Work Text:
Jaskier often finds himself traveling between Geralt and Yennefer.
For all that it’s lovely to wax lyrical on fate and destiny bringing people together, it really just isn’t practical for Yennefer and Geralt to be with each other all the time. They’ve chosen each other, yes, but follow very different walks of life.
Jaskier too spends his time on personal pursuits and performances, but he sooner or later finds himself traveling back to Geralt or both the witcher and the sorceress. He knows he’s playing the helplessly fluttering moth to each of their bright and beautiful flames, but isn’t the beckoning fire gorgeous?
He’s suggested carrying messages between them before. Each of them had something negative to say about it, of course.
Geralt had asked, “Are you suggesting I write her poetry, like some lovesick young noble?”
And Yennefer had said, “Seeing you will be enough of a reminder about how much he actually misses me .”
Jaskier can tell that they both think it’s a good idea, really, but he didn’t ever get a chance to put it into practice until now.
Geralt is camping outside a small town waiting for the return of some flying ghost whatsit or another, and he'll need to pull some kind of midnight vigil when it arrives. The creature isn't due for sure until the full moon, and that won’t be for weeks. But Geralt, always true to his word once he's accepted a contract, is staying.
Yennefer’s taken up temporary residence in an abandoned tower. It used to be the home of a powerful healer who was also perhaps something of a witch - according to local legend, anyway.
Whoever and whatever they were, they’ve left behind quite a lot of ritualistic materials that Yennefer wants to study. More importantly, this tower isn’t more than a day’s ride away from Geralt.
Jaskier had been traveling with the witcher, and, well, he doesn’t want to spend two weeks camping outside a town. Not when that town’s made it plenty clear they don’t value a bard’s talents, and not when Geralt’s made it clearer still that Jaskier is forbidden from stirring up anything, not when the witcher has to remain there for days to come.
So, feeling a bit bored, Jaskier mentions again that he could travel on the witcher’s behalf to Yennefer, and perhaps bring back a message in return. Geralt isn’t so receptive.
“Leave the poetry to me, Geralt.” Jaskier explains, somewhat less patiently than he had been earlier. “I’m not saying you have to empty out the purest emotions of your heart onto a page. Just, don’t you have anything you’d like to tell her? At all?”
“She knows I miss her,” says Geralt, slowly. “And any news of value would be dangerous for you to carry.”
Jaskier throws up his hands. “Why don’t I just get you twenty pieces of blank parchment and you can write out ‘Hm’ onto each one and I’ll bring that to her and it’ll be just like you’re there.”
Geralt smiles a bit, despite himself, but Jaskier isn’t to be thrown off the trail this time.
“Come on, Geralt. Pretend I’m Yennefer.” The bard would follow that up with an unflattering impression of her if the sorceress were there to see it, but if she’d actually been there, all three of them would be in the bed, or maybe on the floor. Jaskier wouldn’t be so bored, anyway.
While he’s thinking about that, Geralt snorts.
“What, you don’t think I’d cut as nice a figure as she does in the gowns she wears?” Jaskier asks, with a mockish suggestion of a moue.
“For one, no. Stick to your colorful doublets.” As Jaskier changes his stance to seriousness and prepares to argue, Geralt quickly amends, “Well, all right, maybe you would. But, I’d never confuse you for each other. I don’t miss you less when she’s here and you’re not, Jaskier.”
Jaskier swallows an unexpected lump in his throat, and hastily continues.
“Fine, don’t pretend I’m her. But, if she were here, what would you want to say to her?”
Geralt crosses to him and Jaskier has a second to wonder if he’s about to be told to shut up, and then he squeaks as Geralt scoops him into his arms for a lingering kiss.
After a moment, the witcher releases him with a smile. “Something like that,” Geralt tells him.
“Well. Uh, well then.” Jaskier says, straightening his doublet. “I guess I can tell her that.”
A day’s travel brings him to the tower, where he ponders the meaning of “abandoned.” There are some odd scorch marks along the mossy stone entrance. Did something drive out the previous inhabitant? Or, perhaps, are they the marks of a ritual gone sour? The atmosphere of the place isn’t off-putting in the haunted way some of the crypts he’s been in with Geralt have felt, but Jaskier does wonder: if he sings in this expectant silence, will an unseen listener join in for the chorus?
He doesn’t have time to try, because Yennefer comes to meet him. She leads him to the tower’s top bedroom where she’s taken up residence.
After peering around at the books piled high and the frankly alarming collection of small statues that ring the place, Jaskier asks, “So, how goes….whatever?”
“You can’t possibly comprehend what I’m doing.” Yennefer says, but it’s not unkind so much as it is a statement of fact.
“I can listen?” offers Jaskier, and, to his surprise, Yennefer nods, and begins to speak to him of what she’s finding, the knowledge that remains here, of portals and prophecy.
She’s right: he understands absolutely nothing. However, Yennefer is clearly getting something out of putting her efforts into words, and actually comes to a couple of new realizations as she talks through her work. She finishes with a description of something she still needs to find, a goal that will keep her in the tower for a while yet.
