Chapter Text
Geralt never really thought much about why he did it. His hands had a life of their own sometimes, and after slaying a monster and writing as many specifics he thought could be useful in his journal, he drew it. Sometimes he drew the whole monster, other times he captured just some details, like claws, teeth, wings, a spiked tail...but he didn’t stop at drawing monsters for long.
After so many years spent on the Path boredom was inevitable, there’s only so many times he could draw a drowner or a wyvern without boring himself to tears, so he started to change subject: one of his favourites, to no one’s surprise, was Roach. He drew her at rest, while she drank from a clear spring, while she ate, and he did his best to capture the way she looked at him, but with just a charcoal pencil and a worn-out journal as his tools the results were less than stellar.
It became a sort of ritual. After a contract, at camp, he unwound writing a sort of report and drawing whatever came to his mind, ending up drawing that one solitary hill covered in trees he had seen while traveling, a few lakes and a mountain spring that had made him wish for better tools and colours other than black to capture the shades of blue and azure of the waters.
His brothers teased him every winter, leafing through his journals to look at his last drawings, trying to convince him to draw a beautiful woman for them to admire at least once. He didn’t mind their jabs and jokes at his expense, every single one of them had something that sparked just a tiny bit of joy while on the Path, and they shared it each other over the long cold months they spent at the keep.
Eskel had found out he enjoyed cooking and while he couldn’t do much of that while camping in the wilderness, he took advantage of the kitchen in Kaer Morhen to try his hand at everything that could satisfy his brothers’ hunger. Not that it took much, it just needed to be edible enough to be appreciated.
Lambert had started mixing substances and strange powders just to create his own explosives, but then he kept doing it, experimenting and writing down the results, discovering quite a few interesting things. And if his experiments sometimes went sideways and burned his eyebrows or filled the laboratory with smelly smoke no one said anything to spoil his fun, as long as he cleaned up after himself.
As Vesemir said more than once, his hobby was probably the most harmless, since he had never given anyone food poisoning or set himself on fire.
So he kept at it. He drew a human figure just once, but he ripped off the page and hid it in the depth of his travel bags, not knowing what to do with the portrait of Renfri’s smile, undecided between burning it and never looking at it again or bringing it to the Keep, safe in his quarters.
That was the last time he drew someone. Until a certain bard decided to stick to his side like glue.
*
Jaskier was...noisy.
Gone were the quiet nights spent around a campfire with Roach and his journal, gone were the early mornings he spent looking at the dawn while riding on her back. Now he had a travel companion who never, ever, shut up.
It was deeply annoying at first, he tried to shake off the pest more than once, leaving camp quietly before he woke up, leaving a village after a contract completed while the bard sang his heart out in the tavern, but nothing worked.
Jaskier always found him, in a few hours or a few days, he was again at his side.
Geralt had stopped trying after the first year, when the bard had found him again come spring, even if the Witcher never told him precisely where he was wintering.
*
<I swear, he won this year because he paid the judges, but oh no, next year I’ll show him. He won’t know what hit him, I’m going to fucking annihilate that idiot and his bland songs!>
Jaskier was still going on about his rival’s victory at the annual bard competition the University held in Oxenfurt for its graduates. He had been raving about it for the last hour, never stopping even while foraging mushrooms for the stew, skinning the rabbit Geralt had caught, and cooking it. At least he wouldn't speak while eating.
The Witcher would never tell him, of course, but he had heard a few of his rival’s songs here and there in taverns and inns, one even in a brothel, and Jaskier was absolutely right: there was no way the fool had won fairly against him. Geralt wasn’t an expert, but he had learned a thing or two listening to Jaskier’s rants: the rhymes were trite, the lyrics terribly banal and the melody never stayed on his mind for long after the first impression. “A good song should never leave your mind, it should torment you every time your hands are idle”, or so the bard said.
After eating and putting away their limited supplies, they each selected their spot for the night around the fire, and Jaskier took out his lute, tuning it absentmindedly while making up a silly little song about his rival’s voice being mistaken for that of a chicken.
