when he sees what he’s wearing — his face does something complicated and very quiet that Jaskier has never seen it do before. His eyes get soft and wide and sort of wondering, and he doesn’t say anything.

“Eskel found me covered in ketchup,” Jaskier explains, suddenly self-conscious. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” says Geralt.

His voice is rough, like he hasn’t used it in a while, and it turns Jaskier’s insides to molten goo. He wants to hear that voice say lots of new things tonight, like fuck, and fuck, Jask, and fuck, Jask, please. Potentially he’s fixating on sex because he doesn’t want to deal with what just happened to him, but also he’s wanted Geralt for approximately as long as he’s known Geralt, and discovering that he might actually care about him is not helping the issue.

Neither is Geralt saying, “Come on. I’m taking you home.”

Jaskier’s always liked Miami at night. The black water of the Atlantic stretched out to infinity, the warm little knot of city lights and sunbaked people perched on the edge of the abyss. It doesn’t always feel safe, because there are alleys in Miami he wouldn’t want to walk after dark and places he generally tries not to go, just like any city, but it does make him feel alive. The heat that cooks your heart in your chest and the tropical music that keeps rhythm to the beat, the prickle of sweat like eyes on the back of your neck and everyone on island time, everyone looking for a hit or a score or a body to lose themselves in that isn’t theirs. Miami at night is a snake; it’s a jungle cat; Jaskier loves being hunted.

Tonight, though, he’s glad to have been caught. He’s glad to be curled up in the passenger seat next to Geralt, watching the wind through the cracked window play with his moonlight hair and not even trying to remember the name of the song on the radio. They don’t speak on the drive from the hospital, north out of the city and into the quiet residential streets of Miami Shores. Jaskier reaches out once, aborted, and Geralt catches his hand before he can pull it back into his lap, folding their fingers together. He squeezes once and holds on. Jaskier lets him.

His apartment, he realizes. He's never going to feel safe in his apartment again, the apartment that he loves, the home that he made for himself. He feels safe here, now, pulling up the drive to Geralt's house, but he's not going to be allowed to stay here forever. This is a temporary thing. What happens when he leaves? Is he just going to be afraid for the rest of his life?

The front door to the house opens before Geralt even shuts the engine off.

Jaskier almost sobs to see Lambert bounding down the front steps, but he manages to hold it together — at least until the passenger side door is ripped open and Lambert hauls him out into his arms. Then Jaskier gets a little blubbery.

He thinks he’s allowed, though, because a few hours ago he was in his kitchen with three men in ski masks threatening to torture and kill him, and now he feels like coming into the AC after a long day in the sun; like finally getting a drink after being parched and salt-dry for eons.

“You’re alright,” Lambert’s murmuring against the top of his head, “we’ve got you, you’re alright,” and Jaskier believes him.

All his muscles start shaking like jelly as Lambert herds him over the threshold into the house. It’s the adrenaline wearing off, he knows, and Eskel confirms as much with soft words as he comes into the entryway with a glass of orange juice and a cookie — eat this, he murmurs, you’ll feel better — to find Jaskier braced against the wall with his good hand over his eyes, Lambert tucked close to his side, still muttering reassurances.

Jaskier does feel better after he eats the cookie, if only marginally so. The shaking has stopped, at least, and he can manage himself well enough to get up the stairs to the second floor, where Lambert suggests he take a shower.

“I’ve got a plastic bag you can put the hand in,” he says. “We tend to injure ourselves a lot, we’ve got all the supplies.”

“Right.” Jaskier swallows. He doesn’t quite feel steady enough to trust himself alone in the shower, but he’s not sure how to ask — he’s not sure he has a right to ask, after everything that’s already been done for him, tonight. “I’ll just…”

“You can have help, if you want it,” Lambert says softly. “Non-sexual help, even.”

Jaskier feels like crying again, but instead he musters a smile. “Yes. Thank you. That would be lovely.”

Having now had some experience being nursed by three large and beautiful men, and with his sexual appetites dampened somewhat by the night’s events, Jaskier manages to stay soft all the way through Lambert undressing him. Even when Lambert finds the cockring still on and pauses, lips twitching in what would under other circumstances probably turn into a laugh, before sliding it off with a chaste kiss to Jaskier’s hip, Jaskier manages to keep down his erection.

“You know,” Lambert says, when they’re behind the opaque glass of the shower stall, standing under the hot spray. “Me and Geralt and Eskel have been fucking since we were teenagers.”

