TW for brief discussion of scars from a suicide attempt, and mention of a car accident
It's entirely Roach's fault that Geralt falls in love with Jaskier.
They're standing outside the café waiting for Yennefer when a young guy crouches down in front of Roach and starts talking to her. Geralt glances down from where he's been staring at his phone – it's not unusual, Roach is ridiculously charming and sweet, and it takes forever for Geralt to walk anywhere because everyone wants to pet her. Yenn's theory is that Geralt got stuck with an extroverted dog to make up for his general dislike for people, and she finds it hilarious.
"She's absolutely gorgeous," the man says, looking up at Geralt with bright blue eyes and a smile that takes up nearly his entire face. "What's her name?"
"Roach," Geralt says gruffly.
The man stares at him for a moment with an expression of disbelief on his face. "Roach?" he finally manages, gesturing to the fluffy three-legged golden retriever who is currently trying to sit in his lap. "You named this beautiful girl after a bug?"
Geralt shrugs. "She likes it."
The man rolls his eyes, scratching behind Roach's ear while she pants at him, tongue lolling out the side of her mouth. "Well, despite your ridiculous name, you are adorable," he says to her. She licks his cheek in response.
The front door of the café dings and Yennefer appears, balancing two coffees and a bag of pastries. As soon as she sees the man, her expression slips into something that's halfway between exasperated and affectionate.
"I see you've met Jaskier," she says, handing Geralt his coffee.
It takes a second for the name to float around Geralt's subconscious, attempt to make a connection to one of his conversations with Yennefer, and finally piece together that this is the guy in her art history class that she refers to as, "an idiot hipster who thought Michelangelo was a cartoon character instead of the person who painted the fucking Sistine Chapel."
"Ah, Yennefer," Jaskier says, brushing the dust off his jeans and standing. "I'm surprised you're not off sacrificing kittens to your dark overlord."
Yenn rolls her eyes and tosses a piece of croissant at his head, which he catches smoothly and pops into his mouth. "So," he says, making a very obvious display of checking out Geralt from head to toe. "Tall, handsome, broody – you must be Geralt."
Geralt's not really sure what to say to that, so he just gives Jaskier a half nod and looks awkwardly down at Roach. He can feel Yenn's curious gaze on him and in a desperate bid to get out from under both of their gazes, he gestures down the street.
"We're going to the park," he says quickly.
"Excellent," Jaskier says, patting the top of Roach's head and grabbing one of the muffins from Yennefer. "Shall we?"
After that, Geralt supposes that they're all official friends because Jaskier just… doesn't leave. Suddenly he starts to show up at the café, or trails after Yennefer when they're done class, or sometimes appears at the park when Geralt's spending the afternoon there with Roach.
Normally Geralt would be irritated with the intrusion – he's not a people person, and some days he can't even stand Yennefer, who he's been friends with since they were kids. Plus, Jaskier never shuts up. He takes Geralt's silences and fills them with words, with humming, with random stories and bits of songs that he sings as he picks flowers and tucks them into Roach's fur.
Geralt listens sometimes, but other times he tunes out the words, and Jaskier's voice becomes a muted soundtrack to the time they spend together. Sometimes Yenn tells Jaskier to shut up, but he usually just retaliates by calling her a bitch, and then she'll call him a stupid twink, and Geralt just stops listening completely. He's not entirely how their friendship works. They spend a ridiculous amount of time together for people who don't really seem to like each other.
Roach adores Jaskier, of course. Every time he sees her, he immediately sits down on the ground and lets her climb all over him, licking his face and headbutting him as he sweet talks her and tells her how pretty she is. It's the excuse Geralt uses when Yennefer starts to tease him.
"Really?" she says, raising an eyebrow and kicking him under the table. "You hang out with Jaskier because Roach likes him?"
Geralt just hms at her and looks the other way.
"Why did you name her Roach?" Jaskier asks one day. He's lying on his back with his arms tucked behind his head, staring up at the blue summer sky. Roach is beside him with her head resting on his chest and Geralt's leaning against a tree nearby, whittling a piece of wood his pocketknife. When he doesn't answer right away, Jaskier tips his head back and looks at Geralt upside down.
