Chapter Text
"Why do you keep bothering me?" Yennefer snapped at him the third time he wandered into what had become her study.
"I guess I don't have anyone else to annoy," he'd said, not casually enough. She patted his shoulder, which was not comforting in the least.
"Don't worry, you grow on people. You're like a very friendly lichen."
When he woke up again he was alone in bed, but there was a cup of water on the nightstand and a mug of something that smelled like grass. There was a note in Yennefer's swooping handwriting: "just drink it you'll feel better."
He huffed out a laugh and, pinching his nose, took her advice.
"Why are you being nice to me?" he asked her once in a fit of self-pity. Geralt hadn't apologized and he'd spent the day wallowing.
"Because you're my favorite lichen."
He found Yennefer on a balcony dressed in a fur-lined coat overlooking the courtyard. Jaskier joined her. Below Geralt and Ciri were trading strikes and parries in a pattern she was getting quite good at. For a moment they stood in companionable silence.
"You left me a hangover cure," he said at last, teasing. "You like me."
"I just didn't want to listen to your constant complaining. Don't make me regret it."
"Nah, you like me, you can't fool me, witch." He bumped his shoulder against her, hoping she understood he was joking. "Didn't take you for a snuggler."
"I knew I should have poisoned you when I had the chance," she said so yes, she absolutely understood.
"We should talk about it when we're all sober. Clue Geralt in. He's not always great at subtext."
Yennefer snorted. "No, no he's not. It took him years to figure you out and you're the most obvious bastard I've ever met."
"As an artist and a poet I wear my heart on my sleeve," he huffed. There was something he wanted to ask, but it felt weird to say any of this out loud. He had only figured it out the night before. "How long?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"When you were trying to set us up?"
"Trying? I set you up successfully – you're welcome , by the way – you're the ones who fucked it up." She paused, then corrected herself. "Geralt did."
"We must be patient with him, dear, he's not good with feelings."
She raised her eyebrows at the endearment. "Don't think I'm going to go easy on you just because I'm… fond ."
"Fond." It made him smile.
"To answer your question, no. Not until the boat."
"Ah, you heard me get concussed with my own lute and thought, 'yes, now that is a man I desire carnally.'"
"I must have some sort of thing for dumb-arse men with no sense of self preservation."
He laughed. "And I for people who could kill me without breaking a sweat, it seems."
"No wonder you have so many lovers."
He pushed her playfully, laughing. Geralt must have heard him, because he looked up. When he saw the two of them he smiled broad enough Jaskier could see from where they were.
"What's his type, then?" he asked.
"Smartarses."
People always grew tired and left in the end, so he had to get his fill while he could. Jaskier became a hedonist – drank his fill across the Continent; dressed in the finest fashions; sang in every tavern and concert hall that would have him – but it was people he coveted most. It was easy to find someone, anyone to tumble into bed with, and he did. Often. But the people he loved and who loved him back, he would follow them to the edge of the world (or meet them there) because their time together was limited. He had to make the most of it while he could.
Geralt looked very confused.
"Where'd we lose you?" she asked.
"You- Jaskier-?" He looked between them. Jaskier reached out and took one of Geralt's hands in two of his.
"I love you, Geralt," he said again.
"Uh-huh."
"And Yennefer loves you."
That wasn't what she said but correcting him would probably only confuse their poor witcher further.
"And you're okay with that?"
"Yes," Jaskier assured him.
Geralt looked at her. "And you like him? "
Correcting him would definitely confuse him further, but this time she did anyway.
" Like is such a strong word."
Geralt opened and closed his mouth a couple of times. Finally he said, "Jaskier?"
As usual the bard knew exactly what he was asking. He looked at Yennefer and smirked.
"Sexy and very insane, like I told you."
"When was that?" she asked.
"First time we met, actually," he confessed and she laughed musically.
"How- how did you know?" Geralt asked.
"She grabbed me by the balls and held a knife to my throat. It was very illuminating."
"I mean ," Geralt said, frustrated. "That she liked you?"
"Oh. I wish I could say I figured it out a while ago, in hindsight she's really quite obvious. Hey!" He protested when Yennefer slapped his arm. "As I was saying before I was rudely assaulted –"
She hit him again. He hit her back. Geralt put his head in his hands.
"This is where I've laid my affections," he said in a way that startled a laugh out of Jaskier.
"I gave myself away last night," she said, because Jaskier wasn't ever going to finish the story if she waited on him.
"Didn't figure it out until I was sober, though," Jaskier added.
"So," she said, trying to bring the conversation back to the most important topic. "What do you think?"
