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If Rincewind the Wizzard’s romantic endeavors were a playbill, it would be a single page long, slightly crumpled, credit Rincewind as the understudy, and look as if it had spent the last thirty years dormant in an old drawer.
He’s had one or two rows with women in the past. They never went anywhere, of course. The universe wasn’t so kind as to let Rincewind have anything more than a drunken one night stand with a nice young lady who was just doing her job. There had been scandals at the University regarding some wizards who broke the code of Lore, and their official expulsion from wizardry altogether had made Rincewind shudder some years ago. But being almost completely disregarded from the “Wizard” title by his peers had the strange effect of protecting him from further persecution. The current Archchancellor of Unseen University simply didn’t care enough to give Rincewind a fair trial.
Women or no women, Rincewind wasn’t worth the trouble.
That being said. With less than rudimentary experience in the romance department (better put, none at all), Rincewind only knew that someone liked him when they explicitly told him so. Those licentious invitations from scantily-clad seamstresses were clues enough. It didn’t mean that the little voice in the back of his head, the one that was always punctual to remind him that their feelings weren’t real, wouldn’t be correct whenever it made its point.
It wouldn’t matter now, in any case. Rincewind had outgrown his youthful ways. Something wicked had come his way, and it was wearing specs and a floral shirt.
“What’re you doing now?” he said tiredly, watching Twoflower. The old stump was practically the worst thing in the world in terms of comfort, as it was hardly a stump and more like a rotted log with spikes. They had stopped in the middle of . . . somewhere, resting from an exhausting day of avoiding certain death.
An hour ago Twoflower had suddenly brightened up with an exclamation of “I have a great idea!” And for the last ten minutes (after the last twenty had been spent on firestarting) Twoflower had made a magic show out of retrieving random food items from within the Luggage.
“Since I left Bes Pelargic I’ve been wanting to give this a try,” said Twoflower, putting aside some slices of bread and cheese. Rincewind flinched when the little man pulled out a small circular pie iron with a smile. “Mountain campfire recipe!”
Twoflower had said this in Trob, so the translation to Morporkian was something to the effect of, “Wildfire moonshine!” but Rincewind got the idea. Granted it was half past noon and they were in the middle of nowhere, but to Twoflower it was all the same. So long as there was a fire and something to cook over it. Potato potato.
The bread from the Luggage smelled fine, and Rincewind was feeling a bit famished, so he let Twoflower do his thing and roast a cheese-and-spinach-and-onion-and-salt sandwich. There was only one iron and the first few pies came out charred black. By the time Twoflower got the timing and technique down, with Rincewind’s help, there were enough materials for one sandwich.
Then of course Rincewind had to go and accidentally grab the hot skillet when reaching for the sandwich and Twoflower was up and fretting over a little burn. The wizard insisted he was fine but Twoflower was wholly convinced he wasn’t.
“You have to let me care about you, Rincewind,” said Twoflower. “Just a little. Here, let me help. There’s a little stream over by—”
“You really don’t have to,” said Rincewind, failing to pull his twitching hand away.
“Yes,” Twoflower smiled, “but I want to.”
So Rincewind, unsure how to feel about that, let Twoflower want to help him. Cool water soothed his skin and Twoflower went through all the trouble of ensuring his hand was bandaged. Rincewind didn’t say anything as this happened, more embarrassed than irked. But Twoflower didn’t mind it.
They shared that sandwich, then. Twoflower let him have the larger half.
He couldn’t help but blush. Rincewind wasn’t used to such gentle treatment like that. He felt better when somebody chided him for doing something astronomically stupid, and after some minutes of discomfort he expressed this to Twoflower. This resulted in him being met with a look of . . . hm. Genuine concern wasn’t one of the tourist’s notable faces, but there it was.
“You want me to berate you?”
“No! No, I . . . I just meant, I don’t know, it feels strange when you say things like I have to let you care about me,” the wizard’s voice cracked a little, “and that you want to do that.”
“Oh, dear, I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t . . .”
“Does it make you uncomfortable? When I say things like that?”
