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[forged_hero]

There were things to consider, Moist thought, contemplating the bottom of his glass. The mended drum was descending gently to the belligerence of late evening with a few knife throwing competitions. Moist had, with a grin and a sportsmanly wink denied entrance as a target or competitor. Let them love you, buy you pints, but if you were a real

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[forged_hero]

There were blessed moments of happiness early the next morning. There was a hum in his bones that suggested he'd done precisely what his body had been made for* and he was in a soft bed that, while it didn't have the musty odor of half a pack of wolf-hybrids, felt enough like a beachside bungalow that his body could be tricked.

For a little while, at least.

As Ankh-Morpork's many clock towers came to a slow, ambling consensus of 7am, Moist rolled over in bed, found a cold spot beside him and choked on a wave of guilt so great that the idea of standing was insurmountable until all eight feet, seven hundred pounds of Gladys came into his bedchamber and announced that He Was Due For A Morning Meet With The Pseudopolis Post and the day was off like a shot, the guilt miring him like quicksand, sucking him down before he'd even realized his thoughts had strayed to Duo, the night before, and that familiar hitch in his breath.

"I said reschedule the Stamp Enthusiasts Luncheon, Stanley!" Moist yelled when he heard a rattle at his office door. "They've all waited eighteen spotty years or more to make eye contact with a girl, they can sure as hell wait one more day. I've got a headache."

*ie. make more smaller, more genetically diverse versions of itself as frequently as possible.

[self_named]

"Sounds like an advanced kind of group," Duo said, ducking in around the door and letting it fall shut on its own behind him. He sauntered across the room and dropped lightly, sideways, into the chair across from Moist's desk, legs kicked over one arm and arms draped over the back of the other.

"Afternoon, boss."

[forged_hero]

Moist covered any other kind of reaction with a slowly arched eyebrow. Well. He could do this. Last Night Did Not Happen. From just his posture, Moist got that loud and clear.

"Afternoon, employee," Moist said. "Wait, what is it exactly we're not paying you for?"

[self_named]

"Not vandalizing the property," Duo replied.

"But apparently," he kept on, lifting his hips a little to access his pants pocket, fishing a slip of parchment out, "your Lord Grace Vetinari wants me to go to work in your clacks office, until such time as you can concluded whether or not I am a spy."

[forged_hero]

Moist was not at all distracted by the cant of Duo's hips and kept his eyes steadily focused on Duo's mouth. His face, he corrected mentally. His face.

"Ah, so putting you in a position to crack heavily encrypted transmissions from our foreign friends and allies," Moist sighed, taking the paper. "Wonderful."

[self_named]

"Well, you can put me in some other positions if you want," Duo said without missing a beat, one corner of his mouth curling slowly up at the corner, tugging back into a grin that was too pleased and sincere to be anything as tawdry as a leer.

[forged_hero]

Moist, to his absolute horror, felt heat on his cheeks. Chalk it up to Uberwaldean prudishness - a country where formal sex education mostly consisted of understanding that after a pair of dogs played what looked like a poorly executed game of leap frog, one of them was likely to turn up with puppies in a few weeks time.

He'd lived a long and eventful life since then, and playing people easily slid into* playing bodies. So really, he'd no right to be sitting there looking scandalized, not when he'd had more partners and poor decisions under his belt than a pseudopolis seamstress at the start of her career.

But.... Duo. Duo had always been good at making him flush. He'd practically made a game of it, once upon a sun-drenched time. The good sort of flush, too, head to toe, with tingling left in his gut.

"Uhm," Moist said, as the pink fog in his mind burned away, and left him clutching the paper hard enough to crumple it.

and you used all those little memories against him, didn't you?, said a cruelly honest part of his brain, which sounded uncomfortably like Mr Pump. you didn't even hesitate. But then, you've always been good at taking what you want, haven't you?

"Well, uh. Far be it from me to ignore edicts from the man with an executioner on payroll" he said, lifting up the paper up enough to cover his face.

*haha

[self_named]

Duo's eyebrows crawled up to his hairline as he utterly failed to bite back a grin of unadulterated glee. Last night had been a no-holds-barred barrage, to the extent that Duo, upon waking from some dreams that were simultaneously soothing and deeply upsetting and filled with the sound of ocean waves, had thought it might have been a particularly intense wet dream. Moist had been... something else. Duo had been a wreck.

So this? This moment was rewarding in the utmost.

