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Valdo sighed dejectedly as he watched Jaskier flirt with his third bartend of the night.
The students from the Department of Trouvereship and Poetry had finished their mid-semester exams and were celebrating with a traditional bar crawl. With each bar their large group migrated to, the deeper into their cups everyone became, which meant the more people Jaskier wrapped himself around, and the more dispirited Valdo grew.
It started off with the usual flirty wink toward another student, then evolved into kissing the back of the hands of the maidens who served them, then leaning across the bar counter to bite his lip and give the bartend a sultry grin, weaseling out of having to pay for his drinks like he was now — and oh, no, now Jaskier was fully in the lap of a man twice his size, sloppily making out in between sips of cheap ale, giggling as the man whispered something in his ear.
What was that man doing with their group? He didn’t even go to their university.
Priscilla nudged him harshly, almost knocking him off his stool.
“If you scowl any harder your face will set that way,” she warned. “You’re bringing the mood down. Celebrate with us! Term is halfway over and then we get a break,” she said the last word on a dreamy exhale, clinking his tankard.
He took a bitter sip. He raised a hand to the barkeep. “Temerian Rye, biggest size you’ll pour,” he ordered. Ale wasn’t going to take the edge off his dour mood.
The bartend shrugged and handed him a tankard full.
“Okay, you’re definitely going to split that with me because I am not wiping your vomit off the common room floor tomorrow. Eat some bread with it,” Priscilla encouraged, taking the tankard and pouring half into her empty glass, pushing the complimentary bread toward him. He took a bite off angrily, hating that it was sourdough and that it was actually good, and complimented the rye nicely. He didn’t want to enjoy things right now, he wanted to wallow in his… whatever it was he felt. Angry? Jealous? Sad?
Priscilla took a hardy swallow, eyes roving between him and the corner where Jaskier was getting his throat tongue-railed.
“Why do you keep pining after him like that when you know it's fruitless? Jaskier doesn’t tend to do romance long-term, he does it quick and dirty. And preferably with people he’s just met, not with people he’s already known for a year and a half. It hurts him too much otherwise — you saw how he was after Catrina broke up with him.”
Valdo grimaced, remembering how Jaskier hadn’t responded to a single one of his teasing taunts in class for almost a month after, keeping to himself and growing a depression beard instead. He hated how sad he’d looked, how quiet he had been.
“You two are great for stoking each other’s creativity, but I just don’t see you two stoking anything else of each other’s, let alone being a romantic match. Especially not after all of your ridiculous advances.”
Valdo cringed a bit.
He’d realized he’d gradually fallen from having a playful rivalry with Jaskier into genuinely being in love with the man earlier in the term, and had started changing his engagement tactics as a result.
He loved their flirty, snarky banter, their seemingly natural chemistry, how the two of them were just better than everyone else, and how Jaskier’s brain was as sharp and quick as his tongue. He thought they’d had something going on, but it turned out that Jaskier seemed to just find him annoying (much like he’d found Jaskier to be when they first met. It was hate at first sight. And then it wasn’t, anymore).
He’d spent the whole term trying to profess his love to Jaskier through various methods.
He tried asking him on a date outright, to which Jaskier laughed until he realized Valdo was being serious.
“Oh, you’re not being serious, are you? Oh, no ho ho, I cannot deal with this today,” he said and walked off.
He’d tried dedicating several of his poems to Jaskier, but Jaskier still didn’t take it seriously, thinking it was a joke or something to goad him on; getting more heated as a result and more vicious in his responding poems.
He tried what all bards do well, trying to speak in a language Jaskier would understand: serenading him with an original song. Valdo had waited for a full moon so it would be romantic, standing outside Jaskier’s window and letting the balmy night breeze carry the notes upwards.
Jaskier had thrown his bedroom window open and thrown a spare pillow at him. “Oi! Some people are trying to sleep here!” He’d yelled, and then closed his window again.
He supposes it’s his own fault for having used flirting in the past as a way to rile Jaskier up, thinking it was funny.
“You’re such a schoolboy, why don’t you pull on his pigtails why don’t you? Such bullshit. You don’t treat someone mean if you like them,” Priscilla had told him off one day, prompting him to examine himself and his methods.
Alas, he’d been the boy who cried love too many times, and now Jaskier didn’t believe him.
