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Eskel rested his elbows on the movable toolbox and smirked at Lambert. "Where are you headed, then?"

"Hang out with Aiden," Lambert mumbled.

"Are we ever going to meet this guy?" Geralt asked.

"No," said Lambert. "Fuck off."

"You could at least introduce him to Jaskier," Eskel said with heavy implication. Jaskier noticed, but could not interpret, a sudden look of alarm in Geralt's eyes.

"You lot could all go fuck yourselves bloody in a stagnant ditch," said Lambert, flipping the bird at all and sundry and stalking out of the garage.

Jaskier turned to Lambert's brothers. "What was that all about?"

Geralt grunted. Eskel wiped his hands off and spoke. "Listen, Jask, I'm only telling you this because you're gay."

"I'm bi, actually."

"Right, right," Eskel said, waving his hand dismissively.

Jaskier opened his mouth to defend himself, but Geralt beat him to it. "Don't be an asshole, Esk."

"What? How am I being an asshole?" Eskel said over his shoulder, then frowned at Jaskier. "Oh. I believe you that you're bi, that's just not really relevant."

Jaskier bristled again. Eskel rolled his eyes, but held his hands up in placation.

"Foot in mouth syndrome. I'm only telling you this because you're not straight, but Aiden is Lambert's secret boyfriend."

Jaskier blinked, looking between Eskel and Geralt. Geralt cleared his throat. "Actually secret from Vesemir. Don't tell him."

"Would your dad care?"

"No," said Eskel, unconcerned.

"Probably not," said Geralt, but he looked a little tense.

"So what gives?"

"Look, all we know about Aiden is his name, that Lambert is always hanging out with him, and that Lambert refuses to talk about it."

"Secret boyfriend," Geralt said with a nod.

"Quod erat demonstratum."

Jaskier frowned, looking at Geralt. "I'm your best friend, and Lambert's known me for years."

"And he knows I've known you all that time, too," Eskel agreed. "We're cool with it, obviously. And like, yeah, we tease him about it, but 'we'd like to meet this Aiden guy someday' is very weak teasing in the Morhen household."

"So why…?"

Eskel shrugged. "Lambert's got a bit of a bug up his ass about masculinity, I guess."

Jaskier couldn't help snorting. "Lambert's got a bug up his ass about masculinity?"

He laughed aloud as Eskel and Geralt gave him identically owlish looks of incomprehension.

"Sorry, sorry," he said. "It's just kind of a funny distinction to draw between Lambert and his brothers, Gruff McGrunts and the straightest guy I know, while standing in your father-and-sons mechanic shop."

Now Eskel was laughing, too, and he hiked a thumb over his shoulder at Geralt. "If I'm the straightest guy you know, what does that make this guy?"

"Gruff McGrunts," Geralt said calmly.

"Tell me about Aiden," Jaskier said, leaning obnoxiously against the gas pump with his slurpee instead of getting back in Lambert's car.

"Fuck no," said Lambert. "Get in the car."

"I've had an embarrassing crush on your brother for coming up on a decade," Jaskier said, as if that was an appropriate response to what Lambert said or, indeed, an appropriate response to Geralt.

"Everybody knows that," Lambert sneered.

Jaskier slid his pretentious sunglasses up onto his forehead and raised his eyebrows, like he was making a point. "Geralt doesn't. My lips are sealed. Tell me about Aiden."

Lambert grit his teeth and closed his eyes.

The thing is, he had a line prepared for whenever he finally felt he had to answer this question. The line just kind of sucked, for a number of reasons Lambert didn't like to look at too closely.

"Aiden's my weed dealer," he said.

The silence stretched, then popped, like gum.

"And that's why he can't meet your brothers?" Jaskier asked skeptically.

"He has a real job, and he's a decent guy," Lambert said, defending Aiden from — what, exactly? "He just also deals weed."

"Yeah," said Jaskier. "I've met plugs before. So, presumably, have your brothers?"

"I'm their weed connect," Lambert said smugly.

"Okay," said Jaskier, briefly at a loss. He didn't give Lambert much time to celebrate before rallying. "So, like, is dealing weed supposed to be a dealbreaker for them or for me?"

"It's not you I need to impress," Lambert said, then swore. Jaskier's face had 'jackpot' written all over it.

"You won't tell your brothers about your secret boyfriend because Vesemir won't approve of him dealing weed," Jaskier summarized, victorious.

Lambert flushed painfully, the muscles in his neck seizing. "Get in the fucking car, asshole."

Jaskier got in the fucking car. Lambert took it out of park with a slight excess of force.

"Gonna have to take the scenic route if your bitch ass wants to pry in my private business. Buckle up, dumbfuck, this is gonna be a long ride."

Jaskier sipped his slurpee demurely in the passenger seat as his sunglasses fell back onto his nose. "So let's talk about it."

"Yeah, Aiden's my boyfriend," Lambert said, swapping vindictively to country radio. "Yeah, Vesemir wouldn't approve of the weed dealing. Fucking ex-hippie hypocrite. And yeah, I don't wanna talk about it with my straight-identified brothers, alright?"

"Straight-identified?"

Lambert did something with his lips and teeth halfway between grin and grimace. "If Geralt can tell stories on me I'm gonna tell stories on him."

"How do you even know that?" Jaskier asked peevishly. "No other guys can get within three feet of Geralt with the kind of claim I have staked on him."

Lambert laughed, vicious. "Right, yeah, big fuckin' mystery, ain't it?"

"Aiden," said Jaskier. "Tall? Short?"

"Shorter'n' me," said Lambert, puffing out his chest. "Dark curly hair, red beard, green eyes. Real fuckin' pretty, if you must know."

"Since we're snitching on your brothers, Eskel said you have a bug up your ass about masculinity."

Lambert's mood soured. "That's rich, coming from him."

Jaskier laughed. "That's what I said!"

Lambert had been well trained on safe driving, so even as he ignored the speed limit, the appraising look he gave Jaskier was through the mirrors of the car. "You think so, too?"

"For sure," said Jaskier, refolding his legs to sit on one ankle. "I don't know much but if you have baggage around masculinity in the Morhen househole, you come by it honestly."

"Aiden hunts and fishes and shit," said Lambert after a moment. "But he's faggier than you."

That got Jaskier's attention. Lambert smirked.

"Your voice is theatrical or whatever. But you have fancypants, like, King Lear, Hamlet stage voice. Aiden has a fagcent, and he owns cutoffs in shades of camo I've never seen anywhere else."

"You're proud of that," Jaskier said. He sounded sincere, but Lambert bristled reflexively.

"Of course I'm fucking proud of him," he snarled, shifting gears as a new song came on the radio — mandolin over Emmylou Harris on guitar. "Skanky fucking hick-ass flamer wearing Carhartts with the sleeves cut off and shit. Confident as anything. And he looks damn good in it. Aiden's the bravest guy I know."

"Where's he live?" Jaskier asked. Lambert flinched. It was a deceptively simple question.

"Little bit outta the way from home," he muttered. They were driving in the vague direction of Aiden's, actually.

Jaskier nodded, too perceptive. "So you can date him pretty openly over there, but it doesn't get back to your family."

Lambert was getting itchy from this line of questioning. Type of shit he tried not to look at too closely. Wildflowers don't care where they grow, the radio sang.

"Fuck it," said Lambert. "You wanna meet 'im?"

"Hey babe," said Lambert on the phone from the driver's seat. "I'm driving your direction with a friend. Wanna get a drink or something?"

Jaskier fidgeted in the passenger seat. His sense of victory still sat in the emotional seat of honor, but some nerves were creeping in to sit at the back tables.

"Hell yeah. You got beers enough?"

Jaskier didn't like beer. If Aiden liked beer, that put Jaskier in a bit of a weird spot. He wasn't sure if he was emotionally prepared to be outgayed and outmasced by the same guy tonight.

Lambert met Jaskier's eye in the rearview for a moment before flicking away. "Bring a couple ciders too, yeah? Alright, love you baby."

Not quite in the seat of honor, but definitely at the same emotional table, Jaskier felt a little envious. Or a lot envious, maybe. The easy affection in loudmouthed, foulmouthed Lambert's voice just made Jaskier think about getting a phone call where Geralt called him baby like that.

But it didn't bear thinking on. You didn't impress your quasi-brother in law's boyfriend by rolling up to the function already depressed.

Aiden lived in a trailer with an awning over the porch and a shed in the front lawn. He burst out the front door as Lambert did the sloppiest, fastest parkjob Jaskier had ever been victim to in his life, seatbelt off and door opening before the car was even in park.

As Jaskier took off his own seatbelt and wriggled his limbs out of the car, Lambert picked Aiden up and spun him around for a kiss. From a trailer not too far away, somebody wolf-whistled.

"Who's this cutie?" Aiden said, ballcap askew, once he'd been set down. Lambert was not kidding about the fagcent. Or the cutoffs.

"This is Geralt's best friend, Jaskier," Lambert said with sublimated malice. For a brief, terrifying moment, Jaskier saw in Aiden's eyes the same calculating, predatory curiosity that had led Jaskier to pry about Aiden in the first place. Then he smiled indulgently and extended a hand to Jaskier. Jaskier took it and, on impulse, did the European cheek kiss thing, and Aiden giggled delightfully.

