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Chapter Text

[When I asked for the monarch of the city, nobody was brought to me.]

“What terrible manners,” responded the thin, pale, and impossibly calm man sitting at the foot of the steps. Something leathery shifted.

[I was directed here. You rule this place?]

The man considered for an instant. “It would appear so, on a normal day.”

[Then why,] the suspicion and scorn resonated in the man’s head, [are you not on your throne?]

The immense and impossible dragon glanced sidelong. At the top of the stairs was a gilded, if peeling, throne.

“Thrones,” he said, with the same delicate tone one might use when discussing municipal garbage buildup, “are very much the domain of royalty.”

The dragon’s scales whispered against one another as it shifted, raised its immense head. It appeared to be giving the man the kind of scrutiny one might when a delicious steak suddenly began talking back.

[You aren’t king, then.]

“Oh, heavens no.” His eyes widened, as if surprised. “I’m the Patrician, an entirely different breed of tyrant. Not a birth title.”

There was a drip of contempt in the last words.

[And yet,] the dragon mused, its eye narrowing as it examined the Patrician, [you hold yourself apart from the common people.]

A hint of smoke in the way it laid itself across the Patrician’s mind, and he found his skin prickling, no matter how hard he willed it not to. Sometimes, even for him, these things were a lost cause.

“Well, yes,” he replied, leaning back a little in his seat, to look the beast in the eye. It blotted out most of the light in the room, but the dull gold shimmer in its scales was one of the few things it had in common with Sybil’s little swamp dragons. It was distracting, and made the less evolved part of his brain gibber with fear. Exactly none of that read in his voice.

“They get rather upset if I hold them close.”

It wasn’t… a laugh, exactly, in the same way that it wasn’t the dragon speaking, exactly. Nonetheless, a warm, low ripple of amusement still made itself known in the Patrician’s mind.

[A tyrant who disapproves of kings.] Its massive bulk moved, leather and whispering scales dragging across the floor and themselves. It bent down to examine him with a pupil the size of a horse’s head. The hairs on his arm stood up, but he said nothing - either struck mute or with nothing further to add.

[Alright,] it declared, and laid its head on the floor, watching him with just a hint of smoke tracing out from between its teeth, [I like that well enough.] A split second pause. [When you wake up, I’ll be less dragon, more terrier. As a gift.]

“How literal are you being?” the Patrician tried to inquire, but instead he found himself murmuring the question in a daze, at a face that swam into familiarity quickly. He was asking His Excellency, His Grace, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes, the reluctant Duke of Ankh-Morpork, who gave him the patented stony stare.

Vimes hoists Vetinari more securely in his arms.

“I,” he growls, as Vetinari tries to blink away afterimages, “bloody hate wizards, magic, and especially gods damned L-Space.”

For a dizzying moment, Havelock Vetinari can hear the scales in his voice, smell a curl of smoke that doesn’t fit a cigar’s sweet-heavy profile.

“Ah, Vimes,” he manages, “Sybil does so love you. Even missing your scales.”

Vimes gives him a look, flat and level.

The look, in turn, gives him nothing.

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“I think the Patrician might be -” 

The distressed voice cut off suddenly, and Havelock raised his head, his finger placed on the line he was reading. 

“Oh, now you can hear me,” Downey sneered from the other end of the table. The tall youth had been sitting there for quite some time, loudly talking about Havelock. His friends, his main audience, had been quietly dispersing, probably because Downey was essentially just talking to himself. 

Havelock did spare even a glance at Downey as he turned to the boy beside him. 

“Did you say something?” he murmured quietly. 

His classmate, who had been scowling at his own messy handwriting for a while now, looked at Havelock distractedly. 

“No?” Vimes said. “It’s him that’s been going on and on. He’d do numbers on the street corner.” The young scholarship kid ran his hand through his short-cropped hair, groaning in frustration. “I hate learning about poisons. They’re all the bloody same. Put it in a drink, pop behind the corner and have a giggle while some poor bastard chokes to death on their chardonnay.” 

Havelock tutted, and reached out, placing a finger on Vimes’ essay to drag it closer, giving it a cursory glance. His brows arched up - he looked impressed. 

“Is it okay?” Vimes asked, agitated, leaning towards Havelock. Havelock painstakingly ignored the little jolt in the pit of his stomach, the one he’d developed in the recent months whenever Vimes crossed the invisible boundaries of his personal space.  

