Work Text:
‘You’ve known him a long time.’
‘Have I?’ Downey asks. He doesn’t need to ask who. They are leaving the Patrician’s Palace, ergo the Patrician is meant. Also, this is Boggis, Head of the Thieves' Guild and an inveterate gossip.
‘Have you ever seen him laugh?’ He asks now.
‘On occasion.’
‘I don’t suppose you could tell me what occasion?’
‘The death of Lord Winder.’
That is literal truth, and has the advantage of fitting most people's conception of the man. No-one need know the details. Downey furious, indelibly painted from his earlier ambush by an invisible assailant, and Havelock laughing, and laughing, and laughing. Not because of Downey, not really, but because John Keel was dead and the new patrician had turned on the people he should be most grateful to, and what Downey thought or felt should have mattered even less now than it ever had.
Yet, somehow, instead of the indifference he had been affecting seemingly forever, the maddening refusal to react to all Downey’s taunts and childishness, that was what Vetinari had seemed fixated on in his near-hysteria.
‘Don’t ever change.’ He had choked out between fits of giggles. ‘Oh don’t ever grow up, it’s a horrible business. Immaturity will keep you as safe as anything can.’
Downey had slapped him, not least because he seemed to need it, but no less because it was a damned good excuse.
Then he had seized his arm and dragged him into Downey’s room. Pushed him back against the door and demanded to know what was going on.
‘You’re not angry with me.’ Havelock had told him. ‘You’re angry because you’re scared, and you’re right to be scared. This is not a safe world to grow into.’
It was the most honest thing he had ever said or would ever say. It was terrifying.
Downey had kissed him mostly to shut him up.
Or at least, he thinks that's why.