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February was, without a doubt, the best time to be an artist. Jaskier couldn’t get enough of February. There was so much drama and love in the air, without even trying. The first two weeks were all anticipation and excitement, as every couple in school made plans and promises and declarations of love. Then there was Valentine’s Day, which always promised to produce plenty of material for a good poem or song or perhaps a oneshot for tumblr. Romance was everywhere, longing looks and sweet blushes and everything that Jaskier’s dramatic little heart could ever hope for.
And it didn’t even stop there! The last two weeks were fodder for the creative mind in an entirely different way. That way lies heartbreak, and tragedy, and all of the other terrible-but-delightful misfortunes that befell young couples after February 14th. That, too, was good for Jaskier’s imagination. He was sure that once his favorite holiday had passed, he would have enough material from the kids at school to make a song that could crack your heart in two.
Not that he’d have any material for heartbreak this year. No, Jaskier has only good things coming. He can feel it.
“I’m telling you, this is my year,” he assures Yen as they walk through the hallway, already late for 4th period and neither one of them bothered in the least. The ‘senioritis’ was hitting hard already. “I’m 18, on the cusp of a brand new world, and romance is in my future. I’m sure of it.”
“Yes, we’re right at the beginning of an epic novella,” Yen says drily, rolling her eyes. “Prince charming is due any day now.”
“Precisely!” Jaskier says with an excited twirl, ignoring her sarcastic tone. “He’s going to sweep me off of my feet, just you wait.”
“Is he going to carry you to detention?” someone drawls behind them. Yen and Jaskier turn in unison to see the vice principal, Mr. Vesemir, frowning at them with arms crossed. “Because that’s the only place you’ll be going if you keep showing up late, Mr. Pankratz.”
“Oh dear, was that the late bell? Gosh, that does explain why the halls are empty,” Jaskier says with a gasp, looking at the empty spot on his wrist where a watch would be if anyone wore watches anymore. He doesn’t even bother asking why Yennefer isn’t getting called out. All of the teachers are afraid of her, and rightly so. “We’d love to stop and chat, but I’m afraid we have other obligations, Mr. Vesemir. Goodbye!”
They hurry around the corner, Jaskier pulling Yen by the arm, and arrive at the Spanish classroom they both should have been in nearly ten minutes ago. “I’m telling you,” Jaskier assures her as they enter the room and slink towards their seats, “this is my year.”
He’s sneaking back into the building towards the end of the lunch hour (eat cafeteria tacos? As if) when Jaskier notices a booth set up in the hallway outside of the cafeteria. It has a gaudy, glitter-soaked banner that Jaskier absolutely adores hanging on the front of the folding table, which advertises “Carnation-grams” in big bubble letters. He swerves towards the girl running it, munching on salty fries as he goes.
“Ooh, what’s this?” he inquires, inspecting the shoe box covered with construction paper, lockable cash box, and assortment of precut valentine hearts topping the table. “Is it a fundraiser?”
“Yeah, for the SGA!” the mousy girl chirps. “You can buy a carnation to send to someone on Valentine’s Day! All you have to do is pay three dollars and fill out one of these hearts, and we’ll be delivering them during first period on Valentine’s Day.”
“That is fucking adorable,” Jaskier declares, clutching his McDonalds bag to his heart. “What a cute idea. God, what a time to be alive.”
“Do you want to buy one?”
“I want to buy ten,” Jaskier counters, already listing all of his closest friends in his head. Priscilla will want one, and Renfri, and of course Yen will hate it but that’ll only make it better. “Will there be a full rainbow assortment to choose from? I need to consider outfit coordination.”
The girl blinks at Jaskier from behind her glasses. “Uh, pretty sure they’re doing like pink and red.”
“If you send me a pink carnation, I’ll shove it down your throat,” Yen says from his left side, making him jump. “You know I wear exclusively black or purple.”
