#and I know ciris hair is lighter and straighter than that but cmon yennefer and jaskier are important figures in her life

[finleycannotdraw]

Shut Up and Dance With Me

Geralt has always known that soft things aren’t meant for him.

It’s why he pushed Jaskier away. It’s why he keeps away from towns when he’s not working. It’s why he denied his Child Surprise so vehemently for so many years. He was told that the world would have nothing for him but roughness, so he roughened himself in preparation and never truly relaxed.

Until now, that is.

He’d stumbled over his apology to Jaskier—not the one in the prison cell, his real apology—and the bard had laughed at him. He’d panicked for about two seconds, which was as long as it took for Jaskier to close the distance between them and pull Geralt into an embrace.

“I’ll always forgive you, dear heart,” he’d said. “It might make me fucking stupid, but that’s never stopped me before.”

“Taking my lines now, huh?” Geralt had replied, hugging Jaskier back with a bone-deep warmth he’d never felt before.

Maybe he’d never felt warm before because he never let himself get close enough to the heat.

Now, Jaskier is strumming his lute and singing some silly song about shutting up and dancing, and Ciri is giggling as she leads Geralt through the steps of a dance. Her hair is loose around her shoulders, and she’s wearing a dress that Jaskier and Yennefer had managed to produce from someplace or another.

“Spin me,” she says, laughing too much for it to sound like a proper order, but he obeys anyway, smiling indulgently as he grabs his daughter by the waist and lifts her up, spinning around a few times before setting her down, grasping her hand, and twirling her on her own feet. She laughs harder, her joy ringing out into the snow, into the music.

The music stops, but Jaskier keeps singing, and Geralt glances over to see the bard dancing with Lambert, both men laughing just as much as Ciri. It only takes another second for her to notice, and she spins once more with Geralt before reaching out to switch, falling into a waltz with Jaskier and leaving the two witchers to quickly decide whether to continue dancing.

Lambert decides for both of them, hooking his elbow around Geralt’s and skipping in a circle, dragging Geralt with him.

They switch directions a few times, and then Ciri is shoving her way between them to dance with Lambert, leaving Geralt to be caught deftly by Jaskier and maneuvered into a different dance, one that causes them to be pressed close together. Jaskier keeps singing, keeps grinning, but his eyes have softened as he gazes up at Geralt’s face.

Geralt, feeling seen and insecure, dares a glance toward his brother and daughter. Lambert, roaring with laughter, is throwing Ciri into the air and catching her with ease. Jaskier has gone through enough choruses that they both know the words, so as Lambert heaves Ciri upwards again, they’re both singing along.

“She said ‘shut up and dance with me!’”

Jaskier stops singing to chuckle at them, but joins back in during the next repetition, with one notable change.

“This witcher is my destiny,” he says teasingly, and looks nothing but delighted by the concept, unlike everyone else forced into Geralt’s life by destiny.

The thing is, Jaskier wasn’t a result of destiny. He’s here by choice, and if he’s so happy to joke that he’s destined to be here, with Geralt, then—

Geralt kisses him.

Jaskier makes a surprised humming sound and returns the kiss eagerly, his hands going from Geralt’s shoulders to the back of his neck as he stands up on his toes to get closer.

“Oi, bard, the song doesn’t end in the middle of the lyric like that, right? Why’d—oh,” Lambert says. “About time. Fucking morons.”

“Gross,” says Ciri. “But yeah. It is about time.”

Maybe Geralt wasn’t meant for soft things. But he’s learning, day by day, that maybe that doesn’t mean he has to live a life without them.

—

and here’s the rest of the drawing of all the dance combinations! the fic took me like 10 minutes and the drawing took a few hours😭