Chapter Text
Present Day, Wyoming, USA-
The hunter licked his lips, waiting. Looking at the rack on the thing.
The elk was huge. Massive.
Oblivious to the man in the homemade gilly suit soaked in deer urine, who was training a rifle on his prey’s majestic dun flank.
A trophy.
Sixty inch spread to the antlers, going all the way back to the hind haunches, beautiful.
A score of 375, right? Roughly? In the neighborhood at least.
He adjusted the scope, aiming for the heart, and—
There was a sudden… Just a blur?
He looked up.
The man wasn’t a park ranger, or a warden—at least he wasn’t dressed like one.
And he didn’t seem concerned to be at the business end of a Winchester 30-aught-6.
The barrel was half an inch from poking him, for fuck’s sake. And the man wasn’t wearing hunter orange.
I could shoot him by ‘accident.’ No one would know, the hunter thought.
But the thought had barely had time to form, just a series of suggestive electrical impulses across his mind before he was on his ass, looking up at the…
“The fuck!” he said, knowing the trophy elk was long gone.
"You’re over the line, Johnny,” said the man, holding the gun now, unloading it expertly. “No hunting in Yellowstone.”
“Not in Yellowstone,” denied the hunter, not happy that the man knew his name.
“Hnn, that’s what you think?” said the man. “Wrong.”
“Accidentally over the line if anything,” said the hunter.
“Got six days of footage of you,” said the man. “Parking, hiking into the park. You know where you are. You did this last year too.”
“Just… feeding my family?” tried Johnny. “How do you know my name?”
“With a modified… This is a thousand dollar gun, and that’s without looking up the cost of the scope,” scoffed the man. “Car registration,” he added. “Your name’s Jonathan Price. You just seem like a Johnny. Come on.”
Johnny found himself handed off to rangers inside of four hours.
Never did get the bastard's name.
*****
Geralt stayed back after Johnny was driven away.
One of the rangers hadn’t left yet, seemed a little curious. His partner was next to him, shaking his head.
New guy, Geralt reasoned.
“So, um, you’re the wolf guy?” asked the fresher looking ranger.
Geralt nodded. “Hnn.”
“Do you just… Live in the park?”
Geralt gave him a bland look. “Asking for my ID?” he said, patting himself a moment to find his wallet.
“I mean, no. But, sure?” the ranger said.
Geralt handed over the whole wallet. It was thin, worn leather with a rivet where you could attach a chain if you wanted to.
The ranger stared at it a moment, then handed it back. “Pleasure to meet you,” he said, slightly stiffly, before turning and going back to his partner. His partner who gave Geralt a smile and a wave before they went driving off, back to the nearest main road.
Geralt watched them leave before starting after them. Roche’d be parked along here somewhere, he knew.
This Roche was a late model Subaru Outback, modified to have higher clearance. He gave the hood a gentle pat as the doors unlocked.
The season was about over anyway, time to store Roche in a unit for the winter, change boots, and head overseas.
*****
First class was usually for suckers but sometimes Yennefer liked to rub elbows with what she still called the peasantry.
The peasantry sighed at her and repeated that he sort of preferred to be called ‘Geralt’, thanks?
“Hush,” she told him. “You can afford to fly in better seats than coach. You know this, I know this, but until you buy the nice seats and I don’t have to have you bumped up to sit with me, you’re peasantry.”
“Worse things to be,” Geralt said, looking out the window.
She smiled to herself, tapping the screen in front of her to pre order some mimosas for them both. “There are worse things to be but it’s not that long a list,” she mused to herself. Ooh, peach juice mimosas? Yes please.
She pulled a small box out of her purse with slow deliberation. Undid the crisply folder paper with her nails, careful not to tear it
She didn't need to look to know Geralt was paying attention, even if he hadn't turned his head. He could probably smell the box's contents by now if he hadn't already been aware of them.
“That's not Valhrona,” he said after a moment.
