Chapter Text
“The tailor, Geralt,” Jaskier says from behind him.
In the doorway stands a tall, thin aged man, with wild grey hair, tiny spectacles perched on his pointy noise and wearing an impeccable calf-length coat. He blinks the blink of a professional who is choosing to ignore the bathhouse blow job they’re sure they’ve just interrupted. Behind him, is his comparatively short and young assistant, in an oddly fitting jacket coated in textile debris, arms laden with fabric wrapped packages, staring desperately into the middle distance, ears scarlet red.
Too late, yet again, Geralt realises he’s being Dressed Up to Go Out.
Still, he has to ask, “Why is there a tailor, Jaskier?”
“I’m playing the King’s Leg tonight. They wouldn’t have you in there dripping blood on their patrons.”
Geralt’s sigh is great enough to ripple the water around his chest as he fights the urge to sink back underneath the surface.
The tailor coughs. “Gentlemen, I have three doublets suitable for those measurements. Shall we… get started?”
Finally accepting his fate for the night, Geralt steps out of the water, sparkling clean, good as new. The tailor and assistant turned away as soon as he moved, but Jaskier’s eyes trickle appreciative and curious over his skin. None of the available bathrobes look large enough to fit over his shoulders so he settles for a towel wrapped around his waist. He offers a hand, palm up, to Jaskier, holds steady and watches the muscles pop out of Jaskier’s arm as he pulls himself out. The robe, of course, fits Jaskier perfectly.
With a wave of his hand, Jaskier sends the tailor’s assistant scurrying to the stone benches tucked around the edges of the room. There they lay out and unwrap the doublets from the plain fabric they had been transported in. Jaskier watches the clothes, Geralt watches Jaskier, and the tailor watches them all.
As soon as bright yellow fabric trimmed in black is revealed from the first package, Geralt and Jaskier catch each other’s eyes and minutely shake their heads. The next: countless interlocking geometric satin panels in the many green shades of a dappled forest. The last an almost black merlot, intricate velveteen brocade. Jaskier approaches the table.
“And how will the Viscount Jaskier be dressing me tonight?” Geralt quips, with a smile.
Jaskier is running his fingers over the fabric, one hand on his mouth as he thinks. He nods once to himself, and then keeps nodding. “Yes, let’s see this one-” he indicates the velvet merlot “-on him.”
“Perhaps some drawers first,” the tailor pipes from behind them, springing his assistant back into life to hand a pair to Geralt. They all turn away again as Geralt hops in, then grumbles, “Done.” The tailor spins on his heel, and whisks the doublet towards Geralt, who holds his arms neutrally floating in a pose he guesses is fitting for being dressed.
“Ah, his hair,” the tailor says, finding the wet hair stuck all over his shoulders, and slightly at a loss with full hands. Again, the assistant springs forward, whipping a red ribbon from their deep pockets, only to find it intercepted by Jaskier.
Jaskier’s fingers swipe over Geralt’s shoulders, between his hair and his skin, as he lifts Geralt’s hair. The tailor doesn’t wait a moment longer to pull the doublet onto his shoulders, and Geralt finds himself within a flurry of hands - the assistant at his front, measuring him head to toe; the tailor working across his torso, pinching and pinning sections of fabric; Jaskier behind him, finger-combing and braiding his hair. Geralt had not expected this afternoon to include this much manhandling. Nine, seven, eight firm fingers holding him in place. Finally, Jaskier’s fingers reach the nape of his neck, where they linger, fixing a bun at the base of his skull. It’s altogether more attention than the tailor’s request had warranted. He takes a slow steadying breath and rejects his eyes’ request to slip closed.
All at once, the hands disappear and release Geralt, the image of a gent. From the waist up anyway. Jaskier strolls to his front and looks him up and down, a hand on his chin. A sea of abstract vines and leaves now flow in deep ruby velvet from his wrists to the collar just under his Adam’s apple. Every button, fastening, every tiny detail is made up in that same shade, almost invisible, a united front. It does not scream, but thrums with power. His hair, now modestly braided, mirrors the restraint.
Jaskier spreads his hands wide. “My work here is done.”
“And mine is just beginning,” replies the tailor sardonically, already pulling the thoroughly pinned doublet back off him.
With no time to spare to have it adjusted and back to them before evening, Jaskier and Geralt are soon alone again. Jaskier pokes his head out of their room, has words, puts more money in more hands. Geralt tilts his head - the room next to them has filled with the sound of many feet scurrying. There’s a knock on the linking door, then a head and, “Whenever you’re ready, gentlemen.”
