Chapter Text
What Geralt remembers most from their first meeting in the Oxenfurt Theatre is the color of Jaskier’s large, wide eyes under the warm floodlights. They were blue like the sea in the colossal mural still stashed in that forgotten prop room. Blue, like the cloudless sky after a storm outside the square window of his hospital room. Blue, like the perpetual waves in his dreams, when he’d still dreamed a dream that he was so sure he would one day live.
Jaskier had worn an olive-colored jumper, and light blue jeans, and high-top sneakers. The jumper had a sharp neckline so low that it’d exposed a wide swath of those dark, dense chest curls.
They’ve got a bit more salt-and-pepper in them now. He likes that very much.
Yennefer had introduced Jaskier to him as “her up-and-coming alternate-folk rock star under her record label.” She’d introduced him to Jaskier as “that grumpy, monosyllabic, old bastard of a dance choreographer everyone’s talking about, you know who.”
Jaskier’s eyes had been so blue under those lights while they’d stood facing each other on the grand stage. Jaskier had stared at him with parted lips revealing pearly, straight teeth that would shine through a thousand megawatt-smiles in the years to come. Had stared and stared, until he’d cleared his throat and pushed up his black, horn-rimmed spectacles, until Yen had snapped her fingers in front of Jaskier’s nose.
Jaskier had jumped and flailed his hands like a frightened bunny. Then, with an adorable shake of that dark-haired head and broad shoulders, Jaskier had put on a deadpan expression, offered a pale, slender hand and said, “Hello, my name is Julian Alfred Pankratz, but I highly prefer Jaskier, and you most certainly did not see me making an utter fool of myself just now, Mr. Bellegarde.”
He’d stared at Jaskier, and Jaskier had stared at him—and something in him had cracked, and opened. The strangest, rarest sound had flowed from his mouth, causing everyone to stare at him instead of the bright, beautiful man who would sing to him, and for him, and of him.
Jaskier had been so beautiful then.
Jaskier is beautiful, even now.
“Geralt, have you changed already?”
Oh, Jaskier’s got on those cute square-cut swim shorts. The teal ones with the red triangles at the sides. Jaskier looks very cute in teal and red.
“Hmmn.”
That’s his go-to response whenever he hasn’t gotten off his arse to do what his fella’s told him to do. If it’s worked all these years, why stop using it?
“Geralt! C’mon, the sun’s out, and the water’s just nice.”
He knows Jaskier’s telling the truth. Jaskier’s bare feet are wet. They’ve left prints of sand and seawater on the porch tiles.
The short hair above Jaskier’s ears has a lot more salt-and-pepper in it now. He likes that so very much—but not too much, not too fast. He’s the one with all the white hair. It’s okay for Jaskier to take his time to grow old.
“I’m up, I’m up. I’m already wearing them, see?”
His right leg still aches when the nights are very cold. Sometimes, the new bone in his thigh likes to remind him of the old bone’s pain. Sometimes, his leg still folds despite him commanding it not to, and sometimes, he almost hits the worktop, or the table, or the floor.
But Jaskier’s always there.
Jaskier has always been there for him, really, when he thinks about it.
Jaskier holds his hand tight as they saunter out and down to the fine, ivory sand. There’s no one else on the beach, and they both like it that way very much. There’s no one else around to see the myriad of scars emblazoning his legs below his black swim shorts—but then they only mean something to him, and to Jaskier. They’re the only ones who need to know how all those scars got there.
Under the afternoon sunshine, his scars look like the gold veins of precious pottery made whole again.
Under the afternoon sunshine that dims in the light of Jaskier’s crinkled eyes, his decorated legs are beautiful too, and the beckoning sea is his stage.
◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊
He’s thankful, at least, that he has no memory of his body slamming through the stage’s rotten timber. He remembers moving as he was instructed to by the choreographer, as he was energized to by the deafening music from the speakers, the inextinguishable music within him. He remembers the fluid waves of his muscular arms and legs through the air, the thrilling weightlessness of every high leap that brought his fingertips ever nearer to the stars.