Geralt keeps his eyes on the wood in his hands. His chest twists uncomfortably and part of him wants to tell Jaskier to fuck off. It's none of his business. But there's something about the blue of his eyes and the freckles across his nose that make Geralt feel like telling the truth might be safe.
"She was training to be a service dog," he says. "For a friend of mine."
Jaskier doesn't say anything, just rolls over on his stomach and pillows his chin on his folded forearms. There's a patch of yellow flowers in front of him and he starts to pick them. There's something comforting about the fact that he doesn't expect Geralt to look at him when he's talking, and that he doesn't push. Even when five minutes pass and Geralt hasn't said anything, Jaskier just keeps picking flowers and waits patiently.
"We got in a car accident," Geralt says eventually. "He died and she almost did. Lost her leg." Jaskier makes a sympathetic sound. "I took her. Changed her name. She didn't answer to her old one." Geralt runs his fingers over the smooth wood in his hands. "I picked it 'cause roaches can survive pretty much anything."
Roach perks up at her name and stands up, shaking out her fur before trotting over to Geralt and leaning against him. He gives her a half-smile, reaching up and brushing his fingers through her fur.
"Were you hurt?" Jaskier asks.
It's not the question Geralt's expecting, and he looks back over at Jaskier, frowning.
"You said 'we,'" he clarifies. "You were in the accident too?"
Geralt tips his head back against the tree, staring up at the way the sunlight falls through the branches and leaves dappled shadows across the ground. "Yeah." He fiddles with the sleeve of his shirt, then tugs it up and holds out his arm. The twisted, ugly scar that runs from his wrist to halfway up his bicep is stark against his tanned skin and he hates it.
Jaskier studies it intently, pushing himself back up again until he's cross-legged and close enough to Geralt that they're nearly touching. He doesn't reach out, though, and Geralt appreciates it.
"I'm sorry," Jaskier says eventually.
"'s just a scar," Geralt says, tugging his sleeve back down and trying to push away the uncomfortable memory of metal crunching and broken glass. "Everybody's got them."
Jaskier nods, running his fingers up his own arm. Geralt knows there are scars there – smaller than his, random and chaotic. He'd seen them one time when they'd been in the washroom at the same time and Jaskier had rolled up his sleeves to wash his hands. Geralt hadn't asked, but Jaskier had seen him looking and had said, "It's a long story," before hiding them again under his sweater.
"We do," Jaskier says now, picking up the pile of dandelions and tossing them in a tiny cloud that drifts across both his and Geralt's laps. Roach turns to grab a few from the air and the sight of it makes Geralt laugh.
Jaskier gives him a strange look and Geralt returns it for a second, then drops his gaze to the yellow petals scattered across his hands.
"I've never heard you laugh," Jaskier says, and Geralt doesn't know what it means when he's disappointed that Jaskier's right.
Jaskier is not only excessively vocal in person – he also loves to text. Somehow Geralt ends up with some kind of Twitter account, and he never touches it, but his phone is constantly exploding with messages. Ninety percent of them are from Jaskier – videos of baby wolves learning to howl, silly memes that Geralt doesn't really understand, pictures of Jaskier in ridiculous outfits or silly photo filters.
Yenn and her new girlfriend Triss join in and decide that Roach needs her own Instagram page, so they spend hours taking photos of her rolling around in the grass and playing with Jaskier in Yenn's back yard. Geralt leans against the edge of the porch and watches them tussle, and it makes something inside him burn bright in a way that it never has before.
So there's texting and memes, and Jaskier bringing his guitar down to the beach to play pop songs that Geralt doesn't recognize (Jaskier makes up new lyrics with him that are much less appropriate than the originals). They spend weekends at the Farmer's Markets, and Wednesday evenings playing D&D, and half the time they end up at Geralt's apartment, sprawled over the couches with pizza boxes everywhere while Jaskier and Yennefer try to beat each other in Mariokart.
Everything is gradual, and it hits Geralt one day that everything's changed – that he's gone from his tiny world of him and Roach to a crowd of new people that maybe don't seem so bad after all.
Then, Jaskier disappears.
At first it doesn't seem so strange. Geralt nearly sleeps too late one day because he's gotten so used to a message from Jaskier appearing at exactly the right time to wake him up. Then he doesn't hear from Jaskier throughout the day, and by the time dinner comes, Geralt's starting to feel anxious.
