Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I’m home.”

Geralt throws his keys onto the low chest next to the door and takes his shoes off.

“Yen? Jask?”

He sorts through the mail in his hands. Bill, ad, ad, bill. Postcard from An Skellig. He turns it around and skims the contents. Sounds like Lambert and Ciri are having a good time, as well as a lot of work. With a small smile, Geralt notices that reading about it hurts less than it used to. He puts the mail next to the keys and enters the kitchen to bin the ads and have a glass of water.

Still no one in sight. Yen should be home, although she is probably working with her headphones on. Geralt glances at their shared calendar, but it’s more of a habit. He knows Jaskier should be here, or at least, that he has nowhere else to be. He checks the days to Ciri’s return. Four to go.

He makes his way upstairs. The door to Yen’s office is open and he sees her back, the headphones nestled in the mass of black curls as he expected. He smiles to himself and approaches, ready to knock loudly on the open door so he won’t startle her, when another movement in the room catches his eye.

His mouth instantly goes dry.

Jaskier is in there with her, floating in mid-air next to her with his chest towards the ceiling, his legs and arms trussed together in a hog-tie, Yen’s luxurious violet ropes forming intricate patterns along his limbs, rows of diamonds. Jaskier is completely naked, and while Geralt’s gaze was first attracted by the ropes, the second thing he can’t help but notice is Jaskier’s erection, pointing to his chest. There is a small wet spot on his belly. A soft purple ribbon is tied snugly around the base of his cock and wound around his balls, making him look like a very appealing human present.

While he watches, Yen extends her left hand and, absentmindedly, without interrupting her reading of what looks like an obnoxiously long email, she jerks Jaskier’s bound cock in slow, firm motions. Jaskier whimpers through his open mouth, his eyes staring to the ceiling aimlessly. He doesn’t seem to notice Geralt.

Geralt knocks.

Yen lets go of her mouse, but not of Jaskier’s cock, to pluck her headphones off. She turns her head to smile at him. “Hello Geralt,” she says, sweet as anything, as if their lover weren’t hovering next to her, shaking apart under her off-handed ministrations.

“Hi Yen.”

He comes over to her. He would like nothing more than to touch Jaskier, or even just look at him, talk to him, but if her game is to treat him like a piece of furniture, he doesn’t want to throw them off.

He leans down and kisses her, which is a bit uncomfortable and very hot with her hand keeping up her teasing motions on Jaskier.

“Got a new… adornment for your office?,” he asks her, still fighting not to stare.

She smirks. “You can look,” she says. “He can’t hear or see anything right now. He can only feel.”

Without interrupting his affectionate stroking of Yen’s nape, Geralt straightens and looks. Jaskier looks like his lunch.

Then again, Yen worked him up, so if she wants to, she will get to finish him off. It’s only fair. Maybe he can bully Jaskier into taking a second round with him. Jaskier likes to be handed off.

“Look your fill now,” she says with an unhappy sigh. “I’ve been keeping him there for a while. I’ll have to let him loose soon, as sad as it is. Have him stretch.” She stops jerking Jaskier’s trapped cock and instead holds it fast, her thumb pressing against the slit of his glans. The precum it is slowly oozing drips over her thumb and Jaskier moans.

“Damn,” Geralt murmurs to himself as Jaskier shudders minimally, his whole body tense like a guitar string. “Is this a punishment?”

“I told him it is, you know he loves punishments. Officially, I got tired of him pestering me for attention,” Yen explains. She lets go of Jaskier’s cock and the musician gives a desperate little whine. Yen licks her thumb. “But actually I just wanted his company while I worked.”

“I won’t tell,” Geralt grins.

Yen gets up and they kiss. Her slim body melts against his and she allows him to hold her, firmly, even hold her head while he licks into her mouth, tasting both her and Jaskier. She sighs. So does he.

They weren’t like this before they had him.

As they part, Yen smiles as if she read his mind. Maybe she did. “I’m so glad we have him, too,” she says slyly. Then she turns to look at their floating sub. “He has no idea you’re here, you know.”

Geralt bites his lip. “Do you plan on keeping it that way?”

“Oh, I’m not about to fuck him,” she replies matter-of-factly. “I’m terribly busy. He’ll have to make do with whatever you’re willing to dish out.” With a wave of her hand over her shoulder Jaskier floats over to the narrow couch, where he is gently set down, his limbs underneath his body, his cock still pointing upwards. When he feels what is happening, Jaskier moans desperately. She ignores him and sits down at her desk again, but doesn’t put her headphones back on.

“Yennefer, please,” Jaskier begs. His hips try to thrust, but all he manages in his tight bondage is a little snap upwards, his cock finding nothing to rub against. “Please let me cum, please, I’ll never bother you again,” he promises, his useless eyes darting around, seeing nothing. “Or at least, not today or tomorrow. I need to cum, please, Yennefer…”

Geralt smirks to himself as he walks over to his bound lover. Not that he doesn’t enjoy working Jaskier up himself, but it’s nice that Yen did this as a surprise for him, even if she doesn’t want to frame it that way. And it’s even nicer that, with what their relationship is like these days, he can just tell her as much, openly.

“Yen, you’re an artist,” he says over Jaskier’s babbling. “Can I repay the favour sometime soon? Get him started for you so you can eat him up?”

“I expect you to,” Yen says without turning from her computer and he hears the smile in her voice. “Go on, enjoy. If you want him to cum, just remove the edger. The spell’s in the knot.”

Geralt observes the inconspicuous purple ribbon, straining around the base of Jaskier’s throbbing cock and balls, keeping his lust from tipping over. “Hm. It can stay for a bit,” he decides.

Yen chuckles and returns to her work, but Geralt knows she keeps listening. He makes sure Jaskier gives her plenty to hear.

Chapter Text

– three years earlier –

The day had started badly.

As Jaskier stumbled into the coffee shop, drenched like a dog fresh from the lake, he was already resolved to have a miserable, miserable day.

The coffee shop, usually well-frequented at this time of the day, was packed. Jaskier wasn’t the only one seeking some respite from the rain; people clutching alibi coffees could be seen left and right, sharing tables, waiting for the downpour to end.

Jaskier shook his umbrella out and turned around, looking for an empty chair. His hair was plastered to his forehead. Damn useless umbrella. They should make umbrellas to shield you from horizontal rain as well. In fact, they should probably just put a glass ceiling over everything. All of it. Everywhere.

Jaskier hated rain.

He left his umbrella with the others by the door, already disheartened about finding it again when he walked out. The sheer mass of limp wet umbrellas by the door was ridiculous.

He got in line.

While he waited, he opened his emails and tried to make sense of his inbox, but somehow, the queue was moving much faster than he was used to. He put the phone away and looked ahead, curious as to the speed. Usually, there were two people behind the counter this time of the day, and while they certainly didn’t dawdle, this speed was impressive. Especially with the rush.

Jaskier saw what must be causing the difference: the two girls he recognized from his almost daily visits over the last two years were joined by a man who Jaskier had never seen, and when he was not taking orders, he was making them in an astonishing pace.

Jaskier quickly advanced towards the front of the line and got momentarily distracted watching the man’s hands work. Much later, he would remember that his hands were what he had noticed first about Geralt of Rivia, even with his hair, his eyes and his scars. Geralt would forever be charmed by that.

As Jaskier looked up again, there was nobody in front of him. The barista should have already looked annoyed at him holding up the line, but he didn’t. He just regarded Jaskier with raised, snow white eyebrows and said: “Ready to order?”

Jaskier blinked and hastily rattled down his usual, and while he talked, the man was already working.

“You want your name on that?,” the barista asked.

Jaskier noticed the strangeness of that question. The names were usually for the orders that took a moment, or for people who mostly wanted to take photos of their cup for social media. Did he look like an influencer?

“Jaskier,” he said, so as to not hold up the line any further.

Geralt scribbled on his cup and slid it over the counter. “Caramel cappuccino for Jaskier,” he said, superfluously, and grinned. His grin showed white teeth.

Jaskier swallowed and took the cup. While he paid, the barista shamelessly checked him out, and when he finally stumbled away with his cup, there was nowhere to sit and Jaskier resigned himself to just standing near a window, watching the rain.

While he came to his senses a bit, the rush from the run through the rain and the queue and the ordering ebbing away, he noticed the black letters on the cup.

Jaskier, it said, and underneath that, Enjoy, handsome.

Jaskier felt his face heat up. He was usually the one flirting. The brazen one. The pursuer. No matter the gender of his current love interest. Being flirted with was a change of pace, and not an unpleasant one. Even if the barista was being highly unprofessional here. He had either gone out on a limb to flirt with Jaskier… or Jaskier was just exuding flirt-with-me energy, which, as he happened to believe, he was.

He looked over his shoulder, but the barista was busy filling a carrier box with a whole bunch of black coffees for some office dude in a suit. Jaskier took a moment to take in the barista, the strange white hair, the broad shoulders. Then he turned around again and enjoyed his coffee, and waited out both the rain and the crowd.

–

“Excuse me.” Jaskier put on his most winning smile.

The barista looked up from where he was cleaning the giant espresso machine on the counter between them. He smiled and dried his hands on the towel hanging in the strap of his apron. “Hello,” he said.

“Hi, just,” Jaskier found that his usual charm and chill seemed to have left the building for some reason. “You put that on my cup, right?” He showed the barista the cardboard cup with the scribble on it.

The man seemed amused. “You saw me write on it,” he said. “What do you think?”

Jaskier laughed. “You’re right, of course. I was just… I mean…”

The man leaned over the counter and offered Jaskier a large hand. “I’m Geralt.”

Jaskier shook Geralt’s hand and smiled at him. Geralt’s eyes were as unusual in colour as his hair - they were a light brown, almost golden. His hand was warm, and its grip was nice and firm. The unusual hair could have any number of explanations, but Jaskier was pretty sure he knew what the unusual eye colour meant. But then, what would a Witcher be doing working in a coffee shop?

The only Witcher Jaskier had ever seen before had been doing work for a client of his father’s. Jaskier had been a little boy then, but he had been at the office when the Witcher had turned up, and he had been everything people said they were: straightforward, stoic, and greedy. His father had complained about the mutant basically robbing my client for months on end. Still, that was what they were made for. You had a computer problem, you called an IT specialist, you had a leaky ceiling, you called a plumber, you had a wraith in your distribution center because one of your workers died on the clock, you called a Witcher.

In fact, one time Radovid had told him about- Not now. Head in the game.

“I’m not looking for anything serious right now,” Jaskier said before he could stop himself. “I mean-”

“That’s alright,” Geralt hurried to say. “Neither am I.”

Jaskier grinned. “Alright. So, do you want to meet up later?”

“Definitely.” It was hard to feel insulted with Geralt eyeing him up like his next meal, professionalism be damned. The barista hesitated for a moment. “My place is… small.”

“I just moved,” Jaskier hurried to lie. He didn’t want anyone in his flat right now, not with the still half-empty… well, everything.

“Mine it is. I’ve got a place at Garden Square,” Geralt said and waited for Jaskier’s reaction.

Jaskier knew why. Garden Square was close to the rails and didn’t exactly have a shiny reputation. But he knew people there; several of his clients lived in Garden Square, and he planned on taking a cab home anyway.

“Sounds great. I don’t mind that it’s small,” he added in a stage whisper. “I won’t come by for the leg room.”

Geralt grinned wolfishly.

–

Jaskier’s day had taken a definite turn for the better, he decided as he hummed and picked out a shirt.

The half-empty wardrobe was like a spot in his vision, irritating him. Some day soon, he should probably just start using the space. It could be worse, he thought glumly. At least I can afford the place on my own.

Maybe not think about that right now, he told himself while he fixed his hair. Head in the game, head in the game. Show must go on.

Geralt didn’t seem like a guy to appreciate lingerie – although appearances could be deceiving – and if it was true that Witchers had a much better sense of smell, too much of Jaskier’s expensive perfumes would probably just be difficult for his nose. Jaskier misted a napkin with his favourite scent and dabbed the tiniest amount behind his ears, and also a little bit on his left buttock, for a laugh, if it came to that.

While he packed a small bag with essentials, his phone rang. He looked at it, did a double take, then went to pick it up.

“Hey Essi.”

“Hi Jask. How’s my sopping wet kitten doing?”

“You spend too much time on tumblr,” Jaskier said and went to pick out shoes.

“I beg to differ,” Essi quipped with mock haughtiness in her voice. “You know I don’t have time for that. That’s why I watch the meme compilations of tumblr posts on YouTube.” There was a short silence. Then, “Well… how are you doing?”

Jaskier shrugged to himself.

“Did you just shrug in a phone call?”

“Did you just hear me shrug over the phone?”

“Jask, what’s going on? Should I worry? Should I come over?”

Jaskier hesitated. “I’m fine,” he finally said, unhappily. “It really helped to hang out with you last week. I… they never stay. Why would she be any different.”

“I mean, no wonder you got blindsided. She told you she was happy with you, didn’t she? Not so long ago.”

“They’re always happy with me until they aren’t,” Jaskier replied, and he tried not to sound bitter. He did not succeed. “It seems my career as a fill-in after difficult break-ups is not yet over. Other people with handsome faces are heartbreakers-” He found the shoes he had been looking for and put Essi on speaker while he put them on. “-and I’m a heartmender. And once they’re mended, they leave.”

“Oh Jask.”

Jaskier blinked the tears away while he tied his shoes. “Don’t worry, Essi, I’m butthurt right now, but I’ll be fine. I always am.”

“Listen, maybe I should come over.”

“Not tonight,” Jaskier replied. “I’m just on my way to do some mending on myself.”

Essi cooed. “Now that’s what I wanna hear. Who are you seeing?”

“Geralt. Gorgeous bloke. No idea who he is or what his deal is. I’m gonna drink beer with him, fuck him silly and then go home. Might not even see him again.”

“Nice. Like a palate cleanser. Have fun, Jask.”

“Bye, Essi.”

–

Geralt opened his door in tight-fitting jeans and a faded grey muscle shirt. Jaskier’s mouth began to water as soon as he opened the door.

“Evening,” the gorgeous man said and smiled.

“Evening,” Jaskier echoed and held up the sixpack he had brought. “I brought beer.”

“Off to a good start,” Geralt rumbled. He stepped aside and let Jaskier in.

Geralt’s place was tidy and clean, but so small that it still looked cramped. The kitchen was tiny enough to look full once Geralt had entered it, so while he put the beer into the cooler, Jaskier just stood in the doorway.

“I have to ask,” he said while Geralt stuck the beer bottles between what looked like an alarming amount of liquid meals and some packets of steak and sausages. Someone liked their protein. And also, for some reason, their Capri Suns. There was a family-sized pack of the things, half empty. “You don’t have to tell me, obviously, but I have to ask.” 

Geralt turned around and lifted an eyebrow. He had stopped smiling, and he had not closed the fridge door yet. His grip on the door went firm.

“You look a bit like a Witcher,” Jaskier said. “But you’re a barista. How come?”

Geralt closed the fridge, with a bit more force than was strictly necessary. “I am a Witcher. Lost my weapons’ license, and without that, I can’t work. So until I can get recertified, which will be a few years, I do whatever job I can get. Gotta eat, and lots of employers are prejudiced, so minimum wage is really my only option.”

Jaskier nodded.

“Satisfied?”

Jaskier raised his hands in surrender. “Yeah, all good. Really. I just wanted to make sure you don't think I’m a vampire and invited me to kill me… or something.”

Geralt’s smile returned, albeit a bit guarded. “Not all vampires are bad. One of my best friends is a vampire,” he joked. “You can laugh,” he added and leaned his hip against the sink. “But I didn’t say Come in. I never do. Because some daywalkers actually need to hear it for some reason.”

“So you won’t stake me?,” Jaskier asked, encouraged by Geralt’s honesty.

“Only if you ask me to,” the Witcher-turned-barista replied, and really, Jaskier walked into that one.

He laughed.

“Anything else we need to talk about?,” Geralt asked.

“Nah.” Jaskier extended a hand. “Come here.”

–

They lost most of their clothing in the hall. By the time they stumbled into Geralt’s small bedroom – almost entirely filled by a rickety, but clean-smelling bed – only Geralt’s pants and Jaskier’s socks remained.

Geralt, as it turned out, was an excellent kisser, and he was not afraid to take charge. It was exactly what Jaskier needed right now – not having to think, just going with the flow.

Geralt sat down on the edge of his bed and pulled Jaskier onto his lap, snogging the breath out of him. Big, strong hands gripped Jaskier’s bare ass, ground him down onto Geralt’s still clothed erection.

“What do you want?,” Geralt rumbled between kisses.

Jaskier scratched lightly over Geralt’s pecs, brushing his nipples with his fingertips. “I like anything,” he gasped. Geralt hmmed and transferred his kisses to Jaskier’s neck so he could talk. “I’d like to suck you,” Jaskier said, suddenly remembering how long it had been since he had had a nice fat cock in his mouth. “You can suck me. You can also take my ass, I brought condoms.”

“I have some,” Geralt mumbled into his neck, his fingers gripping Jaskier’s buttocks, pulling them apart. “So you like to bottom?”

“Don’t I look it?,” Jaskier laughed breathlessly as Geralt’s firm pull pressed his hard cock against Geralt’s well defined stomach.

“Looks can be deceiving,” Geralt replied. He lifted Jaskier off himself and placed him on the bed, which gave a pitiful squeak. “Let me just…” He bent over and began to rummage in the nightstand.

Jaskier took his socks off while Geralt found condoms and lube.

“Is that cherry flavoured?,” Jaskier laughed incredulously as he saw the label.

“Don’t I look it?,” Geralt asked and opened the lube. The wave of too-sweet artificial cherry aroma that Jaskier expected failed to come. In fact, he could hardly smell anything.

Geralt turned back to him and pushed him down onto the bed with his hand on his chest. Fuck, he’s strong.

Jaskier relaxed against the bedding and wrapped his legs around Geralt’s trim waist, loose enough that there was plenty of space for him to work.

Geralt spread some of the lube on his fingers, but didn’t get to work yet. He busied himself with stroking Jaskier’s thighs, gripping his cock lightly, stroking it twice, letting go again, using only his one dry hand.

“Are we waiting for someone?,” Jaskier joked as Geralt kept the lubed fingers carefully in the air.

“Impatient little shit,” Geralt chuckled. “Just warming it up.”

“How are you- Oooh…” Jaskier interrupted himself as Geralt finally reached between his buttocks and began to smear the smooth, heavy, hot gel over his entrance. “Fuckkk, that’s nice,” Jaskier whispered to the ceiling.

“I know.” Geralt seized his cock again, but he merely held onto it while he slowly pushed one finger into Jaskier. Now Jaskier did smell cherry, the faintest bit. It didn’t smell like the sticky, plastic-y aroma most lube was made with, more like really faint perfume. He peered over at the label of the bottle on the nightstand again. He didn’t recognize the brand, but it looked expensive.

A Witcher working as a barista. In a cramped little flat. With expensive lube. Before Jaskier could try to unravel the mystery, Geralt added a second finger.

Jaskier decided it was really none of his business. He committed the name of the brand to memory and laid back. He wanted to close his eyes, but he wanted himself and Geralt to be absolutely clear about their expectations first. Respect, and all that.

“Geralt?”

“Hm?”

Jaskier opened his mouth again to say something, but instead he moaned out loud when his prostate was prodded.

“Geralt…”

“Heard you the first time. Don’t worry, I’ve got the condoms here.”

“No, I mean, great…” Jaskier sat up a little and looked at Geralt. “It’s just… I’m usually not lazy, but I would really like to just take, today. If that’s alright. Have you take charge. Is that okay?”

Geralt showed his white teeth again as he grinned, but the grin had an edge to it that Jaskier couldn’t quite decipher. “Just tell me if you don’t want something.”

“I will,” Jaskier promised. “But it will be fine, I’m sure. I’m just…”

“No need to explain,” Geralt interrupted and punctuated the statement with a twist of his wrist that felt incredible. “I like to take charge.”

Jaskier let out a relieved huff. Then he fell back into the bedding and enjoyed Geralt’s fingers, opening him up quickly and pleasurably.

“I’ll suck you off now,” Geralt rumbled when Jaskier could take three of his fingers easily.

Jaskier shifted and gripped the pillow. “I… I thought…”

“Hm?”

As Jaskier looked down, Geralt stared at him, as though daring him to complain.

“I just, I thought you were gonna fuck me,” Jaskier said and lifted his hips to prove his point by clenching around Geralt’s fingers. “I’m ready, you know.”

“I know,” Geralt replied easily. “You’re also not in charge. Right?”

Jaskier stared for a moment, and his neglected cock strained upwards, the treacherous thing. “Right,” Jaskier managed and he couldn’t help the grin spreading on his face.

“Who is, then?” Geralt pressed down on his prostate with an answering grin and gripped Jaskier’s cock with the free hand, approaching the tip with his open lips. 

“Who’s in charge, Jaskier?,” he asked mockingly when Jaskier just watched him descend and didn’t reply.

“You,” he hurried to reply. “You are in charge, Geralt.”

“Right.” Geralt nodded towards Jaskier’s hands over his head. “Hands in my hair,” he ordered. “Hold it back for me. Don’t pull or push, I’ll stop if you do.”

“O-Okay.” Jaskier gathered Geralt’s milk-white hair in his hands and held it for him, careful not to rip on his scalp.

Geralt’s mouth closed around his glans, hot and impossibly tight. He sucked Jaskier down slowly, lightly scratching the underside of his cock with his teeth, and then he pushed him out again with his tongue pressing against the tip.

Jaskier groaned and fought the reflex to grip Geralt’s hair tighter.

The Witcher let him pop out of his mouth completely to ask: “Have you ever been edged, Jaskier?”

Before he could answer, Geralt swallowed him down again.

“Oh, I…” Jaskier gathered his thoughts. “A… a few times, yes. But I’m shit at it.”

Geralt pulled Jaskier’s cock out of his mouth, obscenely rubbing it over his tongue. “Hm. No discipline?”

Jaskier’s hips jumped, but the weight of Geralt’s forearms on his thighs kept them down.

“None at all,” he laughed. “Especially not when my partner is gorgeous and has a voice like this.”

“Hm.” Geralt began to bob his head on Jaskier’s cock, sucking him down vigorously, then lifting his head without releasing the pressure first. Jaskier felt his heartbeat in his shaft.

“And it doesn’t hurt,” Jaskier kept babbling, “that you make really excellent cappuccino. Your hands are the first thing I noticed about you, they’re so strong…”

Geralt snorted a laugh and kept at it.

“I’m babbling, sorry,” Jaskier said and interrupted himself to moan heartily, “I can shut up, if you want…”

Geralt let his cock fall out of his mouth to say: “You clearly can’t.” Then he licked the underside of Jaskier’s shaft, sucked on his glans with gusto. Slowly, he started moving his fingers in Jaskier’s ass.

“No, you’re right, I can’t, I… it’s a… thinggggg.” Jaskier reared up as Geralt nibbled his cock, from the side, very gently. “You’re a tease.”

“Yes.” Geralt pressed down on his prostate.

Jaskier keened and bucked, but Geralt was stronger than him and he couldn’t get away. Not even if he actually wanted to.

Geralt chuckled, but didn’t release the pressure. He started to move the pressing fingertips in a very slow, very small circle and Jaskier’s whole body started shaking.

Geralt made an appreciative noise and licked his cock again before he said: “You’re a fidget. Maybe I’ll have less trouble with you if I just tie you up.”

Jaskier’s body jackknifed in at those words and while Geralt sucked him down again, he considered encouraging Geralt’s idea. It wasn’t something he usually did with one night stands, but it had been so long since someone tied him down. Must have been some fling he’d had after Radovid. After him, Jaskier had been sick of tenderness for some time.

“Won’t, though,” Geralt informed him in between his diligent sucking. “Like it when you struggle.”

“Fuuuuck,” Jaskier groaned and struggled some more. He really fought to keep his hands in Geralt’s hair light and without pressure, but the closer he got to cumming into Geralt’s mouth, the harder it was to keep track of this, and suddenly, he pulled when Geralt pushed and felt the gorgeous white hair get tense in his hands. Geralt immediately robbed him of his mouth.

“Shit, sorry, I didn’t-”

“Told you what’d happen,” Geralt rumbled and grabbed both his wrists, pressing them to the mattress next to his hips. “Now you don’t get to cum before I fuck you.”

“Can I cum on your cock?,” Jaskier asked greedily while Geralt sat up and shuffled next to him.

“We’ll see.”

Geralt manhandled him onto his left side and bent his right leg against his chest. Jaskier flailed a little, being positioned like a ragdoll. His left arm was turned behind his back, uselessly sprawled there. “Come on,” he murmured against the blanket at his cheek, “come on, fuck me like you mean it.”

Geralt mounted his straight left leg and shuffled forwards. Jaskier waited impatiently, digging his toes into Geralt’s thigh while he put on the condom. Then, Geralt gripped his buttocks again, pulling them apart.

Jaskier waited with his breath held, but when nothing happened, he looked up nervously. “Geralt? Are you getting off on not fucking me right now?”

“There’s perfume on your ass,” Geralt said. He sounded strange.

Jaskier huffed a laugh. “I was wondering if you’d notice,” he said. “I thought it was funny…”

Geralt looked conflicted for a moment. Then he laughed, quiet and rumbling.

Jaskier laughed along.

And then Geralt speared Jaskier on his cock in one smooth thrust. It was a tight fit, even with the preparation, because Geralt was endowed well beyond the average. Jaskier gasped and cursed under his breath at the burning stretch. He made himself breathe through his nose and relax while Geralt, seemingly completely unhurried, waited him out and drew idle paths on his leg and side with one hard fingernail, moving only in the tiniest rocks to get him used to the size.

Jaskier flailed some more, pawing at Geralt’s hip, trying to pull on his ass.

“Sure you’re ready?,” Geralt asked, his voice even and a tiny bit amused.

“Come on,” Jaskier urged, going as far as kicking lightly against Geralt’s thigh with his right foot.

Geralt caught his ankle in one hand and his wrist in the other. Jaskier’s breath hitched.

“You know, you’re a real treat,” Geralt groaned, pulled back and then fucked into Jaskier, all very, very slowly. Jaskier’s cock was straining against nothing again, his glans only touching the bedding lightly every now and then. “Impatient little fuck.”

Jaskier was beyond words. He allowed himself to clench down on Geralt’s cock and felt his eyes roll upwards at how good it felt.

More of those terrible slow thrusts.

“No discipline, indeed,” Geralt said, but he didn’t sound put off. He sounded awestruck. “You really have dick for brains when you’re riled up, don’t you?”

Jaskier tried to rip his wrist free – his left arm was still behind him – he had to touch his cock or he would explode – but Geralt’s grip was unrelenting.

“Can you cum untouched?”

Jaskier made a noise of protest, but he didn’t have the capacity for a verbal answer.

“I think you can. Let’s try.”

Jaskier bucked and fought, but Geralt kept him down, and Jaskier could tell it made Geralt just as wild as him.

The Witcher picked up the pace of his thrusts just slightly. He thrust into him languidly for long minutes, groaning with relish while Jaskier lost his mind.

It got to the point where Jaskier thought he could not take it anymore, not unless he could cum really soon, and he started trying to kick again, but with his ankle in Geralt’s firm grip, all it did was jostle the Witcher minimally.

Geralt used his grip on Jaskier’s ankle to pull his leg up slightly, and suddenly the angle was just glorious.

Jaskier sputtered pitifully as Geralt’s fat cock rubbed over his sweet spot.

“Hmmm?”

Geralt built up speed.

“Oh… oh please…”

“Hm.”

Without letting go of Jaskier’s hand and foot, Geralt finally properly fucked him, hard and fast, and getting faster.

“Lemme cum,” Jaskier mewled into the sheet.

“Cum all you want,” Geralt snarled.

“My cock,” Jaskier begged.

“Not likely.”

Jaskier felt tears burn under his closed eyelids. “Please,” he breathed, and instead of the moan that had left him with each of Geralt’s thrusts before, he uttered the word, over and over. “Please-please-please-please-please…”

Geralt chuckled, but didn’t react otherwise. He fucked Jaskier, hard and luxuriously, without a care for his cock or his wishes.

He now threw his back into the thrusts, pushing Jaskier’s whole body away with each one before tugging him back by his ankle and wrist. His bed sang along, and it sounded almost as pitiful as Jaskier. If he’d cared, he’d be worried about the neighbours.

“Please,” Jaskier keened, “please!”

And Geralt must have superhuman stamina or something, because he just kept fucking him, minute after minute, until Jaskier felt himself tip over into bliss, gradually, like falling in slow motion.

“Called it,” Geralt grunted over him, and Jaskier heard him grin.

“Oh god,” Jaskier breathed, and then he came, and it was a slow and bone-deep orgasm, wrecking him with shudders, making sounds spill out of his mouth like water. Cum spurted and then trickled out of his cock and onto Geralt’s sheets, and even though it wasn’t touched by more than the light friction of the sheets and his own shaking thigh, he felt the orgasm along every inch of it.

Geralt finally let go of his limbs and gripped his thigh with one hand, his ass with the other, then fucked into his well-used hole in terrible quick snaps that made Jaskier yell.

Jaskier gripped the pillow hard with his finally free hand and babbled into the sheets. By now, he was pretty sure Geralt was getting off on his brainless rambles. “Keep fucking me,” he moaned, and he didn’t know Geralt at all, and this was nothing at all, this was stress relief, and tomorrow when Geralt made him his coffee they would smile and nod and not think about each other again, he would not think about Geralt again, no matter how earth-shattering this orgasm had been, but if he wanted that to work, then he needed to do right by Geralt, give him as much pleasure back, so they could be even and not think about each other again, “please don’t stop, I really want you to cum in me, show you how much I love your fat cock in my ass…”

Geralt stayed true to his word and didn’t stop again until he filled the condom with a savage moan.

–

Geralt got them beer from the fridge. They sat up against the wall next to the bed and talked about nothing while they drank it, nothing being mostly their jobs. Jaskier talked a bit about what kind of cases he worked and Geralt said a bit about the perils of minimum wage work, but he never once let it sound like he was whining.

Funnily – and, although Jaskier would not admit it, charmingly – Geralt mostly complained on behalf of his coworkers who did not have their actual job waiting for them after all was said and done, but would be working at tills, in cafés, in storehouses and gas stations for the rest of their working lives.

They found some common ground there, because Jaskier’s work touched on all that heavily.

Jaskier got a bit greedy for Geralt’s cock again, but he didn’t want to seem desperate – not even to a one night stand – so he didn’t ask again to suck Geralt off. He also didn’t ask Geralt to touch him again, but Geralt seemed to be reading his mind.

“Not used to coming untouched, are you?,” he asked when Jaskier shifted on his side of the bed again.

Jaskier had wrapped himself in Geralt’s blanket, so there was no way he could see Jaskier’s hard-on that had returned over the last half hour, but he probably just… smelled it. Or something.

“No,” Jaskier admitted. “But that’s alright, I don’t need-”

Geralt scoffed, downed the rest of his beer and got up. “Even so,” he said. “You’re still here, aren’t you? Why not make the most of it?” He offered Jaskier his hand and led him, still completely naked, into the living room.

The living room was probably the least cramped-looking room in the flat, although it wasn’t roomy by any stretch of the definition. There was a davenport in front of the TV, in sofa mode right now, a narrow wardrobe in the corner and a lot of shelves with books and games, and not much else. Jaskier wondered if the davenport was Geralt’s compromise if he wanted to offer someone to stay over, but didn’t want them to sleep in his bed.

Geralt took the folded blanket from the corner of the davenport and spread it over the whole thing. He sat down with his back to the wardrobe and beckoned for Jaskier to sit between his legs.

