Archive of Our Own ^beta

Jaskier watched him, the fucking moron was horsing around with his brothers. A part of him wanted to laugh at them. A smaller part of him felt a little like crying.

They were working in the orchard; a small apple orchard near Kear Morhen that sometimes employed the Witcher’s to help pick apples when they were boys, and now that they were men it was family tradition to hire Witchers to pick the fruit at the end of the season. There was a particularly tall tree, one that Eskel claimed to have planted some 80-odd years ago. The only problem was that 80-odd-year-old trees are big, so the Wolf Witchers’ put together their heads and made a plan. One which involved Eskel standing, legs spread wide and back straining visibly to balance, Geralt sitting on his shoulders, his back also visibly tensing to balance as his legs clenched around Eskel’s neck in a vice-like manner, and Lambert tottering on Geralt’s shoulders - standing. They swayed unsteadily like a tower made of straw.

xXx

“We should each stand on each others shoulders-”

“That wouldn’t work, you blockhead! It’d be too unstable!” Lambert snapped.

“The person in the middle could be sitting and the other two standing-”

“I mean that would make it slightly more stable-”

“We’ll never reach it!”

….

“Fuck it- let’s try.”

xXx

That was the half-assed reasoning that got them here. Lambert had been right. With Geralt sitting they never even got close to reaching the lowest bows of the tree. They had to take a different approach.

Now Eskel was braced against the tree, arms trembling to keep balanced, and feet digging into the earth to push his back against the trunk. Geralt, on the other hand, was leaning his front towards the tree, his shoulder braced against the wide trunk and his hands gripping Lambert’s calves in a stranglehold. Lastly, swaying precariously at the top of this tower of Witchers- Lambert was trying to grasp the closest branch to steady their sway. This would have been fine except for the fact that his body couldn’t seem to acclimate to the shifting balance and he wouldn’t stand up straight. Geralt growled something and Jaskier giggled. He was always growling, couldn’t verbalize things in a normal way - noooo he had to huff and puff and growl like he really was a wolf.

The ache in Jaskier’s chest intensified, it was worse on days like this - when Geralt let his gaurd down and did stupid things, or made a wry joke, or made a snide comment on something - when Jaskier felt the most like laughing. He could feel the ghost of his desire trying to crawl it’s way up his throat, grasping and clawing at his esophagus, and strangling him until he felt like the only noises he could make were garbled and wrenching. His hands would twitch and quiver at his sides as they yearned to reach out and touch, touch what was not his, touch what would never be his. His hands itched to caress the spot on Geralt’s forehead where pale skin met paler hair, and the spot beneath his lip where it dimpled ever so slightly, or the hollow space beneath his ivory jawbone. Jaskier yearned.

Geralt yelped, and the ache in Jaskier twisted, like a cruel, invisible hand gripping his innards. His eyes snapped into focus, Lambert had stood up, but the burst in which he’d done it had been the last straw, the tower’s delicate (shoddy) infrastructure began to crumble. Eskel tipped to the side, Geralt pitched to the other side, and Lambert panicked and jumped to catch himself on the branch, inadvertently kicking Geralt from him.

Geralt hit the ground in a roll, landing some 10 feet from the tree with his hair full of grass, a twig, and three separate leaves. Looking around dazedly, he saw Eskel sitting by the tree, knees splayed, and hands behind him as he gazed up. Geralt looked up.

Lambert was dangling from the tree, his feet desperately flailing for a foothold where there was none, his arms folded over the branch so he was gripping it between his underarms and torso. The redhead’s hands were scrabbling at the bark of the tree.

“Let go, ya dolt!” Eskel yelled at him from where he now lounged.

“No!” Lambert yelled back spitefully.

“Lambert! Let go! You’re gonna crack your skull open!” Geralt yelled.

“Go fuck yourself! Both of you!”

Geralt sighed and shook his head, causing the twig to fall and poke at his eye. He hissed as he brought a hand up to remove the offending bit of nature, before he rubbed his eyes and looked to Jaskier.

Jaskier was sat in a much shorter tree a few yards away, nestled in the cradle of the branches at the very center of the tree, with legs crossed, and journal out, he watched the idiocy happening before him- for once not contributing. His breath caught in his chest. Geralt’s eyes were so gold. How was he supposed to be normal, act normal when the eyes that looked at him were seas of molten gold, beautiful, and like if he were to gaze into them too long he would fall in and be lost forever. Geralt smiled at him, a fondly exasperated look on his face as Lambert flailed and cursed from the tree limb, clinging furiously. The white haired Witcher rolled his eyes and shook his head - Jaskier smiled and shook his head too.

“You’re all idiots,” the bard said endearingly.

“Go fuck yourself! You pansy-” Lamberts curses were lost in grumbles and other muffled curses as his grip on the branch started to waiver. Geralt shook his head again, this time with a fond smile gracing his lips. Jaskier’s heart fluttered.

