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janie_tangerineIt’s Jaskier’s rotten luck that he’s in Vegas when Captain Trips comes.
He had been there for a small tour he had managed to book in Nevada after Her Sweet Kiss sold enough to actually earn him some money and make his manager decide that he was worth investing some more time and money into, and the first two concerts out of the planned ten in his Vegas set hadn’t even gone that badly - the second had had more attendees than the first, for sure.
Then -
Well.
Then he had woken up with his forehead burning and feeling cold in his bones and he had remember what the newspapers said about that superflu that had been doing the rounds around Texas first and in the rest of the country later, and his last thought before he had fainted in his bed had been, of course I end up dying just when I was getting somewhere.
But -
He doesn’t die.
He spends weeks feeling like shit, throwing up every other moment, feeling like his lungs might burn his body from the inside out, with crippling cramps all over his stomach and legs and arms, and he’s only glad that when he caught it he was in a motel where no one cares if he pays or not, and he can get free food and water from the vending machine that no one uses. Around week three, he starts hallucinating his parents, which says all about how bad it’s getting - he hasn’t talked to them since they kicked him out, fuck’s sake, and here he is, waking up thinking his mother was there and sweating all over his stained, dirty sheets.
Honestly, he expects to die - he had heard enough, in the first days, when he just felt like he had a common cold. No one who gets that shit survives. He knows that.
And yet -
And yet, a month or so after he catches Captain Trips, he opens his eyes and breathes normally and then he throws up because his room is in such a bad state he’s surprised he hasn’t woken up to rats munching on his sheets. He can barely remember having gone to the bathroom for water or to the vending machine for food, and he definitely lost too much weight for it to be healthy, but -
But he’s alive.
Holy shit.
He’s alive.
Then he throws up again, stumbles out of the room and moves into the next one.
--
The next one is clean, at least, and he doesn’t waste time hopping into the shower and spending hours in it washing himself - at least running water is still a thing. He wraps an entire towel around his face before going back to his old room and finding his guitar and the suitcase and backpack he had left in the closet, thankfully unarmed, and when he finally puts on some clean clothes, he looks at himself in the mirror properly.
So: he looks like shit. All his clothes are too large on him, his hair is longer than it was in his goddamned seventies hippie phase when he was fourteen, his beard needs a shave and he immediately provides and he looks like someone who hasn’t slept for the last year.
But -
He’s alive.
And he’s pretty sure he should keep his mouth shut about that, especially if no one except people who were already immune was supposed to get the damned superflu.
He sighs, heading for the window and opening the curtain, trying to check how things are outside -
He immediately closes them.
All the trashcans under the motel are on fire and there were groups of people going around that most likely just did that, and he hears a few gunshots even with the window closed.
Well, fuck.
He’s in deep, deep shit.
--
He considers what to do very carefully and eventually decides on exploring the damned place and seeing if he can find anything useful to get out.
What he finds out is that the motel’s lower floor was looted a long time ago, but since the elevator was broken and someone had locked the only way to the upper floors and the door had been bolted from the inside and it was heavy lead, no one bothered trying to tear it down, most likely assuming that no one residing in such a shithole would have valuables.
Not that they would have been wrong.
He finds a gun he doesn’t know how to use in the empty owner’s office, and he takes it just in case, and then finds out that there are two stocked vending machines on each of the three floors not counting the one he raided, which means he has shitty supply food to last him a few weeks, if he’s careful, except that he doesn’t want to know what it will mean for him to survive on junk after he just spent a month puking his stomach out. He tries to check the other rooms, but while his floor had been empty except for him, the other two -
The other two are full of decomposing corpses whose stench he can smell from behind the doors when he goes to raid the machines.
This would have made a beautiful song, he thinks, if only it wasn’t real.
--
He spends a few weeks eating the healthiest options from the vending machine food and trying to regain his strength, glad that the electrical system has stopped working at all because he doesn’t risk getting gets noticed by the few survivors who he’s maybe sort of sure would eat him for sustenance, at this point.
Then the dark man shows up.
Jaskier doesn’t dream of him, as most others who would later come to Vegas do.
But he sees him walking his street without a care in the world, dark leather jacket and jeans and dark boots hitting the floor slowly and steadily, and when he looks up and calls for Vegas to come to him, even if Jaskier is very far from him, he can just see his smile.
