Work Text:
It is somewhere between the seventeenth and twentieth time they've done this, and somewhere between seventeen and twenty Geralt lost track of his own automatic counting, his endless remembering of details forever, without trying, the ability to hold and the inability to let go -- anyway, he hasn't been paying attention to the number, any more, and that in and of itself is a warning signal. An alert.
He ignores the warning, and ignores the dangerous flag of his own ignoring -- another problem, another failure. Another thing to be addressed later.
For now, he focuses instead with almost-nearly-all of his attention on Jaskier.
The bard is shaking. He's pulling Geralt's hair and petting it, alternatively, and meanwhile saying something both unimportant and stupid, the libretto of sex is almost nothing --
Geralt focuses on breathing through his mouth, using his tongue to distract with contrast. Hot breath out, cold breath in. Every motion gets a reward: gasp, clench, swear.
He pulls off to lick meanwhile, lazily, and runs a hand up Jaskier's stomach to his chest to a nipple, to pinch.
"Oh, you whoreson," says Jaskier. "You tease. Oh, fuck --"
Gerlat ignores this. He is painfully, blissfully hard, untouched.
"Cruel, unfeeling man. I need to finish. I need to come, gods, I need your cock in my mouth so I can make you suffer just like -- Geralt, are you listening? I swear if you don't let me finish I will pour every single one of your creepy potions in a bucket and drown you in the mix."
"You wouldn't get far in that," says Geralt. He blows air across the tip; it's leaking.
"Did you restock the oil? Or at least a cheap, helpful substitute? Because I want it, I want you," says Jaskier. "When I come. I want to end like that. Taking you."
It wouldn't be the first time. He didn't want it to be the last. His cock twitches at the memory of that heat, the tension, the noises. The mere idea is --
He wants it. He wants it. Finishing inside the bard, stretching him open and finishing his noise, buried in that silence -- the white space after orgasm. He wants it.
But Yes would be a confession and so instead he leans over and swallows Jaskier down to the root, a full mouth and his own silence, nose buried in curls and the scent of desire.
Jaskier swears, shivers, and digs his hands into the dirt. "Please," he says. "Please. At least let me touch you." He reaches out, palms roughly at Geralt, straining in his trousers. "You idiotic single-minded -- Geralt, please!"
Geralt pulls off, not gently. Kisses him -- this is not forbidden but it is not acceptable, not between them, and he very carefully does-not-see how Jaskier reacts, how he knew Jaskier would react, his movement and sigh and response, and then it is over almost too quick: with his calloused hand wrapped around Jaskier's cock, holding tight, and a soft hand palming over rough fabric, kissing back.
Geralt moves away. Shuts his eyes. Silence. Silence. His heart is steady and slow, even in this, and he can't quite turn off his senses, but this dulls it all -- this hushes it.
Jaskier curls up next to him talking, softly, an ongoing event. Pillow talk. It's just more bullshit. You're beautiful, you're amazing, I've never been fucked like that. Nothing important or even true; he's said it to hundreds of people in hundreds of inns, usually a thin wooden wall apart from Geralt, who isn't particularly interested in either the lies or the noises that come before.
Tonight he doesn't even bother to pretend to listen. He lays on his back and seems to feel -- this isn't possible -- but he feels, he feels the entire world turning beneath him, and turning everyone on it in unison, in a static dance.
But the world stumbles. Jaskier is frozen still, and the smell of fear pours off his body.
Geralt really wasn't listening. He sits up now, raising up on his elbows, separating them, listening: but the forest is quiet. The world is quiet, listening, moving again on its oiled axis.
The only sound is Jaskier's quick, shallow breath.
"What did you just now say?"
"Me? To you? Nothing. I didn't say anything at all."
"I wasn't paying attention." He can hear it in his mind, he can play it back, he can hear the words, but it doesn't make sense.
I love you so well.
He can't make it make sense.
Jaskier laughs, falsely. "Honestly, Geralt. The way you take for granted my gifts is just shameful. Here I am, at your service, the world's most scintillating conversationalist --"
"Fuck off. You don't love me."
"Of course not. I don't lie about things like that. This isn't a brothel."
But he had said it.
If Jaskier were being -- Jaskier -- he would argue now. He'd brag and boast and complain about how Geralt ignored the best companion a witcher could ask for in favor of a horse with an attitude problem, and what had Jaskier done, anyway, that would be anything but loveable? He had only increased Geralt's good reputation! Only ensured he would get work and praise in every podunk town they pass through. Witchers can't live on bread alone, you know! And why should he, when there are so many finer things to enjoy? Sweetbread. Wine. Women, too -- and they're all the more eager after hearing the songs, the songs, Geralt, that a singularly passionate and well-versed bard created -- in Geralt's own honor, no less. It's insult to injury that a single word could fall out of Jaskier's lips without being collected and written down. It's rude, Geralt! Rude.