The bard wondered if the Witcher’s lips were as soft as they looked, or if the wisps of hair framing as face would tickle when he kissed him, or if- he interrupted the train of thought, and looked away.

The bard looked down and moved his quill like he was writing something, his heart ached so badly he nearly gripped his chest to quell the pain. Except that would be noticeable, especially to someone so observant as his Witcher. He would ask in gruff alarm ‘Jaskier…what’s wrong?’ and Jaskier would have to pause, lest he say something so painful as ‘nothing, I’m just in love with you, and it’s physically painful how much I love you, and I didn’t know it was possible for love to hurt this much- but here we are’ and would instead have to take a deep breath and say something like, ‘I’m alright, quite alright - just human things! Ugh, the things they don’t tell you about getting old,’ then he would have to laugh it off and sit there pretending not to feel the immense and tangible weight of Geralt’s gaze on him for the whole of the evening. The thought of it alone was unbearable.

Eventually, it was Lambert’s pride that was his downfall, literally. He had swung his leg up onto the branch and had whooped and hollered in celebration before swinging to try and get his other leg onto the branch as well so that he was laying flat on the branch. What happened however was that he overestimated the amount of force it would take to get him entirely onto the branch, and ended up swinging himself off the other side of the branch. He had tried to grip the tree branch once more as he fell but the bark came off and he plummeted to the grassy ground below. Geralt and Eskel watched the whole affair with blank, bordering on deadpan faces. These are the faces that met Lambert when he sat up and looked around.

“Oh fuck you,” he growled out, stomping and staggering to his feet. “Fuck both of you! And you! Fuck you too, bard!” The Witcher jabbed a finger at each one of them in turn before he stomped off. Once he was a distance away, both Eskel and Geralt burst out in roarouse laughter. Jaskier watched the redhead continue to stomp for a minute before the bard turned to Geralt and Eskel and laughed as well.

When he’d finally caught his breath and wiped the tears from his eyes, he found Geralt looking at him with a strange look on his face. The bard gave the witcher a questioning glance and aloud Geralt said, “nothing,” and his face hardened, Jaskier hadn’t realized until then that the look on his face had been soft. His heart fluttered. Eskel - who had still been laughing softly until that point - gave Geralt a strange look. The brown-haired witcher turned to Jaskier, and shook his head with an eye roll, Jaskier shook his head too, smiling.

The White Wolf stood up with a groan before stretching his back and grunting, “I think I’m done with work for the day,” he turned to Eskel, then Jaskier, “dinner?”

Jaskier nodded, then looked off in the direction Lambert had stomped off to. “He’ll be fine,” Eskel cut him off before he could ask, “he’s like a cat, no matter what, he’ll always come back for the food.” Both men huffed a laugh at that.

Geralt made his way to Jaskier’s tree, held up a hand, and said, “here, I’ll help you down, Dandelion.” Jaskier closed his journal and tucked it under an arm before leveraging himself out of the cradle of branches. He gripped Geralt’s outstretched hand and hopped down. Geralt steadied him with a hand on his hip when he landed, Jaskier felt heat rise to his cheeks, “thank you,” he chirped as he dusted the bark and bits of leaves off of his clothes. He could feel Geralt’s eyes on him like a brand.

The White haired witcher cupped the back of Jaskier’s neck and guided him to the direction of the cabin before setting off, his hand falling slowly back to his own side, Jaskier watched as he went for a moment before jogging to catch up with him and Eskel - who had apparently set off a moment before Geralt. The cottage was a couple of furlongs from where they had been, so by the end of their walk Jaskier was beginning to grow tired - moreso than he had been before. They found Lambert trudging towards the cottage as well, albeit from a different direction. The younger witcher snarled wordlessly at them, before trudging into the abode. The trio chuckled at him.

Eskel went inside without any preamble; Geralt turned to Jaskier. The mutant looked like he had something on the tip of his tongue, that strange look was back on his face, his eyes looked unbearably soft and Jaskier wanted to brush his fingers against the soft skin beneath them. To catch the drops of gold that would surely fall if his eyes softened any further. Jaskier wanted desperately to cup the witchers face in his hands, run his thumbs along his cheekbones, press his forehead to his, and breathe the same air as his Witcher, if just for a moment: he wanted to be close. He yearned.

Despite what Jaskier thought would happen, the gold of Geralt’s eyes did not flow down his cheeks in tears, but instead caramelized and swam with something unspoken as he watched Jaskier.

Then the moment was over, and the white wolf was opening the door to the cottage, stepping aside, and waving Jaskier in. Once the two of them were inside, the door swung shut with a clack. The fabric of Geralt’s tunic brushed the fabric of Jaskier’s jerkin, and the bard could feel the heat coming off of his Witcher, warming him.

They shared that space together for a moment, neither saying a word, being close for closeness’ sake, and Jaskier smiled softly. If this was all he would ever get of Geralt, these quiet moments where all he had was the ghost of a touch, or the weight of a gaze on him, he would be happy.