Chapter Text
The village had dressed itself in flowers.
They hung from doorposts in ropes of green and white, nodded from the handles of carts, and floated in wooden bowls of water set before thresholds. Someone had tied them to the horns of an old brown cow, which accepted the honor with the heavy patience of a saint. The road through the village had been swept clean, though the spring mud waited at either side like a creditor.
Jaskier approved of all of it.
He approved of the ribbons, the garlands, the barrels of beer already opened before noon, the girls with flowers braided into their hair, the boys pretending not to look at them, and the old women who missed nothing. Most of all, he approved of the long table set near the green, because it promised both supper and an audience, and Jaskier had always considered those two things proof that civilization, however battered, might yet be saved.
Geralt leaned against a fence beside Roach and watched him approve.
“You look,” Jaskier said, tuning his lute, “as though someone has invited you to be hanged.”
“Someone invited you to sing.”
“An act of taste.”
“An act of desperation.”
Jaskier plucked a string, frowned, tightened the peg, and plucked again. “They are holding a spring marriage feast. Songs are required. Joy must be organized. Young love must be encouraged into making foolish promises before witnesses.”
“Sounds cruel.”
“Only to people who brood beside horses.”
Roach nosed at a garland tied to the fence. Geralt moved it out of reach without looking. Jaskier noticed, because he always noticed when Geralt did something gentle in secret.
The feast had not yet begun in earnest. Men were raising a maypole in the green while children shrieked around them, very nearly underfoot. The village elder, a broad man with a beard like a winter broom, stood nearby giving instructions that no one seemed to obey. Beside him toddled a small girl in a wreath much too large for her head. Every few steps it slipped down over one eye. Each time she pushed it up with both hands and marched on with grave importance.
“That,” Jaskier said, “is clearly the true authority here.”
Geralt followed his gaze. “She’s a toddler.”
“All the more reason. Kids of such tender age have not yet learned politics. Their tyranny is honest.”
The little girl was trying to carry a basket of flowers. The basket bumped against her knees and shed petals behind her like evidence after a crime. She stopped at one of the wooden boards laid in a half-circle near the maypole and crouched to examine the marks painted on it.
Runes, or what passed for them after several generations of village memory and bad winters. Some were old. Some were nonsense. Some might have been old nonsense, which was often worse. Geralt narrowed his eyes.
Jaskier saw the change in him.
“Dangerous?”
“Probably not.”
“That is your least comforting answer.”
“It means no one is bleeding.”
“Yet.”
Geralt grunted.
The elder clapped his hands. “Master bard! When you’re ready.”
Jaskier straightened as if the words had pulled a string through his spine. He stepped away from the fence, and the afternoon seemed to turn toward him. It was a trick he had. A dreadful, shameless, useful trick. He could stand in mud with his boots scuffed and his sleeves rolled, and still make people believe a brighter world had entered by the side door.
He glanced back once. Not at the crowd. At Geralt.
Then he smiled.
Geralt looked away first, which was foolish, because he could still hear him.
The song began lightly, with a teasing verse about spring catching old men asleep and young girls awake. The village laughed. The elder’s wife laughed the loudest, elbowing her husband until his beard shook. Jaskier bowed into the sound and carried it with him, turning the second verse softer, warmer, threading courtly polish through village rhythm until even the boys stopped pretending boredom.
Geralt had heard him sing in courts, taverns, camps, roadsides, prisons, one rather damp ditch, and a baron’s hall where the roof had been on fire. Jaskier adjusted himself to every place without becoming less himself. Here, among garlands and churned grass and beer foam, he sang as though marriage were not a trap, not a bargain, not two families counting coins and fields, but a promise made by people ridiculous enough to hope.
The little girl had stopped dropping petals.
She stood beside the half-circle of boards, staring at Jaskier with her mouth open. The wreath slid over one eye again. She did not fix it.
The song moved into the blessing verse.
The elder lifted his hands. Couples came forward in pairs, some shy, some grinning, one already arguing under their breath. Women brought ribbons. Men brought cups. Flowers were passed from hand to hand, woven, tied, tucked into belts and hair. The elder spoke the old words after Jaskier sang them, making them heavier, more official, less beautiful.
