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He loves him.
It's not a new thought, really. He's watching Jaskier, watching the way he flits around the room, chatting and laughing, a smile stretching his lips as he goes. He's already played tonight and ceded the stage to another bard, but he still captures the attention of everyone in the tavern.
He's magnetic. His smile creates its own gravity, pulls others to him and holds them in his orbit. He has so many admirers.
Across the room, Valdo catches his eye without meaning and that smile slips wider. He returns it with a much weaker one. A second later, the man beside Jaskier says something, and his attention is stolen. Valdo can breathe again.
He can't remember how long he's been stuck in Jaskier's orbit. Since Oxenfurt, obviously, but when exactly...
Well. It doesn't matter, really.
A flower doesn't wonder how long it's been bending towards the sun (it's always been bending towards the sun, long before it broke the soil and knew there was such a thing).
Jaskier is the sun to Valdo's flower--a celestial force far beyond Valdo's understanding or control, despite how his life revolves around him, how he measures time by the beat of his heart and the rush of his breath.
He loves him, and yet he's so far out of reach, absolutely unattainable. Jaskier will never love Valdo the way Valdo loves him, that deep, fathomless chasm of feeling in his chest. Sometimes, he wishes he could hate him for the way he feels, for the fact Jaskier feels nothing in return. And yet...
And yet it's not Jaskier's fault. You can love the sun, but you can't blame it for not loving you back. It can't. It's not the sun's fault.
It's not Jaskier's fault.
Still, he's here now, for a while, and Valdo luxuriates in the warm rays of Jaskier's presence, savors it for the next time he goes. A flower taking advantage of the last burst of light before nightfall.
The sun may not love the flower, but their fates are still tied--the sun will be back.
And the flower will be waiting.