“But pink would look so lovely on you!” Jaskier insists, writing her name on a card anyways. Not even her goth queen aesthetic will prevent him from showing his love. “Can we compromise on red, at least?”
Yennefer narrows her eyes at him. “No.”
“Just until lunch?”
“Red carnation, second period, take it or leave it.”
“Deal.”
With that --and the nine other carnation-grams he’s going to send to the squad-- sorted out, Jaskier is on cloud nine as he wanders towards the courtyard for some sunshine in the final few moments of lunch. “I wonder how many people are going to buy me carnations,” he muses aloud. “At least one, for sure.”
Yen glares at a couple of freshmen occupying a bench until they get uncomfortable and wander off somewhere, allowing Jaskier to sit on one end and her to lay across the rest of it with her head in Jaskier’s lap. “Is that a hint?” she asks, one eyebrow raised archly. “If you want me to buy you a flower, just use your big boy words and ask for it.”
“Not you,” Jaskier says with a roll of his eyes. “No, someone else is going to get me one.”
“Who?”
“You know who,” Priscilla says as she drifts over, dropping her backpack on the concrete and plopping down on top of it. “His future husband.”
“Oh, are we talking about Regis again?” Zoltan says, following closely behind. “I really wish you wouldn’t, I just ate and if I have to hear Jask talk about his gorgeous chocolate eyes one more time, I’m going to toss my tots.”
“His majestic mahogany eyes,” Jaskier squawks indignantly, then winks. “But yes, I’m talking about him. Light of my life, Regis Terzieff. I’m telling you, I’ve been on my A+ flirting game recently with him in eighth period. Caught him staring at my ass the other day. I’m certain he’ll be buying me a carnation to confess his affections.”
“Pretty sure he’s straight,” Yen says mercilessly. “He was definitely trying to stick his dick in Triss Merigold, like, last week.”
“He was not!” Jaskier protests, scandalized. “He’s in love with me, he would never. Trust me, come the 14th you’ll see. He’s going to give me a carnation and when I walk into eighth period wearing it, he’ll ask me out. That’s if he doesn’t buy me a whole dozen as a grand romantic gesture. He’s very sweet that way.”
“He’s a dumbass,” Zoltan snorts.
“Well I believe in you, Jaskier,” Priscilla insists with an elbow to Zoltan’s thigh. “You’re going to get your man and everyone else will see the truth.”
“Thank you, new best friend,” Jaskier sniffs haughtily, then darts off the bench to avoid the punch Yennefer had immediately aimed at his crotch, laughing as he goes. “You’ll all be eating your words, just wait!”
…………………
As it turns out, Jaskier is correct about the kind of man Regis Terzieff is. He does, in fact, buy an entire dozen carnations for his crush and ask them out --in the middle of the hallway, on bended knee, in a very dramatic and romantic scene that Jaskier will remember for the rest of his life. There’s a ring of people surrounding him with their phones out, immortalizing this moment on every social media platform known to man and probably getting crazy likes just for cuteness factor alone. It’s an incredible moment.
The only problem is that he does all that for stupid Triss Merigold.
“He’s a dog,” Yennefer intones, not unsympathetic. “You’re too good for him anyways.”
“I shouldn’t be sad, but I am,” Jaskier whines, wishing she were with him. She’d come to school and worn her red carnation for two periods, as promised, then tucked it behind Jaskier’s ear and promptly ditched school for the rest of the day on the grounds that all of this lovey dovey shit makes me want to barf. Which means that Jaskier is stuck skipping class in the boys bathroom in the back of the gym alone, instead of having Yen there to run her scary claw fingernails through his hair and comfort him.
“We could kill him in his sleep, if you want.”
“No, let him live and be miserable with that skank,” Jaskier gripes. “I heard she sucks at hand jobs.”
“Who did you--? Never mind, I don’t want to know.”
Jaskier examines the graffiti on the stall door gloomily. “I really wanted to get a carnation, Yen. I didn’t get any. Not even one. It was depressing.”