It’s the foundation beneath his feet that fails him.
It’s the splintering of the platform’s wood, the bulk of his then unscarred body, the fleeting seconds in which no one’s swift enough to catch him, to hold him up.
Months after the fall, Eskel would tell him that the shattering wood had sounded like the explosion of a bomb. Like a weapon of immense destruction and suffering, obliterating the world before and hurling Geralt into the world after that he never wished to be in.
He remembers the red of the cloth banners hanging as bowed slings from the ceiling above the stage. He remembers, even more, the wet red coating his right thigh. The spurting of it out of a massive hole that shouldn’t have been there. The jagged bones jutting out from his torn flesh that shouldn’t have been there.
He shouldn’t have been there sprawled on the cold floor like an oblation to gods he didn’t believe in anymore. Eskel might have been agreeing with him while holding him down by the shoulders. It’d been impossible to tell what Eskel’s moving lips and wide, glistening eyes had said to him, over and over. He couldn’t hear over the ear-splitting screams of agony of some poor bastard nearby.
He remembers, more than anything else, that he hadn’t cried.
◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊
The storm is over. The sun is shining once more.
He’s sitting in his favorite wicker chair in the living room, gazing out the large square window at the rolling combers of the endless sea in the distance while Jaskier is brewing tea—but he’s also sitting in an inclined hospital bed, propped upright by pillows, blanketed up to the waist.
His face isn’t as lined with age. His long, white hair is tied into a loose ponytail instead of its typical half-up, half-down style: it’s greasy from days of no showering. His snug, satiny jumpsuit has been replaced with a plain hospital gown.
His right leg doesn’t have a massive hole in it anymore. It isn’t spurting wet red anymore. It’s splinted and bandaged. It has metal where there was once mere flesh. He can’t feel it.
He can’t feel anything, but he doesn’t care about that.
Someone in a white coat is standing next to the bed, speaking to him with benign tones. They’re gripping a clipboard. It probably has papers on it that bear his name, his age, his body weight. Those papers probably have sentences here and there in boxes of black lines that inform their peruser of his current condition, of what had occurred to make him this way.
He doesn’t hear anything the person in the white coat says to him. He stares out the window at the cloudless sky with heavy-lidded, glazed eyes burdened by purplish bags, and he hears the waves of the sea crashing against sand, against rock far away.
It would be nice to go to the coast one day.
It would be nice to go there, and never come back.
“Look, Doc, I’ve read up on the physiotherapy. Geralt’s, he’s—he’s strong. He’s far stronger than you think, okay?”
He can hear Eskel speak again, but Eskel sounds so different. Eskel’s gravelly voice doesn’t sound like his today. It reminds him of the wind in the retreating storm, fragile and reedy, weeping for something priceless that it can never get back.
“Eskel.”
Lambert’s here too. Lambert had been there too, holding him down along with Eskel, staring down at him with wide eyes so childlike, so unlike him. Lambert’s trembling hands had looked so strange coated in wet red.
“Just listen, okay? Maybe you’re wrong, maybe it isn’t that bad—”
“Eskel—”
“He doesn’t have to hear all this now—”
His brothers are both dancers, like him. They’re two of the best in the Continent, with hard-earned, renowned careers, like him.
Like he had been.
“Hey, Geralt. Hey, wolf.”
The person in the white coat is gone. Eskel is sitting on the side of the bed, after lowering the metal rail that’s supposed to stop him from falling to the floor. He hadn’t fallen to the floor here. He’d fallen to the floor there. Fallen through the floor to a bad place where there was no light, no softness, no one to catch him in time.
Eskel’s hands are big and callused from years of practicing and choreographing sword fights for film and theatre. They’re gentle as they tuck his greasy, white hair behind his ears, as they stroke the side of his head.
“It’s gonna be okay, wolf. Everything’s gonna be okay.”
He doesn’t feel anything, and he doesn’t care about that at all. He stares out the window at the cloudless sky with heavy-lidded, brimming eyes. He hears the waves of the sea crashing against sand, against rock far, far away, and doesn’t listen to any other lie Eskel feeds him.
◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊
He’s strong and unblemished and young, in the prime of his life, and he knows it.
Another concert is over, and he’s still buzzing like a live, wild wire from the thunderous applause. From another mega-pop star calling him out by name and inviting him to the front of the stage to be perceived. To be recognized, and remembered.
It’s still true that he isn’t dancing down this particular path in life for fame or fortune: throughout their childhood and well into their young adult years, he and his brothers had next to nothing to consider monetary wealth despite their father’s best efforts to raise them. Vesemir had next to nothing himself for decades before adopting the three of them from an orphanage in Rivia, performing as best he could on the streets, snatching up minor roles wherever he could while touring the Continent.
Vesemir had taught them everything he knew. Vesemir had taught them every dance move he knew, and from there, they’d taught themselves even more moves. Taught themselves and each other new dances every winter when they return to the safe haven of Kaer Morhen high in the snow-capped mountains. Where they dance together, laugh together, eat and drink together, year after year.
Vesemir never leaves the ancient, antiquated fortress he’d inherited from a very old friend. But the three of them do, and Vesemir never stops them, knowing that they’ll always go back to him. That they’ll never forget him.
Geralt remembers him after every performance, after every high leap that brings him ever so nearer to the stars and heaven beyond.
Eskel and Lambert are walking far ahead of him to their third-hand albeit decent car in the theatre’s car park, chatting in low tones. He’s fallen behind, lingering under the warm light of a lamp post—and gazing with curious eyes and quirked lips at the teenage boy who’d yelled his name then dashed up to him.
The teenager can’t be older than eighteen, by his rough estimation. But then the boy has what he can only describe as an ageless face.
“Geralt! Wow, you’re Geralt.”
The boy has the most luxuriant hair he’s ever seen, undulating in dark brown waves from a center split down to a soft jawline. The boy gapes at him with huge, blue eyes rimmed by long, lush lashes. Before he can reply, the boy speaks again with that mellifluous voice.
“Oh my gods! I’ve watched every concert you’re in, just to see you dance! And you—you’re here! Standing right in front of me!”
Geralt’s lips curl into an amused smile. A fond smile, even.
“Thank you,” he says, and his amber eyes crinkle and his smile grows when the boy lets out a dramatic gasp and squeals, “Oh my gods, you really do sound that sexy!”
He has to bite his lower lip to not chuckle when the boy slaps both hands over his own mouth in an equally dramatic fashion. He’s had similar interactions in the past with other fans, but none of them were as, well, ebullient as this cute fella. Nor as sincere.
“Uhm, thank you.”
He nods—and finds himself reluctant to turn away, to walk away. The boy is still standing there, staring at him with such blue, reverent eyes, with hands lowered, with full, parted lips revealing pearly, straight teeth.
“You’re gorgeous,” the boy murmurs with that mellifluous voice Geralt suspects will mature into a sublime one. “You’re the one.”
From anyone else, the last statement might have prompted Geralt to take a wary step back. To pivot and stride away without hesitation.
“The one?”
Geralt tilts his head to one side and raises his eyebrows. His amused smile remains, and it encourages the boy to take a tottering step forward. To give him a megawatt-smile that steals his breath away.
“When I’m—” The boy presses pale, slender hands in fists to his own chest in excitement, in hope. “When I’m a world-famous singer, will you—will you dance for me?”
Geralt’s smile remains, and it can’t help but soften with warmth, with a churning ball of molten heat in his chest. He’s had numerous celebrities asking him the same question in person. He’s had countless fans asking him the same question via emails and messages through the one social media account Lambert had set up to promote their service.
But none had ever asked him that question while gazing at him as if he’s the dazzling star of the stage.
There’s really just one answer he can give. One answer he wants to give this sincere, sweet boy.
“Yes,” he rasps.
The churning ball of molten heat in his chest drifts up to his throat when the boy’s eyes glisten even as those full, dark pink lips wobble into an ecstatic smile. The boy bounces on feet clad in high-top sneakers.
