Work Text:
The winters have been getting longer.
Not in the literal sense, Jaskier supposes. Winter is just as long as it was when he was a boy, vacationing on the coast with his family to stave off the inclement weather in Lettenhove. Winter hadn’t changed since the first time he left Geralt at a signpost on the border of Kaedwen, telling him that they would meet again as soon as the fates allowed. That year, they never happened to run into one another at all. Jaskier had barely known the witcher, only having traveled with him for two years at most. Up until then their encounters were chance, running into one another in taverns and on the side of the road in a way that always smelt like destiny to Jaskier’s poetic heart. Despite their tenuous relationship, that entire year, Jaskier worried. His worry had peaked as a chill ran over the Continent, forcing him down south back to his alma mater, away from where he knew the witcher spent his winters, not knowing what the alternative was, unable to wait out the change in seasons any longer. He worried through the whole season, through all of the classes he taught. He worried the entire way back northeast to Kaedwen, and he worried until he got to that signpost and saw what he had been lacking for months.
Geralt was there, and Jaskier could swear that he knew the relief on Geralt’s face, because he was feeling it as well.
They only ever spent one full year apart from one another again. It’s a year Jaskier doesn’t like to think about, and one Geralt has never stopped apologizing for in the decades since. They leave it behind them, and they learn from it.
That signpost became a tradition. Halfway to between the Blue Mountains and Oxenfurt. A relatively long trek for both of them, but it was even. It was fair. It was a sign that they were going to be parting, but also a sign that they were going to be reunited. It became a symbol of their friendship, of the different directions their lives would take, a symbol that they would always return to one another in the end.
That’s how Jaskier thinks of it, anyway. He highly doubts that Geralt shares this same sentiment. He never seemed to understand the song Jaskier has been fussing over for the last thirty years, a song about a signpost. Despite his best efforts, Geralt has never really understood poetry.
Physically, the winters have not gotten any longer. The cold snap still comes every year, at the same exact time, hovering around Saovine. It came every single year while they were hiding Cirilla, every year that they were searching for her, and every year since their family reunited, after the war. The snow melted even when Jaskier didn’t think that there was warmth left in the world. Despite the lack of faith that burned a hole inside of him those last few years of the war, somehow, the spring always came. Life always returned to the Continent. Bellteteyn was celebrated, a May Queen was always crowned. The birds always sang, and the flowers always bloomed, and always, always, their family returned to one another.
Despite the fact that those cycles of seasons never changed in length, Jaskier’s winters became longer.
Life is rather normal now. The normality of it all is what makes it so clear just how much things have changed. Where Jaskier used to be ready to go before spring, leaving Oxenfurt well before the first thaw, he now finds himself lingering. It isn’t from a lack of excitement. In fact, Jaskier aches for Geralt’s presence in those long, cold nights of solitude more than he ever had before. After learning the warmth of his body in his bed, the comfort of his love, Jaskier wakes every morning yearning. Reaching for the side of a bed that won’t be filled for months. Each morning he counts down the days until they can be together again, until he will see that face filled with relief, will be wrapped up in familiar arms and the scent of woodsmoke and leather. He awaits the day that he returns home.
No, lack of excitement isn’t the problem at all. Jaskier is just getting old.
It’s taken him a long time to realize this. During the war, time passed differently. It was easy to chalk up the aches and pains as a side effect of sprinting all over the Continent at a breakneck speed for nearly a decade.There was never a good night’s sleep, never a moment without constant fighting and running and sleeping on the ground. Aches and pains are natural to experience throughout that, not just of the body, but of the mind.
There is no war to blame those aches and pains on now.
In his mind, Jaskier is still eighteen years old, freshly graduated from Oxenfurt with bread in his pants and stars in his eyes, ready to follow Geralt around the Continent until his body gives out. He is ready to fall in love with him, to raise a daughter together, to build a family with him and a woman he had never expected to love. His mind is as sharp as it’s ever been, but his body aches. His body is tired. It’s more than just the tiredness of a man who spent a lifetime on his feet. It’s the aches of a man who is getting old. A man who is aging, while the rest of his family sits still, frozen in time.
There is a decision that has to be made, one that Jaskier has been dreading ever since his own mortality became a reality to him so many years ago.
