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"You're here."
The sea breeze whistles softly, like a caress, and blows Geralt's hair away from his shoulder, his face. Under the setting sun it looks like a painting with fine lines, warm and welcoming, full in reveal and Jaskier tries to remember when was the last time he saw him like that, like he could breathe him in and never suffocate in his absence.
Geralt descends the shore, steps light on the pebbles, and stands beside him. There's a questioning furrow between his eyebrows. "Am I too late?" Afraid, as though a heart can ever dismiss its beat, as though it will ever be too late to breathe.
With a smile that fights to reach further than his eyes, Jaskier looks up at him, shakes his head. "Late? No, my dear, never." He gently takes his hand, still unsure, and tugs at it. It's limp. Waiting for a space to mold into. "I've waited so long," Jaskier says, and his voice is a little thick, "and I would wait even more. I would wait forever."
The chuckle that escapes Geralt's lips echoes like the timid waves hitting the sand, melodic. He sits beside Jaskier, and stares ahead. The sea is peaceful.
It feels like a memory. Jaskier could say he knows how the story ends, because he has seen it again, but after all, after everything, his fingers still ache to tangle in white hair, his arms to hold Geralt tight. His heart is thumping inside his chest and he knows he would, he will, do it all over again, from the start. He wants to. And maybe this time, maybe the story is different.
He gazes at Geralt as he stares ahead. He's so beautiful like this. Resting. There's a wetness in his eyes. "I..." He has nothing to lose. Yet there he is, Geralt, brows twitching faintly as they do every time the bard starts to talk, and Jaskier knows there is nothing, no one he will ever love more in this life or any other. And now, oh, Geralt is here. He swallows. "I thought you'd never come."
It's funny, perhaps, because Geralt laughs silently and lowers his head. "Yes," he says, like revealing a secret, "I though so too. But," he takes a deep breath, bites his lips. His voice quivers and Jaskier wants to craddle it between his hands. "You were right. We should do what pleases us while we can."
Jaskier flinches, breath suddenly cut and parts his lips to speak, say anything, because the breeze is skinning him open and bare and he's learned his lot with vulnerability. But Geralt raises his head and looks at him and, as their eyes meet, all words hanging from his tongue fall in their gold and drown.
"I thought about it. What pleases me. All these years and all these months and every time," Geralt's voice breaks, "every moment I couldn't breathe because my side was too quiet." A breath hitches. They can't tell whose. A heartbeat so fast it races to reach a human's. Geralt gazes into his eyes as though they're prettier, deeper than the sea itself and shakes his head. "And I know I'm late but I realized–"
A sob, desperate in its hope, and tears glint in Jaskier's eyes. "Geralt–"
"–I realized that I can't spend a single moment more away from you." Geralt clenches his jaw, lowers his eyes as though searching for the right words between the pebbles, as though he is pulling them right from his heart. "I realized that what pleases me," he huffs, looks at Jaskier again, "is you."
Jaskier bites his lips, smiles so as not to cry and his heart is beating to espace his chest, or carve more space for Geralt's heart to fit too. He nods and Geralt smiles back, tilts his head. What a scandal, a poet at loss for words, for love. "Well, that's..." he laughs, voice choked. "Geralt, I–"
He doesn't manage to utter anything more. Because Geralt leans and presses their lips together and his lips are so soft Jaskier sobs and kisses back, deep, tasting the sea and the longing they had been swallowing for so long, and the love, the love.
He may have worked it out earlier, what pleases him. He knew. But now, Geralt's lips still touching his as he pulls away and his breath warmer than the sun on his skin, he discovers it again, and again and again. He laughs, cries and Geralt laughs with him. "You are what pleases me, Geralt."
And maybe he is blessed, he can't explain it otherwise, because Geralt smiles bright like a full moon and kisses him again and again and then hides his face in Jaskier's neck, nuzzles there and breathes him in.
Maybe. And maybe the story is different after all. Jaskier lets the tears fall and kisses Geralt's hair, and finds he does not care that much.
Now, more than any other time, he is happy.