"Y'okay there, bud?"

[forged_hero]

"Mmhm!" Moist managed, slouching back in his desk chair and concentrating furiously on the neat copper plate handwriting that had Drumnott written all over it. "Right as rain!"

Moist hadn't really had much of a relationship with trust prior to the island. Or, there was a relationship there, but it was more like the interaction between a seamstress and client. Often faked, performed easily, and given only with the expectation of a handsome payout.

If Moist trusted rarely then Duo, well... Duo had spent a significant portion of his life trusting no one at all. Moist knew that, just like he knew every one of Duos nicks and scars, and it hadn't stopped him toppling Dup onto his back at the first gods damned opportunity.

"Er...," Moist swallowed, glancing at Duo over the top of the paper. "do you remember that ex I mentioned?"

[self_named]

"Front page news ex-fiance?" Duo asked, brow quirking. He didn't move a muscle but his entire posture shifted.

It was a hell of a moment to bring up a former betrothed, Duo felt a certain amount of mental bracing was warranted.

"Rings a bell."

[forged_hero]

"Front page in the tabloids," Moist huffed. "de Worde at least had the sense to bury it on page 6." And spare him the political cartoon. Moist really should send round a fruit basket for that tender mercy.

Moist sighed. "Her name is Adora Belle Dearheart, and if you need to have a laugh at the name, I suggest you get it out of your system now. She hasn't got a sense of humor about it. Vetinari might own the clacks, but it's her that runs it."

Moist drummed his fingers on the desk, and another sickly surge of guilt went through him. After a moment, he quietly said,"She's not exactly someone I should go begging favors from right now, and somehow I don't think showing up and waving this letter around in her face is going to endear me to her."

"In the meantime, I suppose we can get you set up with the boys on the roof. I might even get away with not running it by her."

He glanced up at Duo, making eye contact for the first time since he burst through the office door. "Anything else you needed?"

[self_named]

Duo's gaze was a touch too round to be entirely, effectively neutral. He cleared his throat, barely, and sat up in the chair, properly, scratching the back of his neck in a casual way. The blushing had been a fucking delight, and promising. And he'd needed--well, wanted, anyway--Maybe he'd misread.

His own gaze dipped to somewhere a few thousand miles to the left of the edge of the desk, and he pursed his lips faintly as he shrugged and nodded.

"Unless you've got a room of un-cracked encrypted missives for me to start with. I can find my way to the roof," he added, standing. "Sure you're busy."

[forged_hero]

It wasn't hurt that Moist was reading, not really. Confusion, maybe, which - fair. Moist in his emotional trashing had gone from aloof to flirtatious to unhinged lust and back to buttoned up civil servant in less time than it took for one of Dibbler's sausages to traverse the human digestive track.* Duo didn't deserve that. He was displaced and confused and more than likely going the disappear in a burst of light between one moment and then next. That was the best option. The worst was the memories coming back and Duo realizing that every one of the awful things that Moist had always insisted about himself were true.

"Er, yes. Busy day. Busy day!" He handed the missive back to Duo. "I'll - I'll check in later, shall I?"

*Wizards in the High Energy Magic Building estimated that this broke several land speed records, and even more humanitarian rules of war.

[self_named]

Duo was very used to being dismissed. He wasn't so used to it stinging. A muscle in his cheek barely twitched as he nodded and accepted the page back, only meeting Moist's gaze to flash him a quick and perfunctory smile that was, at a glance, charming, and was, beyond that, wholly and defensively empty.

"Sounds good, boss," he said, and folded the page around his finger before slipping it into a pocket and heading for the door. He opened it and paused, glancing back.

"I should use the stairs, not the drainpipe, right?"

[forged_hero]

Moist huffed out a laugh. "The boys up top tend towards paranoia, so I suggest the stairs. Also, there's a gargoyle that hangs out on the eaves near the top and if you try to get past him without a pigeon for toll money, he's likely to spit old rain water in your ears."

Right, he could do this. Gods knew he'd tumbled plenty of people and been out of town before sunrise the next morning. He could pretend this was the same. He could force himself to ignore all the little tells in Duo's expression that he'd spent years committing to cherished memory. In this situation, it was as close to the right thing to do as he was likely to get.

"Let me know if they give you any trouble, will you?"

[self_named]

Duo held one arm straight out so the last part of him that was visible in the door was a disembodied thumb's up.

Time to go see what the Renfest Metropolis counted as encrypted missives.