Jaskier did, and by now his cock was fully hard again.

So was Geralt’s, and he wasted no time putting on a new condom and slipping into Jaskier from behind.

“Hands over your head,” he ordered into Jaskier’s ear. “Reach behind you. Touch my hair.”

Jaskier did.

Geralt used the room that position granted him to roam his hands over Jaskier’s body.

Jaskier waited for Geralt to start fucking him, but instead, the Witcher initiated a conversation.

“You know, you’re fit for a lawyer,” he said. “What do you do in your free time?”

“Running,” Jaskier replied. “And some working out, just for, you know.”

“Hm?” Geralt’s fingernails scratched over his chest, lightly enough not to even leave marks. Jaskier wished he would be harsher, but he didn’t dare to ask. One of Geralt’s hands vanished and Jaskier smelled the lube again.

“For health. And aesthetics.”

“I see.”

Geralt lightly twisted his left nipple. Jaskier immediately felt both of them perk up.

“You’re sensitive.”

“Always am,” Jaskier replied. His cock was drooling between his legs. “Can you fuck me now?”

“But I already did.”

Geralt’s right hand slipped around his hip again. There was a shine of fluid in his palm. His hand, unhurried and self-assured, wrapped around Jaskier’s twitching cock slowly.

Jaskier moaned and impulsively tightened his ass around Geralt’s cock. Geralt groaned, but didn’t speed up. Very, very slowly, he rubbed the lube all over Jaskier’s cock. Then he just held his cock in a tight grip for a moment.

“G-Geralt?”

“Are you still feeling lazy?,” the Witcher asked. “Or are you ready to do some work?”

“Do some work, please,” Jaskier immediately replied. He was itching for Geralt to move, but if he wouldn’t, at least Jaskier wanted to.

“Good man,” Geralt praised him. His fist closed a little and then loosened again. “I want you to fuck my fist.”

“But your cock…”

“Yeah. Kind of the point.”

Jaskier laughed breathlessly. “I don’t know how long I can do that.”

“Neither do I,” Geralt said, and in his voice Jaskier heard his mean grin. “But maybe you’ll manage long enough to cum again.”

Jaskier started to move. The position put strain on his thighs, his calves, his stomach, even his back. He carefully thrust forward into Geralt’s fist, then backwards, impaling himself on his cock. It was agonizing and it felt divine. He knew immediately that he would not make it like this.

“At least try.”

He tried.

He worked. He tensed. He sped up, then had to slow down again. He asked Geralt if he could grab the back of the davenport. Geralt allowed it. That made it easier, but it was still…

“I can’t,” he half-laughed, half-whined after several minutes. “It’s too much…”

“Hm.”

Geralt didn’t help him along, but his free hand traced some patterns on Jaskier’s shoulder, thoughtfully.

“You know, there is something I could do. I usually don’t use that ability for… this.”

Jaskier immediately felt hotly curious. “Oh, do tell,” he breathed.

“I bet that right now the exhaustion is mostly in your head,” Geralt said. “You think you can’t, but you could, if you really tried.”

“I am really trying!”

“I could make you really try,” Geralt said into his ear. “But you would probably use strength you normally don’t mobilize, so you'll likely be sore tomorrow.”

Jaskier moaned. He shifted his hips again.

“Or I could just fuck you some more,” Geralt offered hurriedly. “You don’t have to-”

“No no,” Jaskier’s heart was already beating in his throat at the exciting proposal, “please do the thing.”

“You sure?”

“I can take it.”

Geralt bit his neck lightly and formed a strange little gesture with his free hand, pressing it to Jaskier’s chest.

Jaskier suddenly felt like all his thoughts were blessedly fading into the background. All intention vanished, all pressure abided. This was very nice.

And in the emptiness inside his head, he felt a single thought install itself, a single intention: Fuck yourself back and forth between his cock and his fist until you both cum.

Jaskier got to work, and it was strenuous, it was a lot, it was maybe too much, but it didn’t matter, because he didn’t consider having to shower later. He didn’t consider having to go to work tomorrow, and be a functioning person, and not wreck his muscles over some little sex game with a near stranger. He worked with all his might.

He heard Geralt laugh behind him as he started fucking them both with abandon, but the laugh turned into a moan, and soon Geralt’s free hand appeared on his hip and helped him along, and when Jaskier finally came and squirted into Geralt’s big fist, he howled, but he still heard Geralt growl behind him.

It was almost midnight when he left Garden Square and took a cab home.

Chapter Text

Jaskier had never liked his day job. But he would hate to disappoint his father.

He knew that his music – the two self-published albums, the one t-shirt that an artist he only knew online had designed for him and that, so far, 14 people had bought, the several thousand bucks worth of instruments and technical equipment in his flat and the two to three gigs a year he played – was not considered a career in his family, it was considered a problem. His father feared for the good name of his law firm if anyone found out that his stubborn son was jumping around on stages singing his heart out about love and trauma and, occasionally, sex.

So Jaskier had taken a stage name and only performed with a hat and sunglasses on, and at least up until now, the reputation of Pankratz & Sons, Attorneys At Law, remained intact and unsullied by whatever Dandelion was doing.

And if Jaskier would ever manage to get a band together, he would refrain from suggesting the name Dandelion and the Punk Rats , even if he himself found that very funny.

But he didn’t want to complain. His family was far from perfect, but it could be so much worse, and he did dearly love them. So he worked in law, even though it hardly fitted his tastes.

At least most of the clients were alright. As labour lawyers, they mostly worked with private individuals or union people, and especially in their field of work, that, too, could be so much worse.

–

He left his office for the receptionist’s desk when she called him to let him know his client had arrived. She had not warned him that his client was absolutely gorgeous.

She was young, small, slim and ridiculously well-dressed. Her hair was a waterfall of black curls and both her eyeliner and her cheekbones looked fit to cut him if he touched her face.

Not that he wanted to touch her face. Even if his pulse might have picked up at er sight. He was a professional.

He approached with his second most winning smile in place.

“Mr Pankratz agreed to see me personally ,” she said as a greeting, with a cutting tone that didn’t match her smile, but did match her cheekbones. “Mr And Sons, I presume.” 

Her sharp sense of humor caught him off guard and he couldn’t stifle a genuine snicker. She didn’t look funny, she looked… she defied a one-word-description. 

Andrea, who was looking back and forth between them like someone following a tennis match, didn’t smile at her quip. But then, Jaskier wasn’t sure he’d ever seen her smile.

He hadn’t had time to read the file lying on the corner of the receptionist’s desk before the appointment as he usually did. It was true, she was supposed to meet his father, but he had eaten something bad for breakfast and had had to leave in quite a hurry.

But she knew his father personally, so he could at least be sure she knew that they weren’t divorce lawyers. With the way she looked standing before Andrea’s desk, tilted in her hip but with her chin jutted out assertively, from her matte black shoes to her expensive-looking white softshell coat, she looked twice divorced. She was very possibly working on the third, and she wouldn’t be the first to stumble into the wrong specialist’s office.

Jaskier smoothed his face to an almost professional smile. “Please excuse Mr. Pankratz, he is being held up at court, I’m afraid. I’m Julian,” he introduced himself.

“Yennefer.”

Yennefer – the name became her – shook Jaskier’s hand. Her hand was small and warm, and surprisingly strong. Jaskier found himself more than a bit smitten. What a beautiful woman, and flawless manners despite obviously being rich. And she smelled like something. Something delicious. Too bad she was probably a witch, and he didn’t just mean the fact that she might possess magic powers.

Aretuza drop-outs were so common in courtrooms that that particular brand of beauty – a bit too perfect, a bit too timeless – had, over time, become firmly connected with magic in Jaskier’s mind.

“And yes, I’m one of Mr Pankratz’s sons,” Jaskier explained to get talking again and not just stare into her violet eyes until he forgot where he was. Where they were. Still standing in Andrea’s frigid line of sight. “Can I offer you some water, a cup of coffee, or maybe tea?”

She smiled patiently. She had to know the effect her beauty had on those around her, of course she would be patient with him. 

“I would like a cup of coffee,” she replied. “Black.”

“And a tea for me, please, Andrea,” he added and smiled at their receptionist.

Andrea, her hair in a high firm knot, gave him a steely glare and tapped her long acrylic fingernail pointedly onto the file on her table. She was probably the only human he knew who was completely immune to his charms. Or anyone else’s, for that matter.

He noticed he was still holding Yennefer’s hand. He awkwardly let go and collected the file, clearing his throat.

“Please, let’s sit down in my office,” he instructed the beautiful witch and motioned to the open door to let her go first. “Let’s see what I can do for you.”

–

It was not as he had expected. Appearances could be deceiving indeed. She wasn’t trying to get divorced, she was trying to fight an oppressive boss, which – as Jaskier had to admit – was actually right up his alley, only not… in this particular case.

“Despite what this looks like, it is not a question of money,” Yennefer of Vengerberg said when Jaskier lowered the file. “I don’t want compensation.”

Jaskier read the short printout on top of the papers again. If the woman hadn’t been so enchanting, he would have asked her to leave and take with her what she had brought into his office. Or rather, who. This guy racked up more lawsuits than any other mage, and Jaskier knew one or two colleagues who had had to handle one. The man’s lawyer was a chapter advocate, highly specialized in magic law, competent and ruthless, and so far, every attempt to hold his client responsible for anything had glided off him like water.

But Jaskier was only human, and the witch’s dress was cut extremely well. Unfairly well. Then again, it was probably her body that was the real problem. If the dress were the problem, Jaskier would have offered to take it off her hands. Off her everything. Head in the game, dammit. He turned pages to win some time and get his mind out of the gutter.

“What do you want, then?,” he asked slowly. Because compensation was really all that could be done. If anything. So far, his devil of a lawyer had kept him clean of even that.

“I want him to resign as Archmage. To lose his position in the chapter, by choice or otherwise. Which is why I cannot talk to any of our lawyers. They’re with him. All of them. And your father ,” she added somewhat pointedly, “came with a personal recommendation from someone I trust.”

Jaskier read the printout again. Of course. She had to be enchanting and an idealist. “I’m sorry, Miss Vengerberg,” he started, stumbling into old fashions in his attempt to look charming while turning her down. “While I completely understand that you feel-”

“Mrs,” she corrected him gently. “I’m divorced.”

“Of course you are,” Jaskier’s mouth said before his brain could catch up. “But I’m afraid-”

“What did you just say?”

They stared at each other for a moment. Her eyes narrowed.

Jaskier felt as if a bag of ice cubes had been dropped into his stomach while his entire face caught flame, quickly and brightly like the head of a matchstick.

She held his gaze with narrowed eyes and said nothing to relieve the tension.

For a moment, the silence lingered. He opened his mouth twice, but shut it again. Now, that was not a blunder, that was a catastrophe.

“I’m so, so sorry”, he finally said. “I… I never… Please disregard that, that was impossibly rude.”

“It was.” She kept glaring at him, but she didn’t change her posture at all. She didn’t move. Not even her breathing seemed elevated. The coffee cup in her hand was perfectly still.

Hot fury he could take. Hot fury he knew - hot fury could be cooled down, extinguished, mitigated. Cold fury was a problem. A big, big problem.

He should grovel, and grovel well.

She would either take this to his father, which would probably be the end of his law career, or make him take a case that would get him in hot water with the wrong people. If he was lucky, and she wasn’t mafia as well as chapter and as such would just have him drowned in the Pontar. He consoled himself with the thought that if she were mafia, she would probably have chosen different means to fight her Archmage.

The change in her energy was palpable. She was no less enchanting for it, but much more menacing. He felt his head try to sink between his shoulders and had to fight to keep a dignified posture.

He half hoped she would just tell on him and his father would fire him at last. But he had not played along in his family’s plans for him for thirty-something years just to go and disappoint them now because his big mouth got the better of him. Whatever it took to get this sorted out, he would do.

“Is there anything I can offer you so you will not take this matter up with my father?” Jaskier asked quickly and quietly, too intimidated by her to outright suggest money.

Apparently, he had managed to say something she did not expect. Her perfectly shaped eyebrows lifted and the icy glare with which she had regarded him warmed somewhat.

“ That’s what you’re most afraid of?” The witch began to smile. It made her look even more dangerous. “That I’ll go and tattle to your father?”

Jaskier’s face, somehow, went even hotter. Can the ground swallow me right now, please and thank you, he thought with his heart in his throat. He nodded silently.

“Poor Daddy’s boy.” Her tone was quiet, but serious despite her smile. “And you’re far out of your depth, yes? What did you want to tell me about Stregobor? That a bit of assault and mental harm will never suffice to topple an Archmage?”

“Something like that,” Jaskier croaked.

She arched one eyebrow. Jaskier felt sweat run down his back under his shirt.

“And his lawyer,” he admitted. “He’s… well.” Jaskier swallowed. “Even if we find a judge who agrees to hear this,” Jaskier found himself babbling, “his lawyer would roast me on a spit in court like barbecue.” He was loath to admit that to her, but she would not be impressed by him having his ass handed to him by Rience in front of her either, so honesty was his best shot.

The witch sipped the coffee Andrea had made for her and pursed her lips in politely subdued distaste. Of course. Nothing was ever good enough for people like her. Especially not Julian Alfred Pankratz, not by a long shot.

She placed her cup neatly on the table. “Tell me now, and tell me honestly,” she said emphatically, “what I need to do to bring him down.”

“I can’t. So you’ll need a different lawyer, for starters,” Jaskier replied quickly. “You’re right, I’m out of my depth. And whoever recommended my father might not be aware of it, but none of us here specialize in magic law, we just touch on it a lot. With the nature of your opponent’s transgressions, that should be your angle.” He opened a drawer. “You’ll need her ,” he said and handed the witch a small light pink business card. “She’s a specialist, and from what I can tell, she knows the skeletons in everyone’s basement by name. She’s never short on cases, but she’ll be interested in yours. I’ve heard her say she would love to get a shot at Stregobor, so probably lead with that when you call her.”

Yennefer read the card and he could tell she didn’t know the name she read. So he had been able to give her that, if nothing else.

She rose from her chair. “So this was not a complete waste of my time,” she said and pocketed the business card.

Jaskier held his breath.

“Now let’s talk about the recompense you owe me,” the witch said and while Jaskier was still very much afraid for his unloved career, he couldn’t help but think, for the shortest moment, of lying over her lap with his trousers and pants down. She was the kind to make you count out loud, and to start over when you screwed it up, he just knew it. Such a shame she was actually mad at him. Such a shame being unprofessional as a barista was one thing, but it was another thing entirely to be unprofessional as a lawyer. A lawyer who was already on thin ice for lack of professionalism.

She stared at him like someone examining a pinned butterfly. He opened his mouth to say something, but she beat him to the draw. “Shut up.”

One, the unhelpful monkey part of his brain supplied, Thank you, Mistress.

“... Dandelion ,” the witch added evilly.

Jaskier closed his eyes. This had been a disaster, and now it was a double disaster. He had, like, two thousand listeners on Spotify. And maybe four thousand hits on the one video he had uploaded to YouTube. How the fuck did she even know. That was just unfair.

Would she expose him? Post his music video to the law firm’s social media? Make a laughing stock of his father’s business, at least in his eyes?

But the witch surprised him.

“Are you any fun at fundraising dinners?” she asked. “I am, of course, divorced, and my actual escort canceled, on rudely short notice.”

Jaskier swallowed thickly. “I mean.” He stood and spread his arms to show off his expensive suit. “I look good in a suit.”

Not that the suit he was wearing right now was more than could be expected of a lawyer. But he did flatter himself that being smartly dressed became him; that the light blue shirt made his eyes pop, that the pinstripes on his dark grey vest gave him a Tenth Doctor-kind of charm, and even if his tie was a plain-coloured dark blue, anyone who knew their tie knots knew he was wearing it fancily. And quite tightly, which spoke to his self-discipline, he told himself.

It had nothing to do with Geralt, and the night he spent with him last week. Even if it had awakened all the urges that his year and a half in a relationship with someone proper and a bit prudish had buried. And made him long for a repeat performance, and this time around, a hand tightly around his neck.

He did not wear cufflinks to the office, but when Yennefer regarded him with a shameless once-over, he suddenly wished he did. Or just a sign around his neck that said “Witch prey, please hunt.”

Head in the game, you masochist. He wasn’t used to this kind of client at all. He was acting ridiculous.

“You’re easy on the eyes, yes. But can you look handsome and keep your mouth shut while I talk to important people?”

If your idea of fun is me keeping my mouth shut, we’re ill-matched, witch, Jaskier thought, but he nodded. “If that’s what you require of me, I will do that,” he hurried to say. 

Yennefer’s smile turned predatory. “And can you,” she purred, leaning over his desk on her arms and treating him to the sight of her tasteful and inviting cleavage, “make vapid conversation with boring people and be charming about it?”

“I can,” Jaskier asserted. Her perfume made him dizzy. For a moment, he thought of Geralt’s sumptuous cherry lube. That thought did not help.

Yennefer straightened and mercifully took the beguiling scent with her. “I’m warning you now, I will wear a low-cut dress,” she said. “If you stare, or disgrace me in any other way, I will end your career.”

Jaskier swallowed. Two. Thank you, Mistress.

“You’ll pick me up on Friday, at seven”, she ordered and nodded towards the open file on the table. “You have my address. Don’t wear the hat.” 

That damn hat he had worn for the video. Three. Thank you, Mistress.

Her gaze dropped to his crotch. “But maybe a jockstrap, if you’re always this excitable.”

Jaskier swallowed and nodded obediently.

Four. Thank you, Mistress.

And with that, she turned around and left his office, carrying herself like a goddess.

When the door closed behind her, Jaskier sat down, let his forehead rest against his desk and tried not to hyperventilate.

That must have been the first time that Jaskier was grateful for a reprieve after just four hits. And he didn’t even get a chance at literally receiving them. People like Yennefer looked at people like him like they could eat them alive for fun, but they would never, ever, do it. They just liked to know that they were adored.

Not that Jaskier had changed his mind about staying single. But if Yennefer had asked him to make amends at her feet, he probably would have said yes, unprofessional as it was.

He loosened his tie to get some deep breaths in.

Chapter Text

“What can I get you?”

“Just Death in a cup, please,” Jaskier murmured.

“Excuse me?”

“Caramel cappuccino,” Jaskier amended. “Please.”

“You don’t look so good.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“You know what I mean. You alright?”

“Sure.”

Jaskier watched Geralt’s hands work their magic. This time, he didn’t ask if Jaskier wanted his name on his cup. He just handed the cup over and took Jaskier’s money.

“Have a nice day, Geralt.”

“You too.”

In the door, Jaskier turned around again. He slowly walked back to the counter. He waited for Geralt to finish up with the girl who had been behind him in the line, then he said: “Hey.”

Geralt turned his head. “Hey again,” he said and smiled. It sounded like a question.

Jaskier fiddled with his coffee.

“You know, we could meet again,” he suggested. “We don’t have to get attached or anything, it’s just… I had fun last time.”

Geralt looked skeptical. “You sure?”

“Didn’t I look it?,” Jaskier asked and allowed himself a lopsided grin.

“No, I mean,” and Geralt grinned in turn, “Are you sure you won’t get attached. Don’t get me wrong, you’d know best, but you’re also…” He gestured vaguely.

Jaskier lifted his eyebrows. “I’m also what?”

“You know what they say about artists,” Geralt said. “You guys are supposed to be all… sentimental and delicate and whatnot.”

“Artists?” Jaskier frowned. Had he ever walked in with an instrument on his back since Geralt started working here? He didn’t think so.

“You’re a musician, aren’t you?,” Geralt asked. “Buttercup, or something.”

“Dandelion,” Jaskier corrected automatically. “You know my stuff?”

“Accident, I swear. I haven’t been stalking you or anything.”

“Hey Geralt,” Geralt’s coworker called from the side. “Double espresso and a hot chocolate with hazelnut syrup for Carol.”

Geralt got to work, but while his hands were crafting delicious-smelling drinks, he kept talking. “My… someone I know loves your stuff. She made me watch the video and listen to some of the tracks.”

“Did you like them?,” Jaskier asked eagerly. There was nothing he enjoyed more than direct feedback. Especially if it was positive.

“Sure,” Geralt said noncommittally. “But, if you don’t mind me saying-” He finished the hot chocolate and placed it next to the espresso. “-if you wrote that stuff yourself, I have a hard time believing you can be casual about many things.”

Jaskier looked down at his cup while Carol picked up her drinks.

“True.” Jaskier shrugged and decided to just go with the truth. “But I had a messy break-up some weeks ago and even if I tend to be… intense… a second hookup won’t get me all clingy, I promise.”

“Alright,” Geralt agreed. He looked relieved. “I’m glad. I had a lot of fun, too. Friday?”

“I can’t,” Jaskier replied. “I have to meet a client… how’s Saturday?”

“Can’t do Saturday or Sunday.” Geralt pulled a face. “Busy most weekends.”

“Oh, really? What do you do?”

“Geralt, medium sized latte with oat milk for Cheyenne and a Nutty Club Blend for Anna.”

Jaskier fidgeted with his cup. Geralt didn’t want to send him away, but he knew he was in the way and had to leave. “You know what, Monday at nine?” he suggested in a last ditch effort.

“Monday,” Geralt agreed and got back to work.

–

Friday rolled around. Canceling a date for a formal affair with two day’s notice was definitely a little rude, Jaskier found himself agreeing with Yennefer of Vengerberg there. He had borrowed his cousin’s car – his own car was nice enough to visit a client at home, but not nice enough for something like this – and was wearing his best suit. He was determined not to disgrace the witch or himself tonight, so maybe he would in fact spend most of the evening with his mouth well closed. And if he had owned a jockstrap, he would probably have put it on. He didn’t, so his prized self-discipline would have to do.

Yennefer lived in a small villa in Vengerberg, and Jaskier felt a bit queasy when he pulled up to the street in front of it.

There was lilac growing in the garden, and he suddenly realized that that was what the floral note in her perfume had smelled like. Did she make her perfume herself? Or did she just really love lilac?

Jaskier got out of the car and climbed the stairs to the ornate door.

Shortly after he had pressed the little button for the doorbell, the curtain that covered the diamond-shaped window in the door on the inside was pulled aside and he saw Yennefer’s face. 

Years from now, Geralt and Jaskier would finally tire of teasing Yennefer about the window, which was low enough that she could comfortably gaze outside – which meant that whenever one of them would answer the door to their shared home, they had to stoop down to look outside.

Yennefer smiled and closed the curtain again, and as she opened the door he found she had made good on her threat and put on a low-cut dress. It was tight and black and the slit in the calf-length skirt went to mid-thigh. Both the plunging neckline and the slit looked nothing short of professional, at least for a witch. And as such, they made Jaskier’s thoughts drift in a decidedly unprofessional direction.

She looked a little smaller even than she had looked in his office, which was explained when he looked down at her feet. She was wearing almost invisibly thin pantyhose, but not yet any shoes. He saw her delicate toenails, polished dark purple like her fingernails, the only bit of colour on her safe for her mesmerizing eyes.

He should have just bought a jockstrap.

“Good to go?,” she asked.

“This alright?,” he countered and turned around to show off his attire. She had not told him anything more than to dress up business formal, so he had carefully left his checkers and pinstripes at home. His white shirt set off his broad tie, light blue and tied extra fancily. It was plain-coloured and unassuming from afar, but beautifully textured with waves in Hokusai’s style that could only be made out from up close or in the right lighting. The pocket square matched it. His jacket and his dress pants were plain dark blue, and his shoes were black and shiny. To make up for the boring jacket, he had put on silver cufflinks that looked like conches.

She scrutinized him. “It will have to do,” she decided.

One.

No, shut up, Jaskier firmly told himself. This is not a game. You have legitimately fucked up, she is legitimately mad at you and for one fucking evening you will behave like a gentleman and make up for it.

“I brought another tie and different cufflinks, if this is too flashy”, he said carefully. “Like, grey and square, that kind of thing.”

She scoffed. “Grey? Not likely. This one is nice.” She slipped her small feet into a pair of stilettos, dangerously high and matte black again. Even in those, she barely came up to his chin. She stood on the heels perfectly and grabbed her white handbag from the chest next to the door. As she turned, he saw that the back of her dress was almost impossibly low cut, with a sparse silky lacing criss-crossing the elegant curve of her straight spine, her delicate shoulder blades. Accentuating her obvious lack of a bra.

Her hair, which had fallen onto her back at his office, was twirled up into an elegant knot and fixed with a single silver pin with a cut obsidian at the tip, perfectly matching the obsidian star on her necklace. 

“Shall we?”

He opened the car door for her, but drove silently instead of making conversation. She didn’t seem to mind, writing emails on her phone with both thumbs at a mad pace, her nails clicking on the screen like angry insects.

He breathed, and told himself he could be calm for a few hours and not behave like a hormone-driven teenager. Even if her presence made him feel as such. Must be her perfume, he decided. It’s beguiling me. She’s probably doing this on purpose. She looks like someone who enjoys playing with others.

–

“Marti! It is so lovely to see you again!”

Jaskier waited as Yennefer and yet another too-beautiful-to-be-nonmagical woman exchanged their greeting: three kisses, given to the air next to the other lady’s cheek. Every time this happened, Jaskier strained to keep his eyes away from Yennefer’s almost-naked back. The lighting at the venue, discreet enough to be flattering to almost everyone in the room, had a lovely way of accentuating the shoulder blades under Yennefer’s flawless skin. Jaskier thought of wings. He thought of running a hand over her spine, ghosting his fingertips over her neck. He thought of her whirling around to him, backhanding him in the face. Gripping his hair… biting his lip…

He gritted his teeth without dropping his smile. Head in the game…

“Lovely to see you , Yennefer, it’s been too long!” Marti sighed theatrically. “You haven’t met my escort yet, I expect. This is Bernhard of Velen. Bernhard, Yennefer and I go way back.”

Bernhard of Velen hinted at a kiss to Yennefer’s hand. “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” he droned.

“And this is Julian Alfred Pankratz, Esquire,” Yennefer introduced Jaskier, turning to him and imposing on him the challenge of ignoring her collarbones. And her cleavage and her face. This was getting arduous. He hoped at least she got something out of this. “In case you two have not yet had the pleasure.”

“We haven’t,” Marti replied and offered her hand to Jaskier, who gave the same hint of a kiss as Bernhard had. “Your father’s a lawyer too, isn’t that right? Pankratz, I’ve heard the name.”

“Marti Sodergren’s uncle is an attorney,” Yennefer explained with a sociable smile.

“It runs in the family in my case, I’m afraid,” Jaskier jested and gave Marti the tiniest wink. “My uncle is an attorney as well, as are my father and two of my siblings. We all work together.”

“Oh, the pressure must be immense,” Marti exclaimed.

“The Christmas parties at the office get interesting,” Jaskier replied, smiling diplomatically. The other three laughed politely and Jaskier cleared his throat. “But it’s really quite lovely to be part of a close-knit family. The work brings us all together.” He took a sip of his champagne to declare his contribution over.

“That sounds like a good concept,” Bernhard of Velen offered. “The merits of family business are underrated.” And he went on a tangent about economic shifts in postmodern society and whatnot. Jaskier listened and nodded and smiled and frowned at the right places. And he was glad when someone else spotted Marti and her escort and Marti had to excuse them and leave.

“Look at that, so you do have some manners,” the witch murmured.

Two.

Jaskier suppressed a shiver.

“Just to be completely honest with you,” Yennefer touched his shoulder and leaned in to him, an engaging smile on her face that didn’t match her words at all, “there are a lot of people with telepathic skills here tonight. Try not to upset them.”

Jaskier tried not to let his panic show, but he knew his smile must have come off slightly forced as he replied: “ They’re reading my mind without my consent and I’m upsetting them? ”

“Depending on your thoughts, yes,” she responded and looked around carefully. “If you continue on this track however, you should be fine.”

Jaskier took another sip of champagne to build some courage before he asked: “What do you mean, what track?”

“I am among the people with telepathic skills,” she said through her eerie smile. “I know what you were thinking about in your office, and I know what you’re thinking about now.”

Three.

Jaskier felt his face grow hot again, just like in his office. His self-discipline was limited to his actions, and, to some extent, his words. He had never been good at disciplining his thoughts. He looked away from her and tried to picture something else. A beachside. A mountain.

“No, no, none of that,” she chastised and touched his neck under his ear. It was just a whisper of a touch, a thought of fingertips rather than anything else. “I told you, it’s fine. In fact, keep thinking those lovely things about me, if you don’t mind. It sends the right message.”

“Is this why you asked me to escort you?” he whispered, freed from his panic, but still uncomfortable. “And why you’re telling me this now rather than in the car – to publicly fluster me? Because my thoughts about you send the right message ?”

“I told you to escort me.”

Four.

“As if I would ask you. As if you could say No to me.”

Five.

“And I chose you because you were available.”

Six.

“And I had no other use for the gigantic favour you owed me.”

Seven.

Yennefer’s smile, sharp at that point, softened again. “And then there’s my own thoughts.”

Jaskier stared at her, his mouth dry despite the champagne that was still in it.

“Would you like to see?”

She didn’t wait for an answer. She took her half-empty champagne flute in her other hand and linked arms with him. Her warm fingers touched his shirt sleeve, slid over the silver conch on his cuff and settled on the back of his hand. Through the physical contact she sent him a thought, or rather, an image.

He saw them both as if he were standing in front of them, as if he were an observer. They were standing right where they were, in their formal clothes, between the other guests of the fancy party.

The image moved and he saw himself sinking to his knees. He saw her putting a hand on his shoulder and his smart outfit just melted away, leaving him bare. He saw her kicking him onto his back with her stiletto on his chest, and then he saw her take the shoe off and lightly place her foot on his face.

He saw heads turning towards them curiously.

He could almost feel her delicate little toes on his lips, could almost taste the clean pantyhose and the intimate aroma of her skin, moisturized with almond oil, while she slipped her toes into his mouth.

The image vanished and Jaskier’s normal vision returned. He saw the witch smiling up at him dangerously.

“That’s what I’m thinking.” She turned around as someone approached them, but before they were close enough to hear, she said out of the corner of her mouth: “Maybe, if you’re good just like you have been until now, I’ll ask you if you want a coffee before you leave. Later, when you drop me off.”

Jaskier felt his heart lurch. So she actually planned on…

She let go of him and went to greet a pretty dark-haired woman and her square-jawed companion.

“Sabrina! It’s so lovely to see you!”

Jaskier swallowed heavily and plastered a smile on his own face.

I’ll be good. 

He kept a giddy laugh in. When he had come home some three weeks ago and half of everything had been missing, plus the person with whom he had shared his life for the last year and a half, he had thought maybe he was just cursed. The fourth break-up of his life, and every single time it had been him who was cast aside, every single time he had obviously been happier with the relationship than his partner. And he had never heard a reason beyond “This is just not working out”. This time, he had heard nothing at all.

He had meant what he had said to Essi. People gravitated towards him when they were heartbroken, and as soon as they felt better, they left. His designation as a heartmender would feel like a gift rather than a curse, if the hearts he mended were still his afterwards. But they never were.

But while love was maybe just not in the cards for him, right now, for some reason, fascinating people like Yennefer and that strange Geralt came into his life. And Geralt was right, he had a hard time being casual about anything, but if nothing else, their attention made him feel desirable, and that was nice in its own right.

Chapter Text

“Would you like a cup of coffee before you drive back to your cousin to give the nice car back?,” Yennefer asked while she unlocked the door.

“I’ll, I’d, I’d actually love that,” Jaskier stammered, grinning, while he followed her inside.

He heard her laugh.

The door fell shut behind him. For the first of many, many times.

She turned around in the hall and faced him. She smiled, and he felt like that was perhaps the first genuine smile he saw on her since they had arrived at the party.

