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Geralt regrets coming to the party as soon as he steps through the doorway— he should’ve known Jaskier’s version of a quiet get together, Geralt, just the graduating seniors! would be anything but that. Unfortunately for him, Jaskier spots him almost immediately, and begins pushing through the crowd, loudly shoving people to make room for him.
“Geralt, dear!” he says a second later, stumbling out from between two girls— both glaring daggers in their direction— who were wrapped in each other’s arms until Jaskier forced himself between them to get to Geralt. “I’m so glad you came.”
“Small get together, huh?” Geralt says, but his mouth curls up into a smile despite himself.
Jaskier waves a hand, the bangles on his wrist clanging gently against each other. “Ah, you know how it is. I invited Priscilla of course, and Renfri, and she wanted to invite Sabrina, and then I had to invite Philippa if Sabrina was coming, and then once I invited Philippa, you know I had to invite the rest of the girls—”
He’s taken Geralt’s hand at this point and is dragging him through the crowd. Geralt follows along murmuring apologies as he sidesteps different groups, before they finally arrive at the drinks table.
“Here,” Jaskier says, shoving a red solo cup into Geralt’s hand. “Yes, yes,” he says when he sees him makes a face— what are they, freshmen again?— “Would you rather we use wine glasses like real adults? You can clean up the broken glass afterwards.”
“I didn’t say anything,” Geralt says, before sniffing the drink he’s been given cautiously. Rum and coke. Could be worse.
Someone else yells Jaskier’s name from the other side of the room, and Geralt inclines his head at Jaskier as he takes a sip of his drink. Jaskier throws a salute at him as he’s already turning away to push through the crowd yet again, and Geralt retreats to lean on the wall, now that he’s been trapped in the party via the drink in his hand, and Jaskier has abandoned him to mingle with his other friends.
It is nice, Geralt thinks somewhat grudgingly, even if he doesn’t know that many people here, even if crowds and parties really aren’t his thing. It is after all, their graduation, the room buoyant with cheer and hope and possibilities. Geralt watches Jaskier flit throughout the room, laughing, dancing, his drink sloshing everywhere, and hides his own smile behind his cup.
He’s trying to decipher the loopy writing on the different alcohol bottles to pour another drink when a voice behind him says, “Hello stranger,” and he gives up reading the labels to turn in its direction.
“Triss,” he says, grateful for the familiar face.
She grins back at him, curls loose and frizzy around her face. She must have had an exam today, one of the unlucky ones whose exam timetable stretched out until the last date, because her hair never gets so untamed unless its assessment period. Geralt is glad to see it out and free now— very different to the girl who had always kept it neatly slicked back in freshman year, to the point of painfully dragging at her hairline.
“It’s good to see you,” she says, drawing him down into a hug and kissing his cheek. He clasps her briefly in return, the smell of her floral perfume washing over him. It reminds him of being newly eighteen and fresh to the town, walls still up and barred off to everything in the world. Before he settled into his skin and found friends, made a home.
“Glad to be graduated?” she asks.
Geralt huffs a laugh. “Absolutely. Are you?”
Triss laughs with him, high and trilling. “I would say the same, except I’ve just signed myself up to four more years. I’ve been accepted into Aretuza,” she adds on, at Geralt’s raised eyebrow.
He whistles lowly. “Congratulations.”
“Thank you. There’s a couple of us going, actually, you might know them—"
“Geralt!” Jaskier reappears at his side. His cheeks are flushed pink, more so than a few minutes ago— enough for Geralt to tell that in the few minutes Jaskier’s been lost in the crowd he’s done at least two tequila shots— and he’s dragging someone by the wrist behind him.
Geralt looks past Jaskier to see gleaming violet eyes, dark hair, a knowing smirk curling at one corner of her mouth.
“You know Yennefer, right?”
“Yen!” Triss says, before Geralt can answer. She presses forward to collect Yennefer in a hug, and Geralt takes the moment to stare at Jaskier over her headful of curls. Jaskier only smiles innocently back, the fucker.