Geralt looked at the two of them again.
"I think you've both gone mad," he said, but then he was smiling that sweet Geralt smile. "And I'd be a fool to say no."
"Yes!" Jaskier held up a hand for a high-five. She ignored him.
The countess had been clear: loving him was a lot of work. His nightmares were still an almost nightly occurrence and she hated being woken. He used to lay there, crying silently into a pillow, afraid of waking her. He got good at it. Still, sometimes it couldn't be helped. Sometimes he made noise before he woke, or even pushed her away in his sleep.
Because she loved him, she said, she would put up with it. She would politely ignore his tears, let him hold her if he asked. She listened if he talked about it, and she always kept his secret. (Kept it dangling over his head, he thought in a spiteful moment.)
She had been very clear. This was a kind thing she did for him. He couldn't possibly expect any other lover to do the same.
Jaskier had always had nightmares, as long as Geralt knew him. They weren't always common, certainly not as common as Geralt's, but it was a known problem. He knew it was only a matter of time before Jaskier had one of his worse nightmares in front of Yennefer.
They didn't all sleep in the same bed every night, but they did often enough – especially on nights when they became a sweaty, sticky tangle of limbs and no one wanted to walk back to their own room – that it was inevitable. Geralt worried how Yennefer would respond. She was very protective of her sleep and cranky on waking. Jaskier usually loved their verbal sparring, but he worried her sharp tongue would go too far when Jaskier was already feeling fragile and scared.
It was one of those nights, of course, when they fell asleep naked and exhausted and in each other's arms, when Jaskier awoke thrashing. And of course Jaskier had somehow ended up in the middle, so when he panicked and tried to escape before he woke up fully he ended up elbowing Geralt in the chest and then scrambling right over Yennefer in his fear.
"Sorry," Jaskier said when he realized where he was, and then he fell off the bed and threw up on the floor.
"The fuck?" Yennefer grumbled into her pillow.
"Don't be mad," he muttered to her, then, "Jaskier?"
Jaskier waved a hand at him vaguely over the edge of the bed, indicating that he was okay. When Geralt sat up he could see him kneeling on the floor, naked and shivering, bile stringing from his lip. Yennefer peeked at him with one eye.
"Ugh."
"Don't-" Geralt started to warn her when she reached out a hand, but she didn't touch Jaskier, just waved a hand and one of Geralt's cloaks floated off the hook to drape itself over Jaskier's shoulders. Then she dropped her head back into the pillow.
"Thanks," Jaskier rasped. He was still hunched over like he might be sick again, but at least he wasn't shivering. And, Geralt realized, Yennefer had magicked away the vomit on the floor. He looked at her, but she was already breathing evenly.
"Water?" he offered and Jaskier nodded.
While he got a fresh cup of water from the pitcher Jaskier climbed back onto the bed. He accepted the cup with a hand that still shook a little. There were tears on his cheeks, but he didn't seem to be actively crying. Jaskier passed back an empty cup and Geralt got up again to refill it. When he came back Jaskier had made himself a little more comfortable. Yennefer's hand rested right next to his knee, barely touching it with her pinky.
"Sorry," Jaskier said again.
"Don't be."
Jaskier indicated Yennefer with his gaze. "Is she already asleep again?"
"She's trying to be," said a very tired voice from the pillow.
Jaskier huffed a laugh. He nudged her hand with his knee and, once again proving herself to be utterly inscrutable, Yennefer reached out and patted his leg a couple times. Jaskier didn't flinch the way he sometimes did, which was probably a good sign he was starting to calm down, though he was clearly very fragile.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Geralt asked, because he always asked.
"Yen's trying to sleep," Jaskier said.
"Yen can deal with it."
"He means no, Geralt," Yennefer said, still face down on the bed. "Jaskier, do you want to cuddle?"
"No."
"Okay." She rolled over and patted the spot Geralt had abandoned. "C'mon."
Geralt looked at Jaskier, who shrugged. There wasn't much Geralt could do other than give him water, listen if he wanted to talk, promise no one would ever hurt him like that again. He climbed back under the covers and let Yennefer crawl half on top of him before she passed out again. He let one of his arms lay across the bed, an open invitation. After a moment Jaskier took his hand.
Geralt lay awake for a while, breathing in the smell of lavender and gooseberries that clung to Yennefer's hair and holding Jaskier's hand. When he finally drifted off to sleep Jaskier was still sitting against the headboard, bundled in his cloak.