The child repeated them too.
Not all of them, and not correctly. She mumbled, skipped, hummed where the sounds were too large, and drew her fingers through spilled pollen on one of the rune boards.
Geralt stopped leaning on the fence.
The air had changed.
Only a little. A witcher learned to distrust little changes. The smell of crushed grass sharpened. The garlands stirred, though the wind had dropped. Roach lifted her head and snorted.
Jaskier was still singing.
Of course he was. If a dragon had landed on the maypole, he would have tried to rhyme it with “devotion” before running.
The girl picked a flower from her basket. A small one, white-petaled, yellow-hearted. She looked at it, then at Jaskier, as if some perfect law had revealed itself.
The blessing ended. The crowd clapped, shouted, laughed. Someone threw a ribbon. Someone else threw a crust of bread for no clear reason.
Jaskier bowed, flourished, caught the ribbon, missed the bread, and received applause as if both had been planned.
The little girl marched straight through the newly blessed couples and stopped in front of him.
Jaskier lowered himself at once, one knee in the grass, lute held safely aside.
“Well,” he said, solemn as a duke before a queen. “Have I passed inspection?”
She thrust the flower at him.
“Pretty flower for the pretty bard.”
Something in the half-circle of rune boards gave a soft, dry crack.
No one else heard it. The village was clapping. The elder was wiping his eyes, maybe from emotion, possibly from beer. A dog barked at nothing.
Jaskier accepted the flower with both fingers, as carefully as if it were made of glass.
“For me?” he asked.
The child nodded hard enough to lose the wreath over both eyes.
Jaskier did not laugh. He reached out, lifted the wreath back into place, and bowed his head over the little flower.
“I am honored.”
The girl beamed.
Geralt watched Jaskier smile at her, not the bright stage smile, not the wicked one he used before a rude song, not the lazy curve he wore when he wanted forgiveness before committing the offense. This was quieter. Unpaid. Unguarded.
The flower in Jaskier’s hand opened wider.
It had already been open.
Geralt pushed away from the fence.
Jaskier looked up at him, still kneeling in the grass, the white flower held between his fingers.
“What?” he asked.
Geralt looked at the rune boards, at the child’s pollen-streaked hand, at the garlands moving without wind.
“Nothing,” he said.
Jaskier’s brows rose.
“Geralt.”
“Keep the flower.”
“I was going to. I have been gifted it by a lady of discernment.”
The little girl nodded, satisfied with this accurate account of events.
Geralt crouched and took Jaskier’s wrist, not roughly. His fingers closed around the pulse there. Jaskier went still, but only for a breath.
“Does it hurt?”
“The flower?”
“Your hand.”
“No.”
“Prickle? Heat? Numbness?”
“No, no, and no. Are we being haunted by a daisy?”
“Chamomile,” Geralt said.
Jaskier blinked. “You know flowers?”
“I know herbs.”
“Forgive me. Are we being haunted by an herb?”
The corner of Geralt’s mouth shifted before he could stop it. “Maybe.”
The little girl leaned closer and whispered, loudly, “Flowers listen.”
Geralt looked at her.
She smiled, pleased to have explained the world.
Jaskier tucked the chamomile behind one of the lute strings, just above the carved rosewood. “Then we must be careful what we say.”
Geralt’s hand was still around his wrist.
The crowd called for another song. The elder called for beer. The newly blessed couples called for luck, kisses, witnesses, and in one case the return of a missing shoe.
Jaskier looked down at Geralt’s fingers.
Geralt let go.
The chamomile remained where Jaskier had placed it, small and white against the dark wood of the lute. For a moment, as Jaskier rose and turned back to the waiting crowd, Geralt thought he saw another bloom in the grass between them.
Then a boot crushed it into the spring mud, and the feast went on.
***
The feast went on because feasts, like wars and taxes, had their own stubborn momentum.
By late afternoon the green had become a battlefield of happiness. Ribbons hung crooked from the maypole. A boy had fallen asleep under the table with one hand still wrapped around a heel of bread. Two mothers were arguing over whether a bride had smiled too long at the miller’s son. The old cow, stripped of half her flowers by Roach’s superior tactics, chewed in the shade with the expression of a creature who had survived public life.
