“Hm?” Jaskier says, only half-listening, from where he’s apparently gotten distracted playing with the hair peeking through the vee of Geralt’s shirt.
Geralt grits his teeth, because if he starts thinking about that, then this conversation will be over, and – for once – Geralt’s the one who wants to keep having it.
Jaskier and Geralt keep trying to figure out their relationship. It keeps getting worse before it gets better.
When Jaskier finally has no more delays as an excuse, he swaggers over and drapes himself over the bench opposite the witcher, taking a long swig of his drink and studying the man across from him over the rim. The cider is almost painfully bad, acidic and aggressively alcoholic. Still, he appreciates it for the distraction it is from everything he’s trying very hard not to feel. He tries to look at the witcher with a stranger’s eyes, wondering if he would still love him despite all of the pain if he’d never known about the beautiful heart behind that handsome face. Annoyingly, the answer is “yeah, probably.” Surprisingly, Geralt speaks first. “Jaskier, listen, I want to-” “Sorry,” Jaskier interrupts, summoning all of the arrogance an upbringing like his can instill, “have we met before?” As approaches go, it’s fairly juvenile, but from Jaskier’s experience, there are few barbs more cutting than being forgotten entirely. He doubts Geralt will actually entertain the bit for any length of time, but it’s deeply satisfying to say. (being the petty bitch he is, jaskier pretends not to know geralt) (is it really HIS fault if geralt believes him??)
Geralt is on his feet at once when the portal opens in his room, reaching for his sword and unsheathing it in one smooth, practiced motion as he leaps from the bed. He squints against the light pouring into the dimness of the room, eyes stinging at the contrast, growling low in his chest on instinct at the invasion. His medallion hums like a bee against his chest, reacting to incredibly strong magic in the immediate vicinity. He shifts his weight, ready to attack-
Only to nearly stumble with the change in balance when a puff of orange smoke at his side causes something to wrap around his wrist. He snarls, turning and raising his sword for a blow.
And then nearly drops the blade entirely at the sight of a painfully-familiar bard at his side, dangling from his arm with shining handcuffs joining their wrists.
(after the mountain, geralt and jaskier have gone their separate ways) (until a drunken night at a pub with a sorcerer leads to jaskier accidentally getting them handcuffed together courtesy of the world's WORST wingmage)
Jaskier, sleepless as he has been almost every night since he came to Kaer Morhen, flops dispondantly in his bed and then hisses between his teeth when it jolts his hand and sends a shock of pain rippling up through his arm. The throb of it has contributed to his sleeplessness, and it’s stunning, how a little movement can make it hurt so much. He grips the wrist of that hand with his other and squeezes, breathing through the pain as it ebbs in waves until it settles to the usual burning pain it stays at.
Once it’s at a manageable level of pain once more, he turns more gingerly, staring at the lines of stone making up his ceiling. Idly, he wonders how many tons of stone are above him, and then he makes himself quit that line of thought when it makes his stomach flip with anxiety, imagining it all crashing down on him, squeezing the very breath from his lungs, burying him in agonizing darkness-
He jerks himself upwards, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.
He makes an annoyed, frustrated sound, and then repeats it in case doing it twice will make him feel better.
Even if almost everything else in his life still kind of sucks, Vegas at least thought things with Pete were going pretty well. The past is in the past, right? Everything's fine. Or not. Pete's reliving his trauma at night. Vegas has a crisis about it, and tries to figure out what he's supposed to do now.
Jaskier didn’t want to marry just any noblewoman--no matter how comely she may be--he wanted adventure and many loves, but most importantly his biggest, greatest love of all. He is not expecting that love to be in the form of a brooding stranger sitting at the back of a tavern. In one instant his breath catches in his throat at the beauty of the man before him and in the next, there’s a burning sensation on the bottom of his heel as his mark makes itself known. It’s pain and pleasure knotted together, roses surrounded by thorns.
