Chapter Text
“Can you believe it? He had the nerve ? I’m holding him back? Me ?” Jaskier jabbed a finger at his own chest, wincing at the shrill note his voice hit. He paused for a breath, and took a swig from the bottle of vodka he’d found in the freezer. It burned on the way down, but that was fine. He felt like he had been gutted. Valdo didn’t just empty his half of the closet and grab the coffeemaker when they came home after the most awkward car ride ever, he had broken all the promises they made each other their senior year of high school. Seething, fueled by alcohol, he said, “He’d be an accountant with two point five kids, having dinner every Sunday with his stuck up parents, wearing khakis and a sweater vest if it wasn’t for me.”
Okay, he was being a little dramatic, he knew that. Valdo said they would be together, hit it big together, but he was nothing but a lying liar. Jaskier felt like he threw away almost a decade of his life. He collapsed on the couch, letting his head loll over the back, and looked at Artemis upside down.
“I’m better off without him, right?” She blinked, head tilted to the side, and adjusted her feet on her perch. His falcon was the only one who understood him. But he’d known her longer than Valdo. Known her longer than anyone he still talked to. Freshman year when his school said he needed a sport and his parents suggested golf , he threw out the first thing he thought of. It was how he found himself in the woods with a master falconer trying to catch a bird. “You never liked him anyway. I don’t even know why I’m asking you.”
Maybe if he had taken Arty trying to bite Valdo the first time they met as a sign, he could have saved himself this… he was loathe to call it heartbreak because when he thought about it, he was more upset about losing his singing partner than his boyfriend and what did that say about him and their relationship? “I’m an idiot.”
He wasn’t an asshole, which was more than he could say about Valdo. Taking another healthy swallow of vodka, he felt his anger rise again.
“That dick,” he spat. He got one gig on his own and thought he was Beyoncé. Jaskier had done everything for them from schmoozing club owners to running their Instagram. Jaskier was the reason they had a demo. Valdo wouldn’t have a career if it wasn’t for him. And he said Jaskier was holding him back. He barked a laugh and Artemis made a disgruntled noise and flexed her wings.
Turning with less grace than he normally possessed thanks to the booze starting to hit him hard, he leaned over the back of the couch and stroked her beak with the pointer finger of his free hand. “Sorry, baby girl.”
She closed her eyes and let him pet her until he got tired and slumped over the back of the couch, blinking to clear his vision, the bottle of vodka brushing the floor.
“I hate him.” And he did. He loved Valdo, part of him always would even if he realized now that he didn’t love Valdo the way he should love his boyfriend, but even if their relationship was filling out, the betrayal was still there, burning a hole in his gut worse than the cheap vodka.
“I need to tell him that I hate him, but I don’t want to be that crazy ex who couldn’t accept the breakup or make Valdo think I’m bitter or jealous because I’m not ,” he said to himself, wagging his head back and forth. Jaskier would and could make it on his own, thank you very much. The question was, how did you tell someone they were trash without actually saying the words?
He started to lift his head to take another drink when his eyes snagged on the flower pots sitting on the window sill, the ones he bought to liven the place up because Valdo’s idea of interior design was ultra modern and neutrals. And faux furs. That really should have been the thing that tipped Jaskier off they were doomed as a couple. But that wasn’t important, now. What was important was, he had a plan.
Poets from time immemorial talked about the language of flowers, didn’t they? Or something. If you could tell someone how much you loved them with flowers, then it stood to reason you could tell someone you hoped they burned in hell the same way. Jaskier could send Valdo a bouquet, with a pithy card that said ‘No hard feelings,’ content in the knowledge that Valdo wouldn’t know he had the equivalent of a giant middle finger sitting on the table of his new apartment.
Jaskier clambered over the back of the couch, stumbling when his foot got stuck in between two of the cushions. He swapped the vodka for one of the flower pots and held it up to Artemis in triumph. “I’m going to tell Valdo to fuck off with flowers.”
Artemis gazed at him in silent judgement. “What? It’s perfect! He won’t know what it means, cause he’s not that kind of gay,” he wasn’t either, but details and future him’s problem, “and he won’t be able to wonder if I’m over him or not because obviously people who aren’t over their exes don’t send them flowers, you know?”
The only reply he received was more blinking. He waved her off and retrieved the vodka, making his way back over to the couch. “Why am I asking you? You’ve never even had a relationship.”
Jaskier remembered how much he hated the couch once he was stretched out across it, his feet hanging over the edge. “This will work. It’s amazing. Best plan I’ve ever had.”
The bottle was half empty by the time he fell across his bed, still fully dressed, and passed out an hour later.
The aftermath of a drinking binge was never pretty, Jaskier reflected the next morning (could have been afternoon, for all he knew) when he rolled over in bed straight into a patch of sunlight. That normally wouldn’t have been a problem, but today it sent pain stabbing into his brain when he opened his eyes.
“Son of a whore!” His arms flailed, the blankets tangled around his legs, and he hit the floor with a thud. “Ugh.”