"C'mon, big strapping men carry the beer," Aiden said, patting Lambert on the ass. Lambert, unprotesting, bounded into the trailer. Aiden turned with mischief in his eyes. "Jaskier! It's so good to finally meet you, I've heard so much about you."

"All scandalous, I hope," Jaskier said with some trepidation. Aiden giggled again. Lambert came out with an eighteen-pack of PBR over one shoulder and passed Aiden a plastic bag with a mix'n'match four-pack of ciders.

"Mm, mildly scandalous. C'mon, walk and talk."

As Aiden plugged Jaskier for nominally harmless details about his friendship with Geralt, they walked to a spot in the woods with a firepit, seasonally unnecessary for the moment, and four railroad ties arranged around it. Lambert dropped the beer in one inner corner, plopped onto the far tie, and scooped Aiden onto his lap to rub his face playfully in Aiden's hairy pecs.

"Stop that, Lambie, we have a guest." Aiden slapped Lambert's head away and reached into one pocket for a piece and a grinder. "Do you partake?"

"I have been known to partake of the bud," Jaskier said, smiling as he sat. Then he swore and swiped a flying cider out of the air. "Lambert, what the hell? That coulda hit me!"

"You're welcome," Lambert said, all innocent.

"They're my ciders," Aiden reprimanded, packing the bowl. He turned to Jaskier. "You're welcome."

Jaskier cracked into the cider; Lambert brushed weed crumbs off his lap, muttering foully. Aiden finished his pack and extended a yellow lighter and the bowl to Jaskier in both hands, waggling them enticingly. "Guests get greenies!"

"Thank you, darling," Jaskier said, bowing deeply before cornering the bowl for a hit that was neither too modest nor too greedy to impress.

On the exhale, he realized he might not need too much more of this. "Aiden, have you been holding out on Lambert's dear brothers?"

"My brothers are lightweights," Lambert said dismissively. "Buy your own damn weed if you want loud."

He took the bowl from Jaskier. Aiden settled his elbows on his knees, still perched precariously on Lambert's lap, and peered at Jaskier through the smoke.

"Does he talk about me?" Aiden asked in a dangerous tone. Lambert choked.

"You are exactly as he described you," Jaskier said with tactful honesty. "I hear you hunt?"

Conversation flowed smoothly therefrom, the bowl passed around blessedly few times, and they drank and laughed in the lissome light of evening. Jaskier had never seen Lambert look so happy or so comfortable as on that weatherbeaten railroad tie, his hands on Aiden's legs.

"You work at the shop, right?" Aiden asked. "What do you do?"

"I'm the receptionist," said Jaskier. "And I process payments. And I do the books. And I take the calls. And I'm preparing a marketing pitch right now."

Aiden pulled a face. "Baby boy! Are they working you too hard?"

Jaskier giggled. "I'm twenty-three."

"I know, aren't there child labor laws against that?"

Eventually it was too dark, and the mosquitos too aggressive, to remain outside any longer. They walked back, chattering aimlessly.

"I gotta see a man about a dog," Lambert said when they got back to the trailer. In the same bounding cadence he'd used before, Lambert loped inside for the bathroom, and Jaskier and Aiden were left giggling outside.

"He really doesn't talk about me, does he?" said Aiden, in a convincingly amused undertone.

"May I make a suggestion?" Jaskier asked, surprising himself.

Aiden narrowed his eyes. "Fire away."

"You should ask him to meet his brothers," Jaskier said quietly. "He'll do it if you make a point of it. I think he needs the push."

Aiden's eyebrows went up at that. "You're a bold one, Buttercup."

Jaskier shrugged, easy and loose. "I care about those idiots. And you're a delight."

"What's your read on his dad?" Aiden asked. But Lambert was back outside, kissing Aiden goodnight, before Jaskier could answer.

🌻Buttercup🌼: vesemir's chill! he's never had an issue with me

😻Aiden😽: yeah well apparently youre not corrupting his little boy yet

🌻Buttercup🌼: >:( have AT thee foul harlot!!

🌻Buttercup🌼: you're gonna want his bros on yr side before you meet daddy ves, tho. they'll know what to do

The devil moved fast, but Aiden moved faster. Lambert called Jaskier the very next day.

"Did you fucking talk to Aiden?" Lambert hissed.

"I don't know what you mean," Jaskier lied, hurriedly exiting the library.

"Aiden wants to meet Geralt and Eskel," Lambert said. Panicked, not angry. "I want you there."

"Yeah, alright," Jaskier said in tones of exasperation. Actually, the request was… sort of flattering? Maybe made Jaskier a little emotional? But that wasn't the sort of thing you told Lambert if you wanted him to keep doing whatever it was he was doing, unless maybe you were Aiden. "We'll outnumber the heteros. Where should we meet? Coffeeshop or something?"

"I think it should be, like, between town and Aiden's digs," Lambert said, wincing audibly. "Aiden had some, uh, pointed things to say about what it'd look like if I only ever brought my peeps to him."

"That's a very noble compromise," Jaskier said tactfully. A thought occurred. "You know that huge barn complex off the interstate with ANTIQUES painted on the roof? Does Aiden like antiquing?"

Plans made, Jaskier hung up the phone. Maybe half an hour later, Eskel was calling him.

"I can't believe Lambert," Eskel said with poorly-veiled elation. "He literally did introduce you to Aiden first!"

Jaskier hedged. "Whyever do you say that?"

"No way in hell Lambert suggested the Antiques Supermall. That was all you."

"Yes, Eskel," Jaskier sighed, "you have excellent ideas and your elder brotherly wisdom is as transcendent as ever."

"I knew he'd crack if we got you on the case," Eskel crowed, and Jaskier resolved never to be this douchebag's catspaw again if he was just going to gloat like this.

Lambie's brothers were adorable. They were so polite — to Aiden; they were clearly getting digs in on Lambert that Aiden lacked the context for — and they were more normal about it than Lambert was when Aiden threw his arms around Lambert's neck to kiss him hello in the midst of the fancy upholstered armchairs.

(For the sake of harmony, and in the spirit of not punishing Lambie when he was making progress, Aiden would let go of Lambert's apparently setting up a meeting between his brothers and… quasi brother-in-law…? and his boyfriend, thinking or hoping that his brothers didn't yet know they were dating.)

"Anyway, why isn't this a triple date?" Aiden asked, punishing Lambert a little bit. But Lambie snorted, because he liked it, so it was fine.

"Too single," Eskel said, smiling.

"Yennefer doesn't even like Lambert," Jaskier said, whatever that had to do with anything.

Eskel had a good eye for furniture quality, if boring color preferences. Lambert pointed out stuff that would go with Aiden's trailer décor in lieu of having his own opinions, because if Lambert was allowed to have his way the only furniture he'd ever use would be milk crates and broken sidewalk couches. Jaskier's taste in furniture made Aiden's look tasteful, which was a fun change of pace. And Geralt was completely unreadable, but he didn't complain out loud about being dragged around wherever.

All told, they made an entirely functional adventuring party. And the advantage of an antiques super-mall was that the section with the weird local candy and sodas was actually kinda dope here.

"So, what do you do for a living?" Eskel asked in the parking lot over his cherry birch beer.

"I work at the hardware shop near my place," Aiden said with a smile. Eskel's face didn't twitch, to his credit. "No, I'm kidding. Can you imagine the fit the clientele would pitch? I'm a shift lead at a gas station."

"Hell yeah."

"And I deal weed."

"Fuck," Eskel swore.

"You owe me twenty bucks," said Geralt.

"Yeah, well, you owe me twenty because Aiden damn well is Lambert's boyfriend, you asshole."

Geralt's lips quirked. "Still a win for me if I don't have to give you twenty bucks."

"You guys suck," said Lambert, crushing his disgusting grapefruit cream soda and pitching the can in the recycling. "I've been selling y'all dirt mids."

"This is why you didn't tell us?" Eskel asked querulously. "Dude, you can chill out, we're not gonna tell Dad your boyfriend sells weed."

"Don't tell Vesemir about Aiden," Lambert snapped.

Which, ouch. Like, Aiden got it for sure, dads are tough, but it didn't feel good.

Eskel rolled his eyes. "Vesemir is not going to give a shit that you're gay."

"Probably," Geralt muttered. Jaskier touched Geralt's elbow in support. Which was sort of a weird interaction, if Geralt was just the straight guy Jaskier was hung up on.

Aiden was feeling a little left out of the Morhen and Sons inside baseball. "Vesemir likes weed less than he likes gay people?"

"Yeah," said Eskel. "Fuckin' hypocrite. He smoked crazy and did a lot of hallucinogens back in the day."

"I think he did shrooms on his hunting trip with Guxart last summer," Geralt said. This got a lot of heads turning at once, not least of all Aiden's.

"He what?"

"That hippie asshole —"

"Guxart?" Aiden asked. "Guxart Dynmarv?"

"Uh," said Geralt. "Yeah."

"How does your dad know my uncle?"

And then it was a whole situation. Guxart wasn't really Aiden's uncle in the technical sense, it was more complicated than that, and besides which Aiden was estranged from his family so what did it matter? It wasn't like Guxart would know who Aiden was dating these days. (As if it would be such a fucking disaster.)

