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samstree · 3 years ago

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Keeper of Hearts

Destiny has one more surprise for Geralt after all these years, involving Jaskier of all people. It comes in the form of a soulbond and well-hidden heartache from the past.

Written for Geraskier Secret Santa 2021. A gift for @demisexualgeralt. 🎄

(5.3k, rated t, prompts: soulmates, cozying up by the fire)

Beta'd by @curls-cat. Also on AO3.

It starts as a throbbing pain in Geralt’s ankle.

He frowns, looking down to see his feet planted to the solid ground of Oxenfurt’s street, the cobblestone covered in snow. There’s nothing wrong with his foot, no injury flaring up, no spraining on the slippery stairs. There shouldn’t be pain. At least, not on him.

It explodes all of a sudden.

“F—” the curse is cut off by what feels like fire licking up every inch of his skin—no, not fire. It burns, but it’s different.

It feels like…ice.

It washes over him from head to toe before gathering in his lungs. A thousand needles prickle his skin, sending him to his knees. Air is trapped in his chest, his vision darkening from the lack of oxygen. It’s almost like—

Like he’s drowning in freezing water.

Geralt clutches at his throat with fingers that he can no longer feel, his face somehow landing in the snow. He can’t breathe. All his limbs grow numb. Everything is what he’s supposed to feel if he’s actually drowning in some wild lake in the middle of winter.

But it leaves just as quickly.

Within one heartbeat and the next, the pressure eases, and Geralt lets out a choked breath and coughs into his fist. The numbness remains all over his body, sending another shiver down his spine, but he’s not drowning anymore. He stays on the ground for another moment.

“Are you okay, Sir Witcher?” a sweet voice asks from above, and Geralt looks up to see one of Jaskier’s students—Dalia, the girl whose hair cannot be tamed. She’s the one always smiling and calling Geralt ‘sir,’ a diligent pupil and Jaskier’s favorite, not that he should ever admit having those.

“Dalia, ah, yes. I’m fine,” Geralt lies, still huffing and puffing. To be fair, he doesn’t understand what happened yet. He’s never had phantom pain like—

“It’s soul pain, isn’t it?” she asks, before the concern in her eyes turns into horror. “Oh! Professor Pankratz! He must be hurt! But where is he? We must find him now!”

Geralt stares at her round eyes for a second before his brain catches up. “What are you—” he scrambles up from the ground despite his feet still feeling like someone else’s. “It’s not soul pain. I don’t have—Jaskier is not my soulmate.”

Her frown doesn’t ease. “Okay, sorry. I thought…”

Geralt knows what she thought, what most people they meet in Oxenfurt think these days. It’s already unusual for a bard to travel with a witcher for nearly three decades, let alone inviting him to winter together in the faculty quarters for so many years. This time, Jaskier didn’t even bother booking him another room because they always end up in the same place after a week or two. Save me the money, dear witcher, he said at the end of the fall. Wasting a bed in this economy should be a crime.

But no, despite what Dalia assumed, they are not together. He and Jaskier are most definitely not soulmates.

Witchers don’t get them. The trials have made sure they are not among those lucky ones—or, as Vesemir once put it, unfortunate sods—who have to burden an innocent person with all the shared pains and hurts and sorrows. It’s just the way it is, they simply don’t get soulmates.

They don’t.

…Right?

Geralt looks down at his hands, where the tingling remains deep in his bones. Soul pain? Could it be?

Just like too many of Geralt’s problems, the answer comes when Jaskier rounds the corner, letting out every curse under the sky. He is half-carried by Essi and Valdo on each side. Their little group is loud, as one that is purely made of bards is expected to be, with indistinguishable yells and orders exploding among the three of them. Dalia turns to the noise at the same time as Geralt, but there’s no way a human’s eyes can catch the state Jaskier is in as quickly as a witcher.

Jaskier is dripping wet.

Two large overcoats are wrapped around his shoulders, and the curls on his forehead are stuck to his skin. There’s snow in his hair—no, ice. The water is crystallizing in the wind. He’s also limping, one of his feet hovering awkwardly off the ground.

They are coming towards Geralt, or rather, the faculty building behind him. The three bards are still arguing. Even Jaskier’s chattering teeth can’t stop him.