So now he had to watch his crush grind sensually against another man while they swapped spit.
He tossed back the rest of his rye.
He raised his hand. “Another.”
**
“I fucking told you I’m not cleaning your vomit off the floor,” Priscilla told him the next morning while she held a basin under his face and stroked the nape of his neck.
“‘S not on the floor,” he moaned.
“No, it was on your desk chair, which is even weirder and grosser. Remind me to never sit there when I come over. In fact, you should probably just burn the thing.”
“I’ll throw myself in the fire too, then Jaskier won’t have to deal with me anymore,” he wailed.
“Oh, hush. None of that crap. You need to either move on, or you need to try communicating with him in a way that somehow… doesn’t involve you speaking to him. Speak to him in a way he’ll really understand,” she said, holding up a rag for him to wipe his face with.
In his alcohol-soaked mind, he started thinking about what kind of language Jaskier speaks, realizing the answer was in his name.
“Flowers!” He exclaimed, sitting up and stifling a gag when the movement disagreed with him.
“Oh. I had been thinking something more along the lines of a heartfelt letter, but I guess that works too.”
“Write it down so I don’t forget it,” he asked her.
She wrote down, “flowers,” on a piece of parchment and stuck it to his forehead with a few drops of water. “There you go.”
**
The first flowers arrive outside of Jaskier’s room shortly after midterms.
He opens his door one morning to go get some coffee and breakfast before heading to his geometry seminar (his least favorite of the seven liberal arts), almost stepping on two flowers left on his welcome rug.
He picks them up, finding a red rose and a pink camellia wrapped together with a thin parchment ribbon. Love and longing.
He huffs, looking around. A secret admirer? Most people who like him are pretty quick to tell him, so to receive this slow, shy, wordless hint is intriguing.
Until he thinks a bit harder and realizes they’re probably from Valdo.
He groans, tossing them inside his room and locking the door before he’s late for class. “Stupid, Jaskier,” he mutters to himself. He’s tired of these pranks. He’d have to have words with the man. Although…
Jaskier’s repeated insults, rejections, and outright declarations of hate hadn’t seemed to deter the man. If anything, it just riled him up more, causing him to up the ante.
The last straw for him had been when Valdo had gone so far as to serenade him under the moonlight. The gesture would have been the most lovely thing anyone had ever done him, were it to have come from anyone other than Valdo, who had repeatedly made it clear that he found Jaskier annoying and loathsome.
Valdo had robbed him of the opportunity to have his first time being serenaded by someone who actually liked him by doing that. In the middle of the night, no less. He had let himself pretend for just a moment, let himself dream that Valdo actually liked him for just a second, before throwing a pillow at him to shut him up.
Valdo hadn’t tried anything as brash since. Jaskier almost thought it was over until he’d stepped on the flowers.
He’s tired of having his hopes and feelings teased like this. If Valdo wants to play, fine.
He can play this game.
**
Valdo opens his door one evening after hearing a knock and footsteps quickly moving away to find two flowers on his doorstep. He’s excited at having received a response from Jaskier until he sees what the response is.
A yellow carnation and a candytuft glare back at him. Rejection and indifference.
He harumphs, twirling them by the stem in his hand. He’s not going to give up, and he’ll tell Jaskier as much.
Valdo lays on his bed, setting the candytuft in the book he’d been revising to use as a bookmark, plucking petals off the carnation and letting them fall to the side.
“He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me not…”
**
Jaskier comes back to his quarters from a late night at the library to find more flowers.
This time, a bunch of magnolias in a vase sat waiting. Perseverance.
Valdo wasn’t going to be deterred so easily, it seems.
Jaskier rolls his eyes, scooping up the vase and putting it on his side table. He figured he could at least still use the vase once the flowers died.
**
Jaskier’s response to the promise of not giving up comes in the form of butterfly weeds stuffed under his door.
Valdo had to dig out his Farmer’s Almanac and poetry books that referenced the language of the flowers to find its hidden meaning: “Let me go.”
Valdo plucks one of the tiny orange flowers off its stem and smells it, smiling to himself and thinking, No, I don’t think I will just yet.
