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He’ll hate the smell forever, he thinks, as another chill snakes through his body. The purple flowers, crushed now in a hidden pocket, are giving up a scent that has turned from ethereal to sickly, a sort of sweet rot. He closes his eyes against the pain radiating from his chest, where he is sure some broken bottle glass must remain. Makeshift, as weapons go, but brutal. In a moment, (a mere moment, he tells himself), he will get up and make his way through the maze of polished wood and marble hall to his own small room, or to the Guild physician, who should ask no questions about how a student came by such a wound and sort it out with minimal fuss.
Havelock drags himself to his feet, leaning against the sill of the window he’d climbed through with fading capability. He can feel the blood that streamed down his torso pulling at his skin where it dries. The room swims in a disconcerting way, a sudden dip of his vision towards the dark floorboards and slightly threadbare old rug. Klatchian, he thinks hazily, and supremely beautiful once, in scarlet and emerald; the way the sun falls across it in long harmonies is nothing short of magical. He is vaguely aware that this dreamy line of thought in someone with a stab wound is incredibly concerning.
He shivers again, the creep of cold through his body another worry he doesn’t have time to worry about. He breathes as deeply as the wound allows, shoving away the crowding clash of hectic memories. Keel gone down, and the rage of his men like a halo of reactionary fire, a bodied roar that had echoed in Vetinari’s own thudding heart as they’d swept over bits of barricade together. He’d adapted quickly to the melee and the crush, but not altogether in that first mad minute, and not quite fast enough. The fact that his current inconvenience was a blow dealt by an unskilled thug added some salt to it, but not much. His chest feels too empty for recrimination, this minute the spades are eating the earth as they dig Keel’s grave. He runs his tongue over lips that seem very dry, the bitter juice of a bitten lilac stem lingers there.
He wrenches his mind back to the difficult present. This is, clearly, a graduate bedroom. He’d picked a wall of the building that looked fuzzily familiar, but why had it? He moves unsteadily to the desk hosting a green forest of empty wine bottles. A few books on poison tower haphazardly on one corner, and he flips over the cover of the first to see an ownership inscription flamboyantly taking up half the paste-down. He blinks.
Of course, why keep things neat when you could announce your presence even to the inanimate with the foghorn of ego. Never mind. It is now absolutely imperative that he leave the room.
His feet feel strange, the sort of numb they can become in a hard winter, like he’s making his way to the door on blocks of wood. He wrestles with the handle for what feels like a week before it sinks in that of course it’s locked, and he definitely lacks the co-ordination to do anything about that at present, for some mysterious reason. He slides to the floor with his back against the wall, stifling a flicker of fear. The world is not going black, exactly, more sort of spotted. His throat tightens at a sudden scrape in the lock.
'Wha…’ Downey leaps away nimbly, like a startled hare. ‘What in the hells are you doing in my damned bedroom, you scag!’ He looks from Vetinari to his curtain being sucked through the open window by the breeze of early summer, and back again. Two flushed spots appear high on his cheeks and his jaw is rigid with mounting anger, but Vetinari just shakes his head, his hand pressed to his chest.
Downey, for all the magnitude of the faultlines of his personality, is an Assassin, and therefore good at taking stock quickly around odd bodies. He swiftly draws back the edge of the shapeless outer robe, revealing a section of shirt cut away in haste to make sure he wasn’t losing unsurvivable amounts of blood, and the raw scream in skin of his current problem. Well, his first problem. He is currently in the middle of another problem, but the first still takes precedence. Just. His eyes meet Downey’s, which are grey but can be changeable. Cloud-cover, thinks Vetinari serenely. Squall line.
Downey stares first at the ragged wound, and then at Vetinari’s lips, which are going a bit blue for someone alive. ‘Oh, you’re in shock,’ he says, irritably. ‘Idiot.’
The world dips again and this time things do go black, briefly, but whether that is unconsciousness catching up with him or the soft velvet of Downey’s jacket it’s hard to say. He hopes for kind oblivion, the idea of going into shock is, after all, deeply embarrassing. When he opens his eyes it’s to a teacup brimming with very good brandy which Downey makes him finish, and the wrapping of some great warm coat around his shoulders, and the bliss of his back sinking into a mattress. He feels something being placed under his ankles to raise his legs, and remembers that you need to do this with shock victims to force blood back to the vital organs. He turns his head into one of Downey’s pillows, thick and reassuring, the fine wool of his black coat smells faintly of cedar. He wants suddenly to weep.
‘I need to get it clean and sew you up,’ The voice is clearer now some of the pressure in his ears has eased. Havelock feels his heart stutter at the thought, and his eyes must widen in alarm because Downey snorts dismissively.