“No, Essi, it w—wasn’t your fault! I will not accept your apology anymore! It was Valdo’s—don’t you hey me! You shoved me into the lake!”

“The ice should have settled!”

“You conspired to kill me! First, you tripped me and broke my ankle. My livelihood! And then you tried to drown me! In this horrid weather, no less—” Jaskier breaks into a coughing fit, trapping a gurgling noise in his lungs, the fit making him tip forward, just in time to land on his injured foot. “Shit,” he heaves out a labored breath, his voice now hoarser and deeper, “that hurt.”

Pain shoots up Geralt’s leg, exactly where Jaskier jostled it.

“Our livelihood is the voice, Julian. If your feet are somehow included, you are singing the wrong way.”

“How dare you! You know you’ll never beat me on the dance floor—oh.” Jaskier’s shouting cuts off when he notices Geralt standing right in front of him, his eyes widening like a cat seeing his favorite person, the steaming rage in his voice immediately gone, leaving only softness. “Geralt, hey.”

Jaskier drags Essi and Valdo to a halt, his foot setting down gently. For a moment, surprise knits his brows together. His hands drop to the sides of the other two bards, his fingers red in the cold air. It looks like it hurts. Geralt knows it hurts. The wind shifts, ruffling the wet hair at Jaskier’s eyes, cutting into his still-damp skin like a sharp blade. Geralt feels every bit of the tingling.

He doesn’t know what face he’s making, only that whatever Jaskier is seeing can’t be good, because that familiar worried look is creeping up on the bard’s frown. He stares at Jaskier still, his Jaskier for the past thirty years, and tries to find the answer in those beautiful blue eyes.

Instead, Jaskier finds it first. Like a lightning strike, splitting open the cloudless sky.

Despite the paleness already overtaking his features, Jaskier blanches.

“Oh,” he breathes. “Oh, Geralt, no. I—I can explain…”

Jaskier shudders, losing his balance, almost taking Essi down with him. Geralt snaps out of a trance and suddenly he’s seeing signs of shock all over Jaskier. He’s shivering under those thick cloaks, his lips turning blue and his heart fluttering dangerously. The babbling is the worst; Geralt should have realized. The bard has a habit of distracting himself from all sorts of hurt by rambling on and on, until he stops.

“Jaskier?” Geralt asks but there’s no answer. Jaskier is shaking all over, looking like he’s only seconds away from passing out. “Shit.” With two long strides, Geralt is at Jaskier’s side and taking all his weight from Essi. “Here. Let me.”

“Geralt, I—it’s not like that…” Jaskier struggles.

“Later.” He lifts Jaskier off the ground in one swift motion, and the ache in Geralt’s ankle eases immediately. “Get you warmed up first.”

Jaskier trembles again, clinging to Geralt’s neck. Gods, his hands are like ice blocks. He nods to Dalia, who is looking even more confused, but Geralt doesn’t have the time for it. He sets out for the well-lit building where their bedroom is. Essi keeps a hand on Jaskier’s arm the entire way and squeezes from time to time, only breaking contact when they reach the stairs. Valdo and Jaskier have also ceased their jabs, a rare bliss.

“Sweet Melitele,” Jaskier sighs with relief when Geralt nudges open the door. The fire is still burning, so Geralt prioritizes setting Jaskier down on a chair and stripping him of those wet clothes. His ankle has only swelled a little, not broken. It can wait a bit.

“Could you get us a bath? Cold water is fine,” Geralt acknowledges the other bards. Valdo is already on his way out, but Essi looks like she’s on the verge of tears.

“Hey, poppet. Come here.” Jaskier stills Geralt’s fingers on the ties of his doublet and reaches out for Essi, and she takes his hand. “It wasn’t your fault. We were all just fooling around.”

“I shouldn’t have started it.”

“Nonsense. You can always start snowball fights with me.” Jaskier winks, but his eyes are drooping with exhaustion. “It was all Valdo.” He lowers his voice. “And, perhaps, a little bit of me.”

“I heard that,” Valdo says off-handedly, bringing in the second bucket of water.

Geralt would shake his head in bemusement if worry wasn’t still a bitter lump in his throat. Jaskier loves his two friends too differently. He’ll never understand the three of them.