**
Jaskier leaves his arithmetic professor’s office one afternoon after seeking help (he takes it back — geometry isn’t his least favorite subject, it’s definitely arithmetic) and is on his way to meet Priscilla for a late lunch and to grab some desperately needed caffeine and/or alcohol, (whichever presented itself first) when Valdo Marx comes strutting his way.
“Nope, no, I have had it with you and your flowers stinking up my doorstep, not today— argh!” He protested, trying to walk in the other direction but was quickly caught by the other man.
Valdo is beaming, the idiot, but thankfully doesn’t say anything. Instead, he tucks a red tulip into his chemise, taking advantage of Jaskier’s opened top buttons and using the space between his skin and the fabric like a pocket, patting the flower once and then leaving.
Jaskier sputters. “Wha–?”
He pulls the flower out and grumbles when he sees it. A declaration of love.
When he meets Pris at a nearby tavern, he snips the stem in half with his nails and tucks the flower behind her ear. Red always looked nice on her anyway. She raises a brow in question.
“‘Gift’ from Valdo,” he explains sullenly, setting his books down.
She turns to the barkeep. “Can we get two small glasses of Est Est?”
**
Valdo opens his door one morning to find a throng of flowers so thick that they spill out into the hall and reach the surrounding three dormitories.
He laughs, grabbing as many as he can and dumping them on his desk before going back for more.
It takes four trips.
He stands, hands on his hips, studying the mess of flowers he’s now stuck with.
Rhododendrons had several meanings, but with how many there were and the meaning of his last flower, Valdo hazards to guess that they mean a declaration of war.
He can play this game.
**
Jaskier wakes to giggling and whispers outside his door, and someone yelling, “Is this the Herbology or Natural History department’s idea of a joke?”
He shoots up in bed, cold fear and near regret washing over his body. What the fuck did Valdo do now?
He throws his robe on and opens the door, letting the girls across the hall from him catch a glimpse of his ungroomed chest hair before he ties the fabric shut.
He gapes.
Buttercups of all sizes and stages of bloom litter not only his doorstep but cover the entire hall floor, spilling down the turret stairs at the west end of the hallway. Valdo somehow managed to get some to hang from the ceiling, the yellow flowers dangling like garlands in front of his face. He swats one away, but it swings back to hit his nose.
Valso surely must have had help from someone to not only procure so many buttercups but also to place them.
The whole hallway smells like perfume. A student he knows from his rhetoric lectures sneezes down the hall.
Buttercups had several meanings as most flowers did. But the nature of the delivery meant only one thing: childishness.
Oh, it was so on.
**
Valdo sort of regretted the overblown reaction with the buttercups when he realized his actions inadvertently started a prank war between the students of the Trouvereship and Poetry and the Natural History departments.
His hall was above Jaskier’s, so he’d heard secondhand from someone in his hall that an older boy in Jaskier’s hall had decided that while the Herbology department was a good candidate, medicine students were too busy studying to pull something like the buttercup incident off, and the flowers made more sense of someone studying biology.
Valdo worried that any response from Jaskier would get lost amidst the chaos of the now daily flower-bombing and release of non-lethal snakes and insects into the Trouvereship and Poetry department dorms. It had been a few days since hearing from him. Perhaps he’d been roped into the task of slipping scathing and lewd poems under students’ doors, or into participating in the caterwauling midnight ‘concerts’ outside of the Natural History department dormitories.
He needn’t have worried.
Valdo walked into his room after releasing another snake he’d found back into the wild to find a bouquet in a vase waiting on his desk.
The arrangement was beautiful, but their meaning was not so much.
Evergreen leaves of basil stood proudly between vibrant orange lilies, complimented with yellow, peach, and white daffodils. Their colors were even more vibrant contrasted against the sleek black vase. At the center of the bouquet was a single black rose.
It was the prettiest way he’d ever been told that he was hated.
That his love wasn’t returned.
Daffodils and orange lilies, even basil, grew best in the spring and summertime, which meant that Jaskier must have really tried hard and paid a lot to procure the needed flowers given that it was nearing winter.
Valdo shook his head. Honestly, he’d been kind of short-sighted to decide to start a flower conversation in the fall term.
He takes the vase and kicks his door gently closed, sitting on his bed with the vase in his lap.
