The Witcher Headcanon (Modern AU) - Error 404 Brain Not Found: Bonus Scene - Part 5
Jaskier pushed the last armload of laundry into the washer and started the cycle.
"Do you think that's too much in there?" he asked Geralt.
"Yeah, you're right. There was still some room at the top."
If Yennefer had been home, she probably would have b*tched at them for not dividing the load. But she wasn't home at the moment, and she wouldn't be back until long after everything was washed, dried, and put away.
Satisfied with the situation, Jaskier and Geralt left the machine to do its job and went to do less boring things. Geralt went up to his room to play with customize his new horse figurine.
Jaskier sat on the floor in the laundry room and made up an impromptu song about laundry, which led to him scribbling down some notes for a song about a poor laundry lass who fell in love with a tanner's son, married him, then ended up washing him and hanging him out on the washing line because she couldn't stand the smell.
Once the clothes were dry, folded, and put away, Jaskier was taking his basket back to the laundry room. He paused at the top of the stairs and turned to ask Geralt something. Then he turned back around. He stared at the stairs, then at the basket in his hands.
Intrusive Thoughts: What if we...?
Jaskier: No, that only works in movies. And they use stuntmen.
Intrusive Thoughts: If a stuntman can do it, so can we!"
Jaskier: But I'm not a stuntman."
Intrusive Thoughts: It's just physics! Center of gravity and mass and all that! It's all about balance! Come on, it will be fun! Just like going down a slide!
Geralt saw Jaskier look at the stairs, then at the basket, and before he could blink, Jaskier was sitting in his clothes basket and sliding down the stairs with a small scream.
Jaskier hit the bottom and tumbled out, then lay on the floor laughing his a** off while Geralt rushed down the stairs to see if he was alright. Jaskier got up with an excited whoop. "Geralt, did ye see that? That was f***ing awesome! Ye have to try it!"
Geralt had indeed seen it. And it had looked f***ing awesome. But his sense of self-preservation was screaming at him that it was a very bad idea. Not because he could get hurt. He was a Witcher, and he had incredible balance, strength, and reflexes. The chance of him injuring himself was minimal.
No, what he was afraid of was either breaking something they couldn't hide or fix before Yennefer got home, or Jaskier getting seriously hurt and Yennefer finding out.
The witch would straight up murder his a**, bury him in her garden somewhere, and claim he'd never come back from a contract. It was best to err on the side of caution.
But then again... Geralt watched as Jaskier took another turn going down the stairs, screaming delightedly and cackling as he got to the bottom. Geralt shook his head and marched upstairs. He retrieved his basket from where he'd dropped it and turned to march down the stairs, fully intending to retrun it to the laundry room.
He hesitated, looking down the lenght of the carpeted slope of steps.
No. He was a mature f***ing adult!
But Jaskier was standing there, smiling and laughing, and throwing all kinds of encouragement at him.
No, no he was not going to get sucked into the shenanigans!
But then Jaskier started chanting "Do it! Do it! Do it!"
All of Geralt's brain cells left the chat, leaving only one small neuron flickering just enough for him to think "LEEERROOOOYYYY JEEEEEEEENNNNKINS!" before he went bumping down the stairs in his laundry basket.
Half way down, he tipped forward and tumbled the rest of the way down. Jaskier was laughing breathlessly by the time Geralt reached the bottom and rolled sidways out of the basket. Jaskier was rolling on the floor, holding his sides and howling with laughter along side Geralt.
A look passed between them, and seconds later they were rushing back upstairs.
"You have to lean back a little, so you don't go ar*e over elbow!" Jaskier suggested as Geralt settled himself in the basket for another go.
Geralt tried the suggestion, with slightly better results. After hitting the wall hard enough to have to re-hang one of Yennefer and Jaskier's Awkward Sibling Photoshoot pictures, Geralt had piled a bunch of pillows and couch cushions on the floor around the foot of the stairs and against the wall.
They took turns sliding down with varying degress of success and a sh*t ton of laughing. It turned out Jaskier's first two slides had been beginner's luck. There were spills, tumbles, curses, and a lot of laughing.
"We should try going down at the same time!" Jaskier said as he got up after his latest trip down.
"We won't fit in the same basket!"
"For f**k's-! No, not in the same basket, just at the same time!" Jaskier had grabbed both laundry baskets and set them at the top of the stairs, one behind the other. "Like this!"
Jaskier sat in the basket in front, bracing himself with his legs over the sides so he wouldn't go flying down before he could show Geralt what to do. "Now, you sit in the back one and stick your legs in my basket."
It took a little bit of maneuvering, but they finally ened up with a very short laundry basket 'train'.
"Ready?" Jaskier asked after they were both situated.
"One...twothreegooooo!" Jaskier shouted, picking his feet up and using the hand rail to pull them forward. They started sliding, and there was no going back. They had gotten the balance right, for the first two seconds, and then the leading edge of Jaskier's basket dipped too far down, and the whole thing went tits up.
It was at that moment that the front door swung open. Yennefer walked in just in time to see what appeared to be Geralt and Jaskier falling down the stairs. She gasped in horror as they tumbled over each other before reaching the bottom, landing in a heap.
She was fluttering around them in panic, bombarding them with questions, and thinking surely one of them hand broken their neck. Her concern turned to confusion as Jaskier and Geralt had untangled themselves and slowly gotten to their feet.
"What happened? Are you alright?"
Neither one of them were looking her in the eye, which Yennefer had found highly suspicious. "What did you do?" she'd asked, her tone low and almost threatening.
Geralt had looked at Jaskier, and Jaskier had started grinning like an idiot. Geralt had made a valiant attempt to keep a straight face, but the strain had given him a constipated look. Jaskier had taken one look at Geralt's "pooping face" and had giggling, which had made Geralt start giggling.
Jaskier: *giggle snort* LaUnDrY!
Yennefer narrowed her eyes at him and said flatly, "Laundry," in a tone that suggested she knew d*mn well they had been doing no such thing.
Yennefer had already surveyed the scene and taken in the little details: the baskets, the stratiegic piles of pillows and cushions, the two giggling morons...
"You two ar**holes went down the stairs in the laundry baskets, didn't you!" she'd said accusingly.
By now, the two of them were trying very hard not to look at each other.
Jaskier was practically vibrating with the effort of holding in the laughter that was trying to escape.
Geralt felt Jaskier start turning his head beside him, and hissed desperately at him through their mental link "Don't you dare f***ing look at me!"
"Look at the two of you!" Yennefer snapped in exhasperation, "Not a thought behind your eyes!"
Geralt saw Jaskier twitch out of the corner of his eye, and heard him snort. That was all it took. The two of them burst into outright laughter.
Yennefer sighed and used her magic to reinforce the laundry baskets, make them big enough to hold the two grown adults, and make them 'crash proof'.
"Here, " she said, tossing the baskets at them, "At least do it right so I don't have to bring out the Dumba** Band-aids." Then she went to take a shower and listen to them whooping excitedly as they went back to their game.