“Well,” Rincewind shrugged vaguely. “Not really? I guess it’s just—new. I’m not used to hearing things like that.”
Twoflower considered that for a while, masticating. This gave Rincewind enough time to realize how utterly pathetic he sounded.
A beat of silence followed, and then Twoflower’s firm, “I believe you’ll have to learn to get used to it, then.”
Rincewind said nothing. An odd fluttering seized his chest and his tongue knotted up. It didn’t help one bit that Twoflower leaned forward and patted his knee, grinning amicably. The wizard kept his eyes down and grumbled some inaudible assent, and he could hear the Luggage creaking at him curiously.
It would be an education, for sure.
* * *
Several days had passed since, all involving some eccentric adventures having to do with shapeshifting carnival troupes or bloodthirsty hounds or the occasional member of the Thieves’ Guild trying to do their job. Usually the universe liked to rearrange itself so that these various activities were daily occurrences, much to Rincewind’s dismay.
Twoflower remained his usual happy-go-lucky self. He was the one who bewildered the Thieves’ Guild member by ecstatically proffering him three rhinu in exchange for directions to the nearest inn. But then the young man, with enough shame to let his grandchildren feel it, reluctantly requested that they do this the right way, since this was only his second time out on the field alone and wanted a good story to tell the lads back at the Guild. The tourist conceded and Rincewind, agape, watched as they performed the whole “put the money in the bag” routine and signed it off with a receipt.
“Now we know a place to stay the night!” said Twoflower. “What a friendly young man!”
“Yes,” said Rincewind wearily. “How nice.”
They went to the inn.
It wasn’t anything lavish, but it checked all the marks for basic necessities. You just had to step outside to use the privy.
The room they got only had one bed (of course. Rincewind couldn’t expect to be lucky enough to have his own room for a chance to bolt as soon as possible), which was fine with Twoflower as long as the Luggage had its own corner. The innkeeper’s eyes bugged when he saw he was being paid more than his yearly salary and obsequiously escorted them to their quarters.
These were the times when Rincewind enjoyed Twoflower’s ludicrous affluence. Upon first seeing the wizard hat the innkeeper slipped on his trained scowl and would only sell them the cheap rum that probably spoiled a day ago. But as soon as those lustrous rhinu came out, suddenly the innkeeper was very eager to welcome a wizard into his establishment, and anyway everybody knows wizards are a coupla good chaps, eh? Always nice to see a wizard and of course you can get our special brew, no reason to be so myopic about the magically inclined, that’s what I say!
It was nice to be shown some due respect, is all. And a majority of it was due to Twoflower’s surprisingly stern, “Please ensure my wizard companion has the appropriate provisions-paraphernalia-ablutions-sleeping necessities, thank you much obliged you’re a pistol see you again soon space cowboy!”
But again, Twoflower’s intentional misspeaking made Rincewind cringe and blush and avoid eyes with the innkeeper. The translation was as gritty as gravel, but Twoflower basically just said, “please give my wizard partner (noun, intimate connotation) a suitable place for bedfellowing, thanks bye!”
It got the message across, certainly. But Rincewind had to decide whether to thank Twoflower or thump him. He settled on neither, opting for the passive approach, crisscrossing his legs atop the bed while Twoflower sorted through the Luggage.
“You pretty much told him that we’re an item,” Rincewind explained miserably. “Like, that we wouldn’t want two different rooms even if they had any available, and of course they don’t. He thought—do you understand what I’m talking about?”
Twoflower either didn’t or was masterfully pretending that he didn’t. “I’m afraid I don’t,” he said. “We are an item, aren’t we? I paid for the both of us.”
“That’s not what I mean. I’m saying ‘item’ as in, um, we’re a thing, you know? That we’re . . .”
The wizard squirmed uncomfortably. Sexuality courses in Unseen University generally boil down to “wizards and women are forbidden, but anything otherwise is something we’re not quite sure about, so . . . be safe anyway”. There was no official constitution on homosexuality written in the Lore. It wasn’t commonly spoken of but it definitely had a presence.