He chews a basil leaf, relishing the flavor. They’d be nice on a salad or something, and the flowers smelled pleasant too (although the smell could have also been from the cascade of aphid-filled roses someone had dumped in their hallway at some point in the early morning).
The black rose, however, was something he had never seen before. Whether it was painted, enchanted, or cultivated to look like that, Valdo wasn’t sure, but it fascinated him. He picks it up, inhaling sharply when he pricks his thumb and forefinger on the thorns — they’d been deliberately left on.
Valdo smirked, sucking the droplet off his thumb.
He’d gladly prick himself on Jaskier’s thorns if it meant he could be close to him.
He reaches for his Almanac again, coming up with his own idea for a bouquet.
**
Jaskier was starting to get annoyed with flowers. Really, really, fucking tired of flowers. He’d be glad if after all this blew over he never saw another flower again.
He looked into the tiny mirror above his washbasin and snorted. Who was he kidding, he’d named himself after one. He would never see the end of it.
He dried his face on a towel and stepped out of his en-suite, almost stepping on a lone mouse.
“Were you conscripted into the prank war too, soldier?” He asks rhetorically, picking it up and petting it. He didn’t like the snakes or bugs that would find their way into his dorm, but small fuzzy creatures like this never bothered him. He’d gladly helped the girls across the hall wrangle the mice from their dorm and gently placed them outside when their shrieks of fear woke him up.
It was the least he could do after playing a hand in inadvertently getting this war started. He felt bad for the whole Natural History department taking the blame, but the war was kind of fun (and a great opportunity to put his skills into practice), and it was better that no one found out he and Valdo started it, lest they get demerits. Or worse, expelled.
“I don't like him, but he shouldn’t let his obsession with me get in his own way, you know? I hate to admit it, but he’s talented, and if it wasn’t for his stupid taunts I don’t think I’d have pushed myself so much to come up with sharper, more concise ways of writing. I just wish he’d stop insisting that he’s in love with me when he’s not. I know he hates me, and I get it. I don’t know why he keeps on poking my wounds with all these gestures of love. The joke isn’t funny anymore. It never was,” he says to the mouse, who just squeaks at him. He finds leftover basil trimmings from the bouquet he arranged and offers one to the creature, continuing as the mouse nibbles on the leaf.
“I’m tired of having my heart broken. It hurts, to give yourself so completely like that to one person — in body and heart and mind and time — only to have them eventually stomp all over you. It’s better to never let yourself get that deep in the first place.”
He sighs, continuing, stroking the mouse behind its pink little ear. “It’s hard for me. I don’t know why but I’ve always been a hopeless, helpless romantic. I can’t stop myself from falling a little bit in love with basically everyone I meet. Some more so than others, and it’s hard every time they go. But it hurts less if I don’t let them love me back, because then I can pretend it didn’t mean anything in the first place. It’s easier to fuck and leave than to let myself fall so deeply in love again.”
The mouse’s ear twitches. “Yeah, you probably want to go back to your family. Let’s go, little one. Sorry for dragging you into all my maudlin monologuing,” he apologizes, standing up and cupping the mouse with one hand so he can open the door.
When he comes back from setting the mouse outside behind a bush, he finds a bouquet on his nightstand.
He curses.
Wrapped with a dark silk ribbon is a bouquet of purple and blue anemones and gladiolus flowers, broken up by the white from stems full of lily of the valleys.
Now, this was a bit of a puzzle.
Jaskier opens his Almanac and poetry books to sort through the meanings, taking out his notebook to write it out when it still isn’t quite clear.
Anemones were related to the buttercup, so perhaps their use in this form was an apology? Blue and purple anemones both signified anticipation… but for what? Unless he was meant to take them for their more individual meanings. Purple anemones solely signified anticipation. However, blue anemones also stood for mutual trust (that didn’t exist between them, so Jaskier crosses that out), but also for love, respect, and admiration of intelligence. Perhaps, if the bouquet’s meaning had been difficult to discern on purpose, Valdo was preemptively (snidely) congratulating him on his intelligence in anticipation that he’d figure it out, while also saying he loved and respected him? Ugh.
Blue and purple gladiolus tended to connotate hope, love, admiration, creativity, as well as mystery. If he was keeping up with the theme of love and compliments, then it wasn’t out of bounds to say that their inclusion doubled down on Valdo’s alleged love and admiration for him, complimenting his creativity, hoping and anticipating they’d be together, and also hinting that either the bouquet was a mystery or Jaskier was. Or that Valdo was.