‘I’m not carrying you like a fainting bride all the way to the san*,’ he says, witheringly. ‘I studied applied medicine too, you know, I do know how to do this.’
Weighing up his options, which does not take long and is helped by 80 per cent proof hitting his bloodstream like a rock to the jaw, Havelock nods once. ‘Shouldn’t be too deep,’ his voice feels thick. ‘It was more a swipe than a stab.’
‘Still impressive, glass?’ Downey distractedly lays out several towels of good thick linen, and pours some water into two clean bowls. He looks at Vetinari for a long moment, glacial eyes roaming his face, frowning. Havelock has no idea what he looks like apart from ghastly, he might be covered in anything: blood, dirt, flowers.
‘How did it happen?’ He says finally, using a pale bar of soap to wash his hands. Vetinari finds this attention to surgical hygiene reassuring, he isn’t trying to kill him off with sepsis at any rate. The words come from a long way away.
‘I was…I got caught up near Treacle Mine Road.’
Downey freezes. ‘The barricades? My Gods, they’re still mopping up, it’s carnage down there.’ He stares uncomfortably at Vetinari, whose hand flies unthinkingly to the lilac in his pocket. ‘What were you doing?’
Havelock grits his teeth against the sting in his eyes. ‘Nothing, I’ll sew myself up if you’d rather talk,’ he says shortly.
‘No you won’t, you can’t see it properly, and don’t be so bloody ungrateful.’ Downey bats his protest away and takes a small pair of scissors to the clotted material of Vetinari’s shirt. Cutting vertically, he lifts it away using a wet towel where dried blood has glued it to his skin, hissing through his teeth.
‘Going to have an almighty scar at the very least.’ He surveys the wound closely with a careful eye, as Havelock gazes resolutely at the wall and tries to ignore how close he is. ‘Gods, you were lucky, a bit more to your left and into your shoulder and that could have nicked an artery.’
Vetinari knows it, he is lucky. The ceiling above him wavers as though in a heat haze, and he swallows against the lump of misery in his throat. He doesn’t feel lucky yet. Downey mistakes the shudder of indrawn breath for pain of another kind as he gently moves the angry flesh, looking for a tell-tale glint.
‘Mhm, can’t see anything, not even much dirt, really,’ he draws his lower lip into his mouth in thought. ’Still needs cleaning.’
Vetinari shrugs with the insouciance of brandy, before realising it really, really hurts to shrug. Downey rolls his eyes and turns back to his array of first aid. Havelock wants to ask him why he’s being so helpful and not leaving his schoolyard nemesis to conveniently expire on the floor, but he doesn’t want to break this soft bubble full of strange co-operation. He struggles suddenly to take a breath and Downey looks at him, putting a quick hand to his forehead and trapping his pulse under his fingers, counting.
‘I’m going to get on with it, you need to warm up.’
There is some more brandy, which Vetinari is achingly grateful for in the face of a different cup full of iodine solution, and a special kind of sewing kit. Downey’s head is so close to his own he fancies he can smell the wash he uses in his hair, the scent of an astringent herb, rosemary perhaps. Downey’s hands, surprisingly deft for someone so hamfisted in every other arena, pause at a knot.
‘Could you stop sniffing my hair? It’s distracting.’
‘Sorry, just…nice herbs. Garden herbs.’
‘I see the brandy’s kicking in at least.’ Havelock is surprised, Downey sounds for all the Disc as though he's trying quite hard not to laugh. ‘You have the better end of the deal, by the way, you smell of blood and lilacs.’
He turns his head away from his pocket of bruised petals, into the scent of cedar which is playing tricks on his memory. It speaks to him of threadbare red velvet, of wooden trunks full of white sheets. Cocooned in the spark of distilled wine, he allows himself to fall into the sharp, pricking rhythm of the stitches, unhooking himself from the world and its memories with their jaws apart, drooling, ready to fall on him like unhappy beasts. After what feels like the passing of a great age, Downey appears satisfied with his work. He carefully wipes away the dried blood still frozen to Havelock’s skin, the now-cool water running down his sides, forcing him back into his body and making him gasp. Downey looks askance at the bed as though trying to work something out, then he shakes his head, rinsing his hands and drying them, pushing his thick hair away from his forehead. ‘That should do it, no other injuries?’
His throat feels like cracked earth. ‘No.’
He closes his eyes as the coat is pulled from his shoulders and shaken straight. He tries to summon the strength to both thank him and swing himself from this bed with the least amount of awkwardness for them both, and is surprised to feel it being drawn over him again, covering him this time like a quilt. The warmth returns. Downey’s voice is falling down a well.
‘Just rest for a bit, I’ll be here, I’ve got some work to do anyway.’
That should not be the comforting nudge into sleep that it is, yet it is.