These are decisions that can’t be made over a single season, though. It’s been years of little things all piling up to force a decision to be made. Jaskier notices himself lingering in the warmth of southern Redania, notices himself returning to his post at Oxenfurt earlier than usual and staying long past his semesters are finished. He’s always made it to Geralt in time, never letting him fret, but he no longer arrives early, lingering for the man at their meeting spot. Geralt has beat him there twice now. Two years in a row, Jaskier has not made it there before Geralt, and it’s clear that Geralt noticed, despite him not saying anything about it.
No, Geralt won’t say anything about it. He’ll only stare at him when he thinks Jaskier isn’t paying attention.
(He should know by now that Jaskier is always paying attention.)
Geralt will brush through his hair while he thinks Jaskier is sleeping, moving brown aside in search of grays, a feat which gets easier each year that passes. He will frown back at him as Jaskier struggles to keep up on the Path, and he will take Jaskier to bed early when he can’t finish the long musical sets that he used to perform. He will rub Jaskier’s sore fingers, kiss their aching joints, and he will massage Jaskier’s feet until he falls asleep, pretending that he isn’t worried all the while. Jaskier smiles through it all, and he pretends that things don’t bother him as much as they do. He pretends that Geralt’s worry does not cling to him like a bad scent, hovering around their every interaction. He pretends that he can be that eighteen year old again in a fifty-year-old man’s body, that it will be possible to push through to spend another year at Geralt’s side, hunting monsters as they were made to do.
Things are normal, but things are not the same.
Jaskier writes a letter.
The signpost does not have an address, but he knows how to get it to Geralt anyway. It’s something he’s had to do before, as has Geralt, when their paths take them unexpectedly far away. Their letters always say the same thing. They say I’m safe. They say I miss you. They say come find me as soon as you can.
It takes Geralt less than two days to get to Oxenfurt, which Jaskier didn’t think was physically possible, not even for a witcher.
There is something to be said about the impossibility of love, but it’s a song that Jaskier has sung a thousand times before. It does not need to be written again.
Even with all of this waxing about Jaskier moving on while his loves stand still in time, Geralt has changed. It isn’t just the new scars on his face, either. Geralt is aging, however slowly. He doesn’t look as old as Jaskier now feels, but he’s older. More mature. He’s growing into his white hair, which Geralt growls at him for saying every single time. Ciri and Yennefer on the other hand, love the joke, which means that Jaskier refuses to stop saying it.
It isn’t the first time that Geralt has been inside of his flat at Oxenfurt, but it looks different than it had the last time. The room has not changed, but Geralt has changed. It makes Jaskier smile, seeing the inevitability of time pull at Geralt in the same way that it pulls at Jaskier, but Geralt does not look to be in a smiling mood. All it takes is three long strides to cross the room, and Jaskier pictures that’s the same way that Geralt had crossed the map from Kaedwen so fast. Geralt is there one moment and in front of Jaskier the next, kneeling down in front of him, not even giving Jaskier a chance to get up from his chair.
“Jaskier. Are you okay? What–”
“I told you I was fine in my letter.”
Geralt frowns at that, as though he doesn’t know how to argue with it, but he also doesn’t want to accept it. There are very few reasons that Jaskier would not meet Geralt at their place, and simply being ‘fine’ is not a good enough one. It does make Jaskier feel a little guilty over making Geralt worry, but there wasn’t an alternative. There’s no point in crossing through an entire country just to tell Geralt what he has to say. Geralt just needed to trust him that he was safe, but Jaskier can’t blame him for not doing so.
“Well. Fine.” Then Geralt is leaning in to kiss him, a delighted sound falling from Jaskier’s lips. This is always Jaskier’s favorite way of saying hello. It feels the same as it did all those years ago, every single reunion just like the first. Geralt has never been good with words, but he has always been good at this. It tells Jaskier hi, I missed you, I love you, in such a convincing way that Jaskier can never dispute it in the same way he can words.
Geralt lifts him out of his chair with great ease, and Jaskier’s laughter rings out in the room, his arms wrapping around Geralt’s neck, grinning into the narrow space between them.
“Hi. I missed you, and I love you, too.”
Really, Jaskier had been planning on doing things differently. He had wanted to have the conversation before Geralt got handsy, but he should have known better. Every reunion goes the same way. It’s lucky that they picked a signpost near a tavern or else travelers would have gotten an eyeful every spring, watching two men fuck in the middle of a dirt road as a way of greeting one another.