“Thank you. Thank you so much. I love you.”
Decades from now, Geralt will be sitting in a wicker chair shaped like a clover leaf, because Jaskier thinks having a clover leaf-shaped chair somehow means it’s chock-full of good luck that will epically fight destiny because Geralt thinks the concept of destiny sucks donkey bollocks.
They go together fantastically like that. Like the matching platinum gold rings on the fourth fingers of their left hands.
“See, I told you I said the words first.”
Jaskier really does look cute in teal and red, with his luxuriant hair undulating in silver waves down to a delicate jawline.
“Hmmn, you did,” Geralt murmurs, caressing Jaskier’s bare foot with his own while Jaskier sits in the matching wicker chair facing him, aglow in morning sunshine. “But I made the life-long vow to you first.”
◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊
He hates physiotherapy. He fucking hates physiotherapy, not because it hurts worse than hell every time he sets his right foot down on the floor and has to lift its planet-heavy mass again, but because he has to cling onto those fucking metal bars with both hands every single time. Because he stumbles and falls, and falls, and has to get up, and up, and up—and it’s still not enough.
It’s not enough. It’s nowhere close to enough.
He’s not enough.
He never will be, again.
“You’re going the long way.”
He knows Lambert’s heard his gruff remark. The radio’s off. The bustle of inner city traffic outside of the car is muffled. It’s just him and Lambert in the car, Lambert steering it and staring through the windscreen at the road and not once glancing at him. He knows why Lambert’s going the long way instead of the short way they’re both acutely aware is right there for the taking, that will cut down the drive back to his apartment by at least ten minutes, and he fucking hates it.
The shortcut goes past the theatre. The theatre that Eskel is suing with the assistance of multiple lawyers and a shocking load of money, that Lambert is lambasting to millions of their social media followers, and whose name Vesemir won’t vocalize even in a phone call.
“Yeah, Geralt.”
Lambert takes the long way, and doesn’t glance at him, and he fucking hates that too. It’s no better than the looks of sympathy Eskel gives him whenever he’s crushed into a quaking, sweaty ball of pain on the floor, unable to budge an inch until the storm has passed.
What sort of a dancer is he now? What sort of a bloody dancer is he now, if he can’t stand on his own, much less leap and spin and fly?
Later, he tries to make a strange, rare sound burst from his mouth after reading the latest article about him on some notorious entertainment gossip website. He really tries, but nothing comes out of him. Not even a parody of that sound. Not until Eskel gives his hunched, vibrating shoulder a squeeze, and gives him that look and feeds him more lies—
“Geralt, stop reading that. Give me the tablet, okay? It’s all bullshit. All of it. He doesn’t know you at all. That guy likes to rile people up by saying the vilest—”
The tablet explodes to irreparable smithereens upon the wall. Its broken pieces rain down onto the laminated floor of the living room, glittering under the warm light of the ceiling lamps. Had his right leg sounded like that when it had shattered beyond salvation? Like the herald of more immense, imminent destruction and suffering?
His efforts to mete that out pales in pitiful comparison to the fall in the theatre, of course, but he tries, he tries. His fucking leg is stopping him from jumping off the couch, but it can’t stop him from screaming at the top of his low, gravelly voice gone barbed and strident. From propelling all his frustration and rage and grief out his cavernous mouth at Eskel and Lambert so he’ll finally be alone, because he needs no one and the last thing he wants is someone needing a fucking useless thing like him, so fuck off already, fuck off—
“FUCK OFF!”
In the years to come, in the solitary darkness of his curtained bedroom, sometimes he’ll sit on the side of his bed with his head bowed, his hands clutching at his temples, his eyes squeezed shut while he rocks back and forth. He’ll see the stark anguish on Eskel’s beloved, scarred face all over again. He’ll see Eskel reaching out for him even after his childish, ferocious outburst, see a blank-faced Lambert pull Eskel back and whisper into his ear and drag him away from the living room.
He gets what he’d demanded for—and he fucking hates himself a thousand times more while he listens to his brothers pacing the corridor and speaking in low, harsh tones.
