Archive of Our Own

Geralt knows the bard is a selkie the moment he enters the pub. The scent moves off of him in waves, a waft of saline air and mist and warm sun, tempered by his own individual smell, green things and cool, damp stone. The former is strong, still, indicating that he’s been in his other form recently. 

It’s all Geralt can do not to sneeze, it’s so powerful. 

The bright little fool prances along to his table and then along on his Path at once, no trace of common sense or self-preservation to be found. He doesn’t admit to being a selkie, and Geralt pretends he doesn’t see the pelt tucked away in his bag each time the bard digs through. The bard doesn’t admit to being what he is, and Geralt knows enough about complicated pasts and the hardships of being an other to not ask. 

It’s hard, at times, to keep playing at ignorance when the intrepid little moron dumps out the entire bundle of his sleek, downy-soft pelt in search of a new quill, but if he isn’t going to bring it up, Geralt’s certainly not going to pry, even though he does have to prompt the bard surreptitiously more than a few times when the flighty little pest evidently forgets all about his pelt and moves to happily trot along on his way, his freedom left behind in the dust. It’s a fine line Geralt walks, playing dumb while hyper-aware of the situation, but he manages to hold his peace and remain silent even when he wants to scold the selkie to be fucking careful. The bard babbles along at length throughout the day enough without prompting; gods forfend Geralt give him any sign of encouragement for more.

Still, despite Geralt’s best efforts, he finds that the selkie–who has chosen Jaskier as his name of all things–is growing on him. 

It is, in a few words, fucking obnoxious. 

Still, when those massive blue eyes turn his way, sparkling with joy and zest for life that Geralt doesn’t think he’s ever felt, even before his mutations, it’s a hard thing to not lean in. It’s addicting, the taste of happiness Jaskier tries to share with him at every turn, as if pleasure and contentment were as readily available as sunshine and as easily enjoyed, too. He catches himself slipping, at times, enjoying a bun all the more because of the pleased noises Jaskier makes while downing his half, leaning into the touch as the selkie bats his own hands aside and insists on washing out Geralt’s hair himself. He catches himself purring one morning before he’s fully awake and realizes to his horror that it’s in response to Jaskier’s warmth curled against him, the bard having crept ever closer around the campfire in the night. Geralt’s purring stops immediately, and the sounds for the rest of the morning are exclusively from Jaskier, strident complaints about rude witchers who dump innocently snoozing bards out of their bedrolls like they’re flipping fucking hotcakes, Geralt.

(Geralt hates that even the fussing makes him want to smile, amused by the passion behind it and the wild promises of dire vengeance).

He wakes the next morning to the bard snuggled close again and endures another day of reprimands for his immediate handling of the issue, and the cycle continues for an unbelievable number of days, Jaskier evidently completely unable to learn a lesson no matter how many times he’s faced with consequences. 

Geralt’s attempt to make the bard cease and desist lasts until a contract takes him close to a coastal town, and he catches sight of seals on a beach. Jaskier’s eyes linger on them as his scent spikes with wistfulness and no small touch of sorrow, the animals huddled together in a warm pile soaking in the sunlight, dozing happily while pressed into a large group, each member touching. Watching Jaskier watching them makes Geralt realize exactly where the bard’s desire to press close in sleep comes from, and as much as he tries to resist the sensation, it suddenly makes him feel like the worst sort of dick that he’s spent so long denying Jaskier a small comfort that he very clearly misses dearly, a comfort that costs Geralt nothing to provide. 

(It gains him a great deal, in fact, the unexpected pleasure of a trusting body against his, but he isn’t ready to face that fact yet and scrupulously ignores it accordingly). 

The next time he wakes to Jaskier pressed tight, he lets him remain as he is while Geralt rises to begin packing up camp. When the bard blinks awake half an hour later in response to Geralt nudging at his foot, his happy, sleepy smile is almost enough to make Geralt smile in return. (He puts a little more force into his next kick to the bard’s ankle to make up for it). 

*

Jaskier doesn’t get any better about keeping track of his pelt, and without quite knowing how, Geralt ends up becoming the steward of it, plucking it up from chairs and floors and rocks and tree limbs, bundling it away with his own possessions. It makes his own things absolutely soaked in the scent, and he endures unbelievable amounts of teasing for deciding to turn human and seek a selkie bride when he returns to Kaer Morhen that winter, but there are worse things that smelling of Jaskier at the end of the day, and it at least relieves his own anxiety, keeping hold of the fur and knowing it won’t fall into the hands of someone who would use it to hurt and control Jaskier.

The bard still hasn’t confessed to being a selkie, and Geralt doesn’t ask when he slips away near bodies of water and comes back damp, the soaking pelt over his arm before he tosses it thoughtlessly somewhere. Geralt always keeps track of where it falls, knowing the bard likely forgets about it the moment he’s not holding it anymore, but he keeps his peace on the matter. He still expects Jaskier to get bored eventually and decide to wander off, and it’s no business of his to dig more into the past of someone who won’t even be around much longer. 

*

It’s in their third year of traveling together that Jaskier finally confesses, given absolutely no other option.

It’s been a dry year, and in late summer, the sun is still witheringly hot. It’s not quite enough to be a drought, but water sources aren’t as plentiful as they normally are, lakes shrinking back and some smaller creeks drying up altogether. 

Jaskier seems to flag as the year goes on, arriving fresh and energetic in spring but slowly fading. His footsteps drag more each day, and he smells nervous for reasons he won’t tell Geralt about when asked. He just pastes on a bright smile. 

Contracts have taken Geralt to an especially dry section of the Continent, water provided by springs enough to keep them hydrated but too precious for things like proper baths in inns. Jaskier’s anxiety grows by the day, and it makes Geralt twitchy in response, his body responding to the scent of the bard’s nervousness. It makes him even more vigilant than he usually is, trying to watch for a threat that he doesn’t even know actually exists. 

The tension winds ever tighter until one morning when the sun is already baking the earth from where it peeks above the treeline. Geralt will be glad when they’re finally free of this portion of the Continent and can move to a place less overwhelmingly sweltering. For all that he can tolerate heat better than someone without enhancements, it’s still far from enjoyable to bake in the sun day after day. 

He frowns when he catches sight of Jaskier from the corner of his eye, trembling slightly. The bard is pale, and combined with the shaking, all signs are pointing to him being too cold. 

Which would only make sense if there wasn’t already sweat beading along Geralt’s hairline. 

Still, he leads them along in quiet for nearly an hour, which is concerning even without the physical symptoms, pointing clearly to the fact that Jaskier isn’t well. The bard hasn’t gotten ill since they began traveling together, at least not worse than a normal reaction to pollen for a few weeks in spring, and Geralt doesn’t actually know how to broach the subject. For someone who once complained for a full week about a blister, Jaskier is also unsettlingly quiet about his condition, shuffling along in silence. 

Right as Geralt is about to turn and finally ask him what’s wrong, Jaskier collapses, one motion straight to the ground, like a puppet with its strings cut. 

Geralt dismounts immediately, moving with inhuman speed to the bard’s side, turning him onto his back as gently as he can manage and slapping his cheek lightly. Jaskier’s eyelids flutter, but he doesn’t fully rouse, and Geralt curses. Roach wanders back over and noses at the bard, snuffling at his hair. Geralt pushes her nose away gently and picks Jaskier up, moving to the treeline, Roach following close behind. Far from feeling cold as his appearance would indicate, the bard feels like he’s burning, his skin dry and hot to the touch. Geralt settles him under the shade of a tree and starts tugging his doublet off, his chemise following. 

Geralt dampens a cloth and works it over his skin, and Jaskier begins to rouse at last, pressing against the cloth. It would be funny under absolutely any other circumstance, but Geralt just dampens it more, moving it up to his face. Jaskier’s lashes flutter for a moment before his eyes actually open, dazed and unfocused. 

“Bard?” Geralt asks, voice gruff, and Jaskier’s eyes slowly focus more before he groans, closing his eyes once more, his brow crinkling with pain. 

“Fuck,” he hisses, even as he still leans against the cloth. “Fucking…fucking tit balls.”

Geralt snorts at that. 

“What’s wrong with you?” He asks, rewetting the cloth. It appears to be helping, and so he continues, propping the bard up slightly to help him also take a drink. 

“I, uh,” Jaskier says, opening his eyes. He looks afraid, suddenly, and Geralt doesn’t know how to read that, which makes his own unease rise higher. 

“Humans can survive in this heat for longer,” Geralt says, frowning. He’s pretty sure, at least. He hasn’t had a lot of experience with them beyond the boys who came to Kaer Morhen before their trials, but he doesn’t think someone like Jaskier should swoon before the day’s heat is even at its peak, especially when Geralt’s been making sure his water skin is filled. 

“Humans can,” Jaskier says, and his scent sours with fear. “But what if I…wasn’t?”

“You were fine last summer,” Geralt says before it dawns on him exactly what’s different between last summer and this one. “Oh, the dryness. How often do selkies need to shift?” 

He’s asking to try and diagnose the problem so he can figure out how to fix it, but his question makes Jaskier pale even further, until he’s the sort of pallid Geralt’s only seen on corpses before, which is more than slightly alarming. He tries to bring the water skin to Jaskier’s lips again, hoping to help, but the bard just tilts his head away, eyes massive. 

“You…you know?” He asks, voice frightened. “How long?” 

“Since we first met?” Geralt answers honestly. “It’s not like you’re that fucking subtle with your pelt, and besides, selkies have a scent unique to them. You couldn’t have hidden it, not from me.” 

Jaskier’s brow furrows. 

“And you…don’t care?” His voice is mystified, and Geralt raises an eyebrow. 

“Why the fuck would I?” He’s never hunted a selkie before, never had reason to. He’s rarely encountered them to start with, and the ones he has have either been wild, happy to keep their distance, or trapped in marriages they have no choice in, miserable and itching to escape. He’s had more than a few people, mainly men looking for beautiful, exotic wives, try to hire him to capture one for them, but he’s always refused, disgusted by the idea. 

“Why would you,” Jaskier parrots faintly, and Geralt has no more time for this strange guessing game. 

“How much water do you need to change in?” Geralt asks, and Jaskier blinks at him, speaking slowly, as if he’s still not sure it’s not a trick. 

“I don’t need the water to change,” he offers tentatively, “just my pelt. But I need to be submerged in some kind of water at least once a week or so, and salt water as often as I can, once a month if I can manage it.” 

Geralt nods, and Jaskier squeaks when he’s picked up, flailing wildly until he lands with his arm around Geralt’s neck, holding on tight even though he’s carried securely, his weight practically nothing against Geralt’s strength. 

“Um,” Jaskier asks nervously, “where are we going?” 

“To find some water to dunk you in,” Geralt says, hoisting him up in the saddle. 

“Oh,” Jaskier says, appearing slightly dazed. 

It takes around an hour more until Geralt gets them to a farmhouse. For once, Jaskier stays out of the negotiations, Geralt taking the lead. The farmer is confused by their presence but not hostile, perking up when she hears their names. From the way her face lights up in wonder, she’s heard Jaskier’s songs. 

Perfect. 

She’s confused when Geralt negotiates to borrow one of the large metal troughs from her barn, but she agrees easily enough when he promises to bring her a deer in exchange. Jaskier observes him with watchful, cautious eyes as Geralt drags the trough into the woods, a bucket in one hand, the bard following along behind on Roach. Jaskier seems to cotton on to what he’s doing after the fourth bucketful of water from a spring, and his face creases in a way that Geralt would call adorable if he was absolutely anyone else. 

Once it’s full enough, he helps Jaskier down and then digs through his bags for the pelt. Jaskier takes it with quick hands, nearly snatching it away, blushing slightly when he registers what he’s done. It’s mildly offensive, but Geralt thinks of the listless, despairing eyes he’s seen in captive selkies before and decides he can get over it. 

“Um,” Jaskier says, coloring darker. “Do you mind…turning around? I can’t shift if there’s anything between my skin and my pelt, so I need to…disrobe.” 

Geralt raises an eyebrow at the uncharacteristic display of modesty but complies. Given how the bard usually revels in his nakedness, lounging about like he’s posing for a bawdy portrait, the sudden wish for privacy is wildly unexpected from him. Idly, Geralt wonders if he’s finally at the end of the near-constant attempts at seduction he’s fielded in their time together, the bard flirting shamelessly whenever he gets a chance to. 

He hears rustling as Jaskier strips behind him and then the sound of the bard stepping into the water. He smiles slightly, amused, when he hears a heavy plop and the sound of water sloshing out. A soft, hesitant bark prompts him to turn around, and he finds himself being watched by a fur seal with large, black eyes and long whiskers. There’s fear still beneath the strong ocean scent, and Geralt keeps his motions slow and easily visible when he moves to pick up the bucket and replace the water that sloshed out. Unable to stomach the fear he’s being watched with, he pours a bucket over the seal’s head and is rewarded with disgruntled snorting and whining barks, Jaskier evidently distracted from his hesitance by offense. Geralt does it again, pleased with his success, and finds himself splashed with a smack of the seal’s tail against the water. He would scowl if the selkie didn’t look so pleased with himself, and instead he just pours in one more bucket of water, flicking the last bit of it across Jaskier’s snout before he drops onto a rock and leans his forearms against the edge of the trough. 