Jaskier’s flat is much preferable to even a tavern bed, though. It’s Jaskier’s bed. It smells like him, and now it’s going to smell like Geralt, and his aching back is supported by plush down, and Geralt makes this place feel like home in a way that it never has before.
So the conversation waits until they are finished saying hello to one another in the best way they know how.
And again.
Fuck it, and again.
Jaskier may be getting old, but this part of their relationship has never been a problem.
Finally, Jaskier taps out. It’s always him first, even when he was young. A witcher’s stamina is unmatched even for a virile teenager. Geralt is even more insatiable after a long winter away from each other, even in those winters where Yennefer keeps him company. He likes to think that it has less to do with Geralt being horny and more to do with Geralt being horny for Jaskier. It’s the way that Jaskier feels about Geralt at least. Being apart pushes him to reach limits he didn’t know he still could at near fifty years old. Still, even with divine intervention from merciful Melitele herself, Jaskier’s human stamina always catches up with him eventually, always leaves him panting and sweating and usually sleeping in bed while Geralt watches over him carefully.
(Jaskier asked him once why he never sleeps after they have sex. It feels like a personal failing of his, to not be able to shut that brain off by giving Geralt pleasure. It had been a question he’d held onto for years, jealousy he tried to get over long ago still clinging to him, wondering why Yennefer was able to give that to Geralt when Jaskier never could. When he finally found it in him to ask, Geralt got soft, stroked hair out of his face, and told him that he liked to watch him sleep. He told him that he didn’t want to sleep himself, especially after their first time together in the spring, because he missed him too much. He enjoyed the sound of his peaceful heartbeat because it reassured him that he was safe, that their last time parting was not the last time they would ever see each other. Jaskier never complained again.)
Jaskier wakes a good while later, starving, but significantly less horny.
They eat together, following the same routine they always do, though now Jaskier cooks. He had been preparing for Geralt’s arrival, having bought his favorite foods and wine, creating a rather elaborate breakfast/dinner. (Jaskier has no idea what time it is.) Whatever meal it is, it’s going to be a great one, because Geralt will be more receptive to what he has to say on a full stomach.
“You’re hiding something.”
Jaskier pauses over his food, looking up at Geralt with an annoyed expression on his face. Geralt, on the other hand, looks smug.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“Well, I’m annoyed,” Jaskier argues, shoveling another fork full of pork into his mouth, frowning deeper as Geralt’s fond smile widens, “just shut up and enjoy your dinner, hm? I’ll get to it when I want to. By the way, I’m not hiding anything. I had fully planned on telling you what’s going on the second that you walked through the door.”
Geralt chuckles, dipping his bread into the sauce on his otherwise empty plate appreciatively, before licking his fingers clean as well.
“Mm. Sure.”
“I was!” Jaskier’s voice doesn’t reach the same high pitch that it used to, but the pitch is still quite spectacular, and it still very clearly amuses Geralt to no end upon hearing it. “I was going to, but then you came in with your big burly arms and your locks of white hair and swept me into bed. What was I supposed to do? Stop you from fucking me? You forget I haven’t been laid in months.”
“I don’t forget. I also haven’t been laid in months.”
“Then you also wouldn’t have liked for me to stop you, would you? No? I didn’t think so. So no. I’m not hiding anything. I was simply waiting for you to be… Satisfied, before we have this conversation.”
Geralt snorts, shaking his head, before popping the last of his bread into his mouth. He leans back, hands crossed over his stomach, and looks to Jaskier.
“I’m satisfied. Go on.”
Jaskier has practiced having this conversation for months. Years, if he’s being honest with himself. He’s been winding himself up for this one, and yet now that he’s here, he finds that he isn’t able to do it. He can’t make the words move past his lips, despite them being lodged in the back of his throat. They will choke him if they don’t move, and yet they sit still, refusing to make noise. It’s worse than any stage fright he’s ever had in his life. Worse than when he couldn’t speak from the Djinn, because now he is capable of speech, but it feels impossible. He thought he was mature enough for this. He should be. Geralt loves him, and is going to accept this, but that’s also the issue. Geralt loves him, and Jaskier is going to break his heart.