Always so blunt, Lambert. It’s a good thing Jaskier’s used to it, or he’d swallow his tongue in shock.

As it is, he just leans his forehead against Lambert’s wet shoulder and asks, “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because.” Lambert’s fingers card through his hair, soothing, rhythmic like the pounding of the water against his back. “We tend to share what’s ours. And I know they’d like to share you, if you want to be shared.”

Jaskier breathes out hard.

“You don’t have to,” Lambert says. “It can just be you and me.”

“I want to,” Jaskier says. “I just don’t think I’ll be much fun tonight.”

“Shit, buttercup.” Wet arms tighten around him, holding him close. “That’s not what I meant. I care about you. Geralt and Eskel care about you. Just let us look after you, alright? Let us take care of you.”

Jaskier would have to be a much stronger man to say no to that.

But he’s a very weak man indeed. So weak that he lets Lambert wash his hair for him, lets Lambert towel him down and then wrap the towel around his hips, tying it with a neat little tuck. Lambert drops another one of those chaste, close-mouthed kisses on his damp navel, and the muscles of Jaskier’s stomach jump under his lips, under the rasp of his stubble. Despite everything, despite his throbbing hand and the terror of the Marx case and the enormity of what’s waiting for him on the other side of the bathroom door, Jaskier feels blood rushing to his cock. Just from Lambert’s lips. Just from the sight of Lambert kneeling in front of him.

Lambert starts to move away, but Jaskier catches him with a hand in his hair, holding him in place.

Blue eyes turn to look up the length of Jaskier’s bare torso. “We don’t have to,” Lambert murmurs, lips ghosting over skin.

“I know,” Jaskier says. “Open the door.”

Lambert reaches out with one hand, the other firm on the terrycloth covering Jaskier’s ass, and opens the door.

Eskel is sitting on the floor in the hall, arms leaning on his folded knees. He looks up at the sound of the door opening, and his eyes go dark and liquid as he takes in the sight in front of him: his brother at Jaskier’s feet, Jaskier’s hand tugging at red hair, Lambert’s hand skating up the inside of Jaskier’s leg, under his towel.

He licks his lips. “Shit,” he says, “Jaskier — ”

“Come here,” Jaskier interrupts.

Eskel holds very still. “You’re sure?” he checks.

“I’m sure,” Jaskier says. And he is. God help him, he is.

Eskel is at his side in an instant, one arm going around Jaskier’s waist and the other hand coming to the side of his face to pull him into a long, feeling kiss. He’s only just met Eskel yesterday — well, only just had an entire conversation with him yesterday, though he met him before — and he knows it should feel strange, to kiss him so deeply, to want him so much, but it doesn’t feel strange at all. It feels like a more thorough way to say hello, that’s all. Hello. I’ve been waiting for you. Took you long enough to get here.

Jaskier has been with plenty of people who didn’t much care for kissing, who treated it like the mandatory first step on the way to the bedroom, and he’s never much minded. Eskel’s not one of those people. Eskel kisses with deadly intent; he kisses like Jaskier’s mouth is the main event, slow and searching and methodical. Never in a million years would Jaskier have guessed that methodical would turn him on so much — but it does.

Lambert’s lips move over Jaskier’s skin, just above the towel. His hand tightens on Jaskier’s knee, forcing him to bend it, to give his weight over to the two of them.

At the feeling of Eskel catching him, holding him up, Jaskier makes a soft involuntary sound in the back of his throat — a sound he normally doesn’t make until much, much later, after he’s been fucked hard and left boneless, totally sated. But he feels like that now. He feels totally relaxed between them.

No one tries to move him into the bedroom. No one reaches for his cock, even though he can feel it getting hard, tenting the front of the towel. Under normal circumstances, Jaskier might feel insulted, but right now he’s just glad. He’s not sure he has the energy for an athletic foursome.

Plus, he only has one hand right now. He’s not sure the logistics of that would really work out.

There are footsteps on the stairs, in the hall outside, and then Jaskier hears Geralt suck in a sharp breath.

He and Eskel break apart, Eskel’s hands still on his body. Jaskier blinks over at Geralt. The past few minutes in this warm, lazy embrace have left him feeling almost groggy, like he’s been asleep, but the sight of the man he’s wanted for so long standing there in the open door wakes him up again.