Essi kisses Jaskier on the forehead and leaves him be. The bath is filled fairly quickly as Geralt continues to remove Jaskier’s clothes down to his undershirt. The bard almost dozes off at one point, but Geralt nudges him with a gentle hand.

“Jask? Stay awake for me?” he asks softly, before turning to heat the bath with Igni. Steam fills the room, and Jaskier smiles at his friends tiredly. At least his heart is slowing to normal.

“Thank you,” Jaskier says, voice small. “Yes, even you, Marx.”

“I’d be more worried about myself, Pankratz.” Valdo throws Geralt a meaningful look. “Quite the mess you’ve made.”

Jaskier doesn’t reply. His eyes stare distantly as the door shuts, and Geralt gets to work. With how much Jaskier is flagging, it takes more time to get him out of the last shirt and his small things.

“This might sting,” Geralt warns as he carefully helps Jaskier into the tub, the bard holding onto his forearms with a death grip. It does sting, Geralt notices, resisting to soothe the discomfort on his own skin while Jaskier flexes his fingers in the hot water.

Steam fills the room, and Jaskier melts into the warmth. Geralt has to rouse him again and then settle himself decidedly on the stool next to the tub, just in case.

“But I want to sleep,” Jaskier croaks, a few coughs bubbling up in his throat.

“Not yet. It’s dangerous,” Geralt says, a pang of fear rising at the memory of his chest burning. “There was water in your lungs. It could still get worse. We need to keep an eye on that.”

Jaskier’s eyes flicker to Geralt’s for a split second at the mention of his almost drowning. He doesn’t ask how Geralt knows.

“Alright,” Jaskier says softly, putting an arm on the edge of the bathtub and resting his cheek on it. “Keep an eye it is.”

They fall into a companionable silence. The water sloshes as Jaskier moves around, loosening his tense muscles and painting his skin pink. By the time he relaxes and has regained some energy, Geralt is leaning on the tub as well, observing Jaskier intently.

Soulmate.

Geralt turns the word over in his mind a few times, and yet he stays silent.

“Really?” Jaskier finally says. “You’re not going to ask?”

Geralt sighs. Anyone who’s spent a day with Jaskier will see how the bard wears his heart on his sleeves and simply assume he can never keep a secret. Geralt isn’t anyone. The bard has mastered the art of talking non-stop about everything while not revealing a grain of truth once he’s determined to hide it. Patience works on him though, just a bit of patience. “Do you want me to?” Geralt asks instead.

“No? I don’t know? Wait, yes.” Jaskier worries his lips. “I owe it to you, at least.”

“Okay.” Geralt nods. “Are we?”

Jaskier pauses. The ripples on the surface of the bathwater are suddenly the most interesting things in the world. He chases them with his fingers.

“We are.”

The admission seems to lift a weight off of Jaskier’s chest. He sags, the flush deepening on his face and chest.

“How?”

“How are we soulmates?” Jaskier blinks quizzically.

“No.” Geralt shakes his head gently. “How did I not know?”

“Oh. I—” Jaskier chuckles without humor. “Funny story. Okay, maybe not funny. In my defense, I sort of didn’t know…either? For a few years, at least. You see, this soulbond thing, it starts manifesting when you’re what, five? Six? My sister scraped her knee and our butler’s boy cried out on the other side of the estate. Mother and father were not pleased. A noble lady and a servant’s boy bonded together? How improper. So imagine when I started having soul pains almost every other day.”

Geralt’s blood runs cold. His stomach turns with nausea. “You were only five?”

“Five and a half, mind you,” Jaskier corrects him, as if that makes it any better. “The symptoms varied, nonsensical at first. There were signs of poisoning, blood loss, sometimes burns. No child can be injured this often. It was my mother who pieced it together. A witcher, of course.”

Geralt rests his hand on the edge of the tub, hoping Jaskier might close the scant inches between them and take it. He doesn’t.

“They had to fix it. She did some digging and found a mage in Oxenfurt. He brewed a potion, one that was rumored to block one’s soulbond. It worked, temporarily, at least. For a day or two, I wouldn’t feel it.”

A potion to fix one’s soulbond. It sounds like something out of a storybook, a perfect setup for a tragedy. But again, a soulbond itself has never seemed less of a fairytale to Geralt.