“Well, I don’t have that,” Jaskier says, and Yennefer raises an eyebrow as Jaskier steps forward and puts a hand on her shoulder. “But I did bring you something. Er, that is, if you want?”
“If I want,” repeats Yennefer, flatly.
Jaskier would kick himself, if he hadn’t been inches away from Yennefer and in great danger of kicking her also if he tries. The offer does sound stupid now that it’s in the air. Yennefer could take whatever she wants from him, and if she wants nothing, could destroy him easily and utterly. Powerful sorcerers can do as they like, their abilities give them the freedom to suffer whatever terrible prices they’d like to pay in exchange for their marvelous deeds.
She doesn’t look upset, though. Merely thoughtful. He wonders how many people in Yennefer’s life have asked her what she wants.
“No offense meant, my gentle lady,” Jaskier says quickly and automatically, as if this is a court function, and grins to see a flash of amusement in Yennefer’s eyes. “Ah, but really, I just meant that you and I usually aren’t alone? Well, not ‘alone,’ I just mean, we usually have Geralt here also.”
Yennefer takes his face in her hands and kisses him. He has a moment to hope that the ghosts, if there are ghosts in the tower, are appreciative of the show before his eyes flutter closed.
“Geralt sent that,” Jaskier tells her, after. “But you can have one from me too, if you’d like? And, shall I send anything back? I was going to offer to carry a letter, but if you’d like to respond in kind, you won’t hear any complaints from me.”
“Sending back the same message seems a bit trite,” Yennefer muses, and looks him over with a gleam he recognizes and welcomes. “And I don’t know that I trust your delivery. Still, I don’t mind sending him back something to look at…”
He laughs as he steps backwards from her advances until she has him backed and pinned against the wall, and raises his arms so that she can hold them above his head.
Jaskier gasps as she kisses and bites down the side of his neck, and squirms a bit in her grip as she lightly runs a finger down the marks she’s made.
When he returns to Geralt, the witcher eagerly hears the details of Yennefer’s cozy book-lined nest, and laughs to see the bites she’s left on Jaskier’s neck.
Geralt’s set up a snug campsite as well, taking up temporary residence in a small cave. Jaskier leans against the rock, warmed by the fire and the bedroll on his lap and Geralt’s arm around his shoulder.
“I still have parchment, if you’d like to try actually writing something for me to bring her?” Jaskier offers, jokingly.
Geralt pulls him closer, and murmurs low in his ear. “I rather like this way of sending messages.”
A few days later, Jaskier returns to Yennefer in her tower. She rolls her eyes to see that Geralt’s left a matching string of love bites down the other side of Jaskier’s neck.
“For all the lore he’s mastered and learned,” Yennefer sighs, “That man has no imagination sometimes.”
“That’s why you have me, you know.” Jaskier answers, and arches in her arms as she coats the back of his neck and collarbone in bites, kissing each mark after it forms.
Jaskier uselessly tugs up at the neck of his doublet afterwards, covering nothing. “Bards have reputations, but this is a bit ridiculous. I look like I’ve been fighting bruxae.”
Yennefer gives him a scarf, one of hers, to cover his neck and the traces she’s left. It’s vibrant purple, warm, and a lovely reminder.
He hopes she doesn’t want it back.
When Jaskier returns to the witcher’s cave, Geralt starts and looks surprised to see only Jaskier. Jaskier hadn’t thought that the scarf might still smell of Yennefer, and promptly unwinds it and offers it to Geralt. The witcher takes it, twining the soft material through his hands, pressing it to his face and sighing.
“You’ll see her soon, I’m sure,” Jaskier reassures. “In the meantime, you’re going to have to think of something else to, ah, ‘say.’”
Geralt examines Jaskier’s neck, considering. “She certainly didn’t leave me much room. She does know I won’t be able to go to her for at least another week and a half?”
“She knows -and she said you have no imagination. I’ll probably head back to her in a couple of days, unless it becomes more fun over here. You’ve got at least until then to think of something. If not, I’ve a suggestion or two.”
The acoustics of the cave are charming for improvising new melodies during the time Jaskier stays with Geralt, before he’s ready to return to the tower.
He’s enjoying this, being sent between Geralt and Yennefer like their own personal love letter, their marks of endearment left on his skin for the other to read.
Geralt beckons him over, scarf in hand. Jaskier holds out a palm expectantly, waiting for his scarf to be returned for the journey. Instead, Geralt loops the soft fabric around his wrists, pausing before drawing the scarf any tighter.
“Go on, then.” urges Jaskier. “Just as long as this isn’t some sort of comment about my lute-playing ability, and you’re trying to keep me from strumming.”
Geralt takes several minutes to gently secure Jaskier’s wrists in the scarf, running his hands along Jaskier’s arms underneath the fabric to make sure nothing is too tight, asking him to move his fingers, and finishing with a gentle squeeze to the bard’s hands. Jaskier feels his face growing unexpectedly warm at the care.
“I hope you know I’m not going to travel wearing the scarf like this,” Jaskier says, hoping to distract Geralt from his blushing. “She’d probably appreciate that you’ve made a present of me, but it’d be damned inconvenient to carry my things, and, I don’t know, fight off bandits.”