And he hates it.
He hates it at once, and resolves to run the moment he can find it in himself to.
--
He hides another couple weeks. The looting does kind of stop, in the sense that whenever the man walks around Vegas most of the people who were behind it are behind him, but at least the streets seem safer.
In those two weeks, they clean the streets and the electricity comes back, not that Jaskier makes use of it.
Then, one night he dreams of crucified people at the side of the street he’s living in and all along the Strip and -
He wakes up with cold sweat all over his face.
He needs to leave.
--
So: he packs his backpack with the necessary items - two changes of clothing, tissues, water from the vending machines, enough snacks to survive for three days -, then grabs his guitar and the gun and ponders on when he should make his exit. The motel hadn’t been smack near the Strip, which had been good in retrospective, because if he can hotwire a car (which he could, technically), then it wouldn’t take… too long to get out.
Of course, it means he has to find a car to hotwire, then he has to do it without getting noticed and he has to hope it has enough gas to make it through the whole goddamned desert around him, but he supposes he’ll worry about things one at a time.
So: getting out without being noticed. He slips out of his room, then walks through the now unbolted door, then slips out of the back entrance of the motel. All right. So far so good.
No cars in this street, of course. There is a garage, but he should break into it and he has no idea of how he could break inside when there’s a shutter pulled down and he has no time to waste, and so he opts to stick to the shadows and see what awaits him in the next street -
“Come on, the boss needs him dead!”
What the fuck, Jaskier thinks as he flattens himself against the wall.
That was -
Coming from the next street.
“Fuck,” some other voice says, “let’s be quick, he’s not going to stay under for long.”
“Look at this freak,” a third says, “‘course Mr. Flagg wants him done with. Promises nothin’ good. You think it’s gonna work if we set him on fire?”
“Oh, I like that,” the first voice says.
Fuck.
Sense is telling Jaskier that he should hightail the shit out of here and run.
But -
He can’t let whoever these assholes are burn a man alive, and they don’t know he’s here, and there are more than three bullets in that gun, and -
And well, come on, was there any chance he’d get out of here without anyone noticing? He might as well die trying to do something useful. He breathes in, grabs the gun -
“Fuck, he bit me, this bastard!”
That was voice number two.
“C’mon, get the gasoline. We’re torching this freak up and that’ll be the goddamned end of it.”
That was voice number three.
Jaskier takes off the safety, he did practice with it, and considers saying something to distract them but he also knows it would be fucking stupid and that he’s not in a movie, and so he just turns the corner, eyes the three men who are trying to keep from moving a fourth one who is lying on the ground - one of them has boots on his back, fuck -, raises the gun and shoots.
Now.
Jaskier has never fired a gun in his life and the most he knows about his aim is that he’s decent when playing darts, so he fucks that up - he had attempted to at least kill one of them, but instead he catches the first guy in the shoulder, the second in the leg and his attempt to go for third goes missing, and when the three of them turn to look at him he knows he’s done for good because there's no way he can fend them off, but then -
Then the man they were trying to hold back kicks the third guy’s leg from under his feet and snaps his neck with a swift motion of his hand, grabs another gun from the second’s waist and shoots him from beneath and when the first stops worrying about his injured shoulder and realizes what’s going on…
Well.
It’s too late, because he’s stood up and snapped his neck, too, and for a moment there’s just silence in the street -
That is, before the guy stands up like it hurts to and turns towards Jaskier.
Holy shit.
He’s not much taller than him, but he’s built like a dream, large shoulders drowned into a large leather jacket, and Jaskier would have noticed the state of destruction of his other clothes if he hadn’t seen the guy’s face first.
He has long, dirty hair so blonde it almost looks white, or maybe it is white, and a pair of golden cat-like eyes that only belongs on one category of people, as far as Jaskier knows.
And they’re looking at him in utter gratefulness.
“You’re - you’re a witcher?” Jaskier asks, lowering the gun.
The guy nods. “I was here for a job before - before,” he says, moving closer. “Thank you.” His voice is low, barely audible but sincere. “If it hadn’t been for you, they would have managed to do it.”
“Uh, glad to help out,” Jaskier says, and then -
Oh.
Maybe they can help each other. “On that topic,” he says, “I was trying to hightail the shit out of here and I think you are, too, and it was a miracle I didn’t shoot myself with my own damned gun, so what do you say about joining forces?”