“I thought it was a myth.”

“Not a myth if you know the right people.” Jaskier winces. “Or are a noble. Or have enough money.”

Geralt frowns. “And you’ve been taking it ever since?”

“I had to, so they could pretend my bond never appeared. Also, I need it just to…um, to…”

Jaskier trails off, but Geralt finishes it for him.

“To grow up.” The idea doesn’t become less horrible, Jaskier as a child and writhing with pain that is near unbearable even for a witcher. “To live. You couldn’t have otherwise.”

Geralt tries to do the math, find out what year it was, which contracts he took when Jaskier was five. It all blurs together, all the blood and sweat and scars that fade into one another. He cannot identify when he hurt Jaskier inadvertently just by existing, or by how long and how deeply, only that he did.

“And you don’t feel anything with the potion, right?” Geralt asks tentatively. “It helps?”

“More or less. It reduces all the pains to a dull ache, so I won’t notice most of the time.”

“Most of the time?”

Jaskier smiles sadly. “That’s how I learned. For so long I took the potion religiously to the point of forgetting about the matter altogether. It wasn’t until the striga. It was just an ordinary morning, and I’d taken the potion the night before. But…when dawn broke that day, I woke up with the worst pain I’d ever felt in my neck. I could sense it, deep in my bones, that my soulmate was close to dying. The potion failed, all the other painkillers too. The fever burned for days and I was past delirious when Valdo and Essi found me.”

“They know,” Geralt muses, “of course.”

“They guessed. Especially after news arrived about the protests in Vizima, the witcher who died and the other gravely injured—the White Wolf. Who else, Valdo said, trouble with you is always trouble with that witcher. I think he hated you for a while after. I…I denied it still, until I couldn’t”

“You came to Ellander.” Geralt thinks back on that day, the joy between the two of them upon their reunion. “You were so happy to see me.”

“My dear, you were okay. Of course I was happy to see you.” Jaskier smiles, moving towards Geralt and reaching for the bite mark above his collarbone. The warmth seeps into the faint scar at Geralt’s neck, and drops of water run down his chest. “There you were, hurting right where I was hurting.”

Their gazes meet through the steam. Geralt touches the scar too, catching Jaskier’s hand and feeling how soft and warm the bard is. The old fear is a familiar thing, hiding in the lines around Jaskier’s eyes. He’s endured more fearful nights than one should in a lifetime.

Geralt, more than anything, wishes to erase those fears.

He opens Jaskier’s palm and places a tiny kiss in it, taking the bard by surprise, and then gently puts both of their hands down. “I’m right here, Jask.”

“You are,” Jaskier repeats like he can’t quite believe it. Like a prayer. “You are still here.”

The surprise in Jaskier’s tone is a confusing thing, but Geralt lets it slide.

He clears his throat and breaks the moment, getting up to retrieve a bar of soap. Washing Jaskier’s hair is easy when Geralt already knows the motion by heart. He even scratches behind Jaskier’s ears the way he likes and gets a contented sigh in return. The bard dunks his head underwater and emerges to shake off the droplets like a wet dog.

“Come on,” Geralt says, splashing at Jaskier’s face. “Get yourself dry so we can rest a bit.”

“Together?”

“How else would you stay down?”

Jaskier beams, ready to stand up but forgetting about the sprained foot. The careless motion makes them both wince, but at least Jaskier looks contrite. “Sorry about that.”

“Hmm.”

Geralt takes Jaskier’s damp hands and guides him out of the tub before fishing out fresh tunics and a large towel from the closet. Jaskier takes them and begins drying himself, his ankle no longer hurting as much, thankfully.

“Bed?” Geralt asks.

“By the fire?” Jaskier gestures to the thick fur rug and the crackling fire. “It’s warmer.”

Geralt just shrugs and retrieves the blankets and bandages and the one hundred pillows the bard has collected over the years. Jaskier soon puts on his clean clothes, before limping to the spot in front of the fire and plopping down amongst the pillows, his hair a damp mess.

Kneeling in the sea of pillows, Geralt places Jaskier’s injured foot on his lap and starts wrapping it. They only need the bandage for a bit of support in the next few days as it heals.

“Any pain?” The process is careful, but Geralt still soothes the delicate skin at Jaskier’s ankle a little, making sure he’s relaxed.

