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There are two steaming mugs side by side on the countertop.
It’s only once he’s burnt his tongue on his underbrewed tea that Jaskier remembers there only needs to be the one. Dead air is poor substitute for his name on Geralt’s lips.
“I know, I know,” he says anyway, as if the phantom sound has reached him somehow. “I haven’t let it steep long enough. You don’t have to say it.”
And he never did, actually. Let the long-suffering quality of his voice speak for itself, with that wry quirk to his brow that told Jaskier far more than his words ever did. Though in retrospect, Jaskier has to wonder if he presumed too much of Geralt’s silence. The delighted yellow of the hibiscus teabag tag is practically mocking. Batman sat on the side of the mug maintains his crouch in the rain, forever BROODING, no truth anymore to the end bit of the chipped one-liner: COME BACK LATER. He doesn’t really care for hibiscus tea, but there’s a box of it in the cupboard. He doesn’t really go in on Batman, and he’s not much for brooding, himself. Yet the mug stays.
“Typical,” he says into the contents of his mug. “How completely predictable of you. You did always have that thing of yours about getting the last word in. Couldn’t you have just let me have it, for once?”
But that’s not entirely true, now is it? For all that he spoke last he wasn’t so much getting the last word, not really. Not in a way that mattered. See you around, Geralt was mollifying, worse than that, it was a white flag tossed up into the air for all to see. Cowardly as a dog scampering off with his tail between his legs—no, more. At least the dog was blameless, because who ever blamed a dog for shoveling shit? Really, with what hands?
Oh, Geralt could find a way, rises to the surface of his thoughts like air bubbles breaching. The thought shames him nearly the same second he has it, and yet he can’t find it within himself to regret it, or even to disagree. Honestly, a dog is as much to blame for Geralt’s problems as he is. Try as he might to give Geralt grace in all things, even when the bastard might not deserve it, he’s at an utter loss here as to how this was his fault. If Geralt was fool enough to throw his hat in the ring, even for a laugh, he doesn’t get to go on fussing for five long years after the fact, in that time never once fulfilling his role as godfather. Jaskier is more Cirilla’s godfather than Geralt is, for the simple fact that he knows the girl’s fucking name, whereas Jaskier isn’t sure Geralt even knows she is a girl to begin with.
His tea is still entirely too hot, but he catches it against his pursed lips this time and avoids any further mutilation of his tongue. He can’t bear to set it down, for a number of reasons ranging from strange to absurd, including but not limited to maintaining his tenuous grasp on his sanity. The idea of setting it back down aside Geralt’s makes him want to do nothing less than scream, and the last thing he needs right now is another noise complaint from the prissy downstairs neighbours. The air in the kitchen is stifling, somehow, even with gooseflesh raised all along his legs up to his sleep shorts. Hibiscus is thick in his nose.
“Uh, outside,” he decides then. “Outside should do nicely.”
Clambering out onto his fire escape with a full mug of tea in one hand does take some maneuvering, but he’s no stranger to it. Dawn has just barely broken across the horizon. Were he in a better mood he might find it within himself to poeticize it, the sweep of orange across the sky like a touch of molten gold–or something far more clever. But he isn’t, so he doesn’t, and instead he burns his tongue on his tea again.
It’s still, or as still as a city can be at first light, which ultimately isn’t that still at all. A car trundles down the road, a beat up red thing scratched to hell and back. Geralt’s car had never looked much better, not that he would ever hear any words on it.
His breath billows from his lips on every tight exhale. He warms his fingers against his own mug of tea. A far more sensible mug of black tea, with light touches of lemon and honey. Sometimes Geralt would steal a sip from it, and his expression would lock itself down as his lips pressed together, like he could hide his displeasure through sheer force of will. Jaskier was a lot more vocal when he stole sips from Geralt’s. Geralt would laugh, sometimes.
There are birds singing sweetly. Distant, and faint. Not so many, really, just two of them. He can’t see them from here and can’t quite figure where they’re even perched. It strikes him almost as a call-and-response but then, Jaskier has never really known much about birds. Something bittersweet coats his throat when he swallows thickly, something knotted tight beneath his collarbone. The rail is a chilling thing against his forearms when he lowers himself to lean against it. His loose sleep shorts rustle around his thighs in the cutting breeze.
He takes in the lovely aroma from his mug, testingly flexes his reddening fingers on the ceramic. It might be just cool enough to drink. The fog of his breath battles with the mug’s rising steam when Jaskier lets himself sigh, right into the lip of the mug. He’s curling down over the thing, like he’s nursing a blow. It’s as if it’s hitting him for the first time, all over again. They never sang duets because Geralt never sang—except for those rare times he did, all rough and low and terribly attractive, brief snatches Jaskier knew to sear into his memory with meticulous care. How terribly intriguing his eyes were across the bar, the first time they met. How warm his eyes always were, even when his face fell flat and his wit sliced Jaskier along its sharp edges. The blankets strewn throughout his apartment, just for Jaskier, even though he ran like a furnace most nights. The way their calluses fit together. The smell of his awful hibiscus tea.
In all this, it seems he had entirely forgotten the mug in his hand. His lax fingers fumble around the handle, the curve of the body, and it tumbles entirely from his grip.
He isn’t so high up he can’t hear his favorite fucking mug shatter against the pavement.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!”
+
The bed is cold.
It takes him a moment to remember why. Geralt is turning his face into his pillow to avoid the sunlight seeping through his shuttered blinds when the thought lands. Every muscle in him stills, as if the pain it brings will pass more easily that way. The pillow smells like the bar of citrus soap that has its own place in the shower. His lips twist in the scowl Yen never liked, and Jaskier could always be counted on to mock at length. He wrenches his face from the pillow like it burns.
The dull green glow of his alarm clock resolves itself into 5:00AM. The blanket peels reluctantly from his tacky skin. Geralt is not a man for blankets; he’d expected it thieved by morning. A wash will do him some good. It’d better.
The shower sputters to life overhead. The pressure is shit. The water comes out just short of freezing. But the pressure doesn’t bother him much and he prefers a cold shower to a warm one. Or, he would normally. He’s tugging through his hair with his fingers when a strong gust of wind sends a shiver running through him. The window is cracked open. It’s been left that way, as if it’s still waiting for someone to wander in and take a customary, long, steaming hot shower. Jaskier always complained when the mirror fogged.
Despite himself his eyes stray to the corner he’s been avoiding. The anger that rises within him is a live thing. He’s being cowed by a fucking bar of soap. In his own shower, in his apartment. His teeth clench, grinding together painfully behind the cover of his pursed lips. Practically between one blink and the next he has the thing in his grip. It isn’t even half the size of his palm. It is so fucking blue—why the hell is it blue? The bar of soap crumbles in his fist, one fragment shooting from his fingers to the tile with a clatter of sound. It still smells of fucking citrus.
That’s enough of the shower.