He exhales a huff of a laugh when the seal ducks beneath the surface and spins with what looks like happiness. Remembering what Jaskier said about salt water, he rises to go through their bags and grab the pouch of salt, pouring a good handful into the water. Jaskier mixes it with one flipper and then wriggles with pleasure, eyes closing. 

“Enough, or do you need more?” Geralt asks, and Jaskier peeks open one glossy eye, shaking his head slowly. “Enough?” Geralt clarifies, and this time he receives a nod. He cinches the pouch once more and returns it to its bag before taking a seat once more on the rock, amused by watching the seal duck his head in and out of the water and occasionally spinning again. 

After a good half-hour, Jaskier seems fully content in his bath. It’s an absolutely absurd sight, a seal lounging in a metal horse trough, tail flopping over the edge and flippers waving languidly in the same way Jaskier’s arms do when he’s humming a song to himself while dozing in sunshine. Geralt reaches into the water and flicks a few droplets at him to get his attention, receiving a glare for it. 

“Are you alright now?” 

The seal nods, ducking beneath the water again before he rises, shaking himself out like a dog. Geralt scowls, wiping the water from his face, but he heeds when Jaskier moves his head, pointing with his nose to indicate that Geralt should turn his back once more. He hears a noise like the rustle of velvet over skin, and then the noises in the water are less sloshy, more like the sounds of a person bathing. He hears Jaskier stepping out and cursing to himself when he apparently slips, but he evidently catches himself before Geralt can turn and offer to help. The sounds of cloth tell him that he’s dressing once more. 

“Alright,” Jaskier says at last, and Geralt turns, finding that the bard has put on his trousers once more but not bothered with anything else beyond his chemise. His dripping pelt hangs in one hand, and he watches Geralt with hesitant eyes, although with less fear than before. 

“Once a week, you said?” Geralt confirms, and Jaskier nods. 

“Yes. It doesn’t need to be salt all the time. Just has to be water.” 

Geralt nods this time and moves to overturn the tub. He’s not sure it’s good for the plants, salt water poured over them, but he’s not about to carry a tub of water all the way back to find a better place to dispose of it. Besides, he has a sneaking suspicion there’s probably a sorcerer somewhere who would love to do fucked up things with selkie bathwater. Better to let it soak into a forest in the middle of nowhere. 

Once it’s empty, he hauls it up over his shoulder and nods his head for Jaskier to grab the bucket. He fumbles with his pelt when he does, but he grabs it, holding it in front of him like a shield. Geralt frowns but moves again, leading them back. 

The woman clearly has questions about what they were doing in the forest with a watering trough, but she keeps her peace. Geralt sets out at once to bag the deer he promised, and Jaskier stays behind, slipping easily into his friendly self, gregarious as ever even as Geralt can still see tension in his body that isn’t normally there. 

*

Geralt half-expects to find Jaskier gone when he gets back back, fled from terror, never to be seen again. It hurts in a way he thought he’d already prepared himself for, imagining it, but it still makes him feel like he’s lost something, the idea of traveling alone again.

It’s an unexpected pleasure, then, when he returns to find Jaskier perched on the bed in the room they’ve been given for the night, anxious still but there at least. He jumps slightly when Geralt enters, nervous in a way Geralt has never experienced before, but he holds his nerve enough to square his shoulders. Geralt raises his eyebrows with interest, leaning against a wall on the opposite side of the room and slowly sliding to sit on the floor, legs loosely bent in front of him, arms resting on his thighs. He waits for Jaskier to make the first comment, to hash out whatever it is that’s making him act so odd, and the bard doesn’t disappoint. 

“What happens now?” He asks, making a clear effort to keep his voice even. It hits Geralt then, as it has a few times, how wrenchingly young Jaskier is. He knows selkies can live almost indefinitely, but if the bard has been truthful about his age, he’s scarcely seen 21 years, a number that seems wildly small against Geralt’s own. He tilts his head, tracing the lingering signs of youth in Jaskier’s features. Selkies stay young and beautiful for their entire lives, one of the things that makes them such attractive prey for people who crave such things in a partner, but he can see where Jaskier’s face has sharpened a little with age, his face losing some of the lingering baby fat it held when they first met. He’s broader now through his chest and arms, strong from months of tramping along after Geralt and helping to hoist kills around. Still, when Geralt looks in his eyes once more, all he can see is a scared youth. He leans back more, tries to make himself look loose and open, less threatening. 

“Supper and then sleeping?” Geralt drawls, and Jaskier’s eyes narrow a moment, his mouth twitching in displeasure at the sarcasm. 

“I’m being serious,” he says, voice close to a snap. His nerves are clearly frayed from sitting and fretting, and Geralt takes pity on him. 

“I’ve carried your pelt around for years without problem,” he points out, and Jaskier bites the inside of his cheek briefly, a tic that Geralt knows means he’s thinking something through. 

“Yes, but you didn’t…know,” he finishes weakly, face scrunching when he realizes that actually, Geralt did know. “You never said anything,” he accuses, and Geralt can’t help but smile slightly at the outrage in his tone. 

“Neither did you,” he points out. 

“Yes, well,” Jaskier fidgets, picking at his cuticles briefly. Geralt’s impulse is to move across the room and tug his hand away before the bard makes himself bleed, but he remains where he is. “Why didn’t you say anything?” 

“You didn’t want to tell me,” Geralt says with a shrug. “I figured there was a reason. I don’t pry into people’s personal business.” The little scowl that flickers across Jaskier’s face tells him that his emphasis hasn’t been missed, but Jaskier elects to ignore the jab at his own perpetual nosiness. 

“People usually… want things. From us.” Jaskier says, his cadence stilted in a way it never usually is. He’s clearly trying to get to the bottom of things without being insulting, and it’s messing up his flow. 

“I want you to stop going through my things,” Geralt offers, and Jaskier gives him a look, unamused. “And to stop saying you’re buying jam for me when you’re the only one who eats it.” 

“I’ve seen you eat rhubarb jam,” Jaskier shoots back, “with my own two eyes.”

“And yet it miraculously never finds its way into the things you bring back from the market,” Geralt argues back, an old point of what could be called playful contention between them. “While strawberry and blueberry are always magically available.” 

“Because those are- no,” Jaskier refocuses himself with a frown and a shake of his head. “Not time for jam discourse right now.” He fixes Geralt with a serious look. “You’re really not planning to do anything now that you know?” 

“I’ve always known.” 

“Geralt,” Jaskier says, clearly exasperated with him. Geralt shrugs. 

“Now I know to soak you in water more often, but no. Nothing else needs to change. Why would it?” 

Jaskier doesn’t respond, but he gives Geralt a tentative smile, and that feels like enough of a foundation to build on. 

*

They part that fall and Geralt lets Jaskier get down the road and nearly around the turn of the road before he calls to him. 

“Have your pelt?” 

Jaskier freezes at the question, and Geralt can practically see him trying to remember if he remembered to pack it away. The answer is no, but Geralt lets him think about it for a moment, pulling it from where he stored it at the top of a saddlebag after finding it balled up under the bed of their inn room last night. 

The bard jogs back looking sheepish and accepts his pelt with a grateful smile. Geralt holds onto it before he releases it and gives the selkie a stern look. 

“Don’t lose it,” he tells him firmly, and Jaskier gives him a sunny smile, tugging to gain possession of the pelt. 

“Don’t worry, you big fretful thing, you. I’ll keep it nice and safe over winter and get it directly back into your keeping come spring.” 

Geralt’s faith in the validity of the “nice and safe” part of that statement fades rapidly as he watches Jaskier walk away once more, unaware that an edge of the pelt is hanging out of his satchel, dragging in the dust behind him as the bard walks jauntily on, singing a cheerful celebration song to the trees for turning such beautiful shades of red and orange. 

Still, the promise of a meeting in spring, improbable as it is, still has Geralt smiling ever so slightly as he turns away, nudging Roach into motion.  

*

Jaskier does in fact find him again in spring, smile blindingly bright as he darts through the crowd and tosses himself at Geralt. Geralt doesn’t return the embrace beyond a single pat to the bard’s back, but when Jaskier pulls back, he grins as if Geralt has kissed him. The bard tugs him into motion immediately, recounting for him in detail all of the court drama he missed out on over the winter. They’re halfway to the inn when Jaskier freezes. 

“Oh, fuck, I was shopping,” Jaskier says, about-facing immediately and darting off once more. 

Geralt rolls his eyes but follows, arriving in time to see the bard trying to reclaim his bag from thieves who took advantage of it left unattended on the ground. Jaskier’s smile is strained as he tugs at the strap, speaking through his teeth. The thieves exchange greedy, satisfied looks and step forward, attempting to menace Jaskier with their size. 

Geralt steps forward then, stopping at Jaskier’s shoulder and meeting their eyes evenly, moving one hand casually to rest on the pommel of the dagger at his hip. 

The thieves suddenly find their moral center and make themselves scarce, shoving Jaskier’s bag back at him and darting off. 

“And let that be a lesson to you!” Jaskier calls after them, full of the same sort of confidence that makes ladies’ dogs so yappy from their secure places in embroidered handbags. 

Geralt raises an eyebrow when the bard turns to him. 

“Truly, Geralt, one winter I’m going to entice you to remain with me,” he says with confidence, leading the way once more to the inn. “It’s ever so convenient to have a witcher at one’s side for unpleasantness like today.” 

“I think your life would be far more pleasant if you would just keep track of your belongings,” Geralt observes dryly, but Jaskier dismisses him with careless waves of his hand. 

“Oh please, that’s what I’ve got you for, dear witcher.” 

And well, Geralt’s been kept around for worse. 

*

Geralt gets to watch Jaskier in the water many times over the years that follow, his sleek body moving in arcs and twirls underwater, as graceful as any dancing girl. When he’s feeling particularly like a show-off, he balances stones on his nose for Geralt’s supposed entertainment or demonstrates exactly how high he can jump out of the water. When they’re at the coast, he sometimes finds other selkies, and it makes Geralt feel a strange sort of satisfaction, watching Jaskier’s joy at finding others of his kind. It made him feel unsure, the first time, certain that Jaskier will decide to remain with the colony of selkies, but the bard always emerges from the surf after a few hours of aquatic acrobatics and playfighting, dripping and practically glowing with contentment, tossing himself down beside Geralt, damp and happy. 

After Geralt makes a comment meant to be a tease about Jaskier’s lack of attempts in also providing supper when camping, the bard disappears in a huff with his pelt and a rope, returning less than an hour later with a string of fish that he tosses proudly at Geralt’s feet. Geralt thinks idly of a pet cat bringing its owner presents and lets the bard have his victory, even as he’s absolutely insufferable about it for the next week. 

It takes a while before he coaxes Geralt to join him in the water when he’s in seal form, Geralt finally folding on a day that’s absolutely roasting in its heat. Jaskier turns tight circles around him when Geralt dives and dodges a grab when he nudges at Geralt’s feet like the little pest he is. It turns into a chase, then, Geralt trying in vain to catch him while Jaskier evades him easily, too fast for even a witcher underwater. When they both climb out of the water hours later, their shared mood is exhausted but happy. 

It feels foreign, really, the joy Jaskier causes in him. It’s as if the world looks brighter when the bard points it out to him, when he shares the simple joys of good bread and cool breezes and summer sunsets. It’s more content than Geralt’s felt in years, and he mistrusts it most of the time, sure that there’s a catch, that someone is waiting to yank the rug from under his feet. Witchers don’t get to love life with Jaskier’s relish, don’t get to look forward to what a new day will bring, even if it’s only a vividly blue rock pushed into his palm for safe keeping. 

Still, when Jaskier grins at him and stretches in the morning sun, asking what adventure they’ll face in the new day, it’s so, so easy to pretend.

*

“My mother was a selkie,” Jaskier says quietly one balmy midsummer night, crickets chirping out a lazy rhythm in the grass nearby. Geralt, lying beside him, their pallets parallel but not quite touching, doesn’t respond, doesn’t break the tentative trust Jaskier is extending in telling him this, a story about his past that finally rings of truth instead of whatever pretty story he’s decided to spin in the moment for the delight of his audience. “She and the midwife kept my being a selkie a secret. When we’re small, we need more time in salt water. She hired the midwife as my nursemaid and had her take me down to the sea in secret at night and in the early morning. My mother kept my pelt locked up in a secret drawer in her wardrobe when I wasn’t using it.” Jaskier laughs once, darkly. “Maybe it’s why I like clothes so much now.” Jaskier shifts then, and Geralt can hear the pain in his voice. “My father used to let her change every few weeks in a tub in a locked room that only he had the key to.” The bard inhales a sharp, shaky breath, and Geralt can taste salt on the air when the first tears spill. “It would have been agony, living like that. Selkies can survive in fresh water for a while, but years?” Jaskier shudders. “It was enough to keep her from dying, but it wasn’t living, what he made her do.” 