“It’s completely illegible,” he said with a straight face. Vimes gave him a Look, the one that Havelock enjoyed, the one that said You’re Lucky We’re Friends. Because they were friends.  

Sometimes it was all he could do not to push Vimes too much, just to get that look. 

“Careful, Vimesy,” Downey called out, clearly annoyed that he’d blocked out a space in his calendar for bullying that wasn’t having its intended effect. “Dog-botherer will make you his little lapdog if you don’t watch out. Arf arf!” 

“Okay, Downey,” Vimes said, as if talking to a small child, his expression flat. He wanted to punch the youth. Havelock could tell that, from the way Vimes’ fingers twitched. Once upon a time, before they’d become friends, he probably would have - but Havelock had managed to convince Vimes there were other ways to get even. He hid his smile, as he pulled Vimes’ essay closer. 

“I’ll give you some notes,” Havelock said. “For starters, poisoning someone successfully requires a bit more than just administering it to the target’s drink.” He spared his smallest, briefest smile to Vimes, who stared back at him with an unreadable expression he sometimes adopted. “Often, what it requires is - misdirection.” 

At the other end of the table, Downey, clearly annoyed, stood up, stuck his hands in his pockets and yelped. His pockets had been stuffed full of dog kibble. 

Vimes smiled, small and rueful, back at Havelock who reigned in his useless teenage hormones, and opened his mouth to continue. 

“I already know this!” Commander Vimes snaps, his hands tight on Havelock’s shoulders. “Went through the whole bloody circus when you were poisoned, sir - “ 

“He’s not talking to you,” Ponder Stibbons says. “I mean, I think he is, but not you, you.” 

“Great,” Vimes growls in frustration. “Then how do we get him back - to me, me?” He pauses, his expression complicated. “I mean, to us."

Chapter Text

Ponder suited his name - takes a moment to ponder.

“Well, something must be causing the temporal anomalies, and I don’t think it’s a standard delirium -”

“Yes, I know -” Vimes grimaces sharply, shifts the mass of bony limbs in his arms and stares into space. “But what could it be? Is there such a thing as temporal poison?”

“First time for everything,” Ponder replies glumly, right around the instant Vimes is thinking it, and Vimes freezes as a narrow, clammy hand clasps his jaw. Resists the urge to flinch.

“Yessir?” he grinds out, looking down at Vetinari’s alarmingly sharp blue eyes, which are currently staring at him in a sort of wonder.

“Good gods, Samuel,” the Patrician says, “would you look at those teeth.”

He is, Vimes thinks with an uneasy shift, a world away. Maybe more than one.

And a world away, Havelock Vetinari was lifting the lip of an immense, brownish wolf.

“I’m quite certain you could bite through your own crossbow, in this state,” he informed Samuel, who growled low and resonant, vibrating through a huge barrel chest.

To anyone else, this would be pushing his luck. To Havelock, a little mauling would be a small price to pay for getting a rise out of a real, genuine article Samuel Vimes in immense canid form.

…He said canid, because even the word ‘wolf’ didn’t quite fit the bill. For one thing, there was something excessively still in the expression of this wolf, despite Havelock manhandling it. Sybil was trying not to laugh.

For another, she was currently knitting it booties, as if the snowstorm was going to hurt its pawpads.

But the final aspect was that it was immense. Young Sam could have ridden on his back like a short man on a tall horse. Frankly, if Havelock’s legs weren’t so long, he probably could have as well. Perhaps with short enough stirrups -

“Don’t tease him so,” Sybil scolded, as Samuel-Vimes-the-werewolf pulled his face away and clacked his teeth in sharp, irritable warning. “He’s having trouble with the, you know.”

“The prey drive, or the bloodlust?” Havelock inquired mildly, fighting the urge to open Samuel’s mouth by force. He’d never been the kind of person to take unnecessary risks - except where pushing Sam Vimes is concerned, in which case there was an impossible fascination with trying to work out how he ticked.

“I think,” Sybil responded, carefully, “the now-mandatory time off.”

Havelock had to cover his mouth to avoid… not smiling, but letting the amusement show in the corners of his mouth. He was very, very good at not smiling when he didn’t want to.

“I see.”

He had to lean on his cane to stand up. Sam-Vimes-the-wolf was sniffing his leg, suspiciously, tail low, tone building into a slow rumble.