Jaskier leads them to a smaller, similarly stepped, white stone room lit by oil lamps rather than the sky. The bath here is far smaller and far hotter and has filled the room with a pleasant humid heat. As they sit - Geralt almost jumps feeling the heat rising from the stone too - a train of staff appear and decorate the steps around them with dishes of bread and cheese, dried fruit and meat, two tankards, and a jug of ale. As the last attendant leaves, Jaskier drops yet more coin, and a thank-you, into her hand.
Getting comfortable, Jaskier plucks half a dried fig from the nearest bowl and with a cheeky smile asks, “So why did I find you today-” he gestures with his fig “-head to toe in shit?”
Geralt leans his head back against the wall, and looks to the roof, perhaps for strength. “Sometimes when you cut a well fed chort from throat to taint the guts…. are not just guts…”
Jaskier laughs an easy laugh through a wide smile and flops his head against the wall too. “It needed a shit?” He looks sideways to Geralt.
“Hm-hm,” Geralt hum laughs. “It needed a shit.”
Silence, for a moment, then with sharp eyes Jaskier leans towards Geralt. “And the fight? How did you two come to such an ofally awful-” Geralt glares at the pun through a cracked eye “-killing blow?”
Geralt sighs. It’s supposed to be Jaskier’s job to make his terrible jobs sound fantastic and noble.
In any one fight there are a thousand split seconds between life and death. No time to think, less time to remember. And then he’s standing over a corpse. Sometimes under it.
But with Jaskier he must. And he does.
A harpie in the Gustfields of Redania. A summer in Kovir protecting Count Beledal as he travelled. A winter trapped in the Dragon Mountains whittling away his earnings when he had wanted to spend it with (and spend it on) Ciri and Jennefer in Touissant. One by one Jaskier pulls the shards out of him and sews them together into a song.
It takes nearly five years of tales before Jaskier is satisfied, inspired enough to let the conversation lose coherency, instead doodling melodies and lyrics in the air between them, pausing only to have Geralt fill in details where his interest asks for more.
Geralt lies on the stone, eyes closed, head resting on his arm behind his head. Body happy to rest here. His head by Jaskier’s hip. Floating.
The songs make sense.
Geralt makes sense.
They’re roused only by the return of the tailor’s assistant, finished doublet, matching trousers in hand. He leaves soon with cloth replaced by gold, leaving Jaskier and Geralt to the task of dressing themselves for the evening.
Underwear not included, Geralt returns to the first room to dig through his discarded clothing for his own. He smirks when he finds them comfortably dry, but stained with blood and visceral juices. They’ll be well hidden under Jaskier’s civilized clothes, and the smell is too faint for the human nose, but Geralt will still be able to smell the taint.
It takes little more time for Geralt to dress himself completely. It fits perfectly, of course, and blessedly only slightly restricts his movement in favour of elegance.
He returns to Jaskier, absently tracing the braids in his hair as he walks, trying to work out what he now looks like. “Leave it.” Jaskier bats his hand away. “It matches the doublet.”
Wryly, Geralt bats back, “Mine or yours?” Jaskier just winks and fastens his last silver button.
Outside, the temperature, along with the sun, has dropped quite sharply, in harsh contrast to the warmth they step out of. Geralt’s body adjusts instantly, but Jaskier is limited to hunching his bare neck into his collar he hurries downtown towards the raucous heat of the King’s Leg.
Hardly a metre over the threshold Jaskier slithers into the crowd abandoning Geralt. He sighs and hunkers down in the shadows of a plush booth, nursing the cheapest pint he could get his hands on, ready to glare amber daggers at anyone who looks his way. Only then does Jaskier reappear, hopping onto stage, lute in hand. The bard come to life. Geralt’s fingers play around the rim of his tankard as he watches.
Liquid golden light spilling out of the great fireplace dances over Jaskier as he moves, catching in his hair and on the angles of his face, twinkling in his eyes. From here Jaskier is a painting in lush colours - the wood, leather and crowds a dark frame around him. That bold, demanding personality, on a freshly grown man still stumbling around like a colt, had previously been almost entirely obnoxious, having not been earned, now is bolstered by experience and repute. It fits this man perfectly. It becomes clear that Jaskier had always just been growing into this.
And so, of course, between songs he is beset by admirers. Quite a few a decade younger than him, plenty his age, and notably, a jewel encrusted woman perhaps two decades older. She had left him a sizeable emerald attached to a ring when he had bent to kiss her hand. Apparently aware this entire time exactly where Geralt has been, Jaskier had looked up to wink at Geralt, who had promptly snorted into his beer.
