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1.
He doesn’t know quite what causes it, that day, although he blames it partially on the hustle and bustle of the big city. It doesn’t make much sense– he’s traveled to busier places with naught but the lute at his side and been perfectly okay– but maybe it’s so much chatter after so much quiet, traveling the road with Geralt these past few weeks. Delayed, and delayed again, but they had finally made it. And the town is beautiful and busy and Jask gawks with wide, ogling eyes at the buildings and streets and women, and adores it.
But he is so tired come nightfall. He spends half the evening nursing something so very strong at the tavern, and goes to their room well before Geralt shows back up from whatever hunt he’s been chasing. He doesn’t know if he expects him back before the night ends, actually. He’ll get the details later to turn into a song. Right now, he’s going to have an early night and a less draining day tomorrow for it.
… it stands to reason that, when he is tired, he just cannot fall asleep. He stares at the ceiling in something like irritation, exasperated at the old feeling crawling back up on him again. His head aches. His bones ache. It’s so loud from downstairs and even the streets below, and he thinks he misses sleeping out under the stars.
Even for a sentimentalist, he’s taking it a bit far, isn’t he? Geralt has spoiled him with wild scenic views and quiet conversations the past few weeks, the brute. Now it’s city life again, something he loves, seeing as how he is very much a city boy, but… just the change of pace again. His life has been drastically different as of late. He wouldn’t change it for the world.
He would like to fall asleep, although it doesn’t seem forthcoming. He tries to lay quiet and count, and then to think of his songs when it doesn’t work, but he’s all too focused on things around him and it feels oddly… lonely, here in this big city. He’ll appreciate it magnificently come morning, but right now it seems to be settling heavy on his chest and squeezing at his throat.
When the first tears come, they come as almost a shock. Then he kind of has to laugh at himself, because good gods, he’s back in his natural habitat of life and revelry and he feels out of place after being out on the road. And he misses Geralt, who’s probably just skulking through town gathering information or coin or something. He feels a bit pathetic, truly, which doesn’t exactly stop the tears flowing. Nothing bad had even happened. But that was just how it went, didn’t it?
He has it on good authority he’d cried a lot as a child. And he can absolutely shed a tear over civic theatre, these days, or his own lyrics if they’re meant to provoke the emotion. He is also not a stranger to losing it a bit in moments of uncertainty or overwhelmed choices, but… hells, he supposes this counts. So he laughs at himself, just a little, while he scrubs at his eyes. Maybe he just does need the lapse in control, the release of emotion. Maybe it’ll put him to sleep once he cries himself out. He’s never been much in the state of mind of pulling a Geralt and locking away all of his emotions. It wasn’t good for you.
Still, it isn’t really good for his heart when Geralt comes back halfway through his impromptu cry. Unannounced and uninvited– even if it is their shared room. Jaskier’s just startled enough that it, well, freaks him out a bit, sends embarrassment running hot through his veins. He scrambles to turn over, wipe his face free of the evidence and bury his face into the pillows, but it’s a lot of movement at once, and accomplishes very little. Especially when you were rooming with a witcher.
“… what happened?” Geralt doesn’t speak at first, not for a long minute where Jaskier tries to sniffle quietly in the dark. He doesn’t sound sure of the question, apprehensive and suspicious, but then he doesn’t seem very good at comforting anyone over the age of being a young child. That was Geralt for you.
“Nothing,” Jask says quickly, and winces as his voice rasps. Damn. Hoisted by his own petard, there. “Nothing,” he says, quieter, and wipes his nose on his sleeve.
There’s a pause, and then he actively cringes when the candle on his bedside table sparks to life. “Geralt,” he gasps, and jerks the blankets up over his head. His eyes already hurt. The flame in the darkness is as painful as it is humiliating. He probably looks like shit. “Put that out.”
There’s another moment of silence, and then Geralt’s sign extinguishes the flame again. “Alright.” The room goes back to darkness. Jaskier doesn’t peep out of the blankets.
Geralt doesn’t say anything else, and Jask is infinitely relieved. He drops off quickly after that, completely and thoroughly wrung out.
If the witcher looks at him a bit more closely come morning, trying to solve him like a day old mystery, well, Jaskier can at least be sure his eyes aren’t red for crying anymore.