“I know,” Yen sighs, and miracle of miracles, she really does sound like she feels bad about it. “I’m sorry, Jask.”
“I brought a safety pin so that I could secure it to my shirt. I brought a second shirt that I could swap depending on what color I got. It isn’t fair,” Jaskier tells her, and it’s fully a whine by the time he’s done.
“You’re a god among men, Julian Pankratz. These little boys just aren’t ready for you yet,” she consoles him.
“You’re right,” Jaskier pouts, pushing off the wall with one final dramatic sigh. “Alright, I’m gonna go. Lunch bell is gonna ring soon, I don’t wanna be late.”
“Alright. Love you, loser.”
Jaskier makes a smooch at his phone by way of goodbye and ends the call, picking up his backpack off of the tile floor and unlocking the stall door. If he hurries, he might get to the cafeteria before the bell rings and get his pizza before it gets cold. If he hurries and he’s lucky, he can sneak into the teacher’s lounge and get a soda to go with--
He pulls up short upon exiting the stall, frozen in place with the realization that he hadn’t been alone in the secluded bathroom as he’d thought. There, leaning against the wall, cigarette in hand and smoke blowing out of the cracked window high on the wall, is Geralt DeRivia, looking right at him with a single raised eyebrow.
Under normal circumstances, seeing a guy who looked like that would have Jaskier in flirtation mode immediately. Geralt DeRivia is six feet and change of gorgeous, with long hair dyed a ridiculous(ly attractive) shade of white-gray, and piercing green eyes. He’s muscled all over, all wrapped up in layers of black from his combat boots to his leather jacket. Even the cigarette --stinky, cancer-causing death stick and all-- manages to be attractive in this moment, smoke curling out of those plush lips like a kiss.
He would be trying to get into those tight black denim pants, that is, except that Geralt DeRivia is mildly terrifying. ‘Brooding and mysterious’ is an understatement. He drives a motorcycle to school, and at 19, is rumored to be graduating late because he got kicked out of so many places. Not that anyone could confirm this rumor; most people in school had never heard him speak more than a hmmm when directly addressed by a teacher. He’s the kind of guy that gets a wide berth in the hallway because he’s perfected that ‘touch me and I’ll put you through a locker’ stare.
In other words, he’s exactly the kind of guy who would shove a twinky gay kid’s head in a toilet for disturbing his smoke.
“Umm,” Jaskier says eloquently, before scurrying out of the bathroom as fast as his feet could carry him. No need to add getting beat up to this already garbage day.
No one gives chase as Jaskier makes his break for the cafeteria, so his eavesdropper must be too busy to bother. Thank heaven for small mercies.
…………………
The first one appears in Physics.
It must have been left there from yesterday, some mistakenly forgotten token given to some lucky lover. Its red petals are soft against his fingertips as Jaskier picks it up from the shelf beneath his seat, twirling it in one hand as he half-follows the lecture. It smells sweet too, very gentle in its floral aroma, and he feels half a lyric about heartbreak smelling like day-old flowers rise up in the back of his mind. That could be something, maybe, and he scribbles it down in the margins of his notes just in case.
Forty-two minutes later when the bell rings, the carnation returns to its resting place beneath the desk. Jaskier hopes whoever it belongs to finds it again, and that they never lose their love for whoever gave it to them.
The next one is stuck in the vent-slits of his locker between third and fourth period, pink this time, stark against the ugly gray of the metal. Aiden, following behind him and talking about something lame like lacrosse, trails off. “Oh. Is that for you?”
“I guess so,” Jaskier says, confused, plucking the flower carefully from the slot and examining it. “I wonder who put it there.”
“A secret admirer,” Aiden suggests, eyebrows waggling suggestively. “Jaskier’s got a boyfriend!”
“Oh, ha ha.” Jaskier’s voice drips with sarcasm. “As if. Pretty sure Yennefer’s the only other gay kid in this school, and we are, tragically, incompatible.”