“What is it, Commander?” he asked, mildly enough, and the wolf gave him a Look of such immense, long-suffering indignance, over its inability to call him an ass, that Havelock almost lost his calm exterior entirely and laughed.

“I think it’s a slower-acting poison, sir, designed more for delirium than anything else,” says Vimes, a world away from that one, and gets another pat on the jaw for his troubles, followed by a single finger inserted into the side of his mouth.

This is his life now.

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So. Anything.

“Sir,” he hazards. And then, tensely, he tries again. “Vetinari.”

Pale and rain-soaked, Havelock Vetinari looked at the wrapped, bloody body of Sergeant Keel. Keel’s body offered no answers.

Winder would be a distant problem soon enough, long gone, but on his aunt’s request, Havelock had watched the man.

An interesting, distant sort of twist in his guts. It took him several rain-soaked minutes, his dark clothes hanging off him in the rain like rags on a scarecrow, to realise that what he was feeling was an odd pang of grief.

Havelock didn’t exactly believe in the idea of good people. The idea was antithetical to a world in which people like Lord Winder could exist and be elected: if Winder can be elevated to power, the world was a place occupied by the most unpleasant option - people - at its forefront.

It was odd, then, the amount of melancholy he felt looking at the death of one scruffy, violent man. It felt like a paradox. It felt like a terribly cruel one, at that.

The bundle lay there, unbreathing, unmoving, until abruptly it said, in a voice like sandpaper:

“Oh, fuck.”

At which point Havelock had a brief desperate struggle to keep his conniption internal.

Once he couldn’t taste his heartbeat in his throat, he hazarded, voice soft, “Do you need something to drink, Sergeant?”

There’s a tense silence, in which Havelock wondered briefly if he was delirious, but the response came a moment later.

“Not a good idea, I think. Actually - maybe some water. Lemonade, even. Don’t suppose you could get me unbundled?”

Havelock could walk away, could contact his aunt, but instead he mde a rapid decision, most enterprising of him, and pulled out a short dagger to cut away the knot holding the wound-up fabric in place.

“Much obliged,” Sergeant Keel muttered, as he wriggled out of the funereal winding sheet. It was not the most dignified.

Havelock considered him.

He looked like hell, Havelock decided. Scruffy as always, the man now looked pale and drawn, haggard. He still had his own blood dried and flaking on him, but two solid puncture marks on his throat had scabbed over. Perhaps someone sneaking a quick meal on the battlefield, perhaps something more deliberate. Havelock tried to remember what he could about vampires, remembers the term ‘thrall’, and then promptly lost track of the thought because he could feel the chilly gaze of a predator on him, and some small and squeaky internal instinct was telling him to run.

Instead, he looked right at Keel.

“I suppose you’re thi-”

“Don’t say it,” the sergeant snapped, newly sharpened teeth clicking on the rough hiss of it, “or I might get ideas.”

A little thrill went through Havelock. The urge to push back, mostly - to test himself against it, maybe, or something. He had, he would admit under no circumstances, been watching Keel with a sort of transfixed awe.

“…Is there something else I can get you, then?”

“Out of the damn rain. And maybe a smoke.”

Havelock nodded slightly, and inclined his head. “Of course. Just follow me.”

When Keel began to sway upright, began to walk, Havelock felt an uneasy thrill. He could feel the gaze of the sergeant fixed on the back of him, and he couldn’t help but imagine the sensation, the sharpness and the chill pressure, he’s read too much, a morbid fascination was overtaking him and he wanted desperately to know how accurate the accounts he'd read were -

“Who are you, anyway?” Keel hazarded, stepping past puddles with his leaking boots and his tired stooping shoulders. He looked worn to the bone, like this, and right now Havelock almost wished for his sake that he would lose control, that he would drink his fill from some poor passerby, or from Havelock, just so he’d look less like he’d been run over by a cart and staggered up with broken ribs and blood loss to keep walking.

He realises after a moment that he hadn’t answered, and that Keel was giving him a flat, stone-faced stare, waiting. Breathless, but not in the typical sense - patient, as it were, as the grave.

“My name is Havelock Vetinari,” he murmurs, glancing back.

“I know,” responds Keel, responds Vimes, and Havelock’s head is starting to swim, a sensation like floating in egg-whites overtaking him, syrupy and not entirely pleasant - dipping under again a moment later -

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The smile is putting Vimes so thoroughly, deeply on-edge, but he still barely parses what’s said next.

