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The first time that Jaskier says it, Geralt thinks that he misheard.
He couldn’t be blamed for mishearing, he doesn’t think, not with Jaskier’s cock inside of him, lighting him up like a lantern from the inside out. He’s on his hands and knees with one hand braced against the headboard, gasping for breath as he pushes back into Jaskier’s firm touch as the bard fucks him so hard the bedframe shakes with each thrust. It’s good, so much better than the quick, anonymous fucks that Geralt is used to, backalley hookups and the rare male whore he runs across who only agrees to give him a perfunctory blow job before taking his coin and darting off to safety, away from the mutant. It’s good, feels better than Geralt ever knew he could feel, his entire body shaking with the effort of staying still as he takes Jaskier’s cock to the hilt again and again.
It’s good, because it’s Jaskier who’s fucking him, Jaskier who’s got his cock buried inside Geralt’s fluttering hole, Jaskier who’s gripping his hips bruise-tight and kissing up and down his sweaty spine and murmuring sweet nothings while he shatters every misconception of sex is messy and shameful but necessary that Geralt’s ever had.
“Jaskier,” he gasps, as Jaskier pushes at his hips and changes the angle to aim for that spot he’d found earlier with his fingers - with his tongue - and each thrust tears a shriek from Geralt’s lips as it obliterates him. “Fuck, Jaskier!”
Jaskier’s mouths lightly at his shoulder, bent over him and pressing their sticky, sweaty bodies together as he continues to turn Geralt inside out with each obscenely perfect roll of his hips. “There we go,” he whispers, scraping soft, blunt human teeth over Geralt’s skin. “There we go, my love, you’re taking it so beautifully.”
Geralt whines, his arms giving out as his face plummets into the pillows, and still Jaskier doesn’t stop, doesn’t hesitate, just coos and hums and tightens his grip on Geralt’s hips until it’s nearly painful and so fucking good that Geralt can feel tears gathering in his eyes; he can barely hear Jaskier’s voice over the roaring thunder of his heartbeat in his ears, and he just pushes his ass back with a whimper and a wail as Jaskier’s hand slips beneath his belly to take his throbbing cock in hand. “Jask -!”
“I’ve got you,” Jaskier whispers, twisting his hand, and Geralt bites into a pillow to keep from screaming. “I’ve got you, my love, come for me -”
Geralt does scream when he comes, insensate and blissfully unaware of the words that fall from Jaskier’s lips; he screams, and he also tears the pillow in half as he spills all over the bed beneath him and wails, and he’s laughing and crying as he comes down from it just in time to feel Jaskier’s cock pulse as the bard comes inside of him, and the noise Jaskier makes when he comes has his cock twitching painfully and dribbling out a last little spurt of come as he mewls and weeps and fucking giggles at the wave-crash of endorphins flood his body and make him lightheaded. “Fuck,” he chokes, “fuck,” and then he gasps it out again as Jaskier slides slick and soft from his hole and leaves him empty and fluttering and deliciously sore. He collapses all the way, not even caring that he’s laying in his own come - that Jaskier’s come is dripping down his thighs, now, sticky and tacky and bitter-smelling - heaving for breath as he shuts his eyes and shivers.
Jaskier lays beside him and slings a shaky arm over Geralt’s back, kissing his shoulder, and Geralt turns his face to find his bard smiling at him like he’s the first sunshine after a long winter. “Hullo, my love,” Jaskier croons, and this time - this time Geralt hears it. He hears it, and he cannot unhear it. It slides down his throat, down his spine, sickly-sweet and pooling in his belly like a fine liqueur.
“I - Jaskier,” he says, uncertain what to say, something in his chest clenching.
Jaskier makes a soft, pleased sound and kisses the tip of his nose, pulling back before Geralt can tilt his head up for a real, proper kiss. “So lovely,” he croons, and squeezes his arm around Geralt briefly. “So lovely for me, my darling, my sweetheart, my love.”
Something itches at the back of his throat. He’s not - he’s mishearing him. He has to be. No one’s ever - “Jaskier,” he says again, barely more than a whisper.