“You were decent company tonight,” she said. He laughed and pretended to preen.

She reached up and pulled the elegant pin from her hair. It fell over her shoulders, luxurious raven locks that, as he now knew, smelled like lilac. “Did you have a good time?”

Jaskier scoffed and got ready to say No, of course not, it was a stuffy affair full of phony people, but then he reconsidered.

“You know,” he said, “I think I did.”

She twisted her mouth in an ironic smile.

“No, really.” He approached her, slowly. “It was stuffy, and I didn’t really like most of the other guests, but it was nice being at your side.” He stood three feet before her, looking down on her, smiling. “I didn’t even mind that much that you used me.”

Yennefer smiled like a wild cat. “And you seemed so scandalized at first.”

“I was, but…” He hesitated.

She lifted an eyebrow.

Fuck it, he thought. She can read minds. She knows what I’m thinking - with her little display there she even reassured me that she’s into it… “It was like a… like a really nice game,” Jaskier said, and his voice got away from him a little. The hard-on he had been fighting almost all night threatened to win. Jaskier let out a slow breath and relaxed his posture. Then he let his body just react. “And I liked it as soon as you said it wouldn’t end with me dropping you off.”

“The question may seem redundant,” Yennefer said. “But would you like to play some more, little songbird?”

The nickname – or perhaps the little – hit his newly relaxed mind like a flick to the cock and he breathed out a sigh. “Please,” he whispered. Would she really? Had he misjudged her – did she not just enjoy playing with him because she enjoyed playing with everyone? Would she actually quit the repartee and… play?

She looked into his eyes and a moment of silence passed. Maybe she was enjoying making him wait. Maybe she was reading his mind some more.

Just in case, Jaskier conjured up the scenario she had shown him earlier. Imagined lying on his back, in the middle of the crowd, her shoving him to the floor with her heel. Sucking her toes into his mouth without thinking. Considering, briefly, to bite open the pantyhose to get his tongue between them, but not daring to.

While he waited for her to react, he felt his blood rush south.

“I’d ask you for your boundaries, but such discussions take time,” Yennefer said. She made no move to show him whether or not she was actually reading his mind. “So I suggest I’ll just tell you, throughout, what I’m about to do, and you can tell me No whenever you need to.”

Jaskier opened his mouth, but he wasn’t sure what to say. She knew about his leanings. She knew what he had already done and enjoyed; depending on how deep she had looked into his thoughts she might even know about the things he wanted to try but hadn’t yet, because he hadn’t dared to or hadn’t thought his partner would enjoy them.

But telling her No. That was a thought he struggled with. Not that he didn’t have boundaries, but…

“You don’t have to say No, per se,” she said.

He grinned, sheepishly. “Apparently, I don’t have to say anything.”

“You are projecting your thoughts like a lighthouse, Pankratz. I’m not even trying right now.”

“Right.”

“I have a suggestion,” she said and closed the distance between them, looking up into his eyes. With her enchanting violet ones. The smell of her perfume again, earthier and more subtle than when she had opened the door some hours ago. She still didn’t touch him. His cock was all but pointing at her now, and she was so close, but not quite… “You don’t say No when you don’t want something, you say Mercy.”

“Like a safeword?”

“Like a way to tell me No without giving up your subordination. We’ll still need a safe word, though, for emergencies.”

“Can’t you just read my mind?”

Yennefer frowned. “You are not seriously trying to forgo a safeword with a dominant you don’t know, are you?”

“Never been with a mind reader before,” Jaskier muttered and looked at the floor between them. But yeah, put like that, it did sound fucking stupid.

“That’s not a sufficient safety measure,” she snapped. “Thinking about using the safeword and actually using it are different. Even a masochist with little experience like you should know that. You’re either agreeing to take responsibility for yourself, or you’re leaving my house.” She crossed her arms in front of her chest.

He met her eyes. She was so, so beautiful.

He was desperately hot for her. Right now he didn’t think he’d care if she never wanted to see him again afterwards, in this moment he just needed her, badly.

“I’ll do whatever you want,” he said. “If you’ll have me.”

“Then pick a fucking safeword.”

He thought fast. “Red?” he suggested.

She smiled minimally. “There you go. Now kneel.”

The order came so suddenly, and her voice changed pitch so little, that he was almost taken aback when his body obeyed immediately, like his muscles had just waited for her command. The knees of his dark blue slacks hit the ornate rug on her hallway floor. His eyes never left hers. By now, his cock was straining against the inside of his pants.

“I’ll tell you my rules then,” she said and gripped his chin with her small, strong hand. Tilted his head up, ungently. “Listen carefully.”

“Listening,” he said quietly. His hands were at his sides, he was balling them to fists, releasing them, digging the nails of his thumbs into the tips of his forefingers nervously.

“You do what I tell you to do, immediately. You don’t make me wait.”

“Okay.”

“When I tell you to do something, or not do something, you don’t say Okay. You say Yes, Yennefer. ”

“Okay. Yes, Yennefer,” he hastily corrected himself.

“No calling me Ma’am or Mistress or any of that. My honorific is my name, and you’ll use it.”

“Yes, Yennefer.”

“You don’t touch me unless I tell you to. You don’t cum unless I allow it. If you need a break, or you don’t want me to do what I’m about to do-”

“Mercy,” he tried to nod, but with his chin in her hand it didn’t work. “Red, if I need you to stop.”

“And that’s the only two words with which you may ever interrupt me,” she said sharply.

He gulped.

“Well?”

“Yes, Yennefer.”

She smiled down at him. A dangerous smile. Her fingernails, long and purple, dug into his jaw and chin as she gripped his face tightly.

“What’s the most painful thing you have experienced, so far, that you still enjoyed?,” she asked.

“Let me show you… Yennefer?,” he offered tentatively.

Her violet gaze bored into his and he let his eyes turn glassy as he remembered, in as much detail as he could muster, that time he had gotten drunk on Kahlua with Essi. In her new flat, on the couch she had stolen from her ex. She had stolen something else from him as well.

They had both been relatively freshly broken up, and as Jaskier was wont to do when he was heartbroken, he had met up with his oldest friend to mess around. To drink. Maybe fuck, or maybe not. It was always a bit embarrassing, afterwards, because they’d known each other so long and so well. It felt really close to incestuous. But it was also always a comfort, and a safety, and Essi was such a fun and generous lover and sometimes, sex with her was the only thing that really soothed the pain.

“He was into whips and stuff,” Essi had coughed after downing another shot of Kahlua. The liquor had been in her fridge, to make White Russians. But right now they weren’t drinking to enjoy the taste.

“Like, whipping you?,” Jaskier had asked while he had carefully filled the shot glasses back up. He tried to imagine Essi enjoying that. He couldn’t.

Essi had scoffed. “Whaddaya think? ‘f course not. I was, it was me, whipping him.” She got up and went to the wall of moving boxes that were still part of her living room scenery. “I stole one of ‘em when I moved out,” she snickered. “I’s really fun… Lemme see…”

While she had rummaged around the boxes, Jaskier had drunkenly gazed to the white ceiling and wondered how he had fucked up this time around. Too much romance? Not enough flowers? Too much music? But he’d always said he enjoyed listening to Jaskier play. And they hadn’t even lived together. The one good thing about breaking up after a mere year.

When a sharp whirring had sounded, Jaskier had looked up.

Essi had been giggling. “Look a’that,” she had slurred and flung a mean-looking leather whip around. It was a sturdy handle with a long, thick braided tail of several black leather strands, ending in a tousle.

“Whoooah,” Jaskier had croaked.

He’d known, back then, that he liked to be hurt. He liked to be manhandled. He especially liked to be bitten and scratched. But he had never tried anything like this. And his ex Radovid, who had been uncomfortable with lovebites because he didn’t want to hurt him, wouldn’t even have touched this implement.

The sight of Essi with the whip, and also – to no small extent – the alcohol had encouraged Jaskier to say something you’re not supposed to say to your best friend.

“I wanna try.”

“What?” Essi looked at him, distracted.

“Or are you too pissed to aim?”

Essi had considered him.

“You said it was fun,” Jaskier had said, defensively, lifting his hands. “And you know I… I like… it… rough.” He had forced the words out one by one; he had not been self-assured enough at that time to just say he was a masochistic little slut and be done with it. Thankfully, he was today.

“You wanna try it?” There had been a definite glint in Essi’s blue eyes when she asked.

And that was what he remembered now, what he showed Yennefer, who was, for the first time, his mind’s guest by invitation: him, stark naked, bent over Essi’s stolen couch. Essi had told him you never started with the hitting, so by the time she actually got to work with the whip, he had already cum once and his neck and chest were covered in lovebites.

Essi had always been excellent at biting and scratching, but that had been the day she had learned just how rough he liked it.

He remembered the feeling of the strikes. Brutal. Cathartic. Thrilling. Essi had aimed for his back, but in her sloshed state she had missed a couple of times, hit his ass, his thighs, the back of his arm once. He remembered looking down at his painfully hard cock, remembered thinking of Essi’s ex, who had loved this, and on whose couch Jaskier’s cock now dripped precum. Because he had been a cheating bitch and broken his best friend’s heart.

Every hit had made his cock jump. With every strike his back had gotten warmer, and he had felt dizzy, in a decidedly better way than the alcohol provided.

When the tail of the whip had hit the fold between his left buttock and the back of his thigh, he had hissed and cursed loudly. Essi had stopped, worried, and dropped the whip to check on him, but he had turned around and sat down on the couch, and when she approached, he had seized her by the hips and pulled her onto his lap. He had felt his heartbeat in the welts on his back, and had loved it so much he had felt a little lightheaded with it.

“Please say you’ll fuck me again, Essi,” he had pleaded, but only because he liked to plead. He knew she would.

She had kissed him, grinning, and reached for the box of condoms on the table.

Jaskier cleared his throat. “That,” he said, a bit hoarsely. “That was the worst so far, Yennefer.”

Yennefer kept staring into his eyes and Jaskier wondered what else she wanted to find out. But it was only a moment before she said: “I see.” She smiled. “We’ll stick to that benchmark.”

“Pity,” he murmured.

She picked up on it, because of course she did. But she wasn’t fazed. “You know, you’re a bit too inexperienced to have such a big mouth.” She let go of his chin and straightened.

“Are you going to do something about it?,” he asked, his heart hammering in his throat.

She didn’t ask if he meant the lack of experience or the big mouth. She just grinned, not unlike Essi when he had begged her. But then, completely different at the same time. “Oh yes.”

She turned around and went to the stairs. “Come,” she said, and he obeyed.

–

On the first floor, there were three doors. One stood open a tiny bit, but the room beyond was dark. One was closed, and on the closed door there was a poster of a horse, surrounded by postcard-sized cuttings of magazines. Passing the door, Jaskier saw that some of them showed fancy motorcycles while others showed characters from some Netflix show or other. Then there were some musicians. He recognized Paloma Faith and that flashy violinist he could never remember the name of, and was that Valdo Marx?

Yennefer led him to the third door, which had no handle. She touched it and he felt the ripple of magic when the door opened.

“Handy,” he murmured.

“My daughter is curious,” she said, and flashed him a smile over her shoulder. “That’s her room there. She’s with a friend tonight.”

“Great.”

“Yes, I had planned on bringing you home if you behaved,” Yennefer said, and she sounded every bit as cocksure as Geralt had.

He entered the room.

Chapter Text

Yennefer’s play room wasn’t big, but it was very well stocked.

So well, indeed, that he immediately wondered if Yennefer was doing this professionally on the side.

“No. Just an enthusiast,” she answered the unspoken question. “Don’t worry, I won’t take it out of your payment.”

Jaskier cringed. Of course Andrea had sent her an invoice for half an hour of Jaskier’s time. She was nothing if not meticulous, and even a referral was expensive in his line of work. He tried not to dwell on it – Yennefer was obviously well off.

“Now, why don’t you take these,” Yennefer handed him two hangers, “get out of that nice suit of yours, then kneel on that cushion there? I’ll get us some water in the meantime.”

As Yennefer left the room again, Jaskier hurriedly started to undress. She had only been speaking about his suit, so just in case, he left his pants on. When his attire was safely on the hangers and the hangers on the door, he still didn’t hear her footsteps, but he sat down on the indicated cushion in the middle of the room anyway. He considered squeezing his hard-on just once to take the edge off, but then he decided to just enjoy the edge for what it was.

He heard her rummage downstairs in the kitchen and used the time he had to let his gaze wander.

The walls were painted a dark wine red; the ceiling, with a single lamp providing subdued warm-white light, was white. The floor was polished wood. While he looked around, Jaskier noticed that here and there, heavy-duty metal rings were screwed into the wood, just big enough to thread a length of rope through.

The only furniture in the room was a big chest of drawers, a chair and a low, fancy wooden desk with a cushioned top. All three were of sturdy build, the same honey-coloured wood, and the thick cushioning on the table was black.

On the left wall there was an arrangement of ropes, hanging on hooks on the wall in neat coils. Most of them were of a rich purple colour, but there were also some black ones and a single white one. Her colours, as it seemed. Right next to them a single nail held a pair of gleaming safety scissors.

A big painting without a frame covered the back wall. It was a dark grey at the top and faded almost to white towards the bottom, and it was covered in ghostly, barely-there handprints. It looked a little eerie.

The right wall was empty, with the chest and the chair covering its length almost entirely.

By now, he wondered if Yennefer was just giving him time to take in his surroundings.

But why? To put him at ease? Or rile him up?

It would help if Jaskier knew what it in fact did to him, but he wasn’t sure yet.

“I’m back.”

The door closed behind Yennefer, and the click made Jaskier’s breath hitch.

She went around him, still in her high heels and her fancy dress, and put a tray on the chest. It carried a bottle of water and three jars, one of them filled with ice cubes, and a small bowl. Jaskier couldn’t see the contents of the bowl from where he was kneeling on the floor.

“It’s been a while since I played with someone I don’t know very well,” Yennefer said without turning around. “If I’m too rough, tell me.”

“I will.”

She turned around.

“...Yennefer,” he amended.

She smirked. “Also, do tell me if I’m not rough enough,” she ordered.

“Yes, Yennefer.”

“Well. Let me see what I’m working with.”

She circled him at a leisurely pace. The sharp clicks of her heels felt like pinpricks of promise, needled him with anticipation. He did his best to sit straight, pushed his chest out, let his shoulders fall.

“Hm, very nice.” She stopped in front of him, leaning back on the table. “Let’s start with something simple. Do you like being tied up?”

“Yes, Yennefer.”

“Good. I’m usually a fan of full-body bondage, ornamental stuff, but you look tasty and I’m hungry, so I’ll stick to the basics for now.”

It wasn’t a question. He swallowed and nodded anyway.

She took a coil of violet rope from the wall and said: “Wrists in front of you, a fist apart.”

With his mouth growing drier by the minute, he watched as she wound the rope around his wrists with poised movements. He suppressed a shudder, then he realized he didn’t have to suppress it. She would probably take it as a compliment, and rightfully so. He had never done this with someone so confident, someone who so obviously knew exactly what they were doing.

When she began to wrap the rope around the loose part of the coils between his wrists, they tightened like cuffs. Jaskier exhaled shakily.

“Excited?”

He huffed a nervous laugh. “Yeah.”

She struck his cheek, hard enough that it took a moment before the pain registered. Jaskier blinked and looked up at her.

“Yeah…?” she asked.

“Yennefer,” he hurried to say. His cheek was heating up. The pain already subsided again, but the moment of shock stayed with him. Made him giddy. He tried not to look at the prominent bulge in his pants.

Yennefer finished the binding with a complicated-looking knot.

“Struggle for me.”

He tried to move his wrists around. Nothing moved. He nodded, to himself or to her.

“Look at this.” She showed him one of the short tails left of the rope that hung from the strange knot.

He did.

“If the situation calls for it, you can open the bondage by biting down on this and pulling hard,” she instructed.

“Wow, you really take that whole safety thing seriously, don’t you? What’s supposed to happen?,” Jaskier asked a bit nervously.

“This.” She kicked him in the chest, exactly as she had shown him in her fantasy, and he fell onto his back.

He huffed indignantly.

“ This is what happens when you question me.” Yennefer stood over him and placed her foot on his chest. Her tiny heel dug painfully into his pectoral. “Since you wanted to find out so badly.” She began to twist her foot, scratching him deeply with the heel. “While I’m at it, I’ll show you what happens when you disobey me.”

She kicked his legs flat to the ground and pressed her foot between them. The toe of it rubbed over his hard cock with a delicious little grind, but then she pressed her pointy heel to his balls and he immediately started to whine.

“Doesn’t take a lot for you to break into song, hm?”

He tried to formulate a response, but he couldn’t. He just moaned helplessly, his bound hands searching for purchase on the smooth floor over his head. She was so confident. So competent. So superior. He felt weak, in the best of ways.

“Ah, I see. Too excited for banter. Well, if you’re not gonna be any fun talking to, you might as well shut up.”

“Yennefer-”

“Shut up.”

He closed his mouth. He closed his eyes, too, while he was at it.

“That’s our new rule,” she decided and lifted her shoe. He sighed in relief. “You only speak to say a safeword or when I ask you a question. But don’t worry.” She went to the chest and he heard her open a drawer. “You can still whine and moan to your heart’s content. Screaming is optional, but it is encouraged.”

He let his hips thrust upwards once, even if it didn’t bring any relief to the throbbing of his hard-on.

“And he’s already trying to fuck the air.”

He grinned stupidly. He was sure there was a big wet spot on his pants. Trust him to bring another tie and another pair of cufflinks, but not another pair of pants. He would have to drive home in these.

“Don’t think about leaving just now.”

He nodded with his eyes closed. He should just relax. Enjoy. Take whatever she wanted to give him. Because this was shaping up to become the best time of his life.

Suddenly he remembered Geralt’s weird mind trick that had made him fuck his own brains out some days ago. Well, one of the two best times maybe.

“I would like to play a game of trust.”

Jaskier opened his eyes.

Yennefer was standing over him, still fully clothed. Still with her collarbones on delicious display. With a big padlock in her hand. She bowed down and seized his wrists by the rope between them. With a surprising strength for her diminutive stature, she pulled Jaskier over the smooth floor like a sack until he was lying underneath the eerie painting. Yennefer locked the rope cuffs to the metal ring there and went back to the chest.

She came back with a thin bamboo cane in one hand.

“Spread your legs.”

He did. His head swam as the cloth over his cock was stretched.

“I will cane your thighs,” she said, giving the cane a little swish. It whirred.

Jaskier swallowed dryly. The trust, he understood, was to be put in both her abilities and her good intentions – not to hit his erection, leaking and vulnerable between his legs, or his balls, soft and sensitive.

Yennefer waited for a moment, but when Jaskier didn’t use their word, she smacked his inner thigh with the cane.

Essi had explained why you didn’t start out with the hitting. First, you had to build up the good hormones. Get started. Get in the groove. So that the pain could register as the pleasurable kind of pain.

But either Essi’s scumbag ex had just not known as much as he thought or someone had made that up, because Jaskier didn’t need snogs or orgasms first for this to register in exactly the right way.

Every hit on the sensitive skin of his inner thighs hurt like a bitch. But with the pain, at exactly the same moment, came tiny waves of euphoria, and the longer Yennefer caned him, the better it got. She started out with almost soft hits, hardly swinging the cane, and worked her way up slowly.

Jaskier, his hands balled to useless fists over his head, thought it was a good thing she hadn’t tried to ban him from making noise, because he could not for the life of him keep the moans and yelps in. The slow buildup meant that while Jaskier welcomed every beat with a hitch of his breath and a tightening of the lust in his lower abdomen, he also really hoped for every hit to be the last. And then again, he wanted her to never stop.

Lost in his enjoyment, he alternated between closing his eyes to savour the sensations and looking greedily at her while she worked, observing the play of the muscles in her slender arm and shoulder, silently cheering on the neckline of her dress as it slipped further down with every hit. He looked at the obsidian necklace. He looked at her black lashes, her black locks. Her violet eyes, filled with concentration and lust.

Then, all of a sudden, something touched his cock.

“No!”

His whole body convulsed and he felt his legs twitch inward protectively.

They stared at each other.

She had tapped his hard-on with the cane, lightly, just in tact with her hits. Barely touched it, really.

“Hm.” Yennefer straightened. “I see. So you don’t trust me. And you don’t respect my orders.”

He bit his lip. “Sorry, Yennefer,” he whispered. His voice shook. He was not entirely sure that the shock hadn’t pulled a tiny, ruined orgasm from him.

“What did I say about speaking?” She looked down at him, coldly.

He pulled his lips between his teeth and tried to look as sorry as he could without speaking.

“And what did I say about answering questions?”

Jaskier’s heart jumped into his throat. Right! “You said to answer, and you said not to speak otherwise, Yennefer,” he hurried to say.

She looked at him.

If you don’t let me cum really soon, I’ll break another one of your rules, he thought pitifully. Without you ever really touching me. How embarrassing.

“I’m not reading your mind right now,” she said without changing her pose or her tone in the slightest. “I don’t want to hear it.”

He closed his eyes and tried to breathe himself back into control.

“Spread your legs.”

He obeyed slowly.

“This needs to go,” she decided. “Don’t mistake this for a reward.” She touched his pants, and she must have used magic, because she didn’t work them down his legs, but a moment later, she had them in her hand and he was finally, gloriously naked.

He didn’t need to look to know his cock must look desperate. Red, wet, bobbing upwards.

Yennefer put his pants on the table and looked at his thighs for a moment, probably admiring her handiwork. She scratched over the reddened skin with the heel of her left shoe, and he whimpered.

“Would you like me to step on your cock again?” she asked, almost sweetly.

He scoffed to gain some time. How was he supposed to answer that?

“Take your time, make up your mind,” she taunted.

“I… would probably like it, Yennefer,” he finally admitted, looking past her at the ceiling.

Yennefer laughed cruelly. “Good answer, songbird. Very good.”

His cock jumped.

“Since you’re so green, I’ll tell you a little secret,” she offered and stepped on his cock. This time, there was no fabric between her heel and his skin, and she didn’t poke his balls either. She just bowed his cock upwards with the tip of her shoe and then pressed it to his belly. He felt it splutter a bit of precum and he felt so gloriously pathetic it was making him dizzy.

“Most doms have a favourite answer to all questions of that kind,” Yennefer explained without letting up. He tried very hard to listen and retain, but he had already forgotten what she was explaining. He nodded nonetheless.

“And it’s one of two.” She pressed her foot down. The pressure began to hurt. Jaskier gasped and tried not to whine.

“It’s either ‘Yes please’ or ‘If it pleases you.’” Jaskier felt his glans swell with the blood she pressed from his shaft and heard a rushing in his ears, but he was not a bit afraid. Yennefer, that much was obvious, knew exactly what she was doing. How far she could go. He was safe.

So safe.

His cock leaked some more drops onto his belly.

“But you know, I like surprises.” She finally lifted her shoe and Jaskier felt the blood stream back with a vengeance. He wailed, open-mouthed and lost, and it was all he could do not to cum on the spot.

“And I was very surprised to hear you lie to me,” she said. “What do you mean, probably. You knew you were going to like it. Still playing coy, then.”

Jaskier fought his eyes open and stared at her. Willed her to hear him think Please let me cum.

“Liars get punished,” she said lowly. She kneeled down next to him and began opening the padlock. While she was close, he drank in her scent in greedy gulps. He could smell her lust. A hint of sweat, and also a subtle, but distinct waft of eager pussy.

Yennefer got up and pointed to his wrists. The rope, which was obviously magical or at least responding to her magic, pulled him upwards slowly, forcing him to sit, then to stand.

Naked and leaking, his arms stretched high over his head, he stood before her.

“Have you ever been edged, songbird?,” she asked conspiratorially.

He winced as the question brought him back to his night with Geralt. That had been different than this, but… a very similar brand of enjoyable.

But right now? After all her teasing? After the evening of her parading him around as her horny sidepiece? He looked up and shook his head, his mouth in a desperate frown. Please don’t do this. Please don’t do this.

But beneath all that, at the very core of his being, something greedier and unashamedly pathetic was hoping she would disregard him. Do it. Do it. Do it.

“Somehow, I doubt that was an answer to my question,” she said and her slight smile vanished. “Have you, or have you not, ever been edged, Jaskier?”

Jaskier took a deep breath, then he said: “A few times. But I’m not very good at it… Yennefer.”

She chuckled dastardly. “No, of course not.”

Jaskier opened his mouth to object to the way she had said that, then he remembered his place in this devious game, and he closed it again.

“He can be taught,” she smirked.

His cock jumped. And dribbled on the floor pathetically.

Yennefer laughed at him. “And he likes it, too.”

Jaskier closed his eyes. The burning shame at the bottom of his stomach made the lust even sharper, and the way she talked about him as if someone else were present, someone as superior to Jaskier as herself, sent his mind reeling. Usually, one night stands were far from perfectly hitting the mark for him, but the mind reading business really made a difference, he guessed. Magic, in any way, really. Like Yennefer, Geralt had also had some special abilities that made him… different.

Jaskier briefly wished he had something like that to offer.

“You’re thinking too much. Head in the game.”

He nodded without looking at her. She was right. Comparing was nonsense. The night with Geralt had been terrific, and this was terrific as well. He settled into his submission to her, tried not to think about Geralt for now, not to give her the wrong idea by thinking of someone else.

“If you think about it, I have hardly done anything to you yet,” Yennefer said. “Even though you might feel differently. Still, time to change that. Time for me to get some fun out of you.”

She pointed at his wrists again, and Jaskier was lifted into the air like a string puppet and then deposited on the cushioned table on his back.

Without any hurry, Yennefer wrapped his ankles in ropes as well and had both fetters stretch him out over the table.

“I call this one the sailing boat,” she joked, tracing the tense line of his body from knee to elbow, then touching the wet tip of his erection. She got something else from the chest and when she returned, she was unwrapping a condom. She smirked at him while she made to put it in her mouth, but he shook his head frantically.

“Are you trying to tell me you’ll cum if I put this on you with my mouth?” she asked.

He gritted his teeth. “Probably, Yennefer,” he managed.

She leaned over him and, to his surprise, gave him a sweet kiss on the cheek. “Thanks for the warning, songbird.”

She lifted her free hand and he saw her concentrate on something – a spell perhaps – then she grabbed his swollen cock at the root.

Jaskier gasped for air when something seemed to press his lungs together.

Yennefer put the condom in her smiling mouth and bowed over the table, and Jaskier couldn’t see because her black locks were like a curtain, but he could feel her roll the condom down his length with her lips and tongue, and he could feel her hot mouth, and he wanted to cum, and he would have cum, but whatever compressed his lungs compressed everything else as well, and when Yennefer let his cock slide out of her hot mouth with a satisfied sound, he clenched his ass and tried to cum, but he couldn’t. He just couldn’t, the spell stopped him short.

Yennefer waited for him to calm down before she let go of his erection and the feeling vanished.

Jaskier’s hips twitched upwards.

Yennefer climbed on the table and reached underneath her skirt. “This is where I must part with your beautiful blue eyes for a bit, songbird,” she said and pulled her panties over his face, making sure the part that smelled best was right over his nose. “This sight needs to be earned.”

Jaskier blinked in the semi-darkness of his new vision. Some light still pierced the thin fabric; he could see shapes and movement. He saw and felt her climb over him, not bothering to take her dress off, just gathering it around her hip.

“How do I earn it?” he asked, although by now he should have known better.

“Not by talking,” she replied and painfully squeezed his thigh with her pointy fingernails as punishment. “Hush.”

Jaskier breathed deeply. It did not really help to settle him down, thanks to the soaked panties on his face. He would have expected them to smell strange, for her to have used some kind of magic to make her fluids smell like lavender or something. It sounded like something sorceresses might do. But Yennefer’s panties smelled perfectly natural and painfully alluring. Eau de Horny Lady, unaltered.

“Sorry to break scene,” she suddenly said and halted her movements. “But I want to check in with you.”

“I’m fine,” Jaskier answered immediately. “Please don’t stop.”

“I know that , silly,” she replied. “It’s just – I don’t know how you feel about magic in this context. I’ve been told it can be disappointing.”

Jaskier tried not to jerk his hips upward. “Can you be clearer?”

“After you cum, I can cast a spell to get you hard again instantly. You will be very sensitive, though.”

Jaskier groaned and his hips bucked of their own accord. “What could be disappointing about that?”

“Let’s talk later,” Yennefer said, obviously satisfied with his reaction, and then her free hand came around his cock and held it while she sank down.

Both of them moaned, she with satisfaction, he with gratitude. Her pussy was so warm, and so tight, and it felt so good it had to be forbidden, although it might not have been the feeling of being inside her alone; both the makeshift blindfold and her bossy conduct amplified all sensation to eleven. He threw his head to the side and moaned again when she lightly clamped him with her inner muscles.

Yennefer giggled. “You’re a feast for the eyes, you know that?”

So he had misjudged her. Thoroughly. She was… sweet. As well as superior.

Jaskier blushed – when was the last time he had blushed? – and tried to shrug in his bindings. “I would return the compliment,” he said, “but apparently I haven’t earned-”

Her shape over him made a quick movement and suddenly, both his nipples were being twisted by sharp fingernails. He keened and reared up to lessen the pull, but it hardly helped. 

“Seems you forgot all those nice manners you learned,” Yennefer cooed and Jaskier silently cursed himself… and got too distracted to keep his hips from bucking up again, this time with the effect of fucking hard into Yennefer.

She moaned, and if he hadn’t been convinced by then that Yennefer did not feel the need to make anyone feel good about themselves, he would have thought it a touch too pornographic to be honest.

Next he knew, the pain in his nipples was accompanied by her knees squeezing his hips so hard it hurt. “You’re not in charge here, songbird,” she reminded him a bit breathlessly.

He nodded and kept still, and slowly, her knees and fingernails lessened their pressure and then vanished completely.

“Will you be good and hold still while I take my pleasure from you?,” she asked sweetly.

“I’ll be good, Yen,” he gasped.

Her pussy clenched hard around him. She didn’t move.

What did he do wrong?

“Yennefer,” he corrected himself. “I meant Yennefer, I’ll be good, Yennefer, please…”

“Shh. Stop talking now.”

She began to move. She needn’t have told him to stop talking, because all words failed him when she rode him ruthlessly, leaning onto his chest, moaning without shame or reservation.

All Jaskier could do was try not to cum, and from their brief check-in, he knew that was a losing battle. But he also knew that that was alright. Sex with Yennefer, he decided while he neared his inescapable climax, was like a bath in hot milk. Luxurious, relaxing, and he already knew he would want it again. He only hoped that so would she.

Yennefer must have noticed when he was getting close again, but she was relentless.

“You’re not coming, are you?” she paused to ask.

With clenched teeth, he shook his head, and knowing that he would, he really would break and cum, and really, she wanted him to break, was so delicious. He felt the salaciousness of it to the tips of his toes.

She slammed herself down on him and hummed to herself in pleasure, almost like someone eating something delicious.

Her smell filled his nose.

His hands and feet flexed in their ropes, and he could not get away, not if he tried, not if he wanted to.

If she had lied, and she actually planned on edging him some more with her magical fingers, there wasn’t a blasted thing he could do about it.

“Yennef-”

“Unless you’re crying Mercy,” she started, but the bouncing did take her breath away, and she didn’t finish the sentence. Not that she had to.

“I… I…”

She didn’t let up.

He couldn’t hold back. He couldn’t. In a last ditch effort, he clamped his teeth into his lower lip and held his breath, but that only made him cum faster.

“S-Sorry,” he managed, and then he was coming.