“I’m gonna find him,” Lambert calmly says, “and I’m gonna kill him.”
“Lambert, hey, hey, come on—”
“We are gonna find him, and then we are gonna hurt him, and then we’ll kill him—”
“I’m as pissed off as you are, okay? You know that. But—this is what writers like them do. They come up with this clickbait stuff so people will read it and make them money—”
“Fuck them! Did you see what the sonofabitch wrote?! Nobody deserves that, least of all Geralt!”
“I know, I know.”
Geralt knows precisely which portion of the article Lambert is referring to, which word has sunk its lethal claws into his hazy brain, his wounded soul. No, Eskel’s wrong about the article writer: the sonofabitch knows him, all right. Knows what he’s become, long before he himself had known.
He isn’t a has-been.
He’s a never-been.
He rocks back and forth, his arms criss-crossed over his clenched, roiling belly. He shivers in his threadbare t-shirt, tracksuit bottoms, and cotton robe. He used to do this when he was a boy, when he’d been alone in the orphanage, because it made him feel a bit better and not so bad. He used to do this all the time, and he would also squeeze his eyes shut, and dredge up a memory to relive so he didn’t have to live in the present and feel so fucking bad.
He doesn’t know what it implies about his brain that he likes to relive the funeral of Vesemir’s very old friend who’d bequeathed them their fortress home. It’d been a sunny morning, and there were startling, yellow flowers everywhere, an entire field of them, and Vesemir had told the three of them with his solemn voice that those flowers had been very precious to his very old friend.
All four of them had worn their best, and only, suits for the occasion. Vesemir had towered over them, young as they’d been. But Vesemir had towered over them like Kaer Morhen towers over them in their eager annual approach up the perilous trail to its formidable gates: Vesemir is safety, and strength, and solace. Food, and comfy beds, and a welcoming seat in front of the vast fireplace in the evening hall. Vesemir is a harbor in the storm.
We do not cry for those who die.
Geralt had gazed up at Vesemir’s old, gleaming eyes that are amber just like his, and saw no tears in them. Lambert had asked Vesemir what he’d meant, while Eskel—whose face wouldn’t be mutilated in a choreographed sword fight gone terribly wrong for decades yet—gazed at the brilliant field of flowers in contemplative silence.
Vesemir had gazed at the flowers too. Rested his hand on Geralt who stood beside him, on long hair already gone lustrous white.
We cry for those who will never live their dream.
None of them had asked Vesemir what that meant. They’d understood, even then.
Geralt remembers the comforting, warm weight of Vesemir’s hand on the crown of his head. He remembers the beginnings of his dream to be the greatest dancer in the world after seeing Vesemir leap and spin and fly through the air, free and light as a bird amongst the clouds.
He hears the sea crashing against the frangible walls of his skull. He feels its ice-cold waters flood his eyes and turn lava-hot in them. His lower jaw tremors despite his gritted teeth and his lower lip quivers, and he rocks back and forth, seeing nothing and yet too much.
He does not cry.
He doesn’t cry.
◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊
Jaskier is a singer but moves like a dancer, and Geralt says so to Yennefer who sits beside him on an identical, red velvet-wrapped seat facing the stage, in the very center of “J” row in the Orchestra section. No, he hadn’t picked this row simply because it’s “J” and Jaskier’s name starts with that letter. These are the best seats in the house, and she knows that very well. It’s a coincidence, that’s all, and Yennefer is really, awfully juvenile to accuse him of doing such a thing.
She’s ravishing when she chuckles like that, with her head of long, grey-streaked black hair thrown back and her gold-encircled neck gracefully arched without a care in the world.
Once upon a time, when they had been teenagers and attended the same secondary school in Rinde, they’d glanced at each other across the crowded school canteen—and instantly despised each other. Well, that was what he had thought at first, when she’d stomp on his foot while passing him in the corridor, or call him a “stinky snowman”, or give him the two-fingered salute just for glancing at her. It’d taken him a long time to suss out why she had given him said salute so many times.
