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janie_tangerineIt’s not that Jaskier is handling this like shit.
Or well, maybe he is, but — he hasn’t hoarded toilet paper, he hasn’t hoarded sanitizer, he has bought all of his food three days ago and he’s carefully taken care to not go out if not to throw away the trash, and every time he went out with gloves that he immediately threw out after, he postponed all the concerts he had planned and is giving streams instead. He has been doing exemplarily, on that side.
The problem is that no one else in this neighborhood fucking is, and considering that the news only talk about the people who have just ran away now that the city is officially in a red zone — for what, to bring their possibly infected asses outside and pass it over to their fucking grandmothers?? —, that he keeps on seeing people walking by without a care in the world or for social distancing and so on, he’s about going to lose his fucking shit.
Is it so complicated to just stay in and follow the rules? No, of course it’s complicated, people have to go out so that it’s one hundred percent sure this stupid quarantine will last far longer than it could, and he’ll have to make people pay for his streams when he’d rather do it for free, but he also has to pay his damned bills and he’d rather perform, damn it.
Day four and he has screamed from his balcony to get the fuck back inside to at least five elderly neighbors who don’t get they’re at risk, day five and he’s had to do that with teenagers who decided that since they weren’t going to school it was a good idea to skip the online classes and hang around while not respecting social distancing, day seven and he’s done it to both categories so many times he’s halfway sure he’ll ruin his voice for the next fucking month.
Probably, the icy water was an exaggeration, but after spending three days not sleeping because this entire situation is making him fucking anxious and he can’t be anxious if he has to stream concerts and not making whoever sees them feel any worse, he had sworn to himself that the next idiot he saw going around without being in line for the supermarket was going to get the literal cold shower.
Maybe he did exaggerate a bit.
Anyway, he had the bucket ready on the balcony and he had hoped he wouldn’t need to —
And then he sees this guy in a fucking leather jacket strolling calmly along the road at fucking eight in the morning, with no grocery bags, no dog to walk and no apparent excuse to be out, and fine, he hasn’t slept a wink tonight also because he did three streams one of which for the American time zones, so it’s not his best moment.
He does dunk the icy water on top of the guy’s head, with a most likely not dignified You’re supposed to stay at home, damn it.
Except that then leather jacket guy with actually damn nice hair, it’s very pale blonde but it looks almost white in the sunlight, glares up at him with what seems like amber eyes, and isn’t it a lovely color, scoffs, opens his mouth and says —
“Except that I’m a pharmacist, genius,” he says, “and I’m supposed to open in an hour and now I’m fucking drenched.”
Oh.
Oh.
Jaskier feels like fainting on the balcony, and shit now he wants the ground to open and swallow him whole, and then he realizes that the poor guy is standing in the middle of the road dunked in icy water, for —
“Fuck, I’m sorry, I — listen, uh, I’ve got a dryer and a shower, if you want to come up you can hop in real quick and I can help you with that? I swear I’m usually not like this but —”
“Yes,” the guy says, interrupting his rant, “just open the door.”
Jaskier immediately does, tells him what floor he should get to and immediately goes to get a few towels ready so that when the guy shows up he doesn’t waste time — he doesn’t, actually, barely even saying a word through chattering teeth before he locks himself in the bathroom and leaves the clothing on the outside.
Jaskier immediately puts shirt, trousers and sweater in the dryer before laying the jacket out on a chair in front of a window, at least it’s sunny outside, and then leaves them back in front of the bathroom door.
It takes the guy half an hour to dry his hair, and when he shows back up he’s dressed, but the jacket is still soaked.
“Whatever,” he says, “it’s not far. I can run and I have a spare coat there. I’ll be back this evening for it,” he says, and Jaskier says of course, it’s not like he’s going anywhere.
He doesn’t go out on the balcony for the entire day and sleeps the morning off on the couch, and when he wakes up he gets an entire pot of coffee and eats some late lunch and then he thinks he has himself in check enough to not look like a complete asshole when the pharmacist shows up… probably at dinner time.
He does, around eight in the evening — Jaskier told him the surname as he left and he obviously didn’t forget it.
The jacket is, thankfully, dry.
“Hey,” he says as the guy puts it on, and shit he’s hot, Jaskier realizes now that he has a chance of looking at him in the face, with that chiseled face and large shoulders and long hair and amber eyes, which are frankly gorgeous, “I just — I was a jerk and I think I could offer you a beer or something in repayment, if you’d like. Jaskier, by the way.”
“Yeah, it’s written on your door,” the guy half-smiles, shaking his head. “Geralt,” he says, not shaking his hand, “and you know what, it was a tiring day, so I’ll take that beer. Honest, I could have dunked icy water on half of the people coming in today wanting to throttle me because we don’t have hand sanitizer anymore.”
“… No one has hand sanitizer,” Jaskier says, handing him a beer.
“Hm, my point exactly,” Geralt agrees, and then drinks half of the beer in one go.