Lily of the valley could be taken several ways. For one, in its namesake, it could be a direct response to the orange lilies in the bouquet Jaskier sent. The plant was also poisonous, so it could be considered a return of the sentiment of hatred, but that didn’t fit the theme. As a symbol, the flower stood for humility, chastity, purity (but he knew for a fact neither of them was pure, humble, or chaste so he scratched those meanings off the list), and luck. Traditionally, fully bloomed lilies signified ‘a return to happiness.’
Jaskier took greater care in looking at the flowers, noting that at least half the buds hadn’t bloomed yet. That was deliberate. So, a return to happiness, eventually. Did Valdo mean that he hoped Jaskier would return to happiness eventually, or that Valdo himself was returning to happiness?
Jaskier groaned and tossed the books aside. He was tired and his head hurt. He hadn’t been getting much sleep since midterms between studying and thinking about the flowers, and now the prank war.
Fuck this. Even if Valdo meant what he’d been sending, it was still cruel because of how he’d treated him in the past. He wouldn’t get together with someone who had already hurt him, even in jest.
He knew a bouquet arrangement that would surely end this confusing, petty nonsense once and for all.
**
Valdo eagerly anticipates Jaskier’s response to his floral love letter full of compliments and wishes for Jaskier.
He hasn’t been able to sleep since he dashed inside Jaskier’s quarters to drop the bouquet off, knowing Jaskier was smart enough to at least figure out half their meanings.
The prank war had slowly died down in early November, and as the leaves started falling off trees around campus, building crunchy piles to step into, Valdo felt himself to be in a pretty good mood.
His mood is arrested when he sees the bouquet on his doorstep, nestled in the vase Valdo had first given Jaskier, next to a cheap-looking pair of gloves.
Monkshood, white oleander, and foxglove stood in the vase. A bouquet entirely made of poisonous flowers, the clearest ‘fuck you and fuck off’ one could ever say. Gorgeous yet barbarous. Just like Jaskier.
The aconite, another relative to the buttercup, was a lovely shade of indigo, whispering “Watch out.”
The white oleander stared up at him, their yellow eyes saying, “I don’t trust you.”
The foxglove was an especially harsh inclusion, accusing him of insincerity.
Had Jaskier thought Valdo was insincere this whole time?
The bouquet as a whole signified his distrust and caution.
Valdo sighed. Maybe he’d been going about this the wrong way, and needed to try saying something else with the flowers.
Using the gloves to set the vase on his windowsill, the poisonous leaves illuminated by moonlight, he looked up at the night sky and got an idea.
**
Jaskier headed up a turret toward the observatory, wanting to identify and sketch some constellations for his astronomy lectures when Professor Lindenbrog called him into his office on the way up.
Jaskier stopped in.
“Yes, Professor? I was just on my way up to see if I could observe the constellations you mentioned in the last lecture, was that okay?”
Lindenbrog smiles at him over his glasses. “Yes, Julian, the telescopes are available for use until morning. That’s not why I called you in.”
Jaskier starts to panic. He thought he did well on his midterms. Has his work since then not been up to par?
Lindenbrog raises a hand, placating him. “I’m not here to talk about your passing, you’re doing exceptional, despite your reputation otherwise. You need not worry.”
Jaskier breathed a sigh of relief, wiping some cold sweat off his forehead. “Oh, good,” he laughed nervously.
Lindenbrog reached behind his desk and produced a potted plant — vines with a single furled bud in the middle. He had an amused twinkle in his eye as he nudged the pot forward.
“Take this up there with you, set it on the windowsill. Observe it as well when the sun and moon change positions.”
Jaskier is confused. “Okay. Is this an extra credit assignment?”
“No, but it can be if you want to add sketches of the phases of the sky during your observations. Your friend Valdo Marx dropped it off with me and asked me to give it to you.”
Jaskier is even more confused, and a little irritated at the term ‘friend’, but he decides not to say anything to his professor about it.
He takes the plant.
“Thank you, Professor Lindenbrog.”
