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[vrdantwind]

"Hey, this is Claude! Pretty sure I'm doing this correctly. You can leave me a message here, and I'll get to it as soon as I can. Talk to you soon~."

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[vrdantwind]

"Well, he was never even a little in love with me," Claude says, with something like wry amusement. "That was something we were always clear on, and that he never wanted to give me any false impressions about - we were friends who fucked, and nothing more. If he's usually at least a little in love with the people he sleeps with...maybe that was a warning sign of its own, huh?"

He shakes his head. "All I know is that I'm the same guy now as I was when I first met him, but I went from someone he wanted to spend time with to someone he can't have in his life anymore. And based on what he said, it's because he thought I'd be different when I trusted him. So all I can think is that he liked some person he imagined I could be if he won me over enough, not the person I've been the whole time." He shrugs, looking away. "I guess I couldn't have done anything but disappoint him."

After a moment, however, he seems to forcibly shake the melancholy off, turning back to Geralt with a softer smile. "I'm glad he's with you now. After so long, he knows exactly what he's getting with you, and he couldn't be more obvious about that being exactly what he wants. And if he were going to change his mind about that, he had years of time to do it in. Don't let my troubles with him make you think you have a single thing to worry about, Geralt - you're on a whole other level. And I'm genuinely happy for the both of you."

Now, finally, his smile does turn amused at the mention of what Jaskier did with the sketchbook. "Not quite the overcome reaction I would have expected. What inspired that?"

[lovelybottom]

Jaskier's small love for everyone he sleeps with is probably better described as an infatuation, but perhaps, at this point, it's irrelevant. If that's true, and that Jaskier thought that Claude would somehow be different once he knew him better and trusted him more, than no amount of infatuation would have saved the relationship. Even Geralt can understand that if the person you want doesn't exist yet, you're starting off wrong.

"Hm."

Exactly what he wants. It's true, Jaskier does always know exactly what he wants-- for a little while, anyway. Then, usually, what he wants changes, fickle as the wind. Who's to say that it won't change again? That he won't find someone who suits him better, who has more to offer him than honestly far too many horses? Though perhaps it doesn't matter; perhaps Geralt should take what he can get for as long as it's given to him.

And Claude still wants to know more about the damned journal. Geralt should've seen this coming, of course he would want to know more about the piece of this that he had a hand in, as any busybody would.

"He asked me why I didn't say anything sooner," he replies, the bitten-lemon expression intensifying. "I told him. He said a few other things that had no bearing. Then he threw the journal at me, and missed."

So, really, he should probably be glad that Jaskier has such a poor throwing arm and can miss a man sitting in a bed from across the room. Being a bard doesn't really require him to have much skill in it, at least, otherwise he'd make for a very poor bard. More importantly, though, this is the kind of bare-bones storytelling that frustrates Jaskier every time the witcher comes back from a hunt, and now Claude knows first-hand why he complained so much about it. Absolutely lacking in detail. Specific about nothing. One might almost think it deliberate, except that Geralt's just Like That.

[vrdantwind]

"He threw it?" Claude looks somewhere between amused and exasperated. Of all the stupid reactions he could have thought of, that one has to be pretty high on the list. It'd take more than a thrown notebook to hurt Geralt, of course, even if it had actually hit, but why throw something at the man you love at all? And why a notebook with sketches of such exquisite beauty, sketches that Jaskier must surely treasure now that he knows about them?

It seems to become more obvious in retrospect to Claude that he understood far less of Jaskier than he thought...and not because Claude was ignorant or inattentive, but because Jaskier's actions - especially when driven by high emotion - simply don't make any kind of coherent sense. Of course, emotional reactions aren't always logical, but Jaskier's often seem to be directly contradictory - if not actively toxic - to what he supposedly wants or values.

And how can anyone understand someone who self-sabotages to that extent? Someone for whom thoughts and desires and actions don't necessarily have any connection to each other?

Aloud, he says, "I wouldn't think he'd be inclined to risk damaging the contents like that. Or you, for that matter...actually, didn't he say it was right after prom? Weren't you injured at the time?"

Honestly, worse and worse. Even if Jaskier's miss was intentional rather than incompetent, the levels on which it was stupid to throw the book at all seem to be multiplying.

[lovelybottom]

It would, really, take far more than a thrown journal to hurt Geralt, or really to hurt the journal, either. As for why he might throw things, well... Geralt can be a frustrating person sometimes. He has, occasionally, seen fit to grab a pillow and pummel the witcher for a little while to vent said frustrations. And while Jaskier's emotional outbursts are annoying, they never seem to veer into anything that's actually harmful.

And if Claude is looking for some kind of enlightenment about Jaskier's moods from Geralt, he's... come to the wrong place.

"No," he replies, because, well. It wasn't right after prom, technically all of that shit was still going down. "It was right after Felix cracked me over the head with his pommel. The evening's entertainment--" sarcasm, that "--wasn't over yet."

Does that count as being injured? It was just a concussion, after all, and that's basically nothing. He's surely fought with concussions before. He's probably fought when he's had all sorts of near-fatal maladies, that's just what witchers do. Worrying about something like that is like... fussing over scraped knees or something. Probably.

"I've been injured worse. A little concussion never killed anybody," he says with the confidence of a man who, up until very recently, had superhuman healing abilities. "And I doubt he could've thrown hard enough to damage the journal, either."

[vrdantwind]

"I'm almost positive that's not true," Claude says dryly, "although I guess for witchers it might be different. Even then, though...well, I'm just surprised his mini tantrum managed to overpower his worry, even briefly. And if it didn't, and throwing the book was just an empty gesture because he never even tried to hit you, then why bother throwing it...?"

He shakes his head. "Honestly, the more distance I have from Jaskier, the more I realize I never actually understood anything about him. Not even because I wasn't trying, but because I'm not sure he understands himself, so probably no one else stands a chance either."

Considering Claude's evolving feelings about Jaskier - none of them good - this is the mildest of grumbling. But he's sensitive to who he's speaking to: someone who loves Jaskier, for all his foibles. Claude wouldn't offend Geralt by harshly criticizing his lover to his face; more than that, Claude has never lied about wanting them to be happy together, and he won't do anything to harm or cast doubt on their relationship. So the complaints Claude is offering are, he thinks, not just restrained, but probably quite relatable to Geralt - the sort of eye-rolling even a lover might do. Felix has certainly talked about Claude like this...possibly even more critically.

Any deeper bitterness Claude has...that's for other times, and other ears.

"Anyway, you don't have to throw any kind of book hard to damage it. All it has to do is fall in a way that crumples or crushes the pages." Claude waves a hand. "I'd hate to think of that happening to your sketches. And I think Jaskier and I should have at least that in common, so I wonder what he was thinking." More specifically, Claude wonders if he was thinking.