Jaskier sang until his throat roughened.
He sang the proper songs first, as contracted. Blessings, welcomes, a ballad of two lovers separated by a river and united by a very convenient drought. Then, when the elder’s wife sent him a jug of watered wine and a plate of honey cakes, he moved into lighter material. The village approved. The elder pretended not to. His beard betrayed him by shaking at the worst lines.
Geralt stayed near the edge of the green.
He had accepted a bowl of stew. And refused three cups of beer, one kiss from a woman with a gap in her teeth, and two invitations to arm-wrestle. He had inspected the rune boards when no one watched too closely, and found old paint, older knife cuts, pollen, ash, grease from many hands, and a faint taste of power gone thin in the air.
Not hostile.
That did not comfort him.
A trap could be sweet. A curse could begin with laughter. A blessing could be worse if it did not know when to stop.
Jaskier saw him looking and, between verses, lifted two fingers from the lute in a little salute. The chamomile was still tucked into the strings. It had not wilted, blackened or grown teeth, which Geralt was willing to count in its favor.
He watched it anyway.
The sun lowered behind the roofs, turning thatch, smoke and hair the color of old copper. The couples blessed earlier were called forward again. This time each pair stood beneath the garlanded arch while the elder tied a ribbon around their joined hands. His granddaughter helped by presenting each ribbon with grave attention and occasionally handing over a flower instead.
No one corrected her more than once.
A young man with ears too large for his head bent down to take the flower she offered. “For luck, little mistress?”
“For kissing,” she said.
The village roared.
The young man turned red from collar to hairline. His bride snatched the flower, kissed him soundly, and earned louder applause.
Jaskier, traitor to all embarrassed men, turned the moment into a song before it could escape. Three lines later everyone was singing the refrain. Geralt did not know how he did it. Jaskier could catch a village by the throat with filth, by the ribs with laughter and by the heart with something too simple to defend against. He made it look easy when it wasn't. Nothing that moved people so purely was easy.
The girl with the slipping wreath drifted near Geralt while the others sang. She had lost her basket, or abandoned it. Children were ruthless with possessions once better entertainment appeared.
She stood beside Roach and looked up.
“Horse big.”
“Mm.”
“Horse eats flowers.”
“Sometimes.”
“Bad horse.”
Roach breathed warmly into the child’s hair.
“Very,” Geralt said.
The child giggled. Then she touched the fence rail, dragged one pollen-yellow finger over the rough wood, and drew a crooked mark that might have been a rune if one were drunk, generous, or four years old.
Geralt caught her wrist before she finished.
Gently.
She blinked at him. Her hand was small inside his. Sticky with honey, dirt under the nails, a petal mashed against the thumb. No glamour. No fever. No sign of possession. Her pulse hopped like a sparrow.
“Who taught you that?” he asked.
She considered the question as children did, with her whole face. “Grandda.”
“The mark.”
“Pretty mark.”
“Did he teach it?”
She shook her head. The wreath slipped again. “It knows.”
Geralt let go.
The half-finished mark on the rail darkened. Only a little. A line of damp green pushed from a crack in the wood, impossible and quick, and opened into three small leaves.
The child clapped both hands over her mouth.
Geralt placed his palm over the leaves before anyone else could look.
Jaskier’s song came to its last refrain. The village answered him. The sound rolled over the green, bright and foolish and full of beer.
The leaves brushed Geralt’s skin.
He looked down.
Between his fingers, a single blue flower had opened from the dead wood of the fence.
Small. Five petals. Yellow eye.
Forget-me-not.
Geralt closed his hand around it.
“Pretty,” the child whispered.
“Go to your grandfather.”
She looked at his fist, then at his face. Whatever she saw there made her go, though not quickly. Children rarely hurried when ordered. They preferred to demonstrate that obedience was a negotiation.
Geralt waited until she had returned to the elder’s side. Then he opened his hand.
The flower lay crushed in his palm.
Its color remained.
“Geralt?”
