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Geralt is lost in contemplation.
He can’t help it. He doesn’t want to help it. Not when there are bright colors and unearthly blue eyes and a sweet tenor, clear as bells, belting along to the melody of a lute and a fiddle across the thoroughfare from the makeshift stage for the sword fighting exhibitions.
Lost in thought, letting the sounds of that voice, blessed as if by all the gods, wash over him, surround him, encompass him, oh, there is no better to place to be, whyever would he want to--
“Earth to Geralt!”
A voice. Not the dulcet tones from before, no, not that, another voice, intruding.
Wait. He knows that voice.
Oh, it’s Renfri’s voice, and the acknowledgement barely has time to register before Geralt raises his sword to block Renfri’s blow, not half an inch from his ear.
He turns, just a fraction to the right, and there her swordpoint is, almost brushing his nose. He arches an eyebrow, trying to muster as much incredulity as he can manage when he’s the one interrupting their rehearsal with his inattention.
“Trying to kill me, Creyden?”
“Going to get your head in the game sometime today, Rivia?” she shoots back. The fingers of her free hand toy with the hilt of a dagger tucked away in her thigh holster. “Or are you going to keep making eyes at Pankratz and pining hopelessly until this faire ends tomorrow and we all faff off back to our lives and you’re left drowning your sorrows and lamenting missed opportunities?”
That is . . . uncomfortably close to the fears that have been plaguing his nights over the past two weeks, as the faire finally winds down and it becomes more and more likely that Jaskier will waltz out of his life, go back to his own much more exciting world of teaching violin lessons and making a name for himself on the indie music scene, taking all the sunshine in Geralt’s world with him as he goes. Yes, yes, Renfri’s words are much too close to that from which his thoughts refuse to stray.
Time to deflect.
“I’m not pining,” is what comes out of his mouth, a denial tinged with an unfortunate amount of petulance, and he could slap himself upside the head, he really could, he has chosen the worst possible thing to say in front of this particular audience.
“Yeah, no. You’re pining,” Renfri says.
Eskel, leaning against a post just off the stage, looks up from where he’s sharpening his own dagger against a small whetstone and chimes in, “You’re definitely pining.”
“I’ve seen entire forests of pine trees that have been engaged in less pining than what you’ve done these past two months concerning our dear bard.” That’s Lambert’s unsolicited contribution, and upon seeing him, sprawled out on one of the benches in the audience area, Geralt narrows his eyes.
“Aren’t you supposed to be watching the shop before your impending emceeing duties for this afternoon’s show?”
Lambert shrugs, as best as he can while lying down, and waves a hand in the general direction of the stall where Witcher Brothers Metal & Woodworking has been set up for the duration of this faire. “Aiden and Coen have it well enough in hand. And we’re not talking about me or about the shop. We’re talking about you and the way your eyes can’t stop following a certain songster all over the grounds. You gotta say something, brother. This is just getting sad.”
“Very sad indeed,” Eskel agrees.
“He’s not--”
“If the next words out of your mouth, Geralt, are ‘he’s not into me,’ I’m going to insist that you temporarily stop doing these fighting exhibitions because clearly you need to get your eyes examined,” Renfri says, shoulder checking him hard, but with undeniable affection, before wandering over to Eskel, who tosses her a bottle of water.
“He flirts relentlessly with you,” Eskel says. He checks his watch, hidden underneath one of his bracers, and starts moving around the stage, methodically setting out the various weapons they’ll all use in the upcoming exhibition.
“He flirts relentlessly with everyone,” Geralt replies, and a part of him sighs at his own obstinacy, at his own willingness to dwell in denial.
He wants this. If he’s being honest with himself, at this moment, there’s nothing he wants more than for Jaskier, brilliant beautiful Jaskier, full of starshine and heavenly melodies, to flirt with him and mean it, but there’s something terrifying about it, too. Something wild and uncertain. Geralt can’t explain it, but every time Jaskier takes a break from performing with Essi to prop the stand holding the flower crowns that he sells outside the door to Geralt’s shop and wanders around inside, chattering away as he runs featherlight fingertips, reverent and awestruck, over Geralt’s creations, something makes Geralt hold back, shy away, even when he wants nothing more than to bask in the rays of Jaskier’s warmth and light in all its splendor.
He wants, and he wants desperately, but he doesn’t know how to have.
“It’s different with you,” Lambert says, quietly, seriously. He sits up and shoves a hand through his ginger hair, looking Geralt directly in the eye. “He flirts with all of us, sure, but he’s interested in you, Geralt. We all see it. You see it. You want it, too.” He shrugs again. “He’s a good guy. Let yourself have something nice once in a while, yeah?”
Geralt stares at him, at a complete loss for words. Let himself have something nice? What--how--what does that even--how does he even begin to go about doing that?
He turns to Eskel, who is of no help. “Even Lambert has to be right sometimes,” he says, simply, as if Geralt’s path forward is somehow clear. He reaches over to swipe a hand through Lambert’s hair and dances back out of the way, laughing in delight at Lambert’s growled fuck off.
