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It's early in the morning hours. A curtain of fog hangs over the meadow. The world dissolves in the distance in grey white nothingness.
Geralt is sitting in a field of daisies, lavender, dandelions and soft wet grass.
His breath comes out in visible huffs hanging in the cool air.
Jaskier flops down beside him with a big sight.
"Hello Geralt."
"Jaskier."
For once in his whole live the bard is silent.
"Shouldn't you be angry with me?" He asks at last.
They haven't talked in so long. He hasn't seen the bard in what felt like forever. Geralt doesn't keep track of time. But every spring through autumn, every winter through spring, dragged on and on, day by day, looking for a person that he was used to being there.
"Eh. Of course I am angry. I am fucking pissed at you. But-- Well I am still your friend I guess. Even if you were never mine."
There is a melancholy in his voice that Geralt is not used to hearing from the frivolous bard. A longing for things that never were. That the bard has convinced himself - that Geralt convinced him - as true. Geralt wants to object but-- But.
When he spoke last to the bard he made his fears into reality. He never was his friend. Couldn't be. Maybe he was before he misspoke. Unloaded onto the bard. He did think of Jaskier as his friend, but never offered in return. He regrets this. The bard didn't deserve all of Geralt's baggage.
"I'm--"
Geralt is looking at Jaskier.
At the world around them.
Of course.
The bard looks misty, like the fog. Washed out of all his colors. Dessaturated like the meadow.
It's all wrong.
A dream.
Geralt looses his train of thought. Forgets what he wanted to say. This is only a dream. He could say whatever he wanted instead.
He could apologize. Or tell him all the stories that the bard wished to hear and Geralt was afraid to share. Afraid to drag back out of him into the open and acknowledge them as reality he lived through.
"I--"
There is nothing he can say that changes their reality. He doesn't know where Jaskier is. Hasn't heard of him, hasn't been looking for him. But--
But Geralt thought about the bard. Would imagine him still walking beside him, singing, breathing, annoying the fuck out of him.
I miss you, he wants to say.
Jaskier raises his eyebrows questioning.
"I love you."
He says instead. That's the only truth. Both true in dreams and reality. Something he never allowed himself to even think - but at least one version of Jaskier - even if only the fragment of him that lives in his dreams - deserves to hear that.
The bards mouth has shaped a perfect little o.
"Of course." The bard says to himself.
"Yeah. That makes sense."
He sounds confused, it doesn't seem to make sense.
"Jaskier--"
"Geralt. Kiss me."
It's not a question. It's a wisper. It's a promise. It's a command and Geralt has to obey. It's soft and sweet and he keeps it short. It's like kissing cold air.
It's not real.
Jaskier's breath is cool on his face when they part. Geralt can count the shades of blue in his eyes. He wonders if this is how he remembers the bards eyes, if he really spent so much time looking into his eyes or if it's only from his imagination, filling the missing information he desperately wishes he had kept.
"I have loved you when I was eighteen. I have loved you when I was thirty. I have loved you when you told me I was the worst thing to ever happen to you. And I will have loved you when this burning anger is a far away memory, and I am old and grey waiting for death knocking at the door."
It's in the past. It's not real. But it's a nice sentiment that there may have been a person who could love him so much.
He will carry this moment with him, the memory of something that never happend.
That's also fine.
Geralt doesn't know what to say - he never knew what to say to Jaskier - so he kisses this specter again.
When Geralt wakes he waits to linger for a moment on what he remembers of his dream, bevor he moves on with his day. There is no use lingering on impossible dreams.