Jaskier had come up quietly, which meant the village was loud, or Geralt had been stupid.
Possibly both.
“What did you do to your hand?” Jaskier asked.
“Nothing.”
Jaskier looked at the blue smear on his palm. “That is a very floral nothing.”
Geralt closed his fist again. “Where’s the chamomile?”
“Still on the lute. Unless it has developed legs.”
“Let me see.”
“If you wished to admire my instrument, you had only to ask.”
“Jaskier.”
The bard sighed, but not with much commitment, and turned the lute. The chamomile sat tucked between the strings. Fresh. White petals open. It should have been bruised by now from the music alone.
Jaskier’s expression shifted.
Only slightly. A smaller smile. A sharper gaze.
“Well,” he said. “That is unusual.”
“Now you notice.”
“I noticed earlier. I chose, in a spirit of artistic optimism, not to panic.”
“Don’t touch any more flowers.”
Jaskier glanced at the green, where half the village was wearing them. “A difficult order at a marriage feast.”
“Try.”
“That tone of yours really does charm cooperation out of a man.”
“Good.”
“It was sarcasm.”
“I know.”
Jaskier studied him. The noise of the feast filled the space between them: clapping, shouting, a fiddle scraping toward disaster. Firelight began to show in the lanterns being lit one by one along the green.
“Is it dangerous?” he asked, quieter.
Geralt looked at the chamomile. Then at the fence rail, where the leaves had already withdrawn into dead wood as if ashamed of themselves.
“I don’t know.”
That should have made Jaskier flinch but didn't. He only nodded once and moved closer, enough that his sleeve brushed Geralt’s.
“Then we find out,” he said.
Geralt frowned at him. “You’re calm.”
“I am at a village wedding where a child has gifted me immortal chamomile and you have apparently murdered a blue flower with your fist. Calm seems more useful than screaming.”
“You scream well.”
“I do many things well.”
The line should have been bright. It came out tired.
Geralt understood. Jaskier had sung and smiled for hours. The village had fed him praise and wine and requests, and he had turned all of it into more light. Now, up close, there were shadows under his eyes and a rawness at his throat. His fingers flexed once around the lute's neck.
Geralt reached for the strap across Jaskier’s shoulder. Jaskier stilled as Geralt took the lute from him. No ceremony or words. He lifted it carefully, avoiding the chamomile, and slung it over his own shoulder.
Jaskier looked at him as though handed a riddle in a language he almost understood.
“You hate carrying my lute.”
“I hate listening to you complain when your shoulder hurts.”
“My shoulder does not hurt.”
Geralt looked at him.
“It was beginning to consider hurting,” Jaskier amended.
“Sit.”
“I am employed.”
“You’ve sung enough.”
“Tell that to the elder.”
“I will.”
Jaskier caught his sleeve before he could move. “Please don’t. You’ll frighten him.”
“He’s the size of a boar.”
“Yes, and you frighten boars.”
Geralt glanced down at the hand on his sleeve. Jaskier released him right away, but the place remained warm through the wool.
A thin line of white appeared in the grass at their feet.
Geralt saw it first. Jaskier followed his gaze.
One chamomile. Then another. Then a third.
They opened in a crooked little row between Geralt’s boots and Jaskier’s.
The bard did not move.
Around them the feast kept singing, deaf and merry, while the flowers lifted their white faces toward the darkening sky.
“Geralt,” Jaskier said.
“I see them.”
“Do they mean anything?”
Geralt crouched. He did not touch the blooms. Three, close together, rooted in grass trampled flat by half the village. Fresh as morning.
“Chamomile is for sleep,” he said. “Calming. Fever. Stomach.”
“I did not ask what it does in a pot.”
Geralt looked up.
Jaskier’s face had gone careful.
Geralt knew that face. It appeared when a noble insulted him and Jaskier decided whether to answer with wit or ruin. It appeared when coin ran low and food ran lower. It appeared when someone called Geralt butcher and Jaskier smiled before doing something unwise.
Now it was turned inward.
“In flower language,” Jaskier said, “chamomile means patience in adversity.”
Geralt looked back at the flowers.