The witcher doesn’t waste time before nodding at him. “My ride. I have it in that garage nearby.”
“It’s locked.”
“Won’t be a problem,” the man says, and Jaskier immediately follows him back into the road he had just left. The witcher heads straight for the garage, conjures fire from his hand and breaks the shutter's lock, then lifts it up with one hand and holy shit, it’s not the time to think about how hot it is except that Jaskier is thinking that it’s hot as sin, and then immediately follows him inside the garage where the man grunts his way through a bunch of cars until his eyes rest on a sweet, sweet ride - a black Harley that looks in pristine shape and for that matter absolutely matches the man’s aesthetic. The witcher pats the inside of his jacket, opening a hidden zipper and taking out the keys, then takes a look at him and nods.
“You’ll fit without leaving anything behind,” he says. “Get behind me after I get it started.”
Jaskier nods. “Uh, by the way,” he asks as the witcher turns the engine on and moves the bike near him, “maybe we should exchange names? I’m Jaskier. Very pleased to meet you.”
“Geralt,” the witcher replies, “and now hold on.”
Jaskier does.
Then Geralt speeds the fuck out of the garage and of the street, and before Jaskier knows he’s seeing the desert and no one is after them and the gas tank is full, he can see it.
He holds on tighter to Geralt’s waist and doesn’t let go.
Eight hours later
“Fucking hell,” Jaskier mutters as his feet touch the ground, “everyone’s dead, aren’t they.”
He knows it’s a rhetorical question - they stopped in Tonopah after hightailing their way out of Beatty and Indian Springs, an unspoken agreement to go as far as possible as they could before either the gas ran out or Geralt was too tired to drive, not that it seemed possible, but still.
“Yes,” Geralt says, moving next to him. “I heard things in Vegas.”
“You did? What things?”
Geralt shrugs. “That everyone who wasn’t dead or fled before the flu arrived was in Vegas. We won’t find anyone else for a long time, I think.”
Well, fuck.
“And how did someone like you end up in that sorry predicament?” Jaskier asks, trying to lighten the mood and most likely failing. “I mean, you owned them in a minute. How did they have you like that?”
Geralt looks at him for a long, long moment, then lets out a long breath. “I told you I came for a contract. I was looking into it. Then the flu arrived. Who do you think people blamed for bringing it?”
“What? You?” Jasker asks, outraged. “But if half of the country had it already! It was on the news. How would you be the reason?”
Geralt does look a tiny bit amused at his outburst. “My kind,” he says, “we’re always blamed in this kind of situation. So they threw me in jail and they used - I don’t know if they had a mage in the police enforcement, but the chains were… enchanted, I suppose. I couldn’t break out of them.”
Now that Jaskier looks at him, his face is a bit gaunt. He has a feeling he didn’t have much to eat, either.
“It lasted a while, then - that man showed up.” Geralt shudders. “I only ever saw him once, but he said that I wasn’t - I would have never joined him, so there was no point in wasting time with me, and he told them to off me. And once I had three of them on me and I was already weak, it was hard to shake them off. Good thing you showed up and distracted them.”
“Jesus Christ,” Jaskier shakes his head, “if it consoles you I saw him a few times from that motel and only wanted to fuck off as far from him as I could.”
“From a motel?”
Jaskier shrugs. “I was there when it arrived. I mean, I was here to play some gigs, as you can see by my trusted instrument over here, and then one day I was fine and another I caught the flu.”
“And you’re alive to show it?” Geralt asks, sounding surprised.
“Beats me. But yes, I survived. Let me tell you, it wasn’t pretty and I wouldn’t do it again ever, but - I stayed hidden where I was until I couldn’t anymore. Good thing I ran into you when I did.” He smiles tiredly, and the other man just looks back at him like he can’t quite know waht to make of him.
“I’m sorry,” he says at once, “people don’t usually… are happy to be around me.”
Jaskier raises an eyebrow. “Excuse me, you get cities rid of monsters for a living which means you save their ass as a job, you didn’t even think before offering me a ride out even if I could have slowed you down and until now you’ve been perfectly nice to me, and now you’re telling me that?”
“If only everyone was like you,” the witcher sighs, not quite looking at him.