Doubting himself even as he moves, Geralt slowly wraps an arm under Jaskier’s head, settling it in the crook of his elbow and resting his hand on his shoulder. The bard stiffens for the briefest moment in surprise, and Geralt prepares to remove the touch, but then Jaskier relaxes into it, turning slightly and resting a tentative hand over Geralt’s chest, feeling the heartbeat beneath his palm. 

“It was a fight about me going to Oxenfurt that made him kill her,” Jaskier tells him, the words carrying the cadence of a confession, as if his father’s sin is his to bear. Geralt doesn’t have words for most things he wants to, and he certainly doesn’t have them for pain like this. He firms his touch and hopes it helps. “He made her wait too long, trying to punish her for going behind his back to send in my entrance fees too late for him to stop me from going. Once word was out, he couldn’t go back on it. It would have shamed him.” Jaskier stops and breaths deliberately for a moment, clearly an effort to self-soothe, and Geralt can’t help but turn and tug him closer, trying to press whatever support he can into the touch. “I stole her pelt during the funeral,” Jaskier says, and Geralt is relieved to hear the slightest thread of mischievous satisfaction in the words, “and then I rode for Oxenfurt like I had devils at my heels.” 

*

There’s a question that Geralt feels almost mean for asking, but in the days that follow, it stays right in his mouth, ready to leap from his tongue at a moment’s notice. 

“Why aren’t you more careful with your pelt?” Geralt asks at last, when he can’t help himself any longer. “Knowing…” He hesitates. It isn’t his place to say this, to ask this question, but he truly can’t resist. The velvety pelt seems to weigh like a stone in the bag behind his left thigh. “Knowing what your father was like.” 

Jaskier doesn’t answer for a long time, and Geralt prepares to never know. 

“I can’t live as if my father lurks behind every corner,” Jaskier says at last. “I can’t believe the world is full of men like him.” He gives Geralt a pained, self-conscious smile. “What would be the point of living in a world like that?” 

Geralt doesn’t have an answer, and Jaskier doesn’t elaborate further. He’s quiet for another hour, his usual limit for remaining silent, and then he swings his lute around and picks out a jaunty tune, making up a ballad for Roach. The horse’s ears swing back to him with every mention of her name, but she seems otherwise unaffected by the effusive praise of her coloring and mane and loyalty and skill. 

Jaskier serenades other objects at random throughout the day, particularly shiny rocks or especially green trees. Geralt is handed a few of the muses to tuck away in a pocket, but he doesn’t comment. It’s a distraction, what Jaskier’s doing, a signal that he’s finished talking about his past for the moment. Geralt respects the decision and doesn’t pry, but he doesn’t forget it.  

Geralt thinks about Jaskier’s answer for a long, long time. 

*

Geralt doesn’t fully understand the extent of the trust Jaskier places in him, not really, until the day he sees other selkies watching Jaskier retrieve his pelt, taking it from Geralt with a bright thank you and then running to join the pod, skipping on the hot sand with muffled curses, leaving a long trail of discarded clothing in his wake. The other selkies watch Geralt with mistrust, but he’s used enough to that to be unbothered, moving to collect Jaskier’s clothing before it blows away. The bard’s usually at least a little more careful with his outfits, but Geralt knows it’s been a while since he’s gotten to transform, and at least a year since he’s gotten to swim with other selkies. He snorts when he sees Jaskier faceplant, tripping over a hole, but the bard is up once again immediately. 

Picking up the clothes also brings Geralt close enough to hear the other selkies, their voices nearly drowned out by the crashing surf but still audible, if only just. He keeps his head down when he hears a selkie man stop Jaskier before he slips into his pelt. 

“We can help you,” the man says, and from the corner of his eye, he can see that the man has a gentle grip on Jaskier’s wrist, the other selkies nodding earnestly. 

“Yes, dear,” another selkie, her tone maternal, adds. “We can distract him, and you can change and swim far. He won’t be able to catch you. We won’t let him.” 

“Who, Geralt?” Jaskier asks, his voice still light but confused. “Trust me, I’m in no danger from him.” 

“Love,” the man says, “we saw him with your pelt.” His voice is gentle, but Geralt sees Jaskier tip his head like a puppy in a question. 

“Yes?” He says, clearly not understanding. “He grabbed it for me last night after I nearly left it at a pub, dear thing. It’s really better that he keeps hold of it. I’d have lost it ages ago without him, really.” 

“Oh sweetheart,” another female selkie puts in, “I know it might feel like love, but enough of us have been through it before, or lost loved ones to it. Possession isn’t love. Being allowed to use your pelt at his leisure isn’t freedom.” 

“I let him keep my pelt because I choose to,” Jaskier says, voice firm. “I know the history of our people, the dangers we face, but I have never, not once, had reason to fear that from Geralt. He’s a good man, the best I know. I’m never safer than when I’m with him. I want to swim with you all, truly I do, but I won’t hear these things about him. There’s no one else in the world I would trust with my pelt like I trust him.” 

The other selkies keep their peace after that, and the group sets off, twisting and turning through the waves. 

Geralt, still reeling slightly from the force of the trust placed in him, sits down in the sand and waits, easily picking out one selkie in particular as he dives through the waves, spinning and twisting and leaping, joy clear in every movement.

*

Jaskier staggers his way up the beach later, soaked and naked but smiling like the sun. He accepts his clothes when Geralt hands them to him and tosses his pelt down, the fur landing with a wet plop on Geralt’s lap. 

Jaskier drops down to the sand next to Geralt once he’s dressed and rests his head on his shoulder without a thought. He smells of nothing beyond contentment and joy, and Geralt even dares to press his cheek against the top of the damp chestnut hair. 

“I take it you heard that whole little fuss,” Jaskier says, voice quiet. Geralt hums. “Thought so.” Jaskier brings his arm up, resting the line of it on Geralt’s thigh, squeezing his knee when his palm rests on it. “I meant it, you know. Every word of it.” 

Geralt inhales sharply, and Jaskier squeezes again. 

They rest there on the beach until the sun descends. The other selkies bark their goodbyes to Jaskier from the water, and he waves to them, head still resting on Geralt’s shoulder. They sit until the chill of the night drives Geralt to make a fire, and then Jaskier chooses a place right next to him again, pressed together side by side. They eat dinner that way and later lay back against a log, Jaskier sketching elaborate stories in the stars that have the merest bit of actual legend in them. 

Geralt calls him on a few of the more outrageous ones, and Jaskier playfully debates him over the points until the disagreement descends into a wrestling match. They roll around in the sand until Jaskier begins to tire, and then Geralt pins him, grinning down at the bard as he kicks and bucks, trying for freedom even despite impossible odds. 

I love you, Geralt thinks, a quick, flickering thought. The realization must make his face do something interesting because Jaskier tilts his head in a question, but Geralt just shakes his head and lets him up. 

He fears that Jaskier will choose to dig at him, will needle at Geralt until he gets what he wants in the way he’s perfected throughout the years, but instead Jaskier just rises and then moves to sit next to him once more. Slowly, he leans his head down once more and winds his arm around Geralt’s. He doesn’t dig. He doesn’t pry. He just sits, watching the fire quietly, apparently sensing that Geralt needs to sort through his head on his own for a while. 

He wonders if it will ever stop feeling unbelievable, being understood by someone like this. 

*

Geralt thinks of that night, that one perfect, beautiful night, on his walk down the mountain.

The weight of broken faith weighs at him, jagged edges stabbing at him with every step. He can still smell phantom traces of Jaskier’s pain, the salt of his tears souring his natural ocean scent. 

It spurs him on faster. 

He makes it to Roach and sorts out their shared belongings with haste. It’s been years since they’ve had defined ideas of separate ownership, their property instead treated as equally belonging to them both. Geralt lingers briefly over a shirt of his that’s absolutely soaked with Jaskier’s scent, borrowed as a sleepshirt after a goblet of wine meant the bard didn’t have a clean set of his own left, and the weather meant no laundry could be done for a week. Geralt, weak and pathetic, presses it to his nose, trying to memorize the smell, a scent he’s just forfeited ever experiencing again at its source. 

He doesn’t bother with all of their bags, only the ones he knows Jaskier has belongings in that he’ll want back. He adds some food to the pile he leaves behind, jerky and hardtack. He hates that he can vividly picture the way Jaskier’s nose will wrinkle with distaste when he sees it, ever loathful of road rations. 

It makes him finish packing even faster. 

*

He spurs Roach on faster than he normally would, desperate to put space between him and Jaskier. From his early days of trying to ditch the bard, he knows that the man is absurdly good at finding Geralt when he feels like it, despite his usually abysmal sense of direction. 

Geralt tries to adjust back to traveling along, a process that doesn’t come naturally to him, not anymore.

He’s painfully aware of how bad he is at it now with every bun he splits without thought, each turn he makes to direct a comment to his side, every extra rabbit he hunts out of long habit for providing for two. 

It aches, this loneliness. 

It hurts all the more that he knows how much he deserves it. 

*

It’s two weeks before he finally needs to go into the smaller satchel that contains thicker socks, stored away for cooler weather. 

He looks in horror at the pelt neatly resting on top. 

In his desperation to get away before Jaskier could return the angry words he so justly deserved, Geralt had completely forgotten tucking it away. On the day he made it down from the mountain, he hadn’t seen it in the larger bags and had figured that Jaskier had grabbed it and stuck it in the satchel he had carried up, responsible for once. 

Geralt feels sick, resting a slightly shaking hand on the silky fur. 

It doesn’t matter if Jaskier hates him, if he greets Geralt with angry, scathing words. 

Geralt has to find him. 

*

Geralt is horrifically derailed from his mission by the fucking everything his life becomes in a rather short span of time. 

The pelt weighs at him like a stone from its secure place in a saddlebag when he rests by a campfire, keeping watch over his child surprise, newly claimed from the smoldering remains of her kingdom, stolen beneath the noses of Nilfgaardians hunting for her in vain. He comes back one night from hunting nearby to find her curled up with the pelt, evidently stolen in an effort to keep warm against the unseasonably cool night. His first impulse is to take it back, to store it away. The fact that it’s still in his possession at all speaks to his failure, to the fact that he’s still holding Jaskier captive to land.

With a sick swell of guilt, he wonders if Jaskier will think he did it on purpose, will think that Geralt is a man just like Jaskier’s father, someone to use trust as a weapon.

It makes him feel damnably conflicted, desperately needing to seek out Jaskier but also now responsible for a child.

Ciri makes a soft noise in her sleep, rubbing her cheek against the sleek fur of the pelt before she settles once more. It feels presumptive, letting her keep hold of it, but it’s also the most restful Geralt’s seen her since he took custody of her. 

He thinks of Jaskier, sweet and giving, the man who once blew all of his earnings from a weekend giving it to a woman fleeing a husband with an anger problem, and thinks he wouldn’t mind if Ciri borrows it, just for now. 

*

Geralt is making excuses for himself, he knows. 

But with every day that passes, he fears finding Jaskier more. 

He wants to give the pelt back, truly. He knows it can’t be good for the bard to go so long without shifting. 

But still he lets himself hold onto the excuse that Ciri offers to delay just a bit more.

When he dreams, he sees visions of Jaskier looking at him with pained betrayal, hears scathing, angry accusations of “I guess I was wrong about you all along.” 

He wakes, guilty and sweating. 

He knows he needs to find a safe place to stash Ciri, needs to finally suck it up and face his doom, needs to give back what he never meant to steal. 

Still, with each morning, he gives himself just one more day. 

*

Meeting Yen is unexpected, and the way she and Ciri immediately pair off to tease him makes him hopeful that perhaps he won’t be quite as alone in raising her as he feared. 

After the attack in the temple, Geralt wrenching open a door afterwards to find Yen standing defiantly in front of Ciri, candelabra clutched close and ready to be wielded with the ferocity of a sword, he knows he finally has someone who can look after Ciri with him, can take her where she needs to be so that Geralt can finally atone for what he’s done, can finally try to fix it. 

In the darkness of camp that night, both of the adults too wary of watchers to risk a campfire, Yen tells him everything about what her life has been since the mountain. She punches him in the face when he tries to apologize and then declares them even. Geralt accepts the trade gratefully. 

“I need you to take Ciri to Kaer Morhen,” Geralt tells her. 

“And where the fuck will you be?” Yen asks, clearly already prickling at the idea of his abandoning his child surprise. The anger lets him know he’s chosen well in trusting her with this. 