He trudges up the stairs of the turret toward the observatory room, the sun still too high in the sky to properly observe any constellations yet. He sets the pot down on the windowsill as directed, and sets his things down, bringing out his sketchbook.
He thought Valdo would get the message and leave him alone after the last bouquet. Now he’s going to his professors?
The pot is different though. It’s more vines than flowers, just that one little bud that had no other distinguishing features so he couldn’t identify what it was yet. It was properly planted, too, so unlike all the flowers they’d been sending back and forth, this one was alive.
Why had Lindenbrog looked so amused and why was he told to observe the flower too?
He takes a sip from his canteen of tea that he’d brought along, doodling idly in the margins of his notebook. He reviews his notes as he waits for the sun to go down, occasionally peeking through and adjusting the telescope to see if it was dark enough yet.
By the time the constellations were in sight, the light of the moon was Jaskier’s only light source to draw with, and he’s thankful that the moon was full tonight, or else he would’ve needed to go back downstairs for candles.
He finishes one drawing, and takes another sip from his canteen when he notices the flower in the pot is changing. The flower slowly unfurls and opens its petals under the presence of the moon.
A moonflower, of course. He’d heard of them but he’d never watched one bloom in real-time before, they were always already closed or already open by the time he saw them. It was slow and gentle, and beautiful to watch.
He almost hates that its Valdo who gave him this experience.
He quickly sketches the phases anyway and observes them.
What did a moonflower, in this context, mean? To be patient? That he wanted Jaskier to open up for him at night? Ew.
Jaskier thinks back to his Almanac. There wasn’t a whole lot about the moonflower specifically. More attention was given to morning glories. The family of flowers signified unrequited love and obsession (no shit). Moonflowers also symbolized blossoming or growth in dark times.
Was he telling Jaskier to grow up past whatever darkness he had? Or that he would be patient and wait for Jaskier in his darkness?
His last bouquet hadn’t exactly been a beacon of any light or warmth. It was cold, and admittedly cruel.
He stays in the observatory, thinking how metaphorically, it could’ve been Valdo asking Jaskier to take a leap of faith, to wait with him and watch something beautiful bloom together.
He sketches the last few constellations when they come into view, and waits and watches with bleary eyes as the early morning rays make the flower swirl tightly shut again, as slowly and gently as it had opened, hiding its face in the sun’s presence.
A chill comes in through the window, and he remembers from the Almanac that moonflowers only bloomed in spring.
Valdo must’ve gone to the trouble to get the flower enchanted by someone to work as if it were warmer.
Perhaps, Valdo just needed to understand why Jaskier kept rejecting him.
He takes the pot and keeps it on his dorm windowsill, watching it unfurl and furl back up with the moon’s rise and fall each night.
**
Valdo receives another bouquet on his doorstep.
A bunch of black, purple, and blue petunias crowded with lighter blue forget-me-nots was nestled inside a deep blue vase.
It was a simple message, but it hit him like a brick when he realized what he’d been doing wrong the whole time.
Petunias, when given to a recipient with whom the giver didn’t have a good relationship with, meant anger and resentment. Forget-me-nots were obvious.
Jaskier hadn’t forgotten how Valdo used to treat him, and resented him for it. He wanted Valdo to remember, too.
In all his flirting and pettiness and search for words, not once had Valdo ever told Jaskier that he was sorry, or that he wanted to start over, or explained his intentions or reasoning behind why he’d had such a sudden switch in how he interacted with Jaskier.
Jaskier spent this whole time thinking Valdo was playing a long, cruel joke – and why wouldn’t he, when it had been his go-to in the past and he had never talked to Jaskier seriously in the first place.
He feels like an idiot.
He needs to go to the florist.
Valdo is sure that between him and Jaskier, and the prank wars, the local florist has never seen so much coin in his life.
**
Jaskier opens his door to find a bouquet of gorgeous purple hyacinths, laid gently in parchment paper and wrapped delicately with a lilac bow.
Deep regret, apology, and a request for forgiveness.
Jaskier bites his lip and picks it up, stroking one of the flower petals.
He dares to hope.
**
Valdo receives a bunch of cornflowers the color of Jaskier’s eyes the next morning, wrapped in a similar parchment.
A plea.
“Be gentle with me,” they asked quietly from their paper.
**
Jaskier finds a single white clover slipped under his door.
