A/N: I'm a huge Discworld fan and fanfic writer who has never written Discworld fic. So I'm doing that now, and for what appears to be an incredibly rare ship. Enjoy the fluff!
Historian's Note: This story takes place sometime after the events in The Last Continent, but it doesn't really matter beyond that. Possibly we are in another trouser leg of time, or another pair of trousers altogether. Probably still in the same wardrobe, though.
Betas: SkyTurtle
Disclaimer: I do not own Discworld, nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.
…
Magnetism
Raven Ehtar
…
It shouldn't be possible. Good things just didn't happen to Rincewind. His preemptive karma should have made it really impossible, but he was forced to admit – reluctantly, suspiciously, watching for the universe to come barreling in like a travelling accessory and snatch it away – that he was… happy.
Even thinking the word in the privacy of his own skull made him cringe and look around, expecting any number of horrors to come at him, teeth bared and various other threatening extremities brandished. Against every law that had ruled the wizard's life before now, there was nothing. Only a small man, a little more than middle aged, now, his single pair of eyes closed and his chest moving slowly and rhythmically in sleep.
Rincewind scowled at him. He ought to hate the man – and he did, but in an almost absentminded way. Before Twoflower had come into his life, it had been incredibly boring. Not the best life, even by the most generous of philosopher's standards, but one that had been notably absent of any immediate threats to Rincewind's life and limbs. It was so strange to think of now – difficult to remember what it had been like. To think that once he had thought of "boring" as a bad thing! What his life had become could be traced directly back to the little man and his ridiculous desire to travel around the Disc and "see" things.
He'd often thought that there must be a mirror Rincewind somewhere; someone to whom only good things happened. It hadn't taken too long to decide that if such a man existed, that man was Twoflower. Certainly bad things occasionally happened to him, but the effects of any of those occasions could never get through the mile or so of happy naïveté that was Twoflower's natural state of being. Negativity just to bounced off of him. Unfortunately it bounced off of Twoflower and landed unerringly on Rincewind.
It had been a niggling suspicion at the back of Rincewind's mind for some time that Twoflower had acted on Rincewind the same way a magnet acted on inert metal. He had heard that a strong enough magnet could change some metals it came near, altering it subtly so that it became another magnet, a polar opposite to the first. Rincewind suspected that upon their meeting at the Broken Drum all those years ago, Twoflower had done much the same to Rincewind, so now they were polar opposites. Only instead of magnetism, it was luck. Or something similar. Thinking of it that way, Twoflower could be held responsible for every bad turn that had come Rincewind's way not only when he was nearby, but even after he had gone home to the Counterweight Continent.
Really, he ought to hate the once tourist.
He scowled at Twoflower, but not too hard. And when he turned over, murmuring in his sleep, the scowl all but disappeared. It was impossible to really hate Twoflower because… well…
Because he was happy. He was happy when he was with him, this continuously cheerful catalyst of chaos, which ought not to have been possible, for a variety of reasons.
But then, if Rincewind's karma was so that nothing he considered "good" could happen to him, and Twoflower was the opposite of that… Then anything Twoflower considered "good" was bound to happen to him.
And he thought Rincewind was a good thing to happen to him.
Technically this direct conflict of two perfectly opposite forces should have resulted in a stalemate – or the total destruction of the universe. Instead it resulted in…
A sleepy Twoflower sharing a bed with him.
Possibly his theory was wrong, or possibly it was right and it was just that Twoflower's luck poles or whatever were stronger than his and won out.
Either way, Rincewind was happy.
Rincewind lay down next to Twoflower, cuffed him lightly on principle – he only hummed in response without waking up – and settled into dreams of running. But he was running with someone beside him, so that wasn't so bad.
Besides, he reminded himself sleepily, hate was an attracting force, just like…