Everybody told you not to date closeted guys, but Aiden thought it would be fine since Lambert was okay with Aiden's neighbors knowing. And now here they were, two familial handshakes separated from Lambert's accidental outing, and Aiden had to play soothing girlfriend to Lambert's freakout while taking splash emotional damage himself. Even though Lambert's brothers were right there looking like two huge lumps on the same log. And there wasn't even an exit strategy, because Aiden's dumb ass had fallen in love with this prickly weirdo.

"Okay. Alright. Fuck this," said Jaskier, physically moving Lambert off of Aiden and onto Geralt. "Hug your brother. Eskel, talk him down. Lamb, I'm stealing your boyfriend for a sec."

Jaskier dragged him back into the storefront and picked out the stupidest pair of sunglasses on the whole display for Aiden, bless the kid. Aiden slipped them on and felt the armor settle on his shoulders.

"When it's faaam'ly, they're a mirror of the worst and best in you," Jaskier sang, settling the second stupidest pair of sunglasses on his own face.

Aiden snorted, but joined in. "And they always put you to the test…"

They sang the rest of the chorus, ignoring the weird looks from the cashier.

"Miss Dolly knew," Aiden said, smiling crookedly in the mirror.

"When did she not?" said Jaskier, smiling back. "Sorry about those lunkheads back there."

Aiden shrugged. Jaskier adopted a declaiming posture and began to count on his fingers. "Esk never met an emotional situation he couldn't delegate. Lamb never met an emotion he couldn't misidentify as anger. Ger just never met an emotion, period."

"Geralt seems weirdly invested in whether his dad's okay with having a gay son," Aiden said, raising one eyebrow.

Jaskier sighed, and his shoulders dropped. "He's very protective of me."

… uh-huh. "Didn't Vesemir hire you to greet all the guests at the mechanic shop?"

"I didn't say Geralt was reasonable." Jaskier took the sunglasses off and put on another pair that actually looked kinda good on him; Aiden made a considering expression at him in the mirror. "Do you, like, wanna talk about it?"

Aiden sighed and put back the sunglasses. "Not really. Just regrettable that I fell in love with a closet case. You know how that is."

"Mm," Jaskier said, shrugging noncommittally.

"Like, I've fought my own battles with my family, and I guess now I have to weather Lambie's. Which isn't really his fault." Aiden picked up a heart-shaped pair and turned it over in his hands. "But I do appreciate you getting me out of there for a second."

"Are your friends going to cause a problem?" the cashier asked, frowning.

"No ma'am," Aiden said, on instinct, and turned to see that Lambert was stomping inside, trailed by his brothers. Ah. So that's why she asked.

"Sorry I was such a piece of shit out there," Lambert blurted out. "Those sunglasses are nice."

"Thank you," said Jaskier. "I think I'll buy them."

"Wasn't fucking talking to you," Lambert muttered, and took Aiden's hands, the sunglasses between them. "Can I get you those? To make it up to you?"

Lambert's hands were warm, and his furrowed brow wrinkled its way right up to his widow's peak. Aiden smiled, and could feel himself forgetting whatever had been so obnoxious just a second ago inside those chocolate eyes.

"Well, baby, you know I'll never say no to that."

Jaskier suggested Waffle House, so they wore the new sunglasses to Waffle House. And if that fine dining establishment was a little closer to Morhen and Sons, but still not really in town, well. Jaskier was diplomatic, and also maybe invested in getting to record with Aiden sometime now that he'd heard his smooth, pleasant baritone singing Dolly Parton.

"Tell Aiden about the commercial," Eskel said, jostling Jaskier's elbow into his chocolate chip waffles and blueberry syrup.

"Hands to yourself, you oaf," Jaskier said, cleaning off his elbow with distaste. "Tell him what? We haven't even started production."

"Commercial?" Aiden asked.

"For the mechanic shop," Lambert answered.

"Well, I figured that part."

"It's not even gonna be anything special," Jaskier said, flustered. "You've seen a million commercials for local businesses just like this. Blue background, bad footage, bad voiceover, the works."

"He said he's gonna be ambush filming us for like a week," Geralt complained.

"I want funny candids!"

"How did you put it?" asked Eskel jovially. "You're going to introduce us 'boy band style'?"

"Lambie's the bad boy, Geralt's the brooding silent type, Eskel's the suave one," Aiden said, getting into it.

"Obviously," said Eskel, smoothing his hair back smugly. Geralt fucked up his hair immediately.

"Ugh," said Jaskier with feeling as Eskel and Geralt started tussling, and wished very much that Geralt's enormous form was not trapping him in the booth for this. "You know we nearly got kicked out of the antiques mall, right? Don't let's get kicked out of Waffle House too."

Lambert cackled. Aiden covered Lamb's mouth with one hand and smiled placatingly at Jaskier. "I'm sure the commercial will go great."

The commercial went fine. It sort of couldn't not. The editing was dead simple, there was a little bit of voiceover work that Jaskier wisely delegated to himself, and the shot of Vesemir saying "I'm Vesemir Morhen and I approve this message" was done in one take.

Obviously the hard part was the funny candids, because none of these idiots could act for shit.

Well, Eskel could probably have done "swivel towards the camera with bedroom eyes and give the first half-second of a cheesy line" from a dead sleep, but he sold it better when taken off-guard. Lambert's was the most elaborate, requiring multiple pranks until Jaskier got good footage of him flailing and swearing so Jaskier could beep it out.

The one that took forever was Geralt. It was harder than Jaskier thought it would be to get footage of Geralt looking annoyed and standoffish; every take, he just looked a bit stunned in a stupid way, as if he'd just been unexpectedly bopped in the face with a handful of flowers. Jaskier eventually had to resort to wearing a disguise and putting on an accent, playing a clueless customer trying to get his attention while he was working on a car. Even then, Geralt's footage ended up being noticeably a little worse, because Geralt recognized him and immediately stopped making the resting bitch face.

To sell the boy band vibe, all of the feature shots ended on a freeze-frame with their name in a cursive font, to look kinda like a celebrity photocard. Even Vesemir's, which was pretty funny in Jaskier's humble opinion.

After that, it was just a matter of rendering the file, showing it to Vesemir (who, thankfully, agreed that it was pretty funny), and sending the commercial off to local TV stations with the pretty-please play our ad fee.

And then the commercial went viral.

As quickly as possible, Jaskier made YouTube and Tiktok accounts for the shop and zhuzhed up the Instagram and Facebook. The attention became overwhelming almost immediately, and the work required to take advantage of their fifteen minutes of fame was so time-consuming and so pressing that the Morhen sons had to take over phones and customer intake for a couple weeks while Jaskier worked overtime as a vlogger and meme-maker.

(And he did clock in his overtime hours, at Geralt's and Aiden's-by-way-of-Lambert's insistence. Jaskier went ahead and posted the album art for Suffering from Success by DJ Khaled to his personal Instagram story, and attached it to the Community post explaining his absence from his music YouTube for good measure.)

The only workflow that made any sense in the early rush was TikTok first, interviewing the mechanics or whatever, and then posting them to Instagram as Reels, YouTube as Shorts, compiling the footage into a couple longer videos as he could. But over the next few months? Jaskier had long-form content plans.

There were a number of beloved YouTube channels where some shop or other documented the service they provided. Eskel would probably be the easiest to get started as the face of that kind of "what car are you working on right now?" content, but if Geralt could be persuaded to cooperate at all, Jaskier thought the calm, serious know-how Geralt gave off when explaining something was a better fit for the niche longterm.

It took a second for the online attention to translate into increased business, but there did come a moment before Jaskier really felt done catching the virality wave where having one mechanic on the desk instead of on the shop floor became untenable. The phone took the biggest hit once Jaskier was back to his regular duties; for a few days, everyone calling the shop got Jaskier at his most distracted, multi-tasking and caffeinated to a degree that even Jaskier had to admit was probably not very healthy.

Their new customers did have something wrong with their cars. They were just also there to giggle at boys, which everyone present hated — even Eskel, who was rather less enthused about being 'the suave one' when faced with the age demographic who picked mechanic shops based on what was trending on TikTok. Still, they all played up their personae as instructed — it helped that Jaskier had pitched them as slightly-exaggerated versions of their default attitudes towards strangers.

Or, as Vesemir put it, "You have turned my sons into the worst versions of themselves, for money."

"You approved the ad!"

And it did not appear that Vesemir much minded the money, though the rush had him doing more hands-on mechanical work than he'd done in a year or so, meaning that he did complain quite regularly about his old aching bones for being such a jacked old man.

In fact, the shop was so busy for the next month or so that, when disaster struck, nobody even noticed for a full day.

"Who is Aiden?" Vesemir asked at close, wiping motor oil from his hands.

Jaskier felt a bucket of ice water slam over his head, but gave his best puzzled smile. "You'll have to be more specific, sir, it's been a very popular baby name for at least a decade. Why, I know more Aidens, Jaidens, Caidens, and — uh — maidens—"

Vesemir cut the bullshit. "One of our customers pointed at Lambert yesterday and said 'it really is Aiden's boyfriend.' Was she right?"

"Uh," said Jaskier, scrambling for any response that wouldn't immediately out Lambert to his father. "I haven't heard as much? There are a lot of brunettes with strong noses and a widow's peak in the world, you know."

"Hmm," said Vesemir, none too convinced, and turned on his heel. Jaskier immediately sent out the APB, and convened fifteen minutes later with the Morhen boys at their three-bedroom.