Before Jaskier realizes it, Geralt is kneeling in front of him again, holding Jaskier’s hands in his own. Jaskier’s gone and worried him again, which makes him feel like a horrible partner, constantly making Geralt worry when he’s going to go ahead and hurt him yet again. Geralt is looking up at him, must see that guilt on his face, because he reaches up, cupping Jaskier’s cheek in those deceptively gentle hands of his, hands that Geralt used to think were made for killing before he learned what it means to love.
“I’m sorry,” Jaskier sighs, which only makes the worry in Geralt’s eyes spark, the man’s head clearly jumping to the worst possible scenario, “I’m okay, darling, I mean it. I just… I need to get this out.” Jaskier takes a deep breath, putting a hand over the one on his face, and the smile that comes to his face is rueful.
“I’m old.”
Geralt raises an eyebrow at him, clearly amused, which makes Jaskier roll his eyes, but at least Geralt doesn’t interrupt him.
“I’m getting old. Is that better?” Geralt hums in the affirmative, which motivates Jaskier to move on. “I’m getting old, Geralt. I know that you’ve noticed it. We both have. I’m having a harder time keeping up with you on the Path. I’m having a harder time even leaving my post here in the spring. My bones hurt, and my back fucking hurts, and I’m cold so much more often than I used to be, and I’m… I’m tired. I love you, and I love our life, but I’m getting so tired.”
Geralt’s hand tightens around Jaskier’s a little, the concern clear on his face.
This is a conversation they’ve tried to have before, the conversation of what they’re going to do when Jaskier ages. It’s an inevitability. They’re conversations that neither of them can get through, because Jaskier usually cries, or Geralt does, or both of them do, unable to fathom a time when they have to part. It is a concept that is not fathomable. It is a simple fact of life that they do not part. They’re conversations that have never reached a conclusion, because they know that the only answer is that they have to be apart. Jaskier doesn’t want to be apart.
“It’s time for me to retire.”
Geralt squeezes Jaskier’s hand, clearly trying to comfort him, which breaks Jaskier’s heart, because he knows that Geralt’s heart is breaking as well.
Their hearts are one. Jaskier feels it in his chest. When Geralt is hurting, Jaskier is hurting. He felt it when Geralt nearly lost Ciri, when he nearly lost Yennefer. Geralt felt it when Jaskier lost Essi, a heartbreak that could be felt even across the Continent from one another. Geralt held him and he cried, not because he loved Essi, but because Jaskier did.
“I’ll slow down. I’ll meet you here in the spring, and we can stay as long as you need to to feel rested. I’ll shorten my months on the Path, bring you back here in the fall, before Saovine. We don’t have to–”
“Geralt. You won’t make any coin doing that. Both of us know that. Besides, how long will you do that for? Thirty years? I still have a lot of life ahead of me. More years than you can stand only spending a couple of months on the Path. No, I’m not going to ask that of you, because I know that you would do it. You would spend all of our money on an inn every night because of my back, and you would buy me food every night until our pockets are empty and you would have no way of earning it back, because you’re too worried about me to go hunt. No. No, I’m not going to ask that of you.”
“You didn’t ask me. I offered.”
“Geralt. No. That isn’t what I want.”
Geralt winces, looking away.
Jaskier knows what Geralt heard. He’s heard ‘I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with you, however hard it may be. It isn’t worth it to me to try.’
It isn’t what Jaskier said. It isn’t what Jaskier is proposing. Geralt heard it all the same.
“Listen to me, and don’t interrupt me again, please. I know what I want. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. Longer than just this winter, I assure you. I wouldn’t be asking this of you if I didn’t think it wasn’t necessary. Geralt. Look at me.”
Geralt’s eyes snap back from where they had drifted away, over Jaskier’s shoulder. Ten years ago Jaskier wouldn’t have been able to steal his attention back like that. Ten years ago Geralt would have stormed out the second Jaskier said he was retiring. Ten years ago Geralt wouldn’t be able to sit through this conversation without getting furious at either Jaskier or himself because he didn’t know how to handle the big emotions threatening to crush his chest in on his heart.
Jaskier has spent three decades showing Geralt that he’s safe to feel things around him, even the gigantic, terrifying things. Especially the gigantic, terrifying things. For as long as Jaskier lives, that’s going to be his duty. It isn’t a burden. It’s a privilege.