Rincewind recalled some classmates who were neither flamboyant nor closeted, but merely existed in the back of everyone’s minds as the boys who “swung that way.” It was frankly a bit weird, now that Rincewind thought about it, to talk of them like they were mythical beings who freely tightrope-walked the line of the taboo. It was just Something They Did. The University staff never got involved because none of the students were women, so technically no rules were being broken. There had been some mandatory dorm meetings encouraging the tolerance of others’ choices, though, and advising that whoever you may be attracted to, please assure yourself that you are staying safe and maintaining your studies as usual.
During his time at the university Rincewind never fancied anyone romantically. Except for, he remembered, that strange and overall cringeworthy period when Trymon kept appearing in his sights. He figured it was a phase. A long, painful phase. Everyone had been amazed at Trymon at the time, with a select few determined to get on his good side in more ways than one. Jealousy and infatuation tend to get terribly mixed up when you’re young and sexually repressed.
In any case, trying to describe this to Twoflower was just as excruciating.
“You made him think we’re involved , all right?” he said, making some interesting hand gestures which had Twoflower’s brows shooting up in sudden comprehension. “Didn’t help that you literally told him we’re up here bedfellowing.”
“Well, we technically are,” said Twoflower. Rincewind shot him a look, and Twoflower clarified, “Sharing the bed, I mean.”
“Wh—sure, but you said it like . . .!”
“I wouldn’t worry about it too much.” Twoflower retrieved an entire potted plant from inside the Luggage and placed it on the window sill. He smiled at the wizard. “I’m very sorry, in any case. I can head down and clear things up, if you’d like.”
“No!” Rincewind stopped him, blushing madly. “Don’t—don’t do that, please.”
“Why? Didn’t it bother you?”
“Yes—no—maybe—I don’t know, um . . .”
“You just gave every possible answer to that question.”
“It doesn’t matter that much at this point, Twoflower, you can let it go.”
“Oh.” Twoflower thought about that. “. . . So it doesn’t bother you?”
The wizard kneaded his eyes again and fell back on the soft bed. “No, it doesn’t bother me. It’s not a big deal. I’ll be fine.”
It began to dawn on Rincewind just how tired he was. His brain said it wasn’t worth the effort getting upset, and anyway Twoflower heading down just to say by the way, when I said ‘wizard partner’ earlier, I meant that we’re just friends and have completely platonic feelings about each other, thanks for understanding, I will now go up to where me and my platonic wizard partner are currently sharing a bed! would be ten times more embarrassing.
“If you insist,” said Twoflower, more gently. Rincewind rolled over to the other end of the bed and allowed Twoflower enough room to climb in under the duvet.
Rincewind stared at the wall, processing the day, tracing a finger over his bandaged hand. The world outside was cold and dark and ominous. Here, it was . . . probably safe. It wasn’t very often he shared a bed with someone in good company. Ostensibly his heart didn’t know how to deal with that, racing like a madman on a horse track. All of the times he had been condemned to group work in UU, his partners would visibly deflate and moan as if they had lost the ultimate lottery that would have set them for life. No one ever bargained for a magicless coward on their side.
The oil lamp flickered tenderly from Twoflower’s side. Rincewind wondered if the tourist was looking at him at all. Cautiously he peered over his shoulder, finding that this was in fact not the case. Twoflower was happily sat up against his pillow with a ragged leather journal in his lap, writing industriously. The words looked unfamiliar to Rincewind—a lot of them contained pictograms of urinating dogs; certainly the written language of Agatea.
“What are you doing?” asked Rincewind.
At this question Twoflower self-consciously hid the pages against his chest. Rincewind couldn’t read them without a few minutes of intense translating, but regardless this was the first time he had seen Twoflower become aware of himself like that.
“Writing,” said Twoflower. “I enjoy journaling every now and then at the end of the day.”
“Right. You seem the sort who would like that stuff. What do you write about?”
“Just my day, how it went and all, and some private thoughts. It’s very liberating!”
“Hm.” What private thoughts? was left unsaid.