"I can't believe your stupid commercial outed me to my damn dad," Lambert said, seated firmly on the only milk crate his boyfriend still allowed him to keep as furniture. He thought he was maintaining his composure with admirable aplomb.

"Lambert, I am so, so sorry," Jaskier began.

"Shut it, Jaskier, you're making us crazy money," said Eskel. "It's not your fault."

Lambert shot Eskel a dirty look. "That's my line, asshole. It's not happening to you."

Eskel shrugged and spread his hands.

"So he asked you about it, and you denied all knowledge, and he let you get away with that," said Lambert, jiggling an unopened beer in his hand. "Which means he'll ask me next. Fuck."

"It's probably good news that he asked his gayest employee before asking either of us, right?" said Eskel.

"Is that really Jaskier's most salient characteristic as an employee right now?" Geralt asked peevishly.

"So, if you think about it…" Jaskier held up both hands and brought them together: Synthesis. "Gay people are making your dad a ton of money right now?"

Lambert's mouth twisted sourly. He dropped his head and brought his hands up, leaning the cold beer bottle against his neck. Still, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Jaskier gesturing aggressively at his brothers, and couldn't help but smile when Eskel's big dumb paw landed on his back in awkward support.

"I hate all of you, you can all go to hell," Lambert recited, "and when he asks me who Aiden is, I'll tell him the truth. Okay?"

"Okay," said Eskel. "And if he asks us…?"

"We'll tell him to talk to Lambert," Geralt said.

As if this was all just that simple. As plans went, this one sucked. And nobody needed to know that having a plan, and his brothers being part of it, made Lambert feel so much calmer about it.

It took two days, which was a long time for Lambert to agonize alone. Just in the shift where he and Vesemir were scheduled to close together, Lambert entertained, and discarded, dozens of little schemes for how to snatch back some agency from this hellish situation.

But the best one only came to him in the moment.

"Do you know a man named Aiden?" Vesemir asked, cornering him at his wheeled toolbox when he'd shut the garage door.

Lambert set down the tool he was cleaning, and with perfect calm, he said, "My boyfriend's name is Aiden. Why do you ask?"

"Hey," said Lambert, audibly grinning over the phone.

"Hey you," said Aiden, exiting the gas station at the end of his shift. "What's got you so excited?"

"Fuck you." Lambert laughed, helplessly happy, and just like always the sound started butterflies in Aiden's stomach. "You got plans this weekend?"

"None I can't brush off for whatever this is," Aiden said, smiling as he got into his car.

"How about Morhen family dinner?"

Information briefly stopped processing for Aiden, all thought drowned out by an oncoming wall of emotion.

"Uh. Babe? Fuck."

"Yes, no take-backsies," Aiden said, giddy. "Wait, baby, is this for real?"

"I told my dad about you," Lambert said, sounding way happier about it than Aiden had dared to imagine. Like, barely panicked or tearful at all. "Technically he invited you, I'm just the messenger."

"Baby, I'm so proud of you," Aiden said, tearing up.

"Shit, baby, no crying allowed," Lambert said, and there's the panic Aiden was waiting for. "If you're that proud of me you can say it dry-eyed, okay?"

Sunday came, and nobody in Lambie's family was seriously Catholic so Aiden didn't have to drag his gay ass out of bed for church, thank the Lord. But Sunday dinner was "sort of involved," so Lambert had to be there around noon. Aiden figured he'd show up at like noon thirty, and then morning of he got so nervous about what to wear that it was more like noon forty five.

Aiden knocked. Lambert hollered that it was unlocked. On opening the door, Aiden walked into what initially appeared to be some kind of ongoing baking disaster.

With more time to observe, it gradually came to be clear that what was actually taking place was a perfectly ordinary and, relatively speaking, organized afternoon of making so many fucking pierogies. From what Aiden could see, which wasn't much, Eskel was on dough rolling and cutting duties (because, as Lambert put it, "his arms are fucking massive"); Lambert was on shaping and filling, no reason given but presumably because he had young, non-arthritic fingers; and Vesemir was apparently on par-cooking duty, no reason given but presumably because he had old, arthritic fingers.

Geralt's job was, evidently, to enter the fog of flour and steam periodically to rotate out baking sheets and put the par-cooked pierogies in the freezer for later or in the staging area for when they started dinner. This left him some free time to push the rest of the lunchtime charcuterie board, an assortment of off-brand sodas and nice beers, and a truly alarming quantity of grocery store pączki on the guest, while everybody else created a hellish racket in the kitchen.

"I'd be happy to help with dinner," Aiden offered tentatively.

"We'll teach you to make pierogi sometime," Geralt said, and Aiden tried not to look too relieved at what was clearly a polite 'no'.

"Geralt, switch!" came the deep, rough voice that must certainly be Vesemir, and Geralt disappeared once more into the chaos, to be replaced by a surprisingly short, surprisingly muscular man with a surprisingly long grey beard. Aiden stood at once, very glad he'd dressed so sedately and a little worried about the dangly earrings he'd put on in a last-minute burst of spite.

"Aiden!" Vesemir said, smile wide, arm extended. On sheer, terrified reflex, Aiden gave Vesemir the kind of firm-not-crushing handshake he'd been drilled on as a child, and which had not emerged in him for many years. "It's so good to meet you. I'm Vesemir, Lambert's adoptive father."

"It's a pleasure, Mr. Morhen."

"Don't stand on ceremony. Don't stand at all. Sit, boy, sit," said Vesemir, chivvying them both onto the couch. He pressed Aiden's hand with a twinkling eye. "Now, I won't ask you any awkward questions like how long you and my son have been together, because I know my boy and I've not got any desire to cause trouble. Do you have any awkward questions for me?"

Aiden's mouth popped open on protocol, and he found his words as he spoke them. "How did you come to adopt Lambert?"

"Oh, that's a funny story," said Vesemir fondly. "I'm what you might call a failure as a foster parent. I used to be better at it, but then I got old and sentimental and failed three times in rapid succession. Esk and Lamb took my name, of course, but Geralt liked his too much."

"Ahh," Aiden said. "Lambert's the youngest, did you take him in last?"

"Yes," said Vesemir gravely. "Last of them, last of all — well, so far — and he's never forgiven me for it, poor thing. I think he always wanted to be an older brother. Are you interested in having children?"

Lambert cut that off quick. "Tato."

"What do you mean 'so far?'" Geralt hollered.

"You know they always want to send me Polish kids," Vesemir hollered back. "They really twisted my arm this time! Lamb might be getting a little sister."

"What?" said all three Morhen brothers in unison.

"Well, it's back to the pot for me," said Vesemir, and launched himself from the couch with what it would probably be rude to call spryness. "Geralt, switch!"

"Unbelievable." Geralt shook his head as he emerged, looking somewhat concerned and very soggy. "Expecting at his age."

"Nature is beautiful," said Aiden as a joke, not expecting to crack a smile on Geralt's face and launch him into a discussion on native flora pollinator gardens.

"Geralt!" There was a tray of pierogies to process.

Geralt returned from the mists this time with a more guarded look in his eye. "I have a question."

Aiden had no idea where this was going.

"About Jaskier."

Aiden had an incorrect, but very clear and very reasonable, idea where this was going.

"Ask away."

Geralt hesitated, drumming his fingers on his knees. "I'm worried I'm stopping him from meeting men."

"Speak on that," said Aiden, baffled.

"We've been friends since he started middle school," Geralt said, "by which I mean, he decided when he started middle school that I was going to be his friend and stuck to me doggedly. When he entered high school and I was a senior, I figured out he was exclusively dating girls because all the guys who would have been in his dating pool were afraid of me."

"Okay," said Aiden, "that makes a certain amount of sense." For high school, specifically.

"And then I graduated and he kept spending all his free time with me," Geralt continued, "and he went to college but he kept bringing me to parties and performances or whatever, and I kept seeing that same strained look in the eye of the gay guys he knew. And then he moved back here and got a job at my dad's mechanic shop."

"Geralt!" Geralt dove back into the sweltering heat.

Aiden took the brief caesura to marvel at the complexity of the human mind.

Geralt emerged once more, wiping flour from his hands directly onto his black jeans. "I'm just worried that my presence in his life is stifling a big side of his sexuality."

"I think you should ask Jaskier about this," said Aiden with great certainty. "I don't know him well enough to say for sure, but I think you have probably got the wrong end of the stick somewhere."

Geralt grunted glumly. "I usually do."

"Does Jaskier come to these?"

"Sometimes," Geralt said, the spark of life returning to his visage. "We sort of wanted this dinner to be for you two, though. And it's my understanding that Jaskier has… had a bit of a hand in this chain of events so far."

Aiden nodded and shrugged. "Ah, well, you know, us fags gotta stick together. Tit for tat, and all that."

Geralt frowned, uncomprehending.

"Geralt!"

Geralt returned to the mists.

Turns out, making pierogies from scratch takes about four fucking hours. As much as Aiden enjoyed Geralt's company, it was a huge relief when Lambert switched out with Geralt around three thirty.

"I wanted to make sure you'd be eating some of the ones I made tonight," Lambert said, smiling and smelling strongly of dough and potatoes and — cherries? Well, that explained why his fingers were stained red. "So I didn't wanna tap out until close to the end. I didn't think you'd show so fuckin' early, babe!"

"I guess I thought I'd be more helpful," Aiden said around a mouthful of pączki. Lambert laughed, then got more serious.