“You don’t know that! You never know who might be in the closet still.”
Jaskier hums, opening up his locker and tossing the carnation on the shelf while he grabs the books he needs. It can be a problem for later!Jaskier. Post-coffee!Jaskier. “Hmmm. Are you trying to tell me something, Aiden, darling?”
Aiden launches into a damn near sonnet-worthy expression of his love for boobs, and they mosey on to Lit without further mention of flowers of any kind.
He’s almost forgotten until he’s sneaking back into school at the end of lunch --Wendy’s this time, who doesn’t love an early-afternoon frosty?-- by way of the busted back door by the JROTC suite. There, tucked into the handle that pops open if you jiggle it just right, sits a yellow carnation, bright and cheery and laughing in Jaskier’s face.
It’s then that it dawns on him for the first time who’s doing this. It’s his friends, of course; who else would know how he slipped in and out of the school? This is Yen’s doing, or one of the others, trying to console him after the disaster that was yesterday. It would be just like them to go to the trouble of sprinkling his day with carnations to convince him he has a secret admirer and raise his spirits.
Jaskier hates it.
He doesn’t respond to the group chat inquiry about where he is, because if he shows up they’ll see the tears prickling in his eyes and it’ll ruin everything. It’s a sweet gesture, really, very touching, except that it’s also fucking embarassing. What must they think of him? Not only is he lame enough to not receive any tokens of affection from his crush, but he’d received none at all. He’s a pathetic mess that has to be babied by his friends just to function.
When he sees a purple carnation tacked to the bulletin board over the sign up sheet for Jaskier’s poetry club, he snatches it off without stopping, nearly crushing the petals in his hands.
He makes it through seventh period by the grace of God alone, though he couldn’t repeat a word of what his teacher had said about computer science if his life depended on it. That was it for him, though. He couldn’t face eighth period, not today. All it would take would be one look at Regis fucking Terzieff and Jaskier would lose his shit, guaranteed.
The grounds are deserted as he sneaks around the side of the building and makes his way to the student lot. It isn’t very full --not many teenagers in this podunk town can afford a car even in their senior year-- and he can see his ratty silver Pontiac like a rusty beacon of hope in its usual resting spot under one of the trees lining the lot. He just has to make it to the car, and then he can have a good cry on the way home to his lovely bed and his even lovelier pint of Half Baked in the freezer. There’s no heartache in the world that can’t be fixed with a pint of Ben and Jerry’s, after all.
Except that he’s still twenty feet away from his car when he spots the little splash of white on the windshield. “No,” he groans, stopping in his tracks for a moment before starting up again, quicker. “Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me!”
The white carnation tucked under his wiper blade probably doesn’t deserve the cruel death that it receives. There it was, intended to make him smile, existing purely for beauty’s sake, and Jaskier comes along and rips it to shreds. Once it’s shredded, Jaskier makes sure it feels the weight of the crime of its existence by stomping its scraps with the heel of his shoe until all that remains are dirty smears of petal and stem ground into the pavement by the force of his wrath.
“I… thought you liked those flowers.”
Jaskier has to blink tears out of his eyes when he looks up to seek out the source of the voice, and they fall afresh when he sees it’s stupid Geralt DeRivia again, leaning up against his stupid motorcycle with the word Roach of all things airbrushed onto the side with a graffiti-style font. In other words, insult had come to tag-team with injury.
“Oh, fuck off,” Jaskier croaks, voice devoid of its usual melodic tone by the fat tears spilling down his cheeks. “I don’t need an audience. And, for the record, I hate carnations. They are, in fact, the worst flower in the world and I hope I never see one ever again in my life!” He stomps on the murdered flower once again, just for good measure.
“I see,” Geralt says slowly, drawing out the words in a tone that said he clearly didn’t. When Jaskier looks up at him, he can see through the swimmy moisture in his eyes that Geralt is looking at him with the same raised eyebrow he’d had the last time they’d met. “I could… get you another kind of flower?”