“Really, though? A time like now, and still only lemonade and half-brackish water. I would have thought you’d be celebrating.”

“I am.” A flat response.

Havelock was watching the Captain of the ship with a bright-eyed fascination, sitting on his bed. As an apprentice to the onboard botanist - a poisons expert and an incredible scientific illustrator, may he rest in peace - he was one of the younger in the crew.

He’d almost immediately taken a shine to Captain Keel.

In fact, it had been intrigue at first sight, from the moment he successfully commandeered the ship under a black flag.

As an apprentice on a military vessel, Havelock had resigned himself to the idea of, at best, making it a week or so of stowaway time before he was caught and drowned.

Instead, it had been three weeks, of him working for his keep and being treated better than on the military ship.

“It’s just a little surprising to me, given the generous libation at hand.” Havelock widened his eyes fractionally.

“Don’t talk back, it’s a health hazard,” Captain Keel snapped back, and Havelock did his best not to smile. He failed: a little twitch of his lips had Keel turning his head to glower properly.

“My apologies. I’ll be quiet as a mouse.”

Discretion had, so far, been the better part of valour. A saving grace, even. But Keel cut a strange figure, for a pirate of any kind.

The thing was, Keel had turned up on a slightly oversized sloop, boarded in the night, and somehow managed - with one troll and three other (ostensible) men and several well-placed crossbow bolts, to take over an entire galleon.

In his favour was that more than half of the military vessel’s… cargo, as it were, were slaves - who were now armed and enthusiastic to make it to the next port under Captain Keel’s hand. He’d let them know that they could keep any wealth they found in the ship, and would get equal shares in the profits from the spices traveling with them. In addition, that was, to their absolute and unconditional freedom.

He’d made it clear with his words and some expressive gestures what he thought of the current military trades, and lit a cigar from his own pocket.

One of his men, Carrot, had done some hasty translation, and that had more or less been that. Naval officers were no less susceptible to being shot in the neck or bludgeoned than anyone else, and so they’d surrendered.

There was intrigue at play, but there was also a sort of bastardly determination that Havelock had to admire, whether he wanted to or not.

He decided ten minutes into the fight that he wanted to, and promptly took up arms against the more egregiously abusive naval officers. Keel had seemed to take that with some skepticism, but still allowed him to stay onboard and stay working.

Weeks went past, and Keel hadn’t exactly let down his guard, but he’d become tired enough to allow Havelock to follow him around during downtime.

So there was Keel - not tall, not terribly short, but muscled and grizzled, one eye sporting a somewhat raw-looking scar, cigar in his mouth. Stubbled, and, in a slightly dogeared way, rather handsome. Definitely intimidating. Good at giving the kind of flat stare that would wither anyone’s ambitions: it was lucky that Havelock’s ambitions weren’t the kind that needed much water.

He was leaning over the written logs Captain Carcer had been keeping, scowling as he read. And there was Havelock, watching from the new Captain’s bed, resisting the urge to slink closer and read over his shoulder.

He would very much like to have a closer look at the logs. It was definitely the logs, and not the faint aroma of smoke and sweat and some kind of clean-smelling woody soap.

Havelock had a lot of insight into himself, and, after a moment longer, let himself swing his legs a little. Play at being coquettish, in a way that wasn’t entirely play.

“Captain,” he said, voice pitching as low and soft as he could get it, “Captain Carcer’s writing was borderline illegible. I could help decipher, if you’d like.”

Keel’s deep dark eyes swiveled to Havelock again, and he felt a little unexpected thrill chase itself along his spine. He licked his lips, leaned forward. Hands on knees. Tilted his head in a way that he knew would reveal a little of the pale skin under his open-collared shirt. It was time, he thought, almost faint, to make a play.

“I’m happy to help, however you’d like.”

Keel considered him. Flat stare, unmoving. The sway of the ship and its low creaking were the only signs of life in the tableau, for just a moment.

“In fact,” Havelock mused, lips twitching into a smile, subtly inviting, “consider me at your disposal.”

Vimes jolts slightly awake at the phrase, looking up with an uneasy sharpness.

Vetinari seems to still be, for the most part, far away. He has the occasional, very brief, moment of clarity, but other than that he’s living lives and lives away.