Then -
“Wait,” Jaskier says, “you said Geralt? Like - oh my fucking - you’re Geralt of Rivia?”
“... How did you guess?” Geralt replies, and now he sounds like he’s expecting Jaskier to bail in the next five minutes.
The hell.
“I don’t know,” Jaskier replies, “your lot might not be very numerous, but you’re… well. People know you exist and that you have been around for ages, and you, my friend, are maybe a tiny bit famous. But from the way you’re looking at me right now, I have a feeling that you really don’t like being called Butcher of Blawnox, do you?”
The man flinches minutely.
“It was… a misunderstanding,” he chokes out. “No, I don’t.”
“I figured,” Jaskier says. “That story never quite added up. No way someone who kills monsters for a living would have murdered half a town in the goddamned late nineteenth century when there wasn’t even a sheriff around.”
“Most people don’t… really do the math.”
“Most people were most likely stupid,” Jaskier declares. “Feel like sharing it? I mean, it’s not like we have anything better to do other than looking for a gas station.”
“What?”
“The gas. We’re almost in remission.”
“... Fuck,” Geralt says, “I barely even noticed. Good thing I filled Roach up before getting into Vegas.”
“Her name’s Roach?” Jaskier grins. “Aw. You named the bike. That’s… you know that’s adorable, don’t you?”
Geralt scoffs. “I used to name my horses like that.” He shrugs again. “No one uses them any more, though. That’s… more convenient.”
“That’s… still adorable,” Jaskier nods, and he can’t help smiling when Geralt doesn’t quite look at him. “Come on,” he says, “we can find some real food and the gas station, hopefully, and then you can tell me about Blawnox.”
“All - all right,” Geralt says, quietly, and they end up breaking the door to a supermarket that for some miracle hadn’t been looted yet.
Jaskier had not pictured that one day he’d have ended up sitting on a sidewalk side by side with famed witcher Geralt of Rivia who, according to the stories said about him, had been going around the States hunting monsters at least since Deadwood hadn’t still burned down, eating shitty tuna straight from the can with a plastic fork, and hearing what really had gone down in Blawnox.
“You’re telling me,” he says around a forkful of tuna, “that you tried to save that girl at all costs and then you had to kill her because otherwise she’d have murdered the entire town and people think it was your fault because that asshole of a mage thought it would be a good idea to pin it on you?”
Geralt shrugs. “Yes,” he hums around his own forkful. “Couldn’t quite shrug it off. Not that people loved me before, but honestly, the fact that these times we could go a bit under the radar… was not so bad.”
“That’s ridiculous. If we hadn’t ended up in some fucking postapocalyptic nightmare, I’d have written a song just to rectify it.”
“What?”
“Geralt, honestly, I’m a musician. That’s my livelihood. And honestly, considering how my career has gone until now, maybe switching to making sure someone’s reputation gets better would have been an improvement. Not that it matters now.”
“You’re serious,” Geralt replies, still staring at him as if Jaskier had two heads.
“I’m absolutely serious. But I don’t know if it would be useful now. I mean, all things considered it’s more likely that most people who knew about Blawnox are dead. Which doesn’t mean I couldn’t write that song anyway - I mean, what’s better than starting anew with some nice songs about you being sung through the continent as a new society arises?”
“I think,” Geralt says, but now he’s cracking a small smile, and shit, those golden eyes really are something in the pale morning light, and yes, he does have white hair, he can see it under the dirt now, “that you’re getting a bit ahead of yourself.”
“I think,” Jaskier grins back, “that I might be, but I mean, why not? Civilization will have to begin again. Somewhere that’s not Vegas, as well. Can’t hurt to have a theme song all for yourself.”
“A theme song.”
“Give me a couple of days,” Jaskier keeps on, “and I can come up with something. Shit, I haven’t played in what feels like years, I really should take it back up.”
“I think you’ll have time,” Geralt says, putting away the empty tuna box. “And I suppose we should get groceries.”
Jaskier really, really likes that Geralt is talking in we terms right now - he absolutely doesn’t want to go ahead on his own, but he’s also aware that Geralt could survive on his own and he couldn’t, so… he appreciates the gesture. He really, really does. They grab a few cloth bags and try to get as much nonperishable food as they can stick into it, and then they find the local gas station - it’s still working, enough to fill Roach up again. Jaskier opens his pack and finds a bar of chocolate, then tosses it to Geralt.