"Was Dad normal?" He took Aiden's hand.

"Yes," Aiden said, smiling. "Except for asking me whether I wanted kids, but that was kind of endearing. Sort of novel that he thinks I should be allowed near children, honestly."

Lambert winced and rubbed his thumb over Aiden's hand. Aiden shrugged, easy of it.

"And Geralt threatened to teach me to make pierogies."

Lambert gave Aiden's arms an appraising look, or perhaps the word was 'dubious.' Aiden burst out laughing.

"Not what I fuckin' meant," Lambert said hotly, blushing. "I just worry you'd get sore!"

"Well, it's not a tonight priority, in any case."

"Lambert!"

"I'm comin', I'm comin'!"

Wasn't much longer before Lambert was put on table-setting duty, and this part Aiden was pretty sure he understood, so they got five settings and the condiments on the table just in time for three massive platters of pierogies to emerge from the kitchen's localized atmosphere.

"Potato, mushroom, cherry," Lambert said, pointing at each platter in turn with great pride. "Geralt did the mushroom, 's why they look bad."

"Whatever, runt."

Lambert flicked Geralt off. "Show you a —"

"None of that at the dinner table," said Vesemir with a scowl. "Honestly, we have a guest."

"He'll have to get used to us sometime," Eskel said cheerily. "After all, we're famous now."

Geralt groaned.

"That's right, isn't it?" Aiden said dolefully, stroking Lambert's hand beneath the table. "I can break up with Lambie, but I'll never escape the memes."

"Lambie!" Vesemir echoed, laughing. It struck Aiden as innocuous enough, but Lambert's hand tensed, and the three brothers turned to their father in a unified, unamused front. Vesemir looked between their faces with a crooked grin. "Ahh, c'mon, it's funny, right? Never thought I'd ever hear anybody call Lambert something so cute."

"Lambert's very cute," Aiden said placidly.

Vesemir snorted. "Lambie."

Lambert's ears turned red as his fingers curled against his leg. Aiden felt, suddenly, that he didn't know the territory, wasn't sure how to lance the tension in the room.

Aid came from an unexpected corner as, without looking up, Geralt spoke mildly. "I wouldn't make so much fuss if I were you, Vessie."

Vesemir nearly choked.

"Something go down the wrong pipe, tatusiek?" Eskel asked all nonchalant. The significance of the Polish was lost on Aiden, but it certainly consternated Vesemir.

"You look red in the face, Vessie," Lambert said viciously, pushing his glass forward. "Daddy need some wawa?"

"Such sons!" Vesemir cried at last, shaking his head in defeat. "What I could have done to earn such disrespect, I cannot say!"

Lambert's hand turned over to take Aiden's, and he looked over in the general hubbub with a soft smile to whisper, "I like the earrings."

Aiden smiled back. "Thanks, babe."

Jaskier received a text from Geralt reading Can we talk. and knew at once that the whole charade was over. Jig's up! Geralt knew everything, and he was disgusted with Jaskier. Jaskier would have to catch a plane and update the Morhen and Sons social media from Siberia, on mobile data, and the roaming charges would bankrupt him. Until he texted back phone or in person?? and Geralt texted back In person probably., and then Jaskier realized with some limited relief that he wasn't going to have to do anything of the sort, because Geralt was going to personally kill him.

Jaskier arranged to meet Geralt at the Sheetz, because if Jaskier was going to die, he was going to make Geralt pay for his mac 'n' cheese bites one last time before he went.

"You wanted to talk," Jaskier said in the passenger seat of Roach, Geralt's kei truck, filled with dread and a nontrivial quantity of fats and starches.

Geralt winced. "Don't talk with your mouth full."

Jaskier cleared his mouth with a swallow of slushie, also subsidized by one Geralt z'Rivii. "So?"

Geralt spoke all in a rush. "I've been worried that my presence in your life is preventing you from meeting men."

"Oh." It sounded rehearsed, somehow, and clearly it was important to Geralt. It was just also a little silly. "Well, easily resolved, it isn't."

"You're meeting men?" Geralt had the audacity to look surprised. And sound less happy about it than he should have been if he was so worried, for that matter. What an egotist.

"Geralt, dear," Jaskier said, already tired of what he was about to say, "I have a gentleman caller over to my studio apartment about three times a month on average."

"Who?" Geralt asked brusquely, the blockhead.

"Nobody in particular. Just, different men." Jaskier colored a little against his will.

"But you're not dating any of them?"

"No," Jaskier said, losing the thread of this interrogation a little bit. "I would have mentioned it. Geralt, what is this —"

"But you've dated women before," Geralt said. "And you told us then. Are you not dating men? Why?"

"Maybe I'm just not that into men," Jaskier lied, boldly, to avoid pointing out that he hadn't dated anybody since freshman year of college.

"You just told me you're having sex with three men a month," Geralt said disapprovingly.

"Do you have any idea how much easier it is to find sex with men than sex with women?" Jaskier demanded, rhetorically, because Geralt didn't 'find sex'; sex found him, or not at all. And frankly, it was mostly not at all. "No, wait, where is all this coming from? Why did you think you were preventing me from meeting men?"

"Back in school," Geralt said, beginning to flush. "All the gay guys were too scared of me to ask you out."

"Maybe," said Jaskier, considering this. "But almost none of the gay guys we met at school were even out of the closet yet, so I'm not sure you were really the determining factor there."

"And then when you invited me to your college," Geralt insisted, "I scared guys off from you then, too."

"I had a great deal of gay sex in college, Geralt," Jaskier said disparagingly. Although, come to think of it… "You may have scared one guy off, once."

"And now you're back in Bumfuck, Kaedwen," Geralt said hotly, "and you've still never dated a man!"

"Okay, let's circle back — are you seriously judging me for having casual sex right now?" Jaskier spat. "Mr. No Bitches? Are you jealous?"

Geralt snarled. "Did you, or did you not, give up your career aspirations and your love life to go work a dead-end job with your best friend?"

That hit too close to home. Jaskier picked the weakest and least-important point to jab back at.

"Dead-end job? Geralt, I made you a meme. I'm putting 'Social Media Manager for Morhen and Sons' on every resumé I write for the rest of my life! I took that dead end and blew it wide open.You might be stuck here, but I'm certainly not!"

Geralt did what he did every time they fought, which was to say, he lost the fight and immediately started making his 'wounded deer bleeding out on the forest floor locking eyes with its hunter' face. It was usually very effective at taking the wind out of Jaskier's sails. Jaskier ignored it.

"Unbelievable," Jaskier fumed, getting out of the car. "You are so far up your own ass —"

"Wait," said Geralt. "I can still drive you home?"

"Good for you! I can walk."

It was a fifteen minute walk; not bad. Honestly, for within town, Jaskier only accepted rides from Geralt because he liked getting rides from Geralt. But still, by the time Jaskier got home, he was all out of anger and all full up on sad.

Geralt z'Rivii: Talking to Jas about it went bad.

Aiden (Lambert): oh honey

Aiden (Lambert): bad how

Geralt z'Rivii: I think we aren't friends anymore.

"How likely is it that Jaskier would stop being friends with Geralt because Geralt said something stupid?" Aiden asked Lambert, who after all knew them better.

"Pretty unlikely," Lambert said without looking up from the soup he was making. "What'd he say?"

"Hold on," Aiden said, and dialed Geralt, who almost didn't pick up.

"You're on speaker," Aiden said, and Geralt hung up.

"That piece of shit," Lambert growled, and pulled out his own phone. "Stir this, babe."

Aiden got up and stirred while Lambert placed the return call, which went to voicemail so Lambert redialled.

"Hi Ger," Aiden said in a sing-song voice. "I'm deputizing your brother into this because I have no context for whatever's going on between you and Jaskier."

Silence. Then, "Do I have a choice?"

"So what happened?" Lambert asked.

"Aiden said I should tell Jaskier I'm worried I'm keeping him from meeting men, so I did, and I think Jaskier's not friends with me anymore."

Lambert nearly hacked up a lung laughing. Aiden snatched the phone away and left the kitchen. "You're off speaker because Lambie doesn't feel like being helpful."

"He's definitely not gonna stop being friends with Geralt!" Lambert hollered.

"Did you hear that, Geralt?"

"Yes," Geralt rasped. "But I told him he'd given up his dreams and his love life to go work a dead-end job in Bumfuck, Kaedwen with me."

"Geralt told him —"

"Can you please just put me back on speaker."

"Maybe I should have just told you this at dinner," Aiden said once everyone was caught up, "but there is no earthly way you could have prevented Jaskier from finding dick on the Apps if that's what he wanted to do."

"Woulda helped," Geralt said, sounding rough.

"And given that as far as I can tell, Jaskier's life's ambition is to make music on the Internet, I'm not sure it was called for to question his decision to move back to a town where you manifestly can get Internet. My fucking trailer gets decent Internet, Geralt, and it's rural out here."

"Okay."

"Lambert, knowing what you know, do you think Geralt's friendship with Jaskier is over because of the moderately hurtful thing Geralt said?"

"Fuck no."

"Okay." This time, Geralt sounded relieved.

"So, as payment for healing your broken heart just now, can you tell me why it is so important to you that Jaskier should date men?"

Geralt thought this over. Aiden could smell the smoke coming out his ears from over the phone.