2.
He sneaks out of the tent halfway through the night, ostensibly to have a slash but also because he can’t stand to cry when he’s back to back with Geralt. He’s… frustrated, that’s all. He knows witchers and bards are so very different, and Geralt sees the world in a lot of black and white. He’s definitely learned that. But it doesn’t exactly stop him getting annoyed sometimes, and he feels… well, near tears with it. And he doesn’t want to cry next to Geralt when he knows, in the end, he’s the one being overly emotional.
He just wants to cry a little, by himself, then he’ll go back and sleep well and he’ll be okay come morning. Because he’s as irritated with himself as he is with Geralt right now.
There’s a cozy spot beneath one of the trees near the far edge of the clearing. He drops onto the grass, tips his head back against the tree, and allows himself to overthink about the day they’ve had. It doesn’t take long for his vision to go blurry, and then he’s properly giving himself over to the emotion. It’ll help. It always helps.
There is nothing more freeing than letting go.
He thinks, maybe, that is why he values certain things the way he does. Letting himself spiral away into nothing, into the type of high strung emotion that comes with, say, a good fuck, or chasing after Geralt on a madman’s mission. The tension and release, and tears sliding down his cheeks. It’s… nice, although crying itself is sort of a miserable thing. Ah well. So long as he doesn’t get congested in his sinuses for it.
So wrapped up is he in his tears and his sinuses that he doesn’t hear the approach until it’s too late.
“Jaskier.”
He shrieks, no doubt about it. A cluster of birds burst from the tree tops, and he almost tumbles over the roots of the tree with the untimely scare, but… it’s just Geralt. Oh, it’s just Geralt.
He stares at him in heart-pounding terror, and agony, and the noise that comes out of his mouth is undoubtedly a sob, then, before he can pull himself together. But only for an aborted moment. Then he gets angry, and ashamed, straight down to the tips of his toes. And… relieved, because it’s only Geralt. All things considered… that’s really the good outcome here.
“Geralt,” he groans, and rubs his eyes so hard he sees cloudbursts of light. His hands are shaking. He’s shaking. He wants to keep crying for a different reason. “What are you doing?” And then, because he can’t help himself, “why do you keep interrupting when I’m having a cry?” he demands, and tries to dry his face.
But Geralt doesn’t say anything. And when he does, he sounds… uncharacteristically genuine when he says, “sorry.” So genuine and soft-spoken that it nearly punches the breath Jaskier’s just managed to catch back out of his lungs. It isn’t… fair. “It isn’t safe out here,” Geralt continues. “You need to stay close by.”
“It’s not like it’s horribly out of the way,” Jaskier mutters, and his voice is thick and his throat hurts. But Geralt’s right. Jask doesn’t have a weapon to his name if anything happens. “I’ll come back, just… give me a second?” He just wants to blow his nose in peace. That’s all.
Geralt looks at him too closely, and Jask’s once again reminded that witchers can see in the dark just fine. He turns away, a little, and tries not to sniffle. “Sure,” Geralt relents, and he breathes out a sigh of relief. “Don’t be long.”
“I won’t,” Jaskier promises, and he won’t, and he isn’t. He hurries back to camp soon after, and pretends he doesn’t know Geralt’s still awake when he crawls back into the tent next to him.
3.
He’s never been good with the more brutal parts of the world. War, sickness, death… they shake him to the core. He feels dizzy walking through the decaying remains of a village torn apart by necrophages. Meanwhile, Geralt’s wrist deep in some rotting corpse, inspecting their intestines or something. If he pays too much attention, he’ll throw up again. He leaves Geralt to it, and hovers as far from the center of the massacre as he can.
But he’s not blind. Even torn half apart, he can make out the number of corpses. And Geralt doesn’t have to remark on the size of some of the bones. They’re far too small to have been an adult’s. And he can’t get the image out of his head.
They make enough coin from this hunt that they secure a room at the nice inn, but something about Geralt’s face is stormy and turbulent as the churning in Jaskier’s stomach, and he thinks they would have paid to stay at a nice place even if they hadn’t been rewarded handsomely for this one. And there’s a tub big enough for Geralt to stretch out in, too. A tub that Jaskier practically flees to when Geralt tells him to once the water arrives, because he can’t wait to get out of these clothes that seem to stink of death and decay, and wash away all of the crawling feeling he’s been shuddering over since leaving that town.