“I promise.”
He picks it up, tucking it in a vase next to the moonflower and hyacinths.
He looks outside, seeing sprinkles of snowflakes start to fall.
‘Tis the season. It was time for a real, face-to-face conversation.
**
Valdo’s heart leaps at the sight of mistletoe on his doorstep, a letter next to it.
‘Observatory, 7 pm tomorrow. Be ready to use your words this time.’ was written on the card in Jaskier’s scrawl.
He twirls the mistletoe in hand.
Although now it was used to bribe kisses out of people during the holidays, mistletoe had a tradition that traced back to the Druids. It was used to signify a meeting where no violence would take place.
In the language of flowers, it was the closest thing to a symbol of truce they had.
He’s never felt more excited or more nervous.
**
Valdo finds Jaskier waiting at the main observatory telescope with the moonflower pot in hand.
Jaskier looks up as Valdo approaches.
“I still wasn’t sure if I got the meaning of this one right,” he says conversationally, handing the pot to Valdo so he could watch it bloom as the moon fell.
“I was asking for you to take a leap of faith and be patient with me,” he murmured, fingering the now open petals. He was pleased to see the flower was well-taken care of.
“I figured,” Jaskier says. He turns to him fully. “So…”
They’re both silent.
“So you meant all of it? Your flowers?” Jaskier prompts.
Valdo looks up from the moonflower, a bit hurt that he’d gone through so much trouble the past two months and that Jaskier still didn’t believe or trust him fully.
Then again, given their history, he can’t fully blame him.
“Yes,” he says emphatically. “Every single one.”
The corner of Jaskier’s mouth twitches. “Even the buttercups?”
Valdo laughs. “Are you kidding? Especially those. Though I’m just as guilty, look what our childishness did to the rest of campus.”
Jaskier lets a small huff of laughter out. It’s a gorgeous sound.
It dawns on Valdo that this is the closest he’s been to Jaskier since tucking the red tulip in his shirt, and that this is the most they’ve talked verbally back and forth without it being pure insult.
No wonder he hadn’t believed him.
Jaskier looks out the window, fiddling with the arm of the chair he’s in.
“I…” he starts, stops, and huffs. “I’m sorry I’ve been cruel in my responses. I didn’t trust you or believe you. I let this get too far, too. I should’ve just insisted we talked earlier.”
“You’re hard to reach sometimes,” Valdo says, tilting his head and trying to catch Jaskier’s eyes.
Jaskier concedes, looking at his face fully now. “It’s hard for me to get into relationships,” he explains. “I know— I flirt with everyone and I make it seem like I have all the confidence in the world and that I’m a bit loose, but. It’s so much easier to make love with someone than it is to fall in love with someone. It hurts less when they leave or when I leave after, that way. I don’t want to give my heart fully over to someone who historically has just insulted me.”
“I know. I am sorry, Jaskier. I wish we’d gotten off on a better foot. Truth be told, I held onto a rather old notion that if you liked someone it was okay to let them know by being cruel to them.” He makes quotation marks with his fingers. “‘Pigtail-pulling’ and all that. It was immature and counterproductive. I wanted to get close to you but I just drove you away.”
Jaskier squints. “You’re not telling me you liked me all this time?” He asks incredulously.
Valdo shook his head. “Admittedly, no. I thought you were crass and annoying when we first met, as I’m sure you thought of me.” Jaskier deflates. “But I realized earlier in the term that all the things I thought I found irritating about you were actually endearing.”
“Like what?”
“Your talent and intelligence. I was envious, I’ll admit, but now I have a healthy admiration and respect for it. In our taunts, we’ve pushed each other to become better, but I think if we actually supported each other we could progress further. Your boyish charm, your eyes, the way you move, the way you talk, the tone of your voice, the way you dress. How kind-hearted you are despite your seemingly vicious tongue. How you’re able to be sweet despite the world handing you shit sometimes. It’s everything, Jaskier. Everything.”
Jaskier gives a watery inhale. “What made you change your mind?”
“You, by existing. And Priscilla made me get my head out of my arse, which is why I started trying to profess my love for you earlier in the term. But I went about it the wrong way, thinking I could just jump from one extreme to another like that.” He laughs. “For prospective bards, we sure are bad at communicating with one another!”
