An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
And in a single night, everything changes and yet stays exactly the same.
They don’t talk too much as they walk back from the dorms, but Elphaba can’t resist asking Fiyero when they’re approaching the outside of the dorm building.
“Is this usually how first dates go?”
Fiyero’s shrug is non-committal.
“Yes and no.”
Elphaba frowns.
“Well what about your first date, how did it go?”
That gets him to pause, a look of consideration on his face. They're standing in one of the common areas. People have started to trickle back from the masquerade but they still have the space to themselves, but it’s dim enough that if anyone wanders in they might not immediately recognize them.
“I think my first date was asking one of the kitchen maid's daughters if she wanted to watch some of the horse races during the summer festival with me.”
Elphaba nods. He’d told her a bit about the summer festivals before, namely that he’d been a little sad to miss the one from last summer.
“How old were you?”
“Fourteen. If I'd been older, Feldspur and I would have been competing.”
He stops to think again.
“Actually, aside from taking place in public, it was closer to this than any other first date I can remember. Her mother had been with us for years, we'd been playmates and friends before then. None of the usual awkwardness, no need to ask her what she was studying or what she did for fun.”
It sounds sort of nice actually. Back in Munchkinland the family had always had staff, but none had ever taken to Elphaba and even if they had, she can imagine Frexpar dismissing them for it. And their children had certainly not been their playmates.
“Do you still see her?”
Fiyero stills again, a quick expression shaped like pain crossing his eyes. Elphaba feels a pang in her chest, but despite the bits of emotional intimacy they have shared, she does not want to pry.
“Sometimes. It was barely a year before she had to start working for her own keep and was too busy for kid stuff.”
Ahh. She continues to not pry, but she tucks that expression from his face away and carries it along with her.
They pause in the hallway outside her dorm, a step or two apart. Just a long enough wait to ensure no one else is there, and Fiyero darts forward quickly and steals a kiss goodnight before escaping into the dark and leaving Elphaba with something lighter and more buoyant to carry along with her too
And it makes it easy to let the happiness carry her along despite the continuing dark, ever-present tickle in her gut of insecurity. She doesn’t want to let it win.
Even if part of her kind of hates the discovery that Fiyero’s flippant take on her request- the request that was the result of that deep seated insecurity demon within her- is correct. Sneaking around IS kind of fun.
Maybe it’s because inside she knows that there’s nothing real on the line if they do get caught- it’s not like in one of her books where people might get killed or someone might get kicked out of school or even the country- all that’s at risk is her own social discomfort. And it makes it easier to take joy in finding little moments to share with Fiyero without others watching.
The first of these occurs after a political science class a few days after their date. When all the students begin to leave, Professor Nidnik joins them in exiting for lunch, shutting off the light on his way. Fiyero lingers behind, behind the seats but a few feet back from the door, and when Elphaba finally finishes rearranging the contents of her bag to her liking, reaches out and catches her hand.
Just for a moment.
(And to think she usually just lingered back after class because it made it harder for others to gang up on her in the hallway if she didn’t have to navigate a crowd).
It even extinguishes the mild exasperation she’d been feeling. During class, he’d been sitting behind her, beside Galinda, and she kept feeling him…
Reaching out a finger. Maybe a finger- maybe it was actually the tip of his pencil- and brushing one of her braids back and forth. Not to get her attention, or to annoy her, or distract her from class. Not holding one in each hand and making them talk to each other like he’d tried to do once- once back when he was with Galinda and still seemed to think that playing the fool might work on her- just moving them. Brushing them lightly. Making her imagine the same touch on the back of her neck and resisting the urge to turn bright red in the middle of class and give them both away.
But, surprisingly, they both have something resembling self control, and haven’t been found out. They even managed to be extremely casual in front of the others. And all of these little bits, little incidents, just make Elphaba feel…special.
Maybe it shouldn’t. Maybe it should make her feel embarrassed. Maybe she should be convinced that Fiyero doesn’t want to be seen with her if he’s okay with keeping her secret. But it doesn’t. It does nothing to feed the darkness and she’s not sure what to think about that.
Elphaba finds herself thinking about quite a lot of things really
One evening while she's studying, and Galinda is stretched out on her bed reading something out of the Society pages in the Shiz Gazette, one of these things comes out unbidden.
Galinda has gone on a half-dozen dates over the last semester but none seem to have satisfied her and Elphaba hadn’t seen any of them come by more than once. While Galinda had been gracious hearing about her and Fiyero, she seems ill at ease about the lack of her own romantic success and has often spent evenings instead with her head in the papers or a fashion magazine.
But Elphaba doesn’t care for Galinda’s frequent attempts at getting her interested in what she’s reading.
“Why do you read that rubbish?” she finally asks, tossing down her textbook at Galinda’s words of someone who was seen with someone at a hospital opening celebration.