He can barely dodge around the dividing screen, and unbuckle and unbutton his things in preparation to bathe before he starts shaking, properly, finally in the safety and sanctity of his own ‘home’ (albeit for only a night) to finally not have to keep it together.
Besides, Geralt’s on the other side of the room grumbling about the state of his sullied armor and the task of getting all that leather off while covered in monster guts, so he’s distracted enough Jaskier just doesn’t care.
The water is steaming hot when he steps a foot in, but he’s so wound up in horror that he doesn’t know if it’ll help, and he’s already heartbroken enough when he sinks into the water that it really isn’t a surprise he’s crying before he can even grab the soap.
By this time, though, he has more or less perfected quiet crying.
It’s never a foolproof thing, being emotional around someone who can hear every last noise. He’s grown to care a little less; he’s spent so much time with Geralt that there’s a lot he’s not so ashamed over anymore. But it’s just enough of that embarrassment that he tries, a little. Tiny inhales and exhales to keep his breathing mostly steady, and shifting in the water if he’s going to sniffle. But mostly, he just draws his knees up to his chest and stays there, and sits in the water and quietly cries.
Geralt’s going to notice, anyway. He always does.
He’s still glad for some semblance of privacy with the screen, though. Even if Geralt knows, can hear his breathing being the way it is or smell the salt in his tears or something as equally asinine. And he’s especially glad that Geralt never pries.
He does feel a little stupid when he finally drags himself out of the bath and Geralt’s sitting at the cramped writing desk in nothing but his smallclothes, meticulously cleaning his armor. He peeks around the screen and then hurries to dry off, quietly clearing his throat before he speaks. “You could have told me you were waiting.”
Like Geralt hadn’t known. Like Geralt hadn’t been giving him time.
“Not in a hurry now.” Geralt shrugs. His tools are spread across the desk, and his filthy clothes are in a pile at the door.
Jaskier wrinkles his nose, and towels at his hair. “You have to be cold,” he protests. He wants nothing more than to go curl into bed, but making certain that Geralt’s taken care of too is almost calming in itself. Familiar. He needs to do that just as much as he needs to crawl into bed, today.
“Mm.”
He rolls his eyes, because that’s a typical Geralt reaction and he’s about as likely to pull free the truth of why Geralt wasn’t hurrying him as he is to admit why he’d taken so long in the first place. Just an unspoken thing. Geralt had taught him to be good at those, too.
“Go. Get clean, please.” He pauses as he passes by, and reaches to pluck at the ribbon tying Geralt’s sweaty, grime-streaked hair. “Let me know if you need help washing this muck off.” He tugs it loose, and Geralt makes a nondescript noise when his hair falls in limp strands around his face.
“You’ll be asleep in five minutes,” he says, and stands.
“I’ll stay awake,” Jaskier promises, because he may be emotionally wrung out but it’s the least he can do.
“No need.”
“Every need,” he retaliates, and digs for some relatively clean clothes to sleep in while Geralt noisily gets into the bath. He steps into a pair of smalls and an overly long tunic he can’t quite remember where he picked up, and then goes to sit in the middle of the bed. He isn’t going to sleep. Not yet.
I’m here if you need me, too, he doesn’t say, and later washes Geralt’s hair in lethargic– but comfortable– silence.
+ 1
He sees his life flash before his eyes. For all of his declarations of living without regrets, he has a lot of them. He has a lot of life left to live, except he doesn’t. Because the man with the knife flies at him and he’s going to die.
Getting taken hostage, he might have expected this outcome. But he’d thought… he’d thought…
– there’s a blade at his attacker’s throat, and an arc of blood that lands sticky on his skin. The man’s head is skewered and sent flying with momentum. Jaskier watches in mute horror as the body falls, and Geralt is standing behind, steel sword poised, looking irate. He looks like every depiction of every witcher Jaskier’s ever seen, veins black with potion, splattered with blood. The left side of his leather armor is sliced open and bloody. There’s fire in his eyes, anger and determination.