"I just think someone should love him for real and forever," Geralt said at last, sounding faraway. "He deserves that."

Lambert mimed sticking his finger down his throat and gagging. Aiden pushed Lambert's face to the side.

"And when you picture that person who loves Jaskier for real and forever like he deserves, you picture a man?" Aiden asked leadingly.

There was a pause. Perturbed, Geralt replied, "I guess that's biphobic of me."

"Nevermind that," Aiden said, instantly regretting this line of inquiry. Lambert was laughing again, the jerk, but at least this time he was trying not to be overheard. "Your friendship with Jaskier isn't over. Maybe don't push the point with him for awhile besides apologizing to him, but think on some reasons why he might not be dating anybody, huh?"

"Okay," said Geralt. "Thanks, Aiden."

"And what the fuck am I, chopped li—?"

"You're welcome, gotta go, ciao!"

Geralt z'Rivii: Are you coming to Sunday dinner.

Jaskier P: fuck u ger!

Jaskier P: why do u text like a serial killer!!

Geralt z'Rivii: Is that a yes.

"Honest to God, pierogi make up like 90% of his diet," Jaskier said conspiratorially to Aiden, who (on Jaskier's advice) had arrived at a much more reasonable two o' clock. "So any time they can't make quorum for Sunday dinner, Eskel buys a whole grocery run that's just frozen food."

"Is he so bad about remembering to eat?" Aiden asked in an undertone. Jaskier nodded solemnly.

"That's part of why they're nervous about him maybe fostering again. But, honestly, I think some of it might just be empty nest."

"Still, at his age —"

"It's worrying."

Eskel poked his head out. "If y'all are done gossiping, can you set the table?"

Jaskier flipped him off, but they went about it as requested. This time, instead of mushrooms, there were jalapeño pierogies.

"By the way, Aiden," Vesemir said as he sat, "do you by any chance have an uncle named Guxart?"

"Yes," Aiden said, serving himself some of each filling. "Lambert told me you two knew each other."

This gave Vesemir pause.

"Why do you ask?"

"Oh," Vesemir said slowly, "he thought maybe the Aiden I mentioned was you, and he wanted to know where you were these days. But if the two of you…"

Vesemir cut himself off. Aiden felt tired, suddenly.

"I'm not really very close with my family anymore," he said steadily. "But if you want to put him in touch with me, I can give you my number."

"That's a damn shame," Vesemir said, shaking his head. Beside Aiden, Lambert was suddenly tense all over.

"Watch yourself, tato," Lambert warned.

"Easy, Lamb," Aiden murmured. Though, actually, it was nice to be defended for once —

"What?" Vesemir said, affronted. "It is a shame. What kind of family doesn't want to be close to Aiden?"

That was even nicer. Aiden smiled warmly at Vesemir. "Yes, hard as it may be to believe…"

"Respectable, upright young man like that —" Vesemir gestured at Aiden with affectionate affront. "— anybody'd be lucky to have him around."

And, oh, that was where things went a little sideways for Aiden, actually. Sitting there overwarm in a button-down he'd bought just so he wouldn't wear the same shirt two Sundays in a row and a cardigan in a sedate color he'd previously kept mostly for puttering around the house when it got cold, no polish on his nails, wearing slacks he'd last used three years ago for the last big job interview before he decided to just go back to dealing — this was what 'respectable, upright young man' took out of Aiden. All of the hick, most of the faggot.

He lost track of the conversation and focused on Lambert's arm on his shoulder instead. Lamb's brothers gave him guarded, sidelong looks like they'd heard a little of what Aiden heard. At least Jaskier had the decency to smile when he did it.

Aiden ate dinner, rejoined the conversation once he could, and then Lambert and Aiden left a little early. Aiden did give Vesemir his number before he left, at that, morbidly curious to hear Guxart's take on the whole family situation. Lambert drove Aiden to the boys' apartment in town without discussing it, hustled him inside, laid him down in bed and held him, silent for a long minute.

"Hey," Lambert said into his nape. "You're… like. You're fucking wonderful. The real you, right? That's the one I love, okay?"

Aiden shifted onto his back and kissed Lambert, sweet and slow, going nowhere.

Yennefer laughed, too, when Geralt told her about the Jaskier debacle. At least she kept it briefer than Lambert.

"Oh, Ger, you really do have a gift."

"Thanks," said Geralt sourly.

Over the phone, Yennefer Vengerbergu audibly hit her vape, and exhaled slightly more quietly. Geralt, in turn, breathed in the early summer smell of pine forest.

Yennefer broke that peace. "I'm beginning to think I shouldn't have dated you in high school."

"Jesus, Yen," Geralt said involuntarily. It's not like he was carrying much of a torch anymore, but — ouch. Then, because Yen didn't have much patience for sincerity, he switched it up. "Only just now beginning? Not when you had the miscarriage?"

"I regret using expired condoms," Yennefer said serenely. "Not what I meant, darling, keep up. I mean that I think if I hadn't snatched you up so early, you'd probably already be dating Jaskier by now."

That threw the brakes on Geralt's train of thought. "But I'm straight?"

"Based on what, Geralt? The fact that you've only been in one relationship, and it was with a woman? I was there. I am that very woman. So I know for sure that you were barely involved."

"That's a little rude."

"I don't mean to disparage you, Ger," Yennefer sighed. "I just mean that you patently need to be bullied into love or sex."

"What do you mean?"

"Don't play dumb, I know you aren't."

Geralt did know what she meant. He hadn't had a single relationship since breaking up with Yennefer, and none prior. Even the hookups he'd had with someone other than Yennefer were like Geralt getting bowled over by a boulder. One could even go so far as to describe one of them as a 'date rape;' Yennefer certainly did.

All that to say that Geralt wasn't really what you'd call a 'self-starter,' romantically.

"Jaskier has pursued you doggedly for a decade. Perhaps more aggressively than I did."

"Wait," said Geralt, pacing a hole in the pine leaf litter. "Back up. Jaskier isn't interested in me like that."

Yennefer hit her vape; she exhaled. "Uh-huh."

"Sure, he put a lot of effort into becoming my friend," Geralt argued. "I agree that it takes a lot of work to befriend me. And he's done that."

"Well, I do think he wants to be your friend, sweetie."

"Right."

"And perhaps more than that."

"That's where you lose me."

"Honestly, I doubt there's anyone in your family he wouldn't climb like a tree. I saw that commercial."

Geralt gagged aloud. "Sheesh. He's taller than Vesemir, for one thing."

"So your dad's safe from that fate, at least. Anyway, you're special to him, so I don't think you've got any real competition in Eskel or Lambert."

"Eskel the very straight, and Lambert the grossly in love? You think so highly of me."

"I do," said Yennefer, pouty. "That's why I dated you in high school."

"Because you were a gothy Wiccan, and I was scarred, moody, and had all-white hair?"

"No, because you were really hot," said Yennefer. "And moody. You make a great prop for a dramatic bitch."

"Thanks, Yen."

"You described Eskel as 'very straight' just a moment ago. Who were you contrasting him against?"

"You've been a big help, Yen. Goodnight."

A text came in from Jaskier that read show this to ur family!!! >:) followed by a YouTube link. Weird request, but — oh. It was on Jaskier's personal channel, titled SILVER DAGGER — Duet w. Aiden!

Aiden looked gorgeous as ever in the new heart-shaped sunglasses, a sleeveless camo tee, and cool earrings Lambert hadn't seen yet — kinda some Mondrian shit, where the color blocks rotated independently on hidden rods? He smiled as Jaskier introduced him as "my new friend I met through his boyfriend," and then they got right to it.

It was Aiden's rich baritone on the melody, which Lambert realized he'd heard him humming around the trailer, and Jaskier's light tenor singing harmony just above. Jaskier accompanied them on the banjo, an instrument Lambert had no idea Jaskier even owned, let alone that he played it this well. They made an engaging duo, too, all smiles and charisma — was it weird if Lambert thought his boyfriend and his quasi brother-in-law looked gorgeous together? Well, they did. He wondered if Aiden had helped Jaskier accessorize for this.

Lambert smiled like an idiot the whole time, and then he watched it again. He wanted to show the video to everyone he'd ever met. Then it hit him — shit, he probably could — and that felt even better.

"Aiden did a song with Jaskier," he said the next day when the brothers were all on the shopfloor together, pulling it up on his phone and skipping through the intro. "I didn't even realize, but he's been working on it for weeks. Don't they sound incredible together?"

"Thank you, thank you!" Jaskier called smugly from the reception area. "I'm accepting bouquets and boxes of chocolate!"

"They do sound good," Geralt said.

"Geralt! Don't sound so surprised!"

"Your voices fit together well," Eskel said genially. "I didn't know Aiden sang!"

Lambert flushed, pleased. "He sings around the trailer. I love his voice."

"I recognize this song," said Vesemir, walking over to the phone. "They're covering the Dolly Parton version, huh? Oh, wow. I suppose Aiden cleans up nice."

A chill fell in the room as the song wrapped up and the recorded Jaskier shifted into the outro. Lambert felt a million little threads pull taut in all his flesh.

"What the fuck does that mean, Dad?"

"Huh?" said Vesemir, taken off-guard. "Oh, I just mean — he didn't dress like that at dinner."

Lambert gripped a wrench where it lay against the toolbox. "Dress like what?"