Three small white heads. Patient. Absurd. Accusing.
Jaskier laughed once under his breath, without humor. “Well. That is a little pointed.”
The flowers did not vanish.
Geralt stood. “You need rest.”
“And you need to stop saying practical things when the world becomes symbolic.”
“Rest is practical.”
“Geralt.”
He said the name softly. Not calling. Not scolding. Only placing it there, between the flowers.
The chamomile trembled.
Geralt felt something in his chest answer, which was irritating, since he had not given it permission.
He shifted the lute strap higher on his shoulder. “Come on.”
“Where?”
“Away from the flowers.”
Jaskier’s mouth curved. “Witcher strategy?”
“Works on drowners.”
“Flowers are notoriously slower.”
“Not tonight.”
That won him a real smile, small and brief. Jaskier stepped over the little row with exaggerated care.
Geralt waited for him.
They crossed the green toward the inn while behind them the feast sang on, and in the trampled grass where Jaskier’s hand had touched Geralt’s sleeve, the chamomile kept blooming.
***
The inn had two rooms, three beds, and the confidence to call itself The Golden Hart despite possessing no sign, no gold, and no visible hart. It had, however, a roof, a fire, and an innkeeper who liked Jaskier’s songs enough to find them a place in the loft above the common room.
“Romantic,” Jaskier said, looking up the ladder.
“Dry,” Geralt said.
“Your standards wound me.”
“They’ve kept you alive.”
“My standards have kept me charming. Yours have kept me damp, suspicious, and badly lodged.”
Geralt climbed first, the lute on his back, and listened to Jaskier follow with the careful irritation of a man whose feet hurt and who had no intention of admitting it. The loft smelled of hay, old wood, wool blankets, and the faint sour breath of stored apples. A small square window stood open to the dark. Music from the green came through it in scraps, fiddle and drum and shouting, all softened by distance.
There was one bed.
Jaskier stopped at the top of the ladder.
“Ah.”
Geralt set the lute against the wall. “I’ll take the floor.”
“You always say that.”
“And then I do it.”
“That is the problem. A man can only feel noble about stealing a bed so many times before the nobility curdles.”
“You’ve managed.”
“Yes, but with effort.”
Geralt took off his sword belt and laid it within reach. The habit steadied him. Steel in its place. Silver in its place. Door, window, ladder, shadows. Jaskier, pale with tiredness now that no one was looking at him.
The chamomile still sat in the lute strings.
Geralt looked away from it.
“Sit,” he said.
Jaskier gave him a wounded look. “Have you mistaken me for a spaniel?”
“No. A spaniel would obey.”
“And shed.”
“You shed feathers, perfume, and terrible judgment.”
“I have excellent judgment. I travel with you.”
“Terrible judgment.”
Jaskier laughed, but the laugh thinned at the end. He sat on the edge of the bed and began untying his bootlaces. His fingers fumbled on the second knot.
Geralt watched a moment. Then crossed the room, crouched, and took the lace from him.
Jaskier froze.
The common room below roared at something. A song began badly, found courage, and became worse.
Geralt untied the knot.
“There,” he said.
Jaskier did not move. His boot remained in Geralt’s hand, his stockinged foot angled awkwardly inside it.
“You are being very strange tonight.”
“There are flowers growing from dead wood.”
“Yes, but you are strange in addition to that.”
Geralt pulled the boot off and set it beside the bed. “You’re tired.”
“I have been tired before. You did not undress my feet about it.”
Geralt looked up.
Jaskier’s mouth was doing its usual work, arranging amusement over uncertainty. His eyes were not keeping pace. They watched Geralt too closely.
“I can stop,” Geralt said.
The words landed harder than he had meant them to. Jaskier’s expression shifted. The smile went first, then the performance under it.
“No,” he said.
Geralt waited.
Jaskier swallowed. “No. I didn’t ask you to.”
Geralt took the other boot. This knot came free more easily. He removed it, set it beside the first, and stood before the act could become something neither of them knew where to put.
Jaskier looked down at his feet.
“Well,” he said. “Thank you.”
“Mm.”
“No, not ‘mm.’ Thank you.”