Jaskier shuts his eyes and rests his chin on Geralt’s folded arm, carding a hand through Geralt’s loose hair where it sticks to his back with sweat. “My heart,” he whispers, and Geralt bites his cheek to blood and squirms along the sheets, drunk and dizzy and heartsick. “My love,” Jaskier sighs out, and Geralt, to his horror, feels fresh tears gather in his eyes. He tries to roll away, but his body is still half-jellied from orgasm and Jaskier’s nuzzled in tight against him, and when he pulls, Jaskier follows.
He ends up on his back with a confused bard half-sprawled over him, blinking in confusion. “Geralt?” he asks, and touches the corner of Geralt’s mouth with his thumb, rubbing his cheek in soft circles. “Darling?”
Darling. That’s a little better. That’s more like usual; Jaskier calls everyone darling, and he’s been calling Geralt darling since the first month they met, darling and dearest and dear heart and sweetling and even once, when he was very drunk, honey-voice.
But never. Never my love.
Geralt feels something wild and animal and gutting twisting inside of him, and Jaskier’s eyes are growing more blue and more worried by the moment. “Geralt,” he says, “please, darling, I would very much like it if you could answer me right now, you’re giving me quite a fright here -”
“I’m not,” he manages.
Jaskier stops. Squints. Touches a worried hand to Geralt’s jaw and tracing his lips like he could pull the answer from Geralt’s tongue by hand. “You’re not what, my love?”
Geralt - flinches, is the only word for it. “Not that. Not - not my love.”
Jaskier frowns, and leans back until he’s sitting on Geralt’s stomach, pinning Geralt into place and making that wild animal thing grow louder in his chest. Jaskier strokes a hand through his hair, and Geralt wants to cry, and he can’t seem to swallow quite right. “You are though,” Jaskier says, devastatingly gentle, his heartbeat even and honest. “You’re my love.” He tilts his head slightly. “...Has no one ever called you that?”
Geralt squirms, and puts a hand to Jaskier’s hip to anchor himself, feeling small, feeling like an exposed wound. “No,” he says tersely. “I’m not - I can’t be anyone’s love.”
Jaskier blinks slowly, and he keeps stroking Geralt’s hair with one hand and touching Geralt’s face with the other, and it’s so much that Geralt can barely think. “Why not?” Jaskier says gently.
Geralt shudders when Jaskier touches his chest. “I’m - Witchers aren’t. We’re not anyone’s love.” They’re monsters, or hunters, good for a fuck or a game of cards or as pest control, but they’re not meant to be kept. They’re not meant to roll over and show their bellies, open themselves up to hurt, open themselves up at all. They’re not meant for kind things, and Geralt may have deluded himself enough to believe that Jaskier could truly want him as a bedmate but he’s not - it’ll never be anything more than that. Geralt knows. That’s just how it works. “I can’t be,” he rasps.
Jaskier puts both hands on his chest, now, petting him slowly, and he’s still looking down at Geralt with his too-blue eyes and softness that Geralt half-wants to escape and half-wants to beg for. “You think you can’t be loved?” Jaskier says, and his scent turns sad, which makes the wild animal in Geralt buck around with panic. “You think I’m incapable of loving you?”
There’s a fine line here, Geralt thinks, between honesty and insult. “Witchers aren’t lovable,” he says thickly. “It’s not about you.”
“It’s very much about me,” Jaskier says, face creasing with heartbreak, his scent so sad. “I’m here, telling you how much I love you, and you don’t believe me.”
Geralt swallows. I love you rattles around his head like a rockslide tumbling down a hill, loud and disastrous. “I think you love everyone you meet, at least a little,” he says carefully. “And I believe that you believe you love me.”
Jaskier makes a wounded sound, mouth drawing up tight, and now there’s a flicker of anger in his scent. “You think I don’t know how I feel?” he asks, “You don’t think I’m perfectly aware of the truth of my heart?”
“Jaskier -” he tries, but Jaskier frowns so hard he shuts his mouth.
“You have no idea the kind of love I’m capable of,” Jaskier says fiercely, so bright and sudden it robs Geralt of breath. “You have no idea how much I regard you, Geralt of Rivia. You’re my love, and you’re my heart, and you’re the love of my life, and that is the truest thing I have ever said in my life.” His eyes suddenly fill with tears, and Geralt makes a wounded sound at the sight as Jaskier cups his cheek with a sniffle. “I love you,” he says. “I’ve loved you since the day we met, and I’ve loved you more every day since, and I will keep loving you with every inch of my heart and soul until the day I die, and after I die I will be loving you from wherever it is souls go when they leave our bodies.”