He’s not sure if it’s getting worse or better. The periods of silence are longer, but Vetinari doesn’t twitch as much in his sleep - or whatever the delirious in-and-out state could be called. ‘Consider me at your disposal’ in that tone had been enough to wake Vimes properly, and now he’s faced with what Ponder Stibbons had said again - that he’s somehow anchoring Vetinari to this world.

As if he might wander off without the familiarity.

He clears his throat.

“You don’t need to be at my disposal. Just stay… here. It’s fine. I’ll be here when you’re…” he pauses, casts around for words. Finds some. Feels helpless as he says them. “Whenever you’re ready to come back.”

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Another hour passes, and another, and the fever keeps rising. There’s a sheen of sweat that looks… alarming. The last time he sweated like this, Vimes thinks, must be the last bloody poisoning. The last one he knows of, at least.

“Samuel.”

Vimes turns to look at Vetinari, on autopilot, since he’s the one who’s been saying it so often. He’s been murmuring it like a prayer, every couple of hours.

After that, it registers that it’s Sybil calling to him, softly.

“Sam. Samuel. Please, go and get some sleep.”

Vimes gives her a blank, steady look, and she sighs, pushes fingers through her cropped-short hair.

“I’ve taken care of a sick infant, Sam. I’m sure I can take care of a sick Patrician.” A pause. The pause stretches, and Sybil, exhaling through her nose, gestures a little. “Come now, man, what use are you to anyone if you pass out on your feet?”

“She’s right,” Vetinari whispers, his glazed eyes fixing on Vimes, and like he can’t help it he finds himself swiveling. “Don’t make me drag you to bed, Samuel.”

Sybil’s eyebrows hitch up fractionally. She doesn’t look alarmed, only entertained. She’s often watched the two of them with that expression, one Vimes can’t parse right now.

“Havelock, are you awake yet?”

“If I have to drag you to bed, you’ll deeply regret it.”

Samuel swiveled his eyes over to stare at his late husband, who was being peeled out of his bloody clothes by their wife. Havelock might not be breathing, might not be human anymore - but he had no intention of budging on his mannerisms.

He and Samuel had stubbornness in common. Sybil found it appealing, Havelock presumed, but right now she was clearly irritated.

He was trying to convince Sybil to let him get on with work.

“I’m sure it’s more important that Sam gets some rest, I can -”

Sybil ripped away the buttons of Havelock’s blood-soaked robe, and clicked her tongue as she examined the damage. He himself would rather not.

“I’ll send a clacks to Margolotta, but you’re on strict bed rest, Havelock. Sam can last a few more hours at most, but you’ve just been - well, murdered.”

“And rescued,” Havelock replied, mild enough. Nevertheless, Sybil had a knack for handling both of them: she got Havelock into the bath, Samuel into the bed, and only then did she send Willikins off with a coded message.

‘Dearest Lady Margolotta, stop, Havelock and Samuel and I are hoping you’ll come here in all haste, stop, we have a new life to celebrate, stop, it was a shame you did not make it to the wedding but we are so excited to show you the city sights, stop, Havelock is especially pleased to show you the life he has here, end message’

“They know an attempt has been made, of course,” Havelock murmured. He was shivering in the warmth of the bath. Otto, bless his heart, was waiting outside to give them space, but was anxiously checking in every few minutes through the door with reassuring lines like, 'if he starts to growl and hiss, just get some silver nails and -’ before being cut off by Sybil’s dissenting noise.

“Of course.” Sybil dusted herself off.

Havelock had known Sybil since they were youths, and knew how she was. Practical to the point of being, at times, viewed as callous. They had it in common, and Havelock found her the most steadying, reliable force to exist in her sheer practicality - though, of course, the way Sam made the world revolve around what was right, instead of what was accurate, had a profoundly anchoring effect all its own.

The day wouldn’t wait: she’d drawn the curtains tightly closed to give Havelock the best chance at some rest, and now, he could assume, she had to speak to Drumknott, give the girls their orders, make sure the dragons were tended to, make sure young Sam wasn’t being a menace to the nanny -

“That doesn’t mean we have to advertise their success, though, does it? I’m sure Margolotta will be able to help, Havelock.” She laced her boots a little tighter, gave Havelock a stern look. “For now, just listen to Mr. Chriek.”

