Chapter Text
“I used to be quite jealous of you, you know.”
Jaskier hadn’t heard the sorceress approach. His hands still on the strings of his lute, but he doesn’t turn to greet her, keeping his bare feet dangling in the cool water before him. It’s a clear spring night, and though the threat of cold lingers in the breeze, Jaskier needs the escape the water provides.
It’s been two days since Geralt and Yennefer entered the tiny seaside tavern with a wide-eyed, ashen-haired slip of a girl between them, looking every bit a family. The sight stole the words from Jaskier’s mouth mid-verse, his hands frozen on the strings of his lute for a moment. He cleared his throat, stuttered out a flustered apology to the few gathered patrons, and tried to escape. It hadn’t worked. Geralt’s words were casual enough as he greeted him, but he stared at him with a look that had Jaskier not known better might be mistaken for relief (he did know better, though. If life could give me one blessing it would be to take you off my hands). He’d wanted to leave, but it took just one imploring look from those golden eyes Jaskier hadn’t seen in over a year and suddenly he found himself making stilted conversation over bowls of stew with the adorable little princess of Cintra and Yennefer of fucking Vengerberg.
Now Yennefer sits beside him on the dock gingerly, pulling the thin white nightdress about her knees to avoid soaking it as she slips off the flat shoes and mirrors the bard’s position, little ripples splashing against his calves at the gentle disturbance. When Jaskier chances a glance at her, the moonlight shines blue in her dark hair, pulled into a messy knot at the back of her neck. Her normal dramatic makeup is gone, and it strikes him how very young she looks. Stupid, he tells himself quickly. It doesn’t matter how many centuries older than you she probably is, she’ll never show it, while you keep wrinkling and shrivelling away.
He doesn’t know if she expects a response, but he has none to give. He gently sets his lute down beside him on the dock and stares out at the vast emptiness of the sea before them.
“When he brought you to me in Rinde,” she continues, her harsh voice softer than usual, settling into a husky murmur, “he was a desperate man. He would have done absolutely anything, given absolutely anything, to ensure your welfare. I looked at this huge brooding eyeful of a man carrying you around like a ragdoll, but a ragdoll he was convinced hung the moon, and I thought, gods, this fucking bard can inspire this level of devotion, but I can’t? Where do I find my own Geralt of Rivia?”
It’s meant as a joke, Jaskier knows, but it stings. He swallows. “Well, you found one.” That’s meant as a joke, too, yet he chokes on the words. They’re not supposed to talk about this. It’s hard enough just being with them, seeing the casual touches, the tender glances, the familiarity, the intimacy. Which explains how he ended up out here with a now-empty flask in the first place, attempting to write a song about anything other than a certain witcher and failing miserably.
She’s quiet for a moment. “I was jealous of you,” she repeats, weighing each word carefully. “He cared about you with this intensity that I longed for.” She tucks a stray strand of hair neatly behind an ear. “When we came together, I resented you. He and I would meet and catch each other aflame. But then it was cold. We…” She laughs, an abrupt bark of a thing. “Both of us are shite when it comes to being honest and vulnerable and open. I never quite knew how Geralt really felt about me, but I always knew how he felt about you. And I hated it.” The sound of the waves, so gentle and soothing moments before, seems deafening in Yennefer’s silence. She draws a breath. “I never knew when or even if the two of you stopped fucking, so I resented you for that, too. I’ve always been horrible at sharing.”
Jaskier’s breath catches in his throat. He wonders, briefly, if she read his thoughts, now or sometime in the distant past. Perhaps he’s just been obvious; perhaps everyone who’s spent any time in the same room as Jaskier and Geralt knows. Perhaps—and a searing rush of nausea runs through him—perhaps Geralt told her.
No. Geralt wouldn’t have told her.
Geralt never told him to keep it a secret, what was between them. There was never a conversation warning him never to talk about it, not to anyone else, not even to each other, but he knew. Geralt didn’t forbid it, but he didn’t touch him around other people, flinched away at the most casual, innocent touch from Jaskier. He barely spoke to him in public, balked if Jaskier referred to them as friends. If they were in an inn (and for some reason Geralt didn’t happen to fuck off into the night without a word, as he was wont to do), he would clamp a strong, angular hand over Jaskier’s mouth when he became loud enough that someone might hear as he pounded the bard into oblivion.
Geralt was never too loud.
Yennefer is looking at him, her features surprisingly soft. Jaskier shakes his head, as though the simple action might clear away unwanted memories. No, he decides, she must have just pieced it together. She’s smart, and she knows Geralt better than most anyone else. It makes sense. The damn witch figured it out with her witch intuition, and instead of leaving it alone, she’s decided to break the cardinal rule. She shouldn’t talk about this.
He takes a deep breath, his eyes fluttering shut for a moment as he gathers his thoughts. “Whatever happened between Geralt and me,” he begins, his voice low, “didn’t mean anything. We traveled together for years, sometimes with no other company for weeks at a time. If we...if...it was scratching an itch. Nothing more.”