He reaches over and untucks his cloak slightly from around Ciri, revealing the pelt she clutches like a stuffed animal. Yen inhales sharply, looking to Geralt with accusing eyes. 

“Tell me you didn’t,” she says, voice a threat. 

“I didn’t mean to,” Geralt tells her, tucking Ciri back in. The girl stirs briefly but settles, blessedly a deep sleeper. “That’s why I have to find him. I have to make things right.” 

Yen regards him, eyes piercing. A shivery feeling within his head tells him his thoughts are being read, and he resists the urge to flinch at the sensation. 

I was afraid, he tells her without words, and Yen narrows her eyes. It’s true. I said things I shouldn’t have said, and then I left him. 

With the one thing that controls his freedom in tow? Yen asks, her voice sharp in his head. Geralt has the distinct feeling that he would be at threat of flames right now, were the sorceress recovered enough to do it. I saw him in Oxenfurt. He looked fucking awful. 

Geralt winces.

I’m going to make things right. I’m going to give it back. 

And why am I sensing a “but”? 

I need you to do something for me first. 

*

Ciri is distressed the next morning when he tells her she’ll be going with Yen and not him, and Geralt goes to one knee, settling his hands on her shoulders. She’s so tiny, his child of surprise, but he can see in her eyes that she’s fierce in a way that does her grandmother credit. 

“I will come back to you,” he tells her, even as she sets her jaw, trying to control the slight way it wobbles. She’s clearly trying not to cry, and he cups the back of her head in one hand, making sure she’s looking at him. “I swear it, Cirilla. I have something I have to do first, but then I will return.” 

It’s not a promise he can really make and know he’ll keep, his life too dangerous for such things, but he finds himself unable to be blunt with her. She examines his face, searching for a lie. 

“Promise on Roach,” she demands, and the mare pricks her ears up at the mention of her name. 

Geralt smiles slightly and places one hand over his heart. 

“I swear on Roach that I will return to you.” The or die trying, he says only in his own head. Yen’s pursed lips tells him she heard it anyway, but she just moves forward, planting her hands on Ciri’s shoulders. 

“C’mon now,” she says, voice soft in a way Geralt’s never heard before. “I need your help to create the portal.” She smiles then and winks, chucking Ciri’s chin. “And then I’ll need your help whipping the other witchers into shape.” 

Ciri smiles at that, a small, fleeting thing, and then she darts forward and wraps her arms around Geralt’s waist, squeezing fiercely. 

“It’s the bard, isn’t it?” She asks without releasing him. 

“Yes,” Geralt tells her, returning the embrace. “It’s the bard.” 

*

He sees them off and waits long enough to make sure they make it through, Kaer Morhen already covered in a thin layer of snow in the view he can see through the portal. 

Then he sets off. 

He visits Oxenfurt first and finds that Jaskier is long gone, having escaped imprisonment for charges of being a peeping tom and vanishing into the night, evidently aided by a group of students. Geralt is dubious of the peeping tom bit of the charges–for all that he’s as horny as a tom cat, the bard is fiercely respectful of consent–but the rest of the story sounds exactly like something that Jaskier would manage. A quick conversation with the students gets him a chewing out from a ferocious little slip of a thing who barely reaches his chest, apparently named Daisy in homage to their favorite professor and fiercely angry at him. 

Geralt accepts the anger, knowing he deserves it, and then Daisy has a quick conference with the rest of the students. He receives angry glances throughout the debate and overhears a long list of reasons they shouldn’t let him know where Jaskier’s gone. Finally, however, the huddle breaks, and Daisy makes their way back over, hands on their hips and chin raised in a challenge. 

“We’ll tell you what direction he left in,” they say, eyes hard as chips of obsidian, “but don’t you dare hurt him again. Breakup songs are only fun for so long, and he’s dreadfully bad at looking after himself when he’s sad.” 

Geralt agrees easily to the condition and is granted the information. He follows Jaskier’s scent from there, sense of unease growing when he smells sour sickness and pain in it. The path is rambling and fades in a few places where he evidently got a lift in a cart, but Geralt still follows it faithfully, stopping only long enough to let Roach rest before he continues on. 

It’s almost enough to make Geralt laugh darkly when he realizes he’s being led to the coast. It makes sense, when he thinks about it, that Jaskier, weakened and injured from whatever Yen hinted at but refused to actually say, would seek out a space he feels safe even in a form that means he can’t survive in it. That thought makes Geralt spur Roach on just a bit faster, a stab of guilty pain striking his heart at the idea that he’s banished Jaskier from a place he can find solace and safety. 

When he finally makes it to the coast, he follows the scent onwards, tracing it down narrow, winding paths and finally emerging onto the beach. He spots a group of seals clustered near some shallow pools and stones and makes his way to them immediately, leaving Roach behind at the trees to avoid spooking the pod and grabbing Jaskier’s pelt from the top of the saddlebag where he’s kept it. His heart in his throat, he jogs closer, desperate for an end to his search but afraid of scaring them off by moving too quickly. A flash of color among the earth tones has him moving faster without thought, but the creatures blessedly hold their ground. 

Jaskier is a heart-wrenching sight from his place at the center of the gathered seals, and Geralt bolts to him the moment he catches sight of him among the sleek bodies clustered around the rocky pools at the shore, heedless of the sea water that fills his boots, soaking his trousers up to the knee in places where the sand dips. The seals glare up at him with uncannily expressive eyes, their disdain and mistrust clear. A few make low growls and one even snaps sharp teeth close to his arm, but Geralt holds the pelt out before him like an offering, and they let him pass. A long-familiar whispering rustle tells him one has transformed, and a dark-skinned woman appears from his left, her hair the same shade of black as the pelt she holds protectively in her arms. A seal that looks like her, either a child or a sibling, hovers close to her flank, dark eyes watchful and alert. Geralt knows he’s being assessed and found desperately wanting, and he returns the woman’s look as evenly as he can, even as he wants to push past, to drop to his knees by Jaskier and tend to him. 

“You’ve some gall,” the selkie says, her voice hard, “to come to this place after what you’ve done.” 

Geralt doesn’t respond immediately. He doesn’t imagine it would do him much good here among these people to try and explain that he accidentally stole Jaskier’s pelt. For a people used to the theft of their freedom by greedy people keen to possess them, he’s a thief trying to sneak back into the fold. 

“I want to make amends for what I’ve done,” he says, voice even. 

The woman considers him, her eyes piercing. Geralt does his best to remain still, to keep himself open, to make himself seem like less of a threat. It’s a play he’s put on for the entirety of his life, and he’s never wished he was better at it than this very moment, when being found safe enough to tolerate is the only thing that will allow him near Jaskier again. 

“We do not take harm to our pups lightly,” the woman tells him, voice stern, still, but less openly forbidding. She raises her chin in a challenge. “Did you mean the hurt you caused?” 

It’s a complicated question, the answer both yes and no. Yes, he meant to hurt Jaskier. In those few foolish, hateful seconds, he wanted to lash out, wanted someone else to ache like he did. Jaskier just happened to be the closest, easiest target. But Geralt had regretted it the moment he’d finished tossing the words like blows, even as his damned pride had made him keep back the immediate apology he wanted to give. 

And the after. 

Gods, the after. 

Geralt is keenly aware in this moment of the stretch of days he’s kept Jaskier’s pelt, the days he’s stolen from Jaskier what he was trusted to never take. He’s broken Jaskier’s faith, he knows. Even as everything that’s delayed him was essential, important, he wishes suddenly and desperately that he had still moved with more haste, that he hadn’t let the residual fear of rejection keep him from pushing as fast as he could have. 

He’s put everything ahead of Jaskier yet again, he realizes, with a sick swell of guilt. It was easy to tell himself that he had to do everything else first. He’s had a lifetime of practice of putting things in front of Jaskier. 

In front of Jaskier, who has given his life, his freedom into Geralt’s keeping. 

“I have not been worthy of him,” Geralt tells the selkie woman. “I want to try and fix what I’ve broken, with your permission.” 

The last bit galls him slightly, a lifetime of autonomy chafing when it rubs against this need to seek leave from someone else. But Jaskier deserves more than Geralt can ever repay; the least he can do is humble himself now. 

“You will never do this again,” the woman tells him, a declaration, not a question. She smiles at him, teeth slightly too sharp in the sunlight. “Or we will drag you to the depths until we find out exactly how long a witcher can hold his breath.” 

The movement of the selkies around her tells him this is no idle threat. These words are a warning, a promise. 

“If I ever hurt him like this again,” Geralt tells her, “I will deserve far worse.” 

The words gain him a softening of the woman’s face, and she slips her pelt back around her shoulders, moving from his path as she transforms. When he passes her, she gives him a nod of her head that he returns. 

Path cleared at last, he moves at once to Jaskier. The bard is pale as parchment, his head resting on the soft flank of a seal who turns her head to snuffle at him like a mother shushing a babe, even as her sharp eyes pin Geralt in place with the force of her anger. Jaskier’s clothes, in a move of cosmic irony the same ones he wore that day on the mountain, are plastered to him, bleached slightly by salt and sun, the bright red of them fading to dark pink. He rocks with each movement of the water around him, evidently too weak to resist even the slightest wave. Despite the heat of the sun, he shivers, horrible little jerks. The scent of pain clouds the air around him, thick enough to nearly choke Geralt, and every few breaths exhale as a whimper, a vulnerable noise drawn from deep in his chest. His eyes are closed, but it’s clear he’s more drifting than sleeping, conscious, but only barely so. 

Gently, Geralt gathers him up, Jaskier whimpering at the movement and the loss of touch from the seals around him. Geralt shushes him gently, picking his way carefully though the seals, Jaskier’s pelt still clutched in one fist. He wades out to deeper water, until it rises to his chest, and then he releases Jaskier to float, supporting his back but letting him stay submerged fully. Jaskier’s head rests on his shoulder, and the bard’s too-cool cheek presses against his. The current moves with no small amount of force this deep out, but Geralt stands firm. His mutations have given him much to curse. At least in this they give him strength to share. 

Jaskier rouses at the first touch of his pelt against his skin when the water brushes it against his hand, eyes feverish. He paws weakly at his clothes, fingers too weak for the clasps and buttons. Geralt shushes him once more, but Jaskier seems beyond comprehension of most things, even though his hands move easily enough when Geralt gently pushes them out of the way to begin unfastening his clothes for him, pulling at them with less care than he should, buttons snapping from their threads and drifting away. 

Focused on helping Jaskier, Geralt doesn’t bother trying to also hold onto the clothes as he removes them from the bard. They drift away in the water like twisting red weeds, undulating as they’re drawn further out. Geralt watches them go with private, petty satisfaction. They turn his stomach now, the sight of the garments worn on the day he ripped apart every good thing he’s ever managed to gain, bleached now in evidence of his failure to protect the one person who has always trusted him to do so with absolute faith. 

It feels intensely private and intimate, sliding Jaskier into his pelt. Familiar with the process after years of observation, Geralt starts at his shoulders, wrapping the velvety fur around the broad expanse, made fragile by malnourishment and illness. When he smooths the fur down Jaskier’s sides, he feels the ridge of each rib beneath his palms until the flesh begins to change into thicker muscle and whatever fat remains. Jaskier is strong enough to smooth the pelt over his arms with clumsy hands, the expanse of fur seeming to grow in order to cover more of him. Geralt gently lifts him to float on his back while he smooths the fur down Jasier’s legs, which join and shift into a tail. By the time he looks back up, the last bit of it is covering the pale expanse of the bard’s belly, smoothing it away into downy fur. Geralt releases him and Jaskier sinks at once, twisting around in the water in what looks like pleasure. His acrobatics are muted, nowhere near the usual display of aquatic athleticism he usually indulges in after a shift, but each turn and movement speaks of relief. 

Geralt remains still until the twisting stops, and Jaskier surfaces, only his eyes and the tops of his whiskers peeking above the water. There’s a hesitant watchfulness there, but Geralt feels shamed that Jaskier remains at all. Slowly, the bard moves closer until the cold press of his nose meets Geralt’s chest. Geralt reaches one hand down to stroke over the soft fur of his head, moving down in the water until he can rest his forehead over Jaskier’s, his nose touching the downy snout. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, voice rough. “I hurt you because I was angry, and then I hurt you because I was a coward. I’m ashamed, Jaskier, and I want to do right by you. I want to do better by you than I have. If you’ll allow me.” 

It’s the second time today he’s had to ask permission, but this one is easier to bear. It will destroy him, he knows, if Jaskier chooses to walk away, if he refuses to open his heart up again when Geralt has so badly bruised it, but he will let him go. He will watch another person walk away, and he will know that this time, he deserved it. 

Instead of turning tail and fleeing back to the selkies still gathered on shore, however, Jaskier moves upwards in the water, turning his head into Geralt’s neck, his wet nose resting beneath his ear. A rustling tells him that Jaskier is shifting, and in a moment, he has the bard, bare and thin, in his arms. Jaskier sags against him, and Geralt dares to hold him up. He’s shamed when he reaches for the pelt and is allowed to hold it, Jaskier so easily allowing him the trust of the action. 