“Now now, boys,” Renfri chides mildly, indulgent of their antics and banter while Geralt feels the foundations of his world rock and shift in place. Something over by the entrance to the audience area catches her eye, and she smiles, sharp and quicksilver, before slapping both Eskel and Lambert on their shoulders. “Come on, chuckleheads. Let’s go get into our gear. I think Geralt needs a moment or two to reflect on these recent revelations.”
Lambert looks about to protest, but Eskel nods in the direction of whatever had caught Renfri’s eye, and he acquiesces without a fight. “Sure thing, boss. See you soon, Geralt.” He leans in close as he passes Geralt by. “When you see an opportunity, take it. Don’t fuck this up, Geralt.”
Eskel, following after Renfri and Lambert, bodily turns Geralt towards the center aisle between the rows of benches. There Jaskier stands at the back row, a brightly colored flower crown--daisies this time, it looks like, and Geralt feels a smile start to creep up on his face at his correct identification of the flowers--clutched tight in his hands. “Let yourself have something nice once in a while, Geralt,” Eskel murmurs.
He holds Geralt’s gaze for a beat, two, then pats Geralt’s cheek once, twice, and then he’s gone, and Geralt finds himself alone with Jaskier, a situation he wishes he could avoid, a situation he desperately craves.
“Hey Geralt!” Jaskier calls, and he strolls up the aisle, as cool as you please, and it’s only when he’s standing directly in front of Geralt, and Geralt can see the white-knuckled grip that he has on the flower crown, that he realizes it’s a front, a facade, that Jaskier is nervous, just as he is nervous, and paradoxically, that calms him. He’s not alone in this. Jaskier is with him.
“Hey Jaskier.”
It’s not a clever greeting, but Jaskier beams at him anyway. He’s always so happy to see Geralt, even when he takes a break from performing to watch Geralt whittle and they pass the time saying nothing at all, their presence in the same space together more than enough. In an afternoon of revelations, another one strikes Geralt: he doesn’t have to be anyone else for Jaskier. He only has to be himself. He is enough.
That opportunity Lambert was talking about? It’s coming, Geralt can feel it. He doesn’t quite know what form it’s going to take, but it’s in the very air around them, and if for some reason it’s not coming, well, he just might have to take the initiative and create it himself.
“I like that shirt,” Geralt adds when it seems, for a moment, that the conversation will not progress, that they’ll just stand there, sword in Geralt’s hand, flower crown in Jaskier’s, smiling at each other.
It is a nice shirt, as far as shirts go, to Geralt’s untrained eye. It suits Jaskier: a gauzy thing with some kind of floral or paisley pattern, it laces up and constantly threatens to slip off his shoulder. Geralt constantly finds himself wanting to discover how that revealed patch of skin tastes. A tendril of warmth curls through him, settling in his stomach, when he realizes he might be able to find out.
“Thanks, thank you,” Jaskier says, and there’s the faintest hint of a blush high on his cheekbones, and Geralt wants to run his fingers over it, the gentlest caress he has ever bestowed. He wants to feel the heat that his words--plain and unadorned as they are--cause. He wants to feel that blush, that heat, underneath his fingertips, underneath his lips. He manages to stop himself from reaching out to Jaskier; he doesn’t manage to stop himself from swaying forward, infinitesimally, but still noticeably, as close as they are.
Jaskier clears his throat. “This,” he says, gesturing at Geralt’s black shirt with its undone laces at the neck, his tight black trousers, “is, of course, quite fetching. But I couldn’t help but think it might somehow be improved upon?” He raises the flower crown, a question in his gaze. “A favor, perhaps? For the valiant knight before his epic battle?”
Geralt says nothing, overcome by the gesture, by opportunity staring him right in the face and saying, ever so gently, here I am; won’t you let me in?
He drops his chin, ever so slightly. His eyes remain locked on Jaskier’s as he places the flower crown just so, heat sparking between them. Jaskier adjusts the crown to his liking, he lets his fingers trail through Geralt’s hair, and Geralt drops his sword with a clatter, no longer able to keep his fingers from tangling with Jaskier’s free hand.
They grip each other tight. They hold on, as if they cannot bear to be parted.
“Tomorrow is the end of the faire,” Geralt whispers, the slightest tremor slipping in around the edges of his words. “But if you want it, Jaskier, I think it can be the beginning of us.”
He hopes--desperately, as desperately as he wants--that Lambert and Eskel and Renfri are right, that he hasn’t misread this, that he won’t have to flee the faire in shame and disgrace.
The smile that blooms on Jaskier’s face is blinding in its intensity. No room whatsoever for any kind of misinterpretation. There’s only one way to read that expression, that blazing light in Jaskier’s eyes: joy. Pure undiluted joy.
“That, my dear Geralt, I want very much indeed.”
The faire ends tomorrow, but Jaskier’s light will remain in Geralt’s life, shining upon him. He leans in, his murmured may I kiss you? nearly lost in Jaskier’s hasty acceptance, and he lets himself have something nice, something good.