For the first time since that damned mountain, since the dragon hunt and everything collapsing, he sees her violet eyes flash, a spark of that stormy intensity that had given him warning all the way back in Rinde. “Bullshit.” Her hard voice is a challenge. “I’m being honest with you, bard. I’d appreciate if you did the same. I don’t want to hear whatever lies you told each other or yourselves.”
“Fine,” he snaps, his voice a quiet fury, a dam breaking as red-hot feeling pours out without his permission and he’s helpless to stop it. “Fine. I threw myself at him for two fucking decades, making an utter ass of myself traipsing about after him all across the continent quite literally singing his praises until he pity-fucked me. Is that what you want to hear? He fucked me in the woods because I was the only option and in the towns occasionally because I was cheaper than the alternative, but he never wanted me. So I don’t know why you’re jealous and honestly, Yennefer, I don’t care, you have no reason to be. As soon as he met you I was just a nuisance to unload as soon as possible.”
He wipes his eyes roughly, angry at the tears escaping, angry at his outburst, angry at Yennefer and how beautiful she looks in the moonlight, angry at Geralt for not loving him back. Angry at himself for expecting him to.
A small, tentative arm curls around his shoulder, up to his neck, pulling him down. To his own surprise, he lets it happen, lets himself succumb to the sorceress’s uncharacteristically gentle embrace, his face buried in the crook of her neck and shoulder, smelling that same evocative scent he’d smelled on Geralt so many times, and he cries.
Yennefer’s fingers card through the messy waves of his hair as she rocks ever so slightly.
“Before…” he gulps, trying to get the words out, his voice muffled against her skin, “before you, I could write it off as...as a witcher thing. Witchers don’t feel emotions, that’s what they’ve told us since we were children. We know it isn’t true but it helped to believe it, some days.” He stills in her arms. “But then I watched him fall in love with you. And that’s how I knew.”
Yennefer nods, her warm hand still a curiously comforting presence against his neck. She stares out at the water. “He had nightmares, when you were gone. When he was sick, or injured, or even just particularly tired, anytime he slept deeply enough to dream. He called out for you.” She sighs, a soft, wistful thing. “It isn’t much, maybe. But you know Geralt better than anyone. You know he can’t talk about it. But he missed you.
“And now...well, now at least he’s finally getting some rest. He looks at you every time you look away from him, looks at you like he can’t believe you’re really there, like if he looks away you might disappear.” She turns to meet his wide-eyed gaze, smiling sadly. “He’s in love with you, too, Jaskier. He may be absolutely terrible at showing it, but I see it. Just like you saw him fall in love with me.”
Few things leave Jaskier speechless and yet he finds himself mute. Instead, he hesitantly puts his arm around her, and she tucks her head snugly against his shoulder.
“It’s hard,” she murmurs after a moment. “Being in love with two people at once. I pity Geralt in that regard. I once—” she cuts off abruptly. “Geralt probably told you all about it.”
Jaskier snorts. “I thought we’d established that Geralt doesn’t actually talk to the people he loves.” That word feels strange, heavy in his mouth and yet unbearably light, as though voicing it may allow it to fly away.
There’s a pause, and then Yennefer is giggling against his shoulder. “You’re right, you’re right,” she agrees breathlessly. “What an idiotic assumption.” The laughter fades into the darkness of the night sky. “I once loved two men, Geralt and...and another. It was an impossible choice. They fought and blustered and in the end I left them both.” She shivers as a cool wind blows off the sea, and Jaskier pulls her in a little closer as she removes her pale legs from the water, shaking them dry and tucking them neatly under her body. “It was an impossible choice,” she echoes.
Jaskier nods. His lute, sitting forgotten on his other side, catches his eye. “In the songs, you and I would be bitter enemies.” He strokes his free hand gently over the open strings. “We’d hate each other desperately and wage cruel war over the man we love.” He can almost hear the ballad now in the night breeze. “But funnily enough, it turns out that I don’t hate you. I don’t want to fight.”
“I don’t hate you, either.” It’s quiet, and then she snorts lightly. “And you only don’t want to fight because you’re terrified of me, bard.”
Completely inexplicably, he finds himself grinning like a fool. “Granted, you are an absolutely terrifying person,” he allows. “But still, I'm fairly certain I should be commended on this, too. Look at us, refusing the path of violence. Who’d have thought? How wise we must be.”
Yen smiles. “We’re quite evolved.”
“So…what do two evolved, wise, gregarious individuals such as ourselves do in these situations?” He tries to keep the tone light, but he feels the weight of the question in his body. How can they possibly proceed without hurting at least one of them, if not all three?
“I hate to say it, but I think we’re going to have to talk to Geralt.”
Jaskier groans. “I guess it’s unavoidable,” he agrees grudgingly.
“Sorry it’s such a chore,” grunts a gravelly voice from behind them.