“You were a first class donkey prick,” Jaskier tells him, voice husky with exhaustion, but the slightest bit of mirth threading through. “Do it again, and I’m kicking you in the balls and stealing Roach.” 

Geralt huffs a laugh, knees feeling wobbly from the weight of relief, of the chance at absolution he’s been given when he knows how unworthy he is of it. 

“Fair enough.” 

*

He helps Jaskier back to shore, the bard too weak to withstand the movement of the water on his own. Geralt picks him up completely once they get to land, Jaskier’s legs folding beneath him without the ocean to support him and take his weight. Jaskier curls easily into his embrace, and Geralt’s throat feels tight as he holds the bard tighter, Jaskier’s face tucked into the crook of his neck. 

He carries Jaskier to Roach and wraps him in a thin cloak. He still has a few clothes of Jaskier’s, things snuck into his belongings without his knowledge before their separation, but his first priority is getting Jaskier to somewhere safe, where Geralt can check him over and get food into him. A pair of selkies follows him up the shore and points him to a hut, telling him it’s abandoned this time of year. They part from Jaskier with gentle, affectionate strokes to his arms and hair that he returns as best he can from his place in Geralt’s arms and take their leave, giving Geralt a few last warning looks. 

Geralt takes them meekly and waits until they’re out of sight before he turns, easily snapping the lock on the cottage. Jaskier clicks his tongue teasingly in reprimand but sighs with pleasure after Geralt whips a dusty cloth from the top of a bed and settles Jaskier onto the mattress. He leaves Jaskier long enough to untack Roach and set her up in the lean-to in a pen behind the structure, filling a trough with fresh water from a well and leaving her to eat her fill from a lush patch of grass. 

He has a selkie to tend. 

*

His vague plans for tending are upset when Jaskier reaches for him with beseeching arms, and Geralt heeds the summons and lays beside him, the bard tucking himself close and leeching warmth. Before he realizes it, Geralt is asleep, days and days of poor sleep catching up to him now that he has familiar warmth beside him. 

In the early light of the next morning when Jaskier at last rouses, eyes clearer even as his paleness speaks to how ill he still is, Geralt finally has time to investigate exactly what Yennefer meant by trouble, to discover the extent of what he has to apologize for. Jaskier trembles against him, curled around his burned hand. Geralt nearly twitches with the desire to investigate and soothe, but Jaskier makes a muffled noise of distress when his wrist is grabbed, and Geralt makes himself wait until his touch near the hurt will be tolerated, if not welcome. He holds Jaskier tighter, rocking him slightly as the bard speaks, his chest growing tighter with each word, even as Jaskier attempts to make light of the whole thing as he usually does, even though his levity falls entirely flat. 

“At least you had my pelt,” Jaskier says, voice shaking slightly. “If he had-” He cuts himself off, unable to pursue the thought further. Geralt, his stomach roiling with the very idea of such a thing in Rience’s hand, just holds him tighter. 

“It’s safe with me,” Geralt promises him fiercely. You’re safe with me, he wants to say, but the scent of singed flesh and the shining, blistered skin he glimpsed briefly, evidence of his failure to protect what should have never been in danger, stays him. 

At last, Jaskier lets him see to his hand, and Geralt sucks in air between his teeth when he sees the full damage. Jaskier jerks and tenses as Geralt tends to him, pouring cool water over the burns to flush them out and then gently smoothing a balm over them. Jaskier trembles while the wound is treated, holding his breath between little shudders of inhales and exhales. Geralt works diligently but as quickly as he can, relieved when he can finally wind clean linen around the fingers and palm. He turns the hand in his own when he’s finished, bowing his head and pressing his lips to the back of it. Jaskier inhales sharply, but in a different tone than he has the entire time. Geralt feels a slightly shaking hand rest on his head, and he closes his eyes, soaking in the touch. 

It feels like a benediction. 

It feels like forgiveness. 

*

Jaskier is achingly thin, and it stabs Geralt with fresh guilt in the days that follow each time he sees the sharp angle of the bones of his wrists, the lines of his ribs, the hollowness of his cheeks. Like all selkies, Jaskier naturally tends towards plumpness, a healthy layer of fat rounding and softening him. This thinner version is horribly foreign and wrong, and Geralt aches to sit him down and toss a whole roasted deer in front of him, to present him with dainties and delicacies, soft cakes swimming with cream, and crisp, flaky pastries rich with cheese and herbs. For now, all he can offer is jerky and stale bread, augmenting the meager offerings with rabbits, plump at least from fall’s bounty, and fish caught from the water. Jaskier smiles at each offering, clearly reading the mild desperation behind them, and squeezes Geralt’s wrist gently with each one he takes. 

A visit to town while Jaskier is napping one day yields fresh goat cheese, creamy and rich, some studded with dried fruit and some rolled in herbs. An hour of chopping wood for a baker gains him fresh loaves of bread with soft, tender insides and crisp, crackling crusts and a few rich cakes studded with almonds and dripping with sticky, golden honey. A few apples round out his shopping, and he gives one to Roach before he returns to the little hut. Jaskier is just stirring when he returns, tired still from his recovery. Geralt presents his little hoard of food while feeling absurdly like a child seeking approval for an interesting find, but the way Jaskier’s eyes light up is immensely gratifying. 

He rips the bread into small pieces, and Jaskier laughs when Geralt smears them with thick layers of cheese and pushes them at his mouth. He accepts the first bite from Geralt’s hand but then takes hold of them himself, even feeding Geralt a few with insistent presses against his lips. They devour one of the loaves and most of the cheese that way and then lay against one another in the dappled shade of the yard, full and drowsy. Jaskier makes a soft noise of amusement, and Geralt, eyes still closed, responds with a hummed question. He feels the bard turn to him, his long hair tickling Geralt’s temple. 

“I feel like a bee in summer,” Jaskier says, and Geralt snorts, opening his eyes and raising an eyebrow as a prompt to continue. Jaskier grins and tilts his head back, enjoying the spots of sun filtering down through the tree above them. “Full and lazy.”

They’re quiet for a while after that, and Geralt inhales when Jaskier’s non-injured hand slips into his, squeezing lightly. He returns it with gentle pressure and feels the bard relax, eyes closing as he drowses. Geralt smiles, watching him, and then closes his eyes for a nap of his own. 

There are worse things to feel like than a bee. 

*

Their days pass in a lazy, slow routine. Jaskier sleeps for great stretches of time, and Geralt lets him. When he grows too twitchy to remain in bed he takes walks through the forest surrounding the hut. He’s keen to have Ciri at his side once more, but he’d be lying if he didn’t say he was enjoying himself more than a little. 

It’s a warm sort of peace, the two of them together in a hut, and it makes it so, so tempting to pretend. Him and Jaskier, living off of the land and whatever small tasks Geralt picks up in the nearby village. In the early afternoons, when the sun is warm and bright, he guides Jaskier down to the shore and helps him strip down and slide into his pelt. The help isn’t strictly needed at this point, but Geralt indulges anyway, and Jaskier lets him. 

It’s during this routine that they first kiss, Jaskier catching the curve of Geralt’s jaw in his palm when he rises from where he was tugging Jaskier’s boots off to settle the pelt around the bard’s shoulders. Geralt yields to the gentle pressure and moves closer, heart speeding up when he sees Jaskier’s tongue dart out briefly to wet his bottom lip. He leans forward until his forehead is pressed to Jaskier’s, sharing breath. 

“May I kiss you?” Jaskier asks, eyes cast down, lingering on Geralt’s lips. 

Geralt tilts his head forward in response, and Jaskier meets him. It’s a relatively chaste kiss, but the reality of kissing Jaskier makes Geralt’s knees almost wobble. He feels like a green lad first weighing the softness of a breast in his hand, shy but eager, wanting more but afraid to push. Jaskier solves his hesitance for him, ever helpful, stepping forward until they’re pressed together tightly. The bard is bare, the only covering his soft pelt on his shoulders, but it’s an afterthought, the nakedness. What matters more is the arms twining around Geralt’s neck, the feel of flesh, not quite as skinny as it was before, warm and alive beneath his hands. He slides one along Jaskier’s side to his hip, gripping the curve there. The bard inhales sharply and makes a low, wanting noise. Geralt is tempted to oblige, to kiss and caress right here on the beach, no matter how much sand they’ll find in uncomfortable places later. 

Still, the feel of a rib beneath his palm cools his ardor, and he pulls back, brushing his lips in an apology over Jaskier’s cheek, his temple. The bard leans forward, resting his head on Geralt’s shoulder while he regains his breath. There’s the slightest hint of unease in his scent, and Geralt tilts his head to kiss down his neck to his shoulder, working his way back up until he’s by Jaskier’s ear once more. 

“Not yet,” Geralt says, voice soft and apologetic. “I want to, I swear, but…” He trails off, not wanting to insult Jaskier, but the bard makes a soft noise of understanding. 

“More fun to take a tumble with someone not at risk of fainting mid-ride?” He asks sardonically, and Geralt huffs a laugh, pressing a grateful kiss to the pale expanse of Jaskier’s shoulder, relieved as ever to be understood even when he can’t find the words to explain himself. 

*

No matter how much Geralt might wish it, their idyll can’t last forever. Each day Jaskier grows stronger, his flesh filling out bit by bit, his soft roundness returning. He still spends time in the sea each day in his seal form, and Geralt often joins him, delighting in the sheer joy evident in each movement as Jaskier spirals and dives through the waves, circling back to hand Geralt interesting things: bits of seaglass, sea sponges, unusual shells. Geralt accepts the offerings and holds onto them until Jaskier shifts once more, tossing his pelt to Geralt in exchange for his treasures. Geralt always catches the sopping wet fur and shakes it out as best he can, even as Jaskier wanders carelessly away, heedless of how easily he hands over what is probably the most precious thing he has. 

It makes him feel a flutter in his chest, that kind of faith still surviving. 

He still tends Jaskier’s hand, the burns lingering but healing slowly. Jaskier flinches and twitches each time Geralt treats and rewraps it, his scent souring with fear as it never has when Geralt touches him. Geralt firms his jaw and sees his task through, always ending the procedure with a kiss to the back of Jaskier’s hand before releasing him. 

“Yen will know how to fix it,” Geralt assures him, and Jaskier gives him a nervous little smile. 

“I'm sure.” 

Jaskier is the one who brings up that they should leave, rolling over and resting his weight on Geralt’s stomach as he props himself up. He shakes his hair back, the chestnut strands still long, Jaskier evidently not willing to put his faith in Geralt as a barber. Geralt twirls a lock around his finger and gives it a playful tug, and Jaskier grins at him, reaching up to gently pull a bit of Geralt’s hair in return. Geralt uses the hold he has to tug Jaskier down into a kiss, and the bard goes easily, although he pops back up the moment their lips part. There’s a nearly frenetic energy to him, and Geralt releases his hair to rest a hand on his back, pressing down with careful pressure and feeling Jaskier still at least a little bit. 

“We need to decide about winter,” Jaskier says, and Geralt frowns. 

“What about winter?” The question makes Jaskier shift his weight and bite his lip, looking down briefly before looking to Geralt once more. 

“It’s getting close to when we usually part for the season,” Jaskier hedges, and Geralt realizes what he’s driving at. Geralt reaches up and cups Jaskier’s cheek in his hand, rubbing his thumb along the bard’s cheekbone. Jaskier leans into the touch, and Geralt lets himself purr with the perfect pleasure of the moment. Jaskier smiles at that and leans down to kiss Geralt’s chest, lingering for a moment to feel the vibrations before he lifts his head again. “If I’m to find a place for winter, I should start looking soon before all of the good positions are taken.” 

The words are said without pressure, without expectation. It makes Geralt feel faintly guilty, though, that Jaskier would still doubt his right to remain by Geralt’s side, now that Geralt’s finally gotten his head out of his ass about the whole thing. 

“Come with me,” Geralt says, before he hastens to add, “only if you want.” 

He wants, desperately, but Jaskier has been subject to his wants for far too long. It’s time and past time he started heeding Jaskier’s. 

To his relief, Jaskier’s face lights up like a flower opening to the sun, and Geralt finds himself abruptly straddled, kisses pressed to his face, his neck, his hand when he laughingly attempts to fend the bard off. Jaskier finishes expressing his glee and sits back, and if Geralt weren’t so determined to wait until Jaskier has had more time to recover, the shift in pressure would send him spinning down some very interesting paths of thought. 

“So…yes?” He ventures teasingly, and Jaskier rolls his eyes, aiming a weak punch at his shoulder. 

“Yes, you big, dumb wolf. Yes yes yes. Is that enough answer, or should I give you more?” 

Smiling, Geralt lifts his legs to tilt Jaskier forward again, capturing his mouth once more. 

