Title: Octarine-tinted Lenses
Ratings: R. Imagery, nothing overly graphic.
Series: Unlikely. 'Tis an odd little pairing, but I love it. ;)
Summary: Just humorous fluff.
Warnings: Nothing nasty. Slashiness abounds!
Archive: I'll most likely say yes, but please ask me first anyway.
Feedback: Woohoo! *waves little feedback flag* [email protected]
Disclaimer: So incredibly not mine. The great Terry Pratchett *bows* owns everyone and everything in here. May he never read this. ;)
Dedication: To my betas, Neev and Kaci, (thank you! ;) but most of all to my friend Colm, who gave me both the inspiration and the drive to write this when he explicitly forbade me to do so.

So I wrote it on *his* computer! Hah! ;P

A sleepy blue eye cracked open. It and a corner of pale forehead thatched with wildly sticking up brown hair was all that was visible under the mound of blankets that was the Archancellor's bed.

Sunlight was streaming through the window, onto the tangled covers of the bed and right into the eye in question, making it quite hard to get back to sleep.

The lively smell of the Ankh on a summer morning wafted through the window, pausing only to gawk at the slumbering occupants of the bed and rifle through a few drawers before moving on.

The owner of the eye yawned and snuggled back underneath the covers, only to be re-awakened by a scrape of hair against skin as a pair of lips pressed against his collarbone.

"Good morning Mr. Stibbons."

"Good morning, Archancellor."

"You'd better go. The Bursar will be up and about soon. You know how he gets if he doesn't have his pills. Can't have that business with Mrs. Whitlow's washing-line again. Unhygienic, y'know."

"Mmmm."

Ponder snuggled back against the reassuringly heavy arm thrown over his shoulder, trying to stretch out what everyone knew were the most precious and fastest moving moments of the day;

the five minutes in your nice, warm sane little cocoon before you had to get up and face the day.

Where it was almost certain there were going to be uncomfortable, grant-related questions to answer and important and dangerous things prodded, and people saying things like, "What happens if I press this butto-- Oh. Sorry."

Such was life in the University.

Ponder had actually thought about measuring the rate of time acceleration with a sort of modified thaumometer.

All it would take would be a few extra morphic resonance coils from Hex, a couple of hundred octarine rods, give or take a few, and maybe a few weeks of personal trials, incorporating a lot of nice, long, lie-ins...

"...ibbons!"

"Hmm?" Ponder peered around short-sightedly at the amused blue gaze of the Archancellor.

Munstrum Ridcully, your lover, a treacherous little voice whispered. Ponder mentally told it to go and get buggered. There was a short, sniggery silence inside his head.

Ponder turned flushing cheeks to the Archancellor who raised an eyebrow and said "Away with the fairies again, eh?"

"Yes sir."

"Good to see you're feeling your usual self then." He hesitated, and having more than a passing acquaintance with the workings of Ponder's mind, inquired, "How much is this latest venture going to cost the University?"

Ponder smiled distantly. "Oh, nothing. It wouldn't work anyway. Not enough room in here for all the equipment."

He swung his legs off the edge of the bed and started to blearily fish around under the bed for his robe.

According to all the laws of the multiverse that apply to absolutely everyone who has ever er... slept over, his underwear was nowhere to be found.

There was a creak of springs as Ponder straightened, and two arms wrapped around him from behind. He hugged back briefly, then turned as Ridcully, twinkling at him, held out his glasses. "Looking for these?"

Ponder couldn't help smiling as the glasses were hooked around his ears for him, his hair smoothed down and his lips met in a long, slow kiss.

Before they could get too ...involved, he broke the kiss and headed, silly grin still plastered across his face, for the door, saying, "I'll see you at breakfast, Archancellor."

"And Mr. Stibbons?" Ponder turned, hand on the handle, at Ridcully's voice.

"Do something about your hair. It doesn't do to have members of the faculty with unruly hair. Makes the place look untidy."

"Yes sir." Ponder swallowed a laugh and exited the room, leaving Ridcully to look forward to a brisk, early morning run and a nice, long, and most importantly cold shower.

*****

"Runes?"

"Yes, Dean?"

"What's wrong with Stibbons? He looks like he's swallowed a coat hanger."

It was lunchtime, and Ponder was sitting a little apart from the senior faculty, grinning happily into space, apparently unaware that he was currently attempting to eat his soup with his fish knife.

"Tried to swallow it, you mean."