“No,” she said. “Found a delightful little boutique, though. They even do custom batches, if you ask politely.”
Eight squares of dark glossy chocolate gleamed at her. She picked one up delicately.
“Do they now?” he said. “Some small back alley in… France? But not Paris.”
“Correct,” she said. She smiled and held it out to him at mouth level. He turned his head and obligingly took it from her fingers. “Enjoy it now before the air pressure and altitude mess with your tastebuds.”
He hummed and leaned his head back, eyes closing. Chocolate tended to do that to him, after all. She didn’t expect an answer for a few minutes.
She put the lid back on the box and slid it into his lap while he quietly let the confection in his mouth melt all the way through take off.
Better than a Dramamine.
“You’re welcome.”
He finally swallowed, with a contented sigh. “Thank you, Yen,” he said because he knew what was good for him
She waited for him to carefully squirrel away the remaining chocolates before handing over the tightly rolled magazine. “Here. Entertain yourself for a while, I’ll rest my eyes,” she said, unbuckling and putting her seat in the ‘bed’ position, flat and padded.
“Rolling Stone?” Geralt asked, but he took it and smoothed the cover out.
If Yennefer didn’t know him as well as she did… Well. Anyone else would have thought she might as well have handed him a very smooth pebble, for all he reacted.
Most people wouldn’t have noticed the shift in his breathing, or the way his eyes ever so slightly narrowed while the pupils widened.
He folded the cover back and went to the table of contents.
“Page seventeen,” Yennefer said, shutting her eyes. “Now hush.”
“Hnn.”
*****
The first thing that strikes me, when I find myself across from Jay DeLyon, is that he’s larger in person. Even sitting at a high top in West Hollywood, it’s clear he’s got several inches on me both in height and at the shoulders.
It's slightly disconcerting, as I am not a short man. I’m used to stars looking big on the stage and on the screen, but it’s not often the real thing can voraciously demand attention without a spotlight.
“It’s the shirts,” DeLyon says, when I make some element of my surprise visible. “No one expects people wearing lace shirts to be tall.”
“Or broad,” I say.
“Or broad,” he agrees, shrugging and looking at the menu, a quick scan. “I don’t like to intimidate, to loom over people.”
He asks what’s good here, with an easy smile, and if there was any lingering awkwardness it goes away immediately.
I’ve managed to catch him between cities, on this Wednesday afternoon. He just got in this morning for the start of the North American leg of his first stadium tour (currently slated to end in October, if they ever stop adding stops and extensions).
“They’re already trying to get me to circle back to LA at the end,” he says when I asked about that. “If I do that, this’ll be the last show of this tour, because at some point I'll want a nap.”
Before I can ask about what’s next for the performer currently on top, the first round of drinks and tapas arrives. DeLyon throws back a Sidecar before starting on the olives. “I’m a fan of lots of tiny plates,” he explains. “Something about variety in a meal.”
I start to ask about him growing up, when he first started writing songs, but his nose wrinkles. “Oh, that’s no fun,” he says. “Piano lessons and high school swim and wrestling, college… That’s all public record and if I talk about it you’ll find some dreadful yearbook picture to put in your article. Ask something fun.”
It’s true, any entry level fan can tell you that DeLyon started his public facing musical career a bit later than most, graduating from Harvard Law before breaking onto the scene at the age of 25. If you didn’t know about the various pen names he’d used while writing several number one hits, you’d think he was born from an acorn.
Okay, fine.
Everyone knows the story, going from his first open mic at a dive bar in San Jose to opening for The Howling Primates three weeks later, to a record deal and an absolute rocketship of a ride to where he is now.
“Why was that the first time you performed in public?” I ask, because I did find a yearbook, and as far as I could tell, very few people had even been aware he wrote songs, let alone had a comfortable income from selling them.
“I had a song I wanted heard, and I wanted people to know who had written it.”
***
Geralt glanced at Yennefer, who was, naturally, asleep and would not be amenable to being woken up.
