Chapter Text
Over the years, the decades, their meetings change from Geralt buying them two pints of shitty ale in the back of a slightly ominous pub, to Jaskier ordering a hog roast, and fine wine to a plush booth, if not a private room. No longer does Jaskier play for tips to an almost hostile crowd, but the crowds start asking for him. Courting him. As the money in his pockets turns from copper to gold, his copper hair fades to silver.
Despite his best efforts Geralt has watched more than a handful of human lives fully unfold. They don’t often go so fruitfully upwards. And he has to admit, just to himself, in quiet moments, that it is quite pleasant to watch. Of course, a full stomach and mild inebriation always help warm feelings.
These days him and Jaskier tend to know when they’re both in town a day or two before they get around to bumping into each other. Scandalised whispers of the unnaturally pale witcher that has appeared in the rough end of town have always travelled quickly, but now excited whispers of the great bard Jaskier flow in the opposite direction into Geralt’s ears. More and more Geralt finds himself wandering towards a familiar song only to find it being sung by the wrong person. They tend to finish their set early, shaken by the sudden appearance of a silent, glaring witcher.
Although, in this tale, it is Jaskier who wanders towards a familiar sound. This afternoon he is situated outside the patisserie on the town square nibbling a breakfast tarte aux fruits and doodling lyrics when the childrens’ raucous games dissolve into an excited sprint away from him. As they run jabbering, the conversations in their path fall hushed, and turn in one direction. With everyone else, Jaskier looks towards the loose crowd forming around a dark silhouette.
Jaskier smiles and drops his quill. He weaves through gasps and gawps of horror and disgust. “Thank Melitele. Now both beasts can leave us alo-” And all the same things they always say. “I’ve been poisoning the water for weeks. They owe us half I re-” Because this is how he knows that Geralt has returned.
Geralt of course is in the centre. He’s coated head to toe in more than one thick, dark liquid, holding up the end of a mangled corpse of something in his left hand. It’s unclear where it ends and he begins, though his pristine yellow eyes still gleam menacingly out of the grime.
It seems that Geralt is having to re-negotiate the value of the corpse-ing with a local who is suddenly adamant that half a body is worth only half the bounty.
“I can assure you - the other half of this chort won’t be killing your cattle.”
“How can I be sure? It’s an unnatural-” It’s such a familiar sight, and such a bizarre thing to feel nostalgia over, that that laughter bubbles out of Jaskier’s chest.
Both very big, serious, muscled men turn towards him.
Jaskier holds his abdomen, still shaking, “You never change, do you Geralt?” Though his taunt quickly turns into a surprised gag as he accidentally inhales the rancid stench of the mystery liquids.
“Who the fuck are you?” says the local.
Jaskier swallows his bile. “Julian Alfred Pankratz, Viscount de Lettenhove, most renowned bard in the land, and this witcher’s finest patron.”
And why should I give a fuck? says the single unimpressed eyebrow of the local. So Jaskier adds, with a sarcastically friendly smile, “Pay him or I’ll pay double him to do that-” he waves a finger at the misshapen body, “-to you.”
Jaskier quiets Geralt with a single raised finger before he can point out that he doesn’t kill people. He lets his silver buttons glint in the low afternoon sun. The local tosses the pouch towards the cobbles in front of Geralt and walks away without waiting to watch Geralt crouch to collect it.
“That was unnecessary,” he says, a sigh.
Jaskier feigns overzealous gratitude. “Oh, thank you, dear Jaskier, for making that horrible miser pay me and leave in the blink of an eye.” He sends his eyes to the heavens, gestures extravagantly, orates, plays to a nonexistent gallery. “Whatever would I do without you?”
Geralt rolls his eyes to hide a good-to-see-you-again smile. And then, as they find themselves walking shoulder to shoulder, as on so many previous afternoons, he asks “When did you become a Viscount?”
“Ten seconds ago.”
He looks like he could be one: A couple of heavy rings on his fingers. His slit-sleeved doublet in the shimmering pale blue of a winter sky (and his eyes) with two vertical panels of rich deep blue that are embroidered in silver with four-petaled flowers enclosed in diamonds, and two columns of matching silver buttons. The edges are all trimmed in fine grey-black fox fur as if to match:
The individual grey hairs he’d had at their last meeting have grown into great waves of silver spreading from his temples. Where they are clipped short, in the neat beard he had once been unable to completely grow, they catch the sun, sparking like magnesium fire. The baby fat of his cheeks long gone, the bones underneath sure and strong. His eyes, still as bright and sharp as they always were, are refined with ever more lines marking the years he has spent laughing.