"What?" The spotlight of incomprehension turned from Ponder and swung round onto the Senior Wrangler, never one to miss an important metaphysical discussion.

"Well," said the Senior Wrangler, "if he'd actually swallowed the coat hanger he'd be writhing in unbearable agony, I'd imagine. "

"Especially if it was one of those huge wooden ones Mrs. Whitlow uses in the laundry rooms." Put in the Chair of Indefinite Studies.

There was a pause that can be best described as the silence you get just before the mountain starts to rumble.

"And just how" said the Senior Wrangler, "would you know what kind of hangers Mrs. Whitlow uses in the laundry room?" His voice had icicles hanging from it. The natives of the mountain had taken one look at the smoke billowing from the crater, and ran for it.

"Er... well, I er... just happened to be passing by one night, and... er... you know how it is..." said the wretched Chair, wishing he was one of the natives.*

"Oh, really?" The Senior Wrangler had a manic gleam to his eye.

"Now, now," quavered the Bursar "There's no need, to, er, become heated..."

Ponder put down his spoon and wandered out of the Great Hall, deaf to the shrieks, thuds and, for some reason, loud and incredibly flatulent ripping sounds that made up Friendly Wizardly Debate at its best.

Ponder was happy; life was good. Well, definitely okay-ish anyway. Insofar as nothing had exploded, or mysteriously disappeared into another dimension, or shouted at him today.

As Ponder stepped through the doorway to the High Energy Magic Building, humming a happy little tune, a minor explosion rocked the floor underneath his feet and a charred chair leg flew past his ear, shattering against the doorframe behind him.

* i.e. Far, far away, and still accelerating.

*****

The Archancellor finished shoving the last of the paperwork off the snooker table that served as his desk, and stood back to examine it critically. A venture like this had to be undertaken with the proper precautions.

The table was sufficiently large, certainly. But the philosophical crux of the problem, that is to say, the nub, was "Is it sturdy enough?".

Ridcully picked up his staff, and with a brief run up, brought it down on the green surface. There was a sound like a mammoth wooden ruler being twanged off the side of an equally huge desk, a sort of long, protracted "twoiiiiing". Ridcully hurled the staff across the room and massaging his jarred arms, glared at the pool table.

It smirked back at him.

He felt bloody stupid. In fact, this whole situation was bloody stupid. Damn blasted Stibbons and his requests that were so damned impossible to deny. Because he'd never ask outright, oh no. Just sort of… stop, and look suggestively to the table, back to Ridcully, then to the snooker table again. And then he'd smile that shy, short-sighted smile and… there it was, Munstrum Ridcully, Archancellor of UU, one of the most powerful, and certainly most important men on the disc, brought to heel like a bloody swamp-dragon.

How the bloody hells did all this start anyway? He couldn't recall ever even considering this sort of life up until a few months ago. It was just one more of those incomprehensible, slightly grubby things that Did Not Feature in the world of Munstrum Ridcully.

And insofar as if he had ever thought about buggering another chap (which he never had, he hastened to add, he'd always liked women, and great big women built like Valkyries at that) he considered these sort of things rather back door shenanigans and unhygienic. An unhealthy way of life, not to be encouraged amongst the general population.

However, essential to every wizardly mind is the unequivocal knowledge that The Rules of the Universe apply to everybody, for the comfort and well being of all. Everybody except wizards, of course. *

The Archancellor was well known to be the owner of a rather large, loud, bear-like personality. He had the all the tact of a brick and a sense of humour with all the subtlety and stopping power of a well-flung one. He would be an unlikely candidate for any fluffy, rose-tinted gibberish.

Nevertheless...

Ridcully glared again at the snooker table. He must be getting soft in his old age.

* So whilst Ridcully might disapprove of homosexuality in general, in specific cases he was er… right behind the idea.

*****

The senior faculty hurried towards the Archancellors office with a turn of speed that might have surprised anyone who knew that their destination was not the dining room.

"This is all your fault." said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, glaring at the Dean. "We'll be up to our ars-- armpits in tentacles any minute now, you mark my words."

"There's no need to make such a fuss," muttered the Dean sulkily. "It was only a little rip."

"Oh, I do apologise, Dean, by "little rip" you mean bloody great hole in the space time continuum hovering over the faculty dining table, yes?" piped up the Senior Wrangler, who was sporting a black eye and slightly singed hat.