She climbed off of him even while it was happening. His dick, until just now being massaged by her hot pussy, was rudely exposed to the air, and as he filled the condom with a shout through his teeth, his balls drew tight, but afterwards came no relaxation.

“And what do I do with you now, hm?”

Jaskier tried not to laugh, not to break the scene, but the ruined orgasm left his self-control in tatters. He was euphoric and pained and needy and everything was a little bit too much. It was true, he thought dimly while she peeled the condom off his softening cock, she had not done a lot to him. But if she had done more, this would probably have been over much faster.

Still with his face in her panties, he grinned to himself stupidly. More, Yennefer, please more, please don’t stop.

“Don’t stop what?” she snapped. She sounded furious, but he knew what kind of passion really painted her voice. She gripped his soft cock in her hand, not brutally firm, but definitely harder than was comfortable. “Useless little thing,” she scolded him venomously. “Is that any way to thank me after I’ve been so generous?”

“N-No, Yennefer,” he managed and finally stopped grinning. “I… Sorry, Yennefer.”

“Is that all you have to say to me?” She plucked her panties off his face with her free hand, never letting go of his cock.

“Please give me a chance to make it up to you,” he pleaded.

“With this?” She lightly shook his limp cock. It stung, in more ways than one. Jaskier wondered if it should feel bad, but with the knowledge that everything right now was going according to her plan and she must secretly be beyond pleased, all he felt was giddy disbelief in his own luck.

Mages were usually so unapproachable. So haughty. So disinterested.

She was none of that. She was sweet… she was…

Jaskier tried not to overthink it.

“You could sit on my face,” he suggested.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?,” she hissed.

“I would, Yennefer,” he replied, and he met her violet eyes. Her smoldering violet eyes. She smelled… so tasty. So horny. So happy. “Please, I’ll make it good for you?”

She stared at his mouth for a moment and he licked his lips. He could only barely fight down the reflex to hang out his tongue, like he would if he were asking to suck off a man.

“You’re pathetic, you know that?” she asked, and she sounded fond.

“Yes, I know, Yennefer,” he said quietly. His thoughts started to float.

“I have another idea.”

She climbed back onto him and straddled his hips again, and then she started to make a gesture with her right hand. He looked down at her hand in fearless expectation, and when she moved it around his softened cock like she was stroking it, but not quite touched it, he felt something hot and aching stir in his belly.

“Oh… Yenne-”

“Still talking without permission?” She didn’t interrupt her spell while she asked. “Do you want to be spanked over my lap so badly?”

He couldn’t help but chuckle breathlessly, but the sound tapered off into a moan when his cock filled back in in soft waves, bobbing upwards, no less sensitive for it. He felt his balls swell and his shaft prickle, and he had an idea that he would probably be good for another full round, physically… but with his ruined orgasm just now, he would be painfully sensitive.

“Yes, Yennefer,” he said while she built him up again, “I would like you to spank me. It’s one of the first things I thought about when we first met…” He took a chance that she didn’t actually dislike him talking, depending on what he said. Because if he could talk, if he could distract himself, maybe he could survive round two with some vestige of dignity left. Or – if he were being honest to himself – maybe he could give her back some of the mind-melting pleasure she supplied him with.

“You’re such a masochist,” she scolded him while she put a fresh condom on him, this time mercifully with her fingers. She didn’t sound angry, though. She sounded… she sounded exactly like Geralt had sounded. “No discipline, indeed. You really have dick for brains when you’re riled up, don’t you?” In that tone. Awe and enthusiasm, gleefully degrading him in the most-

“Can you stop that?” she asked, sharp in a different way all of a sudden. “You keep thinking about some other person. And I’m trying really hard to be discreet here and not learn their name or anything, but it’s kind of hard with you always comparing us.”

Jaskier gulped. “Sorry, sorry. Really. It’s not… it’s a compliment, really. He kind of blew my socks off last week. But I shouldn’t compare, you’re right. I just…”

“Well,” she said and gripped his now fully hard cock ungently. “Right now it’s me blowing your socks off, so if you don’t mind-”

“Yennefer!”

She sat down on him and immediately, her pussy cruelly clenched down on him.

“Are you with me right now?”

“Yes, Yennefer.”

“Open your eyes.”

He did.

She was sitting on top of him, perched triumphantly like a queen on her prize steed. When he met her gaze, she smiled.

“You will be spanked, thoroughly. Some other time,” she promised. “Right now you’ll be good and fuck me. Right?”

And she sat up a little and snapped her fingers over her shoulder. The ropes on his ankles slowly drew his feet in, bending his legs, giving him leverage.

“Come on, be a good little songbird and entertain me.”

Jaskier planted his feet and tensed his stomach, and then he started slowly, carefully fucking her with upwards thrusts of his hips.

Her pussy felt exactly as impossibly good as the first time she had sat down on him. He moaned and gasped as he fucked her, and so did she. He pressed his eyes closed, but she lightly slapped his cheek as soon as he did it.

“Eyes on me.”

He looked at her. At her neckline, now more of a breastline, her obsidian star.

“Good.”

She began to carefully pull her dress over her head, the silky laces from the back catching in her raven hair while she did it. When she was naked, her hairdo was a charming mess.

“Have I… earned…?” he huffed, but he didn’t dare to stop fucking her.

She laughed and her ropes pulled him flat again, taking the leverage from him, leaving him with nothing more than the ability to buck his hips if he was so inclined. “Yes,” she breathed and threw her dress to the side.

She was glorious above him, her silky skin spanning over her flat belly in a way that looked just kissable, and her small breasts bounced when she started to ride him again, perky, smooth-skinned, with nipples so light only the minimal shadows they cast made them visible. They, too, looked kissable. Lickable. Nibbleable. Was that a word?

Jaskier lost his train of thought.

“If I knew my tits would shut up your brain, I would have undressed sooner,” she grinned through a moan.

Jaskier huffed a laugh, and then he just threw his head from side to side, moaning whorishly while she rode him.

“Talk,” she pressed out between moans and soft cries.

“Can’t,” he whined back.

She struck his cheek again, harder than before.

He felt his balls contract.

“Talk,” she hissed, and her hands found purchase on his chest, her fingernails clawing his nipples. Even with his head swimming, he noticed he had been right: she did like to hear him talk. Sometimes.

“Ooooh, Yennefer,” he moaned. “Don’t stop. Please.”

“I won’t… if youuu… talk!”

“I can’t, you’re killing me,” he whimpered. “I already came once…”

She made an impatient noise between her sounds of pleasure, and then she seemed to remember her powers, and she just thought at him. And whose fault is that, hm, songbird?, her voice asked in his head, mockingly, while her real mouth was busy expressing her appreciation in less verbal ways.

Mine, mine, he conceded and lent his voice to his pleasure as well. It’s my fault, I couldn’t hold back. You’re just so beautiful… so poised… you make me feel so out of my mind.

More than the other guy?

Different. You’re different from each other. And both… so… good…

“Good?” Do you want me to stop?

No, please, please, Yennefer, don’t stop. I’m, I meant to say, you’re glorious, and please don’t stop, please keep riding me until I black out- Jaskier bit his lip. It was really hard to filter what he thought at her, much harder even than filtering spoken words.

Until you black out?,   she asked, amused, and actually she was rearing up on top of him, fondling her own breasts with one hand, tweaking her nipples. Her other hand was between her legs, her dishevelled locks jumping and flowing around her head like black fire. She looked like a goddess again, like a lusty demoness right out of a dream, and- That’s more like it, Yennefer thought, and even her telepathic voice moaned. I knew you could do better… after all, you’re a poet.

Then Jaskier came shouting, and she came with him, and she moaned and clamped down on him and milked him of all he had left to give.

For a while, he just floated. His heartbeat was in his ears, and at first it was frantic, but then it calmed, like sea waves. Jaskier listened. He had closed his eyes again, and he kept them shut while Yennefer carefully sat up and slowly let him slide out of her with a contentéd sigh, then climbed off the table.

He was still breathing with the imagined waves in his head when Yennefer gently pulled the condom off, put it away and opened the knots. Manually, no magic tricks. She must really like playing with the ropes, he thought dimly. He felt himself smile.

“Sit up.”

He blinked.

She had dimmed the light, just enough that it didn’t blind him as he opened his eyes. He pulled himself up onto his ass and put his feet on the floor. The table was the perfect height for sitting on it comfortably, and he briefly wondered if it was a really big coffee table or if Yennefer had commissioned it for her playroom specifically.

As soon as he sat, she handed him a glass of water with an ice cube floating in it.

“Drink that.”

She sat down next to him, and she, too, drank water. Then the bowl appeared, and she offered him something that looked like chocolate truffles.

“Blood sugar gets low,” she explained.

He nodded and took a truffle. It tasted divine, and sure enough, his dizziness – that he had just taken for a symptom of sexual gratification – subsided almost immediately.

He grinned. “You really know your stuff.”

She ate a truffle and smiled at him.

“Did you have fun?”

“Didn’t I look it?” Jaskier asked, but when she frowned, he remembered her policy about mind reading and safewords, and understood she probably expected something more candid. “I had a tremendous amount of fun,” he assured her. “Did you?”

“Absolutely.” She drained her glass and set it aside, and then she touched Jaskier’s cheek. “That was lovely. Thank you for trusting me with this.”

Jaskier didn’t dare tell her that she had made him so horny that he had probably not been thinking clearly when he had. But with how worthy she had shown herself to be of his trust, it hardly mattered, didn’t it?

“Thank you for not betraying my trust.”

She smiled, and took his empty glass from him.

“What did you mean when you said…” Jaskier hesitated. He’d had more flings, more one night stands, more friendships with benefits than he could count, but there were just… there were no general rules for all of this. Every time it had to be negotiated anew, and the next opportunity for, at best, embarrassment, and at worst, heartbreak, was never far. “You said you would spank me some other time.”

“Oh, I was just…” Yennefer made an off-handed gesture. “You don’t have to take that seriously,” she said. “But you could.”

She met his gaze, and like the very first time they had met – which had only been two days ago, he had to remind his sex-addled brain – he had the impression of a woman who knew exactly what she wanted and how to make everyone else agree that she should have it.

“You mean, you would like to meet up again?” he asked. He went for casual, but he knew he sounded hopeful.

“I would like to,” she said. “I don’t do relationships anymore, and I’m told I’m not much of a friend. But I do like to have a steady sub. One night stands are exhausting, especially if you’re kinky. Having to negotiate first every time you want to play. And, just to be perfectly clear with you, I don’t expect you to be exclusive with me.”

That last part did surprise him. “But you didn’t like when I-”

“I don’t like it when you think about someone else while you’re with me,” she clarified. “But while you’re not, do as you like. I don't plan on being strictly exclusive with you, so I will not expect you to.”

He nodded slowly. “I… I would really like that, I think.”

“No romance, no friendship. I don’t want you to bring flowers, or meet my daughter,” she said resolutely. “You’re handsome, and a smooth talker, and a good lay, and a proper masochist. And I have leverage on you so I know you won’t blabber around about me. That’s why I want you.”

Jaskier felt his cheeks heat. He knew she wasn’t trying to turn him on right now, but god, she really did. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he promised.

“Good. Also keep in mind that as soon as one of us is done with this for some reason, it ends, respectfully, without argument or any kind of drama.”

“Of course.” He cleared his throat. “Do you kiss your steady sub?” he asked. “Just curious. Just so I don’t… well, everyone’s different about that.”

“Sometimes,” she said and she smiled a bit haughtily. “In your case, I haven’t decided yet.”

“Give me a sign,” he replied. “No pressure, just, I really like kissing.” He ate another truffle. They really did do immense good.

Yennefer filled his glass again.

“You used your powers to keep me from cumming without asking first,” Jaskier suddenly remembered. “But you asked before you did your little… hm…” He mimed something that she luckily identified right away.

“Nobody ever minded the former,” Yennefer answered, and she sounded cooly sincere. “But I did get some indignated feedback about the latter. So now I ask.”

“Do guys get ashamed of their cock needing a break?,” Jaskier asked stupidly.

“Bi guys don’t, usually, and I suspect neither do the gay ones, although I wouldn’t know,” Yennefer mused. “But yes, some people whose dick is the only dick that’s part of their sex life think employing magic in this way is shameful, even if I try to convince them otherwise.”

She said it carefully and sensitively, and Jaskier couldn’t help but notice she treaded very lightly there, surprising him again. She seemed like the kind of woman to shame people, but maybe that was just a facade. Or maybe…

Jaskier wondered if she had always been like this. Or if she had just learned a lot.

They sat and relaxed in companionable silence for a while, and then she asked if he felt fit to drive.

He did.

They said goodbye with a short hug at her door, and he drove away, his body pleasantly sore and his thoughts adrift.

Chapter Text

In the three months that followed, Jaskier felt better every day.

The breakup had been hard on him, especially because this time, he wasn’t given any chance to talk it out – she had gone without saying goodbye on purpose, after all, and the fact that she had never picked up her phone or answered his texts spoke to the finality of her decision – but he had made peace with it.

A month after first meeting Geralt, he sent a final text to his ex, under all his read, but never replied-to requests for calling, or meeting up, or being fair. Just to finish that up.

I had a good time with you, he wrote. I don’t like that you feel like you can’t even tell me where we went wrong, but it’s alright. I’ll stop texting you now. Take care. Then he just archived the conversation, and that was that.

“You’re way too kind to her, you know,” Essi said when he told her.

“That’s me,” he replied easily. “Not a mean bone in my body.”

“It really is, hm?” Essi took a sip of her coffee and made an appreciative sound. “You’re right, that is delicious.”

Jaskier had picked up coffee at Geralt’s workplace before coming over to Essi’s.

Despite Geralt’s reservations at first, when Jaskier had shown no signs of over-attachment after their second hook-up, he had permitted a third. And then another. And finally, he had asked Jaskier if he wanted to “keep doing this”. Like Yennefer, he preferred the term sub and dom for what they were to each other, because like her, he didn’t think of himself as a very good friend, and was not looking for a lover. By now, meeting up regularly with both Yennefer and Geralt had become fixtures in Jaskier’s life. And it felt so, so good to just play. He never brought Yennefer flowers. He never met her daughter. And he never overstayed his welcome at Geralt’s place.

Both his doms – every time he thought about them as such, Jaskier felt a giddy surge, even after months – knew that there was one other, but he never talked about them to each other. He got better at controlling his thoughts around Yennefer, and he found that Geralt minded less than Yennefer when he had traces left from playing with her.

They were so different, in the way they played, but Jaskier could not for the life of him figure out if he liked one of them better than the other.

Yennefer was demanding, she disciplined him. She liked to tie him up, she liked to hit him with her paddle, her flogger, her cane or her whip. She plugged him with gusto, and, funnily enough, used the same luxurious lube as Geralt. And once she had put a pair of nasty silver high heels on him and made him stand straight-backed while she let candle wax drip over his shoulders. While the feminization aspect did little for him, the physical exertion of standing in the uncomfortable shoes had been positively torturous, and the fact that she must have bought the shoes for him specifically – why else would she own a pair his size? – excited him more than a little. She still sometimes read his mind, but it decreased the longer they knew each other. He found out that she actually didn’t like to do it during sex or playing, save for their telepathic talks while their physical mouths were busy. They talked more about limits and she made him write what she called a red list. She was a service dom, in a lot of ways, and introduced him to everything he expressed curiosity about, although it was very clear where her own preferences lay: rope bondage and edging. Jaskier had gotten better at that. Sitting silently together afterwards, drinking water and eating chocolates, was their kind of afterglow. He never learned a lot about her.

Geralt didn’t use implements, or ropes. He had a simple pair of leather cuffs that he liked to put on Jaskier occasionally, but mostly it was just him and Jaskier and the cherry lube. He introduced Jaskier to breath play, and his way of degrading Jaskier was very different from Yennefer’s. He never minded when Jaskier struggled, or gave lip. He didn’t punish Jaskier, just constricted him physically until he had exhausted himself, or wrestled him down and contorted him to the point of pain until he went still. And when Jaskier talked back, Geralt mostly just laughed at him and fucked him into submission. He didn’t make him write lists, and the only verbal etiquette he demanded was that Jaskier pick a safeword, and when Jaskier had jokingly suggested “Harder, Daddy”, Geralt had been put off and told Jaskier, in no uncertain terms, that they might as well use that, because as soon as Jaskier called him Daddy during sex, they would be done. Jaskier had blanched, and said Sorry, and was Red okay? Red was okay, as it turned out, and so Jaskier had saved himself the risk of using the wrong safeword with the wrong dom in the heat of the moment. And decided not to probe Geralt about his relationship with his father, because it was obvious that he was a very private person. Their little talks in between bouts of fucking and playing and wrestling never went deeper than work and culinary preferences.

Yennefer was strict with everything, she made him count her hits and beg and thank for every single orgasm, and always use her name.

Geralt was generous with everything, with the hits, the manhandling, the fucking, the orgasms and the insults.

–

Jaskier knew it was a common phenomenon – Essi said that’s how it went a lot of the time – that subs fell for their doms, even without a lot of knowledge about each other, simply because of the trust exercises and the oxytocin and the orgasms. He also knew it was a common phenomenon for him to fall in love with his “casual” flings.

So he was really unsurprised when one day, he came home from work, feeling dejected and empty, and he found that he would like to call Geralt, not to play, just to… sit and watch Netflix, maybe.

And, right on the heels of this thought, came the even more absurd wish to call Yennefer, ask to take her out for food and wine, somewhere cozy, just to talk.

He told himself he didn’t mind. He knew that right now, he had no intentions of starting any romantic relationship, with either of them, or with anybody else. So what harm was there in a little raving in the privacy of his own head? He just couldn’t let it get out of hand. So, no, he would obviously not call one of his doms. He would do what a sensible grown-up did when they came home to no one and nothing and felt dejected: he poured himself a glass of wine, ordered pizza and stared into the TV.

And then his phone chimed.

I have an unexpected evening off, read the text Yennefer had sent him. Would you like to drop by?

Jaskier was just considering if simply going to Yennefer’s for sex would maybe get the edge off his feeling of emptiness, when his phone chimed again.

Found some surprise free time, Geralt wrote. The three dots signifying he was typing popped up and immediately vanished again. You busy?

Jaskier stared at the two chats.

What now?

It was like his grandmother had said to his cousin Freddie when last Christmas, she had come out to the family as both gay and polyamorous, showing up with her two girlfriends in tow. 

“Oh, it’s so nice there’s no bad blood between you,” his well-meaning granny had cooed to the two young women, “but Freddie, darling, they’re both so lovely… how will you decide who to keep?”

“I don’t have to decide,” Freddie had replied patiently. “That’s kind of the point, granny.”

I don’t have to decide , Jaskier told himself staring at the texts, I could meet up with one of them, or neither, and it would still not be a decision, as such. Still, he felt like he was standing at a crossroads.

So, who to keep? Who to put off? Which invitation to accept?

And deep in his too soft, too romantic heart, that wanted to scream at the thought of choosing one over the other, he decided he could not do this.

He opened his chat with Yennefer.

I’m not in a great mood. Don’t know that I’ll be too much fun, he typed.

Then he switched to his chat with Geralt and typed the same.

Neither am I, Yennefer replied. Maybe we can cheer each other up?

I don’t mind, Geralt replied. Can’t imagine you not being fun really.

Jaskier groaned into his hands. Trust those two stoic assholes to suddenly get needy, and on the same day. And on the day when he was feeling shitty and vulnerable.

Really sorry, he replied first to him, then to her. But I’m just not up to it today. Hope you have a nice evening off anyway.

Geralt didn’t reply right away.

So sorry to hear that, Yennefer wrote. Everything alright?

Shitty day at work, Jaskier responded, relieved that she had stopped pushing.

I see, she texted.

Then, a moment later, Would some company help? Just having a beer together?

Another moment later, she admitted: I know I would like it. Apparently, Jaskier was not the only one feeling shitty and vulnerable today. He clutched the phone to his chest for a moment, savouring the token of her trust.

Before he could think up a reply, a new text from Geralt came in.

You know, we don’t have to fuck if you don’t want to. We can just eat pizza.

Jaskier felt his head start to hurt. Fuck it all to hell and back.

How will you decide who to keep?

I have to be honest and clear, he typed into his notes app. I’d like to, but my other dom is asking for something very similar right now, and

He paused. And what? And I don’t know which one of you I like better? And I would like to just have you both come to me, share my pizza, drink wine with me and make a big cuddle sandwich?

The doorbell rang. Jaskier tipped the delivery guy and took the pizza into his kitchen, but he also took his phone. Before he could start eating, he had to clean this mess up.

He tapped his fingers on the kitchen table. Was it really such a mad idea to imagine them together, all three of them? Not to play, just… for the cuddle sandwich. Geralt and Yennefer were both headstrong and clever, maybe they would even like each other. How would he feel if Yennefer or Geralt invited him along with another sub they were seeing?

He honestly had no idea.

I’d really like that, he wrote to Essi. But to be embarrassingly honest, my other dom is asking me the same, like, right now. Freak coincidence… And I don’t want to pick one of you over the other because you’re both brillant, so I’ll just say No to you both. Sorry.

He copied the message and sent it to both Geralt and Yennefer, making sure that the format stayed so both of them would see the message was copied. It didn’t prove anything, but he felt better for it.

He had just opened his chat with Essi to delete the message before she could read it, but of course Essi was always on her phone, so she already had.

And she was typing.

“For fuck’s sake, please don’t lecture me now,” Jaskier begged the three blinking dots.

Julian Alfred Pankratz!!!! her first message read. Essi was one of those people who thought full stops were a waste of time when you could just send the message and have your conversation partner deal with 16 new messages from Essi just to decide where to meet for lunch.

She was also one of those people who, despite being well-spoken in real life and when it mattered, mostly just vomited vowels and abbreviations when texting.

He waited for the rest, and it came, one text after the other, in rapid succession.

I really hope that isn’t what I think it is u stupid bitch

cause honestly

ur writing to both of them, copy-pasting, whaaat

way to piss off both of them at once

also what do u mean the same what do they want from u

something new and exciting i presume??

and both of them, the same, on the same day, wtf

jaskier

answer me what is this shit

Did you really just copy this message from your chat with your other dom?, Yennefer asked, and even though she never used emojis, right now he could really have used a winky face or something. So it didn’t read like… that.

By now, he felt petulant.

I copied it to both of you, he wrote back, so you’d know I wasn’t bullshitting you.

jask i swear, Essi raged in his notification bar. Jaskier switched to her chat and started thinking about a reply.

I see. Strange solution, Geralt pitched in.

i dont care if theyre both roasting ur ass right now

u deserve it

plus im ur friend so u talk to me first

whats happening there???

They’re both roasting my ass, he replied to Essi. They both asked me to hang out, not to play but just hang out, and I’d love to, but they both really want to do it *now*, and I’m only one dude?? But why the heat??? I’m just trying to communicate openly and stuff…

communicate

openly

You really think that if the reason you gave me sounded made up I would autom[...], the notification bar huffed with Yennefer’s voice.

with each of them!! separately!! theyre like

two seperate people

they dont even know each other ffs

So instead of taking your pick of a nice evening you decided to have a miserable one? Geralt asked.

Jaskier felt like throwing his phone out of the window.

jask

apologize to both of them

then say ull make it up to them

then eat and go to bed, ur obv off ur game

bitch

He opened the chat with Yennefer.

You really think that if the reason you gave me sounded made up I would automatically assume I’m being lied to? I may not know you very well, Jaskier, but I know you well enough to assume you would treat me with respect.

I know it sounds made up, Yennefer, he hurriedly typed. But it’s true. And I really don’t feel like I can choose, you know? Apparently, all three of us had a bad day… and I wanted to ask you to hang out for ages, but in the beginning, you said you didn’t want to be friends, and I respect that.

did u do it??

Doing it now, Essi, let me live, Jaskier texted her before switching to Geralt.

Yeah, I know, it’s dumb. But choosing would be even dumber.

I would have preferred to just get a No, I’m busy.

Jaskier thought about that, but before he could reply, Geralt sent another text.

I never minded that you have another dom, but I don’t like to be part of that drama that you fabricated in your head. No one ever told you to “choose”. The “please and thank you” were silent.

Sorry, I’m really exhausted and hungry and not thinking straight, Jaskier typed with growing desperation, Can you please just forget about all this and pretend I wrote I’m busy?

I changed my mind about being friends. I really like you, Jaskier. But never paste anything in this chat again.

I’d love to be friends, he replied to Yennefer. Sorry I handled this poorly. I’ll try and make it up to you when we meet on Saturday, ok?

u good?

Shame you’re busy. See you on Wednesday then.

I hope you’ll be in the mood for the whip then.

Think I weathered it, he replied to Essi.

I will be if you want me to be, he wrote to Yennefer.

See you on Wednesday, can’t wait!, he let Geralt know.

lucky bitch, Essi wrote, followed by a barrage of relieved emojis. if i were ur dom and u did that with me i would beat u black and blue the next time we played.

I expect they will, Jaskier typed. Pray for me, Essi.

hands full

met a boy :D

Thank you for putting up with me, Jaskier texted, and felt the beginning headache fizzle out. Crisis averted, for now. Have fun.

and u: eat and sleep!!

Will do. mwah

A string of kiss emojis concluded Essi’s lecture. Jaskier opened the box. The pizza was still warm.

–

“Hello handsome.”

Geralt looked up. Jaskier noticed that while his shirt had big sweat stains under the arms and on the back and chest, a fresh shirt was already lying on the bin next to him, next to two towels, one wet and one dry.

The regimen to which Geralt held himself would have floored a lesser man in under a week.

“You know breaks are usually meant to be relaxing, right?,” he asked when Geralt got up from where he had been doing push-ups on the ground behind the coffee shop.

“This is relaxing,” Geralt replied and slipped off his sweaty shirt.

Jaskier ogled his abs without any shame while Geralt wiped himself clean with the wet towel, then patted himself off with the dry one.

“Do you always bring two shirts and two towels to work just to work out on your break?” Jaskier asked. He sat down gingerly on the bench that stood there for employees to have their smoke and offered Geralt the drink he had brought.

Geralt slipped into his clean shirt and sat down with him, inspecting the can. “I bring one shirt, I wear the other. What’s that?” he asked gingerly and turned the can.

“Capri Sun in a can,” Jaskier replied awkwardly. “I thought… you always have some of them in your fridge. Although not in a can,” he hurried to add. “But a can’s got more in it. And it’s the same stuff, I’m told.”

Geralt looked at the can for a moment, and he looked like he was trying to solve a riddle. Or make an important decision.

“Jaskier,” he said.

“Yeah, I know, it was stupid of me,” Jaskier interrupted quickly. “But I’ve learned. Fabricating no more drama.”

“Good.” Geralt didn’t open the can, but he kept turning it in his hand. “You wanna know something?” he said.

“Sure,” Jaskier answered carefully.

“I really hate Capri Suns.”

Jaskier raised his eyebrows.

“I’ve always got some,” Geralt explained. “But they’re not for me.”

Jaskier nodded slowly. He hadn’t really considered that, but there was really only one explanation. The davenport. The wardrobe in the living room. The off-limits weekends. And the Capri Suns, which Geralt hated. Jaskier had never asked before, even when the thought had reared its head, because Geralt obviously hadn’t wanted him to know. But now he invited him to know – told him that he hated Capri Suns, and that was his way of putting his trust forward.

“You have a kid?”

Geralt nodded. “She’s fifteen,” he said carefully.

“That’s great,” Jaskier said easily. “So you see her every weekend?”

Geralt nodded. “She’s with her mother Monday to Friday.”

Jaskier smiled. “Is that a good thing? Do you get along?”

“We manage,” Geralt gruffly said. “Being with her mother is best for her. How did you even know I was back here?”

“I asked for you inside, and your coworker told me where to find you.”

“Hm.” Geralt looked down on the Capri Sun and the tip of his thumb wiped the condensation off the happy font proclaiming Red Fruit Flavour! . “Would you like it then?” he asked and offered Jaskier the can. “You have a sweet tooth, don’t you?” He smiled.

Jaskier smiled back, but shook his head. “Just take it home for her.”

“She’ll be pleased. I always just get the orange ones.” Geralt carefully placed the can onto his towels.

“Does your offer still stand?” Jaskier asked. “To get pizza sometime?”

Geralt smiled at him. “If you want.”

Jaskier wanted. He also wanted a lot more than all that, but he would be modest and take whatever he was given.

Chapter Text

After the debacle with the copied chat responses, something changed.

Before that, Jaskier couldn’t have said if either Yennefer or Geralt actually liked him as a person.

Sure, he spent some time talking to Geralt about unimportant things, and those conversations seemed to be pleasant for the Witcher as well. And sometimes, Geralt offered him a Capri Sun. That would have meant nothing before he learnt whose those were, but now it meant… something.

And sure, Yennefer got more and more things like the silver heels that she never proclaimed as gifts, but that were obviously suited to Jaskier’s needs or desires. When he got a glimpse at her collection of plugs and said “Now I know the inflatable ones aren’t real, because surely you would have one,” she had said she didn’t, but when they saw each other the next time, she suddenly did. And when Jaskier had offhandedly mentioned that candle wax was nice, but it was a pity it always cooled so quickly, the next time they played, she suddenly had beeswax candles.

But he had always told himself he was being accommodating to both of them as well. And wasn’t that just part of the whole steady sub thing? Being decent to each other?

Paying for the pizza they eventually had together, even though Jaskier knew how tight Geralt’s money always was?

Making time to meet him just to have some wine and tell him that his referral might have actually helped Yennefer make a dent in Stregobor’s position of power?

Jaskier was still guarding his heart as best as he could. Don’t let it get out of hand.

But after the chat situation, things got out of hand.

Yennefer told him that she and her ex-husband were still going to counseling together once a month, even though they had had to give up on their marriage. To do right by their daughter, to stay a team in raising her.

Geralt told him his kid was actually not his biological kid. She was adopted, and that was the real reason why Geralt didn’t work as a Witcher right now. It had nothing to do with his, in fact, intact weapons’ license. The adoption process had been, as Geralt said, “a trip to hell and back” and his only chance of getting joint custody with his ex wife after the divorce had been to give up his profession and work a steady, respectable job until his daughter turned eighteen.

Yennefer ordered in for them, and for some reason she knew that gilthead was his favourite fish. She said she had picked it up from somewhere around his mind, but while he did like it best, he didn’t usually think about it a lot. He suspected she had been looking for that information specifically to surprise him.

Geralt noticed when he was tense. When he asked if Jaskier needed a back rub, Jaskier told him he didn’t have to. Which resulted in Geralt fucking him silly and boneless and giving him the back rub anyway while he dozed off and couldn’t protest.

Yennefer didn’t smell like lilac and gooseberries anymore when he visited her. She explained – in a perfunctory tone that almost negated the vulnerable notion of the admission – that what he had smelled on her was a glamour, a magical substance designed to make social interactions easier and more pleasing for the wearer by beguiling the other. “But I don’t think you need to be beguiled any more, little songbird,” was what she said. “I want all of your reactions to me to be your choice,” she did not say, but he did hear it. He was no less beguiled by her without the glamour, and when he told her so, she tried hard not to look touched.

Geralt made time for him, even when he was working long shifts. He told Jaskier his daughter’s name was Cirilla, but he called her Ciri.

Yennefer decided she wanted them to kiss while playing, and then kiss while not playing, and then kiss for greetings and goodbyes and in between. She still didn’t want him to meet her daughter – “She sometimes understands things she shouldn’t, meeting you would probably confuse her,” she said – but she showed him a picture of her, a beautiful teenager with light blonde hair and green eyes who looked nothing like Yennefer. The father must have been an elf, Jaskier thought, but he didn’t ask.