***
When he wakes, it’s to heat seeping through his back. He is lying on his side now, (he remembers the barbs of agony in rolling), and luxuriates in it, like lying in the sun. He can feel it smoking through the white walls of his bones, making them steam. It takes a few hazy moments to realise that the warmth behind him is no light at all but Downey’s sure and strong body, an arm wound carefully across him, and he isn't asleep because he registers the shift in Vetinari’s breathing.
‘Welcome back, I suppose,’ he drawls, and then does not immediately vacate the bed or hint very strongly that it’s time for Vetinari to be leaving it. This sets off a clamour of thoughts already waving urgent memos at him about the improbability of being spooned by a man who hates your guts. Downey himself seems completely unperturbed. ‘How are you feeling?’
Havelock takes inventory. His chest feels stung and searing, his head aches slightly, but he isn’t cold. ‘Alive, how long was I asleep?’
‘A few hours, it’s nearly sunset.’
They remain in that position for a moment, underneath all that fine wool. Downey’s arm is heavy and Vetinari is very glad that no one can see his face. His mind raises an eyebrow and reminds him that this is Downey’s bed, and if anyone should be getting up it’s him, and then he wonders why he isn’t getting up, (it might be shock again, frankly), and then he wonders, (and really, this is the Foremost Wonder), why Downey decided to join him there at all. Perhaps the book he was reading had very small print and not enough pictures and he needed to lie down. Havelock thrusts away the uncharitable thought; the man had lifted him, bleeding, from his bedroom floor and sewn him up carefully, like repairing a good shirt. He breathes deeply then, or tries to, but it hurts. Gods, it all hurts. Keel on the ground (it hurts), the spiked backwash of spent adrenalin (it hurts), the futility of everything, every barricade you construct against evil is pulled down (it hurts). Winder was dead and Snapcase was another bloodied fingernail being torn from the broken hand of the city, of his city (it hurts). Something about his internal tumult is communicating itself through his stillness, he can tell, which is impressive. He will have to revise his opinion about Downey’s level of subtlety. Then he quickly revises it again, because the hand curled by his shoulder shifts to his hips, and does something unsubtle.
For his part, and for all his posturing, Downey is a vital, healthy sort of animal. There is no better way to kick aside the dam from the river of clarity, and besides, it’s good for you, good for your blood. Dog-botherer appears to have lost a bit of his, and something lodged like a pick in his soul is hurting him, and for all that Downey appears to enjoy hurting him as well…It’s all a bit more complicated than that, isn’t it? So he brings a sort of comfort in the simplest way, the fierce mammalian way, that he knows.
There is only so much a man with so many new stitches can do, abandon himself to straightforward masculine transaction or tear them getting out, and Vetinari is tired and too long without touch. He doesn’t need to worry now about the pain of breathing deeply because his breath is in the keeping of the man behind him, whose hand is practised and slick and certain, and who prefers to hear it staccato. Downey’s other arm has slipped under his neck and braces against his throat and the pressure is sublime in every way, the tension of a thick ice that will take a weight, a running step, a man. He chokes out half-finished words to an evident and pressing pleasure against his thigh, to breath like a new hymn on the back of his neck. When the world does crack and give way, it’s with a cry that Downey muffles with the collar across them both, and Vetinari’s mouth is full of black cedar.
Afterwards, he isn’t quite sure what to do. Downey is still uncompromisingly hard, but when he reaches for him his hand is caught and stilled. Perhaps this is part of the unspoken contract between men at a time like this: No talking, no kissing, no reciprocity. Downey brings himself under a visible control that Havelock did not expect of him and his mind folds away as a point of interest. When his eyes open again he says: ’Why do you smell of dead flowers, anyway?’
Vetinari reaches into his pocket and pulls out the lilac, opens his fingers.
'Rebel emblems,' he says bitterly, a few loose petals rain onto the bed.
‘You’ll make a grave of that kind of stupid bravery, you know,’ Downey mutters eventually, and his voice is serious suddenly, as a lake is serious. ‘A poison of virtue.’
Havelock thinks: there are seven brave graves yawning at Small Gods, and I am not in any of them. He closes his fist against the ruined, waxy bloom as Downey checks the wound and its crazed lines holding fast.
‘I’ll always know that’s there, isn’t that funny?’ His voice is almost wondering, and Vetinari himself wonders what it means to touch the most intimate part of someone, (ferociously, tightly, like a man in moving water grasping the lifeboat), and be less moved than by your knowledge of their secret scar. Now the sun really is setting and Downey is, without subtlety, making up his mind about something, and it turns out that at a time like this men can kiss after all, and it can be ambitious and possessive, and as keen for the air in his chest as glass.