With a soul-deep sigh, Geralt glances up. ”Jaskier, why are you hanging upside-down from a tree?”
The bard wriggles a bit, a movement that looks more like an attempt to shake his butt than actually getting free of the net he’s trapped in. ”Kiss me!” Jaskier calls out. When Geralt doesn’t react, he lets out a small whine and a pleading, ”Geraaaaaalt!”
”Why are you like this,” Geralt says flatly.
”Kiss!” Jaskier demands, wriggling a bit more. It looks ridiculous.
Geralt shakes his head and with an almost absent-minded flick of his wrist, slashes the rope holding the net up. Jaskier falls with a thud, then lies down in a heap for a moment, trying to catch the breath that was punched out of him by the fall.
”I still demand my kiss,” he says from the forest floor.
Geralt turns and walks away.
He isn’t sure when this started or why it keeps happening but for some reason, Jaskier firmly believes that Geralt should be willing to kiss him at any time, no matter the circumstances. It’s ridiculous. He’s ridiculous. Jaskier wakes up in the morning and demands a kiss, or he sings and prances across the inn’s common room and demands a kiss from Geralt who is just trying to eat his stew in peace, please and fuck you very much. Jaskier has even demanded kisses when Geralt has been hyped up on Swallow, white-faced and black-eyed and—okay, fine, it’s not like Geralt is an idiot. He knows Jaskier is attracted to him but frankly, the bard is often attracted to many things. Men, women, monsters (case in point, Geralt).
But he can’t quite wrap his mind around why Jaskier is so adamant about his kissing agenda.
”Geralt, I need my kisses,” Jaskier announces imperiously when Geralt is trying to wrangle out all the information he needs from the alderman. There’s clearly a lot more going on than the man lets on and he’d rather know just where he’ll be heading than go in blind.
”Not now, Jaskier,” he says, distracted, and points at the map. ”You said the last sighting was here?”
The alderman looks at Jaskier and then Geralt, then blinks, shakes his head, and says, ”Yes, yes, there—” and goes on telling a tale that is perhaps one-third true. Geralt stifles a frustrated groan.
He hopes the job leaves him in approximately one piece.
It’s getting annoying. That’s what Geralt tells himself when he starts humoring the bard.
”Geralt! Kiss!” Jaskier announces when he stumbles from his room into the dining room where Geralt is polishing out a bowl of porridge. He flops next to Geralt and leans in and Geralt kisses him without taking his eyes off of the letter he’s reading. It’s from Eskel, something something about Vesemir testing out a new potion or something. From the corner of his eye, he sees how Jaskier is frozen, eyes wide and mouth agape. It leaves him feeling smug.
So he does it again. And again. And—
Jaskier finishes his performance and declares he’s parched for drink and kisses, so Geralt yanks him closer by the collar and kisses him before shoving a tankard at him.
They stop for a night and Jaskier demands a kiss before ordering Geralt a bath.
A band of bandits tries to rob them and Jaskier wails that he hasn’t gotten his kiss for the day and he refuses to die as a man depraved. Geralt kisses him to shut him up and then deals with the bandits who seem to be confused about the whole thing.
At some point, Jaskier stops demanding his kisses loudly but the habit stays.
”So tell me, was it a love match?” the innkeeper asks as he hands Geralt his food. ”Oh, but that’s stupid of me—of course it was a love match! But when did you know?”
”What,” Geralt says.
”You and your bard,” the innkeeper says, waggling a finger between Geralt and Jaskier who’s halfway through his routine. ”How long have you been married?”
”I—what?” Geralt says again.
The innkeeper opens his mouth and then another patron gets his attention, so he merely sends an exaggerated wink at Geralt.
Later, after Jaskier is finished and has plopped down next to Geralt, after their now-routine-kiss, Geralt says, ”People think we’re married.”
”Huh?”
”He,” Geralt points at the innkeeper busily chatting with another customer, ”asked if we’re a love match.”
”Of course we are!” Jaskier exclaims. ”I love you and you love me. It’s very simple, dear Witcher.”