Jaskier had always known his heart was roomy. Several times, while he had been in a monogamous relationship, he had fallen in love with another person. And while he had never allowed himself to act on that feeling, it had undeniably been there, and had undeniably not reduced his feelings for his partner in the least. So he had known, at least theoretically, that he could harbor and nurse feelings for more than one person. But actually doing it was overwhelming, especially because he knew he liked both of them quite a lot more than had been originally intended, and was probably still intended by his doms.

Reigning it in, keeping any amount of distance, got harder and harder.

He imagined them at his sides on his couch when he spent the evening alone, and when he was in crisis, or happy, he wanted to tell both of them.

And then there were the dreams.

He dreamed of kneeling naked in Yennefer’s play room, sucking Geralt off who sat in the sturdy wooden chair. He dreamed of Yennefer riding him on Geralt’s pitiful old bed, the wood creaking along. He dreamed of watching Yennefer and Geralt, on his own bed in his flat where neither of them had ever been, digging into each other with kisses and bites while they fucked, and when Jaskier awoke, he had felt shameful for a short moment, as if he had been watching a private moment, something not meant for him, even though it was his doms, and his fantasy, and whose would it be if not his?

And even while he learned more and more about both of them, and even when he felt like he was getting closer with both of them, he was still surprised – in a strangely painful, but also satisfactory way – when he learned that he was the person they both felt closest to. Even though the way he learned it was terrifying.

–

It was January, and he had had an especially short work day. His last appointment of the day had been cancelled at the last minute, so he had left early.

The traffic was bad in winter, so it had taken him some time to get home. He had very nearly had an accident when a Nissan in front of him had started gliding on the icy road.

There was no food in and his head hurt, so he was really quite ready to be done with the day. He had just ordered pizza and popped some ibuprofen when his phone rang.

Actually rang. Not a text, someone was calling his private phone.

He didn’t even remember when that had last happened unscheduled.

It was Yennefer.

Jaskier cleared his throat and took the call. “Hello?”

“Jaskier,” said Yennefer’s voice, “it’s me, it’s Yennefer,” and she sounded nothing like he knew her. His throat went tight.

“Yennefer, are you crying?”

“Jaskier, my daughter, she’s gone!”

Jaskier felt his stomach drop to his knees. “Wait wait wait,” he said. “What do you mean she’s gone? She’s probably just with her dad!”

“I called him!” Yennefer shrieked. “I’m not an idiot! I called him already, and she’s not with him!”

“It’s alright,” Jaskier hurried to calm her down, “It’s not even properly evening, she could be with that friend you mentioned, Mistle?”

“I tried locating her with a spell,” Yennefer cried. “I only found out she’s still in town, which is good, no one teleported her… But then I got warded off! She didn’t leave on her own, something’s wrong, someone’s keeping her from my senses!”

"Could this be Stregobor's doing?," Jaskier asked.

"I got rid of him ages ago," Yennefer said, "Didn't I tell you? No matter, Stregobor isn't the only shady sorcerer out there and she has been... targeted, in the past."

“Fuck fuck fuck,” Jaskier cursed. While talking to Yennefer, he stuffed his feet back into his shoes. “I’m coming, Yennefer. Where do I…? Are you home? Where should I look for her, where does she go?”

“Her dad will check the more dangerous places, he’s got some magic on his own,” Yennefer explained. “Can you drive around the South quarters, see if she’s on foot somewhere? Especially around the bus or train stations? She can’t use her magic properly yet, she can’t teleport or protect herself, if someone tried to abduct her and she got away, she has to be on foot!”

It was the first time Yennefer mentioned that her ex was a sorcerer. Jaskier wiped the thought away – not helpful right now. All that was important now was to find-

“Yennefer!” he yelled into the phone while he threw it on the passenger seat with the call on speaker. “What’s her name? You never told me your daughter’s name!”

“Ciri!” Yennefer said, still in tears. “Cirilla, actually.”

Jaskier, with his key in the ignition and about to turn it, froze.

“What?”

“Cirilla, like the humanized elven word for swallow,” Yennefer bellowed impatiently. “Call me if you find her! I’ll call her dad now!” The call was ended and Jaskier was alone in his car with a silent phone.

Before his brain could stop tying itself into knots, his phone rang again.

Automatically, without really thinking, Jaskier picked it up again. “That you again?” he asked.

A short silence answered him.

Then: “No, this is Geralt. Look, you sound busy, but I need your help.” He sounded muffled, like someone talking on a headset from inside a motorcycle helmet.

Jaskier remembered the motorcycle. Geralt had never showed him, but he had told him about it.

It’s a shame I’ll have to sell it if my washing machine breaks, he had said.

But driving a motorcycle would be suicide right now, with the frozen streets and the crazy traffic. Unless, of course, you were a superhuman mutant.

“It’s an emergency,” Geralt’s muffled voice said. “Ciri’s gone, and her mother can’t find her.”

–

Jaskier had never considered having children.

Not that he didn’t like them. He thought children were great. He just never thought of himself as the right kind of guy to have one. And none of his former partners had ever uttered the wish.

He didn’t know Ciri, had never met her. But while he drove along the tram lines and peered out into the darkening streets on the lookout for a head of white-blonde hair, he imagined her.

He had little information from Yennefer.

He had little information from Geralt.

But combined, it did form a cohesive image.

Yennefer’s daughter was traumatized. Something had happened to her before she had been adopted. She was headstrong and intelligent, and she was capable of using magic, although she had difficulty controlling it.

Geralt’s daughter loved horses – because Geralt loved horses and had given her riding lessons back when they were all still together. She loved jewelry and pretty clothes – because her mother did, and she had taught Ciri to apply make-up, to walk self-assuredly, to dance.

Ciri had a friend called Mistle. Geralt suspected Ciri might be attracted to girls, although she wasn’t ready to come out yet, and Yennefer knew Mistle was gay.

Geralt loved his daughter more than anything.

Yennefer loved her daughter more than anything.

Yennefer and her ex still went to counselling.

Yennefer’s daughter understood things she should not.

Geralt’s daughter was inquisitive.

For a second, Jaskier’s dream came back to him – Geralt and Yennefer, together, so firmly entwined that it was hard to tell where each ended and the other began. Suddenly, he saw another way of how that went: instead of devouring each other on Jaskier’s bed, they were entwined in the water, in the sea, the waves tossing them about. Pulling each other under, drowning each other. Fighting, fucking, both at the same time.

He looked around the South quarter without finding her. He called Yennefer. Yennefer told him some of the places outside the quarter where Ciri liked to go.

Geralt called. He sounded out of breath, which was unusual, and asked if Jaskier had found her. When he said No, Geralt said not to call him as he was about to break and enter somewhere. Before Jaskier could react, Geralt hung up.

Jaskier called Essi and begged her to help. He needn’t have begged. Essi didn’t have a car, but she walked around the train station and asked people if they had seen Ciri, armed with a picture that Yennefer had sent her.

No luck.

It was almost midnight when Jaskier parked his car near the lakeside park – on an off-chance, really. Who went to a park at night in winter?

The lake was frozen. The snow, which had been falling for hours now, was thick and almost untouched, and it glistened in the brightness of Jaskier’s flashlight.

Jaskier hurriedly closed his jacket and pulled his hat over his ears. He strode between the trees, looking around, peering through his own white breath.

He inhaled, and the cold air stung in his throat. “Ciri!” he called into the silent park. “Cirilla, are you here?”

He kept walking, and for a moment he considered calling Yennefer again. Ask her to try the localization spell again. But he didn’t have to be a parent to know that Yennefer, waiting at her house for Ciri to return and calling everyone she trusted to help, would have tried it a dozen times by now.

“Ciri!”

No one answered.

Jaskier was about to turn and get back to his car when he heard a quiet cough.

He didn’t have Geralt’s super hearing or Yennefer’s magical senses, but he was sure.

“Cirilla?”

The cough again. Almost like a rasp. Someone trying to speak, but not quite succeeding.

Jaskier followed the sound, sounding the ground with his thin beam of light.

The girl was on her side in the snow, and snow had fallen on her, blanketing her, making her almost invisible. But light fell on her locks – why wasn’t she wearing a hat? – and on the pure white snow, her hair looked golden.

“Ciri?”

A croak.

Jaskier ran towards the figure in the snow and dug some of the icy powder away from the head and shoulders.

No doubt, it was her, the girl from Yennefer’s picture, the piercing green eyes studying him. Her lips were blue and her face was white, and in front of her slightly open mouth stood a thin cloud of white breath.

“What do you think you’re doing here?” Jaskier asked and put the flashlight away. He started to pull Ciri into a sitting position. “Your parents are worried sick!”

“Of all fucking people to hallucinate,” the girl rasped, and her voice was a hair-thin strand of sound in the frigid air. “Dandelion.”

“Hey, watch the vocabulary,” he instinctively said. She didn’t sit up by herself. Her body was cold and pliant, movable as a ragdoll. “What the hell are you doing here? I’ll have to carry you, won’t I? Oh, damn, I wish Geralt was here.”

“I wish he was here too,” Ciri whispered. “I thought, if anyone can find me, it’s Yennefer… or him… No matter where I am…”

“This is them finding you, they sent me,” Jaskier hurried to say. Then he hesitated. She knew his stage name and didn’t seem afraid of him, but he couldn’t very well just pick her up, could he? She didn’t know him. Your parents sent me, anyone can say that. In fact, some people did, and the children who believed them ended up abducted.

He should call Yennefer. Have her tell Ciri it was alright to go with him.

“Don’t waste time,” Ciri breathed. “I cannot feel anything, I’m so cold. If you know who my parents are, you know they’ll skin you alive if you hurt me.” She didn’t smile. It might have been the stiffness from the cold, or it might not have been.

Jaskier decided he needed to stop wasting time. He needed to bring her to the hospital, or to Yennefer, but first she needed to be in his warm car. He crouched forwards. “I’ll carry you,” he said, wrapping her arm around his shoulder. “I’m not Geralt, but you weigh next to nothing, it will work.”

“Sure,” Ciri whispered, and she was still while he heaved her up and into his arms. Her hypothermia-induced apathy made her harder to lift than he’d expected, but it did work.

He carried her back to his car as fast as her weight allowed.

“Your parents are livid,” he murmured while he stalked through the thick blanket of snow. “They think you’ve been abducted, because your mother can’t find you with her magic.”

Ciri made a sound. He couldn’t tell what the sound was supposed to convey, because it was just a dry rasp.

“There’s my car. I have no idea how to treat hypothermia, but I guess warmth will help. Let me just…”

He opened the passenger door and deposited the eerily stiff girl on the seat before carefully closing the door. From his trunk he got the old blanket that every grownup kept in their trunk for some reason. He thought of it as the emergency picnic blanket. He got in behind the wheel and wrapped Ciri in the blanket before closing her seatbelt, then he turned the heating on full force.

“I’ll just call your mum real quick,” he said while he took out his phone.

“Say I’m sorry,” Ciri croaked.

“You can tell her that yourself,” Jaskier quipped. “Yennefer? I found her. She was alone, I don’t think she’s hurt, but I think she has hypothermia. Do I take her to the hospital, or? Alright. See you in…” He squinted. At least at this time, traffic wasn’t a problem anymore. The weather was. “Twenty minutes, give or take. Of course.” He hung up. Then he texted Essi quickly, telling her he had found her and to go home. Essi responded with another long string of relieved emojis and and u need to tell me everything tomorrow!

Ciri said something when he started the car, but the heating and the motor swallowed her words. Jaskier drove her home.

–

When they arrived at Yennefer’s house, Ciri was thawed enough to talk and move a little bit, but she would still need Jaskier to support her to climb the stairs to the front door.

“Sorry I thought you were a hallucination,” Ciri murmured while Jaskier helped her exit the car, still wrapped in the emergency picnic blanket. “It wouldn’t have been the first time… and I like your music, so I think about you sometimes.”

Wouldn’t have been the first time. Jaskier didn’t respond to it, but he remembered Yennefer mentioning Ciri was traumatized. And not elaborating.

“I’m glad you like my music,” he said while he helped her up the stairs. “Were you the one who introduced both your parents to my stuff?”

She smiled. “I might have.”

“Your mother could have ended my career, you know.” He still held her up while he rang the doorbell, but before Ciri could reply, the door was flung open and Ciri was pulled into her mother’s arms.

–

Yennefer had busied herself making a soup of some kind, and she asked Jaskier to wait and help himself to a hot beverage in the kitchen while she saw to Ciri. She brought her daughter and the soup upstairs, and Jaskier busied himself with the kettle.

They took a long while.

Jaskier sat at the kitchen table, sipping a piping hot cup of tea and texted Geralt.

Not sure I can call you now, he typed. So I’ll just text in case you haven’t been informed yet. I found her. Brought her to her mother’s.

Just when he was considering adding a “She will be ok”, someone opened the front door with a key.

Geralt, wet and snowy in his leather motorcycle gear, slapped his helmet on the chest next to the door and entered the kitchen, looking around.

“They’re upstairs,” Jaskier said. He smiled. “She will be fine, I think.”

Geralt crossed the room, bent down and pulled Jaskier into a firm, one-armed hug. “Thank you,” he said. Then he let go of him, stole his half-full cup of tea and went upstairs.

Jaskier made himself another one, and finally allowed himself to think about all this.

It should have been obvious.

Yennefer’s ex had their kid on weekends because he had to work long shifts, and he didn’t pay her a cent of alimony or upkeep because what he made in a year, she made in a month.

Geralt’s ex had a prestigious job and a good reputation, which made the adoption possible in the first place, what with his own, widely scorned occupation.

And their marriage hadn’t worked out, not for a lack of love, or mis-matched perspectives, but because they both needed something the other could simply not supply.

Jaskier looked into the new tea he had made himself and wondered if he should just go now. But wouldn’t it be the healthy, grown-up way of handling the situation to at least say “I had a great time, but I don’t want to insert myself between you, take care” ?

Yes, it would be.

Jaskier sipped his tea.

–

Geralt and Yennefer came down after close to an hour.

Jaskier poured them tea, chamomile with a sugar cube for Geralt, lavender with a splash of lemon juice for Yennefer.

“She’s asleep,” Geralt said when the conversation peskily didn’t start itself.

Jaskier nodded slowly. “Why couldn’t you find her?” he asked Yennefer.

“She tried to use her magic to shield herself from the other people in the park earlier. She only meant to become invisible, but she overdid it and became completely imperceptible for a while. Even magically.”

“Why did she want to be invisible?” Jaskier asked carefully. “Is she alright?”

“Mistle broke up with her,” Geralt gruffed.

“She didn’t break up,” Yennefer contradicted. “They’re teenagers. Mistle told her she never wanted to see her again, but I know she’s crazy about her. She’ll beg Ciri to take her back tomorrow, Friday at the latest.”

“And then she just… stayed there?”

“She’s not fully in control of her powers,” Yennefer explained. “When she overdid it like that, she blacked out. And when she awoke, she couldn’t move at all.” She sighed into her tea. “She could have frozen to death.”

“She didn’t,” Geralt said and he made to grab Yennefer’s hand on the table, but then he didn’t.

Their hands were very close to each other. Jaskier wondered if his presence was the reason they didn’t touch, or if it didn’t matter.

“Well,” he said. “Let’s talk about this, then.”

And then both his doms looked at him with confused frowns.

Jaskier blinked. “So, you actually haven’t realized it yet?” he asked. “Or are you looking at me like that because there’s nothing to talk about?”

Yennefer and Geralt exchanged a glance. He saw Yennefer look away from his eyes – an instinctual gesture, he knew, and nothing to do with shame or flusteredness. It was what she always did when she fought down the impulse to read his mind. He had seen that a lot in the past few months. He took it as a sign of respect.

“Alright,” Jaskier said quietly and directed his next question to the ceiling. “Were you worried about me meeting your ex?”

“Why would I be?” Yennefer replied, and at the same moment, Geralt said: “Of course not.” They looked at each other and Jaskier saw the understanding dawn.

“Oh fuck,” said Yennefer into the silence. She buried her face in her hands.

“You’re the other dom,” Geralt said slowly.

“How come we cannot make this,” Yennefer gestured between herself and the Witcher impatiently, “work to save our lives, but we somehow end up with one and the same lover?”

Jaskier drained his cup. “This is me, then,” he said. “I’m certainly not getting between you two again. Sorry, really. I couldn’t have known.” He got up.

Geralt just stared, but Yennefer was a bit quicker on her feet. She got up and followed him into the hall. “Jaskier, don’t just leave. Please.”

“You know I adore you both,” Jaskier said without looking at her. “But this is, I cannot… I’ll just go.” He put his sopping wet shoes back on. He already felt the tears beading, and he wanted to be out of the door before they fell.

“Stay,” Geralt said from the kitchen doorway. “Let’s talk about this.”

“Some other time,” Jaskier said and took his jacket. “I need to be alone right now. I’m glad Ciri’s safe. G’night.” He turned around and hurried down the steps. The tears fell.

Chapter Text

Jaskier called in sick the next morning and informed Andrea he’d be taking the rest of the week off. He hadn’t gotten any time off for months, save for christmas, which was an ordeal instead of a holiday if you had a big family, and he decided he deserved it. Then he got back in bed and pulled the blanket over his head.

He had just muted his phone and was going to put it away when a text from Essi popped up.

morning jask.

so u found yennefers strangely gorgeous kid and shes safe

she must looooove u

He hadn’t told Essi yet. He had told her it was about Yennefer’s daughter and omitted the crux so she would focus and not try to discuss his love life.

Was he up to it?

He thought about Geralt and Yennefer. Yennefer and Geralt. Together. Married. Having a child. Ciri saying my parents. Jaskier thinking my doms, when actually, what they were, most of all, undeniably, was each other’s. You could tell by looking at them.

Jaskier felt so lonely he wanted to puke.

His mouth tasted foul, but he didn’t want to leave the bed and drink.

He didn’t want to talk to Essi. But he knew he needed to talk to someone, and Essi was his best friend.

Hi Essi, he replied, and before he could chicken out, he wrote: Can you come by today?

oh so u can tell me all about ur heroics right

im in :D

7?

Jaskier made himself type Great, you bring the beer, I’ll get food. See you later and sent it quickly.

Then he cried some more.

–

When he finally left the bed and took a shower, he felt a bit clearer. There was really nothing to it, he told himself while he fried two eggs in a pan. He had gone and fallen in love, and not only could he obviously not have both of them, he couldn’t even have one of them, because they belonged together and if Jaskier decided to keep meeting one of them but not the other, any chance they still had to get their shit together would be utterly ruined.

He slapped the eggs onto a slice of bread and made himself a coffee.

His phone vibrated. Maybe he should just switch it off. But if it was Essi, and she was changing the plans or anything, he wanted to be informed. He glanced at the display with a mouthful of eggs.

Thank you for your help yesterday. I don’t think I’ve even said it, I was so out of it… I’m sure you [...]

Jaskier swallowed his eggs without chewing and cleaned his hands on a kitchen towel.

He was only human, after all. He opened the message.

It was long, the longest Yennefer had sent him yet; longer even than her elaborate and eloquent sexts that had brightened more than one dreary work day for him.

Thank you for your help yesterday. I don’t think I’ve even said it, I was so out of it… I’m sure you understand, and know how grateful I am that you found Ciri and brought her home. I’m so grateful for your friend helping, as well. I texted her this morning and thanked her.

After you left so hurriedly, I didn’t want to press you, but I was worried about you because of the weather, so I did check - magically - if you made it home alright, and I’m glad you did.

I talked to Geralt yesterday, for a long time after you were gone, and neither of us is mad or hurt about the situation. You couldn’t have known, and neither could we, especially not Geralt. As you know, he can’t even read minds. And I always deliberately kept myself from learning about your other dominant, first out of respect for your privacy, later because I felt jealous about someone else being with you and didn’t want to know.

I would really like to talk to you. I cannot and will not speak for Geralt (I learned as much in counseling!) but it’s an established fact between the two of us that our marriage is over. And I would like to keep meeting you, if you want. I’m not sure why, but I even stopped feeling jealous about you being with someone else as soon as I learned it was Geralt.

If you don’t want to, for whatever reason, I respect that. But in that case, do you think you could come by and have a cup of tea with me, and say goodbye? We had such a good time. Let’s not end on this note.

Jaskier cried onto his eggs while he scarfed them down, then he drank the coffee in big gulps and burned his mouth.

He turned his phone off, wrapped himself in his fuzzy blanket and opened Netflix, and decided he would just wait for Essi.

But none of the hundreds of shows and movies really provided the kind of distraction he needed right now, and seven was still hours off when he gave up on trying to watch something.

He switched his phone on again and found he had missed a call. But it wasn’t Essi, and it wasn’t Yennefer either. It was Geralt.

Can’t phone right now, he white-lied over WhatsApp, You need anything?

We need to talk.

Yes, that was Geralt. No long texts, no letters. No flowers, no chocolates. Just his no frills, no bullshit kind of communication that, in this case, felt a bit rough.

Don’t think we need to, Jaskier replied. This would be so hot if it were a porno, but it’s real life, and I’m not getting between you.

Yennefer doesn’t mind you seeing me, Geralt supplied. I don’t mind you seeing her. You don’t have to be between us, you can just be where you’ve been before.

And pretend I don’t know what you both really want is each other? Jaskier felt tired. Did he really have to console Geralt now? When he was the one hurt?

For fuck’s sake, you’re fabricating again, Geralt texted. You really think we would have gotten a divorce before trying everything? With Ciri’s custody on the line? There’s nothing to get between.

Jaskier found himself laughing out loud in his empty living room. Did those two see themselves?

Why waste such persistance on a fuckbuddy? he asked. I’m sure you won’t have trouble finding someone else to play with. Neither will Yennefer, for that matter. But maybe you should compare notes this time around.

Don’t want someone else.

Jaskier stared at his phone. Geralt was not exactly prone to bursts of sentiment. Coming from him, this was almost a confession.

Don’t want a fuckbuddy, either, Geralt added, double texting unexpectedly. What had gotten into the Witcher? You really think that’s all we are?

Maybe Jaskier wasn’t the only one hurt.

I mean, you were right about me. Have a hard time being casual. Just didn’t think you did, he begrudgingly admitted.

Listen, all I ask is to talk. In person. Can we do that?

Jaskier shook his head to himself. This could not end well. In no timeline or universe could this possibly end well.

Yennefer asked me the same, he typed, We could just- But then he deleted it.

Essi may have been wrong about Geralt and Yennefer not knowing each other – as had he – but she was right about them being two independent people. He had to treat them as such, even though all he wanted was to meet up with both of them and tell them to quit the shit and make their relationship work already. It had to be possible. Love conquers all. Right?

Think about it, Geralt texted, and then the little word “online” under his name vanished.

Jaskier sunk into the couch.

–

Seven o’clock came and brought a ring on Jaskier’s door. Still wrapped in his blanket, he startled awake. He must have fallen asleep to whatever he had finally settled on watching.

He shuffled to the door without unwrapping himself and buzzed Essi in.

Essi, her pretty face split in a grin when she sprinted up the stairs, frowned as soon as she saw him. “Jask?” she asked. “What’s this?” She gestured vaguely up and down his body with her free hand. Her other hand was clutching a six pack, as promised.

Jaskier stepped aside to let her in.

She entered and hugged him. “Are you alright?” she asked when he had closed the door.

“Except everything is going to shit and I’m sick of it and will probably just become a castrato, yeah,” he answered dramatically and led her to the living room.

“Aww, kitten.” She pulled a face and went to put the beer away while he turned the TV off. “I thought you would be over the moon, the knight in shining armor, all of that.”

“Because I found Yennefer’s daughter.” Jaskier nodded. Essi found the sushi he had ordered earlier and brought it to the couch. “Essi, she’s Geralt’s daughter.”

“What?” Essi’s gorgeous blue eyes went wide. “Yennefer is Geralt’s-”

“Not Yennefer, silly. Ciri. She’s their daughter. They were married.”

Essi’s mouth fell open.

Jaskier just looked at her and shrugged. “Now what,” he said flatly.

Essi collected herself and shoved a box into his lap. “Now we eat,” she said. “And you’ll tell me everything .”

–

“So, let me get this straight,” Essi finally said with a mouth full of rice and salmon. “They both want to keep meeting you.”

“They insist there’s nothing to get between. But you should have seen them, Essi, fuck. Even just sitting at the same table. There’s like… they have their own magnetic field.”

“But they don’t realize?”

“I think they’re just in denial,” Jaskier shrugged and drained his beer. Sushi and beer , he thought, let’s not do this again . “They think they tried everything, and now they pretend it’s over between them, but I bet Geralt didn’t buy that lube at his place. I bet she did. They still fall into bed together every now and then. And that unexpected evening off they both had? Maybe they met up. Had sex, or a fight, but anyway, both of them were so riled up afterwards, they both really wanted to meet up with me. To get the frustration out, maybe.”

“Or the arousal,” Essi suggested.

“They fuck,” Jaskier decided. “I’m sure they do.”

“Hm.” Essi ate her last sushi, washed it down with beer and made a face. “But did they try everything ? Did they try… getting a common sub? Just to play with, or… for a throuple?”

“Can’t imagine,” Jaskier frowned. “They’re both jealous types, I don’t think that occurred to them. Plus, it would have to be someone who likes both of them, and who they both like, and what are the odds of that?”

Essi grinned. “Yeah, what are the odds?” she repeated.

Jaskier scoffed. “Yeah, sure,” he quipped, “We’ll just all fuck each other then. Can’t see how I could get my heart broken if I try to third-wheel in a twenty-year relationship.”

“Twenty years?” Essi asked incredulously.

“When they met,” Jaskier calculated, “I was… nineteen.”

They sat in silence for a moment.

Jaskier’s phone vibrated. He ignored it, but Essi looked at it pointedly. 

“Text from Yennefer,” she said and brazenly read the message in the notification bar. “Ciri feels better… but she’s angry.”

That made Jaskier pick up the phone. He hadn’t replied to Yennefer’s long text yet, but of course she was not deterred, and she correctly assumed he would care to hear about Ciri.

Ciri is feeling better. She’s a bit cross because neither of us thought to ask you for an autograph while you were here. Geralt was supposed to take her while I’m on a business trip until Thursday, but now he’s just looking after her at my place. It’s more comfortable for her. 

But on the downside, there’s no Capri Suns, Jaskier texted back to smooth over the fluttering feeling in his stomach at being asked for an autograph. And his silence after her honesty.

He’s still buying her that junk then.

Jaskier hissed through his teeth.

Essi looked up from where she was picking roe out of the box. “What?”

He just showed her his screen.

“Oops,” Essi said and snickered. “Tattletale.”

Jaskier threw his phone on the couch and groaned. “And this is why the throuple thing is bullshit,” he declared.

“Because the parents argue about what to feed the kid? Jask, that’s normal. That’s normal in couples, divorced or otherwise, that’s normal in any family of any configuration. Grownups don’t always agree on these things. Are you sure you’re not just making yourself miserable again?”

He was about to argue, but then he noticed something. “What do you mean, again?”

She pulled a face. “Jask, you know I love you, right?” she started.

“Yeah?” he said carefully.

“You decided, when you were twenty-one, I think, that the girl who broke up with you had been using you to get better after her break-up before you. Right?”

“Marlene did use me.”

“Maybe she did,” Essi conceded. “But the thing is, sometimes I think you decided, back then, that you are a heartmender. You decided people use you to get better after bad break-ups, and leave once they are. You know what that has made you?”

“A dashing lawyer with a side business of music that’s finally starting to pick up?”

“Is it?” Essi got distracted for a moment. “What- Wait, nevermind. I’ll ask that later. Yes, that, and romantically, a miserable little shit. A pushover. You always claim to want exactly what they want. I remember you really wanting to travel, to buy a horse, to quit music, to make more music, to quit your job, to become district attorney. And coincidentally, whatever you really wanted at any given time was what your partner wanted. Radovid wanted to marry you, so you wanted to get married. Vespula wanted no strings, so you decided marriage is old-fashioned.”

Jaskier winced. He couldn’t even argue with that.

“You know what dating a pushover is like?” Essi asked rhetorically. “It’s great in the beginning, to get everything you want from them. Then it gets boring. Bored people leave.”

“Yennefer and Geralt don’t think I’m boring,” Jaskier protested.

“No, because with them, you finally started to want something for yourself,” Essi explained. “You’re obviously not boring, but as long as you pretend to be, people will always leave. And now you pulled these two headstrong people, and being with both of them means you cannot always satisfy both of them. Sometimes, you will have to decide who to join. Who to agree with. And I think that terrifies you, because agreeing with one means challenging the other one, and you hate challenging your partners.”

Jaskier opened his mouth, but Essi wasn’t done.

“And now, look me in the eye and tell me that a world in which you have both of them, and they also have each other, and can be happy with each other because you are there giving them what they cannot give each other, and you have two doms you love shoving you back and forth between them, wouldn’t be the most perfect of worlds.”

“But how would I know they love me at all and don’t just need me as a bridge?” Jaskier argued.

“There’s one thing you could try to suss that out,” Essi said slyly. “But it will be mortifying.”

–

“I don’t know why I never invited you here before,” Jaskier said. He and Geralt were at his place, eating noodles in the kitchen. He saw Geralt stretch out his legs. As a both tall and broad man, he looked even taller and broader in his own tiny flat. In Jaskier’s place, he looked… more normal-sized. Still formidable.

“You’d just moved in when we first met,” Geralt shrugged. “And then it kind of… established itself.”

Jaskier blushed.

“Oh, you lied,” Geralt easily guessed. He didn’t sound angry.

“Yeah. Sorry. I didn’t know you then. Didn’t even know if we’d ever meet again.”

“Fair.” Geralt slurped down his noddles. “Wanna talk about it?”

Jaskier hesitated. He wanted to say No; both so he wouldn’t have to talk about Annarietta and because they had other things to discuss. But then he thought that maybe, that was a good starting point.

“My girlfriend of over a year,” he said slowly, “had just moved out. I told you I had a messy break-up… well, it wasn’t messy, per se. It wasn’t even a break-up. She just… left. One day. While I was at work. She cleared out all her stuff and left her keys on the table. Never responded to my texts either.”

Geralt looked up from his plate. “That sounds messy,” he said.

“In a way,” Jaskier relented. “Logistically, it was all very clean.”

“She didn’t even steal the X-Box?” Geralt asked.

“She stole nothing. She even left most things we bought together.”

“Hm. Not angry then.”

“Just… fed up, I think.”

“Do you know why?”

Jaskier shrugged and poked his noodles. “In the past, I had a hard time standing up for myself in relationships,” he admitted.

Geralt scoffed.

“What?” Jaskier dropped his fork, ready to be offended.

“Just never took you for a pushover,” Geralt said. “You’ve never been shy about what you want with me.”

“I’m not shy at all,” Jaskier protested. “I just… I want to please other people, okay? In case you haven’t noticed.”

“You’re always immensely pleasing to me, but I just figured I liked you for you. Have you been dishonest with me?” Geralt asked, but there was a twinkle in his eyes as he said it.

“I have,” Jaskier said quietly, and held the gaze of Geralt’s golden-brown eyes. “I never told you just how shit I am at casual sex.”

“Hm.” Geralt pushed his plate away and put his hand on the table, the palm facing up, his fingers open.

Jaskier carefully slipped his hand into Geralt’s.

“Since meeting Yen, I’ve thought of myself as a monogamist,” the Witcher said, observing their entwining fingers. “But we never quite worked out. We broke up, got back together, took breaks. It was a mess. Whenever Yen was with someone else, I felt bad. I never wanted to be with anyone else either, not for something more than a fling. But you’re not a fling to me. And even stranger, I don’t mind her being with you.”

“That’s funny,” Jaskier said quietly, and he, too, looked down on their hands. “She told me something similar about you and me.”