"And lets not forget whose bwight idea it was to flig that spbell at the Bursar, Senior Wrangler," said the Chair of Indefinite Studies nastily, dabbing at his bloodied nose. "You twy explaibing to the Archancellor why the pboor chap is currently half a bowl of sebi-sentient potato salad."

"Ook." agreed the Librarian, knuckling along beside them.

The Senior Wrangler had his mouth formed around a suitably angry retort when suddenly he stopped, and began to look rather worried.

"Tell me," he said in the careful tones of one who is asking a question they are not at all sure they want an answer to, "what did we do with the Bursar?"

There was a collective pause.

"Oh, the poor fellow's fine," said the Dean breezily, "I left him with Rincewind."

The Senior Wrangler relaxed. "Oh. Well. That's all right then."

*****

Outside the study door, the Senior Faculty pause. The Lecturer in Recent Runes reaches for the handle.

Inside, Ponder perches on the edge of the green surface of the snooker table, pulling his robe over his head and knocking his glasses askew in the process. The Archancellor unhooks them for him, and leans in for a brush of lips on lips.

Deep silence for a heartbeat, and then...

*****

Once the screaming had died away, and someone had fetched the Lecturer in Recent Runes a glass of water and a charcoal biscuit, and distracted Ridcully from attempting to murder all his senior staff long enough to point out that he still wasn't as such, wearing any actual clothes, the faculty sat in the Uncommon Room, passing a bottle of brandy from hand to shaking hand.

After a while the Dean opened his mouth.

"Shut up Dean." said the Senior Wrangler, without looking up.

"But I didn't eve--" protested the Dean.

"You were going to make some sort of horrible joke about balls and pockets weren't you?" the Senior Wrangler continued flatly, "I could hear you thinking it."

"All I was going to say was that that was certainly unexpected." the Dean replied huffily, "I mean, who'd have thought old Ridcully was that sort of chap?"

"He was always very wild as a student," piped up the Chair of Indefinite Studies, "remember when he took old Professor "Widger" Todger's sentient dentures to the Mended Drum? Got them so drunk that for a week afterwards all old Widger could say with them in was "Gerrrronnyerbstrrrd, yerwot?"

The Lecturer in Recent Runes, who had made quite a hole in the brandy, was staring into space with a glazed sort of look in his eyes.

Waving his glass around airily so it sloshed all over the Chair's robes, he said dreamily "Oh, I don't know. It looked rather a bit of a lark to me. Much more fun than croquet, certainly. Whoops, sorry there Chair, do excuse me."

There was a pause that might be best described as "thoughtful".

The Lecturer in Recent Runes, pawing clumsily at the Chair's damp robes looked up, and through a brandy-coloured haze, their eyes locked.

"Really," said the Dean disapprovingly, once the sound of hurrying feet had receded, "you would have thought they'd at least have picked up their chairs."

He stood up, gave an incredibly theatrical yawn, and turned to the Senior Wrangler, batting his eyelashes in what was probably meant to be a gesture of coquetry*, "I don't suppose you'd care to come up to my room for a spot more of brandy..?"

Yet another chair clattered to the floor as the Senior Wrangler shot to his feet and back-pedalled furiously out of the room, stuttering something about having quite a lot of washing to do, and having to drop it all down to the laundry rooms tonight.

Looking rather downcast, the Dean stared at the empty doorway, and moved sadly to leave, when a huge, orange-haired hand rested on his shoulder.

A hand with three knuckles per finger.

The Dean's expression went on a light-speed journey through panic, past terror, skidded briefly around thoughtfulness then came to rest in a patch of dazed happiness.

After all, it must be amazing what one could do with three sets of hands.

* Rather a difficult thing for a seventy-year old, fat, bearded wizard to achieve.

*****

We zoom out to the exterior of the university, taking in the velvet of the 500-year-old lawns, the ancient, glass-domed library, the teetering Tower of Art, one of the oldest and tallest buildings on the Disc.

Out further, to view the great seething hive of life that is Ankh-Morpork, city of cities, midden of middens.

Further, until the city is nothing but a badge of suspicious colour amongst the flatulent green of the Sto Plains.

Further, and we see the whole Disc, clouds spiralling slowly around the peak of Cori Celesti, the slow ooze of sunlight climbing the Ramtops.

Further still, and Great A'Tuin glides slowly through deep space, through meteor showers and past galaxies, tiny orbiting sun lighting periodically the world carried on his back.