Jaskier laughs, the sound ringing like bells in Valdo’s ears. “That’s not entirely true. Talking through flowers got the message across eventually.”
“So it seems.”
Jaskier reaches out a hand. “I’m sorry for the cruel way I’ve treated you. I hope you forgive me. I forgive you and would like to move on from how we’ve treated each other if we can. Can we start over?”
Valdo grips it and shakes it firmly. “To starting over,” he agrees.
Jaskier smiles and pulls something out of his pack.
“One last flower, then.” He says, handing it to Valdo.
A pressed buttercup lay in a thin block of resin. Valdo looks up.
“To new beginnings, and making something beautiful out of past mistakes,” Jaskier explains.
Valdo’s heart melts as he examines it.
“Do you want to watch the sun come up? You can see the moonflower curl back up, it’s kind of cool,” Jaskier says, his voice honey soft as he turns to face the window again.
They spend the hours into the morning talking about everything and nothing, trading sips of spiked black tea from Jaskier’s canteen, peeking through the telescope to try to spot the constellations they’d learned about.
Talking in person was better than anything a flower could ever say.
**
On the last day of term, after coming back from his last exam, exhausted and thoroughly ready for a ten-hour nap and a round of celebratory drinks, Jaskier comes back to his dorms to find a giant bouquet and a card waiting for him at his doorstep.
The girl across the hall giggles at him. “Someone’s got a secret admirer,” she says, smiling.
He gives her a small smile in return, picking the blue curved vase up. “Not so secret to me anymore,” he says, waving the card.
“I told you!” He hears the girl say to her roommate. “You owe me ten crowns.”
He turns back around. “You had a bet?”
The girl nods. “We had a bet going on to see how long it would take you to get together with that boy from upstairs who kept dropping flowers off for you. I bet it was by the end of the semester, she bet it wouldn’t be until next term.”
“Oh. So you saw…”
“Him dump a hundred buttercups in our hallway? Yes, and we helped him do it after he explained. We thought it was sweet.”
“Why didn’t you say or do anything about the prank war after? You still could’ve ratted him or me out and stopped it,” he asks, befuddled.
She wrinkles her face. “And end our entertainment? No way, you two were better than any book or play we’ve had to read this term. The prank war was fun too.” She shudders. “Except for the mice. Fuck the Natural Science students. I think we should reignite the war next term just for fun. Ooh, or maybe we should pick another random department and start with them? I dunno. We’ll see where the wind takes us.”
Jaskier laughs. “Well. have a good break if you’re going home, see you again next semester,” he says.
The girl winks and closes the door, but not before letting him see her roommate snake her arm around the girl’s waist and kiss her. Huh.
Jaskier turns his attention to the bouquet. It’s less an explicit message and more just a celebration of Jaskier: buttercups, white and yellow dandelions, baby’s breath, cornflowers, yellow and white roses, all manner of complementary blue blossoms, peppered by the occasional verdant leaf or vine. It was gorgeous, and over the top, just like Valdo.
He set it on his desk and read the card.
'Dinner at The Hungry Bear, 7 tomorrow, my treat? - V <3'
He smiled at the invitation, then panicked and ran down to Priscilla’s room because he needed advice on what to wear to an actual date, and he needed to make one last stop at the florist’s before the shop closed for the winter.
**
Valdo waits nervously outside the tavern, fiddling with the cuffs of his coat. He’d picked this particular tavern for its distance from the university, and thus it would be less likely to be overrun by drunk students celebrating the end of term with the bar crawl.
It was still somewhat crowded inside, but there were a few seats left from what he could tell that he and Jaskier might be able to comfortably hear each other over the raucous music and other people chattering.
Fingers tapped his shoulder. He whirled around and took in the sight of Jaskier, looking sharp in a deep blue chemise, trousers, and silver threaded jacket. “You look nice,” he said honestly.
“As do you. This is for you,” Jaskier held out his hand from behind his back, producing a single red rose, trimmed of its thorns. He tucked it inside Valdo’s coat pocket for him.
“Shall we go inside?” Valdo asked, offering his arm. Jaskier smiled shyly and took it, leading the way inside.
Valdo fingered the rose petals one by one as they walked toward a spare table, thinking:
“He loves me, he loves me, he loves me…”