“What’s this for?” He asks, blinking.
“... I got it at the vending machines,” Jaskier shrugs. “It’s sweet. You look like you can use it. We both can, I think.”
Geralt grunts in response and opens it - and he eats it in the space of ten seconds.
Jaskier doesn’t even try to hold back his smile at the sight.
“So,” he says as Geralt throws away the wrapper, “any ideas on where to go next? I mean, sounds like there’s… ample choice.”
Geralt shrugs minutely. “We go left, we can get to California in a few days. We go right, it’s a trip inland. Most likely there will be less people. Honestly, I just… want to get away from Vegas. I don’t care where.”
Jaskier nods, considering the situation, then clears his throat. “I mean, it’s your ride and all, so I’ll just tag along, but… you look tired, I barely ate for one month, maybe Utah isn’t the best option right now. There’s the coast in California. We can steal some fruit on the way there. Do a real Grapes of Wrath road trip and all. And with winter coming up, I’d rather be warm.”
“You know I was around when that book came out,” Geralt says, an amused glint in his eyes.
“Then I want you to tell me all about it the moment we’re not in Nevada anymore. So? What do you say?”
Geralt thinks about it for a moment.
“You’re right,” he admits. “The coast sounds like a better option. And… I am tired, maybe,” he admits. “I did spend weeks in that jail.”
“Then you need sunlight as much as I do, if not more. So, Hotel California it is?”
Geralt rolls his eyes, openly.
“Fine,” he says, “come on, get up here. The sooner we get the fuck out of here, the better.”
“Don’t you need to sleep at some point?”
“Not as much as a regular person,” Geralt says, getting on the bike. Jaskier follows, moving his hands over his waist again. “And I slept enough in Vegas. Ready?”
Jaskier nods and breathes in relief as they speed out of the town, heading left.
--
They get as far as Mariposa before Geralt calls it a day - the gas is almost finished, again, and he’s obviously dead tired. The city is as empty as every other city they walked through. The weather is still warm, at least, and by the time they break into a room of the only hotel in town that’s thankfully not dirty and not full of dead people, Jaskier can’t feel his legs anymore, not that Geralt must be in better shape since the moment he sits on the bed he lets out a pained groan.
“What’s that?” He asks.
“Nothing,” Geralt says, massaging one of his shoulders.
“Yeah, I totally buy that,” Jaskier says, and then he realizes the matter. “Shit,” he says, “you just drove for an entire damned day after being in a jail in that hellhole for weeks and when those three asses wanted to torch you alive. And you’re saying it’s nothing? Come on, there’s a tub in the bathroom, I can draw you one and you can get the hot water.”
“It’s fine,” Geralt shakes his head. “You can have it.”
“Absolutely not,” Jaskier says. “Please, you earned at least that.”
Geralt looks on the verge of protesting but then he doesn’t and follows Jaskier to the bathroom where, thankfully, hot water still works - Jaskier draws him the bath and he’s not surprised to see the water get pink with old crusted blood other than gray the moment he sinks into it.
Geralt also looks like it’s the best thing that happened to him in years.
Jaskier can relate.
He finds a bottle of shampoo on the other side of the room, then takes off his jacket and moves back to the tub wearing just his shirt. “Your hair looks terrible,” he says, sitting on the edge of the tub. “And since you so nicely saved my life and I do owe you, I have a proposition for you.”
“As in?”
“You relax, let me wash your hair properly and stop looking that tense while I tell you all about what I have so far when it concerns your theme song.”
Geralt huffs, but he’s half-smiling as he does. “Anyone ever told you that you’re somewhat bossy?”
“Do you mind it?” Jaskier grins as he pours shampoo over his hand.
“... I don’t think so,” Geralt admits quietly.
Jaskier beams behind him. “You know,” he says, lathering his hands and already picturing the coast and the songs he will write as they wait for civilization to come back and they get to know each other better, “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
“I was around when that came out, too.”
“Then how about you tell me about it?” Jaskier asks, starting to card through Geralt’s filthy hair.
He doesn’t expect an answer, but Geralt does tell him, in bits and pieces, just after his fingertips touch the back of his head.
Jaskier decides that maybe it wasn’t such bad luck if he caught Captain Trips in Vegas, after all.
End