Triss steps back, facing Geralt, and gestures towards Yennefer. “I was just saying before, Yen and I are headed to Aretuza together.”
Jaskier yelps, and smacks Yennefer on the arm. “You got in! You didn’t tell me!”
“Maybe I didn’t think you were important enough to tell,” Yennefer retorts, and laughs over Jaskier’s indignant exclamation.
“You two do know each other, right?” Triss says, looking between Yennefer and Geralt once Yennefer’s laughter has died down, the humour still lingering in the slant of her lips. Geralt realises then that he’s been silent for long enough that it’s probably getting a bit weird. He wonders if Yen remembers.
Yennefer’s smile turns sly, teasing. “I believe we’ve met in passing.”
Geralt grimaces. She definitely remembers.
The song playing over the speakers suddenly changes, something with heavier bass and much more upbeat. “I love this song!” Jaskier yells over the music, grabbing Triss’ hands and dragging her into the crowd, which is quickly becoming a makeshift dancefloor. She lurches forward, laughing breathlessly, and Geralt neatly sidesteps them both to flatten himself more firmly against the wall, safely out of the way of flailing limbs. Jaskier throws him a cheeky wink before raising his face to the ceiling to yell out the lyrics of the song, and Geralt rolls his eyes.
“I can’t believe you let him stick around you for four years,” Yennefer says, stepping next to him and following his line of gaze.
“Hey,” Geralt bristles. Her comment distracts him completely from the way he’s trying not to notice the curve of her body, her perfume, darker, heavier than Triss’. He’s about to make a curt excuse to extract himself from the conversation when Yennefer silences him with a look.
“I don’t mean it like that,” she says, and Geralt looks at her, the knowing tilt of her head, her smile, gentle, happy, and his defensiveness falls away. She didn’t, he realises. How long have they been floating in and out of each other’s orbit, that she can read him so quickly?
He clears his throat, leaning back to his position on the wall. “So. Aretuza?”
She nods, mirroring his position. She’s relaxed as he’s ever seen her, which isn’t saying much because that’s only been a handful of times, and she’s always been posed, cool, sure of herself. She still is now; radiating a quiet self-assertiveness that Geralt is certain, between her and his own bulking height, the reason why the freshmen group in the corner haven’t tried to approach them like they have with everybody else at the party. But this close, Geralt can see the softer edges of that self-assertiveness, how she’s holding her wrists a little more loosely tonight. A poise that comes from knowing one’s place in the world, instead of knowing how hard one has yet to work to get there.
“Triss and I are moving in August. How about yourself?”
“Just back home, to my father’s farm.”
“Will you be glad to be home again?”
Geralt thinks for a moment. “In a way.”
They lapse into silence, watching the dance floor. The song has transitioned into something slower, less celebratory, and more like the kind, Geralt thinks, that Jaskier listens to when he gets maudlin— when they get maudlin. The voice croons about endings, about leaving things behind. Nostalgic, bittersweet.
He hears Yennefer humming along to the tune, and he says, surprised, “You know this song?”
She arches one, perfectly sculped eyebrow. “You know this song?”
They stare at each other, neither backing down for a second, before they say in unison, “Jaskier.” and both break into laughter.
“I didn’t realise you and Jaskier were friends,” Geralt says when he’s caught his breath.
“He just kept annoying me and then one day he wasn’t there, and I realised I actually missed the brat.” Yen’s voice is fond.
Geralt knows how she feels; not only about Jaskier inserting himself into your life like that, but the undercurrent of wistfulness in her tone. He’d never been very good at initiating friendships either. Maybe that’s why him and Yen are standing side by side watching the party together, making small talk, instead of something else. Something more.
Yen shifts slightly to allow a group of girls to get to the drinks table, and her arm brushes against Geralt’s. They’re standing very close to one another all of a sudden, and Geralt feels the weight of the last four years, of shared classes and the parties where they stood next to each other in the kitchen, that one time Geralt walked Yen home from the library at midnight, the look she’d given him as she’d gone into her dorm building.