But Jaskier -- uncharacteristically -- says nothing of this. He looks strange and green and cold. Eventually he says: "You're staring."
Geralt stops.
Turns his gaze inward.
He hadn't seen this. Any of it. How had he missed this? What else has he missed? "How long," he says, finally.
"The look on your face."
"You didn't tell me."
"Of course I didn't tell you. I didn't want you to look at me like -- like the way you're looking right now. I didn't want you to feel any differently about -- no, please dont speak yet. Not even one of your oh-so conversational Hmms. I can't get this out if you say anything, and I'm sure you think that it's impossible for me to keep anything a secret for even one full minute, but --"
He takes a deep breath; it is like the way he breathes before a performance, the way he breathes when he swears he doesn't have any nerves about anything. "I didn't want to you to know. I didn't want to stop touching you, and I -- I couldn't bear for you to stop touching me, and I know that's over now but it took so damn long for you to do it in the first place. I nearly died waiting. I used to lay here in the dark and listen to you pretend to sleep, until I'd convinced myself that you really were asleep, and then I'd touch my own body like I wanted to touch yours, like other people got to touch you but I couldn't do it, oh life is so dreadfully unfair, and I'd handle my cock and fantasize that my hand was -- did you ever hear me? Of course you heard but what I mean is did you understand? Did you know I was -- no, don't answer that, don't answer that either. I know that part's over. I know. You don't need to tell me, Geralt."
Geralt says, slow: "You didn't tell me."
Jaskier wipes a hand across his nose. "Well. My apologies for that part. I thought that you wouldn't quite appreciate the knowledge. Terribly sorry, I see now that I was mistaken and your famous equanamity remains undisturbed."
Geralt rubs a hand across his mouth. The last thing that touched his hand was Jaskier's skin; the last thing that touched his mouth ... "How long? When?"
Jaskier bites his lip. "I can leave."
"What?"
"I'll go. I'll follow the river to some nice town, and --"
"There are drowners in the river." Automatically.
"Here? This river? Our river? You said you killed them! Came back all bloody and unbowed, carrying skins for a ransom. A whole nest, you said, an entire nest of the disgusting slippery things. Was that a lie? Did you cheat the good people of their coins, Geralt? Tell a falsehood so you could come back in a few months and take a second contract for the same job? That's quite clever honestly, but I wouldn't rely on it working too often. You'll ruin all the goodwill I've labored so intensely to create."
"Not near us. There's a second nest, further on, but if you -- where would you go?"
"I'll keep clear of the rivers."
There were more things than drowners to kill a human. "It isn't safe." His hand clenches in the grass.
The world turns under his skin.
He hates this -- he hates having companions, he hates human emotions, all this dulling of task and sharpening of desire, how could he have forgotten what this was like? How could he ignore it? "Where would you go?"
"You don't want me to stay."
Geralt doesn't answer.
"Oh, my dear. You look," says Jaskier, "you look like someone has broken your heart."
"No."
"I know," softly. "That would be impossible, isn't it? When you don't have one. Witcher. You're big and powerful and terrible -- terribly strong. And cold. Except that you were warm, where I touched you."
He covers his face. "Jaskier."
"That much was warm," says the bard. And then: "Geralt, don't look at me like that."
"I'm not looking at you." His hand smells of human come, of human skin, it smells like music and desire and someone else, something he didn't notice.
Love?
He doesn't know what to do, so he waits for clarity to come.
The night deepens around them, it darkens and softens. Geralt feels his heartbeat drop back to its usual pace.
When had it sped up? When did Jaskier love him? When? he wants to ask again; but he's afraid he already knows.
Jaskier has stopped the jagged sounds, the ones that seemed to hurt him; he has lain down again, breathing even and slow. His eyes are closed. He's drifting into sleep.
Geralt looks at him, and he wants --
No.
He wants to be ignorant again. He wants to forget.
They have fucked nineteen times. He remembers every time. He knows when that count reset to zero, a clock ticking over to midnight. He knows when he first touched him and the last time and every time that he wanted to do it and didn't, didn't, held back, and he remembers when they moved together, slow and sure, deep and rough, when Jaskier called out for him in a voice he never uses on stage.
When? he asked, like he didn't know the answer.
"Your face, witcher," murmurs Jaskier, eyes shut, not asleep. His mouth is red where he's been chewing on it. His mouth kissed Geralt like a man in love, like he was kissed in return.
Geralt shuts his eyes, not to see.