“You know there isn’t.”

Jaskier arranges the pillows for them to lie down side to side, patting the one next to him. Geralt joins gladly. He’s had Jaskier close every day for the whole season, and the past few winters, but somehow, there’s a newness in the way their bodies press against each other. With a pensive hum, he turns and props himself up on an elbow.

“Ellander was twenty-seven years ago,” Geralt states and watches as Jaskier’s eyes become round like bells.

“Holy—has it really been that long?” Jaskier stares up at Geralt, huffing unbelievingly. “It feels like yesterday that I met you in that horrible, horrible tavern.”

“That was exactly thirty years ago. That’s how time works, Jask.” A strand of hair is getting close to the bard’s eyes, so Geralt brushes it away, revealing silver streaks that are growing more obvious each day. “So you’ve known for a while.”

“I guess you can say that.”

“You see what my next question is?”

Jaskier shifts, pulling more pillows under him and propping himself up as well, his posture mirroring Geralt so they’re face to face. There’s a weariness in the way he looks at Geralt. He’s been shouldering this weight for too long.

“I never told you because.” He shrugs. “You’d leave.”

It comes out like Jaskier is simply stating the weather, like he believes it just as the sun rising in the morning. It makes Geralt’s blood boil, a wave of nameless anger gathering in the pit of his stomach. Not at Jaskier, never at Jaskier. He’s angry with himself for putting that kind of doubt there.

As if he’d abandon their friendship for something that already hurts Jaskier.

Geralt is ready to argue, to defend his heart. “I wouldn’t—"

“It’s not that I never tried,” but Jaskier cuts him off, heedless of the silent battle between Geralt and his past self. “I wanted to bring it up a few times, but it just seemed the longer we knew each other, the more awkward it’d be. Next thing I knew, Cintra happened, and then the djinn. You—” Jaskier lowers his gaze to the laces at Geralt’s shirt. “You don’t have a good track record when it comes to destiny or fate or having people shoved into your life. You’d have reacted poorly, darling.”

“I don’t… react poorly.” Geralt protests, but one word catches his attention. “Wait, no. You’re not shoved into my life, Jaskier. It’s not because of what I said?”

“What, no—of course not!” Jaskier frowns, swatting at Geralt’s chest. “It wasn’t. I realized you didn’t mean any of it on the very same mountain. Stop brooding over this again or I will be cross with you!”

Geralt’s shoulders sag a little. His lips purse into a line, and then, a slight upturn. “Wouldn’t dare.”

“Good.” Jaskier continues. “And there’s the other lie. Don’t react poorly, he said. Geralt, you are the bravest man I know, but we both know you’d have run screaming.”

“I don’t scream, either.” He sends the bard a look.

“Okay, not that part, perhaps. But admit you’d have every urge to bolt, and maybe I’d be the one screaming your name around the continent, looking hopelessly for my soulmate who abandoned me with the coldest heart.”

Despite everything, the image makes Geralt rumble a laugh, and Jaskier giggles to himself too.

“So you just kept it to yourself, all this time.” Geralt huffs, bopping Jaskier on the forehead. “Can’t decide if I should be impressed.”

“I can keep a secret,” Jaskier feigns offense, and then more quietly, “you’d be surprised.”

Silence hangs in the air, broken only by the crackling of the dying embers. The temperature is dropping already, so Geralt pulls up one of the blankets to cover Jaskier’s legs and midriff, tucking it in absently.

“Tell me one?”

Blue eyes light up. “If you promise to tell me one in return.”

“Deal.”

The gentle upturn of Geralt’s lips is encouragement enough, and Jaskier shifts down to rest his head on the pillow, his hair mussed against the velveteen surface. He looks as if he’s going to melt under Geralt’s gaze, the way he keeps nuzzling closer. Geralt can’t help leaning in as well until the curtain of his silver hair touches Jaskier’s chin.

He watches Jaskier from above, waiting.

“I sometimes went off the potion,” Jaskier admits, “when we were apart.”

Geralt stills, his smile frozen.

