PSL Horsetrading with Monsterbytrade

[whatupbuttercup]

To the surprise of positively no one, Jaskier was a bit discerning when it came to purchasing anything of significant value. He picked his cremes and soaps out with care, sampled and carefully balanced the perfumes he carried, gauged and tested the accouterments he kept for the care of his lute--and his clothes, the ridiculous care he took in picking fabric and trim would have driven anyone but the tailor themselves to distraction. None of this had ever been inflicted on Geralt of Rivia directly--Jaskier tended to take the day to shop, whenever they were near a major city and Geralt was suitably occupied with hunting.

This time, however, Geralt had to come with him.

Jaskier had coin enough for most trinkets and niceties--but a horse? A horse was a pricey thing and he would have to encroach into the Witcher's purse if he planned on picking out any creature that could tolerate their particularly dangerous brand of wandering.

Fortunately, for all the sound and fury of Oxenfurt, there were a wealth of horse ranches in the surrounding farmland. They had no shortage of beasts to pick from and, with the market days of the big city, it was an easy task to see the lot of them lined up and ready for sale.

Jaskier picked through the herds (literal and figurative) and examined each horse that caught his eye. He hummed, spoke to them, twined his fingers through their manes, and made clucking noises with his tongue whenever one was deemed inappropriate or unworthy. There were more than a few that he fussed over for long stretches of time, but each failed some unspoken test and was given a sad pat on their long snouts as the bard bade them farewell.

They'd started at dawn, just as the first traders had arrived, and late afternoon was creeping into evening as they wandered. A dozen dealers had their stock sorted through and found wanting and, all the while, Jaskier darted to and fro--eagerly searching for something he couldn't explain.

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[whatupbuttercup]

Jaskier talked quite a lot, even he would have acknowledge that. It was part and parcel of being a poet, a bard, but also just his own personal inclination. He was full of words and very much enjoyed talking--he especially enjoyed talking to the people he bedded. The most obvious reason for that was, of course, that he liked the people he bedded. The less obvious reason for that was that he had been bedded by people that he--did not like. It was, at once, courtesy and self-preservation.

Part and parcel of being a wandering bard, really.

He trusted Geralt to his very core--the Witcher had saved his life more times than he could count. (True, he put himself in jeopardy more often than not, but the life-saving was legitimate.) Geralt might be inclined to punch him if he said something especially off color or prodded at an excruciating old wound, but by in large the Witcher was rough in the way a big dog might be. He was big and he was fast and he was strong and, above all, Geralt was used to being able to use these attributes to solve issues.

Crowding argumentative people spared him having to fight them, spared everyone some hurt in the long run, saved lives really. Moving Jaskier around when he needed him out of the way was a small indignity for safety. This--this was not that.

He knew Geralt wouldn't hurt him. Knew it to his very core. Geralt, for all his grousing and grumpiness, was a good person, better than most--

Jaskier went very, very still beneath the Witcher. The fear that coiled through him, then, was paralyzing--Geralt wouldn't hurt him of course, he knew that--his hands were between his shoulderblades and he had no hope of twisting free without breaking or dislocating something. His heart was racing--this was silly, it was just Geralt being Geralt, rough and tumble as it were--he couldn't breathe. The mattress was soft enough that he wasn't having the breath crushed from him, his lungs had room, he just couldn't fill them. He was still dressed, not even slightly disheveled really--there was a cock against his ass and there were teeth near his ear, near the back of his neck. His legs were pinned.

Panic warred with terror in Jaskier's chest, his heart was racing--idiot, this was too dramatic, far too dramatic--Geralt had...asked him a question. All parts of him knew he should answer--why not answer when Geralt asked him a question--it was easier to answer than to stay quiet.

"I--" he starts and it's breathy, an airy sort of tone, intentionally disaffected. "I don't know? C-curiosity?"

[monsterbytrade]

By the time Jaskier managed that idiotic answer, Geralt was hardly listening.

The position he had put the bard into had held the man still but a witcher was made to sense the minutiae. He had pinned Jaskier down with no intent other than to turn the question into some stupid, airy answer-- which the man was sure to give-- and then hopefully more kissing and, positively sweetly, an orgasm for both of them. But underneath the captivity of Jaskier's limbs there were different questions being asked and they had nothing at all to do with what Geralt and Jaskier should call each other now that their relationship had turned sexual.

It was a shallow skip of a heart borne of low oxygen, not arousal. It was the quick pulls of lungs that weren't inflating properly when there was no reason to do otherwise. It was the utter stillness of the muscles, a prey response.

No, Geralt did not hear whatever words Jaskier muttered-- and there was no answer given. Instead, fingers around wrists opened slowly and Geralt's chest pulled slightly from Jaskier's back to give him room. The witcher rolled his weight back onto his toes in order to take it off the back of the legs he knelt on; instead he gave his knees to the bed. So the curl of his body was still present but suddenly far less ominous.