Geralt can’t - he can’t breathe. His entire body aches, from sex and from something that’s burning inside of him. He wants to go back to twenty minutes ago, when he was kneeling before Jaskier and he thought he knew his place in the world. “Jaskier,” he says helplessly.
“You can hear that I’m telling the truth, can’t you?” He can. “You have to know that it’s the truth, Geralt. It’s the truth. ”
“Jaskier…”
“I love you, Geralt, because you are so incredibly lovable. You are the most incredible, amazing, beautiful person I’ve ever had the privilege of meeting, and it’s my greatest honor in life to love you.” Jaskier’s breath hitches with a choked sob, and Geralt’s chest grows tight in sympathy. “It’s my choice to love you, Geralt, now and every day before now. It’s my choice to tell you that. It’s my choice to call you my love. But,” his voice breaks, and hot tears spill down his cheeks. “It’s not my choice whether you believe me. So I am asking you - please, dear heart, believe me.”
“.... Jaskier.”
“I love you,” Jaskier whispers, and leans down to kiss the words tearfully into Geralt’s mouth. “I love you, I love you, I love you. I should have said it before. I should have said it every day I’ve known you. Maybe you would believe me then.”
“I - “ the words stick in his throat. “Jaskier,” he whispers, and puts a shaky hand to the back of Jaskier’s head to keep him close, to kiss him longer. “I - I believe you,” he manages. “I believe you.”
Jaskier pulls back just enough to meet his gaze; he’s still crying, and Geralt wipes away his tears with a whine. “Do you?” he whispers. “Truly?”
“Yes,” he says slowly, painfully, and tries for a smile. “Even you aren’t that good at lying, bard.” And because Jaskier makes it sound so easy, like it's nothing all to love him, to love a Witcher. And because the wild animal inside of him sinks its fangs into his heart and hangs on; and because he wants to believe it like he's never wanted anything: that he's capable of being loved, and by someone like Jaskier.
Jaskier makes a noise and buries his face in Geralt’s throat. “I could never lie about this,” he mumbles into Geralt’s skin, and Geralt holds him as close as he can, wanting to never feel anything except for the warm weight of Jaskier’s body pressing down on him. “And I will tell you every day, so that someday you might believe yourself worthy of it. Because you are worthy, my love. The most worthy.”
Geralt’s eyes fall shut, and he takes a deep breath. And then another. And another. “I,” he says. Stops. Licks his lips. Tries again. “My love.”
“Dearest?”
“My love,” he repeats, shaky, the words dripping from his lips like honey. “You - you’re mine. You’re mine, too.”
He feels Jaskier’s breath hitch, and the wet of Jaskier’s tears. “Oh,” his bard whispers, and he slips his arms under Geralt’s shoulders until he’s cradling Geralt just as hard as Geralt is cradling him. “Oh. My love.”
“It’s the truth,” he manages. He doesn’t know a lot - doesn’t, maybe, know anything - but if there’s a world where Jaskier can love him, then surely Geralt can love him back. Surely he’s allowed to look inside himself and name the mess of what he’s feeling, to rip open his guts and show them to Jaskier, because if there’s anyone who deserves to see inside of him, it’s Jaskier. And if it makes him bad, makes him wrong - maybe they can simply be wrong together. Nothing could be so bad with Jaskier by his aide. “It’s the truth of how I - how I feel," he stumbles out, and thinks I love and I love and I love.
A wet laugh, and a press of trembling lips to his pulse. “I know,” Jaskier whispers, and pulls back so he can look down at Geralt and rest their foreheads together, and all Geralt can see is blue, blue, blue eyes full of wondrous tears and brimming with love. “I know it’s the truth, my love. I’ve always known.”
Geralt swallows. “Good,” he says quietly, “Good.” He takes a deep breath again, pressing into Jaskier’s warmth, and lets himself tremble when Jaskier leans down to lick a sweet, hot kiss into his mouth before he melds their bodies together for a second time, the words my love filling the air as they come together again, and again, and again.