Their eyes met. Geralt smiled. “I don’t know what this is,” he said, to the point and painfully blunt as he was. “But I like you a lot, and I love fucking you and playing with you, and I don’t mind you meeting Yen. So, if you want to… we could just keep meeting. And see where it takes us.”

“Are you trying to stay connected to Yennefer through me?” Jaskier asked seriously.

“I am connected to her,” Geralt replied. “And I always will be. I said it was a mess, well, it still is. We can’t ever really part, but we can’t be together either.”

Jaskier gulped. He imagined saying Maybe you could be again, but he had decided he wouldn’t do that. He would try not to mess with whatever was between the two of them and instead focus on his own bond with each of them. Hoping, perhaps, but not meddling. “I won’t have to,” he’d told Essi. “Those two want to be with each other so badly you can smell it on them.”

“I’m falling for you, Geralt,” he said. “If you want to keep meeting me, you should know.”

“I know,” Geralt said. “And you’re falling for Yen as well.”

“I won’t talk with you about her,” Jaskier ruled. “Not when I don’t even know where you and I stand.”

“Fair,” Geralt decided. “Come here, Jask.”

Jaskier got up and came to where Geralt was seated, his long legs sprawled under the kitchen table. He expected the Witcher to grab him, pull him onto his lap, maybe even pull him over his thighs for a spanking. Geralt liked to start out suddenly.

But instead, Geralt pulled him into an asymmetrical hug and rested his cheek on Jaskier’s chest.

“I’m not good with words,” he groaned after a moment.

Jaskier wondered if he needed to hear anything from Geralt right now – kept himself from not needing what Geralt was insecure about giving by default. Tried not to be a pushover. What did he want to hear? “I’m falling for you, too” ? Well, that was obvious. Jaskier found that if he was being honest with himself, all he wanted to hear right now were some harsh orders. So that he knew that after everything that had changed between them, this dynamic was still intact.

“I beg to differ,” he said into Geralt’s white hair, stroking his muscular back with his fingers. “You are excellent at giving orders.”

“You want to play? You don’t want to… I don’t know…”

“I want to play,” Jaskier interrupted before Geralt could embarrass them both any further.

The Witcher’s hands, until then idly stroking his lower back, wandered up his chest and hooked over his shoulders.

“If you want to play,” he said lowly, “then why aren’t you kneeling?” And he pulled Jaskier downwards with the unfair strength of his arms, making his knees buckle underneath him.

As Jaskier sank to his knees on his own kitchen floor, Geralt got up, reversing their heights.

Chapter Text

Jaskier’s knees hit the floor. Geralt threaded a hand into his hair and turned his face upwards, kissed him unhurriedly.

Geralt’s tongue was rough, almost like a cat’s, and when he licked Jaskier’s lower lip playfully, Jaskier shuddered.

He thought about Yennefer talking about him when they were alone, talking like there was someone else there who could hear and agree.

“And he’s already fucking the air.”

He filled the silence between her sentence and his own desperate moan with a chuckle in Geralt’s voice, and found his hand clawing against Geralt’s chest while they snogged.

Essi was right. The thought of being shoved back and forth between them in bed was unbearably hot, while the thought of being with both of them, being part of their difficult dynamic, having to choose sides, maybe sometimes even having to mediate, was terrifying.

He was made to be with one partner, he thought desperately. One partner with a very clear line of communication as to what they want and don’t want, so that Jaskier could agree with them.

But Essi was right, that was… just pitiful.

What do I want?

While Geralt rubbed Jaskier’s face against his crotch where his half-hard cock was hot and giving under the denim, Jaskier found he knew what he wanted.

I want them both. Even if it’s hard.

But no meddling. Just hoping. Maybe be the letter, if he couldn’t be the messenger. That wasn’t meddling, strictly speaking.

He mouthed at Geralt’s hard-on and gripped his ass with both hands, licked the rough denim, begged with his eyes. And imagined.

Imagined Yennefer on his abandoned kitchen chair, in one of her gorgeous dresses, sipping champagne and watching them with a hungry glint in her violet eyes. Her purple-tipped fingernail tapping the tabletop, not in impatience, but in a hypnotic rhythm that turned Jaskier’s brain to mush and left him with no choice but to obey them, have them throw him around, be used by them.

“You don’t need to exert yourself on that,” Geralt would chuckle. “He’s not going to resist anyway. Look at him.”

“Poor little poet,” the real Geralt purred above him. “Been a little too lost in your fabricated rabbit hole to take care of yourself, and now you’re all worked up.”

Jaskier noticed he was right. Hardly a minute into playing with Geralt, still fully-clothed and all but untouched, he was already sporting an uncomfortable erection.

“Get those clothes off.”

Jaskier scowled and obeyed, quickly and without elegance. His pants were the last to go, and he threw them at Geralt’s chest. The Witcher let them fall to the floor and laughed at him.

“Oh, is that what’s happening today? You want to be defiant?”

If you want to be stupid about your marriage, Jaskier did not say, but he did throw his chin up. “Can’t handle it?” he asked back.

“Ooh.” Geralt sat down and leaned forward onto his knees, needling him with his hot gaze. “This is interesting. So you won’t be all pliant and soft today, you want to fight me?”

Jaskier felt a blush spread from his cheeks to his forehead. But if he wanted his plan to work… being bratty was the best way to ensure it.

“What if I do?” he said lowly. He hated how shy he suddenly sounded, but his heart was pounding in his throat, and he thought himself awfully brave for making it this far, he did not want to back down now. “I’m meeting Yennefer on Saturday,” he added. “Just… so you know.”

“Well, I hope she won’t mind the marks,” Geralt replied and grinned widely, showing his pointy molars. “Cause if you want to fight me, we both know what’ll happen. You’ll get bruised, and I’ll win.”

“She won’t mind if they’re yours. You’re awfully sure of yourself,” Jaskier challenged. His voice came out as something of a croak.

“I am,” the Witcher replied. “Are you?”

Jaskier turned towards the door in a quick motion, but suddenly Geralt was all up in his face, gripping him by the neck like a beast. Geralt laughed, a short, barking sound, and turned him around, shoving him out of the kitchen.

While he was being pushed into his own bedroom, Jaskier tried to turn around, to grab Geralt, to fight his grip, but to no avail.

Geralt sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled Jaskier down with him, throwing him over his thighs and holding him there by a firm hand in his hair.

Jaskier struggled, but every move made his scalp smart. He tried kicking, but Geralt spread his legs a little, rearranged him, and suddenly Jaskier’s hard cock was caught between the firm muscles of Geralt’s thighs. The fight went out of him with a keen when Geralt’s hand came down on his naked ass with a loud smack . His cock wanted to jump, but caught as it was, all it could do was to swell a bit more.

“That’s it already?” Geralt asked darkly as he spanked him again. “That was all the fight you were gonna put up?”

Jaskier writhed, clawed half-heartedly at Geralt’s calf, but the other man reacted with a pleasurable hum like he was getting a massage.

This wasn’t working. Jaskier had nothing to put against Geralt, not physically. He cleared his throat and opened his mouth-

And yelped when the third hit came down, right to the underside of his left ass cheek.

Geralt chuckled. “I just thought about the time I smacked your chest until you cried,” he reminisced, rubbing over Jaskier’s ass, lightly spreading the cheeks, then letting them fall back. Never letting go of his hair with the other hand.

Jaskier huffed and shifted. Geralt gripped his hair tighter.

“Your nipples were dark red,” the Witcher remembered. “You told me they were sensitive for two days afterward.”

“They were fucking purple,” Jaskier ground out and, in a feat of control, managed to keep the next sound in when he was spanked again. “And I wasn’t crying, I was just-”

“You were bawling,” Geralt interrupted him in an indulgent tone. The next hit went to the back of Jaskier’s right thigh, unforgiving and fast. Jaskier bit his tongue and stayed silent. “Did you meet Yen while they were still bruised? I hope she took advantage.”

Jaskier didn’t answer, but he felt a hot rush of vindication and arousal.

“Oh, now you’re giving me the silent treatment?” Geralt asked. “I’d like to see you keep that up.”

Hits rained down on Jaskier’s backside, Geralt’s superhuman strength slipping out a little more with each of them. The first hits were as hefty as could be expected, but gradually they got as hard as hits with a long implement, like a really heavy whip. But it was still just his hand. His other hand went from Jaskier’s hair to his neck, digging blunt nails into the strained muscles there.

Jaskier breathed through his open mouth, his eyes squeezed shut, and concentrated on not making noise. Rile him up. Goad him. Make him work.

Geralt was undeterred by the silence. He only interrupted the spanking when Jaskier’s hand found his still denim-clad ass and gripped it, and he only stopped long enough to say: “Still a touchy little shit then.”

Jaskier, by then, was silently crying onto the floor, the tears running down over his forehead into his hair and down his nose to fall as drops. His cock, now painfully hard and still caught between Geralt’s legs, had started to pulse with his racing heartbeat. Jaskier was almost sure that when Geralt would finally touch him, he would just cum instantly.

At least, Geralt wasn’t better off. His hard-on dug into Jaskier’s right hip and his breath went that little bit faster than usual.

A brutal hit against both his flaming ass cheeks at once finally forced a sound from Jaskier’s open mouth.

Geralt stopped.

“See? All it takes is time.” He helped Jaskier stand up – or rather, shoved him to his feet.

Jaskier tried to turn his face away, but Geralt got up to stand before him and caught his chin in his hand.

Jaskier’s glans touched the bulge in Geralt’s denim and left a wet spot on the grey fabric.

For a moment, they just stared at each other, Jaskier defiantly even through his tears, Geralt with a curious hunger. Then Jaskier ripped his chin away and took a step back.

Geralt smiled with one corner of his mouth and the crinkles around his eyes. “Going somewhere?”

“Are you gonna fuck me now, or play around some more?” Jaskier said, and he was almost sure he sounded proud and defiant. Not sniffy and out of his mind with how turned on he was. The sight of Geralt’s muscular arms, always a delight, hit differently in the wake of the spanking he’d just received. He wiped his face with his hands and scowled. He definitely scowled, although for a moment he was afraid it was more of a pout.

“I think I’ll play around some more, find out what is going on with the attitude,” Geralt said and pointed to the bed. “All fours.”

Jaskier didn’t move.

Geralt furrowed his brow, for the first time visibly rising to the bait.

“All fours,” he reiterated emphatically. “Don’t make me say it again, little slut.”

Jaskier went to the bed and took the demanded position, but slowly and deliberately, taking his time to sort his shaking limbs.

Geralt waited.

For a moment, nothing happened. Jaskier felt the Witcher’s eyes on him.

“Grab a hold of the headboard.”

Jaskier did.

“Don’t let it go.”

Geralt climbed on the bed behind Jaskier, leaning down, spreading his cheeks.

“No no no no,” Jaskier chanted, alarmed. “You know I hate that…”

“Shame, cause I like it,” Geralt replied carelessly and Jaskier felt a cool breath touch his exposed opening.

“You don’t need to do that,” Jaskier tried, for a moment forgetting his plan entirely, “Please, just… if you want, I’ll do that to you, but don’t…”

“Shut up now.”

Closed lips were run over the length of his cleft, tickling the sensitive skin.

Suddenly, Jaskier remembered his plan. “Stop it,” he snapped and used his hands on the headboard to pull himself forwards, out of the reach of Geralt’s mouth.

For a moment, it was silent behind him. Then, Geralt asked something he had only asked twice before.

“Colour?”

Jaskier gulped and stared at the headboard while he whispered: “Green.”

It was silent for another moment.

Then, strong hands seized his hips and pulled him backwards, slowly and inescapably.

“Mouthy brat,” Geralt growled while he positioned Jaskier to his liking again. “Once I’ve had my fill of you, I’m going to properly shut you up.”

Jaskier opened his mouth and was about to retort, but then, without further preamble, Geralt’s rough, hot tongue snaked into his ass, spearing him in one go, Geralt’s hands clamping his hips in, making escape impossible.

Jaskier whined long and loud and let his face fall to the covers, trying to muffle his sounds in the fabric as best as he could while the tongue was followed by teeth, and the teeth were followed by lips, and Jaskier’s higher brain functions went on holiday until further notice.

Jaskier had always thought of rimming – or really, any kind of oral sex – as enforcing a pretty straightforward dynamic between one who gives and one who receives. But with both Geralt and Yennefer, his ideas of that had been shaken up quite roughly.

Geralt ate him out like he owned him. There was nothing servile or subordinate about it. If he didn’t know better, Jaskier would have thought Geralt didn’t even care about his enjoyment of the whole thing. He knew he did, of course, but keeping that in mind would have required higher brain functions. In his dazed state of arousal, he felt like Geralt was eating him up , licking into him, biting his cheeks, pursing his lips to suck stinging bruises into his skin. He was being used. 

Jaskier moaned helplessly throughout the whole ordeal, his hips twitching and fighting, but Geralt held fast. Behind his navel, Jaskier felt a hot tension, tightening and tightening, but never quite snapping, not from just that. He needed something against his cock.

And he needed Geralt to leave more marks.

He let go of the headboard and slipped his hand between his legs. He gripped his cock carefully and immediately his eyes rolled back in his head at the feeling, paired with Geralt still eating him out with a single-minded focus.

He started gently jerking himself off, careful not to cum yet, but just to enjoy. He groaned into the covers and felt new tears gathering behind his eyelids, this time from pleasure.

Suddenly, his tongue halfway between Jaskier’s balls and his hole, Geralt stopped.

Jaskier stilled his hand and made a show of slowly letting go of his cock. He heard his heart thunder in his ears.

“You gotta be fucking kidding me.”

Geralt made to throw Jaskier onto his back, but Jaskier quickly stabilized himself on all fours. “I’m sorry,” he gasped, and even though it was all part of his bigger plan, whimpering felt so shamefully good that he found he didn’t mind it at all. He clambered to get his hand back to the headboard where it belonged. “I’m sorry, please, I already stopped, just-”

“I said to hold on to the headboard,” Geralt growled and a hit with a palm, harder than any before, came down on Jaskier’s ass. Jaskier yelped. 

“What part of hold on to the headboard -” – another hit, harder still, with the backhand this time – “did you confuse with hold on to your dick , hm?” Geralt gripped his hips again, dug in all ten fingernails, red crescent moons would remain there on Jaskier’s skin, Jaskier howled, and then Geralt clamped his teeth into the skin of his left cheek, right next to his cleft, and sucked on him, violent and greedy like a vampire.

“The… the… dick part,” Jaskier answered the rhetorical question, his mind swimming, and he heard the laugh in his own voice, and he heard Geralt growl and felt the bite worsen still, and suddenly, the tension did snap.

Jaskier came. He squirted onto his covers with a shout, his untouched dick throbbing and jumping while it dribbled, and his whole body snapped inward like a jackknife. Geralt didn’t let go and Jaskier heard himself wail.

After a long moment, the Witcher let go of his skin, let it pop out of his mouth, and each of Jaskier’s exhales was a whimper when the force of his orgasm and the pain in his ass added up to create a mind-melting mixture of impressions.

Jaskier sank onto his front as far as his shaking knees allowed.

“You’re a piece of work,” Geralt said behind him. “I hope Yennefer beats you to shreds with that cane of hers on Saturday.”

Jaskier thought he sounded proud.

–

Meeting Yennefer again started out nice enough, even though their habit of having a snack and a drink in her sunroom was a bit torturous. But then, any work he had gotten done that week after meeting Geralt had been a bit torturous.

“Are you nervous?” she asked gently, but unmistakably superior while she handed him a modestly filled glass of wine. “Nothing needs to change, you know.”

He accepted the glass and sniffed the wine. As usual, it was something utterly delicious which he didn’t recognize. Not that he didn’t know a little bit about wine, but Yennefer had contacts all over the Continent and when she broke out something nice, it was likely from a place Jaskier had never even visited.

“Things have changed already,” he said quietly while she took a seat on the bench next to him, nestling her deceptively fragile body against his. He pulled her close with his arm around her shoulders.

“In what way?” She tried not to sound impatient, or anxious, but by now he knew her well enough that he recognized both in her voice. “You always knew I have been married. You always knew Geralt has. What does it change if we were married to each other? To you?”

Jaskier grinned into his wine glass and didn’t respond, and, as he had known, that made her curious.

“Songbird?”

Jaskier shrugged and hugged her tighter. “I don’t think it’s my place to tell.”

In an instant, she was straddling his lap, wine glass still in hand. “If you won’t, I’ll read your mind,” she threatened. “He knows you can’t keep secrets from me.”

Not unless you let me, no, he thought, but he didn’t let the thought show on his face. Instead, he went for a bashful smile. “That’s true. He’s… different. Since we all know.”

“Different how?” she asked, and her face was of stone.

He gently pushed her from his lap and got up.

Standing in the light of the few little lamps she had lit in the sun room after it had gone dark, he undressed. Nothing like he had undressed for Geralt. Unhurried. Even teasing.

He opened the buttons of his shirt one by one, meeting her gaze between glances at his hands. She relaxed onto the couch and watched, still wary, but satisfied with his nonverbal answer for the moment.

She sipped her wine and watched him take his shirt off, even though that didn’t supply any new information.

Then, he stepped out of his trousers, subtly toeing off his socks as they went, turned around and slowly inched down his pants.

He heard her breathe in sharply when he presented her with the results of Geralt’s work – the retribution for Jaskier’s insolence.

The evening with Geralt hadn’t ended with him cumming untouched. It hadn’t ended for a long time. When Jaskier was sure Yennefer had taken in his backside, he turned around and let her see the hickeys strewn over his thighs and the purple bite mark just over his cock.

Yennefer observed him, her eyes flicking from mark to mark.

She was still sipping her wine, trying to seem unaffected, but he knew her tells. In the subtlest of movements, she rubbed her thighs together while she regarded him.

“Looks like you two had fun,” she said coldly.

“I told him we’d see each other today,” Jaskier said quietly.

“So this is a message?”

He met her gaze, her beguiling, entrancing, enthralling gaze. “It’s a love letter.”

Yennefer scoffed. She put her wine glass down and grabbed his hand.

“Come.”

He followed her on wobbly knees.

–

“I want you to come by in the morning sometime,” Yennefer said.

Jaskier wanted to answer that he couldn’t, he had to work in the mornings.

Smack. Smack.

“I’d like to sip my morning coffee in the sunroom, with you warming my clit for me,” she elaborated.

He wanted to say that he wanted that too, but he couldn’t, at least not on most mornings. Maybe I could make time soon, he wanted to say.

Smack. Smack.

“You can fold yourself under my desk while I work,” she continued.

Smack.

“Lick me silly while I figure out how to fix whatever stupid political mess the Chapter has left on my doorstep this time.”

Smack.

He wanted to say that she could hit him harder, that he could take it. He stared at her.

Smack.

“What’s with the stare? Anything important?” she asked and he felt her open the telepathic connection.

“Harder, please, Yennefer,” he thought at her.

She smiled beautifully.

“Oh, don’t worry, little songbird. This is the warmup.”

He closed his eyes and tried to relax.

Smack.

Smack.

“Are you this demanding with him?” she asked. She tried to sound off-handed, disinterested, like it was merely a quip and his demanding nature was the actual topic of the sentence, rather than his time with her ex.

Jaskier chuckled into his gag.

“Oh, now I’m amusing you,” she said.

He wanted to answer, but the telepathic connection was gone. He grunted something unintelligible.

She hummed. “Which means either Of course I’m being a begging brat with him or No, obviously not, I am respectful and modest with him. So which is it?”

She raised the crop again; the leather piece at its tip, usually just an elongated square, was heart-shaped. She had transformed it before she had started hitting him, and by now, he guessed, his whole body was a mess of heart-shaped welts.

He met her gaze and then cast down his eyes.

“Is this you attempting to salvage your reputation?” she asked sweetly, but the connection stayed gone. She didn’t let him answer.

“Let me tell you, though,” she continued and gave her empty hand a twist in the air. The ropes around his wrists and those around his ankles, which held him aloft in the toasty air of her play room, made him spin slowly until he presented her with his already bruised ass. “I don’t care what he does or does not punish you for,” she said behind him.

Smack.

He wailed into the gag. She had hit the worst of his bruises, right next to his cleft, where Geralt had bitten him so fiercely, head on with the heart-shaped tip of the crop.

“I don’t care how lenient or generous he is.”

Smack.

She hit exactly the same spot again. He groaned and started to heave breaths to calm himself down.

“I’m not lenient.”

Smack.

“I’m not generous.”

Smack.

“And I don’t intend to change.”

Smack. Smack. Smack. All in the same spot. Geralt’s bite mark slowly vanished under a heart-shaped bruise.

Jaskier whimpered into his gag and tried to turn his head, tried to look her in the eyes, beg her with his gaze, make her open up her thoughts to him and hear him think You don’t need to, you’re perfect as you are, you’re brilliant as you are…

“Stop twisting,” she snapped and backhanded his less abused ass cheek. Not lenient, indeed. “I don’t want your whimpering and your honeyed words, Pankratz.”

But you love my honeyed words!

SMACK!

Jaskier keened and felt himself drool over the gag and his own chin.

“Call that a love letter.”

–

“Poor little poet. And she didn’t even let you talk?”

“She smacked the shit out of me for half an hour and then…”

“And then what?”

“Then she gave me… sort of… a blowjob.”

“Sort of?”

“I didn’t last long.”

Geralt laughed. Jaskier was on his back, his knees folded up almost to his shoulders, and Geralt was busying himself between his legs. In between mean twists of his wrist he pressed the nails of his free hand into the fading yellowish heart-shape on Jaskier’s ass.

Jaskier pulled on his arms, but the leather cuffs that bound his wrists to the headboard didn’t give at all. He groaned to the ceiling when Geralt stopped probing his bruise and started jerking his cock instead.

“You’re seeing her on Saturday again, right?”

“Y-Yes, why?”

Geralt retracted his hands and grabbed a hold of the inside of Jaskier’s knees instead. He lined his cock up and rubbed the tip of it against Jaskier’s stretched opening. Being fluid-bonded was comfortable, and Jaskier didn’t like the rubbery smell of condoms much, so he had been elated when Geralt had suggested just getting tested and getting that out of the way.

Geralt traced the heart one last time before he pressed in slowly. Teasingly slowly.

“Ger-alttt…”

“I want you to tell her thanks for the message.”

“S-Sure.”

“When did you last get yourself off?”

Jaskier blushed and felt himself clench around Geralt.

“Hey.” The Witcher smacked his thigh. “Relax.”

He tried.

“When?”

“Tuesday.”

Geralt pinned his legs down and shoved in.

Jaskier bit his lip, shivered.

“I want you to tell her something else as well,” Geralt groaned while he got settled.

“Okay, okay,” Jaskier threw his head back and tried to lift his hips to invite Geralt to start fucking him already, but Geralt held him down. “I’ll tell her whatever you want, Geralt, even if you do have a phone and could tell her anything you wanted herself, and I’m sure you’re seeing her plenty, so I don’t get the messenger thing, but I will, if you just…”

“Tell her this, are you listening?” Geralt pulled out and rammed back in.

“Yesss,” Jaskier moaned.

“Tell her to have mercy on you, since you haven’t cum since Tuesday.”

Jaskier’s eyes flew open, but before he could speak, Geralt started fucking him in earnest, holding his legs with his big rough hands, angling his thrusts carefully until he found the perfect angle.

“Geralt!”

“Your neighbours,” Geralt reminded him shortly.

“Fuck’em,” Jaskier slurred and cried out when Geralt’s next thrust hit the spot just right.

Geralt chuckled. “You’re a bit of an exhibitionist, aren’t you?” he said.

Jaskier stared at him, wide-eyed, while his open mouth just kept leaking noise. The fact that Geralt could speak clearly throughout fucking him, with such force no less, was tremendously unfair. Also-

Exhibitionist?

Jaskier had never considered it.

But then, Yennefer… Yennefer taking him to that dinner where people read his mind, and sending him that image of them, getting him even more flustered…

“Seems all the best people are,” Geralt grunted without slowing down.

“Geralt, you… please…”

“Hm?”

Jaskier felt his cock leak onto his belly.

“Pleasepleaseplease…”

Geralt gripped him firmer and fucked him with ruthless enjoyment. “You’re not cumming, Jaskier. Forget it.”

“You’re not even into denial,” Jaskier howled indignantly when Geralt’s stomach touched his erection, but only lightly.

Geralt let go of his left leg and closed the hand around Jaskier’s neck instead. Jaskier’s desperate wailing turned into a strained wheeze.

“I’m not,” the Witcher said and grinned wolfishly without even slowing his thrusts. “But I know she is.”

–

“And you obeyed him?”

Jaskier wrung his hands in front of him. “I… figured you might like the… thoughtfulness.”

“You haven’t cum at home either?”

Jaskier went beet red, but he would not answer that. He couldn’t.

With what his life outside work looked like right now, sometimes he thought it was a miracle that he even got work done at all.

No honeymoon phase had ever lasted as long as this one, which he shared with two people.

They kept his heart full to bursting with how they behaved, both of them, so blatantly fond of him now, but also so painfully fond of each other.

Jaskier knew they saw each other at least twice a week - every time Ciri moved from one to the other - but he had no idea how much or how little they talked. He hoped they talked. He hoped they were starting to get things right.

“Songbird.”

She sounded stern.

Right, her question.

“I haven’t cum at all,” Jaskier answered quietly.

Yennefer looked at him, looked him over with wanton appreciation.

“Why did you agree to this?” she asked, unexpectedly gently. “You said you didn’t want to get between us, but I cannot imagine how you could be any more between us than right now.”

“I can.”

For a moment, their gazes locked. Then Jaskier looked away. “I mean,” he amended, “I never wanted to come between you as an obstacle. I do like being a… bridge. As long as that’s not all I am to either of you.”

“You know it’s not,” Yennefer said at once. Essi was right, it was possible to understand the true nature of their attachment to him. But she was also right that finding this out by simply asking had been excruciating. But he had done it. He pulled Yennefer closer to him, pressed his face to her knees.

“I’m glad to hear that.”

Yennefer stroked his hair. Kneeling for her was always nice, and sometimes, it brought out all the tenderness she pretended she didn’t possess. Jaskier would have purred if he could.

“You’re my darling songbird,” she said quietly. “The fact that you are also a bridge to Geralt is just… extra.”

Jaskier was silent for a long moment. Then, he said: “You know what I meant just now, right?” His voice was muffled by her thighs. He was glad for it.

“When you said you could be more between us?”

He hummed.

She kept stroking his hair.

“You couldn’t handle it,” she said softly.

“I could.”

“We’d probably tear you in two.”

“I’d take that risk.”

Yennefer hesitated.

“You said you have tried everything to make your relationship work,” Jaskier mumbled into Yennefer’s legs. “But have you?”

They were silent for a long moment. Then, she made him stand up and get dressed, and took him to the opera.

Chapter Text

“The party starts at seven.”

“Should I be there early? Help you… set the table or something?” he asked. He was still naked. As was she. They were lying on the ground in the playroom, a mat and some pillows providing comfort. While they talked, she playfully peeled wax drops off his chest. He hissed every time it pulled on his chest hair and stung.

“Actually, you’re the surprise guest, so I rather thought you should come late,” Yennefer said. “Maybe eight.”

“Alright. Should I come alone?”

Yennefer stared at him.

“I’m just asking,” he hurried to add, “because Essi is a musician as well. And sometimes we do stuff together, it’s great.”

“Essi,” Yennefer said slowly. “Blonde, big blue eyes, yes?”

“You know about her,” Jaskier said and briefly wondered if he missed something important. “She was the one without the car, the one who went looking for Ciri at the train station.”

“I remember that,” Yennefer said coldly and picked a wax drop. Jaskier hissed. “I also remember her whipping you and fucking you on her couch.”

Jaskier hissed again, this time in dismay. He had shown her. When they had played for the very first time. Back then, he hadn’t known that some day, she might care about him being with other women.

“We’re friends,” he said.

“Yes… good friends, hm?” Yennefer smiled poisonously.

“Yes, good friends, Yennefer,” Jaskier said. He turned to her and traced her curves with his hand. “And that’s all. We sometimes help each other… recoup, after a bad breakup. That’s what I showed you back then. Nothing more.”

“I see.” But she didn’t sound convinced.

“Look, if it helps, I can ask her to bring her latest boy toy. Her last relationship didn’t work out that well, but she always has prospects.”

“Please do,” Yennefer said sweetly. Then she rolled herself around and straddled him.

He laughed. “No way, Yennefer. Please. I’m done, I’m so done, I’m sorry.”

“Are you now?” Yennefer raised her hand and began to weave a spell. “Well, I’m not.”

–

Yennefer and Ciri, Jaskier learned, shared a birthday.

Yennefer didn’t strike him as someone who would celebrate their own birthday, not for a lack of self-confidence or readiness to have themselves celebrated, but because her work – whatever it was that a mage really did , Jaskier had never quite found that out – was already a terribly social affair, with close and not-so-close acquaintances at every corner and some dinner or the other twice a month. It had become somewhat of a habit for Jaskier to escort her to those, and also for her to fluster him as much as she could get away with. They both immensely enjoyed that, because Geralt was probably right and they were exhibitionists. Jaskier, at least, could not deny that other people noticing just how much he was under her thumb, erotically, was an immense turn-on for him. Plus, he liked being the center of attention anyway, and being the center of attention with her was just more fun.

Yennefer had expressed, more than once, how much more fun he was at such affairs than Geralt had been. The Witcher’s hard-to-swallow humor hadn’t done him any favours in Yennefer’s particular circles, and Jaskier was nothing if not sociable. But she had also told him more than once how very happy she was to just stay in with him.

But Ciri was turning sixteen, and while she would obviously have a party with her friends on the weekend, she had apparently also insisted on having a tiny family party with a few important guests on the day itself.

Few, in this case, meaning Geralt’s fellow Witchers – at least those who were nearby, which were two –, a friend of Yennefer’s, and Ciri’s girlfriend Mistle. Yennefer had been right when she had advised not to take the argument between those two too seriously.

And, obviously, Jaskier.

What Jaskier was even doing at Ciri’s birthday party had remained a mystery – after all, they had met only once, and she had mistaken him for a hallucination; and as far as Jaskier understood it, neither Yennefer nor Geralt were ready to introduce him to her as anything – until a few days prior, when Yennefer had tentatively asked how much he would charge for a private performance.

“Nothing fancy,” she had assured him. “Just bring your guitar and sing her a song, she’ll be over the moon.”

“I’m not charging you for that,” Jaskier had replied a little incredulously. “I’m your boyfriend.”

They had stared at each other for a long moment then, but Jaskier hadn’t taken it back and Yennefer hadn’t asked him to. She had only kissed him and looked at him as if he were a hand-painted vase from overseas that someone had gifted her. Like she adored him, but didn’t know what to do with him. Which was fair.

But he felt it was only fair to warn Geralt about the invitation.

He needn’t have. Geralt already knew, and he didn’t seem nervous about it at all.

Jaskier wondered what was happening while he wasn’t there these days. Did Yennefer and Geralt meet? Did they still go to counseling? Did they ever talk about him there? Or at all?

They certainly left each other all kinds of little messages on Jaskier’s body.

He wondered, but he never dared to ask.

–

It would have been stupid for Essi and Jurand to arrive before Jaskier when Ciri had never seen them before. So the three of them turned up together.

Essi had pretended to turn her nose up at the idea of playing on a “kid’s birthday party,” but Jaskier had known she wouldn’t let the opportunity slide to meet both his lovers and their “strangely gorgeous kid.”