… Jaskier has never seen such a beautiful sight.
For a second, he thinks he’s still dreaming. But then the heavy weight of the corpse lands inches from him, and he jerks from the thud and the new cascade of blood, and Geralt lowers his sword. He’s really there. Jaskier’s really safe.
He stares, hardly able to believe it, up at the man who has been his protector and friend for so many years now. Thinks he’s lucky to know him. And then, after that tiny little pause of self-reflection, Jaskier promptly bursts into tears.
It’s not subtle at all. He feels his lips quiver and then he lets out a sob he hadn’t known was coming, and he’s lost. The tears come thick and fast and his hands are still bound behind his back, so he can’t put his face in his hands or even wipe his tears. All he can do is gasp from terror and relief, and lean over to press his forehead against his knees to try and hide his face. And he can’t stop crying. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to.
“Jaskier.” He hears Geralt sheathe his sword, and then feels him crouch next to him. “Are you hurt?”
Yes and no. He is, he’s got bruises on his wrists from the shackles in the past days. He’d gotten a backhand for his cheek and he still thinks the rib is bruised if not broken where he’d been kicked when he’d first been taken. But those are superficial, and not why he’s crying. The blood on him is from the attacker, now. He’s just… gods. He can’t. He can’t anymore.
The ropes at his wrists tighten momentarily; there’s the cool bite of something metal and then the tension of the rope snaps. His hands are free when Geralt hacks the rope apart, and Jask goes to put his face in his hands but his hands hurt, his arms hurt. He must make a strangled noise of pain.
“Slowly,” Geralt warns, and then, again, “are you hurt besides that?” There’s an urgency to his voice that Jaskier isn’t used to hearing, but he can’t speak to respond.
So he just shakes his head, and keeps shaking his head, a tiny movement of no, no, no over and over. Because he can’t control himself right now, because he’s fine, better than, but he can’t do anything except sit and shake his head and quake and cry.
Geralt’s fingers are too close to the bruises on his wrists, so Jask knows he sees. His fingers are too close to his wrist and his grip is so gentle, and there’s no way he hasn’t noticed. His voice comes out a bit wrong, but he must believe him, because he says, “alright,” and lets his fingers fall from Jaskier’s wrist. He’ll catch hell for not disclosing the injury on his ribs, but he can’t speak.
Instead, he cries harder, and turns around to lean his forehead against Geralt’s bicep. Just to hide his face. Just to feel that Geralt’s really there, and that he hasn’t died, and that this isn’t heaven or hell or whatever awaits them after death. They’re really there. Geralt’s saved him so many times, so what’s once more, this time by being the person who grounds him? He hooks his fingers into the crook of Geralt’s arm shakily, and then just holds on while he lets go.
Geralt has never been good with words, and he doesn’t say anything now, but Jaskier’s pretty sure the need for a quick escape is null and void going by the blood on Geralt’s leathers, and the general state of his sword. No one’s going to come looking for them. Just as well. Jaskier doesn’t think he’d be able to do much of anything in this state, anyway.
Geralt lets him sob himself to silence, punctuated only by intermittent hiccups and the overwhelming urge to vomit if he had anything in his stomach to throw up. In the end, he feels destroyed, anyway, eyes swollen and nose blocked, and it takes a long time to catch his breath even when the tears dry up to nothing and he’s still sat, slumped against Geralt’s shoulder. And Geralt hasn’t moved a muscle, really. Not at all.
It still takes Jaskier a long while to be able to work himself up to speech. Even then, he barely makes it above a rasping whisper, and doesn’t lift his head. “Sorry,” he murmurs, because he feels like he ought to apologize– for crying, for getting taken in the first place. The latter of which wasn’t precisely his fault, but his mouth hadn’t helped matters and Geralt had had to come rescue him again. “Couldn’t…” Now he clears his throat, and squeezes Geralt’s arm where he’s still hanging onto it. “Wasn’t going anywhere like that,” he manages, trying to joke at his own expense.
Geralt does move, then, patting a hand against his back just as awkwardly as he had all those years ago, when that godsforsaken djinn had nearly killed him. It makes Jaskier smile, a little. Geralt really never had gotten good at casual comforting. “Long as you’re okay,” he says, and Jaskier inclines his head in a tiny nod.