The words don’t quite compute, and Jaskier scrubs the tears from his eyes with the back of his sleeve in case clearing his vision helped his brain work better. “What?”
“If you hate those ones,” Geralt explains haltingly. “I could get a different kind. I thought you liked those. I don’t know shit about flowers. Do you like, uh…” He looks around him, eyes falling on a spot of yellow in the grass beneath Jaskier’s tree and reaching down to pluck it. “Do you like these ones?”
Jaskier blinks at him, mouth slightly agape. “That’s a dandelion. It’s literally a weed.”
“Oh.” Geralt grimaces and tosses it back into the grass, scratching at the back of his neck awkwardly. “I thought it was… pretty. I can… keep looking.”
“I’m sorry,” Jaskier says, mind reeling. “I’m sorry, I’m still a few steps behind here. You’re the one who’s been leaving me carnations everywhere today?” Geralt hums, but otherwise doesn’t answer aloud. “Like, as a joke? Because you overheard me saying the thing about the guy in the bathroom?”
“Yes,” Geralt answers, but before Jaskier can get offended, he continues, “No. I didn’t know you liked flowers before that. But not… teasing.”
“Then why?” Jaskier asks, dumbfounded.
Geralt huffs out a breath, looking pained, eyes everywhere but on Jaskier. “Because you wanted the stupid flowers, so I got you the stupid flowers.”
“You just casually bought me four different kinds of flowers and left them around the school like some bizarre scavenger hunt?” His voice is reaching hysteria pitch, Jaskier knows, but he can’t help it. “Who even does that?”
All of a sudden Geralt’s cheeks flush bright red and he scowls, brow furrowing into that intimidating expression Jaskier is used to seeing on him in the halls. “This is stupid,” he mutters, turning around to snatch the helmet off of his handlebar. “Forget I said anything.”
Jaskier is moving forward before he makes a conscious decision to do so, hand reaching out to snag Geralt’s wrist and stop him from putting on the helmet just in time. “Wait,” he pleads, “wait a minute.” Those green eyes are even brighter up close, but their softness is offset by the stubborn set of that jaw. “Geralt DeRivia, are you trying to tell me that you left me those flowers because you like me?”
Just a fraction of the tightness leaves Geralt’s face at Jaskier’s words. “You… look really nice when you’re happy,” he mumbles after a minute.
A nervous sort of flutter goes through Jaskier’s stomach, but he ignores it and takes a step further into Geralt’s face. “You think I look nice?” he says quietly, a smile now tugging at his lips.
Geralt’s eyes focus on the movement, staring openly at Jaskier’s mouth. “Hmmm. More than nice.”
“Gorgeous?” Jaskier suggests, grin widening, heart starting to pound in his chest. “Exquisite? Breathtaking? Resplendent?”
“You look… great,” Geralt replies.
He says it so earnestly, as if it really is the best word he can think of to describe someone, and Jaskier can’t help the laugh that bubbles up in his chest. He’s still laughing when he leans up and kisses Geralt right on his frowny little mouth, and when Geralt finally realizes he isn’t being teased and wraps his arms around Jaskier in return. Somewhere in the background a tardy bell rings, and Geralt just keeps kissing him, out there in the stupid school parking lot for anyone to see.
“I was right,” Jaskier muses when they pull apart for air, Geralt’s forehead resting against his. “February is the best month for creators.”
“What?”
“Never mind, just talking to myself,” laughs Jaskier, pressing another chaste kiss to Geralt’s mouth. “We have more important things to discuss. What, for example, are your feelings on Ben and Jerry’s?”
As it turns out, Geralt has another two dozen carnations left in the saddlebags of his bike, in every color they come in. There’s something of a song in the way they look against white hair with a backdrop of blue sky as he sits on Jaskier’s porch steps and shares a pint of ice cream with him, and something of a story in the way that Geralt lets him open his petals one question at a time.
Yeah, he thinks, February’s gonna be the one.