He swipes through his phone for a while, eventually ending up on a photo of Roach with a crown of dandelions that Jaskier had made for her last week. He hesitates for a minute before sending it – he's never the one to initiate their messaging – but figures that it can't hurt.
Jaskier doesn't respond.
Maybe he lost his phone, Geralt reasons. Or is out of town. Busy with work. Joined a new band. There's a tiny, nearly silent whisper in the back of Geralt's mind that says, he probably doesn't want to see you anymore, but Geralt's been getting better and better at telling that voice to go fuck itself.
After the third day of radio silence from Jaskier, Geralt's convinced that something is wrong. His phone isn't being blown up with stupid memes or gifs or the ten thousand emojis Jaskier likes to send, and Geralt should be thankful for it. Instead he's unsettled. He doesn't like to admit it, but he's gotten used to waking up with thirty-six notifications on his phone, all from Jaskier.
So he texts Yennefer instead.
Have you heard from Jas lately?
It takes her a few hours to respond which isn't unusual, but when she does, the only thing she says is Jas? with some sort of suggestive-looking emoji.
Jaskier, Geralt writes back, rolling his eyes. He refuses to add emojis – he has dignity, after all. Haven't heard from him in a couple days.
You're an adult, Yennefer replies. Have you tried, perhaps, texting him yourself?
How do you know I haven't already?
Because I've known your emotionally constipated ass for twelve years and you suck at this shit.
Geralt scowls at the message, then turns his phone to 'do not disturb' and shoves it in his pocket. Jaskier's probably fine – it's not like they're best friends or anything. They barely know each other.
But then another two days goes by and Geralt still hasn't heard from Jaskier, and the uncomfortable feeling in his stomach starts to turn into something like fear, so he gives in. He stares at his phone for almost an hour before hitting 'send,' and as soon as he does, he feels like an idiot.
You okay?
Yenn's right, he is shit at this. It's why he doesn't have friends, never mind a best one.
Later that day he gets a reply.
Hey. I'm fine, just been sick.
Geralt frowns at the message. It's stupid, but the lack of exclamation points and emojis is unsettling. The bizarre, excessive energy that defines Jaskier isn't there, and it feels… wrong.
Roach misses you, he replies, and he's glad that nobody's around to see the red flush that creeps up the back of his neck to his ears. Do you want to come to the park this afternoon? I still owe you coffee from last week.
The only reply he gets is, Maybe when I'm feeling better.
Later that evening, Geralt realizes what an idiot he's been.
He's sitting with Yenn on the bench at the park while Roach rolls around in a patch of clover, and Yenn's talking about her date with Triss last night, and everything seems normal enough. Then Yenn rolls up her sleeves and Geralt's eyes are drawn to the scars across her wrists, and suddenly he feels like he's going to be sick.
"Yenn," he says, and he knows he's interrupting but this is important. She must sense the urgency in his voice because she stops talking and frowns at him. "You… your…" He gestures at the scars and she looks vaguely uncomfortable for a second, then nods.
"You know what happened," she says quietly.
He hesitates, then says, "Jas has scars, too."
Yenn frowns at him, turning on the bench and tucking a leg up underneath her. "You mean like—"
"Not the same," Geralt says quickly. "Not—they were different. More of them." His stomach clenches and thinks back to the awkward answer Jaskier had given him. "Fuck. He did that to himself, didn't he?"
"Maybe," Yenn says, running her fingers along the thick marks. "It's probably not something he'd want to talk about."
"I know, but…" Geralt pulls his phone out and opens it to his message history with Jaskier. "He's been weird lately. I thought he had the flu – he said he was sick."
"He probably is," Yenn says, scanning the messages. "But maybe not the way you think."
Roach appears next to Geralt, resting her chin on his knee and looking up at him. He sighs, scratching behind her ears and tapping his thumb against his phone.
"You're right," he says, then looks over at Yenn. "Would you—"
She shakes her head. "He and I are friends," she says, "but I don't think I'm the right person to help." She gives Geralt what he thinks is an encouraging smile. "You can do it."
Geralt huffs, standing up and grabbing Roach's leash. "I guess we'll see."