but the story is this
Jaskier will sing and poeticize and bullshit and give his heart away, let it be coloured by everyone he meets, experience the full scale of human feeling, and chase after windmills until the end of his days.
The gray, dull weariness in his father's eyes, his stupefying lack of imagination, his mother's repressed tenderness, her moroseness, their mutual ignorance of the world and withdrawal from all society inessential to their daily existence had been some of the first monsters Jaskier had ever encountered. These monsters he had had to fight throughout all of his life, from a child that would stop plowing the field because he got lost in a hummingbird's song, to a promising pupil completely disinterested when it comes to books, and, finally, to a wandering bard in search of adventure - doubtlessly the greatest possible disappointment to a couple of honest village folk.
Luckily for them, they had passed away the winter before he set off. Death had 'saved' him from the monsters, but not before Life had made him wish to be their greatest antithesis. Only later did Jaskier think that, in trying to survive by being their opposite, he'd simply flipped the coin on its other side. His emotions were of no higher nature than other people's - he fell, he fucked, he ran, he saw the next pretty and shiny thing and moved on. Life was also more full of banal evil and pettiness than good and heroism, was more about physical needs than stories and dreams; the most predominant colour in the world was black.
And, once again, he found the beauty in it. Maybe there was no true love waiting for him, but being able to fall in love again and again was a talent, one that served his Muse quite well; if he lacked constancy, if he was cowardly, if his feelings and words were superficial, then at least he had the decency to acknowledge it before himself and others. Everybody projects and romanticizes and invents, Jaskier was simply honest and skilled enough to make a career out of it. Banality was flagrant, but magic existed, and so, where it wasn't present, it could always be injected, not to mention how easily one could stand out in colour in a world of black.
Jaskier does not think about aging or dying much, except to the extent that he wonders what sort of story he would be able to make out of his potential demise. He feels fear for his life, as every normal person would, when the fights he goes to with Geralt turn on him, when the djinn poisons him, when Pavetta screams - but he doesn't mourn and he doesn't regret. He doesn't want to die, he wants to live to his fullest, but if he dies while doing so, well, then that's one (more?) thing he's got over the monsters.
Geralt thinks him an idiot because he continues to accompany him on hunts despite both his inherently human weakness - physical and psychological - and his lack of combative ability. He offers to teach Jaskier how to fight so that he can have at least some skills at his disposal. Jaskier refuses.
"Why?"
"That is not my role. A bard should be at the scene so that he may sing the hero's praises afterwards, not risk stealing his glory."
"You will get yourself killed."
"Nah, you're too fast to allow me to do that. And even if there was such a risk...well, that's beside the point."
Geralt stares at him while bending to pick up a fallen branch for firewood. Jaskier looks away, trying a different arrangement of the chords he's putting to his new lyrics.
"Humans are like mayflies," Geralt says, and his back is turned when Jaskier looks up. "Except you actually think you're going to live forever."
"It's a nice, arguably necessary illusion, Geralt," Jaskier replies, turning to his lute again. "And a mayfly does not have much by way of thinking capabilities, I reckon, so that's no unique point you're making there. You speak few words as it is, Witcher, at least make them count!"
Jaskier has too much self-awareness to be accused of hubris where none, he knows, is at play. Geralt pauses his collecting for a moment, but then resumes, back still turned on Jaskier, replying:
"And you speak so many, Bard, and still none of them do."
Jaskier takes the invitation to banter gratefully, slipping into his usual tone of flowery defense, is met with the usual monosyllabic sounds, and all is well.
Jaskier is very much like a child still - he will chase after everything pretty that catches his eye, but he will not blush when someone confronts him about it anymore.
"That witcher. How did you ever get 'round to following him? Did he threaten you?"
"No, I can assure you that my traveling with Geralt is completely out of my own free will." He always makes a point of calling him by name in situations like these.
"Why? What made you think he wouldn't hurt you? Has he hurt you?"
"Ah, no, Geralt wouldn't; he only ever threatens it when he's tired of hearing my wonderful voice at the day's end, and even that has been rare as of late. No, no, he's saved my life many times, in fact."
"But you couldn't have known that at the beginning, could you?"
Jaskier shrugs, giving them his most innocent, dumb, puppy-eyed smile.
He does not understand how most people could look at him, the swirl of white and gold and black reflected in shards of glass, the death, destiny, heroics, and heartbreak distilled into mist and compressed in a man, the adventure that is Geralt, and not be immediately drawn. Perhaps they are - perhaps this is why they keep hiring him. They are willing to gravitate around him for a bit, from a distance, just so that they can admire his presence, but maybe the darkness scares them away, or maybe they are influenced by their practicality and sense of survival and need to give up on the excitement to retain their comfort and security.
Jaskier thinks about these things a lot. He does not know or understand Geralt very well, though he can now predict his reactions with reasonable accuracy. Perhaps his curiosity is too strong for him to feel the danger; perhaps it's led him to see something they haven't. Perhaps he's still running from the same monsters without realising it and refusing to see what's truly in front of him - a semi-human beast, trading reality for one of the dreamy heroes he'd always hoped he'd encounter as a boy.
