okay but geraskier modern au in which they first meet bc they live in the same building, and the landlord is showing up to fix something in geralt’s apartment that he didn’t expect, and they’re not supposed to have pets, so jaskier just opens his door to his VERY buff VERY handsome neighbor holding a VERY unimpressed-looking cat like, “hi we’re neighbors we’ve never spoken this is roach can i hide her here please” bc listen jaskier has good vibes and geralt’s desperate
there he goes again, geralt thought.
every morning, without fail, the neighbour guy says hello to roach.
in the beginning, geralt nearly came entirely unhinged. there he was, stepping out of the shower of his ground-floor apartment in a new city, and a shape of another human being stood straddling a bush directly in his front window. what had saved the stranger had been roach’s pleasant little chirrups at the shape and the realisation that the man was scritching at the window for roach to bat at.
okay. weird? yes. murderous? mmm. yet to be seen.
but the neighbour had done nothing but stop in geralt’s window each morning and make little coos at his cat.
the cat he really wasn’t supposed to have.
the cat the landlord was t-minus thirty minutes from running into thanks to a bum aircon unit.
all told…. the neighbour guy was his only option. he couldn’t very well put roach in the car. if the heat wasn’t a problem, he wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place. he didn’t have any friends in this city yet (he said yet like he hadn’t been there a year) and his family were miles and miles away.
so under the bed went roach’s personal effects and up went roach. almost as if she knew some absolute buffoonery was afoot, she very helpfully dug one paw’s worth of claw into geralt’s tit and made unconvincing hurgling sounds the entire way down the hall.
“he’s not going to be friends with you if you keep that up,” geralt muttered, reaching the stairs and putting a hand under roach’s bum just before she decided to turn into a liquid. “he’s really not going to be friends with you if you do that.”
geralt hadn’t been snooping. that’d be the hill he’d die on, if he had to.
he’d simply been… admiring the view one day, when he saw his cat-infatuated neighbour speaking animatedly on the phone with someone and pacing to and fro in front of his bedroom window. from that vantage, geralt had estimated that the apartment he was stood out front had to be his, but…
well, if it wasn’t, there wasn’t really a good explanation, was there?
he knocked.
“coming!” a voice trilled from inside. “you’re early, so i’m— you’re not pris— oh, hello, beautiful!”
“um. hi,” geralt replied. helpfully, roach yowled. “is that how you always answer the door?”
“i was expecting someone else, but now i’m curious.” the man replied.
“hello, curious. i’m geralt.” he hefted the cat slightly higher, wincing as she dug further into his tit and her upset sounds reached a peak. “this is roach, and we are about to ask you for a really weird favour,”
“i’m jaskier and i’m sold.”
“i didn’t even explain yet,”
“when someone this lovely shows up at your door, i think you’d be hard pressed to say no,”
geralt felt his face heat as he tried to prise roach’s claws out of him as delicately as possible.
“i— i’ve got to get back down,” he stammered. “landlord. aircon. you know,”
“i do now,” jaskier replied. “give me the baby.”
the baby, traitor, began purring the instant she was plonked into the other man’s waiting arms.
“won’t be long.” geralt promised heading back for the stairs. before he began his descent, he felt a little brave and turned back. “were you talking to me or the cat earlier?”
“the cat!” jaskier said decisively. “but you’re not so bad yourself.”