It wasn’t like the belt had been the worst of it, not by far. The electricity was definitely Pete’s least favorite part, if he was going to start ranking all the times Vegas had tortured him. And the simple endless burn in his shoulders from being chained up with barely enough slack to stand was pretty bad too. Pain was pain. Pete had taken it before and he would take it again, probably, considering their line of work. He wondered if part of why Vegas regretted these scars in particular so bitterly was because he hadn’t even enjoyed giving them. He definitely wasn’t going to say that. He was just tired of Vegas touching him with regret. He wanted Vegas’s hands on him always, in every way, but not like that. “Okay,” Pete said. “Then let’s change them, if it bothers you so much.”
There’s a corridor off the main hall, a small, dark one that leads to nowhere in particular. That’s where Jaskier finds himself when the pain in his hand flares again, worse than before. It is there in the darkness that he stifles the cry of pain by biting down on his lip, blood filling his mouth as he stumbles against the wall.orRience has left a curse on Jaskier. Yen and Ciri to the rescue, Geralt has feelings™️ and Lambert is a little shit.
Vegas is wrestling with some abandonment issues and deals with this in a reasonable, healthy, and well adjusted way, which is to say by channeling his bad feelings into kinky sex.
When you have their relationship history, there's a lot of ways things can go wrong, and plenty of trauma to resurface.
Jaskier trembles slightly, looking up at Geralt’s profile. They had not thought to ask if the creature’s victims assaulted only the women of the village. It had hardly seemed like relevant information at the time, but now...Jaskier feels foolish, and flushed with shame and fear. He knows Geralt has laid with men before, just as Jaskier has, and if the monster’s bite drives men lust crazed it hardly seems like the magic is likely to discriminate based on something as silly as gender. Or, Geralt hunts an unknown monster whose victims become lust crazed and die of fever if their urges are not fulfilled. This is not how Jaskier imagined having sex with Geralt, and he has imagined it often. (Though the consent is definitely dubious, this is by no measure noncon. Please go elsewhere for that.)
Often, when they're alone, and Vegas looks into his eyes, it's like he's looking into a mirror. In these moments, Pete feels a tug in his heart, and knows that his soul no longer belongs wholly to himself, and that nothing could ever make him want to take it back.//A look into Pete and Vegas' relationship post-canon.
His second year with Geralt is as delightful as the first, and he even gets to ride Roach for a week after a tumble leaves him with a sprained ankle that won’t hold his weight. He feels rather like a princess in a fairytale, barely resisting the urge to wave at the plebeians around him while passing by to invite them to gaze upon his delightful self. His noble knight could stand to be a little less scowly and slap-y when Jaskier tries to take the reins for himself, but needs must, and at least Geralt looks the part, with all of that lovely silver hair and his very well-tailored trousers.
Their second year is also when he finally manages to find a key to finding out more about Geralt: his pupils.
(Geralt is the exact opposite of an open book) (Luckily, his eyes say plenty)
But it wasn’t just a nightmare, was it? Vegas almost died, and Pete was helpless to do anything about it; he could only watch as Vegas clung to life, as his breaths got shallower, slower.
The soft light of the bedside lamp breaks the darkness.
“Pete?”
*Pete is haunted by memories; Vegas is the only one who can make it better.
His grandmother told him when he was very young that there was no love in the world so filling as a place at the table. That there was no greater kindness, no greater expression of devotion, than to feed another, no better way to make them whole.~*~As the smoke begins to clear, Pete waits and wonders.
Vegas was thirteen when he had his first cigarette.Really, he was three months shy of his fourteenth birthday- all gangly limbs and awkward voice cracks, he was not yet a man but no longer a child.Khun Saetang made Vegas feel like a man when he gave him his first cigarette.orVegas reflects on his birthdays.
Morality was never black or white. It was a cloud of grey smoke, sometimes lighter, sometimes darker, depending on the intensity of the fire. And Pete’s world had gone up in flames ever since he had stepped into the minor family’s mansion on a mission fated for failure - one that ended with him face-to-face with Vegas Theerapanyakul.*A character study of both Pete and Vegas in a filler arc that occurs between Vegas getting shot at the end of the ambush at the major family mansion and him waking up in the hospital four weeks later.