Her commitment to music was a very different one than Jaskier’s own. While Jaskier spent far too little time on it, but always dreamed of it to eventually replace his day job, Essi had given up the hope of living off her creativity. She was working a dull office job and spent every free minute – and however much time at work as she could get away with – pursuing her music, artistically, without even trying to market herself. She only played for friends and friends of friends. She took all kinds of classes she could get her hands on. She wasn’t listed on Spotify. If nobody ever knew she was a musician except for the people she cared about, she could still die happy, provided she would one day be able to write a proper Madrigal. Or so she said.

So, of course, Yennefer’s requirement of “nothing fancy” hadn’t withstood the one rehearsal they had managed to squeeze into their timetables.

Jurand was not a musician, but Essi had trained him to be what she called her “stagehand.” Even though she had only played on a stage once or twice. He handed her her instruments and put them away again, and he did it with such reverence and easy obedience that Jaskier wondered what his training had entailed.

Not that it was any of his business.

But Essi was exactly as dirty-minded as he was, and during the rehearsal she openly ordered Jurand about and praised him like a puppy. He didn’t mind; in fact, Jaskier felt like maybe Jurand was a little bit similar to him and Yennefer in that regard. Once or twice, he felt the young man’s eyes on him when Essi praised him, and almost heard him think You heard how she called me good? I do anything to make her say that.

Much how he himself acted when Yennefer demonstrated her hold over him.

Only with Essi, he saw that the playing was all there was to it. He could tell she was already getting bored of him. He would be gone by June.

So here they were approaching Yennefer’s villa in Vengerberg, Jaskier with a guitar on his back, Essi with a harp case in her hand, and Jurand carrying the rest of the equipment in various bags and cases hung all over him.

Geralt had slipped away from the table to let them in quietly. “You’re late,” he greeted them in a low voice when he opened the door. “Ciri already suspects something.” They could hear the talking and the laughter from the dining room.

Jaskier didn’t pay attention to what he said, because Geralt was wearing tight, dark blue jeans, grey leather shoes and a perfectly tailored shirt as white as his hair. Jaskier hadn’t seen him in anything so close to formal before, and he wondered if that had been what had always derailed Geralt’s conversations at Yennefer’s formal affairs. He knew he couldn’t make polite conversation with Geralt in that shirt to save his life.

While Jaskier had been drooling over Geralt, apparently Geralt and Essi got the introductions out of the way, because suddenly Essi shoved Jaskier inside and indicated the stairs to the cellar.

Jaskier had never been down there before. He let Jurand go down before him so he was left last with Geralt who closed the door quietly behind him.

“Hey,” Geralt said, and while Jurand still struggled to maneuver himself and his bags down the narrow staircase, he pulled Jaskier close.

“Hey yourself,” Jaskier whispered.

They kissed, and Jaskier wasn’t sure who had initiated it.

“Yen’s in a mood,” the Witcher said once they parted. “What did you do?”

“Kind of a long story,” Jaskier replied carefully. “But we’re fine now, I think.”

“Hm.” Geralt gently pushed him towards the stairs. “Go on then.”

Jaskier went on then, to complete the quietest sound check in the history of sound checks.

–

Jaskier had always thought Essi was his equal in her one-track-mindedness. But it turned out she was far worse.

As soon as Jaskier had closed the cellar door behind himself, Essi, who had been just standing there draining a juice box while Jurand set up the equipment, whipped around to him.

“Holy shitsticks in a bottle,” she breathed. “Was that him?”

Both Jurand and Jaskier blushed furiously. Jaskier made a noise of agreement.

“If he weren’t yours, I’d eat him for dinner,” she stated and turned back to observe Jurand.

Jaskier began unpacking his guitar and then his own equipment. He’d let Jurand carry it because he was happy for the help, but he preferred to set up himself.

“Is she as hot as him?” Essi asked lazily while she watched the two of them work.

“Essi, please,” Jaskier groaned and kept concentrating on the task at hand.

“I bet she is,” Essi mused and threw her empty juice box in the bin. “Her voice on the phone sounded hot, anyway.” Then, she finally came over to help.

–

“What kind of surprise is set up in the cellar?” Ciri asked suspiciously while the door was opened. She couldn’t see what was before her – Mistle, walking behind her, covered her eyes with her hands. But Mistle hadn’t known either, apparently, because when she saw the ensemble, she grinned, and when she saw Jaskier, her mouth fell open. Jaskier winked at her. It was the first time he saw Mistle. She was taller than Ciri, if not by much, and her dark blonde hair was shaven to about half a centimeter. She must have been about Ciri’s age, a year older at most.

Essi and Jaskier had nestled themselves into a corner of the cellar, leaving the rest of the room to the various picnic chairs and the little tables they had found and grouped in the empty space.

Mistle took her hands away and before Ciri could react to the mini live band in her mother’s cellar, Essi began playing.

Jaskier registered the other guests entering the cellar. The first piece was just Happy Birthday, and the guests sang along, so he didn’t have to concentrate much. After Ciri and Mistle came Geralt and Yennefer, then followed a beautiful young woman with long, chestnut-coloured curls who had to be Yennefer’s friend. The last two people who squeezed themselves into the cellar were men, and even if Jaskier hadn’t known other Witchers would come, he would have known instantly what they were.

One of them was shorter than Geralt, but just as broad, with red hair and a beard. The other one was older than both Geralt and this red-haired Witcher. He looked a little bit like an older version of Geralt with his light grey hair and his muscular stature. Their eyes looked exactly like Geralt’s.

The tiny audience took seats on the wooden folding chairs, Ciri and Mistle still giggling incredulously.

They finished Happy Birthday and when the short applause ended, Jaskier cleared his throat and said: “Happy Birthday, Ciri. We were told you like my music, and there’s nobody I enjoy making music with more than Essi-” He pointed to Essi who waved cheerfully and interrupted him.

“I also brought Jurand along,” she said and pointed to her boy toy who, upon being introduced, looked up from where he was re-plugging cables in alarm. “He’s my stagehand.”

Ciri smiled at Jurand. He hurried to busy himself with the cables again.

“It was lovely of you to come,” said Yennefer, and Jaskier noticed a chill in her smile when she looked at Essi.

“Thank you for inviting us,” Essi replied and pretended not to notice. “Let’s gooo!” She strummed the opening chords to the next song. Jaskier joined in, and for the rest of the performance, he avoided both Yennefer’s and Geralt’s gazes.

There was enough to see anyway. Yennefer’s beautiful friend didn’t know any of his songs, he could tell, but she hummed along and when the red-haired Witcher next to her started swaying with the music, she joined in. The older Witcher glanced between Jurand and Essi, then between Essi and Jaskier, and finally, Jaskier noticed, he snuck glances at Geralt’s profile.

Mistle tapped along with her fingers on her knee.

Ciri, however, seemed adamant to prove to Jaskier just how much she liked his work. She mouthed along soundlessly as he sang, even mouthed along with Essi’s background vocals when she could manage it, and pulled all the right faces. He had picked three of his more cheerful songs for this particular performance, but he didn’t doubt she knew the somber ones by heart as well.

When he had learned that Geralt’s daughter liked his music, he hadn’t expected her to be an actual fan. He felt deeply honoured, and he grinned with the thought that it was a curious coincidence that she should have been his fan before either of her parents had become his lover.

Ciri was dumbfounded when the performance was over.

“That’s it?” she asked, and her little face scrunched up. “You came all the way to play three songs?”

“I actually don’t live that far away,” Jaskier tried to amend, but Yennefer was not amused.

“Ciri, manners.”

Ciri pulled a face. “I’m sorry for being impolite,” she recited, and it sounded practiced. “I just… I wish you could play one more, Dandelion.”

Jaskier looked to Essi. “I mean,” he said, “we haven’t rehearsed anything else together, but Essi’s great with improv…”

“I’m sure anything you can write, I can improvise,” Essi shot back and grinned.

They played one more. And then Jaskier signed a tiny printout of his first album art which Ciri had stuck to her bedroom door two years ago. He’d never noticed it on the way to Yennefer’s play room.

Ciri also wanted Essi to sign something for her, but as Essi had no album art - or really any kind of art - Essi scribbled “Happy Birthday Ciri” on one side of one of her picks, and her name and phone number on the other, so tiny it was almost illegible. “In case you ever need a party musician again,” she said, and Ciri blushed with joy.

–

“Triss Merigold.”

Jaskier remembered her. He’d never met her, but both Geralt and Yennefer had talked about her every now and again.

If he remembered correctly, she was originally a friend of Yennefer’s, but she had been with Geralt for a little while during one of Geralt and Yennefer’s extended relationship breaks. The chemistry between the three of them was tender, and Jaskier couldn’t help but wonder if Yennefer’s heterosexuality was all that had kept Triss from taking the place he was trying to take right now.

But then he caught Geralt looking at her, his eyes soft, but his posture carefully turned away from her. And he thought that maybe, it wasn’t.

Now, they were both standing in the kitchen with Lambert, the red-haired Witcher.

“So nice of you to play,” Triss said.

“Oh, it’s not like I’m an actual musician,” Jaskier admitted. As always, it stung a little. “I’m a lawyer, actually. Music is just… what I do for fun.”

It was less embarrassing to call it a hobby than to admit he just hadn’t made it very far yet.

“A lawyer?” Lambert scoffed. “You don’t look like a lawyer, if you don’t mind me sayin’.”

“I wear a suit to work,” Jaskier replied when Lambert indicated his faded band shirt and jeans. And probably even his ratty converse shoes. “But I don’t play in a suit, thank you.”

“Thank you,” Lambert replied and grinned broadly around a nibble.

Jaskier took one from the plate on the counter. Olives and cheese. “So you’re a real Witcher, right?” he asked without thinking.

“Hey,” the redhead replied and immediately looked dismayed. “Geralt’s as real as anythin’, okay? He’s takin’ a break, don’t mean he’s not a Witcher anymore.”

“Obviously,” Jaskier chuckled. “Sorry. I meant, you’re a practicing Witcher.”

“Geralt’s practicin’ as well,” Lambert laughed. “On you most days, I hear.”

Jaskier and Triss both blushed, and Jaskier was reminded of Essi’s earlier comments.

“Have you met my friend Essi?” he asked. “I have a feeling you two would get along.”

“Naah, too bossy,” Lambert waved a hand. “And with that dude following her like a lost puppy? What the fuck.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Triss asked, and Jaskier thought she sounded a little prickly.

“It’s just unnatural, Merigold,” Lambert said. “You know, the lady telling the man what to do. Ordering him about.”

“He’s her stagehand,” she countered. “She’s paying him to do what she says.”

“And you believe that?” Lambert grinned.

Geralt entered the kitchen with a beer.

“Hey, Geralt,” Lambert grinned. “Your little lawyer here wonders how real of a Witcher you are.”

Jaskier bit his lip. “That’s not what I said,” he said quietly.

“What’s this shit, Lambert?” Geralt said and looked at the uncomfortable faces of Triss Merigold and Jaskier. “Making everyone sad again?”

“Merigold believes the stagehand thing,” Lambert accused, but his grin faltered a tiny bit. “But I say, if I ever saw a woman get off on givin’ orders, that’s the one.”

“If you want Essi to order you about, you can just ask her,” Geralt said, skipping several pretentious lines of conversation at once.

Lambert ‘s face went as red as his hair.

Triss arched an eyebrow.

“They’re not exclusive,” Jaskier supplied helpfully. “She keeps Jurand around for fun. Maybe she’s got space for you.”

“Who’s gossiping about me?”

Essi entered the kitchen, without Jurand. He was probably packing the car. She took a swig of her beer while she looked around and her gaze fell on Lambert.

She said nothing, but Lambert went even redder.

“Look at that,” Triss Merigold said, and she leaned against the kitchen counter behind her and smiled slightly.

“I’ve always wondered,” Essi said, loudly and carelessly, “if Jaskier’s stories about Witcher stamina are true.”

“What?” Geralt said, and at the same time, Lambert blurted out: “‘f course they’re true.”

Silence fell. Essi grinned at Lambert.

Jaskier didn’t dare meet Geralt’s eyes.

“We’re animals,” Lambert added, white-knuckling his beer and keeping his eyes on Essi’s. He couldn’t have been more obvious, Jaskier thought amusedly, if he just fell to his knees.

“For fuck’s sake,” Geralt grunted.

Essi regarded Lambert with a blatant and slow once-over.

“Not in Yen’s house,” Geralt said quickly.

“Oh, don’t worry, Geralt,” Essi cooed when she reached Lambert’s face again, “I’m not even sure yet if I want him.”

And she turned around and left the kitchen.

Triss laughed heartily.

“Who says I want you , even?” Lambert called behind her.

Geralt groaned and rubbed his forehead.

Jaskier felt like this was the moment to slink out of the kitchen, but Triss beat him to it.

“I have to talk to that girl,” she said and pushed past Geralt.

Now Jaskier was alone with two Witchers.

“Stories about Witcher stamina?” Geralt asked him. His brow was furrowed.

“She was just goading him,” Jaskier was quick to reassure. “I told her about you, obviously, but not like that. She made it up.”

“She’s something,” Lambert said and put his empty bottle down on the counter. “I’ll just… go and make sure Merigold’s alright.”

He left without either of them calling him out on the poor excuse.

“So,” Jaskier said when Geralt leaned against the counter next to him. “Did you like the performance?”

“I’m not a music guy,” Geralt replied and took a swig. After a moment, he relented. “But I did like it. You’re good. Obviously.”

“Thank you,” Jaskier said quietly and ate another nibble.

Yennefer entered the kitchen. When she saw who was inside, she hesitated. An unusual look on her, Jaskier thought.

“Hello,” she said politely. “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

Jaskier and Geralt said “No” in unison, and all three of them laughed a little.

“This is so awkward,” Jaskier said after a moment of tense silence. “Being alone with you two.”

“Is it?” Geralt leaned over far enough that their shoulders touched, still looking at Yennefer.

“I don’t think it is,” said Yennefer softly and took the place on Jaskier’s other side, hooking her chin over his shoulder. “Why would it be awkward?”

And of course, that was the moment Ciri walked in.

“Oh.”

She stood in the door and looked between them a few times.

Geralt confidently brought some inches between himself and Jaskier and offered her a nibble. “You alright, Ciri?”

Ciri took the nibble, but instead of eating it she twisted it between her fingers, still reading the room carefully. Her bright green eyes bored into Jaskier’s for a moment. He went for a smile, but he wasn’t sure how it turned out. “Of course I’m alright,” she finally responded. “Just… wanted to ask if Mistle and I can go upstairs.”

“It’s your party, sweetling,” Yennefer said and began to fix a tray with a few nibbles and two glasses. She poured champagne and fished a box of chocolates from the fridge. “The best thing about that is, you decide when to leave.”

She handed her daughter the luxurious tray and Ciri hurriedly ate the nibble in her hand before she took it. “Thanks, mum,” she said happily. “Night, Geralt. Night, Dandelion.”

“Jaskier,” Jaskier automatically corrected her.

There was a short silence.

“Night, Jaskier,” Ciri said, easy as anything, and she went through the hall to the stairs where Mistle was waiting for her.

For a moment, they just looked after her. Then Jaskier let out an audible huff.

“That’s that then,” Yennefer chuckled. “Back to our conversation, awkward little songbird.”

Jaskier winced and looked down on the beer bottle in his hands.

“You call him songbird?” Geralt asked with a grin and a raised eyebrow that Jaskier saw out of the corner of his eye.

“I think it’s terribly fitting. Beautiful, vocal, annoying. Most of what he says makes little sense, but it’s still nice to listen to him. And I can catch him and put him in my pocket with my off-hand. What do you call him?” Yennefer asked, her tone one of polite interest.

Jaskier shivered.

Geralt thought for a moment. “Mostly just Jaskier. Poet, sometimes, when I feel like flattering him.”

“Slut, when the mood strikes,” Jaskier added quietly. When both his doms huffed a laugh at that, he shivered again.

Yennefer peered into the hallway.

“Hm. Seems Ciri’s guests have settled down in the living room,” she observed.

Jaskier looked at her, but she looked past him.

He just opened his mouth to strike up what could have become more idle banter or could have become a serious conversation, but before he could say anything, Geralt crowded him from behind, pulling him back against his hard chest with his right arm, while Yennefer invaded his space from the front, catching his chin between two fingers.

“Let me be honest with you,” Yennefer whispered against his lips while she pressed her warm body up to his. “Geralt and I were hoping you would join us in the play room after the party.”

“Join… you both?” Jaskier asked stupidly. “I mean, the three of us… together?”

“Say the word and we’ll drop it and never ask again,” Geralt murmured. “But if you’d like to try it… we would.”

“Have you ever done this before?” Jaskier asked unsteadily, even though he was pretty sure he knew the answer.

“Too jealous,” Yennefer admitted. “Both of us.”

“But not with me?”

“Never with you,” she answered, at the same time nestling her knee between his legs.

Geralt gripped him firmer, ran his nose along Jaskier’s nape.

“Guys, guys, stop,” he whispered, blushing furiously, “Anyone could walk in…”

“Then say you will play, after everyone’s gone,” Yennefer demanded with her dangerous smile and replaced her knee with her hand, lightly skimming over what was about to become a very visible hard-on.

Geralt nipped the skin behind his ear.

As if I would pass on this opportunity. But… “But with Ciri and Mistle in the other room?” he breathed.

“Sound proof,” Geralt rumbled into his neck. “Both rooms. Privacy for everyone.”

“Enough hard-to-get now, songbird,” Yennefer decided, punctuating her statement with an ungentle grip to Jaskier’s swelling cock. That made him throw his head back onto Geralt’s shoulder with a soundless moan. She ran gentle fingers over his jaw and his slightly open lips. “Do you want us to stop? Or will you play?”

“I will, I’ll play,” Jaskier promised against her fingertips. “Just, please, stop for now… you’re making me…”

“...hard?” Yennefer suggested, and Geralt said “...blush?”

Yennefer looked over his shoulder again and smiled, the corners of her eyes crinkling in joy. Jaskier guessed she was meeting Geralt’s gaze.

“It’s a date then,” Yennefer decided and let go of him, not before rubbing hard along the length of him once.

Geralt delivered a tiny bite to Jaskier’s neck at the exact same moment. Jaskier winced and swallowed a surprised sound.

If he had needed to be seduced, this would have certainly done it. But as it was, he was just glad they had finally caved and made the suggestion he had been waiting for for months.

Now there was only the tail end of the party to sit out.

“Let’s not join them all at once,” Yennefer suggested and poured some more champagne before she made to leave the kitchen with another tray. She looked pointedly at Jaskier and said: “Try thinking about something else for a moment before you come over, will you?” And with a tiny grin to herself, she left them alone.

Geralt put together a last tray of nibbles. When he was done, he turned around and, food already in one hand, snogged Jaskier forcefully while he kept hold of his neck with the other one.

When they parted, Geralt grinned at him, and Jaskier felt reminded of his look almost a year ago when he unnecessarily wrote Jaskier’s name on the cup. Enjoy, handsome.

Geralt left. Jaskier tried to think of something else, but it took him a few minutes to feel presentable again.

Chapter Text

Essi was doing it on purpose.

Jaskier could tell.

The group conversation had long since dwindled from a sleepy, alcoholic murmur to sleepy, alcoholic silence, but somehow, Essi always found new topics to strike up with Triss.

Vesemir and Lambert had left a bit after one o’clock, but almost an hour later Essi was still sitting on the smaller couch, her feet on the lap of the lightly dozing Jurand, nursing the same bottle of beer after half an hour, and her and Triss, who had curled her legs up onto the armchair she had commandeered, were chatting away animatedly.

And on the big couch, Jaskier was losing his mind.

He sat between Geralt and Yennefer, and he would have needed neither Geralt’s hand on his knee nor the fragrance of Yennefer’s glamour in his nose for the situation to make him impatient, but here they were, and he chewed his tongue to keep from telling Essi to just go home already.

“That reminds me,” Triss – who Jaskier awarded the benefit of the doubt – chimed when Essi took one of her rare swigs from the bottle, “have you ever been to see Chelsea Wolfe?” Jaskier inwardly groaned. Why would they meet someone as nerdy about music as them under these circumstances? When all Jaskier really wanted was for all of them to just leave him alone so his doms could-

“Could do what, exactly?” Yennefer’s voice inserted itself into his thoughts.

He winced at the sudden telepathic contact.

“I know the waiting must be hard on you, songbird,” she thought at him with a false note of compassion in her voice. “But try not to be impolite to our guests.”

“I am trying,” he thought back, and because his filtering was still atrocious when they spoke telepathically, she probably also heard him think “But I know Essi is fucking with me on purpose, and that’s making me even hotter.”

Yennefer, who had been politely laughing at something Essi had said, went quiet next to him.

“Wait, Yennefer, don’t-”

“Triss,” Yennefer interrupted both Jaskier and Essi aloud. “Don’t you have work tomorrow?” Her violet eyes bored into her friend’s, but the lovely smile never left her face. “I seem to remember you’re supposed to meet Philippa first thing in the morning.”

Essi winked at Jaskier. Geralt saw it, and Jaskier felt him shift a little closer to him on the couch.

Triss never stood a chance in the staring contest against Yennefer. She just lowered her gaze right away and smiled apologetically at Essi. “Right,” she said. “That’s true, I should… I should go then.”

“It was lovely having you here for Ciri’s birthday,” Yennefer cooed and stood up from the couch. “I’ll see you out.”

Essi stretched and poked Jurand’s thigh with her foot. He startled awake. “We should probably-”

“Yes, you should probably,” Yennefer interrupted sweetly. “It’s getting late, isn’t it.” And she ushered Triss to the hallway.

Essi grinned at Jaskier when they both got up and hugged.

“Tease,” he whispered to her.

“You know I am,” she replied, not bothering to whisper. She pecked him on the cheek. “Have fun being eaten.”

As they parted, Geralt was suddenly standing right next to them, glowering down on Essi with his golden eyes. “It was nice meeting you,” he rumbled without smiling. “You can visit us anytime. But you can not try to insert yourself again.”

Essi curtsied, of all things. “Don’t worry,” she said and hugged Geralt goodbye. He reciprocated the hug awkwardly. “I can tell he’s in a lot of good hands here.”

Before he could reply, she turned Jurand around by his shoulder and steered him to the hallway.

Jaskier turned to Geralt while Yennefer bid the guests goodbye. “You don’t have to be like that,” he said softly. “Essi knows I wasn’t about to go home with her .”

“That makes it worse, not better,” Geralt growled. “Does she think being pretty gives her the right? Or didn’t you tell her…”

Jaskier waited, but Geralt didn’t finish the sentence.

What exactly there was to tell someone so they knew that Jaskier wasn’t on the market, was still not hammered out.

Didn’t you tell her you are serious about me?

Didn’t you tell her you are serious about Yennefer?

Didn’t you tell her we are serious about you?

Jaskier decided to break the heavy silence. “I told her what’s going on,” he clarified without really clarifying anything. “I think she just had fun riling you up.”

“Well, we won’t take it out on you,” Yennefer said behind him. “Your little friend can’t manipulate us, songbird.”

They were alone at last.

“Or did you ask her to provoke us?” Geralt asked. He took a deliberate step towards Jaskier, standing almost nose to nose with him. “Did you need us to prove anything to you?”

“No, of course not,” Jaskier sputtered. He made to lay his hands on Geralt’s chest for a moment, but then he wasn’t sure if he should, so he clamped them behind his back like the world’s most awkward soldier. “She’s just… that’s just how she is, it’s all good fun for her…”

“Shut up, Jaskier,” said Yennefer.

Jaskier closed his mouth.

“I’d like to speak to you for a moment,” Yennefer said to Geralt.

“Send him upstairs then,” Geralt suggested.

“Are you sure?” Yennefer smiled politely. “I seem to remember you like to get him to bed by the scruff of his neck.”

“Your house, your etiquette,” Geralt replied.

Jaskier looked between them while they talked, but eventually it got a little too much and he just looked at the carpet, his hands still firmly knotted behind his back.

“We’ll compromise, then. Play room, songbird,” Yennefer ordered after a moment of silence. Or maybe telepathy. “Just stand in the middle of the room and wait. Don’t undress.”

“That’s a nice idea,” Jaskier heard Geralt say behind him. He couldn’t make out Yennefer’s reply. He was already on the stairs.

The play room door was slightly ajar when he reached it. Ciri’s door, with his signed album art re-affixed right above the ears of the horse on the poster, was closed and the hallway was silent.

Privacy for everyone.

Jaskier stepped into the play room and gently closed the door behind him.

The room looked different. The chest of drawers was still there, as was the table, but the chair was gone. And on both sides of the table there stood low-backed armchairs, dark green and cuddly like two big moss-covered stones.

Usually when she ordered him to go ahead, she would tell him to undress and where and how to stand, or kneel, or lie. He hovered around the middle of the room for long moments.

What was there to talk about?

Why couldn’t they talk telepathically while they got their hands on him already? If they didn’t want him to hear?

What didn’t they want him to hear? Was it something serious, something… divorcy? Or love-y? Did Yennefer want to tell Geralt about Jaskier calling himself her boyfriend? Or was it…

“How do you want to do this?” he imagined Geralt saying. “I like to start off by giving him half a blowjob to properly rile him up, but maybe you got another idea?”

Jaskier shook his head and stood in the middle of the room. He clasped his hands behind his back again and tried to think of nothing, but he couldn’t help but consider what Yennefer would reply to this.

“Half a blowjob sounds fun,” she would reply. “I’ll sit on his face for that. I love the way he licks when he thinks he’ll get to cum.”

“Let’s not tell him he won’t, then,” Geralt would say, and they would start snogging in a positively obscene way.

Jaskier shook his head.

Don’t get ahead of yourself.

He looked at the cuddly armchairs again. Two of them.

Being in this room alone would have served to drag his mind into the gutter, and knowing that any moment now, they would both enter through the door and descend on him…

“Let’s not tie him up right away,” his imagined version of Yennefer suggested, already breathless. “You can just hold his hands over his head, properly pin him to the table, and I’ll bite his nipples until he begs me to stop. Maybe squeeze his balls while I’m at it.”

He shifted nervously on his feet.

Finally, the door opened and Yennefer entered, walking backwards. Geralt was gently leading her inside by her shoulders while they kissed, and he carefully closed the door behind them before he seized her and kissed her again.

Jaskier’s breath hitched as he watched them make out. The sight was every bit as hot as his dreams, hotter even, without the trepidation. They all knew what was going on. They all understood, consented, and would enjoy.

And maybe, just maybe, when they came out the other end, the two hard-heads would agree that this had been too good to be a one-off. Because it would be. Jaskier already knew.

Geralt’s scarred hands seized Yennefer’s waist and he began stroking her, with a tenderness he only rarely showed to Jaskier. He rubbed up and down her back, grabbed her ass, pulled her close. She returned his ministrations with the same enthusiasm, and Jaskier heard her mewl softly against his open lips.

He tried to look at the floor again, to avert his gaze, but he couldn’t.

Slowly, they got closer to him, so close he could have touched Yennefer. If he dared.

He didn’t.

Suddenly, she turned around.

“Sorry to make you wait,” she said lowly. Her lips were shiny, as were her eyes. Her hair was mussed, but not overly so. It looked as if Geralt had grabbed it once, but then thought better of it.

“No problem,” Jaskier croaked. “We good?”

“Had to get some things out of the way,” Yennefer said with a glint in her eye. Well, that could mean anything.

Geralt rounded them both and turned up at Jaskier’s back, and both of them closed in on him like they had a few hours before in the kitchen.

Yennefer kissed his lips, Geralt his neck.

Suddenly, two pairs of hands were all over Jaskier, stroking, pinching, grabbing. Yennefer squeezed his right buttock painfully while Geralt shoved a hand under his shirt and scratched over his chest, his fingernails catching on Jaskier’s nipples. The pain shot directly between Jaskier’s legs like electric shocks, finally prompting the hard-on he had successfully fought down all night to return with a vengeance. Jaskier moaned and keened against Yennefer’s tongue in his mouth and began to twitch between them like a live wire.

“What’s the game then?” he asked breathlessly when Yennefer finally stopped snogging him silly. “What do I-”

“You shut up,” Geralt interrupted him and gripped his hair to turn his head around. “Unless you’re asked.”

“Speak when spoken to, songbird,” Yennefer rephrased while it was Geralt now who kissed him on the lips ungently. His rough tongue invaded Jaskier’s mouth, rubbing against Jaskier’s own. Jaskier felt his whole body jump at the feeling, his cock trying to rise against the barrier of hard denim and Yennefer’s hip in front of it.

“O-Okay,” Jaskier stammered between kisses, forgetting every lesson Yennefer had ever taught him. He promptly regretted it, but not in the way he had feared.

Geralt’s hand closed over his neck, pressing his adam’s apple inwards lightly. “I’m sure she taught you better than that,” he growled into his ear.

“I mean Yes, Yennefer,” Jaskier hurriedly croaked.

“Oh, how chivalrous of you,” Yennefer said, but she wasn’t talking to him. “Allow me to spank him the next time he breaks one of your rules.”

“Of course,” Geralt replied, and Jaskier was unsure of whether or not this had been an actual negotiation or just banter. Whatever it was, it made his toes clench in his shoes.

“Songbird?”

Jaskier blinked.

“You’re humping me.”

Jaskier hurriedly stopped swiveling his hips to get some friction out of his close contact with Yennefer. He hadn’t even realized he was doing it. Thinking of it, where were his hands?

Oh, there. They were clutched to fists at his sides. Acceptable.

“He’s already completely out of his mind,” Yennefer giggled, and it sounded exactly like one of those phrases she said to herself while playing with Jaskier, only this time, there was someone to hear and respond, and when he did, Jaskier felt his heart and cock both swell.

“He’s a gorgeous little slut and gets excited easily,” Geralt agreed smugly. “Have you ever gotten him so far that he begged you to stop?” he asked Yennefer, almost as an afterthought.

Jaskier shook with the control it took not to hump Yennefer’s hip again.

“With pain or pleasure?” Yennefer asked while she undid the button on Jaskier’s jeans.

“I was thinking of pleasure, but really, either,” the Witcher replied and now slipped both hands onto Jaskier’s naked chest. Very slowly, he pinched Jaskier’s nipples.

Jaskier keened and tried to keep breathing regularly. He was looking at the ceiling by now, so he didn’t have to see Yennefer’s predatory smile. He was already far too close. He was still fully dressed, for crying out loud.

“Hm, more than once, but not often enough, certainly,” Yennefer mused and began opening Jaskier’s zipper, tooth by tooth.

Jaskier bit his lower lip.

“I once whipped him until he cried and offered that I could sit on his face if I stopped,” Yennefer remembered. “I think he even offered to relinquish his orgasm.”

Jaskier cringed. That had been one of his less proud moments.

“Oh, so you have a right to an orgasm, do you,” Geralt said softly into his ear while he now started pulling his nipples upward. “Otherwise that’s not a bargaining chip, you spoiled fool.”

“Fool in love,” Jaskier tried, but Geralt bit his shoulder hard and he shut up again.

Yennefer was still not finished with his zipper, although his cock was twitching in his boxers.

“I do appreciate the pitifulness,” Yennefer assured him. She must have read his mind. Or maybe just his body language. “But I’m taking my time today. And if you break the rules and talk, I’ll slow down even further.”

“We have time,” Geralt agreed and let go of Jaskier’s nipples almost as slowly as he had pinched them. Jaskier moaned helplessly.

The zipper was finally all the way down.

Yennefer’s fingertips ghosted over the thin, stretched fabric of his boxers.

Jaskier tried to keep the sounds in, but his breath wouldn’t calm down. He squeezed his eyes shut.

“I think he’s trying to be quiet altogether,” Yennefer observed.

“Good luck with that,” said Geralt, and with four fingers of one hand he scratched over Jaskier’s chest hard.