Was it petty? Yes. Was it funny? Also yes. From his side of the camp Geralt opened his journal, doing his best to hide the smirk on his lips, his gaze fixed on the bard’s hands as one turned carefully and with great precision the tuning pegs on his lute, while the other plucked the strings.
He had beautiful hands. Graceful, but still manly, with long fingers and a few calluses where the strings continuously rubbed the skin. His palms were soft, Geralt had felt them against his skin more than once when the bard helped him with his wounds after a difficult contract, or when he insisted the Witcher's neck absolutely needed a massage because it was making him tense just by looking at it.
It wasn’t a conscious choice, as often happened, he found himself drawing the bard’s hands, detailing the texture of his skin carefully, smudging the charcoal with his own fingers to get the shading of the campfire just right.
It was only when Jaskier started to sing that his concentration broke and Geralt looked at the page, finding that he had drawn those hands nearly to perfection, while the lute was just a crude approximation, like it wasn’t really that important. That just wouldn’t do.
Without thinking too much about it and fully relaxing, Geralt started to add details to Filavandrel’s lute, thinking that that wasn’t really a portrait of Jaskier, as long as he never drew the bard’s face.
*
He knew, of course, that his brothers would be curious about the new drawings in his journal. After drawing Jaskier’s hands that first time, Geralt had unwittingly drawn a few other details, usually in the corners of the pages, or between one entry and the other.
The elven decoration on his lute, the intricate design of Jaskier’s blue doublet, Roach’s mane, which Jaskier had braided with little yellow flowers.
<A bard’s hands and lute?> asked Lambert, observing the drawing and turning the journal to look at it from another angle, as if it would reveal secret details in the shadowing.
<That’s an elven lute...say, Geralt, is this the bard who wrote the coin song?> Eskel was far more observant. Geralt nodded, knowing that they would pester him the whole night if not the whole winter now that they knew for sure they were travelling together. It wasn’t his fault they never asked about Jaskier after that first song. <Wait, are you telling me that it’s true? The songs he sang in the last two years about you are true?> and here it was. Lambert had that glint in his eyes that never bode well for Geralt.
<The bard is following you around then...how lovely. Does he sing for you in private, too?> it was like being thirteen again sometimes, being at the Keep with his brothers. Geralt groaned and put his hands in his hair, searching Eskel’s face for a bit of sympathy.
<It’s not like that, we just travel together. I tried to shake him off, but he’s persistent> he explained, feeling strangely like he had to defend himself.
<And he’s not afraid of you?> Vesemir had been quietly reading a book by the fire, looking like he wasn’t paying attention, but no one fell for it anymore. He intervened only to say something really meaningful to him.
<No, I’ve never smelled fear on him. At least towards me> Jaskier had been afraid a lot in those years, travelling with a Witcher was not for the faint of heart, but he endured. Complained a lot, loudly and lengthily, but never told him he contemplated to leave his side indefinitely, that he had seen enough...it was comforting.
<Mh, must be quite special then>
“Special”, said by Vesemir, could mean a lot of things, but Geralt chose to think it was a seal of approval in his choice of travel companion.
<Is this a shoulder?> Lambert was again looking at his drawings like he needed to interpret them. Geralt nodded again, knowing he was looking at a drawing of Jaskier’s shoulder, the embroidery of his doublet carefully detailed, partly hidden by the strap of his lute.
Eskel was looking at the drawing from above Lambert’s shoulder and he quickly scanned the following pages, before raising his gaze to meet Geralt’s. <You know Wolf, you could draw his face for once, at least I’d have an idea who to be thankful to when humans don’t spit in my face anymore>. He was right. People had been treating Witchers better thanks to Jaskier’s songs, but still...a portrait was something deeply personal to Geralt.
He hummed noncommittally, thinking about Renfri’s portrait, hidden in a drawer in his rooms.