“I’m not going to leave you. I’m not breaking up with you,” Geralt gives him a look that says he thinks that phrase is childish, but Jaskier brushes it off, “I want to change what we’ve been doing. I’m going to be taking a position here for the spring and summer semesters, and revoking my winter sessions to another professor. I want to spend the end of the fall, all winter, and the beginning of spring with you.”
Geralt’s expression changes again, his brows furrowing together, squeezing Jaskier’s hand.
“Jaskier. If you can’t join me on the Path, you aren’t fit enough to make it up the Killer, maybe not even before the snow falls. Besides, it would still be cutting my time hunting short.”
Jaskier raises an eyebrow at him, effectively chastising him for cutting him off. Geralt shuts his mouth, sits back on his heels, and goes back to listening.
“I think it’s time that you stop going to Kaer Morhen for the winter.”
It’s a big ask, and it shows on Geralt’s face.
Geralt’s hand falls from where it’s been cupping Jaskier’s cheek, and it looks as though he wants to pull away more, so Jaskier lets him. He’s not as insecure as he was a decade ago. In fact, he’s left most of his insecurities behind him a long time ago. Despite everything that they’ve been through, neither of them are weaker for it. Yes, Geralt has a bad knee and Jaskier a bad back, but it has nothing to do with their mental resolve, with their love for one another. Their relationship is stronger than ever, so much so that when Geralt stands up to pace the room to help him think, Jaskier isn’t terrified that Geralt is pulling away from him. He doesn’t panic like he used to. He watches as he talks, and he lets Geralt work through this in his own way, trusting that he isn’t going to run off. Knowing for a fact that Geralt would never put him through that again.
“Vesemir is dead.” Geralt visibly twitches at that, making Jaskier sigh, but he barrels on anyway. “Lambert has his cottage with Aiden. I don’t think it’s good for you to be there anymore. All it does is remind you of death, of your life before everything that happened. When I die, I don’t want you stuck up there all alone, shutting Yennefer and Ciri out just like Vesemir did, taking care of an old Keep that isn’t going to take care of you back. I don’t want you to be haunted by the ghosts of the people that you loved, people that you couldn’t save, never letting the past die. You will become like him if you don’t cut yourself off from that place.”
It’s not fair. None of it is fair, but it’s the truth. It’s a conversation they’ve been needing to have for years, a conversation they’ve skirted around, but have never had. Jaskier’s humanity has been a looming presence over them ever since they spent their first night together, Geralt feeling Jaskier’s human heart through his chest, watching him sleep and knowing that their days are numbered.
It stopped them from loving each other for long enough, though. Numbered days should be cherished instead of feared. It only took them half a lifetime to figure that out. Half a lifetime of wasting numbered days, making the ones they had left even that much more precious.
Jaskier lets Geralt think. It’s clear that he’s cross with him because of what he’s said, so Jaskier lets him be. He doesn’t try to tell him he shouldn’t be mad, or defend what he’s said. Instead, he lets Geralt prowl the room with a scowl on his face, clenching his fists and unclenching them, opening his mouth to speak before closing it, trying to find the right combination of words that isn’t telling Jaskier to go fuck himself, but also isn’t breaking down crying in his lap at the acknowledgement that Jaskier is going to leave him one day.
“I wouldn’t do that.”
Jaskier rolls his eyes, leaning back in his chair.
“Yes, you would.”
“I wouldn’t shut our daughter out.”
“Fine. Maybe you wouldn’t. Maybe you and Ciri could be holed up in that old Kaer crying your eyes out because you both miss me so much. How is that a good life for either of you? You’ll go back on the Path, likely getting yourself killed and then leaving Yennefer to pick up the pieces of Ciri, who lost two fathers so quickly. Tell me I’m wrong, Geralt, and look me in the eye when you do it.”
Geralt turns to him, finally, and looks into his eyes. He opens his mouth, and Jaskier glares back at him, challenging him.
Don’t fucking lie to me.
Geralt growls, starting to pace the room again.
“It’s my home, Jaskier.”
“Then let's build a new one!” Jaskier laughs it, a bit hysterically, gesturing wide with his arms. “Why can’t we do that? Why do you feel so desperate to hold onto a place that hurt you so much? Vesemir is gone. You have a family now, Geralt. Just– Listen. Listen to what I’m proposing.”