They need to start moving soon if they’re to make it up the trail before the snows make it nearly impossible for a still-weakened non-witcher, but there are at least a few more moments to spare. 

For the sake of trading happy kisses with Jaskier, Geralt will create all of the moments he needs. 

*

They pack up their belongings from the hut that evening, and Jaskier hems and haws about what sort of thank you card to leave. Geralt’s done repairs to the structure while they’ve lived in it and accordingly thinks they’ve adequately repaid the owner, but Jaskier insists that they have to leave behind at least a note thanking the nameless owner for the use of their property. 

“It’s just manners,” Jaskier says primly, ignoring the fact that he’s writing said note on paper and ink “borrowed” from a desk in one of the rooms, tapping a quill against his lips in thought that doesn’t belong to him. 

Geralt decides to leave him to it and goes to tend to Roach and ready her for an early morning departure. His horse has also enjoyed her holiday, even occasionally venturing down to the beach with them to splash in the shallows and race across the sand before turning and racing back. She’s glossy and sleek from the rest and the treats Jaskier thinks Geralt doesn’t know the bard has snuck her, and Geralt rubs at her soft velvet nose as she snuffles at his pockets hopefully. 

“Wrong person,” he tells her, amused, and she snorts at him, investigating his pockets on the other side. Geralt laughs. 

It’s nice to know he wasn’t the only one who missed their bard. 

*

Geralt picks up a couple of contracts in the nearby villages to shore up their coin. Jaskier fidgets in their rooms at night, worse when he hears the strains of song floating up the stairs. He looks to the door with wistfulness that makes Geralt hurt for him, the bard clearly longing to go and regain his place in front of a crowd. 

Tonight’s is particularly hard for him, the bard below singing more than a few of Jaskier’s songs. Geralt sees his fingers pressing on an imaginary fretboard with each note, and every now and then his lips move as he mouths the words. When he closes his eyes while the audience applauds, Geralt moves behind him, making enough noise to not surprise him. When he wraps his arms around Jaskier’s waist, leaning over him, the bard presses back into the touch. 

“I’m sorry I’m not bringing in any coin,” Jaskier says, voice small. 

“You’re more to me than any coin you can bring in,” Geralt tells him, leaning in to press his cheek against the bard’s. Jaskier pulls in a slow breath, and Geralt feels him twitch slightly when the bard below begins another song of his in the wrong key. 

“I miss it,” Jaskier says in a whisper. “I don’t feel like me right now.” He flexes his burnt hand until he winces, and Geralt rubs his hands slowly over Jaskier’s biceps, trying to soothe the tension from his body. 

“You’ll perform again,” Geralt promises, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. “I swear, Jaskier. Even if Yen doesn’t know how to fix your hand, I’ll find someone who will.” I won’t see something more stolen from you, Geralt thinks. Not while I still breathe. 

Jaskier closes his eyes and rests his uninjured hand over Geralt’s, linking their fingers together. Geralt squeezes gently, three quick pulses to spell out the three words he still hasn’t quite been able to say. Jaskier clearly recognizes it, squeezing back four times in response. 

They stay like that, sitting together, as the bard below finishes his set. 

Jaskier sings along to the rest of them, a quiet rendition for Geralt’s ears alone. 

*

The contracts prove lucrative, and Geralt even manages to earn enough coin to afford a mount for Jaskier. It’s meant to be a surprise, but he knows better than most the value of a horse chosen for its match to its rider. He teases the bard with hints all morning until Jaskier is practically vibrating with anticipation. Jaskier nearly skips along at his side, their joined hands swinging between them carelessly. 

“A new outfit?” Jaskier guesses, not for the first time. 

“No,” Geralt responds, as he has the first five times he’s been asked this morning. 

“New shoes?” Jaskier guesses again, once more not for the first time. 

Geralt pulls him to a stop and reels him in. They’re in a quiet side street, no one to watch or jeer or decide to target Jaskier for his connection to a witcher. Geralt kisses the bard freely, feeling almost giddy at the freedom of doing it in a place that isn’t a quiet hut away from another living soul. 

“Honeycakes?” Jaskier asks the second they part, and Geralt laughs, bumping their heads together affectionately. 

“Try again.” 

The guesses last until Jaskier catches sight of the horse merchant’s sign, and then he pulls Geralt to a stop, eyes wide. 

“You’re replacing Roach?” He says in a scandalized voice. Geralt gives him a look. 

“No, Roach has plenty more years in her,” he says, and that makes Jaskier frown. 

“Two horses is a bit greedy,” Jaskier observes, and Geralt snorts. 

“Even if one is for you?” 

Jaskier’s eyes go massive at that, and he gapes openly. 

“Geralt, that’s…that’s too much.” He looks shy suddenly, hunching his shoulders and shifting his weight anxiously. 

Geralt frowns. That’s not the reaction he expected or wanted. He’d been looking forward to at least a few excited gratitude kisses, frankly. He pulls Jaskier close and backs them into an alcove, safe from prying eyes. He tilts Jaskier’s chin up, persisting despite the resistance until the bard gives in. 

“I don’t know how long it’ll be until I can repay you,” Jaskier says, biting his lip. “A horse is expensive, Geralt. I can walk. It’s what I’ve always done.” 

Geralt tsks, gently nudging Jaskier’s chin with a careful tap. 

“Since when have you been shy about being an expense?” He tries to tease, but that makes Jaskier press his lips together and try to look down, so Geralt kisses his forehead in apology and tries again. “I don’t give a fuck about the coin,” Geralt tells him, and Jaskier looks at him through his fringe, head still tilted down. “I’d spend any amount if it made you happy.” Jaskier blushes prettily at that, and Geralt traces a finger lightly over the pink, pleased. “I know you’ve always walked, but I meant what I’ve said before: I want us to be different now. I want things to be better than they were before.” 

Jaskier studies him intently for a moment longer before his face clears of any lingering doubt, and he smiles into the kiss he presses to Geralt’s lips. 

“Well then,” he says, backing up and towing Geralt along in his wake, “let’s go find my valiant steed.” 

For all that Jaskier begins the selection process gamely, he soon tires. He loves Roach like he loved the Roach before her, but horses have never been a passion for him as they are for Geralt. After the second hour of inspecting candidates and Geralt rejecting them for one reason or another, Jaskier wanders off while Geralt continues the process. Geralt isn’t offended; he relishes the chance to talk horses with someone who knows them as well as he does, and the woman he speaks to is certainly an expert at her craft. 

“Matching mares is tricky,” she says. “If yours is as opinionated as you say she is, I think she and Opal here’d be too busy squabbling about who gets to be boss to do you or your man much good.” 

Geralt agrees, even as he watches the paint go with no small trace of regret. He knows Jaskier would be pleased by her looks, pretty shades of cream and reddish-brown, her mane long and flowing, and for Geralt’s part, the horse looks fast, easily able to carry Jaskier away from whatever mischief he might be able to find. 

And gods above does his bard know how to find mischief.

He goes through two more horses, both sweet, even-natured geldings that he’s mildly worried Roach would bully into anxious illness, before Jaskier calls his name, the tone informing him even before he turns that the bard is very excited with whatever he’s about to show Geralt. 

What he shows him, it turns out, is a mule. 

Geralt watches Jaskier blankly as he leads the creature over, a solid, sturdy animal around half a hand taller than Roach, light tan with a white blanket pattern scattered with a speckling of spots. Despite her size, she moves easily with the lead Jaskier has on her, resting her head over his shoulder when he comes to a stop. Jaskier grins and turns to kiss her cheek, and the mule turns and snuffles at him. Jaskier turns back to Geralt, and his face shines so brightly he knows already he’s going to agree to taking this mule with them. 

Still, he reaches out a hand to run over her musculature to make sure she’s as sound as she looks, only to immediately snatch his hand back when she snaps her teeth at him, ears pinned back. Jaskier swats her lightly with a reprimanding click of his tongue, but it’s still Geralt he turns to scold. 

“Really,” he says, in the tone of a lecturing parent, “you don’t just go off and touch a lady without asking first.” He turns to the mule, who meekly submits to the bard’s hand stroking over her muzzle. When he speaks to her, he coos. “Isn’t that right, beautiful girl? You just have strong opinions on your personal space, huh? Geralt should understand that, shouldn’t he?” 

“We can’t take her along if she’s going to be a problem,” Geralt says warningly, but Jaskier furrows his brow, leaning into the mule more like a recalcitrant child. The damned beast lets him, lipping at his shirt. Her long ears are droopy with pleasure, but they pin back the moment Geralt tries to reach for her again. 

He turns to the horse seller. 

“Is she always this bad tempered?” 

“Not more than any other mare,” the woman says with a shrug. “She just makes up her mind about people fast.” 

Horrifically susceptible to giant blue eyes and bards who know how to wield them, Geralt finds himself passing coin over for a beast he can’t even touch. Jaskier nearly floats on their way back to their inn, keeping up a long line of happy promises and compliments to his new mount, and Geralt prays desperately that Roach at least will see the mule’s bad temper and pitch a fit, giving Geralt a reason to return the animal as the seller promised he could. 

Roach, however, gets along with the damned thing famously, easily consenting to a stall right next to her. 

Geralt glares at her for the betrayal. 

Jaskier dotes on his new mount, and Geralt has to practically drag him away when it’s time to rest for the night, the bard pressing kisses to her nose as Geralt tugs at him. The mule accepts them easily, although she stomps her front feet and lets out a shrill bray when Geralt gets too close, ears pinned back flat to her head.

He gives her a rude hand gesture behind Jaskier’s back when he guides the bard out. 

Over the next few days, he and the mule, who Jaskier names Guppy (“So she and Roach will match!”) come to an uneasy truce. With Jaskier’s hand still not healed, he doesn’t have the dexterity to put on her tack in the morning or take it off at night. Guppy resentfully lets Geralt do it, but he learns quickly enough to back up immediately once he’s done to avoid retribution for the audacity of touching her. 

Still, when he watches Jaskier interact with her, Guppy as tame and sweet as any pampered hound, Geralt finds he can tolerate her.

(Even if she does convince him once and for all of the superiority of horses). 

*

Jaskier asks that they stop in Oxenfurt before making their way to the mountain, and Geralt agrees despite his mild confusion at the request. They make excellent time now with them both mounted, Jaskier an adequate rider already and made better by how much Guppy adores him, heeding him as easily as any school pony. Geralt still insists on stops to let Jaskier shift when they find water supplies large enough, and he’s sure he gets more than a few strange looks when he raids the kitchens of the inns they stay at to make saltwater baths for Jaskier in their rooms. 

It isn’t until the night before they arrive that Jaskier finally tells him why he’s so insistent on stopping in the town, words spoken into the soft darkness between them late at night, the bard held close in Geralt’s arms. 

“You remember I stole my mother’s pelt?” Jaskier says, and Geralt hums an affirmative. Jaskier shifts ever closer, and Geralt lets him, snugging him tighter once he settles. “I hid it in Oxenfurt so my father couldn’t find it. It’s been a few different places, but right now it’s buried in my friend Priscilla’s yard.” He laughs softly, but Geralt still hears the raw vulnerability in his voice. “Not the best for it, I know, but you’ve seen me with my pelt.” The pelt that is currently tucked away with Geralt’s shirts after the bard draped it over a rock to dry in their last campsite and nearly left it behind entirely until Geralt grabbed it. “I’d like to take it somewhere I know he’ll never get it, like Kaer Morhen. If that’s-if that’s alright.” 

There’s hesitance in his voice that Geralt wishes he had no reason to feel. He kisses Jaskier and remains close afterwards. 

“Whatever you want, Jask,” Geralt promises, and Jaskier snuggles closer, his scent heavy with contentment and happiness. Geralt inhales deeper, feeling nearly intoxicated from the smell. 

He doubts there’s anything Jaskier could ask of him that he wouldn’t do, for the sake of smelling it again. 

*

Priscilla greets him like an old friend at the door, tugging him into a hug in the same way she tugs Jaskier. Not expecting it, Geralt freezes, and the woman nearly clotheslines herself with her own momentum against him. When he finally registers that he should move, he embraces her in return, and he only barely resists the urge to wince when he thinks about how awkward and stilted he must look. He hasn’t exchanged casual affectionate touches with any non-witcher outside of Jaskier for decades, and he feels the lack of practice keenly. 

Still, Priscilla just grins at him when she pulls back before she loops her arm through Jaskier’s and pulls him forward. 

“Good gods, man,” she whispers to Jaskier at a volume that carries easily to Geralt when he follows them, “it turns out you were being modest about that one the whole time. Sculpted by a loving god indeed.”

Jaskier glances back at him quickly, well-aware that Geralt can hear the words perfectly, and Geralt is amused to note that the bard looks embarrassed. 

