Thankfully, the fact that Geralt is being touchy and grabbing onto his bard like a child with a favored toy goes largely unnoticed-- Lambert is too busy being drowned, Eskel with drowning the youngest Wolf, and Coën with ignoring all of it that no one pays much heed to what Geralt is doing. He is free to manhandle his bard to his heart's content, at least so long as Jaskier is quiet about it and doesn't do anything that would attract attention--
I love you, he says, and he might as well have shouted it to the rafters.
Eskel pauses in his attempts at water-based homicide while Lambert curses and sputters in his grip, the same expression on his face that he'd had back in the cabin-- like this is some joke that he doesn't get. Still doesn't get, apparently, even after having heard it twice. Even Coën looks over at them, confusion writ across his brow. Love is a word that never gets brought up in relation to witchers, even from the mouths of handsy bards who warm their beds. Witcher schools are different in many ways, but save for the Cats, they are similar in how they mutate the emotions out of their boys; none of them know what love is supposed to be like, nor are they supposed to ever expect it.
Geralt tightens his arm around Jaskier's waist, his face still hidden against the bard's neck, surrounded by his sweet and happy scent. That uncomfortable, tight feeling in his chest is back, the one that rears its ugly head whenever Jaskier says such things. The brave and noble White Wolf, undone by a single bard and a four-letter word. So much for all of those ballads about how strong and brave he is.
Jaskier's an endless font of conversation, though, so he quickly moves on from the I love you incident to embellishing history. Which oughtn't be a surprise, he's been hardly doing anything but wildly exaggerating everything since he started following Geralt across the Continent. This is what finally makes Geralt move his face from the bard's neck, looking at him with a furrowed brow and pursed lips.
"You," he says, "said that I smelled like death and destiny, heartbreak and heroics. It was onion."
Perhaps it's somewhat incriminating that he remembers exactly what Jaskier said to him on the day of their meeting, but... well, he remembers quite a lot of what the bard has said to him over the years. He often acted as though he wasn't paying attention to his endless chatter, but it was just that, an act-- one that he had justified for many years as being solely because Jaskier sometimes said useful things rather than for the entertainment value of his stories. Even now he might be hard pressed to give him that compliment, but that was mostly for the sake of his overinflated ego than anything else.
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I love you, he says, and he might as well have shouted it to the rafters.
Eskel pauses in his attempts at water-based homicide while Lambert curses and sputters in his grip, the same expression on his face that he'd had back in the cabin-- like this is some joke that he doesn't get. Still doesn't get, apparently, even after having heard it twice. Even Coën looks over at them, confusion writ across his brow. Love is a word that never gets brought up in relation to witchers, even from the mouths of handsy bards who warm their beds. Witcher schools are different in many ways, but save for the Cats, they are similar in how they mutate the emotions out of their boys; none of them know what love is supposed to be like, nor are they supposed to ever expect it.
Geralt tightens his arm around Jaskier's waist, his face still hidden against the bard's neck, surrounded by his sweet and happy scent. That uncomfortable, tight feeling in his chest is back, the one that rears its ugly head whenever Jaskier says such things. The brave and noble White Wolf, undone by a single bard and a four-letter word. So much for all of those ballads about how strong and brave he is.
Jaskier's an endless font of conversation, though, so he quickly moves on from the I love you incident to embellishing history. Which oughtn't be a surprise, he's been hardly doing anything but wildly exaggerating everything since he started following Geralt across the Continent. This is what finally makes Geralt move his face from the bard's neck, looking at him with a furrowed brow and pursed lips.
"You," he says, "said that I smelled like death and destiny, heartbreak and heroics. It was onion."
Perhaps it's somewhat incriminating that he remembers exactly what Jaskier said to him on the day of their meeting, but... well, he remembers quite a lot of what the bard has said to him over the years. He often acted as though he wasn't paying attention to his endless chatter, but it was just that, an act-- one that he had justified for many years as being solely because Jaskier sometimes said useful things rather than for the entertainment value of his stories. Even now he might be hard pressed to give him that compliment, but that was mostly for the sake of his overinflated ego than anything else.