Jaskier wishes he hadn’t felt his dick stir very, very strongly at the sight.
“Yeah, well,” he blurts, “this entire building decided it’s a good time for socializing, and I haven’t slept very well lately, so — I kind of lost my shit at that. Sorry about that. Really, I’m mortified.”
“It’s fine,” Geralt sighs, “not the worst thing that ever happened to me and it was obvious you didn’t mean it.”
“Good,” he says, “but — no, really, I’m — usually better than that. Gods, I can’t believe I really did it.”
“And I told you it was fine the first ten times you apologized. Most people would’ve just let me go back to work like that.”
“… What kind of people do you even know?”
The man shakes his head. “You couldn’t imagine. Anyway, thanks for the drink. Guess I’ll go back.”
“Sure,” Jaskier says, and then he decides that fuck it, he does sort of like this guy and he doesn’t want things to end here. “By the way, I’m — I’m a musician. I’m doing free streams these days and maybe a paid one each week or so. If I can pay you back, you can just ask for an access code to the paid ones, for what it’s worth.”
“Hm,” Geralt ponders, “maybe it could be interesting. Where do I find you?”
Jaskier hands him a piece of paper with the name of his YouTube channel, Geralt pockets it and asks when it’s the next free one. Jaskier says at ten later that evening. Geralt hums again and disappears out of the door.
Jaskier will take care to give a decent performance, later.
— —
He checks the YouTube comments after he’s done.
There is one that can only be from Geralt, he can recognize his face in the picture.
My daughter likes your music, it reads. Any chance for that other kind of stream?
Jaskier’s fingers are shaking as he types back.
Of course. Give me your Skype contact and I can send you the instructions when it’s time.
Geralt actually leaves him the contact.
Jaskier saves it quickly before deleting the comment and proceeds to almost faint against his couch.
— —
The paid streams actually work a bit differently — he has a maximum of ten people present for it and takes a request for each of them and if he doesn’t get ten requests he chooses the remaining three songs, and this time he has some five plus Geralt, but since he’s apparently watching with his daughter, Jaskier tells him in private that they can actually choose two, and he’s actually surprised that it’s songs from his first self-released EP that he has put on for free on his website but that he’s pretty sure most people who follow him haven’t heard.
Huh.
So she is a fan.
He takes care to put extra effort in both performances of those songs, not that he doesn’t for the others, but still. When Geralt messages him and says that Ciri (the daughter, most likely) loved it, he says it was his pleasure and he could milk another couple free streams from him, since he still feels like shit for the ice cold water.
He doesn’t expect Geralt to actually take him up on it.
But he does.
— —
Two free streams later, he gets a private message.
From Ciri.
Who asks if she can talk to him.
Jaskier says of course, wondering if she wants to inquire about another stream — at this point he’s going to just give her free access period, he still feels like complete shit about this —, but then turns out that it’s not the case.
The case is that according to Ciri her dad doesn’t really like people much never mind connect with them and he’s had issues in that sense but apparently he’s been listening to Jaskier’s music on the way to work and actually looking forward to the streams but he doesn’t want to admit it, and at the end of it, he’ll never say anything because he’s convinced he’s not the relationship type or whatever but he likes you so just do what you want with this information except hurting him.
Jaskier —
Jaskier thinks he’s going to fucking faint.
— —
He considers his options.
For a whole lot of five minutes.
Then, the next morning, he grabs his guitar and goes out on the balcony.
He did ask Ciri what was Geralt’s favorite song of his yet, not that he has any doubts since it was one of his two requests every time after the first.
So maybe it’s overtly corny that the moment he sees Geralt coming up on the street he starts playing, and then Geralt stops dead in his tracks looking up at him when he realizes it’s for him, which was obvious since Jaskier had his eyes on him all the time, and he supposes it would be hard to miss it when he’s basically singing in his face and I've come to know the manger you sleep in, I’ve come to be the stranger that you keep, I've come from down the road and my footsteps never slowed, before we met I knew we'd meet, which… is kind of apt all things considered, and he’s kind of delighted that it’s Geralt’s favorite when you wouldn’t think that might be.
And then he sings the other two stanzas and holds Geralt’s absolutely shocked stare until he’s finished.
“You meant that,” Geralt whispers.
“Wouldn’t have done that in the open if I didn’t,” he smiles back, and —
Geralt bites down on his lip. “Oh, fuck it and fuck social distancing,” he says. “You think I could get another beer tonight?”
Considering that he out of anyone would know how to not get sick, and he doubts Geralt would proposition it if it was really dangerous, he thinks he only has one answer.
“Sure,” he grins back. “I knew you couldn’t resist my celestial voice soaring through the sky just for you.”
“You wish,” Geralt mutters, but he’s blushing and sort of maybe smiling to himself as he heads to the pharmacy, and Jaskier thinks he will take that.
He absolutely will.
And he can’t wait to have Geralt over tonight.
Oh, he definitely cannot wait.
End.