He follows them to Priscilla’s dining room and sits down for supper, exchanging his best attempts at small talk with the woman until it’s dark enough for him and Jaskier to do what they came for without the risk of neighbors seeing and reporting them. Jaskier’s charge as a peeping tom has likely already been dropped, but they both decide it’s better not to risk it when they’re already operating on a tight timeline. The meal is awkward, at first, but Priscilla’s energy is similar enough to Jaskier’s that Geralt relaxes into it after a while. 

By the time the woman bids them goodnight, her manner loose and easy from a couple glasses of wine, Geralt barely even stiffens under the hand that ruffles his hair. Priscilla laughs at the reaction and winks at Jaskier before taking her leave, wishing them happy digging.

“I like her,” Geralt tells Jaskier as he follows the bard into the backyard, guiding him around treacherous patches when the bard’s eyes aren’t sharp enough to see obstacles in the low light. 

“I’m glad,” Jaskier says, leaning into him. 

Jaskier tries to dig on his own, but his hand stymies him almost immediately. He attempts to persist, the task clearly important to him, but finally it hurts too much to watch, and Geralt gently pulls the shovel from him. Jaskier resists the briefest moment until Geralt ducks his head to meet his eyes. 

“Please let me?” He asks, and Jaskier softens, finally releasing the handle and stepping back. 

After a while, Jaskier huffs a laugh, and Geralt looks up to him in question, still digging. 

“Prissi’s gardener must hate me,” Jaskier says in explanation. “I’ve dug more holes in her property than the worst behaved hound moving it around throughout the years.” 

Geralt snorts and keeps digging until he hits wood, and then he digs around the edges until he can pry it up, a strong, plain oaken chest sealed with a coat of beeswax. He sets it up on the edge of the hole and then sets to filling it, planting the young sapling Priscilla had handed them as an excuse as to why there would be fresh tilled earth in her yard should anyone ask questions over the next few days.

He carries the box back into the house and follows Jaskier to the guest room they’ve been given for the night. The chest doesn’t have any locks, and Jaskier shoves open the clasps, the metal resisting for a moment before giving, moving with a squeak that makes Geralt’s ears hurt. The discomfort is forgotten the moment Jaskier opens the chest, gently unfolding the oil cloth within with a touch that looks like reverence. He pulls in a deep, shuddering breath the moment his fingertips touch the downy fur within, and his eyes fill with tears that spill over immediately. Geralt is at his side at once, wrapping an arm around him in support. 

“I miss her so much,” Jaskier says, voice choked, and Geralt pulls him into an embrace, swaying slowly back and forth as Jaskier cries, one hand still pressed to his mother’s pelt. 

*

Geralt sets aside his enmity with Guppy entirely on the climb up to Kaer Morhen, the mule proving her worth above and beyond his expectations in how patiently she deals with Jaskier, already not back at full strength and weakened further by the thinning air of the mountain coupled with no sources of water to shift in that aren’t dangerously cold when he shifts back. The mule picks her path carefully, barely jostling Jaskier at all, and even when the section is too treacherous to ride, she’s a sturdy presence at Jaskier’s side or back, shoring him up and lending him her strength easily, even letting him hold onto her bridle for support. 

She evidently senses hers and Geralt’s ceasefire because she doesn’t even snap when he gets close while they’re on the trail. 

Geralt spends most of the time walking beside Jaskier, whether the bard is riding or walking as well. The exhaustion makes the bard’s appetite weaker, and Geralt tries to resist the way it makes him anxious, seeing Jaskier’s weight gain halt once more. The bard makes attempts to eat at least some of the food Geralt presses on him, but a large portion of it ends up being passed back to Geralt to finish. 

By the time they make it to the top, Geralt knows he deserves the worst sort of teasing for being a mother hen, but he can’t help the relief that blooms in his chest when he catches the first glimpse of the towers of the keep. Guppy squeals at him in rage when he tries to urge her on faster with a hand at her bridle, but she responds easily to the slight squeeze of Jaskier’s legs, trotting along primly like the best trained dressage mount the Continent has to offer. 

Geralt wonders if he’ll always hate her, at least a little bit. 

His rivalry with his lover’s mule leaves his mind quickly when Ciri comes bounding out of the keep the moment they enter the courtyard, leaping into his arms easily. She begins chattering at him immediately when he releases her, and it takes her a moment to even recognize that there’s another person with him, although her face brightens immediately once she does.

“Jaskier!” She cries happily, embracing him the moment his feet touch the ground. Beyond his consternation at finding that his child surprise and bard are evidently best friends, Geralt notes with a small amount of jealousy that Guppy tolerates Ciri’s presence at her flank easily. 

Bitch, he thinks in her general direction. 

“How do you two know each other?” He asks Ciri and Jaskier as he starts unbuckling their bags. He waves in acknowledgement when Eskel pokes his head out of the front door, and his brother beams, trotting over to them. 

“He used to come to Cintra a lot,” Ciri tells him, moving without prompting to help unfasten the bags. That’s a surprise, and Jaskier flushes slightly when Geralt looks to him with a raised brow. 

“I, uh…” Jaskier trails off, fidgeting with a buckle to avoid looking at Geralt. “I thought she should know me, at least, in case you ever claimed her. It wouldn’t do for the poor thing to go with two strangers, would it?” 

The thought makes him want to kiss Jaskier, but he’s distracted by Eskel, embracing his brother with firm thumps to the back. 

“Well now,” Eskel says, slinging an arm around Geralt’s shoulders and turning to face Jaskier. “You’ll be the bard now, won’t you?” 

Jaskier draws himself up in the same way he does before court performances. He falters slightly when he starts to raise his right arm, and Geralt knows he had been about to offer his hand to shake. Geralt distracts Eskel, even though he knows his brother caught the motion and the bandages around the bard’s hand already, by swinging him towards the stables, gesturing for Jaskier to follow with his demon mule. 

“Jaskier the Bard at your service,” Jaskier says with a slight bow as they walk. 

“Eskel the Witcher,” Eskel responds with false solemnity, returning the bow, which makes Jaskier grin. “It’s about time you got here. We’ve been telling this one for years,” he gives Geralt a shake, “to bring you so we won’t have to put up with his moping anymore. Intolerable, I tell you, he’s absolutely-” 

“Can you settle Roach and the other one into the stables?” Geralt cuts him off, although Jaskier’s sly smile tells him he’ll be hearing teasing about the words for a good long while to come. 

The grin Eskel gives him as he accepts the reins tells him the teasing will be coming from multiple fronts. 

Fuck. 

*

He ushers Jaskier up to his room, which he has hopes will be their room, and manages to avoid any other residents who might have embarrassing things to say. Jaskier’s amusement tells him that he’s being read easily, but the bard still goes willingly. When they make it to the room, Jaskier examines the space while Geralt pretends not to be nervous while unpacking their bags. The bard wanders slowly, picking up and setting down trinkets and various other bric-a-brac that collect over decades. Geralt turns at a soft noise and finds Jaskier holding a paperweight, a glass sphere with a flower held inside. Jaskier looks to him with a bemused little smile. 

“You kept this?” Jaskier asks, lifting the sphere to indicate it. 

Geralt ducks his head, feeling shy. It had been a joking gift, something given to Jaskier for a performance that he had passed along with a smile in their sixth year together.

“You gave it to me,” Geralt defends. “It was…special.” It was the first thing someone had given him without expecting something in exchange for years, he doesn’t say. 

He finds himself very suddenly with an armful of bard. Jaskier is beaming, leaning into him, arms twining around his neck. 

“You’re a squish deep inside,” Jaskier accuses warmly. Geralt makes a noise of disagreement, but Jaskier’s smile just widens. “A smooshy soft mush,” he says, jabbing a finger at Geralt’s chest with each word. 

Geralt doesn’t bother arguing and quiets Jaskier with a kiss, leaving the bard delightfully rosy and dazed when they part. 

They finish unpacking until Geralt pulls the two pelts from his bag, setting them down on the bed, waiting for what Jaskier wants to do with them. Jaskier’s face sobers when he looks at them, and he crosses to the bed to his mother’s pelt at the end. 

Jaskier rests one hand over it, stroking softly in what is clearly affection. He takes a shuddering breath, and Geralt is moving before he even sees the first tear fall, moving behind the bard and allowing him the option to lean back. Jaskier does so, inhaling and exhaling slowly, borrowing Geralt’s strength to keep him upright. 

Geralt feels a certain kinship to the woman who gave him Jaskier, a selkie woman brave enough to defy her husband to ensure her child’s survival, who raised Jaskier to be bright and loving and kind no matter his father’s darkness. Slowly, giving Jaskier plenty of time to knock his hand aside or tell him to stop, Geralt rests his hand on the pelt as well, sinking his fingers into the velvet softness. It’s as silky as Jaskier’s but a lighter color, closer to a dark blonde than Jaskier’s chestnut, the same color as his hair. Thank you, he thinks to this woman he never met, for your son, for the gift of him to the world. Jaskier shudders slightly and leans back harder, and Geralt wraps his free arm around the bard’s still too-slender waist, squeezing lightly. To me. 

He slowly drags his hand to press down over Jaskier’s, linking their fingers in the fur. I’m here, he says with the touch, always.

*

Geralt hunts down an empty, wildly ornate chest in a storeroom, even snagging a couple of sachets of lavender from a linen closet on the way. He doesn’t think selkie pelts are prone to moths, but he knows Jaskier will be pleased by the scent even if it isn’t strictly necessary. 

Jaskier sets his mother’s pelt in its oilcloth in the chest carefully, stroking over it once more before he covers it and shuts the lid. He turns the key with a soft snick of the lock and pats the lid of it firmly once he’s done, extending the key to Geralt automatically for safe keeping. Geralt takes it and sets it on the dresser, making a mental note to hang a nail for it later. He wants to make sure Jaskier will always have access to something so precious, any time he wants. 

Geralt carries the chest to the empty room next to his and lets Jaskier fuss over it, adjusting it this way and that until he has it by the window, slightly turned out as if to offer the view while still protecting it from the direct glare of the sun. Jaskier looks sheepish when he’s done, glancing up at Geralt from under his lashes. 

“It’s silly, I know,” he says, voice shy, “but she always loved the idea of mountains. She’d want to see them, I think.” 

The idea of making fun of such a thing never even crosses Geralt’s mind. He only opens his arms in an offer that Jaskier accepts, leaning into him gratefully. 

*

Geralt ensures that Jaskier rests for a while before taking him back down to meet everyone else. The witchers know from the first smell that Jaskier is a selkie, but the bard still owns it openly, introducing himself with a jaunty, “Jaskier, bard, selkie, utter delight in every respect.” The rest of the keep takes his introduction well, curious but non-hostile. Jaskier’s greater oddity, to judge from the teasing that they both receive, is that he’s in love with Geralt of all people, not that he can shift forms. 

Geralt is mildly gobsmacked to watch how easily Jaskier and Yen fall in to an easy rapport, even hugging, of all things. They chat like old friends, and Geralt retrieves his jaw off of the floor to answer questions and fend off what teasing he can, still keeping one eye on the unlikely pair snickering among themselves in the corner where they’ve retreated. There’s a story in their new easy companionship, and Geralt desperately wants to hear it, to figure out what the fuck has happened.

Yen trails after them to their room that night, and Geralt gets the full story. Jaskier enters their room first, and Geralt pulls the sorceress to a stop before she follows, one perfectly shaped brow arching at him. 

“Thank you,” he tells her, “for saving him.” 

Yen’s face softens. 

“He saved me first,” she says warmly, before her expression turns teasing. “Besides, life would be boring if he died,” she throws over her shoulder. 

The lightness of the evening doesn’t last when Yen settles down to heal Jaskier’s hand. The bard flinches and trembles when Yen takes it in her own, and he extends his other hand to Geralt with no small amount of desperation. Geralt takes it in his own, pressing a kiss to the knuckles before settling beside him, letting Jaskier lean into him. 

Jaskier yelps when Yen’s magic starts flowing through his flesh, and Geralt barely manages to keep him from bolting. It feels awful, holding him in place, but the bard settles soon enough, even as his terror sours the air with its acrid, vinegar scent. It seems years before Yen finally sits back, and Jaskier nearly wilts in relief once he’s released, flexing his fingers with increasing speed when it doesn’t pull at raw flesh as it has for weeks. 

“Thank you, you terrifying force of nature,” Jaskier says, and Yen grins. 

“Don’t make me do it again, you pest,” she returns, flicking his nose when she rises to leave, and Jaskier blows her a kiss with his middle finger.

Geralt thinks he’s going to get a headache, watching them interact. 

*

The days afterwards fall into a rhythm. He rises in the early grey light of pre-dawn, leaving Jaskier warmly dozing away. The bard trundles down to breakfast a couple of hours later, rubbing at his eyes clumsily and flopping down next to Geralt, slowly supporting his own weight more as he rouses. By the end of the meal, he’s at least slightly functional, and he kisses Geralt’s cheek before he rises, sparking exaggerated gagging noises from other members of the table, namely Lambert and Ciri. 