Jaskier rouses him shortly after with some dreaded words: “-because the man, the myth, the witcher himself is here tonight-” Geralt in horror, sees Jaskier gesture towards his booth, and then jump into the opening chords of Toss a Coin to Your Witcher. Geralt braces himself, as a stream of patrons makes their way towards him. They thank him as if he is a little part of Jaskier, and with a stiff smile, Geralt thanks them in return. At least now they hand him the coins. In days passed, in danker, dirtier, backwater pubs some less civilised drunks had literally tossed them at him. Geralt would follow Jaskier soon after pelting him with the same coins, cursing the day he chose that verb of all the verbs.
By the time the melody and the almost-queue fizzle away there is more money on the table than the townsfolk had paid him for the chort.
Behind them is Jaskier, just a shade dishevelled, a fine sheen of sweat fragrant on his skin. In one hand he holds a bottle and glass of red wine - chosen, Geralt suspects, to match his doublet - and in the other a generous platter of food. He collapses beside Geralt, positioning the food between them, as a younger musician replaces him on the stage and plays to a thinner, far more inebriated late-night crowd.
Both picking over the notably decent meat and two veg, they discuss Jaskier’s job instead of Geralt’s, although this consists mainly of gossip about Jaskier’s many wealthy peers, patrons and nemeses and the nefarious things they all do behind each other’s backs. When they get down to tonight’s characters, Geralt insists that Jaskier show him the emerald and, only a little jealous, Geralt half pretends it’s a cursed magical ring that must be surrendered to him for Jaskier’s own safety.
Soon though, their plate is as empty as the pub, with staff hovering, pointedly wiping tables. Geralt drains his tankard. “Bedtime, Jaskier.”
“Yes, yes, alright,” Jaskier replies with drunken floppy-ended words. He shoots chaotically upwards, slapping back his wine with such carelessness that Geralt is surprised he doesn’t flick it over his shoulder.
And then he charges away from the staircase that leads to bedrooms, one of which Jaskier definitely mentioned renting. Not again. “Where are you going?” Geralt asks with years of tiredness.
Jaskier spins dramatically back to face Geralt. “I am not-” He pokes the nearest table “-spending another night on that mattress.”
Geralt rolls his eyes. Accepts his fate. (For this night at least). Again. And follows Jaskier into the night.
The moon is high, almost full, casting rainbows through the delicate frozen clouds wisping over it. It paints the city in two colours only: velveteen silver cut out from darkest liquid blue, then softened with rich yellow from human fire. Jaskier is almost wearing camouflage. And not even midnight, every surface is already coated with a thick layer of twinkling frost. To Geralt’s ears, it sighs under Jaskier’s footsteps.
Jaskier is drunk enough that his path is somewhat veering, amiably knocking into Geralt’s shoulder every couple of paces. Still humming away old and new tunes to himself.
It’s in one of the arcs away from Geralt that Jaskier slips, and in half a heartbeat he’s in Geralt’s arms. Unexpectedly close. Their frozen breath spooling together between them.
Geralt spends the other half of the heartbeat forgetting most of everything because-
Jaskier’s giving him that strange look again. The one that lingers on every corner of his face. And Geralt is fixed.
Jaskier says, “I was joking earlier, but you really don’t do you?” His fingertips have crept off Geralt’s shoulders to trace feather light over his cheekbone. And the skin so smooth. Always so smooth.
“Don’t what?” The words drip off his lips, afterthoughts.
“You don’t change. Don’t age.” He says it with a sad smile.
“No.”
Perhaps Geralt should apologise, but he will not.
Because this is what the humans do not see: A sapling is not better than an oak just because it is theoretically further from decay. Geralt will someday make soil with the rest of them, but he will never make shade, or house birds, or bear acorns. No, Geralt is a fly trapped in amber, unable to move forward, to grow, to form a life, only collect dents and scratches that mar an artificially polished surface.
Instead, the endless silverpoint lines of Jaskier’s face are a refinement of his form. For the creation of some, Geralt must have been present, have been the cause, but he could never pick out which. In the years between, brow and jaw have strengthened, fat lost and regained, shifting like hills pushed, imperceptibly to the human eyes, by winds across the earth. Years and years, and so many songs, collected together in one man.
It is that thought that brings Geralt to Jaskier’s lips. One kiss on the lips. Jaskier kisses back once to say, Yes, and again for, I’m here too. Geralt chases him open mouthed when he pulls away.
He holds Geralt’s face in his hands, still running his thumbs and his eyes over Geralt. When he speaks his eyes are far away. “When I saw you appear again, pale and fresh and pink at the tips- suspended in that crystal water -you were as breathtaking as the first day I saw you. In the back of that pub.” And every day since. He almost shakes his head. “It’s like going back in time. Being in my own memory.”
“I didn’t kiss you then,” Geralt says, with a little upward twist at the corner of his mouth, trying to lift Jaskier too. I never would have kissed him.
“I wish you had.”
And Geralt thinks, I am.