Jaskier had never written a lullabye before. There was a frustrating lack of nursery rhymes in the Kaer Morhen library to draw inspiration from, and the whole thing took much longer than he'd hoped, but eventually he finished. He taught the others how to sing it, but when Ciri woke in the middle of the night screaming she always asked for him. He didn't mind. He would sing to her every night if it meant she wasn't pursued by nightmares anymore.
The gwent tournament had been Ciri's idea originally, but it was Lambert who latched onto the idea and Coen who ultimately organized it. After his first game Jaskier was banned for shameless cheating, which suited him just fine. Yennefer and Coen were in the middle of a surprisingly intense game – Jaskier didn't even realize Yennefer played, but then of course she was as competitive in this as everything else – when Jaskier tucked himself behind Geralt and began playing with his hair. Geralt had objected the first time he did this, but that had been before Ciri was even born. By now he just relaxed and let Jaskier do as he pleased as long as he took it out if Geralt didn't like it.
"Do we all have animal nicknames?" Ciri mused. She had evidently grown bored of the back-and-forth of the ongoing gwent game. "I mean, you're all wolves." She gestured at the witchers.
"No we're not," Eskel said on his way to go get more white gull.
"You're not?" she asked.
Jaskier's ears perked up. He hadn't heard they had any non-wolf witchers at the keep.
Lambert shook his head. "Coen's a griffin."
"Guilty," Coen said at the same time Jaskier repeated, "a griffin?"
"I didn't know there were any griffins," he continued. "You've been holding out on me."
"Tell you what, you can pick my brain after I win this game."
Yennefer scowled at him. Her scowl deepened when he put down his next card. "Are you cheating? Did Jaskier teach you to cheat?"
"I would never," Jaskier said, faux offended. "Besides, it takes skill to be as good at cheating as I am. You can't just pick it up."
"You're terrible at cheating," Geralt said. Jaskier tugged, not hard, on the braid in his hands.
"Be nice to me, I'm still heartbroken I've been disqualified."
"So we've got four wolves," Ciri said, gesturing to each in turn. "A griffin, and I'm the Lion Cub of Cintra." She looked at Jaskier. "Then what are you?"
“He’s the Sandpiper,” Yennefer said.
“ You’re the Sandpiper?” Ciri said at the same time Geralt said, “You’re the what ?”
“Sandpi- honestly, Geralt, I know you don’t listen when I talk, but Yennefer ?” said Jaskier.
“Does this mean you’re going to come up with animal nicknames for all of us?” Yennefer asked. Jaskier looked at her with a gleam in his eye.
“Yes, Shrew .”
They made faces at each other over Geralt's head until Coen drew her attention back to the game.
"How did you do that?" Ciri asked, wandering over to observe what he was doing with Geralt's hair.
"It's much harder on your own head," he cautioned her, even as he undid the five-stranded braid to show her.
Eskel returned with drinks and passed one to Geralt on his way to sit across from them. He watched Jaskier demonstrate the braid with some curiosity.
"You want to learn too, Eskel?"
"I was just thinking," Eskel said in that way that meant he was about to drop a conversational bomb. Eskel, Jaskier thought, was much more subtle in his mischief than Lambert was, but no less mischievous. "Aren't you from Kerack?"
Yennefer looked over like she knew where this was going. Jaskier concentrated on not letting anything show on his face.
"He's from Lettenhove," Geralt said.
"Which is near Kerack," Lambert helpfully added.
"Braids are significant in Keracki culture," Yennefer volunteered. She had the nerve to smirk when she met Jaskier's gaze. Then she saw the card Coen had just played and cursed creatively in Elder. Ciri glanced at him and he nodded, a silent promise. He'd tell her what those words meant later.
"Are you courting the White Wolf, Jaskier?" Eskel asked while he was temporarily distracted.
Jaskier flushed to the tips of his ears. "Don't be silly," he said, casual in a way no one believed. "No one does that anymore except…"
"Nobles?" Eskel suggested.
"Poets?" Yennefer said at the same time.
"Romantics?" Ciri added.
"I'm not courting anyone!" Jaskier squeaked, too defensive. Then, because he still didn't know how to leave well enough alone he added, "Five strands is entirely the wrong braid for courting!"
"What does five strands mean?" Ciri asked. The game of gwent had been abandoned. Everyone was looking at him.
"Okay, it would maybe…" he conceded. Eskel looked smug. "If! If I had the right ribbons and actually did a good job instead of faffing around, it could be a courting braid…" He met Yennefer's eyes over Geralt's head. "...if he were being courted by two people."
From the moment they met – Geralt brooding in the corner, Jaskier stuffing bread into his pants – Jaskier had made it clear what he wanted. He had never been subtle about anything in his life, and he supposed it would be foolish to start now.