“Listen to Mr. Chriek,” he responded, weary. He did look an awful lot like a corpse, and it was accompanied with a matching sensation, a tingling, borderline-obscene sort of hunger starting to cloud him; the Temperance Legion didn’t look this way, but the first few months, apparently, were always rough. Havelock had to wonder if it ever changed. If there would be a time when he didn’t have to crave.

Where the wounds were, his skin was itchy. Already scabbing over.

Margolotta made her way to the city at breakneck speed. She was there in two days, and promptly menaced Otto into a sort of panicked recounting of events.

The information now in her possession, she arrived at Ramkin House, and was ushered in by a blank-faced Samuel.

His face was still that stiff, uneasy still when he brought her to him, and Havelock fought the uncharacteristic urge to roll his eyes.

Havelock’s patience had been thin as rice paper - but like rice paper under tension: quite immovable under normal circumstances.

Sam in a room with Margolotta, giving her that flat discomfited look though, was certainly outside of the norm.

“Havelock,” Lady Margolotta murmured, all sympathy - came over and kissed his forehead. “The fever is treating you roughly, I take it?”

“I’ve had worse fevers,” Havelock responded.

“Have you now,” Vimes grunts, as he props Vetinari up, makes him sip water. The sigh he lets out, the relief, is so palpable that it feels private, reverent. Vimes averts his eyes for a moment, considers, and then tries again.

“When was the last time you had a fever this bad, then, sir? Try to think on it. I’d say it was the poison candle, but I don’t know your whole life, so -”

“More than you realise, I think, you do,” Vetinari murmurs, and drops his head against the crook of Vimes’ neck, breath against his jaw.

All thought falls out of Vimes for an instant, like the bottom of a soggy paper bag with a bowling ball dropped into it. There’s just an instant of absolute blank.

And then, carefully, he tries to pull away. Vetinari’s grip is vice-tight, his blunt teeth flashing, and Vimes feels a thrill of disconnect, like the poison is seeping out of Vetinari and right into him. This shouldn’t be happening. This isn’t how they work.

“Ah, Vimes,” murmurs Havelock, against his neck, and the mental whiplash is kicking in, the idea of the fever breaking a relief tinged with panic, and is made only worse when Vetinari asks, soft and low, still gripping him tightly with sweaty hands which are now moving towards his jaw in an absent and confident wander, “how was your flight?”

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Vimes is staring at him.

He wasn’t lying, either; the man looks decidedly unwell, presumably in part from lack of sleep. Vetinari absorbs details: overgrown stubble; deep dark smudges under his eyes; no smell of food or coffee; no smell of soap, but none of sweat, either. He concludes that Vimes must have been sitting and…

…gripping his hand. Vetinari glances down.

“You,” Vimes spits, with a vitriol matched only by the strained, tense relief on his face, “were nearly dead. Your heartbeat was nearly stopped, you don’t get to say I look half-dead when you -”

Distantly, Vetinari is aware that his hand is being crushed tight under Vimes’, and that the rapid pulse of his heart might be more emotional than it is a sign of illness. Perhaps.

“Not my words, precisely. Though if you’d be so good as to take my pulse -”

Vimes’ eyes widen with rapid calculation, and he checks Vetinari’s pulse with two fingers against his throat.

Before all of this, it was easy enough to ignore, to set aside the irritant that was his weakness for Samuel Vimes. After dozens of lifetimes with the only consistent spark of familiarity being his voice, Vetinari is faced with the somewhat bleak knowledge that he might need time to get this back in control.

“Rapid, but not dangerous,” Vimes concludes, and sags a little in his chair. His relief is something Vetinari wasn’t expecting. He’d more or less assumed that their little dance of play-antagonism was platonic at best, on Vimes’ end, and perhaps it is.

Just being in his orbit will most likely suffice, he tells himself. He can survive on that, as he has done in the past.

He just needs a moment. He closes his eyes, briefly.

“You kissed me,” Vimes snaps, accusing, and Vetinari, tired to his core, doesn’t open his eyes.

“Do accept my apologies, both to yourself and to Sybil. It won’t happen again.”

There’s a silence, and then Vimes shifts, in his seat. He’s at a loss, Vetinari thinks, because of the lack of surprise.

Sybil murmurs, from the door, “Actually, I rather think we’d better talk about that,” steps in, and closes the door.

