janie_tangerine | cowt 12 sett 2 M2: different seasons (the witcher, geralt/jaskier, pg13)

When he gets to know Geralt in the spring, he can’t help thinking that in between all the brooding and harsh answers and pretending he has no feelings, the season looks good on him. The breeze makes that pretty white hair fly in the air and the sunlight makes it shine, and when Jaskier follows him as he picks up flowers that he’ll need for his potions, he can’t help noticing that those rough fingers brush against the petals so softly — nothing like the stories say when it comes to witchers being brutes or something like that.

He thinks he likes Geralt in the spring, as much as Geralt tries to drive him away at all costs. During the first one, the man does keep Jaskier at arm’s length, and the second, too, but the third one they travel together he lets Jaskier sleep next to him when the weather is chilly enough and they’re sleeping in the open, and if he thinks that Geralt’s hair looks so, so pretty spread in the middle of the meadows, little blooming flowers looking so dark and bright against that white hair he should really brush better, and if by that year he knows he’s gone for the man, well.

No one has to know that, after all.

Geralt in the summer is — different. Complains more, Jaskier notices, because all that black armour does nothing to stop the heat. And as much as he says witchers don’t get sick and whatever, that pretty pale skin of his does get burned, and he needs to drink more water than usual and he keeps on complaining about that, but.

But Jaskier doesn’t mind it, either. He doesn’t mind it because it means more excuses to provide the two of them cool baths or to wash Geralt’s hair in the rivers, and the sun beating down on that pretty, glowing hair makes it look almost pale gold at times, and an astonishing warm orange during the sunsets because it fucking reflects the sunlight, and that just makes Geralt’s eyes shine brighter.

The food in summer is better, and he’s always glad to hand Geralt a pastry or two he buys when Geralt’s not looking, and they can get better deals in taverns and the inns are way more crowding with people because they travel during the summer, and so maybe Geralt sleeps shirtless when they have to camp outside and Jaskier won’t mind that, he’s a man with eyes and who’ll look as much as he can since he doubts Geralt’s interested in him like that.

What he likes best is that when they camp outside the stars are all clear and visible, because the sky is cloudless, and sometimes Geralt will share something of what he learned about it during witcher training and he’ll share what he knew from Oxenfurt and his heart will beat faster than usual when that happens. Summer is not all that bad. All the contrary.

Geralt in the fall… well. He likes the season better because it’s less hot, and Jaskier likes the way the warm oranges of the sun and the falling leaves look around him when he sits around the campfire — listen, Jaskier’s an artist and he just wishes he could draw because Geralt looks pretty as a picture like that as much as he wouldn’t believe it. Jaskier doesn’t like it as much as the other two because the closer they get to winter the more hostile people become and the tougher it is to find good food and the roads get progressively hard to travel, and Saovine is a bad time for both of them — Geralt avoids towns because people really tend to look at him worse and Jaskier can’t play lest they get kicked out, and the best thing about it is that after the third fall Geralt doesn’t complain when Jaskier wants to sleep next to him to save body heat. And he does love that, very very much.

He doesn’t know how Geralt is in winter for years, until he ends up stuck in Kaer Morhen with the few survived witchers, Yennefer and Geralt’s just-has-been-possessed child surprise, and from what he hears it used to be better than this before, but it takes a week for things to thaw out, and they decide to not leave until spring comes even if it’s still dangerous, and — well.

Geralt’s hair is blindingly shiny surrounded by snow that’s exactly the same color. He’s warm when he joins Jaskier under the covers of his bed and pulls him close and whispers that he’s sorry against the scars of his hand, and Jaskier just cards through his hair with the other one and pulls him close and draws the covers over them, and it might be cold as fuck but the hot springs under the fortress are very damned pleasant to bathe in, and he hates being out in the snow but it’s not so bad when it’s beating against the windows and they’re in bed and Geralt’s mouth touches his tentatively three weeks after they banish Voleth Meir, and —

Jaskier’s loved him for years, through all the seasons, and there’s something good to be said for all of them.

But he thinks that this winter’s Geralt, that’s his favorite.

And he wouldn’t trade having followed him through so many turns of those season for anything in the world.

End.