They’ve never quite been friends, but they’ve floated in and out of each others’ periphery for the last four years. Geralt has never quite mustered up the same nerve he felt the first time he saw Yennefer, beautiful, mysterious, confident; the courage that welled up within him because of a feeling he had, instinctive, reflexive, that he was looking at someone that would be important to him. But now— they might never see each other again.
Yennefer must be following his train of thought, and because she’s always been the braver one, she turns to him, and says, her voice low, “You know you still owe me a new pair of shoes.”
Geralt groans, bending down so their heads are closer together, partially to hear her under the still faintly booming bass, partially for the pure sake of being closer to her. “Did you have to bring it up?”
“What, you throwing up on my shoes within two seconds of meeting me?” Yennefer says as she closes the last distance between them to press her forehead against his. This close, he can feel the vibrations of her body as she chuckles.
“I was eighteen. It was four years ago.” Geralt takes a deep breath, and takes a leap. “I was trying to be smooth.”
“Yes,” she says. “I know.”
Four years of almosts, of moments in passing, of reaching out but never quite touching. Aretuza is far away from their small university town, even farther from Kaer Morhen.
But he’s not thinking about that as he finally presses their lips together to taste the plum wine scent of her lip gloss, or when Yen pulls them out of the party and they stumble down the street, breaths fogging up the air in front of them, her teeth reflecting the streetlights as she smiles so wide her cheeks dimple. He’s not thinking about it the third time he fumbles his keys trying to unlock his apartment door, Yen distractingly sucking a bruise into the side of his neck and deftly evading his hands as he tries to bat her away. He’s only thinking about the black polish on her fingernails, the freckle under her right ear. The millions of moments they’ve collected together, glances half-missed, the quirk of her lips as she smirks, pressed together like a scrapbook of memories. And then she pushes him down onto the bed, and he’s not thinking of very much at all.
“We could have been doing this for years,” Geralt says the next morning. Yen’s face is still buried into his pillow, and he’s tracing lazy circles over her lower back. The sunlight is streaming in through the blinds where they hadn’t been pulled quite far enough last night to cover the entire window, and the heat makes Geralt feel soft, open in a way he hasn’t felt since he was very young.
Yen makes a disagreeing noise into the pillow, turning her head to look at him. Her hair is hopelessly tangled, and her face bare of makeup makes her look smaller, more vulnerable. Geralt wants to touch her, and keep touching her, even though he already is.
“Imagine,” she says, “if this had happened four years ago. Would we be here?”
“No,” Geralt admits, and when she smiles, he knows he’s answered correctly, even though he wasn’t aware there was a right answer to begin with.
“No,” she agrees. “I know what you were like in first year: closed off, full of masculine bullshit, too much pride—”
“Hey,” he says, but he’s laughing, because of course she’s right, and of course she read him exactly right even though they didn’t even know each other back then.
And Yennefer’s laughing too, “I was too, you know. Even the masculine bullshit. I don’t know the last time I talked about my feelings before I turned twenty. Or asked anyone for help.”
“And now?” Geralt asks.
She shrugs, the movement of her shoulders draws his eyes down to the smooth expanse of her back, the bend of her neck. He leans down to drop a kiss onto her shoulder blade, trying to ignore the tight feeling in his chest, the part of his brain that’s already doing the maths between May, June, July, August, counting down the months they will still be in the same city.
“We’re older now,” she says softly. “It’s graduation. If not now, when?”
Geralt stays bent over her shoulder for a second, just feeling the warmth of her skin against his cheek, and the palm of his hand still resting on her lower back. She wriggles an arm out until she can curl a hand into his hair, stroking through the strands.
The movement makes him draw up so he’s leaning over her on his elbow. “So what happens now? he asks, and she smiles again, more devious this time.
“It’s lucky for you my first semester at Aretuza I’m taking PORT401.”
“What’s PORT401?”
“Portals as Transport.”
“Oh,” is all he can think to say, and Yennefer laughs, bright and clear, and all he can do is lean down to capture her mouth in his.