Jaskier is twelve the first time he doubles over to retch and brings up only flowers. His nanny comes running when she hears him screaming between mouthfuls of petals, and she clicks her tongue when she finds him doubled over in a pool of flora, eyes wide and streaming with tears. He’s convinced he must have done something very naughty and been punished by the gods for it. He had felt a new way when he saw a new stablehand through a window, and the gods must have thought he was being bad, and now he’s going to die from flowers of all things.“Oh lovey,” his nanny says sympathetically, rubbing his belly where the muscles ache already, “it just means you’ve got a very special heart.” Jaskier gags again, spitting up daffodils and forget-me-nots into a basin, the entire room filling with a cloying floral scent. “I don’t want it,” he says firmly. If this is what having a “special” heart means, he wants one that’s mediocre. He’s never seen his sisters throwing up flowers. He wants one of those hearts, instead. (Jaskier has had an affliction that makes him vomit flowers since he was a child). (He finds the entire thing obnoxious, frankly).
It's a silly, silly thing, to keep the first coin Geralt gave him.It's a foolish, sentimental show of whimsy to hold onto a bit of metal that the witcher likely forgot about the second it left his hand.There's no point in keeping it. None at all. It would be absurd to hold onto it when it could be better spent on ale or bread or doublets. Jaskier sews it a special pocket in his bag. (Jaskier's life changed the day Geralt left him that coin. How could he NOT keep it?)
Prompt fill for ewanspotter on tumblr: "Would love to see your take on the fandom’s love of “Jaskier gets tortured by [insert villain here] to gain information on Geralt’s whereabouts” scenarios. Word associations for fun: stifled; crown; fare; antlers; box; persnickety; wax; broken; red current(s)In the aftermath of Jaskier's torture, Geralt wants nothing more than to be a balm for his bard's new scars.It's sensual hurt/comfort body-worship all the way down.
'Cos Darling I was born to rest my head between your shoulder blades (at night, when light is fading)
Behind him, there was a slight stirring, “Hmm, Geralt?”Geralt went still.“What you doin’?” Jaskier mumbled, clearly still half asleep. When Geralt dared to glance over, he could see the barest crack Jaskier had opened his eyes, searching blearily for Geralt’s form in the darkness. Human as his eyes were, Geralt was likely nothing but a shadow to him.“I—” Geralt began to explain, but then realised he had no fucking clue how to answer that question in a way that wouldn’t sound pathetic as fuck. What are you doing? Counting your breaths so I don’t have to imagine a knife drawing blood from your throat. Contemplating your morality. Protecting you from nothing because apparently, you’ve gone and made me care for you, you bastard. -///- Or, After a dangerous encounter with a group of Bandits, Geralt realises how much Jaskier means to him. It's terrifying. (But Jaskier is there to help ease the fear).
“Are you alright?” Jaskier asks. He’s been dragged outside again during the middle of one of his sets. That’s fine. He was almost expecting it. Geralt has become a little bit predictable, and a bad mood usually means he’ll want a quick pick me up at some point.
“I will be in a moment,” Geralt growls, and he pushes Jaskier up against the wall.
And it's fine. Normal. New normal. Jaskier goes and he goes happily and willingly. But there’s something that is tugging on his mind, something that aches.
He doesn’t put his finger on it until afterwards. “You really will have to start being more patient. I do need to make a living – and you dragging me away in the middle of my songs all the time is bad for business.”
Geralt gives a chuckle, “you’re saving money on the whorehouses, are you not?”
And oh.
Geralt is using him for sex.
-///-
Or, Jaskier and Geralt start having regular sex. Jaskier thinks it doesn't mean as much to Geralt as it does to him. He's wrong.
They were on the road again the next day and, having failed to think of a casual way to broach the topic of Geralt's cock, Jaskier asked, "Geralt, is your cock cursed?"
The look of utter bafflement on Geralt's face was nearly worth the two weeks endlessly mulling it over and the half a terrible song he'd composed about how worse than a pie with no filling, was going to get a pie and finding the pantry locked, warded, and impenetrable. Geralt looked down at him from atop Roach and seemed to fail to find words.
"It's fine if it is," Jaskier assured him.
Jaskier wants to touch Geralt, too.