Geralt pressed his face lightly against the back of Jaskier's shoulder. There were things he wanted to ask but he knew how the man was bound to answer. The heat of true anger curled in his gut alongside his lust and his erection diminished. "Friends," he said instead, his tone civil. "Friends who are fond of taking advantage of each other when the correct opportunity arises."

With a sigh, he slipped away just enough to fall onto his side, rolling onto his back and again-- staring at the ceiling.

[whatupbuttercup]

Geralt's released him slowly, carefully, and Jaskier managed to keep himself from trembling as he did. He was so keenly aware of how the Witcher gradually shifted his weight, as he moved to a safe pantomime of their previous position, as his head dropped against Jaskier's sholder, just barely--Jaskier hated himself for flinching there. It was foolish. Geralt answered him, which he hadn't honestly expected the Witcher to do--he'd hoped, of course, but an answer and one given so clearly was not--he hadn't--

Fuck.

The bed bounced just a bit as Geralt rolled away and it was several seconds before Jaskier could make his stupid, traitorous limbs move. For as easily as he'd been pushed into the position, unwinding his arms from behind his back was an ungainly and difficult affair. He laughed as he did but it was a hollow, poorly acted thing.

Of course Geralt wouldn't have hurt him. He knew better. He had been playing at roughness--that was just his way. Jaskier took a deep breath and sniffed. It wasn't much to push himself up on his elbow, to drag a hand through his horribly rumpled hair.

"Friends? How positively sentimental, Geralt--" Jaskier mused distantly as he pulled himself back together. He hoped the Witcher would let it go, his tone and his mocking, he couldn't seem to help himself. It was just how he'd always--it was habit. A very bad habit. Geralt was safe, he was being stupid. Geralt was his friend. He shifted and darted a glance at the Witcher--his expression was the same as it ever was. He didn't stare long enough to make out the subtleties of it and, instead, twisted until he could sit upright.

"Well," he said and, at long last, sounded back to himself. If rather unhappy. "Sorry I drove you away from your dinner for naught at all. It's not--I'm not usually that easy to catch by surprise. It won't happen again."

[monsterbytrade]

"Yes, sentimental," Geralt sighed, in as much of a I couldn't care, this is all ridiculous anyway tone as he could manage for feeling quite the opposite. The still-simmering anger was kept absolutely from face and the lines of his body; he sprawled without much care, his wilted cock still half-out of the buttons that had been undone earlier. He scratched the back of his neck and pulled his hair from underneath him where it was pulling.

His mind was trying to recall the times that he'd been with Jaskier-- in inns? Villages?-- when the man had seemed off, particularly in the mornings, and he'd written it off. Told himself it was just a mood that would pass as they all did. Convinced himself that Jaskier was fine instead of following the problem to the root. Had there been times when he had swept some awful and real trouble under the rug of Jaskier's ability to reclaim a sunny, if annoying, personality?

Geralt blinked at Jaskier as the man found a sitting position, having missed the entirety of whatever he'd just said. He tucked himself away and then touched the bard's nearest elbow with just two fingertips. He waited until Jaskier looked at him and quieted. Both. As long as it took.

"I have an iron sword to dispatch the monsters who are less than supernatural," he said, his cat-eyes direct on Jaskier. It was only after the words were out that Geralt realized that something had shifted between them-- though maybe it hadn't exactly coincided with the sex. Or with the horse.

The horse--

Geralt sat up with a jerk, all the attention he'd had on Jaskier a heartbeat before now out the window across the room. "Fuck." He smacked Jaskier lightly on the back as he climbed off the bed. "Jaskier, your damned kelpie is loose!" And how. The view from the room was of buildings across the street, including a small square set up for dancing and festivals around a large center fountain-- in which, at that moment, the gold horse was in, prancing and snorting.

[whatupbuttercup]

Geralt took all this surprisingly well, his irritability faded quite quickly, nearly as quickly as he'd left off pinning Jaskier to the mattress. He relaxed and sighed and Jaskier had a moment to collect himself. This hadn't been a conversation he'd ever intended to have with the Witcher and, thankfully, Geralt looked to be sparing him the indignity of it.

He took a deep breath, ready to get up and fetch his pack, but a touch at his elbow stopped him--he waited but Geralt didn't say anything, not until he turned and looked him in the face. His heart could have stopped dead with how tender the look on the Witcher's face was. He certainly found himself holding his breath as he held that gaze. He was sure he looked a wreck, then, but there was nothing for it.