Geralt stops pacing, but he doesn’t move closer to Jaskier.
“Fine. Go.”
Obstinate, bull-headed love of his life. Jaskier wants to kick him.
“Toussaint. That’s what I propose. The vineyard.”
The look on Geralt’s face says exactly what Jaskier thought it would. It’s a good plan. A great one, even. Jaskier can’t help but look satisfied with himself.
“You haven’t been there in years. I know it’s in disrepair, but instead of trying fruitlessly to fix Kaer Morhen, you can put your efforts into something that will actually stay fixed, something that can become a home, not something that used to be one. You can still keep busy there over the winters, and I’ll help. I know wine, and I know business. You won’t be bored. It won’t be a vacation home for you. It will be a real home.” Finally, Geralt moves closer to him again, leaning back against the table, making Jaskier look up at him. “There are plenty of things to hunt there, as well, when I get older and can’t make it back to Oxenfurt to teach anymore. That’s all that I ask of you. The last few years of my life, I’ll want you there full time.”
Jaskier’s sentence isn’t even finished before Geralt is swooping down again, intensity in his gaze, cupping his face with both of his hands.
“I would never leave you, Jask.”
Jaskier smiles, reaching up to tuck a strand of hair behind Geralt’s ear, a fond expression on his face.
“I know, but I need you to be happy. I can’t ask you to stay somewhere you would be miserable just for me. Hey, it’s okay,” Jaskier soothes, seeing the way that Geralt’s expression has changed. It’s clear that he’s thinking about what Jaskier has asked of him. That he’s asking him for a retirement home. For a home to live the end of his days in.
He’s understanding, perhaps for the first time, what that means.
Jaskier is going to die.
Geralt has lost a lot of people in his life, but for the first time, he has gotten to keep them. They have built a family, the four of them, together. For the first time in his life, Geralt is allowed to have the people he loves close to him, and as soon as that becomes a reality, Jaskier is asking to leave his life again. It isn’t fair. Life isn’t fair. Being a human in love with a witcher isn’t fair, but even less so is the reverse. Jaskier doesn’t have to watch the aftermath of Geralt losing him, but Geralt has to live in it. That is the thing of Jaskier’s nightmares.
Jaskier can imagine what it’s like. He’s thought he’s lost Geralt multiple times, has felt that great hole of despair rise in his chest, has felt the void calling to him as he believes he’s lost his muse, his love, his best friend. That will be Geralt’s reality when he is gone. That never-ending hole in his chest, consuming the joy in his life. It isn’t something that Jaskier thinks he could bear. He doesn’t know how Geralt will be able to do it.
All that brings him comfort is this, what he’s trying to build. He’s trying to give Geralt a purpose after he’s gone. A home. A physical memory of him to hold onto. It’s the best that he can do, after all of the songs that he’s written for him, the public and the private. This home will be second only to that. To those poems that are spoken into sweaty skin late at night, confessions of feelings he didn’t know humans were capable of feeling until he experienced them himself. Before they met, Jaskier thought all of those poets were lying. He still thinks they are, because he doesn’t know if anyone else is capable of feeling the things that he feels for Geralt.
The poems are all well and good, but Jaskier knows Geralt. He needs to have a physical reminder that the good days exist when the bad ones seem to overwhelm him. This is how he can do that.
“I’m not going anywhere anytime soon. I’m just… preparing.”
“I know. I just don’t want to prepare.” Jaskier chuckles a little at him, leaning forward to kiss his forehead. “I don’t like when you smell like this. You’re so sad. It’s overwhelming.”
“You’re sad,” Jaskier argues as he pulls back to look at Geralt again, “did you expect me to be happy about it? Here, let me try. I know what would make me happy. It would be you saying yes.”
“Yes.”
Geralt leans forward, capturing Jaskier’s lips in a kiss, though Jaskier is smiling too wide for it to be a proper one. Geralt smiles back, forcing them to part, to breathe in each other’s laughter instead, holding onto one another because they still can. “Hm. That was easy. Tell me what to say next.”
Jaskier laughs, and he tells him.
The conversation continues after round three, or four. Jaskier can’t keep track.