Geralt turned toward the window. “You’re welcome.”
Outside, the village sang of marriage with the drunken conviction of people who would wake tomorrow to dishes, debts, and in-laws.
Inside, something green pushed between two floorboards.
Geralt heard it before he saw it. A thin creak. A soft break in the dust.
Jaskier inhaled.
A single blue forget-me-not opened near the bedpost.
For a long moment neither of them spoke.
Then Jaskier said, too lightly, “That one is yours, I think.”
Geralt looked at him.
“Why?”
“You were the one being tender in an alarming manner.”
“It grew near you.”
“It grew after you took my boots off.”
“I was helping.”
“Indeed. Very dangerously.”
Geralt crouched by the flower. He did not touch it this time. Blue petals, yellow center, stem too delicate for the rough plank it had pierced. Impossible. Harmless, so far. Worse than harmless.
“What does it mean?” he asked.
Jaskier did not answer at once.
The delay told him more than the words would.
“Remembrance,” Jaskier said finally. “True love, sometimes. A plea not to be forgotten. It depends on the book, the country, the woman writing it down, and whether the gentleman in question has disappointed her lately.”
Geralt stared at the flower.
Jaskier cleared his throat. “It is a popular little thing. Carries a great deal for something so small.”
“Convenient.”
“That is not the word I would choose.”
“What word would you choose?”
Jaskier leaned back on his hands. The movement pulled his shirt open slightly at the throat, no more than travel and heat had already done a hundred times. Geralt saw the hollow there, the pulse, the line of strain from singing too long. He looked back at the flower.
“Cruel,” Jaskier said.
Geralt’s head lifted.
Jaskier smiled, but only with one side of his mouth. “Pretty, but cruel. If one is inclined toward drama.”
“You are.”
“Professionally.”
“And personally?”
The smile left.
That had been too direct. Geralt knew it. He was better with wounds.
Jaskier looked toward the window. Music moved over his face, distant and cheerful and no help at all.
“Personally,” he said, “I think it is a great deal of meaning to put on a flower that did not ask to be involved.”
The forget-me-not trembled.
Geralt stood slowly. “Jaskier.”
“No, no. You asked. I answered. A marvel of conversation. We should have it commemorated in stone.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Hide.”
Jaskier looked at him then.
No quick answer came. That was rare enough to make the room feel smaller.
Below, someone dropped a cup. Laughter followed. The innkeeper shouted. Life went on with offensive confidence.
“I am not hiding,” Jaskier said.
Geralt waited.
Jaskier looked down first. “I am taking cover. There is a difference.”
The flower by the bedpost bent toward him.
Geralt felt the old, familiar urge to solve the thing with movement. Pack. Saddle. Leave before dawn. Find the child. Speak to the elder. Find a wise woman, a priest, a druid, anyone with more words for this sort of magic than he had. He could do all of that. He would do all of that, if it hurt Jaskier.
But Jaskier was sitting barefoot on the bed, tired and too quiet, and the flower had grown when Geralt touched his bootlace.
Not hurt. Just truth, opening where it had no permission.
Geralt took the blanket folded at the foot of the bed and shook it out. “Sleep.”
Jaskier’s brows rose. “That is your answer?”
“For tonight.”
“And tomorrow?”
“We ask the elder about the ritual. And the child.”
“The child told us already. Flowers listen.”
“Children are bad witnesses.”
“Children are excellent witnesses. They simply lack respect for categories.”
Geralt gave him the blanket. Jaskier accepted it, fingers brushing his. The contact was brief.
A second forget-me-not opened beside the first.
Jaskier stared at it. Geralt did not move.
“Ah,” Jaskier said.
The word was small. Almost nothing.
Geralt looked at their hands. Jaskier had not pulled away. Neither had he.
A third flower opened from the floorboard, completing a small, uneven triangle between the bedpost, Jaskier’s bare foot, and Geralt’s boot.
Jaskier’s laugh came out unsteady. “Persistent, aren’t they?”
Geralt should have stepped back.
He did not.
His thumb rested against the side of Jaskier’s hand. He could feel the callus on one finger from the lute, the faint chill from the evening air, the way Jaskier held still as if any movement might break something fragile or wake something hungry.