The reminder fell heavy between them and Jaskier had no idea what to say--fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how one viewed tender admissions or the sanctity of fountains, there was a commotion going on outside. Geralt, as though he'd remembered he left his stove on, jerked upright and away as he moved to the window. Jaskier watched him, dazed, and heart a high whinny of delight and a great deal of splashing outside.

Kelpie?

"Cantata?"

A moment later, Jaskier was scrambling up and dashing to meet him, crowding the window with the Witcher. There were a dozen people in the square--only about four seemed eager to put a stop to the goings on, the other eight or so were content to point and jeer. (Except for a couple of children who seemed entirely enchanted by the sight.)

Cantata, in all his golden glory, had somehow gotten out of his stall, escaped the stables altogether, and had pranced right into the center of the square. It was a hot day, to be sure, but the stables hadn't been unpleasant? Still, the golden horse had clearly decided the carved marble fountain was a far cry better than simple shade and delighted both in the full sunshine and the arcs of cold water that sprayed up from the carved spouts. It jumped through the basin, happy to splish and splash, and ducked its head under the water whenever it neared any that was tumbling downward.

"How in the world?" Jaskier asked, dazed, and tried to recall--he'd shut the stall, he knew he had. He always did, didn't he?

[monsterbytrade]

Ah, yes. The horse has a name. Geralt had forgotten. He watched the thing for a moment longer, prancing-- frolicking-- and wasn't comforted to realize that his gut instincts about the horse were already proving to be the correct ones: this horse was going to be trouble. "Get," he said, fingers curling around the window frame for a moment to help ground the thoughts that were reminding him that he'd given up a ruby for that idiotic gold devil, "downstairs. Now." And then he was turning around to do the same, shoving his shirt-ends into his pants and throwing open the door to the room before he'd even rebuttoned them. He dealt with the buttons as he took the steps two at a time.

No one was on the steps, unsurprisingly, because they were all gaping like beached fish at the windowpanes in order to get a look at Jaskier's new horse. Geralt put his shoulder to the door with perhaps a little too much force, spilling himself out into the early evening light. There were a few more opportunistic men closing in on the fountain with smiles on their faces and their arms out. Not one of them looked like they were upstanding citizens in even the meanest of senses. "Away from the horse," Geralt snarled out in front of him, across the square. He didn't have his swords and his fly was done up wrongly but he didn't look any less menacing for it.

Alright, perhaps he was driven on a little more forcefully by the lingering ache in his balls, but certainly the men deserved it for the attempted horse theft.

[whatupbuttercup]

Jaskier stumbled after Geralt down the stairs, a half step behind in his confusion and wonder about the stables. The group of rough looking fellows about the square were closing in, despite Geralt's best warnings, and Cantata was prancing delightedly in the fountain with nary a care in the whole world. Jaskier considered the three rough fellows and decided his attention was probably best spent on wrangling the golden horse from the water.

His lute, unfortunately, had been left up in their room.

"Cantata," Jaskier sing-songed and dashed to the fountain. "My mischievous fellow, oh, how did you get out?"

His scolding, while good-natured, was tempered quite a lot by the tall, thin fellow with the knife-blade smile who looked a bare moment away from...let's say: offering to help him. The horse, as Jaskier approached, jumped and splashed in place, and immediately flipped its lovely, sopping wet mane and doused the helpful Samaritan. He must have been wearing his finest shirt because the face he made was rather frustrated.

"It's quite alright, gentlemen, I've got it, no need to fret--" Jaskier assured him at a distance and, helpful man that he must have been, he persisted on getting closer. "Geralt?"

Unfortunately, it looked like the Witcher was going to have to have a firm conversation with the slim man's two helpful friends. They, too, seemed terribly ardent in their desire to help remove the gold horse from the fountain. (And then, ideally, from Jaskier and Geralt's possession.) Why, one of them had even brought a knife--unfortunately both his mates appeared to have forgotten any apples to cut to tempt the creature.

Damn it all.

[monsterbytrade]

It was better off that Geralt wasn't the mind-reader that Yennefer was-- he might have thrown Jaskier into the fountain and shook the hands of horse-thieves before going back to the inn and getting stunningly drunk. Instead he stood opposite the two thugs who decided to physically bar the larger man from their fellow at the fountain and exhaled slowly. "Jaskier. Just--"

But just what was left for another moment, because the man with the knife took Geralt's words to mean that he was distracted, and lunged at him with a knife. His lunge was too long, sloppy in its overstretch, and the witcher moved liked water. A step to the side seemed slow for its precision and as the knife and the man's arm slipped into the space that he had occupied a moment before, Geralt brought an arm down from above. The thief screamed as his ulna snapped and the knife he dropped in pain was caught off-handed before hitting the ground and launched cleanly at his gaping friend even as Geralt was using his crouch to shoulder check the injured man off his feet and onto the ground. The knife stuck into the other's hip and he too dropped with a cry.