They are lying in bed together, the setting sun drifting in through the windows, casting everything in the type of daylight that mirrors Geralt’s eyes. Gold and warm and comforting, making everything feel like home. Geralt is stroking down his back lightly with his nails in a way that almost always puts Jaskier to sleep. There’s a sheen of sweat still on his body, making him slightly sticky, but the open window cools the room, a light breeze carrying in the sound of students returning from classes, of laughter, of life. It is perfect in every conceivable way. Jaskier opens his eyes to find Geralt staring at him, clearly having assumed that Jaskier has fallen asleep.
“Mm. You’re still with me.”
Jaskier chuckles tiredly, letting his eyes drift closed again.
“Do you mean it?”
Jaskier doesn’t have to open his eyes to know that Geralt is looking at him confused, his brows pulled together. He reaches forward to smooth that line between them, but he ends up poking Geralt’s eye instead. Jaskier apologizes through his laughter, Geralt chuckling in return, guiding his fingers to his lips instead. Kissing each one, delicately. The callouses from half a century of playing the lute. Scars from fires that belong to another lifetime.
“Do I mean what?”
“When you said yes. To Toussaint. To the vineyard. My retirement plan.”
Geralt pauses in his kissing, making Jaskier open his eyes again, meeting gold in the evening glow.
“Of course I mean it,” Geralt moves closer, letting go of Jaskier’s hand in favor of brushing hair out of his face, “Jaskier, I would do anything to make you happy.” A pause, because he realizes what he’s said, and he realizes what Jaskier is going to say in response to that. “I will be happy doing that, truly. Besides, Regis has been begging me to make myself a permanent fixture down there.”
“Regis doesn’t beg for anything–”
“Mm. Fine, but he will be happy to have us.” There’s another pause as Jaskier closes his eyes, waves of content washing over him like the water on the coast, carrying him off to a place that pleases him. To his future with Geralt. A place that he never thought could exist, that’s shaping up to be the best years of his life, though he would argue that any year spent by Geralt’s side was their best. Sleep starts to take him over, but Geralt isn’t done.
“Have you talked to Yen?”
Jaskier hums in acknowledgement, trying to force himself back into the waking world. He can’t blame Geralt for having questions, but he wishes he would wait until the morning to keep asking them. Still, despite Jaskier’s general selfishness, he can’t deny Geralt this. It’s rare that he can deny Geralt anything.
“Of course. She came and visited me over the winter to talk about it. I told her I want her to stay with us over the winters, especially the older I get. Ciri, too. She and I have been writing for a couple of months now.”
Geralt scoffs, letting his hand fall from Jaskier’s face, making Jaskier grin.
“Jealous?”
“I’m the last to know. Of course I’m jealous.”
Jaskier chuckles again, leaning forward enough to press a light kiss to Geralt’s nose.
“I knew this conversation would be the hardest on you. Ciri doesn’t take the idea of me dying well either, but I’m her parent. It’s a reality kids live with. Yennefer is still insistent upon making me some sort of elixir of life,” Jaskier ignores the interest on Geralt’s face, not about to have that particular conversation at the moment, “but she is taking it well. I think she’s just excited to have a vineyard. Imagine it, Geralt. You, me, Yennefer, and our daughter.”
Jaskier grins, his eyes closing again, breathing starting to even out.
“Our home together. Finally. Isn’t that what we deserve?”
Geralt is silent for a moment.
It’s not a bad silence. Jaskier can sense it.
It’s the kind of silence that means Geralt is considering. He is imagining it. Perhaps he’s thinking about that little boy that still lives inside of him, desperate for the affections of a mother that will never give it to him. He’s imagining that home, the one where he was wanting, not just for food, or coin, but for love. He’s imagining being taken away by Vesemir, being wanted for the first time before being tortured in a dozen different ways, and in the lucidity between those nightmares, dreaming of being a knight. He’s imagining that boy being told he doesn’t get this, over and over again. He’s imagining being told that witchers are not made for love, or even for happiness, that emotions are something to be shunned. That children are not in his cards, and neither is a lover, a friend, or even a companion.
He’s imagining Jaskier, eighteen years old with bread in his pants, walking up to him at a table, and he’s imagining telling that child that he gets to have this.
All of this.
“Yes. It is.”
It is.
It is, it is, it is.