“Does it hurt?” Geralt asked.
Jaskier’s gaze lifted to his. “No.”
“Does it frighten you?”
“Yes.”
Honest. Bare as bone.
Geralt closed his fingers, not enough to trap, only to hold. The flowers did not multiply. They remained, blue and watchful in the dim loft.
“Me too,” Geralt said.
Jaskier looked at him as if he had spoken in Elder Speech. Then, very carefully, he turned his hand palm-up beneath Geralt’s. Their fingers settled together. No thunder answered. No curse sprang shut. No god appeared to complain about improper use of village ritual. Only the three forget-me-nots by the bedpost and the sound of the feast fading into night. Jaskier breathed out.
“Well,” he said softly. “At least the floor is decorative.”
Geralt huffed. It was nearly a laugh. Near enough for Jaskier to notice. Near enough for his mouth to soften in response. Geralt took the moment and did not run from it.
“Sleep,” he said again, quieter.
Jaskier glanced at the bed, then at the floor. “You are not sleeping down there.”
“I’ve slept in worse places.”
“Yes. I have had the misfortune of seeing several of them.”
“Jaskier.”
“No. The floor is currently producing sentimental botany. I refuse to wake up with you rooted to the boards out of stubbornness.”
“I don’t root.”
“You sulk. It is similar.”
Geralt looked at the bed. Narrow, but not impossible. Nothing about the idea was new. They had shared worse in winter, in war, in inns where the fleas deserved names. But this time the air around the thought changed. Not because of the bed. Because Jaskier’s hand was still in his. Jaskier felt it too. His teasing faltered at the edge, then steadied into something gentler.
“Just sleep,” he said. “If you can survive it.”
Geralt released his hand to douse the lamp. In the dark, the blue flowers seemed to hold a little of the day’s last light. Jaskier shifted under the blanket, leaving space. Geralt lay beside him over the cover, boots off, shirt still on, sword within reach. Proper. Practical. Ridiculous. For a while they listened to the village settle. Jaskier did not speak. That worried Geralt more than the flowers. He turned his head. In the gloom, Jaskier lay on his back, eyes open, one hand on his chest as if keeping something there from rising.
“You’re thinking too loud,” Geralt said.
“I am composing.”
“No.”
“I might be.”
“You breathe differently when you compose.”
Silence answered him.
“Do I?”
“Yes.”
Jaskier turned his face toward him. “How?”
Geralt wished immediately that he had not begun this. The dark did not help. It only removed all the places a man could put his eyes.
“Shorter,” he said.
“When the verse is bad?”
“When you want it too much.”
Jaskier went very still. The forget-me-nots by the bed gave off no scent. Geralt knew that. Yet the room seemed full of them.
“You notice strange things,” Jaskier said.
“Yes.”
“About everyone?”
“No.”
The answer stayed between them. Not decorated. Not softened. Not taken back. Jaskier turned fully onto his side. The blanket rustled. Geralt could see little of him now beyond the pale shape of his face and the darker line of his hair.
“Geralt.”
“Mm.”
“Are you going to pretend tomorrow that this was the flowers?”
Geralt looked at him.
The honest answer was yes, if allowed. Yes, because pretending was sometimes easier than mending what truth had broken. Yes, because Jaskier could survive a joke better than a wound. Yes, because Geralt had spent half his life being told what he could not feel and the other half learning that feeling did not make him fit to keep anything. The flowers at the bedpost leaned toward him.
He shut his eyes. “No,” he said.
Jaskier’s breath caught.
Geralt opened his eyes again. “I might be bad at not pretending.”
“That,” Jaskier whispered, “I know.”
“Then remind me.”
A soft sound left Jaskier. Too small for laughter. Too warm for pain. “I do that already.”
“I know.”
The bed was narrow. Their hands found each other in the dark without either of them looking. Geralt let it happen. Jaskier’s fingers slid between his, and the warmth of it moved up his arm with more force than any spell on the floor.
Outside, the last song of the feast broke apart into drunken fragments. Inside, by the bedpost, the blue flowers remained open until morning.