“What? That is so stupi—”

“Don’t, Geralt. I know you want to get all grumpy on me. Just…don’t. It hurt, yes, but you were okay in the end. Always.” Jaskier’s soft look remains, his hand now resting on Geralt’s hip, keeping him in place. “And I could know, when a wound stopped hurting, when the pain eased. No—don’t argue with me. I don’t regret it, if it meant I was allowed to know. I have not regretted a single moment by your side, least of all this.”

Jaskier’s chest heaves, his eyes gleaming in the gentle firelight. In return, Geralt’s chest constricts with a million things he doesn’t dare to voice. He settles on the touch of Jaskier’s hand against his waist, a grounding point, an anchor.

“And you give me all those lectures about unnecessary suffering,” Geralt finally says, shaking his head, not knowing what to do with Jaskier. He’s never known anyway.

“It wasn’t suffering if it meant you had a choice.” Jaskier is ready to sit up, but his body is kept in place with how close they are. He sighs, resigned to his cocoon of blankets and pillows. “Geralt, you already get too few of them. I wouldn’t know how to stay if I was just another person destiny forced on you—yes, the other two worked out okay in the end and Ciri and Yennefer are the best things to ever happen to you—but I want to be a choice you make. I need to be, because you deserve to choose for yourself. Gods, it should be easy. Everyone has it easy, and yet…”

Jaskier closes his eyes and lets out an exhale, disquiet clear in the way his breath shudders. He’s angry too, the same way Geralt has been for almost his entire life.

Almost.

He hasn’t been angry with destiny for years.

Everyone has it easy, the choice of who to love, who to keep, who to become.

And yet, here they are.

“Hey.” Geralt tilts Jaskier’s chin up so blue eyes meet him, a human’s pulse thrumming under his fingertips. He deserves to choose, yes, and he has. Jaskier shouldn’t doubt it. “My turn.”

“Hmm?”

“A secret,” he reminds Jaskier.

“Oh.”

Geralt runs his palm down Jaskier’s bicep, reaching his elbow. He never gave much thought as to how Jaskier knows when his injuries flare up when the seasons change. He just accepted that Jaskier would be there to press a hot towel to his aching joints and murmur soft words in the quiet darkness until it passed. How has he been so blind?

There’s always been more, soulbond or not.

He’s chosen to love Jaskier so many times.

And loving Jaskier makes him brave.

“I love you,” Geralt says, and the words barely carry any weight. Strange. They’re such big words, after all. “That’s my secret.”

Something inexplicable flashes across Jaskier’s eyes, something akin to hope, equally fragile and powerful.

“If you’re saying this because I’m your soulmate—”

“Soulmate or not,” Geralt interrupts. “You. It’s just you. It has nothing to do with a soulbond, or destiny, or whatever magic has made my life into. I choose you, Jaskier, and I love you.”

The fire dies with a whimper, and they are left with nothing but the plain truth. Geralt has never expected to trust a person with his heart like this, but he’s proved wrong again. Here Jaskier is, hurting quietly for three decades just so destiny has one less tie on him.

His trust must shine through, because Jaskier seems lighter now, and the hope in his eyes grows and grows. “Not because of today? Not destiny?”

“I chose long ago. Jaskier, don’t you see?”

The life they’ve made, the quiet companionship by the fire, the silly conversations at night, it’s all a choice.

“And you love me.”

“I do.”

Geralt would say it as many times as Jaskier needs, but three seems enough for the moment. He rests his head on another pillow so their foreheads nearly touch. Jaskier closes the distance, his soft hair brushing Geralt’s brows.

“And you are staying,” Jaskier whispers. “You found out and you’re staying. Forgive me for not quite believing this day actually happened.”

“Hmm. Blame yourself for falling into a lake.”

“It was Valdo—you know what, it doesn’t matter. You are here. That’s more important than a hundred Valdo Marx combined.”

Jaskier’s voice turns drowsy, and he presses into Geralt’s warmth like a cat subtly scooching towards a sunbeam in the afternoon.

“Jask?” Geralt pulls away a little so their gazes meet. With Jaskier soft and affectionate and falling asleep beside him, it’s hard to be serious. He tries anyway. “Jask, I need you to promise me something.”

“Anything.” Jaskier answers, bleary-eyed and sincere. Love swells in Geralt’s chest anew.

“Promise me that you’ll keep taking that potion. No skipping it from now on.”