It all took less than twenty seconds. Geralt straightened without bothering to retrieve the knife and started toward the third man who was still being very helpful.

[whatupbuttercup]

Geralt, as expected, thoroughly trounced the two thugs who'd come at him. Jaskier hadn't watched but there was a whole plethora of terrifying sounds as Geralt snapped a bone or two, as he made a grown man shriek like a little girl, as he was flung to the ground--then another shriek and thud. Really it was grand little tune, very catchy. Jaskier, in the twenty odd seconds that required, had been faced with a then panicky gentleman who was more than eager to not be stabbed.

He'd moved in, ready to rearrange the bard's face, when Geralt had started thrashing people. Fortunately, he only got one off kilter punch off before he realized his erstwhile friends were not on the winning side. His meaty fist put a rather impressive series of wrinkles into the front of Jaskier's doublet, but he let go as soon as Geralt swung around. Indeed, the moment the Witcher had eyes on him, the fellow was more than happy to back up and let them handle the horse themselves.

"That's right! Get out of here!" Jaskier cried after the man as he bolted, terrified, from the square. Jaskier's glower was a bit cocksure--it was the adrenaline he was sure--but he felt it was earned. It wasn't every day someone took a punch to the face without so much as stumbling. His jaw barely hurt at all. (He felt rather rough and tumble, considering he hadn't done anything at all.)

The horse, in the interim, had stuck its head beneath the fall of water at the center of the fountain and was luxuriating in it. When all the kerfuffle had ended, it pulled its head out and shook it, either oblivious or uncaring of the violent scuffle that had happened in its immediate vicinity.

[monsterbytrade]

Geralt waded into the fountain, ignoring both the man running and his friends on the ground. He took Jaskier's chin in a hand carefully to lift it for a look-- the bard was clearly high on adrenaline-- but it seemed that at worst he'd have a bruise in the morning. Geralt turned his attention then to the horse.

The horse who shook a mane-full of water in his face.

With a dark sigh, Geralt lifted a hand to wipe his eyes and brought his fingers to his lips to give a quick and piercing whistle. The kelpie's head whipped in his direction, ears pricked (as probably had most of the horses in the neighboring barn) and Geralt held up a palm for it to look at as he turned to Jaskier. "Sing to it," he hissed. "Get it back to the barn, Jaskier. Now."

[whatupbuttercup]

Unfortunately for Geralt, Jaskier all but gasped with delight when the Witcher demanded he sing. This made twice in one day! Jaskier was still high on the delight of winning a fight (technically), so he threw his arm up and drew a deep breath. He grasped the first song that came to mind, a delightful ditty about a milkmaid and a merchant, and broke into bright and cheerful song.

The gold horse stared at Geralt's hand for a moment and then its head swiveled with delight as Jaskier started singing. It bounded out of the fountain and shook itself off, flinging water droplets across anyone and anything in the surrounding space, and then all but skipped after Jaskier as the bard walked back to the stables.

In a very, very odd turn of events: Jaskier found the stable doors both closed and latched. The stalls were closed properly as well. Not a single thing was amiss, apart from the golden horse being on the wrong side of the walls. Fortunately, Cantata was more than happy to listen to him sing as he opened the stable doors, led the horse in, and went about resettling it in its stall.

Roach, however, was less enthralled by the music and seemed rather annoyed on whole.

To Jaskier's shock, as he walked the stallion past her stall, Roach leaned her head out and snapped at him. (Cantata, not the bard--his heart might have broken if she'd snapped at him.) She caught some of Cantata's mane in her teeth, a bit rather close to his ear, and gave him a sharp tug. The distracted fellow didn't react quickly and his poor head clunked hard against the door to Roach's stall. She let him go then and huffed, irritably, as he gave her a dazed look.

The stallion appeared...both confused and duly chastised as he meandered back into his stall.

[monsterbytrade]

The song definitely made Geralt want to dunk Jaskier, but the impulse was pushed down and he gave the pair room before following after out of the fountain, dripping water behind him on his way to the stables. It seemed that no one was in a hurry to assist with the horse now, which was well enough, and also no one seemed keen to help the two men still crying on the ground-- which was better. He watched Jaskier undo the stable door... which was odd. Perhaps the stable boy had closed it after the horse had gotten out? He supposed it was a possibility except that the fountain was in clear view from here and he thought that a blind man would probably be hard-pressed to forget such a mount.

He was standing and examining the latch when he heard the commotion; he caught the kelpie's head jerking back from the post and the release of Roach's teeth--

And all of a sudden, as wet as he was, Geralt was feeling much better. Hay stuck to his wet boots as he came into the barn and stopped in front of Roach's stall. She hung her head and he scratched behind her ears until he got a nudge in the chest. "Good girl," he murmured, his voice low and positively sweet.