But Geralt is beautiful and carries excitement and nobility wherever he goes, and Jaskier knows no other life than the one he's spent chasing after these things, in the forms of witchers or courts or otherwise; he has nothing else, and when he meditates on it, he can see a hole where a sense of a self-fueled purpose should be. He will not be eternally attractive to the noble ladies, and bards do not exist without their heroes, so if he and Geralt split paths permanently, he is going to have to find how to fill that hole, for there are now no more monsters to guide his way by pushing him to run away from them.
"Well, who knows - maybe someone out there will want you."
"I need no one, and the last thing I want is someone needing me."
"And yet...here we are."
Jaskier is a poet; he knows how to read between the lines. He also knows the difference between the 'want' and 'need'. Geralt's phrasing seems to imply that his independence means lack of companionship doesn't affect him (anymore?) but leaves a loophole for the thought that a connection with someone would be appreciated. That someone, however, can't need Geralt themselves, so they also need to be independent.
That is how he knows where he stands.
Geralt is not the first person whom Jaskier is drawn to but does not fuck. Before now, though, that has never stopped Jaskier from moving on. His heart appears to be stuck revolving in one place, even if it still sways in the direction of the occasional barmaid, small count, or dragon bodyguard. He supposes it is normal, given the fact that he has continued to be by Geralt's side, and given that his career revolves around the man and Jaskier's finding reasons to literally sing his praises, although that gives him no excuse for when his lyrics focus on golden eyes rather than sword slashes. He revises these lines and moves on - he's never had the good fortune of putting his heart in the right hands, so there is little reason in being melancholic about it.
He manages it all quite well, before Yennefer, who has the incredible talent of delicately carving space for herself in people's hearts despite being a tornado of chaos. He asks about her, hears all the stories there are, tries to understand how it is possible that she can do this to everyone from witchers to peasants, and eventually resorts to the only learning method that's ever worked for him - writing a song. When he finishes it, he cannot tell if he's managed to understand Geralt's feelings through it, as he'd originally intended, or if he's only ended up putting all the fear, revulsion, pain, and sadness he'd tried to (unsuccessfully) hide under his malice towards her. This seems unfair, he muses, seeing as she had saved him from certain death once, even if it had been from selfish motives.
(Jaskier never expects people to do things for him because they cared. Even Geralt, he knows, had started like him due to the sheer routineness of his presence.)
Under different circumstances, Jaskier would have fallen in love with her. Under these ones, he cannot tell which is stronger - his envy of her lovability despite her flaws, or his jealousy of her position in the heart around which his own has been orbiting for so long. She had waltzed in one day, sheer power and ambition and all the beauty of the night, had gracefully taken her place there like it was the easiest and most comfortable thing in the world, and she had stayed. The djinn poison she'd cured Jaskier of had nothing on the one she'd started administering to him regularly afterwards in directing Geralt's eyes and body and thoughts (and prayers, Jaskier was pretty sure) towards herself, and he could not forgive her for that, would never forgive her for that.
There is a hole there, now, too - he's been thrown out of orbit, and there's little he can do about it except hope that destiny threw a regretful Geralt at him, all uncharacteristic sadness and heartfelt apology, with a kiss to Jaskier's boots to match - but those are his drunk musings.
More than this emptiness, bigger than this confusion and chaos and hurt, is the other hole - the older one, the one that, if filled with purpose, with a constant, independent goal, would have served as a pit full of flowers which would have gently laid him to rest from the heartache a bit, before he could get back up on his feet and go his way again.
But his way is nonexistent, and all Jaskier has are a bunch of synonyms for the same thing, a bunch of memories of the same man, some stray paper, a lute, a spinning ceiling and the feeling of having finally, finally sunk to the ground in need of some constancy, as his parents had always wished he would.
So he sleeps and he dreams and he wakes and he plays "Her Sweet Kiss" and he fucks someone ugly, and then one day, his head clears and he puts on his boots and he goes.
He'd once considered crossing the Witcher's path as his blessing of a lifetime, his first (and probably only) chance at destiny, so he'd snatched it like a drowning man does a floating plank from a shipwreck and held onto it tightly. He wouldn't be so quick to classify his meeting with Geralt as a curse, now, but he'd figured out this much:
it was time for him to learn how to swim on his own.
A/N: Title from 'Her Sweet Kiss'. I feel like the relatively popular fanon interpretation of Jaskier as a sweet, sad flower boi is only truthful to an extent. He's been shown to be spiteful, sarcastic, mature, and cynical aside from just a hopeless romantic, and I wanted to emphasize these parts of him, along with other things he finds important (like how he mentions he wants to find out what he likes) in this, rather than just his relationship with Geralt. I'm not trying to imply other people don't recognise his character depth, but I feel like it gets lost in a lot of romance fic due to other things being at the fore. Do let me know what you think of this portrayal of Jaskier, whether it hits the mark or misses it entirely, how it compares with others, etc.