Jaskier steps out of Lambert and Eskel’s hold. The air is cool on his still-damp skin, but he forces himself not to shiver as he walks the short distance to Geralt, so they’re standing toe to toe, eye to eye. They’re nearly of a height, though Geralt is much broader than Jaskier, and Jaskier is suddenly grateful for it — that he can look Geralt in the eye, man to man, while he asks, “Do you want this?”

Geralt makes a noise in his nose that could almost be a laugh. “Of course I want this,” he says. “What kind of question is that?”

Jaskier smiles. “I don’t know,” he says. “I could’ve sworn you hated me.”

“Never,” Geralt murmurs, “I never hated you. I’m just not good at...” he trails off, breaking the train of thought with an annoyed grunt, then puts a hand on the back of Jaskier’s neck to pull him in and kiss him carefully on the forehead.

Jaskier wraps his arms around Geralt’s waist and rests their foreheads together. “I think you can do better than that,” he teases, though his heart’s soaring.

Geralt kisses him.

They all go to bed with semis, but no one seems particularly driven to get off, so instead they pile into the master bedroom’s California king and shuffle around until they’ve found a comfortable position with Jaskier mostly in the middle. He hasn’t bothered getting dressed, and he knows he’ll lose the towel sometime in the night, but at the moment it doesn’t seem to matter; at the moment, all that matters is Geralt’s heartbeat under his ear and three bodies weighing down the mattress around him, and the fact that tonight, this is the safest bed in all of Miami. All of Florida, even.

Jaskier sleeps the sleep of the truly exhausted, and when he wakes up sometime before dawn it’s to find Geralt watching him from point blank range. Golden eyes half-hooded by white lashes, brow smooth and easy with calm, close enough that the air he breathes out is the air Jaskier breathes in.

“Hello,” Geralt rumbles, almost sub-vocal.

Jaskier is normally full of words, but right now he’s empty. So instead he just leans forward and finds Geralt’s mouth with his own.

Eventually Jaskier starts getting hard; eventually Geralt notices. Tough not to, given Jaskier’s nakedness. Geralt’s big hand skates down Jaskier’s stomach, nearly wide enough with the fingers spread to span him side to side, and what little blood was left in Jaskier’s head rushes abruptly south. His cock bobs against Geralt’s knuckles, flushed dark red and weeping precome, as if the lack of stimulation it’s had in the last twenty-four hours is suddenly catching up to him all at once with a vengeance. He sucks in a breath as Geralt wraps a hand around him, staring transfixed at the sight of his own cockhead poking out of that tight, gorgeous fist.

“Is this okay?” Geralt murmurs.

Eskel and Lambert are snoring beside them in the halflight. Jaskier is so close to coming just from Geralt holding him in his hand that he could weep. “Yes,” he gasps, “yes, Geralt, God.”

Geralt jerks him off slow, his forearm on Jaskier’s hip holding him down as he tries involuntarily to fuck up into his grip. Both of them watch every second, Geralt’s forehead resting against the side of Jaskier’s face, gazing hotly down the length of his body as Jaskier’s cock starts to spasm in his hand, as it leaks semen, as Jaskier’s abdomen tightens and he sucks in a breath between his teeth and his cock jumps, coming. Geralt squeezes him through it, working the shaft as his fingers get slick and sticky, coated in Jaskier’s spend, humming against Jaskier’s jaw and murmuring, there you go, sweetheart. I’ve got you. good.

When Jaskier tries to reach for Geralt’s erection, the big man just shakes his head. Jaskier lays back on the pillows, relaxed and sated; he’d be purring, he thinks, if he were a cat. But there's still one worry lingering at the back of his mind.

“Please tell me this isn’t a one-time thing,” he whispers.

Geralt’s eyes lock on his. “This isn’t a one-time thing,” he says.

“Are you sure?” Jaskier asks. “I’ve got a tramp stamp of a dolphin.”

“I’ve seen it. And I’m sure.”

Jaskier exhales shakily. “Oh, thank God.”

Geralt pulls him back in, tighter than before, and Jaskier goes back to sleep.

The next time he wakes, it’s fully light out, Lambert’s the only one left in bed, and he remembers where he’d heard Thug 3’s voice.

He slips out from under Lambert’s arm and opens drawers as quietly as he can until he’s assembled an entire outfit — purple v-neck with the sleeves cut off, white pants, pale blue blazer. Downstairs, Geralt and Eskel are both gone — off to work, probably, the demanding rigors of the 9 to 5 — so Jaskier uses the wall phone in the kitchen to call a cab and goes out front to have a smoke while he waits.