"Tato," Eskel said quietly, laying a hand on Vesemir's shoulder. Vesemir shook it off, scowling.

"What? What did I say?" Vesemir complained, gesturing stiffly. "I don't understand what my son is yelling at me for in my own shop!"

"Cleans up nice," Lambert seethed.

"It's a little backhanded," Eskel said, glancing between Lambert and Vesemir.

"What is he cleaning up, Dad?" Lambert snarled. "We're the ones covered in fuckin' motor oil 24/7! Fuck kinda problem you got with the way my boyfriend dresses?"

Vesemir's hands were up defensively. "Alright, alright, I'm sorry. Christ. So sensitive."

All the rage in Lambert turned inwards for one queasy moment. Sick shame flashed on his skin, hot, then cold.

"Lambert has every right," Geralt said, and cut himself off. Abruptly, Lambert realized Geralt had been holding stock still the whole conversation. Eskel looked back and forth between his brothers, and put on a conciliatory face as he put his hand on Vesemir's shoulder.

"Come on, tatuś. You've worn the same thing every day for ten years. Of course you put your foot in your mouth about clothes, huh?"

"Lambert is proud of Aiden," Geralt said, starting again. At this distance, Lambert could just barely see Geralt's hands trembling.

Vesemir looked bewildered — surrounded and outnumbered, Lambert thought with vindictive pride.

"And I'm proud of Lambert," Geralt concluded.

Vesemir frowned. "Of course you're proud of Lambert. What's there not to be proud of?"

Eskel gave Vesemir a fond, exasperated look. Lambert took in a deep breath and let it out.

"Sorry I yelled, tato."

"It's alright. Sorry I —" Vesemir stopped, face twisting a moment before his brow cleared. "The sunglasses look nice."

"Yeah," Lambert said, smiling tentatively. "Don't they? I bought those for him."

Vesemir smiled back the same way.

"Are you alright?" Geralt asked Jaskier, voice low. Jaskier laughed out loud and slouched his crossed arms across the desk towards Geralt.

"I just wish I'd had popcorn for that," he replied in a breezy undertone. Which, while not quite true, felt true enough; it wasn't Jaskier's dad, and frankly it gave him a vicarious thrill to watch progress happening in someone else's family dynamic. He continued more softly. "Are you alright, Geralt? Your hands are shaking."

Geralt looked down at his hands as if he'd never seen them before. "I don't — I don't know why they're doing that."

Jaskier had known his best friend a long time. From Geralt, it was usually a safe bet that 'I don't understand my own feelings' was the unvarnished truth.

This time, though, Geralt knew exactly why his hands were shaking, and was telling a clumsy lie. How interesting, thought Jaskier.

"Maybe you're just cold," Jaskier said flippantly, and took Geralt's greasy calloused tradesman hands — which were a bit cold, actually — between his own warm, soft moneymakers. "There, now you'll warm up."

Jaskier looked up at Geralt with a grin, and — well, visibility wasn't great for these purposes, there was some backlighting at this angle from the big windows, but — was Geralt faintly pink?

🙀 Unky Gux 🙀: HELLO AIDEN THIS IS YOUR UNCLE GUXART, IS THIS AIDEN? I GOT THIS NUMBER FROM VESEMIR HOW ARE YOU DOING, LOTS OF LOVE UNCLE GUXART

😻 Aiden 😽: HELLO UNCLE GUXART THIS IS YOUR NEPHEW AIDEN, YES AND I AM DOING WELL HOW ABOUT YOU? HUGS AND KISSES NEPHEW AIDEN

🙀 Unky Gux 🙀: HELLO AIDEN, I AM GLAD TO HEAR THAT. ARE YOU MAKING FUN OF ME? 🤣🤣🤣 WELL I LIKE IT IF SO, LOTS OF LOVE UNCLE GUXART

Uncle Guxart was much more as Aiden remembered him on the phone than he was over text messages. Which made sense, the telephone was a much less recent invention. Apparently Guxart and Vesemir had met, not in the military, but as veterans in the anti-war movement.

"And anyhow," he said, cutting himself off in the middle of the first story Aiden hadn't heard before, "what have you been up to lately? Your mom and dad never really have much news about you, I don't even know where you're living these days."

"Ahh, yeah, I don't really talk to them much anymore," Aiden said, smiling but strained. "I… didn't think anyone from home really wanted to hear from me."

"Oh, shove it," his uncle said warmly. "Half my squad got hooked on opiates when we got home, and you know I'm still smoking dope. You think we'd forget about you just like that, only because you spent a little stint in rehab?"

"Rehab?" Aiden said, for one single moment genuinely incomprehending. "I didn't go to rehab."

Silence stretched open like a cave, lightless, hollow. All Aiden could hear was the rushing of his heartbeat. Rehab. Ah. Of course. It wasn't the lying, it was — that was what they came up with? — of course they lied, in retrospect. They couldn't risk anyone guessing the real reason, could they?

"Nephew," said Guxart slowly, "they told me you went to rehab for heroin and moved away when you got back to get away from the drugs. They said that was why we didn't hear from you as much. What actually happened?"

"Well," said Aiden, "I don't know whether to tell you they kicked me out or I ran away from home, but either way it was because I'm gay, Uncle Guxart."

A silence again. Aiden wasn't as invested in this one, really. He'd written off Uncle Guxart before, and he'd gone into this knowing he might have to do it again. Aiden was well inured to rejection, by now.

"Those… I can't believe them," Guxart choked out over the phone. "I'm your fucking godfather. You should have been able to come to — Aiden. I am so sorry."

Oh. There it was.

Welcome to Waterworks, population: one! Humiliation, relief, and grief poured out of Aiden in big ugly sobs. What a shitshow.

When Aiden got off the phone with Guxart he called Lambert and begged him to come over that evening. Aiden must have sounded awful because Lambert showed up before his shift was supposed to be over. They haggled a bit about what, exactly, Aiden needed — Lambert seemed to be expecting 'cuddle it out,' whereas Aiden was more in a 'do anything less embarrassing than cry over affirmation from a heterosexual father figure' mood. They compromised on going down to the crick, and Lambert putting an arm around Aiden's shoulders while Aiden threw rocks into the water.

In Aiden's mind, a chorus was looping. She's a sparrow when she's broken…

"Know what's way fuckin' cooler than crying because your uncle still loves you?" Lambert said, cheerfully cutting Dolly off.

Aiden's rock made the fun sploop! noise he always kind of hoped for when he threw rocks into a body of water. "Like, almost anything, really."

"Throwing a party," Lambert said triumphantly. "Fourth is coming up, yeah? You doing a party this year?"

Aiden threw a party on the Fourth every year. It wasn't an Independence Day party. The rules for a "Everybody's got the damn day off" party were that if you came wearing anything patriotic, the host sprayed you with a Super Soaker. It was always a hit.

"Maybe. As long as I can get the day off." Which meant 'Yes.' Aiden didn't set the schedule for his shift entirely unsupervised, but he had an understanding with the store manager — namely, if Chuck ever crossed Aiden he'd end up dead in a ditch. "Is the shop closed again this year?"

"'Course," said Lambert.

"So your family's coming to my party."

Lambert didn't look upset, but he did look confused. "I thought if I only brought my people to your place, that'd be weird?"

"Yeah, well, now it's weird if you don't bring your people to my place," Aiden said, lips quirked. "Try to keep up, babe."

It didn't even end up being necessary to talk to Geralt about being in the longform YouTube videos. Geralt just got tired of Eskel making up stupid bullshit whenever he talked about what he was doing to a car.

"Teach these people something real for once," Geralt said, and leaned over the car to give a terse, factually-correct running commentary and contradict every second thing Eskel said. It was incredible content.

Jaskier figured that when Eskel was there and Geralt wasn't, they could film mechanic ragebait — sort of the logical gender inverse of those cooking videos where immaculately groomed women do horrible things with food all over their spotless marble counters, complete with Jaskier making infuriatingly credulous active listening noises in his gay little voice — and when Geralt was there and Eskel wasn't, they could film actual for real mechanic shop vlogs. If they were both there they could alternate between Eskel causing problems on one of Geralt's videos or Geralt combatting Eskel's mechanical disinfo campaign.

The meme had died its natural death, and the shop traffic had gone back to something more manageable, closer to normal for Pre-Commercial Times. But virality didn't matter anymore. Morhen and Sons had achieved the critical mass of social media followers required to, like, actually start making some amount of ad revenue. So far it had yet to pay for the cost of equipment, but it was pretty close to covering the costs for the initial run of local ads, and the fanbase was still growing fast — besides, Jaskier ran a pretty lean operation, and the amount of money invested in equipment was so nominal in comparison to the bump in shop profits that Vesemir had waved his hands in the middle of Jaskier's presentation and told him to 'just buy whatever.'

And if filming Geralt was personally satisfying for Jaskier, that was no-one's business. Likewise, what the fans were saying about Geralt didn't bear repeating, and as long as none of the boys got in the habit of reading social media comments? Geralt need never find out.

As for Lambert's involvement in filming days… well, why not let the man speak for himself?

"We need to hire a fucking receptionist," said Lambert in a carrying voice, holding the phone receiver directly against his throat where the sound of his voice was coming from, even though Jaskier knew for a fact Lambert knew about the mute button. "This is horseshit."

It really was becoming a problem. Maybe Aiden was right about Jaskier's workload.

