to grow a winter garden [jaskier x reader] [complete]

1. it is pure gold

Oxenfurt is a wonderful city, and it has always been good to you. It was a matter of privilege that got you here in the first place — something you do your best to acknowledge — and even you have had some struggles. But you're long-graduated now, working on-staff translating texts for the library or significant visitors, and you're happy.

You have your own quarters on campus in the residential wing, room and board covered under the contract with a monthly stipend for purchases. It's better than living with your mother and father, and it's better than living anywhere else — or so you imagine. You're rarely disturbed, living personally up to the stereotype that scribes don't get up to much.

That doesn't mean you don't know how to unwind, though, and you're curled up on the couch in front of the fire with a fine wine when there's a knock at your door. You haven't bothered to go request dinner, so it can't be that, and you slip on your robe over your slip before going to the door.

Finding Jaskier — finding Julian — loitering in the hallway... It feels like every holiday come at once. You throw open the door before he can speak, and then you throw yourself at him, overcome with joy.

He catches you with ease, arms tight around your back much like yours are on him, and he laughs against the side of your neck. "It's good to see you too, darling," he says, and you squeeze him tightly one more time before forcing yourself to let go. He lets you, and you take a half-step back to look at him in full.

He's wearing a fine blue outfit, embroidered in that detailed way that he's always liked. His doublet is open at the neck, also the way he's always liked. Jaskier has always been a bit risque. There's a lute across his back, over what you think is a traveling pack, and —

A breeze comes down the hall and sweeps across your knees, reminding you of your state of undress. How improper of you; you glance both ways to see if anyone else has caught your indiscretion before backing up into your rooms. He follows, smiling as you hold the door open just to shut it tightly behind him, and you find yourself filled with a nervous and excited energy as you loiter there together just inside the door.

There's no sense in being a bad host, though, and you go to the couch to get the wine, go to get an extra glass. "Make yourself at home, won't you?" you ask of him over your shoulder, and when you return to the couch he's taken your words to heart. He's looking at the book you'd been half-reading, curious like he's always been about everything, but he puts it back when you hold the glass out to him. The bottle goes back onto the table and you go back into your comfortable seat, pulling your blanket over your lap again.

"In case it wasn't clear, I really am glad to see you," you tell him, taking a drink. "What brings you back to the university?"

"A man can't return to his old stomping grounds every once in a while?" he asks, but he's smiling through it. "My muse has gone north for the winter, and I was near enough to make it here before snow made travel more difficult," he continues nonetheless. "And I have a few friends in the area that I thought might put me up for a time."

"You know the university would take you on as a professor," you say, raising your eyebrows at him as he takes a drink. "But I guess you want to be able to leave again come the spring, hm?"

"Well, yes, you do have me there," he says, laughing in that nervous way you haven't heard in years — and not just because you haven't seen him since he graduated. "But if you would rather I go somewhere else, it's no offense to me, of course. You were just —"

You say "did I not just say I missed you?" as he says "—the first that came to mind."

"You've been traveling, haven't you?" you ask, and he understands the words you aren't saying, takes another drink. You mirror him, draining your glass, and you refill them both. This bottle will be empty soon, but it's quenching the nervous feeling in your chest, so you don't mind so much. "How has it been?"

"Oh, very interesting," he answers, but the distance in his voice, the bravado, falls away quickly. He's never bothered to put on airs with you before, and you're glad he's not going to bother now. "I've been to all sorts of... owns, and swamps, and villages, and mountains, and —" he waves a hand, encompassing the world. "There is so much that words will not do justice to, out there." You make a noise, interested, because Jaskier has always been a man very talented with words.
"But I'll tell you the stories of my travels some other time," he says, bumps your shoulder with his. "How is life as a kept woman?"

"You will find that the university does not keep me so much as I deign to stay," you say, turning your nose up as a joke before you realize what he meant. "And Eryk and I did not stay together much past graduation."

He breathes a noise of interest through his nose, and you take another drink. "Whatever happened there?" If he were someone else, you would tell him to mind his own business. Of course, if he were someone else, he would already know. But Jaskier will forever be one of your closest friends, and there are very few secrets between you.

"He wanted things I couldn't give him," you say, looking at the red swirl of your wine in the glass. "But instead of... talking about it, and saving either of us our dignity, he was... Indiscreet. I caught him leaving Zofia's rooms, after he told me he couldn't make it to our anniversary dinner because of a 'meeting.' I may have made a scene."

"I knew I taught you well," Jaskier murmurs, and you can hear the smile in his voice. His shoulder is back, and this time it's less a bump and more a long, warm press. He's somehow hotter than the fire in the hearth, even through his doublet and your robe.