My abject and sincere (no, really!) apologies for the time it took this chapter to come out - the unseemly sentiment at the end of it, and also the fact that I don't have time to reply to the reviews I've a Bio test to study for and life's been hectic and not entirely pleasant either. I hope you enjoy this chapter, nevertheless!

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"Whoops, here comes Mr. Jelly!" The Bursar broke the deathly silence. Young Sam gurgled and clapped, while the man's eyes began to roll and his face purpled.

"Dried frog pills, you fellows!" bellowed Ridcully, swooping down like a ba—well, like a heavily built something-or-other-dontcherknow with bat wings. The wizards, awfully pleased to have something to do other than watch the shreds of cloth lick at Vetinari's suddenly bared navel, dove for their own private supplies. It involved much shaking out of the pockets and several miniature universes met their Armageddon then and there since shaking, pudgy fingers were less careful than usual. There were little sizzles, crashes, booms and several cries of, "Hey, what's my thingynozzle doing in your pocket, eh?"

Vetinari leaned down and pulled his clerk up. Drumknott's eyes were squinched tightly shut, and he appeared to be mumbling a prayer. It sounded something along the lines of, "…and if I should be fortunate enough to have complete use of appendages (you can get rid of the one between my legs though, that's never brought me anything but trouble – though I'd prefer it removed with anesthetic, if that's possible) please let me find a new job somewhere, O lord, and er – I'd make a really big donation if this turned out to be all a nightmare..."

… and a really, really, really big donation if everyone else disappears and Lord Vetinari takes off his pants before I wake up (but that's not strictly necessary)…

Thank you, Lord, for your gracious attention. Awomen.

Vetinari studied Drumknott for a long time, while everyone else busied himself with not looking at them. Several stared fixedly into space and pretended they didn't exist and had not been in the same room at the time ("What body? Oh, you mean this body – but you see I was astral traveling at the time and didn't see Vetinari's belly-button, so that's alright, eh?") They couldn't help feeling that this, one day, could happen them – only the Senior Wizards (and Ponder Stibbons) didn't wear pants underneath.

(Without the embarrassing crush on the boss part, of course. Hopefully.)

Drumknott had the type of face wherein color made all the difference. The glaring purple of his ears highlighted the curving, shell-like shape of it; the red of his cheeks brought to mind dusty pomegranates and the vermillion made his small, straight nose stand out daintily. His lips were very pale. One can only imagine (like Vetinari was doing) what they would look like swollen and rosy with kisses. Rawr.

Drumknott felt a delicate touch against his jaw, right where a small tap would probably paralyze all his nodes and kill him.

Vetinari stared deep into liquid brown eyes as Drumknott hesitantly opened first one, then the other. The clerk's mouth opened and closed soundlessly. "Erk," he managed. "Gehjk. Jkejri."

"Aanakjnenna," he squeaked, as Vetinari drew closer, so he could count the fine lines near those sharp, dark eyes. The Bursar found pills pressed into anywhere that wasn't his mouth as the rest of the senior wizards in one dense mass gravitated, metaphorically, towards the drama while attempting to look like they were trying to subdue their colleague and this took up so much attention that they hadn't even noticed that the Patrician was practically nose to nose with his secretary, good heavens, is he really.

"We'll discuss this, Rufus Drumknott," said Vetinari. No damn, that hadn't been right. He kickstarted the right glands - or was it called the larynx? - and his voice came out interestingly, seductively husky on the last word, "later."

"Bejakleje," said Drumknott, as the feather-light pressure against his jaw was taken away and Vetinari turned to flash all the wizards a bright, bright smile. It was a charming, guileless smile that held more menace than a sword at the throat. It was a sweet, delightful smile that said, "None of you were here, got that?"

Ridcully looked up, ostensibly, from pouring dried frog pills into the Bursar's ear. "Hrumph, well, nice of you to drop by," he said, in the weak trumpet of an elephant being stabbed in the leg. There was a short mental search for another generic, harmless phrase, which produced, "We must do this again sometime."

"Oh, indeed," said Vetinari blandly. With an imperious gesture of his fine-boned hands, Drumknott, like one in a trance, went over to collect Young Sam. In the midst of his world crumbling, he felt a comforting hand on his shoulder, and looked up into a rheumy, sympathetic eye.

"Bang goes the X-men," said the Bursar after a long pause, patting his shoulder.

"Oh," said Drumknott. "Thank you."

Young Sam wrapped pudgy arms around his neck, which made him feel better till the baby started to make long drawn out 'riiiiiiiiiippp' noises and blowing spit bubbles and chortling to himself. Vetinari swept out of the room, which was pretty damn cool considering he had practically nothing to sweep with.

--

An enterprising student gathered up bits of the Patrician's robe to sell to various people. Rather to his surprise, none of them were witchdoctors with PhDs in voodoo; but rather a miscellaneous bunch of young woman.

This has nothing to do with the story – unless the story was changed to 'Tales of the Scorpion Pit'.

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"May I lend you my coat, sir?" said Drumknott in a low voice as they started to exist the building. In any other circumstance (i.e.: if it hadn't been his fault), Drumknott would have been busy filing away tantalizing glimpses of Vetinari's pale, lean belly. He would have noticed, for example, that the Patrician's belly button was an 'outie' instead of an 'innie', and that a faint dusting of dark (graying…?) hair led down into the trousers and he would have knitted it all into a warm ankle socks of erotica. But he felt too low and miserable, feeling sure that once in the privacy of the office (if not in the privacy of the carriage), the Patrician would steeple his fingers and raise a brow and say, "Drumknott, I'm not sure how we're going to get along with you, but from tomorrow onwards, we'll have to try."