He looked back at the magazine page.
Names he didn’t recognize were clustered in the corner of the page, telling him who had made what articles of jewelry and clothing DeLyon was wearing.
Or not wearing?
It looked a bit like he’d been artfully wrapped in one long sarong of some sort, though the fact it was enough fabric to make a tent didn’t actually mean it was offering much in the way of coverage. The belts were by Dolce and Gabbana, Burberry, Coach, and wrapped everywhere but his damn waist; bangles on his wrists.
He looked good. Jaskier looked good, no matter what his stage name was, or if he still went by Jay-short-for-Jason, the way he had what, eight years ago? Ten? Not that Jaskier had remembered him then, or would even remember that now, realistically.
He’d filled out a little, Geralt noted. Seemed happier.
Fuck.
Geralt looked at Yennefer again, wanting to demand if she’d seen him, if he remembered.
The rest of the article didn’t give him many clues about that, but ‘I’ve had emerging dreams of a past life' wasn’t exactly interview fodder. Was it? Geralt didn’t read enough magazines to know what a typical interview was like these days.
There were a few more pictures; the yearbook photo was there as ‘DeLyon’ had predicted. Shots from some festival or another. A picture of him posing with fans somewhere in Tokyo, four of them clustered around Jaskier covered in what Geralt supposed was fashion. Jaskier was standing in a way that made them look as if they were all the same height.
He flipped through the magazine to find the last part of the article.
Scowled. It said at time of publishing ten more stops had been added, and eight were sold out, but it didn’t say where and he had no way of looking it up without asking Yenn. His phone didn’t do things like that. He’d only recently gotten rid of his pager, after all.
Yenn was experiencing the sleep of total lack of regret. Geralt wondered what that was like. Maybe if he let her get him one of those slim little computers he’d be able to look up more information on his own but frankly the damn things broke too easily. He rather not have one than deal with an unreliable tool.
He went back to the pictures, knowing a staged image wasn’t going to offer up anything as useful as an address, a trail. It wasn’t going to give him answers, unless the question was ‘Does DeLyon look healthy, hale and good?’ in which case the answer was yes.
He looked at Yenn again. She’d probably take the chocolate back if he woke her, bare minimum, and she might not be useful until they were landing in New York anyway just to punish him.
And nothing he did would make the plane go faster anyway.
He folded the magazine back up, tucked it away. Didn’t bother trying to make the seat more comfortable, it was already down soft and suffocating. He did shut the window and turn off the lights.
Closed his eyes to try to meditate, listening to the engines, the other passengers, the service dog ten rows back, the captain and his co-pilot discussing lunch.
He settled on someone listening to a radio show of some sort a little too loud on their headphones. It probably had a different name now, but the hosts were discussing the downfall of some con artist.
That'd work.
***
By the time the plane was touching down he was actually slightly invested, names jotted down in his notebook to look into later along with a vague resolve to find out if he could get podcasts onto cassette tapes.
Yennefer had stretched leisurely just in time to put her seat in the upright position. “Did you even check a bag or is your whole life in your carry on again?”
“I pack efficiently,” Geralt said, watching the line of her neck a moment while she rolled her head from shoulder to shoulder.
“Mm hm.”
He counted to five in his head before giving up and handing the magazine back. Trying to. She looked at it politely, then looked back at Geralt.
He huffed out half a sigh. “Does he remember?” he asked, not particularly willing to play games but knowing he didn’t have much of a choice in the matter.
Yennefer shook her head. “Not fully,” she said. “But…”
He waited another five count before gently prodding her with the magazine in the arm. “But what, Yen?” he said.
“He might just need a push,” she allowed.
“That didn’t work last time.”
“That was chance, that he found you,” she said. “This time it won’t be.”
“He’s been having the dreams?” Geralt pressed.
“If he is he’s not talking about it directly,” she said. “But it is him. A push should work.”