Party setup was a lot of work, but at least Lambie was there to do all the heavy lifting.

"Where do you want this?"

"By the porch is good."

'This' being the bucket of water for loading up the Super Soaker, because Aiden took his anti-patriotic hosting duties seriously.

The guest list was expansive, since basically the whole trailer park was invited every year, but people had other parties for the Fourth so they'd be in and out. Honestly, inter-party circulation was what kept the Super Soaker tradition alive.

No, it wasn't the length of the guest list that had Aiden nervous. It was his godfather and his boyfriend's dad showing up to one of these parties for the first time. Obviously.

It had sort of slipped Aiden's mind when making this decision to cross his social streams that there was typically a lot of weed smoked at the Everybody's Got The Damn Day Off party, and that Aiden typically made a lot of money. Which meant that there was an extremely arrestable quantity of marijuana sitting in Aiden's trailer right now.

Which would be fine. Everybody's Got The Damn Day Off was an outdoors event, and people were usually pretty good about not barging into the trailer unnecessarily, so Vesemir probably wouldn't even see any drug deals with his own eyes, right? And besides, surely Vesemir's hulking adult sons could physically restrain him from calling the cops?

Gaetan from a couple trailers down was on the grill, as per usual. Kiyan had to wheel his highly-dubious vat of punch over on a handtruck; Aiden secured from him only the promise that there were neither drugs nor Everclear in there, and nestled the punch in a trashcan full of ice next to the more standard beers, ciders, and bottled cocktails. Aiden delegated setting up the lemonade and water to Jaskier and Geralt, who between Jaskier's interference and Geralt's competence could just about handle the task.

Dragonfly's schedule worked out to where she could make it again this year, to general excitement. Vesemir was kind of a square about it, though.

"Is she really giving stick-and-pokes out here?"

Lambert got a wicked look on his face.

"Yeah, tato, she's really good. She gave me this." And he pulled his shirt up to show off the wolf head Dragonfly had stippled onto his left ribcage, to Vesemir's spluttering horror.

Kiyan's jungle juice was a hit — it always was — and by the time Brehen showed up wearing a bald eagle tee, Aiden received a round of raucous cheers for Super Soaking him. Brehen was a good sport about it — he always was.

Leaned over Pardus to give him a little pawprint on his shoulder, Dragonfly glanced over at the edge of the party and muttered, "Christ. My exes are here, and they're dating."

Aiden looked up. "Serrit!"

Geralt looked up. "Yen?"

"Ger, what a surprise to see you here. Have you met my girlfriend? This is Serrit."

"Nice to meet you," Geralt said, sticking his hand out.

"Enchanté, said Serrit, giving him the world's limpest handshake.

"What have you been up to lately, Geralt?"

"Just working on getting certified as a foster parent to help Dad out…"

This 'Yen' — an ex-girlfriend of Geralt's, if Aiden's memory held? — seemed intent on ignoring Dragonfly, who seemed content to return the favor. Serrit, on the other hand, was busy pulling the collar of her shirt to show Pardus the scale pattern Dragonfly had put on her shoulders and reassure him, enthusiastically, that Dragonfly did good work.

"Who'd you let give you that rose?" Dragonfly asked critically as she kept working on the pawprint.

"Huh?" asked Serrit, turning around and slapping her nape. "On my neck? Just some girl I met at a bar."

"What was she, a butcher's assistant?"

"So how do you know Aiden?" Kiyan asked, indulging in the jungle juice.

"You know Lambert," Eskel said probingly. "I'm Lambert's brother, and so's Geralt —" Eskel gestured. "— and Vesemir, over there, is our dad. Jaskier's sort of my brother in law, I guess?"

"You guess?"

"Aiden," said Brehen, drunk and still pretty wet in the shirt. "Aiden, my man, have I got some twenties burning a hole in my pocket for you."

This was entirely too loud to be having this conversation. Aiden surreptitiously bumped the volume on 9 to 5 and tried to angle towards the front door of the trailer.

"You got a sativa on hand? I know I asked for an indica-heavy strain last time, but I didn't know what I wanted. I swear to you, I didn't go anywhere but work and home for a month —"

Having made the exchange with Brehen, Aiden exited his trailer as casually as possible, but the damage had been done. Vesemir was waiting for him with a frown.

"Do you sell pot, Aiden?"

Across the party, four young heads popped up, suddenly at attention. Aiden braced himself. "Uh, yes, sir."

"Isn't that great?" Guxart said cheerily, appearing out of nowhere and slapping Vesemir on the upper back with breathtaking friendliness. "My nephew can sell me the good stuff for my bum spine! And I'm sure he could get us some magic mushrooms for our next 'hunting trip' at the friends and family price, eh, my boy?"

"Of course," Aiden said gratefully. "I'll make sure to get you right, Uncle."

More immense, booming slaps on the back from Guxart kept Vesemir from saying anything else on the subject until Aiden could scurry away and take refuge with Lambert.

"You okay, babe?"

Aiden nodded, tucking himself into Lambert's arm.

Lambert was over by the food with Jaskier, who was explaining Geralt's long history of dress code violations to Serrit.

"Okay, so, initially it was all about his hair, right? His hair goes shock-white right before he transfers to a new school, and unnatural colors are against the dress code, so he keeps getting violation after violation on his record for having 'dyed his hair.' When he started high school, he got fed up with it and tried to dye his hair brown, but naturally-grey hair doesn't take dye for shit, so it was extremely obvious that he had actually dyed his hair, which — you guessed it! — got him another dress code violation. And by the time he could grow a beard to prove white was his natural hair color, the teachers were so tired of him that they just let him wear whatever he wanted."

"Metal," said Serrit, grinning.

"Extremely annoying," said Geralt.

"Sure," Serrit replied. "Why didn't you just, I dunno, get a doctor's note explaining that your hair grows in white?"

Yennefer snorted. "Geralt has never once explained himself if wallowing in his persecution complex in silence was an option."

"Bitch!" said Jaskier in secondhand outrage.

"Wait," said Aiden, "what kind of fancy private school did you even go to where dying your hair was against the dress code?"

Lambert, Geralt, Jaskier, and Yennefer all gave Aiden identical Looks.

"Babe, all of us —" Lambert drew a loop in the air that excluded Serrit and arced towards Eskel, who was flirting with Keira over by the fence. "— went to alternative school."

"What?"

Aiden's head spun. Lambert grinned sheepishly.

"Sorry," he said, "shoulda told you you were dating a bad boy."

"Wait." Aiden turned to look directly at Vesemir. "You're telling me we've been bending over backwards to keep your dad from finding out I sell weed, and all of his kids went to alternative school? I never even got detention!"

The general party chatter went dead silent.

"Don't talk about my sons that way," Vesemir said dangerously, drawing up to his full height.

"Don't fucking talk to my boyfriend that way," Lambert snapped, scowling right back. "You know I've been helping Aiden shift product for years?"

Vesemir stiffened, and so did Lambert — Aiden could feel Lambert's immediate regret.

"All of us buy from Lambert," Geralt offered, doubling down. "You're the only one in the family who doesn't smoke, tato."

"You heard it from Guxart, some people need it for medical reasons," Jaskier said with a sunny smile. "That's why it's legal lots of places these days. Why, if you think about it, Aiden's a pillar of his community, providing an essential service unfairly obstructed by the state and medical industry that manufactured the opioid crisis!"

This seemed a little overstated, in Aiden's opinion, but it certainly got Vesemir on the backfoot. "I didn't — I just meant — oh, hell," he sputtered. "Aiden, do you need a job? We have a position open for a receptionist."

When the hubbub died down., Aiden found Geralt and tugged his arm.

"How the fuck did a guy like Jaskier end up in alternative school?"

"Normal rich assholes send their gay sons to military school," Geralt began venomously.

"Oh, shit," said Gaetan, cutting off all the party chatter with a gout of fire that nearly burned off what little hair he had left. "Stand back, everybody…"

EPILOGUE

Aiden quit at the gas station and started working for Morhen and Sons, doing most of Jaskier's old job while Jaskier kept doing the books and the social media.

There was friction with some of the locals when they noticed that the new receptionist was even fruitier than the old. Vesemir, who really wasn't the worst dude when it mattered, told everyone who complained about Aiden that they were very free to drive fifty miles out of their way to switch auto shops.

When the lease turned over, Eskel moved into a one-bedroom, and Lambert moved with Aiden into a double-wide. Jaskier kept the studio apartment.

Geralt moved back in with Vesemir, freshly certified in the foster system, to 'help Vesemir foster the new girl' — tacitly, also to keep an eye on his aging father. Like father, like son; Geralt was a failure as a foster parent, and shortly adopted the little girl, whose name was Cirilla. Ciri was quite set on getting an apprenticeship at the Morhen shop, but everyone was sure she was destined eventually for greater things, for they all loved and spoiled her very much.

Burdened now as he was with new fatherhood and the caretaking of his own father, Geralt decided he simply did not have time to have a sexuality crisis. His and Jaskier's lifelong thing stopped progressing entirely for several years as a result.

The Morhen and Sons social media accounts continued to grow their loyal following. Aiden and Jaskier continued recording music together. Lambert got his ears pierced, and everybody kept their mouths shut about it while simultaneously trying to project with their body language that they thought it was very brave and cool. All in all, it was a good way of life.