Two hours later, he’s back in his Ballade, which he checked on a whim in the office parking lot and which had another change of heart, deciding to work again. His gun is gone, locked up in the MDPD’s evidence locker, but he borrowed a can of pepper spray from the office stock and he’s got a pair of handcuffs hanging from his — Geralt’s? Eskel’s? — belt, so he thinks he’s reasonably prepared to take down Valdo Marx. The men who’ve been threatening him, maybe not so much, but he can’t exactly hide in the Miami Shores house forever. He’s got to face his fears eventually.

He just hopes this time his fears don’t get the jump on him with a blowtorch.

Technically, he’s still operating on nothing more than a hunch and gut instinct, but he feels like it’s a pretty good hunch. To be fair, that might be the gut instinct talking, but either way, it was simple once he realized who Thug 3 was: Stregobor. The pastor from Friends of Jesus Light and Savior Healing Church.

Now, why would a bunch of Jesus nuts want Jaskier to stay away from Valdo Marx? Jaskier can only come up with one reason — because Valdo Marx knows something about them that they don’t want anyone else to know. Because he was working with them. Because they’re the ones who’ve been knocking off drug dealers. Because Marx was helping them do it.

Jaskier’s not suicidal, despite appearances, so he parks a few blocks away from the church and stops at a payphone on his way over to put in a call to the Miami Shores house, letting Lambert know where he is.

With any luck, Lambert will arrive late enough that Jaskier can try the takedown himself, but soon enough that if something goes wrong, he doesn’t end up dead. It’s a fine line, but Jaskier believes in Lambert’s ability to walk it.

“Right,” he says to himself, as he hangs up the phone. “Game face.”

He strides into the Friends of Jesus Church with a flourish and a smile.

Disappointingly, there’s no one there to see it.

The nave is empty, rows of folding chairs sitting unattended. Jaskier feels a little silly doing it, but he takes out his pepper spray and shakes the can to activate it, holding it low at his side as he walks down the aisle toward the doors that lead into the back of the church. It’s silent, more silent than he thinks it should be with the street traffic a few meters away outside, and Jaskier thinks he must be alone, because if someone else was breathing in here he’d be able to hear it. He’d be able to hear the hairs on their arm standing on end, like the hairs on the back of his neck are doing.

Cautiously, he pushes open one of the doors marked CHURCH EMPLOYEES ONLY. It swings in, hinges squealing, to a dark hallway.

There can’t be that many places to hide back here, Jaskier thinks. It’s just a shopfront in a strip mall. It’s not that big. So he holds his pepper spray up like a gun and moves forward.

Someone comes out of an open door in front of him, facing away.

Marx! Jaskier thinks, with a start.

“Marx!” he barks. “Turn around slowly, hands up, unless you’d like to be pepper sprayed.”

Valdo Marx turns with wide eyes and his hands up. “Jaskier? Jaskier Lettenhove? What the hell are you doing here?”

“I’m a bond enforcement officer, Marx,” Jaskier says. “You’ve missed your court date, skipped on your bail, and on top of that you’ve made me have a really shitty couple of days. I’m bringing you in.”

“I don’t think so,” says a familiar voice behind him.

Jaskier’s stomach drops. “Stregobor,” he says.

A gun cocks. “Drop the pepper spray.”

Jaskier doesn’t drop the pepper spray, but he does turn slowly with his hands up. Stregobor is standing behind him with a gun leveled right between his eyes, his stare hard and flat. His arm is bandaged where Shani clipped him in Jaskier’s apartment last night, but his grip on the gun is steady. “You shouldn’t have come here,” he tells Jaskier. “We were going to let you live.”

“That’s not really the vibe I got last night,” Jaskier says. His voice doesn’t quaver, though everything inside him is shaking. “Anyway, if Marx doesn’t report to the court by the end of today, my boss loses her money. And Yennefer doesn’t like to lose her money.”

“She’s going to lose more than just her money today,” Stregobor says.

He presses the gun to Jaskier’s forehead. Jaskier closes his eyes.