Reluctantly he opens his eyes. She pulls up a seat beside Vimes, next to Vetinari’s sickbed, and gives him a soft look. “I’ve known for years, Havelock.”

Vimes gives her an odd look. “Have you.”

Vetinari says nothing.

Sybil clicks her tongue. “My dear Havelock, you are… not subtle.”

“Is he not.”

She’s exasperated, now, but Vetinari doesn’t have anything he can say in defense of himself. His gratitude to Vimes - to Samuel, in fact - had grown into something else a long time ago, and he isn’t surprised in the least to know that his closest friend knows.

“When did you work it out, dear?” Vetinari murmurs, and she reaches out, covers her husband’s hand where it’s still vice-gripping his own.

“Before we married. I felt a little bad about it, of course, but - well, I suppose I didn’t realise Sam would feel the same way.”

There’s a long, level silence.

A silence in which Vimes does not protest.

Vetinari’s mind turns that knowledge around a few times before he looks properly at Vimes, who looks - frankly - as tense as he feels, and perhaps a little grimly unsurprised.

“Of course,” Sybil continues, “when I first realised, I was surprised enough that you hadn’t already started an affair.” Vimes shoots her a sharply affronted look, and she lifts her other hand. “It took me a good few months to realise that Sam is far too loyal for that, and a good few years to realise that that was more about his love than any obligation to the marriage. So I exchanged a few careful clacks with some of the Uberwaldian dwarves, and found that - well, they have no laws about this kind of thing being disallowed.”

Vimes seems to be calculating rapidly, approaching the same point that Vetinari is already sitting stunned at.

“The thing is,” Sybil murmurs, and leans in, pressing a kiss to the corner of Vimes’ mouth, squeezing lightly at Vetinari’s hand under Vimes’, “I’m more than happy to - extend the family, what have you. It would make me happy, in fact - I love you both very dearly. And it’s upsetting, watching the two of you circle without ever doing a damned thing about it.”

Sybil sniffs, her point made, her expression tense, bordering on haughty. It’s because that’s the expression she makes when she’s getting emotional and doesn’t want to be the first to show it, Vetinari remembers distantly.

“Are you suggesting,” Vimes murmurs, sounding disoriented, “that I have an affair with him?”

“Oh, don’t be daft, man!” Sybil gives her husband an incredulous stare. “The scandal would get things riotous in days!”

And just as Vimes opens his mouth, expression scrunched in consternation, she beams at them both, fixing Havelock in particular with warm intensity.

“I checked the laws here and there’s nothing against it - I think it’s a much safer bet to make it all official, really.”

Vetinari - Havelock - pauses, and then says, delicately, “Are you proposing to me, Sybil?”

“Sort of,” she responds, and gives him a bright and wicked grin. “I think Sam’s too self-conscious.”

“Give a man a moment to think!” Vimes - Samuel - retorts sharply, and he’s flushed to the tips of his ears, and Havelock has never seen him like this, on a back foot in such a harmless, vulnerable, personable way. He thinks he’d love to see it again, and again, as many times as life will allow. ‘Flustered’, that’s the word.

Havelock shifts, and leans back into the bed. Closes his eyes - waits for a jump from one reality to the next - and instead, listens to the sound of Sybil laughing, coaxing her husband towards the idea that perhaps, just perhaps, they could be happy.

When no jump comes, he opens his eyes, looks at Samuel, and asks, very levelly, “Well. What do you think? Do you want -”

“Yes,” Samuel snaps, without giving him time to answer. The man is still flushed, looks stressed, and Havelock wonders why it is that he seems to thrive best like that. Perhaps some kind of enrichment.

Havelock’s heart does something unfamiliar when the Commander growls out, with a look of grim determination, “I just need to find who poisoned you, and the right kind of ring.”

Havelock leans back, into the pillows, and fixes his pale blue eyes on His Grace His Excellency Commander Sir Samuel Vimes, Duke of Ankh-Morpork, now gearing up to go and make some inquiries, and feels, for the first time in recent memory, in his own world, relaxed.

“Well,” he murmurs, mouth twitching into a ghost of a smile, “don’t let me detain you from your tasks, then.”

Sybil laughs, and Samuel gives him a brief, level stare, before rising - knees cracking - and turning to leave. He doesn’t salute. He’s not smiling, too focused on his tasks.

But Havelock, after just a moment, realises that he’s smiling himself.