Jaskier let himself have a few moments to literally wallow on the floor, the comforter he dragged down with him pulled over his face, before he stood on shaky legs and found his way to the bathroom by touch.
Last night had sucked. He had basically been dumped twice—once by his boyfriend and then by his musical partner, but he didn’t have the luxury to just fall apart. He had a gig tonight (the booking manager was going to throw a fit when she found out he was going on alone) and he needed to take Arty out to let her do her hawk thing.
Falconers didn’t typically have the same bird for as long as Jaskier had, but Artemis suffered an injury and no one was sure if she would be able to hunt on her own again. The man he was apprenticed under suggested sending her to a sanctuary, but Jaskier hadn't wanted to lose her. It was selfish, maybe, but his parents had been fighting when his father wasn’t away on business and he hadn’t met Valdo yet. She was the only thing in his life that was a constant.
Artemis subsisted on frozen rats for the first few months after her rehabilitation, but had been finding her own prey now for years. Having her cooped up in the house or in the mews in the backyard more than strictly necessary wasn’t an option as far as he was concerned. With the odd hours he kept, it was easy to sit out on the deck and let her fly around to her heart’s content. And he was free to rehearse or compose or do nothing but lounge around in his underwear since his closest neighbor was miles away.
That had been what attracted Jaskier to this little house, set back in the woods. One of the reasons, anyway. It was also very, very far away from his family. At least his parents hadn’t been able to take away his trust fund when they took everything else after he announced that he wasn’t going to college or law school and was, in fact, going to be a musician. The way his mother acted, you would have thought he told them, “I’m going to become a serial killer, but I’ll make sure to write.”
Jaskier’s grandfather set his trust fund up when he was born to go to Jaskier when he turned eighteen and the old man had been gone by then. Though sometimes Jaskier wondered if he knew somehow that Jaskier was going to go off the beaten path. He liked to think one of the Pankratzs hadn’t been a complete bastard.
When he reached the bathroom, only bumping into a few things on the way, he left the light off. The frosted glass window let in enough light that he could see, but not enough to blind him. Shower turned on hot enough to start fogging the mirror, he stopped out of his clothes from the night before, making a face at the odor of sweat and booze before tossing them in the general direction of the hamper.
He emerged an hour later in a cloud of steam. His head still hurt, turning the large windows in his bedroom that he usually loved into something he hated, and he grabbed some off-brand Tylenol from the medicine cabinet then went to find something to wear. It was warming up this time of year, those months in between spring and summer, so he settled on a pair of old, grey sweatpants and nothing else.
Jaskier was halfway to the kitchen when he remembered he didn’t have a damn coffee maker anymore and cursed, glaring at the spot it used to occupy on the counter from where he stood in the living room. He would need to go buy a new one because Jaskier might have given up many, many creature comforts when he left his old, pampered life, but he would wear corduroy before existing without coffee.
Artemis was already awake, blinking from her perch. She didn’t need to be able to speak for him to know what she thought. “I promise to never get serious with anyone you try to peck again, okay?”
Arty bobbed her head and chirped. “You’re a stupid human,” he imagined her saying, “but you’re my stupid human, and I have to look out for you.”
“Love you, too,” he told her with a quirk of his lips then sighed. “Well, seems like I’ll need to go out for my caffeine fix. So, I’ll let you get breakfast first and get your ya-yas out.”
Jaskier turned to grab his sunglasses off the coffee table and frowned when he found a sticky note stuck to its surface. He grabbed it, recognizing his drunken scrawl and squinted, trying to make out the words.
“Don’t forget plan,” he read out loud. “Plan? What plan? Do you remember a plan?” Arty gave him a blank stare.
“Of course, you’re no help as usual,” he muttered before groaning. “I’m sorry, that was mean. I’m just hung over.”
Jaskier crumpled up the slip of paper and tossed it on the table. Slipping his sunglasses on, he slipped on his gauntlet, holding his forearm out for Arty to step onto. Her talons firmly gripping the leather, he turned for the sliding glass that led to the deck and froze. Tossing Arty a sidelong glance, he asked, “You thought this was hilarious, didn’t you?”
All over the glass door were more sticky notes in an ‘x’ across the pane. He must have used a whole pad. His eyebrows twitched up. “I didn’t even know I had Post-its.”
A quick scan of the notes informed him that 1) Drunk Him was kind of a dick and 2) he was supposed to send Valdo flowers in an effort to poetically tell him he was scum. Drunk Him had thought it was genius. Sober Him was less than certain, but then again, it would hardly be the weirdest thing he had ever done.
“There’s a florist in town, isn’t there?” he mused out loud, pushing the door open and walking outside. “If I’m doing this, I’m committing. No Google search and supermarket flowers. I want someone who knows what they’re doing.”
Arty chirped. He stroked her beak then held his arm out and she flew off, circling a few times before going out over the forest. Jaskier watched her go, hands gripping the wooden railing. There was always a chance she wouldn’t come back every time she left. That knowledge made it all the better when she landed on the deck railing. He settled back in one of the Adirondack chairs, feet propped up on the railing, and waited, listening to the echo of Arty’s cries.