Jaskier shivers pleasurably as Geralt gently circles the bites on his neck with gentle fingertips, and then presses a warm kiss on top of one of the marks Yennefer had left, an indirect touch to his sorceress through the bard.
Geralt helps him lay back on the bedroll he’s laid out in the cave, opens Jaskier’s doublet and rucks up his chemise.
Jaskier writhes as Geralt slowly chains a line of bites down his stomach. The scarf prevents Jaskier from reaching down to grab fistfuls of white hair or cover his skin from Geralt’s ticklishly warm breath, and Geralt's firm hands on Jaskier's thighs keep him from squirming out of place as he nips a trail down to the top of Jaskier's trousers.
“What was your suggestion?” Geralt asks, when he’s done.
“Can’t remember,” says Jaskier, and gasps as Geralt licks a hot streak up through the bruises he’s just made.
Jaskier is actually accosted by bandits on his way back to Yennefer. He tells her about it as they sit in her bed, sipping wine and laughing at odd hours of the night like he did back in his Oxenfurt days. Jaskier’s had to teach Yennefer and Geralt how to have fun in small ways like this, and so it’s a moment he appreciates, despite being nearly mugged.
The bandits had stopped him on the road, and gotten no further than that. The group of robbers was lucky enough to be traveling with a hedge-mage, someone gifted with just a touch of Sight and magic. That one had paled at seeing Jaskier’s scarf, purple and shining in the nearly full moon. The mage whispered a quick word to the bandit’s leader, and they’d left.
“Anticlimactic, that’s what I call it.” Jaskier tells Yennefer. “I’ll have no story to sing of how I crooned my way out of burglary by charming a band of brigands. Still, it’s nice to have a bit of extra safety on the road, when you two aren’t there.”
She raises her eyebrow when the removal of the scarf reveals no new marks, but smiles in approval when Jaskier shows the bruises striping his stomach.
“Geralt does have a talented mouth,” she says in appreciative remembrance. “He hasn’t left me much canvas space, though.”
Jaskier laughs, and pours them both more wine. “He may have a talented mouth, but I doubt he could have sung his way out of a robbery.”
“It’s not as if you did either, though.” Yennefer says, gracefully accepting the cup he passes her. “You didn’t need to.”
“I could have,” Jaskier insists.
Later, in the soft lavender hours of the dawn, he kisses his way up her thighs and hums his own music between her legs, spelling out his own heartfelt lyrics with his tongue against her clit as Yennefer moans and rakes his back with her nails. He groans as she comes while tugging his hair to pull him close against her.
Jaskier rests his face on her stomach while she regains her breathing.
“Second verse?” he asks her, smugly.
After a second verse, and an encore, Yennefer holds the bard against her, both thoroughly mellowed out. Jaskier feels like he’s pleasantly drifting as Yennefer gently pets over the scratches she’s left on his shoulders.
“Show him those,” she murmurs. “And tell him I’ll see him soon.”
“Do you know,” he answers sleepily. “Geralt almost didn’t want to do this?”
“You can tell him he’s stupid, also.” says Yennefer, but he knows he hears love in her voice. A bard’s trained to notice that sort of thing, after all.
"And tell him one thing more." Yennefer says, and whispers a last message into his ear.
Jaskier returns to the witcher to find a puzzled-but-paid Geralt in the town’s inn. The ghost didn’t show up, but apparently all signs indicate that the spirit has moved on. Jaskier shrugs, and then winces slightly, which leads to Geralt investigating his marked shoulders.
“She’s a harpy.” sniffs Jaskier, but waves away Geralt’s somewhat serious offer of ointment, before reconsidering the merits of a massage and allowing the witcher to rub a minty smelling oil into his back.
He feels like a puddle of a musician under Geralt’s hands, relaxed as the witcher flips him over. Geralt kisses his own marks that he’d left on Jaskier’s stomach, before undoing the front of the bard’s trousers. Jaskier groans roughly as Geralt slowly takes the bard's cock into his mouth.
He tries, since his hands are unfettered this time, to thread his fingers through Geralt’s fantastic hair, but the witcher confines his wrists with a hand and leans on his hips, keeping him in place.
“You’re stupid,” grunts out Jaskier, and when Geralt looks at him questioningly, “You're stupid. Yennefer said to tell you, because you didn’t want to write a letter at first.”
Jaskier whines as Geralt laughs around his prick, and desperately tries to lift his hips when Geralt brings his free hand to his face, rubbing the head of Jaskier’s cock through his cheek.
“Geralt, please.” he begs, but the witcher lifts his head up, releasing him temporarily.
“Did she say to say it twice?” Geralt asks.
“No, the first one was from me.” Jaskier tells him, and Geralt snorts.
“Well, we’ll both go see her together, so I don’t need you to carry back any messages.” Geralt says, and drags his stubble against the sensitive inside of Jaskier’s thigh, smiling when the bard whimpers. “But if I did, I would ask you to tell her that the two of us are going to make an absolute mess of you when we’re finally together.”
“Promises, promises. But, that’s funny,” Jaskier grins down at him. “That’s what she asked me to tell you.”