Then he sets to being more productive, and raises his head to wipe his eyes, and the traces of tears on his face. He can’t stay here forever. Gods, he doesn’t want to. “Yeah. Um.” He sniffles, and smooths his hand across the part of Geralt’s sleeve that he’d been crying on. “That’s fine.”
“It’s seen worse.”
Jaskier almost chuckles, then, which startles him a bit, because it’s been a couple days without laughter. But it’s fine now. He’s fine. “That’s true,” he agrees halfheartedly, and lets Geralt help him to his feet when his legs wobble upon trying to stand.
That should be the end of it, really, and it is, for awhile. A few hours. Jaskier can barely walk for exhaustion, dehydration, he isn’t sure. Geralt has to haul him up onto Roach, and he leans heavily against him as they ride back to town. Then he gets the royal treatment: one of the nicer rooms at the tavern, a hot bath, and Geralt helping him to wash. He knows it’s a front, just so Geralt can get a closer look at his injuries, but he lets him, and feels a tired surge of pride and fear at the look of anger that passes Geralt’s face when he takes in the mottled bruise on Jaskier’s side. The pride heavily outweighs the fear. He half dozes in the water as he tries to soak away the aches, and he dozes again when Geralt washes his hair oh so carefully.
He almost falls into bed, except he expects that would hurt. So he crawls in carefully instead, bundles up beneath the blankets, and goes to sleep proper. And that should be the end of it. Really.
It figures that he has nightmares, reliving all of the past few days in his dreams again. Like it wasn’t enough the first time, the actual time. He knows he’s safe. Their room at the tavern is drastically different to that of the room he’d been kept in. It’s warm and dry, he’s curled up under the blankets with Geralt at his back like usual, and it still smells faintly of salts and oils from his bath. There’s a candle burned half down on the nightstand. It’s comfortable, and cozy, and… he’s miserable again, briefly, from the pictures flashing through his head during sleep.
And crying again, because why the hell not. What else would he do at arse o’ clock in the morning after having nightmare-memories of being kidnapped? Shouldn’t he have gotten this out of his system last night? Or just… some delayed onset upset lingering, he guesses. He doesn’t have the energy to be annoyed, and he doesn’t have the energy to move, to untangle his hands from where he’s fisted them into the blankets. And it would hurt to get out of bed regardless, and it’d be cold, and he doesn’t want to go anywhere, anyway.
So he stays awake, staring at the flickering glow of the spluttering candle. Tears on his cheeks and definitely not kidnapped. He’s fine. He’s–
“You’re dreamin’,” Geralt rumbles, and his voice is deep and muffled and still makes Jaskier flinch because he hadn’t known he was awake.
“Uh… uh huh.” He ducks his chin further into the blankets. “I know. Sorry if I woke you.”
“Hmm.”
He doesn’t expect Geralt to put his arm around him, either, but he does, putting direct pressure on that terrible busted rib and Jask can’t quite stop the strangled squawk of pain he emits in response. “Gera–”
“Sorry.” His arm slips down to drape about his waist instead, sleep-heavy but careful. “Forgot.”
“‘s alright,” he breathes, still half frozen in pain and just… surprise. They’ve slept like this many a time. When the nights were cold or the snows came early. Nevermind every single night during any stay in Skellige, damned snowcap as it was. But never without preamble, and it’s a little… surprising. Or maybe it’s just because he’s worn out, and doubly in pain now. Probably that that keeps him where he is, unmoving, hands still clutching the blankets.
Geralt says nothing else, and it takes Jask a few minutes to realize he’s just fallen back asleep. Of course… of course he has. Useless man. Useless, comforting man, he corrects, and smiles a little as he closes his eyes again. Well, fine. He’ll sleep like this. He knows he can sleep like this. Maybe he’ll even sleep well.
… he turns his face to wipe his face on the pillow, and breathes out a breath he wasn’t aware of holding.
He doesn’t remember dozing off, but he sleeps well into afternoon of the next day, and Geralt’s hovering about the room when he does wake up to greet him with a groggy, but comfortable, good morning.
“Welcome back,” Geralt says, dry as ever, and Jaskier… for the first time in days, he properly, truly feels okay again.