They part after that, Jaskier moving happily to his continuing work in the library, a project he had proposed on his own, much to Vesemir’s approval. Geralt does another hour of his own training while Ciri trains with Yen and then he directs her training in the yard. His child surprise makes him prouder every day he watches her, her skill growing exponentially, her determination never wavering. Jaskier joins them occasionally and cheers like he’s at a tourney for each of her victories. When Ciri first manages to complete the entire obstacle course without a single misstep or mistake, Jaskier whips the gathered witchers into a frenzy of celebration, coaxing Coen into lifting the girl onto their shoulders. Ciri giggles and blushes, but the pride on her face at her achievement warms Geralt all the way through. 

After lunch, their days are looser in schedule. Jaskier sometimes returns to the library and sometimes joins in repairs around the keep. He starkly refuses to hunt, and Geralt doesn’t push, frankly relieved to keep him away from deadly weapons and the cold. On the days work is slow, Geralt lures him away to dark corners and sneaks him back to their bedroom. 

They lie together for the first time three and a half weeks after coming to the keep, and as much as he feels absurd even thinking it, Geralt can’t think of any term to describe it other than making love. 

It’s possible Jaskier is rubbing off on him. 

(It’s possible that’s not a bad thing). 

*

A good portion of his time is spent planning with Yen and occasionally another Wolf, plotting training regimes for Ciri and plans for what they’ll do come spring. Some of these strategy meetings stretch long, and he finds himself more than once sharing a glass or two of wine with Yen at the end of them, both of their legs stretched out before the fire. It’s comfortable, this time together, easy in a way their attempt at courtship never was. He has a partner in her with raising Ciri, and he’s grateful for it. 

“So,” Yen drawls this night, “do you mean to live in sin with the bard forever, or will you make an honest man of him eventually?” 

Geralt doesn’t respond and becomes absolutely enraptured with his glass of wine, studying the play of the light of the flames through the liquid. Yen tips her head back in a full-body laugh, her mirth so great she ends up wiping tears from her eyes. She’s more than a few glasses deep, and it shows in her relaxation. 

“He’s good for you,” she says, lolling her head to the side. Her face softens. “I’m glad for you. You deserve someone who makes you better for loving them.” 

Geralt can’t argue with that, and he smiles into his glass of wine, draining it and setting it aside. He makes his farewells after that and takes his leave, Yen flopping onto her bed gracelessly even before he exits. 

“Goodnight,” he calls, and she mumbles a muffled response. 

When he steps into the hall, he finds it’s later than he expected, far past the point at which most members of the keep are asleep. He checks Ciri’s room automatically and has to fight down a surge of fear when he finds it empty, tracing her scent to his and Jaskier’s room. When it’s empty as well, Geralt nearly shouts to wake up others to help in the search, although he calms enough to track their smell through the keep until he makes it to a staircase and hears laughter. 

Geralt follows the sound of shrill giggling down to the hot springs and finds Ciri in braies and an undershirt, towed around the deepest pool, well over Geralt’s height in depth, by Jaskier in seal form, a rope between his teeth as he drags Geralt’s child surprise around in rapid swerves and dives. Geralt leans his shoulder against the wall, needing a support for how big his heart feels, how swelled with love it is watching them both together. Jaskier dunks her twice as Geralt watches, and Ciri surfaces again sputtering even as she laughs, shaking her fist and trying to swim after Jaskier to make good on promises of dire retribution that echo suspiciously of the bard’s own flare for dramatic declarations of planned vengeance. For all of the threats he receives, however, Jaskier still continually circles back around the pool to let Ciri grab the rope once more, pulling her into motion in his wake. 

When Jaskier finally lingers long enough to let Ciri actually catch him, he lets her get her arms around his neck before he takes off with even greater speed than before. Ciri shrieks in delighted terror at the speed, and Jaskier bobs up once in what is apparently a signal for her to hold her breath. After she inhales, Jaskier dives down, sending them into a long series of spirals beneath the water that have Ciri wobbling when she surfaces, Jaskier nudging her straight as she rocks slightly while catching her breath, laughing even as she reaches out one hand to steady herself against him. He snorts at her in what sounds like a taunt, and Geralt presses a hand to his mouth to keep from laughing when she snorts back at him in the same way, Jaskier rolling back into the water and knocking her to the side with a calculated movement of his tail in response. 

Geralt makes his presence known when Ciri’s energy finally flags, the girl leaning against the wall and yawning even as she still laughs. Jaskier’s head pops up from the water with no surprise evident in his mannerisms, and Geralt remembers how keen his hearing is in this form and realizes he knew they were being observed. Ciri, however, jumps slightly when she sees him, and he smiles slightly before he squats next to the edge where she is. 

“It’s well past your bedtime,” Geralt says lightly, resting a hand over her hair. Ciri rolls her eyes with derision only a teenager can summon, but she still leans into the touch. 

“Couldn’t sleep,” she says with the tone of a deflection, and Geralt knows it means she had another nightmare and went looking for him, finding Jaskier instead. It makes him feel guilty, not being where she needed him, even as he’s filled with a wave of love and gratitude for his bard stepping so easily into the role. 

And filling it even better than Geralt can, to judge from the sleepy way Ciri rubs at her face when she yawns once more. Geralt smiles at her and lifts her out with his hands under her arms. She kicks at him slightly to make a point about being manhandled, but she accepts it when he wraps her in a towel and pushes her gently to the stairway. 

“Go change,” he tells her. “I’ll check on you in a bit.” 

“Mm,” Ciri responds, moving with languid slowness. Still, she turns back to the selkie in the pool, smiling sleepily. “Thanks, Jask,” she says, and Jaskier lets out a soft bark in response. 

They both wait until they hear Ciri’s soft footsteps near the top of the stairs, and then Jaskier shifts forms, handing his pelt to Geralt before lifting himself from the pool. He lets Geralt look his fill as he crosses to pull on his sleep clothes once more. Geralt catches him when he crosses to retrieve the rope from beside the pool, tugging him close. 

“What was it?” He asks, and Jaskier doesn’t need more clarification to know exactly what he means. 

“Nothing to be unduly concerned about,” Jaskier answers easily, tapping his nose lightly. “And what happens during a selkie confessional stays in a selkie confessional.” 

“Is that so?” Geralt asks dryly, and Jaskier nods. 

“Yep,” he says, popping the p. “Absolute secrecy, I’m afraid. Even from worry wart witchers.” 

Geralt growls at him in response, and Jaskier growls back before he laughs. 

“Really love,” he says, leaning in to kiss Geralt’s cheek. “Just the standard bad dream fare. She was just a bit wound up, is all. Thought wearing her out would let her settle again.” 

“Thank you,” Geralt tells him warmly, squeezing his waist lightly in affection, “for caring for her.” 

Jaskier smiles at him, a warm, loving look. 

“Of course,” he says, voice tender. “She’s ours, isn’t she?” 

*

It’s a balancing act, figuring out how many salt baths Jaskier needs in winter versus the other seasons. The bard tries to insist he’ll be fine without any, but Geralt’s known him for long enough to read through the bluster. Jaskier doesn’t want to ask for more than he thinks he deserves, and Geralt wonders how he could possibly not know that Geralt would give him the world itself if he just asked. 

Through trial and error, they settle on one salt bath every other week, although Jaskier insists on diluting it more than he usually does, mindful of how much he takes from the supplies. It becomes a sort of game between them, Geralt tossing in more salt when he thinks Jaskier isn’t looking. He gets caught almost every time, but Jaskier’s scolding usually comes with at least a few kisses, so it’s hard to be that repentant. 

*

A few days past mid-winter, Geralt leans back in the hot springs, soaking the heat into his muscles, feeling knots unwind from training. He sighs softly, tilting his head back and resting it lightly against the edge of the pool, releasing the tension in his neck. It’s one of the best parts of Kaer Morhen, this ability to relax in the hot-

A wave of water closes over his head, and he opens his eyes with a glare, wiping the water away and sweeping back his hair where it’s plastered to his face. 

Black marble eyes peek over the surface of the water, amusement clear even in their darkness. A whiskered nose breaks the surface and snorts, sending out a spray of water in what Geralt knows now is the equivalent of a laugh when the bard is in this form. Geralt rises threateningly, and Jaskier disappears beneath the surface at once, one more slap of his tail on the water sending a spray at Geralt. When the selkie surfaces again, his whole head above the water, he’s at the other end of the pool. His gaze is watchful, anticipatory, and Geralt knows it’s an invitation to play. 

He lunges, and Jaskier dives with a sharp bark that sounds uncannily like his normal laugh, and Geralt’s fingers barely brush downy fur before the seal is gone, slipping away in a neat roll and quickly gliding to the other end of the pool. He rises with another snort and slaps his chin on the water in a gesture of challenge. 

Geralt’s attempt to maintain his scowl fails miserably with each failed attempt at capturing Jaskier, the selkie’s sleek body twisting and turning beneath the water with liquid grace. He knows Jaskier is going easy on him to keep the chase interesting, lingering just long enough to let Geralt get close enough to have a chance before darting away once more. With each failure, Geralt receives another splash to the face, and despite the way he’s soaking wet, water dripping into his eyes, he can’t help but smile. 

Finally he gives up the chase and drops onto a carved ledge, returning another splash with one of his own as a signal that he’s done with the game. Jaskier desists and dives once more, nudging at Geralt’s calves with his nose until Geralt feigns a kick that sends him shooting off across the pool and floating to the surface belly-up in a pose of perfect innocence. Geralt snorts and leans his head back, catching his breath. The whisper noise of velvet against skin tells him that Jaskier is changing forms, and after a moment he feels skin against his own as Jaskier in human form slides onto his lap. He wrinkles his nose at the wet thwap of the pelt hitting the floor behind him, and Jaskier laughs, nuzzling against Geralt’s cheek with aggressive affection, shoving Geralt’s head to the side. Geralt swats at him half-heartedly, and the bard desists, tucking his face against Geralt’s shoulder and looping an arm loosely around his waist, sighing contently. His body is loose and relaxed, so different from the tension of earlier, a sign of going without a shift for too long. Geralt rubs a hand along his back, feeling the difference in the muscles there, lax now, Jaskier clearly content and satisfied. 

“Feel better?” He asks anyway, eyes still closed, needing to hear Jaskier confirm it. 

“Mm,” Jaskier hums, nosing up beneath Geralt’s jaw and pressing a gentle kiss to the soft skin of his throat. Geralt shivers at the vulnerability of it, and Jaskier noses up along the column of it, pressing his lips next to the hinge of his jaw. “Take me to bed,” Jaskier breathes in a low, promising voice, “and I’ll show you just how much.” 

Geralt doesn’t need to hear the invitation twice and gathers Jaskier up, the bard laughing when he finds himself weightless, hauled from the water easily. Geralt drops him to his feet and tosses a towel at him. His temptation is to bear Jaskier to the floor here, cold stone be damned, but they’ve both been subjected to an awkward talking-to with Vesemir about respecting communal spaces and not leaving the hot springs reeking of sex, you deviants.

He goes easily when Jaskier tugs at him, modesty provided by a single towel wrapped around the bard’s hips. Geralt manages to tug his trousers on but doesn’t bother with the rest.

He’ll be taking them off soon enough. 

*

Later, Geralt rests with Jaskier against his chest, sweat cooling on their skin while they both pant slightly for breath. Jaskier still trembles slightly with aftershocks, and Geralt feels absurdly smug about it, tracing the lines of the bard’s back with his fingertips, leaving goosebumps and shivers in his wake. Still, as loose and pleased as he feels…

“Jask?” He asks, and the bard hums a question in response. “Where’s your pelt?” 

Jaskier tenses for the briefest moment before he’s in motion, tossing blankets aside and scrambling over Geralt, tugging on the first trousers he finds, which happen to be Geralt’s, and jumping to the door one leg at a time. 

“Son of a fucking-”   His complaint is cut off with a cry of surprise when he loses his balance and topples over, and Geralt turns, grinning down at him as Jaskier kicks like a cat, trying to untangle one of the legs of the trousers where it’s wrapped around his foot. “Do you think they found it?” He asks, gritting his teeth and growling in frustration when the material of the trousers just winds tighter around his ankle. 

Geralt’s grin widens, already hearing his brothers and Aiden making their way to the room, tossing Jaskier’s pelt between them in what he knows already will be another round of keep-away, a game that’s partially meant to teach Jaskier to keep better track of his pelt and partially done out of a familial desire to fuck with him. 

“Think you can jump higher than Lambert can throw by now?” Geralt asks rhetorically in response, and Jaskier drops his head back to the floor with a groan. 

“Beat them up for me,” Jaskier orders, and Geralt rolls his eyes and moves onto his back, stretching his arms up and interlacing his hands behind his head, ready for the show. 

It serves Jaskier right, really, careless selkie that he is.