“Oh.” Blue eyes flutter open, more alert now. “Of course. As long as I take it, it’s like the bond doesn’t even exist. You don’t need to worry about it. There’s no magic to keep you. I won’t try to keep you.”

Geralt huffs a breath. It still amazes me how someone as smart as Jaskier can be so daft.

“That’s nice to hear, but I couldn’t care less about the soulbond. I’m right where I belong.” With Jaskier, their limbs tangling under the covers. “I need you to take the potion so I won’t hurt you again.”

“You don’t hurt me.” Jaskier pouts, offended somehow.

Geralt winces. “I’ve done it enough, being a witcher, being me. I can’t change the path or the monsters, and if our soulbond causes you more harm, I don’t know how I’ll—Just promise me. Just this one thing, please.”

Jaskier stares at him for a moment, probably surprised at the rarity that is Geralt begging, and he relents. “Fine, I promise. But I don’t appreciate the self-blaming party going on in your head. You should have learned better, darling. Or do I need to repeat the lesson for you?”

Geralt chuckles, not wanting to be on the receiving end of that disappointed look Jaskier has mastered with his students. Professor Pankratz is known to be firm but fair, but a dressing-down from him is no joke. “Yes, sir,�� Geralt answers seriously, “and thank you.”

“It’s not a hardship. It smells nice too. Like celandine.”

Oh. Like Jaskier.

Like herbs and spring and everything good in life.

“Okay,” Geralt says. “There could be monsters in Oxenfurt for all we know.”

“No, there isn’t. You are safe here.” Jaskier hums an amused sound before yawning. “This is where you rest, you know? Nothing hurts in the winter.”

“Well, you made sure of it.”

Geralt thinks back on the many winters they spent together. Whether it’s Kaer Morhen or here, Jaskier has always insisted on getting Geralt rested and well-fed. There’s a small patch of burnt wall in Vesemir’s kitchen as proof. The academy is no different—the smiling faces that greet Geralt everywhere, the nosy students who call him “Professor Pankratz’s witcher husband” behind their backs. That’s all Jaskier.

He’s safe here, and Jaskier trusts him to be safe. There’s no soul pain to be shared if it wasn’t for an untimely snowball fight.

Geralt huffs a snort and arranges his arm so Jaskier can rest his head more comfortably on his shoulder. The bard’s breathing is evening out, slowed down by the weight of tiredness.

“Sleep.” Geralt murmurs, his nose buried in Jaskier’s damp curls, the clean scent of his bard a soothing balm for his nerves.

“Am I allowed now?”

“Mm-hmm.”

It’s not like Geralt is going anywhere.

“One more secret for you,” Jaskier whispers, the words almost lost in the quietness of the room. “Just for you.”

“Tell me?”

Even though he’s already heard.

“I love you too.” Soft lips press against the corner of Geralt’s mouth. A smile dances between them. “And I choose you too.”

With that, Jaskier drifts off to peaceful sleep, his chest rising and falling steadily. Geralt stays there, arms wrapped around him, not quite wanting to move. He probably never wants to move anywhere again when Jaskier is right here.

So Geralt dreams in broad daylight. He dreams of what they will become, what Jaskier can still become. The idea keeps him awake, giddy even.

Because Jaskier is already so many things to him: bard, poet, friend, travel companion, defender of his name, and, more often than not, source of his headache.

Also, the reason for his laughter.

The light in his sorrows.

The keeper of his heart.

And now—his soulmate, linked by destiny.

Although, of all the roles Jaskier has taken up, Geralt decides, the last one is the least important of them all.

~~~

In my head, they are both ace/demisexual in this story ;)

Tagging: @wanderlust-t @rockysstupidity @flowercrown-bard @alllthequeenshorses @mothmanismyuncle @percy-jackson-is-sexy- @constantlytiredpigeon @behonesthowsmysinging @kitcatkim3 @endless-whump @rey-a-nonbinary-bisexual @llamasdumpsterfire @dapandapod @kuripon @holymotherwolf @theamazingdevilgivesmehope

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#geraskier #geraskier fic #geraskierss #geraskiersource #soulmate #shared pain #fluff and angst #hurt/comfort #jaskier whump #hurt jaskier #hypothermia #softness #cuddling #love confession #the most time is spent on picking the header #and now i feel fancy ✨

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