Sometimes, he is—less than proficient at getting a hint. In particular regard to the romantic aspects of life.
“That brat up there,” Yen says, sitting with her spine straight and head high like the regal, voguish queen she is in a vibrant purple, caped jumpsuit, “is the most absurd, big-mouthed, overly dramatic, feral, obstinate, uncontainable brat I’ve ever dragged under my wing.”
Geralt’s lips tremor with mirth. He pushes up his black, horn-rimmed spectacles with his forefinger, and wisely says nothing. He gazes on at Jaskier who’s talking to two background dancers loitering on the stage with him, at Jaskier waving those pale, slender hands around and rolling those big, blue eyes and laughing gaily.
Jaskier really does move like a dancer. Like a bird on the cusp of beating its extensive wings to take flight, to soar beyond the cloudless sky to the stars wishing they’re as luminous as he is.
“But.” Yen lets out a long, labored sigh, gazing up at Jaskier too, her face deceptively impassive. “He’s also sweet like a bumbling puppy that constantly falls on its face.”
Geralt’s lips tremor a little harder.
“He’s funny like an enraged cat rolling around and round in a dryer.”
Geralt’s lips tremor even more, quirking up at the ends. Yen pauses for several seconds before speaking again, and in hindsight, he should have recognized it for the calm before the direct attack on his unsuspecting heart.
“He’s always watching out for the crew, and the dancers, and everyone else, really. He buys them a drink, or a meal, when he knows they’re hungry. I once heard him complaining for ages about being famished on a long day of interviews. Then I saw him giving his sandwich and bottle of juice to a random assistant without a second thought.”
Geralt presses his lips together. He says nothing, and stares on at Jaskier who’s now standing arms akimbo, listening attentively to one of those dancers speaking with animated gestures. Jaskier likes to stand that way: hands on hips, elbows out, head angled to one side, and forehead furrowed while he bestows his total attention on the lucky recipient of it.
“He’s sweet, and funny, and kind. He’s an admirable singer, and plays a plethora of musical instruments with equal skill. He apparently coos at mice and croons to them. He gives buskers he passes on the streets whatever money he’s got in his wallet. He’s loyal to a fault. Very loyal, to the people he loves.”
Geralt breathes slow and steady. He refuses to swallow, to show the slightest inkling of how much Yen’s words are affecting him. She knows him too well.
“He loves with all his heart.” She sits back and lays her forearms on the arm rests, so deceptively impassive. “Based on information from—certain reliable sources, he falls in love hard and fast.” If the pause before had been a calm before the attack, the gravid pause now is no different from a hand on his upper back, pushing him towards the cliff edge. “And with the right person, it’s forever.”
Geralt stares at Jaskier, at the bright, beautiful man who makes him yearn to dance once more, and breathes on, and on.
Don’t get my hopes up like this.
I don’t want to fall again. I don’t want to break again.
Geralt rips his gaze away from Jaskier. He steps back from the edge, with inward relief, with an attack of his own up his sleeve. He glances at Yen with a deadpan expression, eyebrows raised, and asks, “How’s Milva, by the way?”
Yen gazes back at him with a deadpan face that rivals his, her purple eyes twinkling.
“Oh, Geralt. You maestro of deflection. Ten out of ten for the noble attempt.”
He drops his deadpan expression to give her a mock withering look, his amber eyes twinkling as much behind his spectacles.
“Now who’s the one deflecting, hmmn?”
She scoffs and rolls her eyes, and replies, “She’s good.” When she notices his intent, heavy-lidded stare that doesn’t let her off the hook, she rolls her eyes again—but her face softens, just the tiniest bit that only a former lover like Geralt would have discerned. “We’re good.”
Geralt’s face softens too. He gazes at Yen with crinkled, warm eyes.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. She’s in Stockholm for the archery championship.”
“Nervous?”
Yen makes a noise with her plump, rich red lips that would have been obnoxious from anyone else.
“Of course not. She’ll win. She always does.”
The pride and respect she has for her fiancée imbue every word. Geralt shifts to partially face her, resting his brawny forearms on his seat’s arm rest.