Geralt shakes himself and remembers to be suspicious of Jaskier’s schemes.
“Where are you going?”
“To the bathhouse,” Jaskier replies as if the answer is obvious.
Geralt turns on his heel. “There’s a river this way. Roach won’t charge me for towels.” If there was one thing they had always agreed on in the past, it was that they were both poor as dogs, and the cheapest option now meant the most beer and meat later.
Jaskier skitters to Geralt’s front and walks backwards in front of him. “It’s nearly bloody mid-winter!” he implores. Geralt does not slow. “I am not going to spend my afternoon squatting in a ditch listening to your pale tales,” he threatens, and then rapidly hops out of arm’s reach when Geralt sets his jaw and speeds up. “Oh, come on! My treat? Compensation… for your inspiration!” he bargains. Geralt stops. He crosses his arms, narrows his eyes, and stares down Jaskier, who is now motionless, hands frozen mid-air, as if trying not to spook a large and rightly suspicious animal.
Geralt doesn’t sink as far as agreeing, but jerks his head over his shoulder to say, Go on then.
Jaskier leads them through winding streets up the gentle slopes of Yspaden, to the swanky side of town, where the buildings spread apart and sprout gardens, and the trees can grow tall and green. Soon they approach a sprawling limestone complex, with a colonnade front, as had been fashionable centuries ago. If he concentrated, Geralt could hear the sound of running water from a tamed upstream section of the river he had planned to bathe in.
Ahead of Geralt, Jaskier enters without event. Geralt is not so lucky. As soon as the staff spot him, stark black, brown and red filth in their white oasis, they rush to hover around him, ready to clean him or anything he might come close to. Apparently unaware of the circus behind him, Jaskier lets the sapphire in his eyes, and the silver in his hands twinkle for the hostess, an older woman with thick grey-brown wavy hair. Within moments he’s secured a private room for the rest of the day.
As they walk through the halls Jaskier pulls a hovering young attendant to his side, whispers a command in his ear, and puts coins in his palm. The boy nods and rushes back the way they had come. Geralt sighs again and decides he doesn’t have the energy to untangle whatever web Jaskier is currently weaving around him.
The room, when they reach it, consists mainly of a square pool with stepped sides offering plenty of places to sit, lit from above by the open sky. The water, flowing in to one side of the room and out of the other, is beautifully clear and hopefully pleasantly warm. Yet more limestone columns border the pool and shade the walkway around it. Barely through the doorway, Geralt waves away the reluctant offers of staff to help undress him, and with that they are alone again.
Moments later Jaskier’s drawers hit the tiles and he sinks into the steaming water with a great sigh. He speaks with his eyes closed, “Give me a minute - the beds in The King’s Leg are mistreating me.” Geralt only grunts, too busy with his own slop ridden clothing escape. When he does slosh into the pool Jaskier is slowly flexing and unflexing his legs, massaging the sides of his knees.
Geralt starts with his hands, then scrubs up his forearms working off the blood-shit, the water turning grey-red-brown in clouds around him. Jaskier dips a hand into the water and combs his fingers through his hair, half slicking it down. His head falls back onto the stone behind him. The clear winter sun shining into the pool looks good on his bones. Looks good catching the grey hairs on his sternum. He looks like something someone ought to paint.
Geralt’s blood stirs. He tears himself away, back to the filth at hand. Soon only his head remains to be scrubbed. He moves into the deeper water in the centre of the pool and sinks under the surface. The faint hubbub of the town fades and warps close to silence. Only himself to listen to. He slows his heart, knowing this will take a while then, eyes closed, starts to scrub his face and work through his hair.
When he opens his eyes to look for the last red locks, he finds Jaskier looking down at him. With an odd look on his face. And his fingers tracing idle shapes on the water’s surface. Geralt only considers now that he’s brought himself close enough to him, at his feet, that Jaskier could stretch out a leg and poke Geralt in the ribs. Geralt denies the pleas of his heart to beat faster.
Jaskier’s gaze is pulled away towards two pairs of footsteps thumping towards them across the stone.
Geralt bursts upwards, spinning towards the intruders.