“Should work,” he echoed.
“He’d been dead a long time, so should is the best I can do,” she said.
Geralt knew that. Had known that. He took a breath in, looking at the cover of the magazine, again. Looking for the month, the year on it.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s get to our next flight.”
Geralt looked at her as they stood. “I didn’t think you liked Russia,” he said dryly before asking. “Where are we going instead?”
“First, to a better airline,” she said “Then Barcelona, where there is a bath and a change of clothes waiting for you.”
“I did bathe before coming to the airport,” he said, but he followed her. He’d always follow her.
“Which I and everyone else here appreciates,” she told him over a shoulder. “But you’ll want to look your best as my personal security for the show.”
Geralt nodded. Nothing short of a sneak attack explosion measured in megatons would endanger Yennefer by now, so having him as a plus one was either for her own amusement or because she thought he’d enjoy himself.
“When’s the last time you went to a show?” she asked, her shoes clicking on the tiles as they navigated their way to the next flight.
“Not recently,” Geralt said. “Don’t like crowds, and there’s such big crowds for shows. I assume they have… Fireworks?”
“That’s very likely for this one,” Yennefer said.
When he tried to picture Jaskier performing, it was hard to visualize something much larger than a dining hall. Certainly not the shoulder to shoulder masses of a modern concert, pictures of which had been in the magazine.
Then again, when he pictures Jaksier performing, it was usually… A tavern at most if not merely the road, working out lyrics idly, plucking away at catgut and wood.
He did like fireworks, though having them in a crowd seemed. Bad. After all, every summer in Yellowstone he could follow the gunpowder smells and lights and bangs to yell at idiots with roman candles trying to burn down the forest.
Geralt wondered if Jaskier performed in the belt and Sarong get up but decided… Probably not.
Hopefully not.
“Where is the show? Besides Barcelona?”
“Palau Sant Jordi.”
“Is that a large stage?”
“It’s not small,” she said. “Little under twenty thousand, if you’re asking capacity.”
Geralt tried not to wince. That sounded loud.
******
The next plane was huge. Air France, First Class out of New York.
Yennefer breezed them in and onto the plane with thirty minutes until take off, and he was shown to a… Not a seat. A nook? A small room almost. A seat that could become a bed, a desk. Amenities. A menu, even.
He wasn’t entirely certain what all the words in the menu meant. Confit? Bream? Comté?
“You’ll like it,” said Yennefer, sitting across the aisle from him and watching him read the menu. “Very fresh ingredients. Bream is a fish.”
“I’ll try the lamb,” Geralt said.
“There’s a cheese tray first,” she said.
“It’s not that long a flight,” said Geralt, who had assumed he’d be eating when he touched down in eastern Europe and had some dried fruit in his bag.
He had to admit that nothing they brought out smelled bad, though. Even the cheeses that often carried a trace of the plastics they were wrapped up in, in this case, smelled more like wax?
Modern preservatives made his nose itch. The charcuterie board they brought out? Did not.
Not even the…
“Why is there bait?” he asked Yen politely, giving the glistening pile of tiny translucent eggs a gentle nudge.
Yen gave him a look. “You mean the caviar?” she asked.
Geralt kept his face schooled, and nodded.
Her eyes narrowed at him, very slightly.
He didn’t pretend to fully know Yennefer, or any woman, really, but he knew he could probably push it a little bit further.
“Is that the word for fish bait here?” he asked. “Or in French?”
Her lips thinned ever so slightly and he knew her well enough to guess that she was recalling past meals with him, and trying to recall if caviar had ever come up.
Geralt smiled and used the little supplied spoon to put some on a cracker with a smear of cheese that he could almost taste the grass in.*
*This was a good thing.
“I think I like it better when it’s called roe,” Geralt said.
She gave a demure snort. “I don’t know why I'm seen with you, some days,” she said.
“You miss me when I'm gone for too long,” Geralt said. “And the skies are starless without you.”
********