Geralt levels him with a flat look. Jaskier grins.
”You do realize most people don’t just kiss each other for no reason?” he asks dryly.
”Oh but it isn’t for no reason,” Jaskier points out.
”Really.”
Jaskier’s smile turns sly. ”I’m an artist. A poet. It is in my nature to demand kisses—I need them to thrive. And you, my brutish friend, simply have to be willing to kiss me at any time. Simple.”
So…Is that a dare? At any time, no matter the circumstances?
Geralt decides to test that.
The next time he returns from a job completely covered in kikimore intestines, he enters the inn’s common room and stomps right to Jaskier, holds out his hand, and waits.
”What—Geralt, you smell disgusting!” Jaskier sputters. ”You should take a bath. Preferably right now. Please and thank you.”
”I’m willing to kiss you,” Geralt deadpans, monster guts making his speech lisp a bit.
Jaskier blinks. ”Ah. But see, my dearest Geralt, that while you are willing, there’s no rule that says I have to let you—”
Geralt snatches him up by the scruff and basically uses him to wipe his face clean, ignoring Jaskier’s outraged screams about his now-ruined nice silk doublet.
”Let me go you absolute brute!” Jaskier yells, smacking at him. It does nothing but splatter the blood and gore around, some of it landing on the innkeeper passing by. Her reaction, Jaskier later says, is blown slightly out of proportion as she screams at them and chases them out, ordering them to sleep in the barn and be gone by noon the next day.
Jaskier complains for the next three days how this all was Geralt’s fault.
”You wanted kisses,” Geralt points out.
Jaskier looks appalled. ”Not like that!”
”A kiss is a kiss is a kiss,” Geralt says with a shrug.
It sort of devolves from there. They come up with increasingly ridiculous situations where to demand and offer kisses which leads to a surprisingly large number of inns banning them on sight.
Jaskier thinks it’s a bit unfair, really. How is not a heroic Witcher kissing a dashing bard not an improvement of any establishment?
”You two are idiots,” Yennefer says the next time she sees them.
”Hey now—” Jaskier starts.
”I just don’t understand why you still bother keeping it up.”
”—just wait a—what?”
Yennefer rolls her eyes. ”The whole Continent knows you’re married.”
Jaskier blinks. ”No, seriously, what?”
She opens her mouth, stops, looks from Jaskier to Geralt and back, and says slowly, ”You’ve got to be fucking kidding.”
”What,” Geralt says.
”You’re not married.” Her voice is flat.
”Um,” Jaskier glances at Geralt. ”No?”
”You’re not fucking.”
Geralt’s voice is as flat as hers. ”No.”
She pinches the base of her nose. ”Why are you not fucking?”
Jaskier eyes her warily. ”I was led to believe that wasn’t an option.”
”Bard. I am not fucking that Witcher. I’m not fucking any Witcher and I have absolutely no desire to fuck any Witcher.” She inclines her head at Geralt. ”He’s all yours.”
Jaskier’s cheeks go rosy and he opens his mouth. ”I—”
”I’m right here,” Geralt grumbles.
”I can see that,” Yennefer says with a bit of bite in her tone. ”Which is part of the problem. Because you should let all of us out of our misery and bend the Bard over—in private, thank you.” She downs wine, opens a portal right there and then, and marches into somewhere with rolling hills and a quaint little cottage by a stream.
When the portal closes, Jaskier gives Geralt a weak smile. ”So, uh—”
Geralt sighs because…well. He can’t get the thought of bending Jaskier over out of his head, and he also can’t even claim to try. ”Come on,” he says, standing up and holding out a hand. When Jaskier merely stares at him, eyes wide, he huffs. ”Yennefer is usually right.”
”She is?” Jaskier asks. His voice comes out a bit high.
”Hm.”
”Oh. Well then.” He stands up, takes Geralt’s hand, and intones, ”Take me to bed and ravish me, dear Witcher!”
(Turns out, Yennefer was right. Again. They would feel slightly annoyed by the fact if they weren’t too busy being happy and doing all the fucking everyone had assumed they were already doing.)