#and instead everything is show-based headcanons au ideas and shippy ficlets

[des8pudels8kern]

Apparently female ferrets can die if they go into heat and then don’t mate.

That settles it. If I ever do a Witcher daemon AU, Jaskier's daemon will be a ferret. Lanky, ridiculous, curious, likes company, very active during dusk and dawn, cute but actually a predator, and, well:

Unless they are going to be used for breeding purposes, female ferrets will go into extended heat. A female that does not mate can die of aplastic anemia without medical intervention. (wikipedia)

AU!Jaskier will definitely be telling people he will literally die if they don’t sleep with him, appealing either to their soft heart (safe him!) or their pride (who else can say they gave someone an orgasm so good it saved their life).

Jaskier will of course also use this excuse whenever he’s gotten in trouble by playing sword-into-sheath with the wrong person.

“Yes, they did just chase us out of town, and with pitchforks, all in all a less than dignified departure, but we would have died, Geralt, died! Ugh, this rain is terrible; I’d be drier if I jumped in a lake. Anyway, I had to have sex with the groom the eve before his wedding because I had to have sex right then and there and no one else happened to be around... in his bedroom... at night. Or would you rather we’d be dead now? Do you care so little for me, your very best friend in the entire world, and my darling, dearest Buttercup, that you would trade our lives for a night in a warm, dry inn?”

His beloved Buttercup peeks out of the relative shelter of his doublet, her furry little face a mask of hurt betrayal and disappointment that would make any actress proud, and vanishes again, ostensibly too disappointed to even talk to him.

Geralt is pretty sure he shouldn’t believe either of them, but he’s a witcher. It’s been so long since he woke up alone after the trial of the grasses that he barely remembers what having a daemon was like at all, let alone whether or not how affected their existence is by the form they settle in. Cue that doesn't sound right, but I don't know enough about demons to dispute it-glare.

Also:

It is possible to use a vasectomised male to take a female out of heat.

Virility optional. That means sterile works just as well. You know, sterile like a witcher. ...You see where this is going, right?

(I assume Jaskier and the (very lazily named, mea culpa) Buttercup are actually only horny, wanton drama queens who love love and not actually going through fuck-or-die cycles. But I still feel like I should apologize for even thinking about it.)