There was a long pause. Rincewind got the odd feeling that he was meant to fill that silence. Instead he took the hint and turned his eyes to the ceiling, away from Twoflower’s journal, and lay there listening to his scribbling. The beating of his heart sounded hollow in his chest. He should ask. Twoflower was clearly waiting for him to ask.
Private thoughts , he thought privately. What a concept. To Rincewind, writing down anything that could be used against you in the court of law, including what you thought on a daily basis, was dangerous. Journaling had never been attractive to him for that same reason.
Attractive . Rincewind’s film-reel of a memory chugged back the past few minutes. Agatean was a language he wasn’t quite lettered in, but from what he saw in Twoflower’s jargon handwriting, there was a certain pictogram he recognized from famous Agatean love poems: a little dove taking flight from a branch. That one had a very special meaning.
Rincewind lay unmoving until the scribbling stopped. Maybe he was thinking too much. Too much thinking was good for one’s health, in Rincewind’s experience, as it was better to expect the worst than be sorry later. But too much thinking on certain subjects, especially in the late hours of the night, proved to be anything but.
Lying here next to Twoflower in the same bed after persuading him that being perceived as an item sincerely did not bother him, talking about things you thought about in the privacy of your own head. . . .
When Rincewind heard the slap of Twoflower’s journal close, he knew he missed his chance. He should have asked. The opportunity was there, and now it was gone. And there would never be a second moment where this strange, specific feeling of uncertainty would return.
He shut his eyes and tried convincing his brain to think about sleep. At his side he could hear Twoflower getting comfortable and dimming the oil lamp. The duvet was warm underneath, nearly too hot with the added body heat. That, too, was unbearable to Rincewind’s fragile thoughts.
There was a noise that sounded very much like Twoflower holding his breath. Even without peeping open an eye, Rincewind could recognize when someone was staring at him with silent contemplation. He hoped the blush on his face wasn’t so palpable.
“Rincewind,” whispered Twoflower, in the tone of one testing the waters. His voice was almost directly beside Rincewind’s ear and it made the wizard’s breath hitch.
“Yeah?” he said.
“Are you asleep?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Okay. What are you thinking about?”
Rincewind shut his eyes tighter. “Nothing, I don’t think.”
“Never?”
“Only in moderation. Why?”
“Just wondering. You seem out of it tonight.”
“Do I?”
“A little. I’m sorry about earlier.”
“I said it was all right. I’m all right.”
A pause. Rincewind hoped the hotness in his face would die out before sunrise.
In the darkness, Twoflower said, “I think writing down your thoughts would be good for you, Rincewind.”
“You think so?”
“Yes. I find it to be quite fun. What do you think about often?”
Rincewind didn’t know how to answer that. The first thing he always did when entering a new building was locate the nearest escape route, just in case. He double-checked that the door and window were locked every night. Once, during a nightmare, he sleepwalked himself all the way to the University wine cellar, where he barricaded himself in until he was woken up by an angry mob of students who weren’t very keen on staying sober for a whole weekend.
“Not much worth writing, I’m sure,” he said.
“Or just your feelings work, too. I feel much better after articulating how I feel on the page.”
Whatever Rincewind was feeling now, he was 100% certain words could not do him any justice.
“What do you normally feel that’s worth writing about?” Rincewind asked him in lieu of an answer. His throat felt tight as he swallowed hard.
Another pause. Twoflower uttered a little, “hmmm,” and nudged himself closer to the suddenly paralyzed Rincewind. “Sometimes I feel a particular emotion I don’t know how to deal with, or don’t want to forget. So I think about it more than usual, and put it down into words. It’s quite a wonderful process.”
“I’m not so good at poetry,” Rincewind rasped. He thought of little white doves with beady eyes leaping to the skies from slender branches. Twoflower was right beside him.
“I could help you,” said Twoflower softly.
Under the duvet, a finger tentatively slid over Rincewind’s bandaged one. It was like receiving an electrical shock that shot warmth up the wizard’s body. He didn’t know what else to do except twist his head in Twoflower’s direction and say, very quietly, “I would like that,” and ultimately allow the soft press of their lips do the honors of articulating the words that could never be expressed in writing.