Probably he should be looking for a way out, some last ditch move he can make to get himself out of here alive, but he’s got a can of pepper spray and there’s a gun in his face and Lambert’s not here yet. Jaskier knows he should have called him sooner, should have woken him when he crawled out of bed this morning. He knows he wouldn’t be here now, about to die, if he had. But he’d wanted to prove himself. He’d wanted to prove that he wasn’t weak, that he could bring Marx in on his own. Now all he’s going to prove is that they were all right.

Last night, lying in bed with Geralt and Lambert and Eskel gathered around him, Jaskier had wanted to say I love you. To each of them in turn, holding their beloved faces between his hands, kissing their closed eyes, their noses, their lips slack with sleep. He’d known it was too soon, though, that saying it would only scare them off.

If he could go back and change one thing in his entire life, he thinks he would wake them and tell them. I love you, I love you, I love you. Even if it meant he ended up on the front lawn with a towel around his waist. It’s a heavy thing to take with him into the afterlife, that much love.

A gunshot cracks, and a body thumps to the floor.

It’s not Jaskier’s.

He cracks one eye and sees Stregobor lying at his feet, half his skull blown away.

Lambert comes out of the room to his right, gun trained on the dead man on the floor. He kicks the gun out of Stregobor’s limp hand and says, “Alright, buttercup?”

Jaskier lets out a shaky breath. “Yeah. Yes, I’m alright.”

A laugh bubbles up past his lips, and turns into a sob halfway.

He presses the back of his hand against his mouth, forcing down the part of him that wants to curl up into a ball on the floor and cry for a few hours or several years, then pulls the handcuffs off his belt and marches over to Marx. “I’m bringing you in,” he tells him. “Don’t fucking try anything, or Lambert will shoot you.”

Lambert brandishes his gun a little, just to underline the point. Marx whimpers and holds his hands out for the cuffs.

He has to hand Marx over to the police, when they finally show up, but since he was present at the apprehension he gets his ticket anyways — Yen will get her money back from the court, and Jaskier will get his 10%. Jaskier also gets interrogated six ways from Sunday and looked over by so many baby-faced EMTs he’s fairly certain he’s getting used as some sort of training exercise, but, he figures, you can’t win ’em all.

Lambert wraps Jaskier up in his arms when the paramedics are done looking at him, sitting on the back step of the ambulance. Jaskier hums and leans into him, and Lambert presses kisses to the circular mark the gun barrel left on his forehead, murmuring, “Stupid, stupid, so stupid…”

Jaskier digs the fingers of his good hand into Lambert’s shoulder, and clings.

Eventually, homicide is called. Jaskier only knows this because their two-man hug turns into a three-man hug; apart from Geralt’s muttered swearing in his ear, he’s not aware of anything beyond the safety of Lambert’s arms. He’s aware that he’s a grown man, and a bounty hunter, and that it’s sort of pathetic of him to be curled up snivelling in a hug where people can see him, but in the past three days he’s been shot at, knocked out, threatened, burned, and held at gunpoint, so he thinks he might be entitled. For a while, at least.

“Come on,” Geralt says after some time, tugging them gently. “Let’s get out of here.”

Jaskier ends up in the back seat of the Bronco, still wrapped up in Lambert, as Geralt pulls away from the strip mall and the flashing lights. He surfaces long enough to ask, “Where are we going?”

Home, he expects them to say.

But Geralt says, “To Eskel,” and Jaskier supposes that’s the same thing, anyways.

“You three are colluding, aren’t you?” he murmurs, more tired than teasing.

“Yeah,” Lambert says, kissing his head. “Keeping you alive is a three man job.”

Geralt parks the Bronco right in the busiest area of South Beach, outside a beachside shack with a sign that reads Wolf Surf Rentals. Eskel’s swaggering out as they pull up, shirtless in board shorts and flip flops, using a rag to clean surfboard wax off his hands. Jaskier starts laughing when he sees him — Wolf Surf Rentals, really? — and doesn’t stop even when the laughter finally does turn to sobs.

“Jaskier?” Eskel asks, leaning in the open door. “Are you alright? What’s going on?”

Jaskier gets himself under control, wiping his eyes. Lambert watches him with a look of abject concern, but Jaskier presses a quick kiss to his lips — bracing — and says, “I’m fine, love. Right as rain.”

It’s the 5th of January, and he feels like he’s lived an entire year in the last few days. Not all good, not all bad, but all of it exhausting. And all of it in a hundred percent humidity.

“I’m going for a swim,” he announces. “Any of you want to come with me?”

They do, as it turns out. All three of them.