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“Hey.” Static fizzles back from the phone; the shitty connection from this room hasn’t changed apparently. He walks further into the room, clean carpet soft against his socks. Jaskier can still see the coffee stain, and he smiles he remembers the first time they’d tried the bitter drink and he’d nearly choked trying to spit it back out.
“Hello?” Valdo sounds half-awake, and Jaskier knows he’s squinting into the darkness of his room, curtains still drawn shut. Or maybe it’s three-am, and Jaskier’s the asshole who forgot that time zones existed. Still, his voice brings a wonderful warmth to Jaskier’s chest, like coming home after being so long apart. They’d drifted away from one another after Oxenfurt— Valdo chasing his dreams as a painter while Jaskier had gone for the musical side of the arts.
“Morning, sleepyhead.” There’s a smile on his lips; he doesn’t know when it got there, but it won’t leave. “It’s Jaskier.” He sits down on the springy bed closes to the window and furthest from the door. It’d been Valdo’s originally, but there hadn’t been night where Jaskier hadn’t snuck into bed with him from his own twin across the room.
“Jaskier?” Bed-frazzled hair comes to mind, an umber fist rising to wipe the last dregs of sleep away. Valdo had always been a deep sleeper; even Jaskier’s snoring hadn’t woken him up. Or perhaps they’d just gotten so used to one another back then. “Jaskier,” theres a sigh in his voice, like relief, like joy, “How are you, darling?”
Darling. Like they never grew apart. They hadn’t, not really; what they have goes beyond time and space, and when they are reunited, it’s as if they weren’t gone at all. “I’m doing fabulously well,” he replies. His fingers drum on the bed, happiness too much to contain. The springs squeak as he shifts. “Guess where I am.”
There’s a pause and a sharp breath. “You’re home. I know that squeak better than I know myself.” Jaskier laughs, his had thrown back as it shakes him. The flimsy, shitty bed squeaks louder and Valdo joins him, his chuckles deep. His voice is still gruff with sleep. “Are the stars still up there, Jas?”
They’ve spent gazing up at those old things that barely shone, telling story after story and singing song after song. Jaskier would be posed for hours, facing up at the ceiling like some longing, star-crossed lover as Valdo painted him for his assignments and those stars. Well, Jaskier knows them better than he knows himself.
“They’re peeling but they’re there, Val.” The room is flush with evening light, and he thinks he can see the pitiful, wonderful plastic glow.
“What’re you doing there, anyway?” Valdo asks. Jaskier can hear the grin in his voice, can practically smell the chemical scent of his acrylics. It’s been too long.
“I’m buying the place.” There’s a long pause. The old house has been on the market for nearly a decade now, originally a part of the orphanage they’d lived in together. Now, it sits alone on it’s plot of ground, the land around it having been sold and the place converted into a white-lawned neighborhood. It’s tattered and ratty and Jaskier loves it with his whole heart. “Valdo?”
“I imagine you’ll need help with the place,” Valdo says. “With getting it sorted, doll.” Jaskier knows what he’s asking, knows how uncomplicated things are with his old lover, knows that he’ll always have a friend and a brother in him.
“Time for you to come home too then, Val.”