That is if he deigned to fire him at all. Vetinari might not even speak except to have the guards haul his head clerk away.

"Thank you, Drumknott," said Vetinari, with a glance at the sky overhead. Oh, well, this was rather romantic, he reflected. The wrists of his longer, bonier arms stuck out, but he was still technically wrapped up in Drumknott's neat, black jacket which was still warm from his body. It smelt of him too, a combination of ink, freshly cut paper and, incongruously, hot chocolate. Drumknott's white shirt was interestingly thin with washing under his coat too.

"You yourself are not too cold, I hope?" he inquired with a questioning lift of his eyebrows.

"I'll live, my lord." If you'll let me.

There was a sudden crack of thunder as the weather suddenly realised its duty to be cinematic and drive home Drumknott's torment. Rain poured down, and that was the only sound besides the carriage wheels slipping over wet cobblestones, and Young Sam, who had no sense of atmosphere, gurgling on Drumknott's lap. He had a pacifier in his mouth, and every contented coo that came through it landed on Drumknott's twanging nerves like a stone on a string of stretched catgut.

Vetinari was holding Drumknott's coat closed over his body, and he was looking out of the window. His long, pale, strong, capable fingers drummed his knee. Drumknott couldn't stop watching them. He couldn't stop thinking of them on his body. Specifically, around his neck and squeezing.

He shuddered, a full-bodied thing that jerked Young Sam about and made the boy squeak and giggle like he was receiving a ride. Honestly, the only time the baby chose to act like a sweet child out of some maudlin story (wherein, perhaps, the childish laughter inspires hope instead of sheer dread and hopeless rage. Ah, the brutal reality that leads us so happily down the path of infanticide) was when cheer was least needed.

Drumknott swallowed heavily. Vetinari flicked him a mild look and a raise of the eyebrows that was only a 0.2 on the Devastating Damage scale, but it further frayed the nerves that were currently all that was holding Rufus Drumknott's brain together.

Metaphorically speaking, they were long, gummy pink things, stretched like a net all over a pulsing grey bag of fear, pain, love, happiness, tears and filing. One by one, with each bounce; with each hair of that rippled along the strip of muscle over Vetinari's eyes that he overworked so that they could probably lift carriages in a way that any cape and underwear-on-the-outside hero would envy; the long gummy pink things were chewed.

Further attempt to accurately chronicle Drumknott's thought process at this point would have gone along the lines of: Ohmygodsohmygodshekeepslookingatmehetheresdefinitely-somethingwrongandhesjustgoingtoletmestewlikethisthewholeridehomebeforehekillsme-

Snap, went one long pink gummy thing.

-ohgodsIdidn'tmeantoInevereventhoughtaboutitbefore(thoughIdon'tknowwhyitseems-likeanovelwayforhimtogetnakednonononononono)maybeitsmyfaultreallybecauseIkepthav-ingthosekindofthoughtsohgodsohgodsI'm-

Snap.

"Drumknott?"

Snap.

"Are you quite alright?"

Snap.

"Only you've been staring at the carriage ceiling fixedly for about five minutes."

Snappity snap.

Snap.

"-so sorry! Please don't kill me I didn't mean to rip your robes I mean I never even thought about them coming off like that and I'm so unbelievably sorry and I'm sure I'll write a very long apology indeed to Archancellor Ridcully for ruining his ceremony like that and it'll never happen again, even if you let me live and Young Sam's bottle rolled under someone's robe and I'm sure that it's been smashed and now his dinner is ruined and so's the floor and what the files will be like if you fire me and let someone else just come in and take it over like that and I just ordered those new filing cabinets in silver and I'll never to get to use them-"

He paused to wipe his eyes, breathing heavily.

Young Sam blinked. So did Vetinari. At this point, Young Sam should have done something comforting and cute and innocent and sweet and silly – like spreading germs all over by sticking his pacifier into Drumknott's mouth. Or wiping his eyes for him. Or something.

Something that wasn't wetting his diapers, that is.

"Just as well he missed his dinner," remarked Vetinari as the smell rose. "Open the window, Drumknott, there's a good man."

There was a brief scramble that caused the carriage to rock side from side as it jittered towards the palace as clean diapers were fished out. Without the least bit of civic consciousness, but with every bit of self-preservation, the dirty diaper was thrown out of the window where it landed at Foul Ol' Ron's feet. His Smell leant down to inspect it – and it was love at first shite.

"Bugrit," said Foul Ol' Ron when he realized it wasn't edible.

"I couldn't fire you, Rufus Drumknott," said Vetinari, very much later in the evening. He had changed into his daily wear of long, black, shapeless robes. If he was wearing pants underneath it, Drumknott couldn't tell, luckily for him. Drumknott's jacket had disappeared, and he was too shy – or not suicidal enough – to ask it back. Just as well, really because Vetinari had –

-- well, nevermind what he did. It was not soppy and he did not fold it neatly away and put it in his treasure drawer, placing it tenderly just under the collection of Agatean killing instruments. Nope, not our Patrician, nossir.

And there was no alternate meaning – besides that of valuing Drumknott's uncanny skills with filing – when he added, "You're far too necessary to me to do that."

And if you believe that, you're in the wrong fic. Sorry.