“And after that?”
“After that, she’s flying to Guangzhou to spend two months with her parents there, mingle with the relatives. The usual.” Yen draws in a long, stable breath, her hands folded over her flat belly. “Then she’ll fly back here with her parents on the private jet.”
“Not so usual,” Geralt says, his lips tremoring with renewed mirth, with fondness.
Yen shakes her head, and her gold hoop earrings gyrate hypnotically from the motion.
“No. Not so usual, no.”
“Nervous?”
It’s her turn to shoot him a mock withering look. She stomps on his foot with a stiletto heel that probably costs ten times the price of his black leather boots. He doesn’t feel it at all, but he supposes it’s the thought that counts.
“Of course not! Do you know who I am, Geralt Bellegarde?”
Geralt’s lips tremor, and tremor, and then stretch wide on their own volition, baring his teeth in that very strange, rare way that causes his cheeks to bunch. He bows his head and shakes it.
In this moment, in his contentment, he doesn’t flinch when Yen touches the corner of his lips with smooth fingertips. Her flawlessly manicured fingernails graze the stubble roughening his lower face.
He doesn’t like being touched, hasn’t liked being touched since the fall in that other theatre, but Yen is one of the extremely few people in this whole, wide world he doesn’t mind touching him. Yen, and Eskel, Lambert, Vesemir, and Ciri, Yen’s cherished, young daughter—and Jaskier, if the soon-to-be world-famous singer ever deigns to touch him one day.
“I haven’t seen that in a long time.”
Geralt’s old, toiling brain doesn’t know what to make of Yen’s murmured statement. Geralt’s old, battered heart does, and within it, that churning ball of molten heat coalesces then surges up to his throat.
He doesn’t look at her. He sits back in his seat, facing the stage again. He stares with lowered eyes at nothing, and doesn’t try to stop his constricted throat from jouncing with a painful swallow. He doesn’t care if she sees it. She knows him far too well.
“I thought—” He swallows hard again, but his old, battered, stubborn heart still speaks. “I thought I’d—forgotten how.”
Those are such silly words, his old, toiling, shocked brain thinks. Such silly words that don’t mean anything.
But his broad chest throbs, and his throat constricts even more, and he doesn’t flinch when Yen grasps his hand and squeezes it.
“You haven’t, Geralt. You haven’t forgotten.” Her voice is low, and benevolent, and it’s the hand on his upper back that shoves him off the cliff edge into the waves. “You are not forgotten.”
He stares on and on at nothing, and says nothing with his mouth but enough with his hand that squeezes Yen’s in return. The strange, rare thing has fled from his face. He isn’t sure how to summon it again, when the sea is in his eyes and it burns them and he has to stop the sea from spilling because it only does so for dead dreams.
He feels the consoling press of plump, rich red lips on his bristly, dry cheek. He shuts his eyes, and the sea recedes from them, and he is on the shore, still alive.
“I won’t accept any excuse from you, stinky snowman, and neither will Milva or Ciri who’s very, very excited to see her godfather again,” Yen says in his ear. “You’re the guest of honor at the wedding. Understand?”
Geralt’s lips quirk up.
“Yes, ma’am,” he says, his voice firm and gravelly again. “I’ll be there.”
When he opens his eyes to half-mast, he is alone in the very center of “J” row. He gazes up at the stage. His amber eyes widen as they lock with large, blue ones rimmed with long, lush lashes, set in that ageless, pretty face now so—melancholic.
Behind the shelter of his spectacles, Geralt blinks.
Why are Jaskier’s eyes filled so with that despondency? What had happened to dim the radiance in them?
He receives no answer for either question from Jaskier or anyone else. He stares at Jaskier. Jaskier stares back for another second, then another, before blinking hard and giving him a tight-lipped smile, then abruptly swiveling away to stride off the stage, head bowed.
Geralt says nothing. He remains seated long after Jaskier has departed, his forearms on the arm rests, his forehead creased—searing the image of Jaskier’s mysteriously flushed cheeks into memory.