Jaskier shouted and bucked, his hands finally unable to stay at his sides. He grabbed Geralt’s wrists, but he might as well have grabbed a metal handrail for all the difference that made. Probably Geralt didn’t even notice his grip. The scratch ended above the waistband of his boxers and Geralt’s hand flattened against his stomach, holding him.

Geralt’s other hand wandered up his pecs in a caress, twirled a bunch of his chest hair around the pinky finger, and tugged.

Jaskier bucked and accidentally shoved his hips against Yennefer who took a step behind her before circling back and gripping Jaskier’s hips with surprising strength.

“Are you always this twitchy when you’re not in ropes?” she asked, but before Jaskier could muster a reply, Geralt answered for him.

“He’s always twitchy,” Geralt rumbled. “Handsy, also.”

“I don’t know how you manage.” Yennefer started to pull the jeans down Jaskier’s hips.

Jaskier tried to grab the jeans and shove them down himself, but in a second flat, Geralt had freed his hands and grabbed his wrists instead. He carefully pulled them out to the sides and presented Yennefer with his full front. The hard nipples, smarting against the fabric of his open shirt. The shaking stomach. The bulge in his boxers that looked like it was pulsating, because with every new shock of arousal his doms inflicted on him, Jaskier felt his cock jump.

“I like it when he fights,” Geralt answered in a rumble against Jaskier’s neck.

Yennefer kneeled down elegantly and pulled the jeans down his legs.

“So, what do we do?” she asked Geralt, and the way they just talked about him while driving him crazy made Jaskier’s head spin. “Do we let him come just once, much later? Or way too many times?”

“Way too many times,” Geralt decided, and Jaskier could hear a definite purr in his voice.

“Of course,” he wheezed without thinking.

“Are you looking for correction?” Geralt asked harshly and his fingernails dug into the delicate skin on Jaskier’s inner wrists. The Witcher pulled him back and Jaskier stumbled against his front. His ass was met with Geralt’s bulge, the size of which made him gulp even though he had taken him many times before.

“Please, Sir,” Jaskier whimpered, this time thinking a lot.

“You have him call you Sir?” Yennefer asked, and Jaskier could tell she was holding back a laugh.

“I don’t,” Geralt growled, but his hard-on twitched against Jaskier’s ass.

“But you like it,” Yennefer observed. Either she had read his mind… or she just knew him very well. Maybe both.

“Kinda do. It’s nice to hear him show some respect for a change,” Geralt mused.

Yennefer pulled the jeans from Jaskier’s twitching legs and got up again. “You heard him,” she said to Jaskier and grabbed him by the chin with one hand, palming his clothed nipples with the other one. “He likes it.” She pressed a thumb into his cheek and forced him to open his mouth, then she said: “Tongue out.”

He obeyed even though his heart was in his throat. He knew what she usually did with it. And she didn’t disappoint.

She sucked the tip of his tongue into her mouth and bit it once, forcefully. It was a very brief pain, but Jaskier still squeaked.

“That’s for speaking out of turn,” she clarified. “So you don’t think what comes now is a reward for your insolence. Geralt, let go of his wrists.”

Geralt hesitated.

“You will like it, I promise,” Yennefer said and Jaskier heard the smile in her voice over the rushing in his ears.

Slowly, the Witcher lowered their arms and let go of Jaskier’s wrists. Yennefer grabbed his left hand and twirled him around so now he was facing Geralt. For the briefest moment, the bulge in his boxers touched the one in Geralt’s trousers and Jaskier felt his breath hitch. Then, Yennefer seized his head by his hair and pushed him down onto his knees.

“Does he blow as well as he licks?” she asked sweetly.

“Really fucking well?” Geralt said and opened his button and zipper, then pulled his boxers down to just below his bobbing hard-on.

“And all the better the closer he himself is to cumming,” Yennefer specified while she held Jaskier’s hair with one hand, the other at his jaw, pressing in her thumb again. As if he needed to be coaxed to keep it open for Geralt. He grabbed the Witcher’s thighs, opened his mouth readily and let Geralt feed him his hard-on inch by inch. After a moment, he started to move his head forward in Yennefer’s grip to get to Geralt’s root faster.

“Slowly, poet,” Geralt murmured when he gagged. “No need to prove anything. I know you can do it. Don’t rush.”

“You know, I kind of want him to cum like this,” Yennefer said behind him.

Geralt chuckled. “Without either of us touching him?”

“He could hump your foot.”

Jaskier felt himself blush furiously and redoubled his efforts of swallowing Geralt down.

“He’s - mmmh - certainly desperate enough.”

Jaskier felt Yennefer stand behind him, so close that her thighs were touching the back of his head. He heard them kiss.

“I probably won’t even have to get him back up again,” Yennefer said between kisses.

Geralt moaned.

Jaskier sucked and worked Geralt’s cock with his tongue.

“He’s usually good for at least two in a row without help,” Yennefer said.

“Hm,” Geralt said, and it turned into another filthy moan. Yennefer’s thighs pressed Jaskier’s head forward, and he wasn’t naive enough to mistake it for an accident. “Three with me,” the Witcher asserted.

“Oh, is this a competition?,” Yennefer asked.

“It could be.”

Jaskier shuffled forward and sought out the arch of Geralt’s foot with his crotch. The first touch of it against his still clothed, but already leaking cock made him moan in relief.

“Hey.” A hand grabbed his hair, and he didn’t even know whose. “You don’t get to make this call, songbird.”

“Let him hump my foot,” Geralt said, and he sounded relaxed and turned on, like he always did when Jaskier serviced him like this. “If he wants to act like a dog, he can.”

Jaskier was too far gone to care about his act. He shuffled forward again, swallowed Geralt down with verve, and started rubbing his hard-on against the warm, socked foot of the Witcher.

“He certainly drools like a dog,” Yennefer stated, and her tone was nestled snugly somewhere between haughty and amused.

Jaskier, who felt the drool slip down his chin while he worked Geralt’s cock with all he had, moaned against his mouthful.

“So, the first one will count as a joint effort,” Geralt suggested, and interrupted himself to let out a heartfelt groan when Jaskier pulled back, polished his shaft with his fingers and rubbed his glans against his own tongue. “And then… we’ll see who can make him cum harder?”

“If you’re ready to be embarrassed,” Yennefer replied. “I once made him cum by biting his ear.”

Geralt laughed, and Jaskier keened wordlessly and took him down again. “I’m sure you did more than that, Yen,” Geralt moaned.

“Not a lot more,” Yennefer lied.

She had been riding him when that had happened, Jaskier deliriously remembered, and, if memory served, there had been something up his ass. But still, it had been the bite that had made him lose his bearings.

Jaskier rubbed himself harder against Geralt’s foot, and Geralt, helpful as he was, lifted the toes a fraction to give him better purchase.

“Can I…”

Something happened above Jaskier, but he was too distracted to care. He was already close, and the thought of Geralt and Yennefer making out while he did this did not help matters.

Jaskier held his breath and gulped down Geralt’s cock, and strained his hamstrings almost to the point of cramping to keep humping his foot.

When he came – his hips jumping, groaning around Geralt in the back of his throat – Yennefer laughed.

“He even came before you, dearest,” she said, and then Geralt came down Jaskier’s throat with a subdued curse.

Jaskier wanted to let him slip out of his mouth, but a hand – small and deceptively strong – shoved the back of his head forward again, keeping him on Geralt’s cock.

“Hm, what now?”

“He likes having his mouth full, haven’t you noticed?” Yennefer asked. “Ladies first.”

Jaskier had only a few seconds to catch his bearings, then Yennefer moved behind him. She gripped his hips and pulled them back. With Geralt now holding on to his hair, slowly petting it, Jaskier had no choice but to go to his knees.

Yennefer pulled his boxers down, but only a few inches. Her fingertips grazed his opening and he tensed, but they wandered further until they reached his balls.

With his mouth still full of Geralt, he couldn’t protest, but the telepathic connection to Yennefer suddenly opened.

“Doing well, songbird?”

“Please don’t stop, Yennefer.”

She sighed adoringly and her fingers cradled his balls for a moment. Then, the fingertips pressed down on the soft place between his balls and his still hard cock. Just when he understood what she was about to do, she pressed hard and sent something like a thrumming electrical impulse through the sensitive tissue right under her fingers, hitting his sweet spot without ever penetrating him.

Jaskier wailed and bucked and came, just like that. His hips, cheated out of a full round of sex, started fucking the air of their own accord while he came without a hand to his cock for the second time. It was all he could do to rip his head back and his mouth off Geralt’s dick to keep from biting him. Thankfully, Geralt let go of his hair and let it happen.

“Aaah, fuckkk…”

“That’s a word, Jaskier,” Yennefer gently reminded him from behind. “You’re only permitted sounds right now.”

He sat up and threw his head back, poking his tongue out so she could bite it. She did, somewhat harder than the first time. He moaned.

“The next time you talk out of line, I’ll bite your cock,” she warned.

He huffed and puffed and went back to all fours to breathe around his stinging tongue.

“Holy shit.” Geralt laughed incredulously. “That’s almost better than my favourite trick.”

Jaskier wanted to beg for a reprieve, but he didn’t dare talk.

“What’s your favourite trick?” Yennefer asked merrily.

Jaskier whined.

“Get him back up for me?”

“Certainly.”

Yennefer shoved him to his back on the floor. Geralt went over to the cozy armchairs and sat down in one of them, calmly doing up his zipper again. He was naked from the waist up, and Yennefer was only wearing her bra and panties now, and the long stockings without garters. So that was what had happened above him.

She finally freed him of his filthy boxers, pulling them down his legs and discarding them to the side. Then she sat down on his thighs and he immediately grabbed hers, started stroking her, trying to show her how very okay he was and that she could proceed.

She took it as he meant it and began her little magic trick, and before he knew it, his cock was hard again, ready for whatever Geralt considered his favourite trick – Jaskier honestly had no idea. Geralt had lots of tricks, and he had never told Jaskier he liked one of them better than the others.

“There you go,” Yennefer said when Jaskier’s cock was perfectly filled again and twitched between her gentle fingers. “Do you need me to get off him for that?”

“If you want, you should get onto him properly,” Geralt said.

Jaskier felt a shift in the room.

He blinked. Through the fog of his arousal – natural and enhanced – he noticed the moment.

Because this was the moment when Yennefer would fuck him, really, properly fuck him, with Geralt watching.

He looked up at her and let all the pleas he wasn’t allowed to say bleed into his gaze, but she was looking at Geralt.

“Are you sure that’s fine?” she asked, very quietly.

Jaskier couldn’t see Geralt, but he heard him hesitate. Then, the Witcher said: “Go on. I want you to. And I’m sure he wants you to.”

Now, Yennefer looked down on him. And she recognized his gaze, because she knew it well. He had looked up at her like this countless times in the past year.

She mounted his newly erect cock and sat on it without preamble.

Jaskier groaned with arousal and a tiny bit of pain as his sensitive cock was squeezed hard by her hot, wet pussy. She herself only let out a soft, dreamy moan, superior witch that she was.

“And now?”

Geralt didn’t answer, but Jaskier felt a wave of calm wash over him. He suddenly remembered that there was only one thing he wanted to do, only one thing in all the world: he wanted to fuck Yennefer from below, fuck her so hard and so good and rub her clit, so that she will cum screaming.

He planted his feet, seized her waist and got to work, and he was in a busy haze and could almost ignore the painful waves of lust that his own body experienced, dulled through the fog of mind control that made him blind for all but one thing, which was Yennefer’s pleasure.

He knew exactly how she liked to have her clit rubbed, he knew what rhythm and pace she preferred, and he gave her all she needed.

He slammed her hard onto himself for a minute, then, when her moans turned dark and guttural, he lifted his knees and helped her ride him in wave-like movements, sliding down his thighs onto his cock and pressing up against him before he moved her up again, rocking her towards her release slowly, but inescapably.

Usually, she touched herself when they did that, but when her hand moved between her legs, he was faster.

She kept up the movements he had set while he stroked her clit with his fingertips, pinched it gently between his knuckles and massaged it there, then rubbed it hard with the heel of his hand.

“The thing is,” he heard Geralt’s voice from really, really far away. “Right now he isn’t even considering his own body. Doesn’t mean it’s not responding, though.”

“Oh, it’s responding,” he heard Yennefer chuckle between moans.

“Exactly. And as soon as he’s close, I’ll lift the sign, and then he’ll cum.”

“It’s a neat trick,” Jaskier heard Yennefer moan without really registering any of the words. “But why is it your favourite?”

“You’ll see. Are you close, Yen?”

“Hmmm.”

“Then cum. For him or for me, I’ll let you pick.”

She came loud and wild, and never stopped riding him.

Then, suddenly, the fog was blown out of his mind, and Jaskier came back to himself while he was already cumming.

He clawed Yennefer’s hips when his orgasm crashed into him unexpectedly, because most of his brain had missed the buildup completely. Which also meant that all his barriers were down, all the layers of what he considered decent that usually advised his conduct even in bed, were just out of order.

He moaned like a beast in heat when he came, completely unhinged, without a touch of shame or decorum, shaking, shuddering and rearing up.

Yennefer laughed above him.

“I think that’s my new favourite trick,” she said. “I suppose you win, Geralt, that’s awesome.”

Jaskier fell flat to the floor and threw both his forearms over his face in embarrassment.

“Jask?”

He heard footsteps while Yennefer slowly let him slip out of her.

“You alright?”

“Mh-hm.” He still didn’t want to show his face.

“Come on, don’t be shy,” Geralt said and Jaskier felt him gently pull on his arm.

Yennefer sat down on his thighs again.

His cock was still hard. Probably because brain-wise, this had been less than enough. Or maybe the shame was helping. Yennefer’s hands, slowly stroking and polishing him with his own cum, certainly were.

“Are you really alright, though?” Yennefer asked seriously.

Jaskier made an unwilling noise.

“He’s more than alright,” Geralt decided. “He’s just ashamed, but that’s turning him on.”

“You’ve cum loud in the past,” Yennefer said. She absentmindedly closed her fist around his cock and started jerking slowly, which did not help.

“Not like this,” he said finally.

“Yes, you have,” Geralt said and Jaskier saw his face, upside down as it was, crunch up in a frown.

“Not with Yennefer,” Jaskier amended.

“That’s true, he’s never quite screamed his heart out like that with me,” Yennefer said. She let go of his cock and let it fall against his stomach, then bob up again. “And I’m the one with the sound proof play room. Can you still look Geralt’s neighbours in the eye, songbird?”

Jaskier felt hot all over. His cock was happily pointing towards his chest.

“So?” Geralt asked.

Jaskier closed his eyes. “Yennefer values discipline,” he murmured. “I try to be a bit more… well-behaved with her.”

Yennefer laughed at him. “That’s what you call it?” she said. “Slobbering all over my high heels? Squirting into your pants even when I forbid you to cum? Running your mouth all the time?”

Jaskier covered his face with his hands. “I try,” he mumbled.

“Oh, you could try harder, little slut,” Yennefer said, trying out the nickname Geralt usually used, and hearing it from her was way worse for its novelty.

Geralt grabbed Yennefer’s face and kissed her. Jaskier saw the kiss happening from below, and he saw Geralt’s tongue moving between their lips, as if he wanted to lick the dirty word out of her. She sighed and ran her fingers through his beard while she reciprocated.

Jaskier thought they had forgotten all about him, but then, they started talking about him again, and it was much worse than before.

“I’ll fuck him, Yen,” Geralt said. “Do you want to sit on his face for that?”

“Depends,” she replied. “If you plan on having him on his back, I’d be happier to sit on his chest.”

“Breathplay?”

“A little,” Yennefer admitted. “But mainly I’d like to edge him while you fuck him, and ban him from making sounds that aren’t words. I’ve done it a few times before, it’s fun.”

“He does love to run his mouth,” Geralt said.

“He gets really charming,” Yennefer replied sweetly, and Jaskier felt the blush creep down to his chest. “I believe he thinks if he compliments me, I’ll let him cum faster.”

“Did you like my gift, by the way?”

“Oh, when you sent him to me frustrated?”

A silence fell, and Jaskier opened an eye.

Geralt grinned. “Yes, you liked it,” he answered for her, a finger under her chin.

She slapped his hand away and shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Do you enjoy preparing him?”

“You can do your work yourself, thank you.”

Jaskier shifted. Had he told Geralt how much Yennefer liked playing with his ass? Had he let something slip? Or was it just a good guess?

Yennefer climbed off him. “Get up. Take the shirt off. Get on the table.” She went to the wall where her ropes were affixed and started selecting. “I’ll tie him down for you,” she said aloud to Geralt, and Jaskier heard her say more, only to him.

“Don’t embarrass me in front of him. Behave.”

He struggled to his feet and slowly laid down on the table, pulling his shirt over his head at the same time so he was finally, blessedly naked. “I’ll be so good, Yennefer,” he thought at her.

“You don’t need to,” Geralt said, but Yennefer was already next to the table.

“I know. But you’ll enjoy it. Sit there.”

She grabbed Jaskier’s ankles and made him pull his knees to his chest, presenting his ass to Geralt who had taken a seat in one of the armchairs again.

Jaskier’s face would probably never be a normal colour again.

Yennefer ran the ropes around him, utilizing subtle magic tweaks so she could do it with him lying down. She tied Jaskier’s wrists to the top of the table, the back of his knees to his torso and finally, she shoved a hard pillow under his hips to angle them upwards and tied his ankles together, hooking them to a chain from the ceiling.

By now, Jaskier’s cock – straining between his upward-pressed thighs – was pulsating again.

“Good songbird.”

Jaskier pressed his eyes closed.

“Are you alright?”

Jaskier tried to reign in his thoughts, but to no avail.

“Of course, but please please please let him fuck me now, or you fuck me, I don’t even care anymore, just pleeease…”

Yennefer laughed.

Geralt ran a single fingertip over the ropes that bound his thighs, then over one cheek of his lewdly presented ass. “Whispering is impolite, Yen,” he reminded her.

“Letting him just lie there would be far more impolite,” she said and Jaskier saw her hand Geralt something.

He heard a bottle of their fancy lube being uncapped and couldn’t stifle a little whimper and a shift of his hips on the pillow, presenting as best as he could.

“Wow, he’s…” Geralt still didn’t touch him.

He’s just warming up the lube with his body heat, Jaskier told himself firmly, just wait, just keep still…

“He’s what?”

Jaskier heard kisses. He counted his breaths. His cock bobbed.

“He’s even more pathetic when he’s tied up like this.”

“I know.” She sounded proud.

“Hm, let’s see what he makes of this.”

Geralt’s fingertips stroked over his opening, smearing him with the warm lubricant. Jaskier moaned quietly.

“I think he likes it,” Yennefer said quietly.

There was more kissing while Geralt kept petting along his cleft, only dipping a fingertip into his ass every now and again.

“G-Geralt…”

“Hey!” Geralt smacked his ass with a hand, so hard Jaskier yelped and jumped as far as the ropes allowed for, which wasn’t very far at all. “We said no talking.”

Jaskier pressed his lips together.

“He’s not this bratty with you alone, is he?” Geralt asked and slipped a finger into Jaskier like an afterthought.

Jaskier keened.

“No. But I imagine you are a bit more… lenient with him?”

Geralt chuckled and moaned. Jaskier couldn’t see what Yennefer was doing, but it must have been good.

“I’m not lenient, I just turn it into a fight, which he loses.”

“Do you scuffle like dogs?”

Geralt fucked Jaskier slowly with his one finger. It was not enough, not nearly enough. Jaskier wanted to beg so badly he had to bite his tongue.

Let them talk, seems to be important.

He felt his cock leak precum. Or maybe cum. At this point, it was hard to tell. Geralt’s finger, probing and stroking idly, found his prostate and started massaging it very gently.

Far too gently.

“Sometimes,” Geralt answered. “It’s fun. He gets really wild when I bite his neck and hold him down while I fuck him.”

“Hmm, that sounds nice.”

Jaskier started to shake in the ropes.

“Do you always tie him up?”

“Almost always. He’s made for it, look at him.”

“It becomes him, that’s true.”

“Yennefer,” Jaskier thought at her while he clenched his ass around Geralt’s finger to keep him still for a moment. Obviously, Geralt just kept moving his finger, only with how tight he now was, it felt way more intense. “Yennefer! Can I talk?”

But maybe she had closed the connection, or maybe she was ignoring him. Jaskier heard her sigh with bliss when something happened that he could not see.

Geralt retracted his finger and then proceeded to press it back in alongside another, slowly, slowly.

“Can I talk… please?” Jaskier pressed out. “Yennefer? S-Sir?”

“Oh, now you ask. Do you wanna cry Mercy?,” Geralt asked, and Jaskier realized that they did, they did talk about this beforehand. Mercy had never been a signal word with Geralt.

“N-No,” he moaned when Geralt’s fingers pressed all the way in and the Witcher started to bend them, slowly forming a hook with them, rotating the fingertips around, searching for… “Please!”

Gentle fingertips touched the underside of his stiff cock. Yennefer pulled the tips of her long nails along him towards his balls.

“Let’s make a deal, songbird,” she said sweetly. “You can either make sounds or talk. Decide.”

“Talk,” he said without hesitation, and promptly regretted it when Geralt started rubbing his prostate, firmer this time. “Hnnngggplease!”

“Fine,” Yennefer sighed as if it was a heavy burden on her.

“Thank you, thank you,” Jaskier said and managed to form his moans into the words when Geralt turned his wrist and started stretching him out with his fingers. “I wanted to say Please, please, do something already, this is too much, I’m gonna cum again, and I don’t know-”

“You don’t know a lot of things,” Yennefer interrupted him.

“Trueeee,” Jaskier keened, but only to mask the keen.

Yennefer giggled.

“You’re right, this is already fun,” Geralt agreed. “Hold on, let me-” And he started inserting a third finger.

“In case you haven’t noticed, Jaskier,” Yennefer gently reminded him, “nobody’s using your cock right now. Nobody banned you from cumming. So go ahead.”

“Pleeeease ban me from cumming,” Jaskier moaned.

Geralt, three fingers deep, laughed in a muffled way that suggested his mouth was somewhere on Yennefer.

“You created a monster,” he said while he fucked Jaskier with his fingers, hard now, in a slow, even rhythm. Jaskier clenched his naked toes and tried to relax his ass, but every now and again, he couldn’t help but contract around the intrusion, and every time he felt like he was close to cumming. “Now he’s all sold on your denial shit as well.”

It was so good, and he never wanted it to end, but especially not in the next minute.

“It’s exquisite,” Yennefer argued. “The fact that you can’t see the beauty in it-”

“Pleeeease,” Jaskier howled. “Please, please, please…”

“Hm.” Something moved, but Geralt didn’t start fucking him, and a moment later he saw Yennefer walking to her chest of drawers. He saw her taking out something. With his head clamped between his tied arms, he couldn’t make out what it was, but it was long and black and likely something to hit him with. He closed his eyes again and made a conscious effort to relax against Geralt’s fingers.

“You interrupted me.”

Yennefer came over to him. Her bra was gone, and she looked like a demoness sent up to earth to condemn him.

“Sorryyyy,” he breathed.

She let the cane come down on his thigh, and he yelped.

“What was that?”

Geralt retracted his fingers and got to his feet. Jaskier heard the lid of the lube again.

“Sorry for interrupting,” Jaskier slurred and looked at her, and he maybe couldn’t help the overwhelmed grin spreading on his face.

“Well, now you’ll get what you wanted,” she said while Geralt rubbed his glans against Jaskier’s gaping, twitching opening. “Now I forbid you to cum.”

“We said we’d make him cum way too many times,” Geralt reminded her and Jaskier saw him frown.

“When he’s earned it.”

“Well, parameters, Yen. When has he earned it?”

“Fuck… me,” Jaskier begged, trying to shove his hips in Geralt’s direction to spear himself on his cock, but of course Yennefer’s ropes did not give way.

“He’s earned it when you’ve cum,” Yennefer decided.

Geralt barked a laugh, which thankfully drowned out Jaskier’s wrecked, wordless moan.

“That’s not really fair. You know I take ages this way,” Geralt argued.

“He takes ages,” Jaskier complained.

“I’ll help you.” Yennefer laid her cane down on Jaskier’s chest as if he were a side table. She rubbed her hands together and pulled them apart again, and between them an inconspicuous purple cloth strip appeared. She bowed down and gently, lovingly, wrapped Jaskier’s cock and balls in it while murmuring an incantation in the Elder Speech. She tied it off with a bow and flicked a bit of hair from Jaskier’s eye. “There you go, now you can relax and still be obedient.”

“That’s cruel,” Geralt growled, but he was grinning.

“Do you want to fuck him?” she asked. “Or should I get a strap-on and do it myself?”

“Hm, I don’t know,” Geralt replied and gently moved Jaskier’s calves to the side to look at him. “What do you think?” He ran his fingertips over Jaskier’s bound cock. “Poor little slut.”

Jaskier shuddered.

“Do you want me to fuck you, or Yen?” Geralt asked. He pushed into him almost accidentally, just the tip of his cock breaching his ass.

If Jaskier’s brain hadn’t been absolute mush at this point, the question would have made him panic. Probably even for real. But as it was, he just clenched down on Geralt’s glans and moaned out his answer.

“Yes!”

And then, at last, Geralt grabbed the backs of his thighs and started fucking him.

A few moans in, Yennefer kneeled down by his head and touched his forehead. “We said no sounds,” she reminded him. “Only words.”

“Please kiss me,” Jaskier begged.

“And what do you really want?” she asked and her violet gaze turned piercing.

“I want you to kiss me so I can’t talk, because I don’t know what I can say without upsetting this dynamic, cause it seems so fragile,” Jaskier felt his thoughts spill out, like cum, like tears, unbidden, but if there was one way to make this work, it was brutal honesty. “I don’t want to have this once and never again, I want you to tell Geralt you want him back, and he wants you back, and I want both of you, but I want you as a couple.”

Geralt fucked into him luxuriously, running his hands over Jaskier’s bound body, stroking his knuckles over his painfully hard cock.

Complimenting him between languid moans. “Lovely little slut. No wonder Yen took you home.”

“I want you to be together, and I want to be with you. I want us all to be together and you can still leave each other messages on me, but please talk to each other, you want to, you both want to. This can work. Please. Please. Please please please let me cum, he’s killing me, I need to, Yennefer, please…”

“You’re begging the wrong dom there, songbird,” Yennefer said and played with his hair. “You can beg me once he’s done with you and it’s my turn again.”

Jaskier wailed.

Geralt gripped his hips, lifted him from the pillow, and picked up his pace, fucking him almost brutally.

“Please,” Jaskier moaned, and it was all he could do not to black out from the intensity of dangling over the edge while Geralt just. Didn’t. Stop. “Please, Sir, cum in me, please fill me up, please…”

Geralt groaned aggressively and bit his calf without stopping, and Jaskier screamed.

“Pleeease, Sir!”

“Oh. Poor little songbird,” Yennefer said and collected his tears with her fingertips. “He’s a cruel man, you should know that by now.”

Jaskier twitched, and he felt his balls contract, and then Yennefer’s magic just didn’t let it happen.

“Oh Gods,” he breathed, and in that moment, Geralt unhooked Jaskier’s ankles from the ceiling, folded him in half so the air left his lungs in a huff, snarled into his face: “Try invoking me ”, and bit down on the side of his neck.

Jaskier would have screamed, but he had no air, and Yennefer kissed him, and someone pulled on the ribbon so it fell away, and Jaskier and Geralt tumbled headlong into bliss.

–

Much later, Yennefer said: “You’re naive, if you really think this could work, songbird.”

But to Jaskier’s surprise, it was Geralt who answered. “If I’d said Let’s see if we can’t find a lover, someone who’s good for both of us and also really wants to be here, you would have called me naive for thinking that could work.”

For a moment, nobody talked.

“I don’t want to be a part of your divorce, I want to be a part of your relationship,” Jaskier said. He didn’t let go of Yennefer’s hand, nor of Geralt’s. “So you need to work it out.”

“Otherwise you’ll leave?” Yennefer suggested bitterly.

Jaskier shook his head.

They had moved to the bedroom in the wee hours of the morning, and sunlight was already filtering in through the gauzy curtains. It hit Yennefer’s beguiling eyes, making the violet almost a magenta. She grabbed Jaskier’s hand more firmly. “There are some gifts you may not accept,” she whispered.

“Nothing is ever a gift,” Jaskier contradicted. “Everything comes with a price.”

Geralt scoffed. “Do you suppose we can just-”

But Jaskier didn’t let him finish.

“I don’t think any of this will be easy. Or quick. It doesn’t have to be. I’ll stick around while you figure it out, and afterwards, if you do. Maybe we’ll spend the rest of our lives figuring this out. Would be fine by me.”

He stretched like a cat and felt tiredness finally catch up with him. He nestled his front against Yennefer’s back and his back against Geralt’s front and yawned.

“I know you’re both some kind of superhuman, but I’m just a man, and I need to pass out,” he murmured against her shoulder. “Sorry guys.”

“Don’t apologize,” one of them said.

“We’ll be there when you wake up,” the other said.

And they were.

Chapter Text

– four years later –

“I’m home.”

Yennefer takes her shoes off as soon as she closed the door behind her. She usually had no problems walking on her murderous high heels, but six days consecutively was pushing it.

Marti had mentioned she had invented a salve for just this purpose. Maybe she should hit her up.

But not today. Today she would be hitting nobody up, she would curl up with her lovers and sip tea and not say a single word until she’d had her morning coffee tomorrow.

What was up with Philippa and her stupid lodge anyway? Was this really better than putting up with Stregobor and Vilgefortz’s bullshit? Why did they have to stay in Philippa’s stupid house in Montecalvo for days on end when they could just portal in and out from home? Too many magical signatures my ass, Yennefer thinks bitterly. She just likes to have us all trapped there with her to show us who’s in charge. One of these days, I should probably just sacrifice Triss to her like that blonde girl in King Kong, maybe that will calm the bitch down.

Yennefer finds herself frowning as she checks their shared calendar and calculates that Ciri and Geralt have been gone for two days now. It’s Ciri’s first time working as a Witcher on her own, and while Lambert might not be the most reliable of companions, Yennefer felt better when Ciri still worked under his guidance. At least Geralt is traveling with her, even if he officially can’t hunt yet. Which is ironic, because the child he is supposed to not traumatize by not hunting is herself hunting.

One year to go, Yennefer thinks. Then she’ll be twenty-one and Geralt will take up work as a Witcher again. Then they’ll both be away for weeks and months on end…

She smiles to herself when she remembers the silver lining of it all, and makes for the attic.

With some time and materials and some magic as well, they turned it into a little studio for Jaskier to work on his music. It hadn’t taken much for Yennefer to convince him to cut back on his day job a little so he’d have more time for this; he isn’t as uselessly proud as Geralt, he doesn’t mind contributing less to their expenses than Yennefer, and he loves his music.

And that’s what he’s doing despite the late hour, he’s in his chair playing one of his guitars, a big set of noise-canceling headphones on his head, singing under his breath.

Yennefer sends a small purple light into the room. In the air, it takes the form of a tiny blackbird and flits around Jaskier, attracting his attention, hopefully without startling him. She had told him when she would be back, but he always gets so engrossed when he’s playing.

He gets up and turns around, the biggest smile on his face as he sees her. The blackbird blows out like a candle flame.

Carefully, he puts his guitar and his headphones away and stalks through the room, over the cables and implements strewn about.

“You’re back!”

They kiss, and he squeezes her affectionately.

“How was work treating you?”

“It was a shitshow,” Yennefer replies, but she can’t stop smiling as she kisses him again. “I’m so glad to be home. How was Geralt treating you?”

Jaskier blushes and avoids her question, but later, with a little bit of coaxing, he answers candidly.