it's my fifth ficlet month! I'll be writing a little fic every day of November again this year and once again, these will mostly be witcher related of any and all canons.
starting off the month strong with a yennskier(/geralt) modern au
Fleeing emotional upheaval, a regretful and nostalgic Yennefer waits backstage for popstar Jaskier to finish his concert of the night-- just the way she used to.
One impulsive midday flight away from the last gasps of a fading dream, Yennefer found herself waiting in the wings of a great performance hall, swathed in refracting light and sound.
A cross-armed security guard stood beside her in the alcove beyond the stage. Even with the call she'd made to his handler, Vespula, before takeoff, she'd had trouble talking her way in backstage.
Had had to scroll through grainy photos on social media feeds to point to for proof, suffering the humiliation of his security's blank looks, pitying frowns.
Though she'd said she would, Yennefer hadn't visited this whole tour, even months since the first show. Too busy, she'd said, when he called some nights. Maybe when Ciri's home from break. Maybe after the holidays. Maybe–
From hundreds of miles away his voice crooned and then softened, phone tucked between her ear and the pillows, the master bedroom as cold and empty as it always was now. If he were there, he wouldn't stand for it. He'd make them talk through the cold distance that had grown between them.
Geralt snored down the hall in the guest room, feeling further away than Jaskier did.
His last tour, when they both were freshly on the outs with Geralt and thought themselves better for it, she'd surprised him often enough that his whole team knew to expect her. She'd slip in through some backdoor, shake off small talk with his wardrobe and makeup crew and lie in wait to pounce after the last encore.
Fresh from the euphoric high of performance, Jaskier was always a living furnace, sweat-slick and dripping glitter, Yennefer's grip on his body possessive and consuming. He could cavort across stage, seduce millions with his vapid pop songs and the thrust of his hips, but afterward, she beckoned and he tripped over himself to get to her and they kissed like lovers torn apart and reuniting after far too long.
They kissed like that every night, brazen and thorough, unconcerned who saw.
She ended up with her own security detail, the fans beginning to recognize her, to seethe with jealousy in Instagram comments, wishing they were her.
Cameras caught their heated embraces and their nights out afterward at fine dining and VIP clubs. Photos of the pair were smeared across the front cover of gossip rags. Kissing in sleek evening wear, in the rain beyond nightclubs, in the backseat of cars.
And then, eventually, it had come out that international popstar Jaskier's mysterious raven-haired paramour was a married woman who lived in the quaint countryside and had a teenaged daughter and a doting husband at home, and the whole thing had blown up into the affair of the decade, several high-profile appearances needed to explain the whole thing away.
“No, you see,” said Jaskier, the fool wholly in his element in the midst of spinning a story about his life-long friendship with Geralt, how he had hated her intrusion into his life until he hadn't at all. “Yen and I have some fun. Rarely safe and sane but consensual on all fronts. But Geralt and Yennefer? Those two are destined to be together.”
The stage lights swung in a blinding arc, and the crowd's roar crescendoed. Only a song or two left and then security said he'd slip back this corridor and take a waiting car to the hotel. These days, he turned in early most nights, they said. Don't keep him up too late, he has appearances first thing tomorrow.
As if it had been Yennefer alone who was the impetus behind the sleepless, wild nights from years ago, as if he wouldn't have found someone else to drag along into the spotlight if not her.
These days, they were used to being small, vital parts of one another's lives, to sharing only moments, to knowing their lives unfolded beyond the times they reunited again. Never wholly separate but inevitably apart.
That had always felt good and right. To know Jaskier missed them well enough, loved them dearly, fit neatly back into the family every time, but did not covet the life Geralt and Yennefer had built together. That he had chosen his path apart from that domestic bliss and did not have to feel jilted, unwanted, or secondary.
Waiting in the wings as the last song gave to shouts and applause, Yennefer felt very small.
He didn't see her at first, the shadowed alcove off stage full dark after the blaze of the stage. Only when security stopped him by the arm, stalling his animated flounce down the corridor, did he see her there and grin and throw back his head with laughter.
Glitter on his cheekbones caught the scant light and fuck-- he was beautiful, all popstar surreal and larger than life.
In a breath, he noticed something off in her expression and sombered at once, crowding close to hold her in his arms without asking a single thing.
Clutching him with her fingers caught in his sweat-damp collar, Yennefer thought of the sheaf of legal papers left on the kitchen island beside a vase of flowers from the garden, thought of the empty drawers she'd found upstairs, the quiet of the house closing in around her.
She thought how's that for destined? Destined to slowly dwindle to nothing.
The woman she had been years ago, the one who had kissed him breathless in the wings most nights, would have hurled sharp accusations his way, crafted to cut. If he had stayed with them, then maybe– If he had thought to take his head out of the clouds and join them in that life then–
The skin of Jaskier's neck smelled of sweat and was so warm it burned Yennefer's forehead as she swayed into him and wept.
She had no one to blame but her own misplaced hope.
(And days later, when Geralt found them cocooned together in the hotel room, she did not shout the angry, hurt things that she wanted to, that she would have, and simply took him, meek and apologetic, into their arms.)