“It's the only way to keep up, Elphie, the only way to know who's who!”
“But..” Elphaba bites her lip, “It’s all so…artificial sounding. And you remember the way they used to write about Fiyero..*
*Oh that's not the society pages, “ Galinda tells her, with a face that says ‘you silly’. “Not that he didn't feature in them of course, one couldn't miss mentioning the presence of a prince. But it was the gossip columns that really built up his sparkly and fascinating image.”
She dazzles Elphaba with a smile.
“Society writers want to report everything just as is. Gossip writers are creative. Not that gossip columns have never unearthed a real scandal or two, but one would be ill advised to read them without the consideration that they're mostly reading terribly entertaining fiction”
That doesn't really make Elphaba feel better. Especially since it seemed everyone at Shiz had read the same sort of things as Galinda had. She continues to think about it after. It comes up again barely a week later.
It was late in the semester, on an afternoon that was quite cold but still clear, and she and Fiyero had joined Nessa and Boq for coffee in the quad. Elphaba and Boq were sitting in the middle, acting as a barrier between Fiyero and Nessa, who has still been sending dirty looks Fiyero’s way on occasion.
Boq is trying to finish a biology assignment from the class he shares with Fiyero- Elphaba’s not in this class with them this semester but she’ll ask later if this is one she should help Fiyero finish. She suspects yes, because from the noises Boq is making, it’s a fairly onerous one.
“I can’t believe she dropped this so close to exams…Fiyero, I don’t imagine you’d be willing to try and do your thing and butter Professor Sinis up and get her to drop it?” Boq asks, scowling at his paper.
Fiyero snorts.
“That’d be a lovely letter home to my parents: ‘Caught trying to improve grades by flirting with the professor’”.
“Is that really new to you though?” Nessa interjects out of nowhere, “Galinda showed us all that picture the papers printed of you with your arm around a professor at your last school-”
“Hey-” Fiyero responds, quickly, and almost snapping, “-first off, I’ll have you know she was an assistant professor, of a class I didn’t even take. And secondly, that picture was from a dance marathon we were partners at. It’s not like I slept with her, we didn’t even get dinner.”
There’s an edge to his voice, and it raises a touch of alarm in Elphaba, so she interrupts by asking what in the world a dance marathon is. Boq actually knows, and the conversation changes to stories about how grueling they could get back during the Great Drought when the prizes were monetary instead of just for bragging rights.
When Nessa and Boq have both left (separately, Elphaba notes) and her and Fiyero are sitting a friends-acceptable distance apart, he continues, his voice much calmer than it had been earlier.
“She got reprimanded for that actually,” he says casually, and Elphaba turns her head, “I didn’t even know, but when the picture was printed she got in trouble for fraternizing with a student. I didn’t know, and I didn’t print the picture, but I still felt awful, I didn’t want her to get in trouble. Not that anyone would believe me if I said that”
She lets his words settle. She doesn’t really think he’s looking for a response, so when it settles into place, she asks for herself,
“Does it bother you? The things the papers printed, the way they made people talk about you?”
Fiyero lets out a breath that only sounds a little like a sigh.
“Yes and no? Like, most of them have at least a little truth to them. Like, the tales of my sexual exploits have been greatly exaggerated but I don’t think I ever said no to a date and I certainly never acted like I cared if people stuck around. And I was a terrible student who distracted myself by partying and having fun. At least when they’re calling me a heartbreaker and a cad, they’re too busy to call me stupid.”
He ruminates on it again.
“I can handle my parents being embarrassed by it, but it does bother me when they say it reflects poorly on others from the Vinkus. But a lot of it there’s nothing I could do anyway- famou speople complaining about how they’re portrayed in the media is hardly new.”
Elphaba has never seen the appeal of being famous, and this certainly cements it- knowing they could publish anything about you and you could hardly argue with it. As royalty, Fiyero may have always known his life would have to be at least partially public. But she can’t help but wonder…
“So what’s the wildest story that’s been printed about you that’s actually true?”
That pulls out a little smile.
“I did once get caught by an Ethics and Morality teacher in a supply closet missing my shirt with my hand up a girl’s skirt.”
Elphaba blinks. Really that was the sort of thing she’d been expecting, but it still feels…small.
“That must have been embarrassing.”
“You’d think so, but she loved it. Probably helped it spread. Might not have spread so…effectively if she hadn’t been the headmaster’s daughter though.”
Elphaba gives him a look. That is something that’s a bit more in line with what she had expected of Fiyero earlier on when she knew him.
“Please tell me you actually knew who she was that time.”
Fiyero smirks.
“It was hard to miss, we’ve established I may be pretty but I’m not pretty enough to get by on that amount of stupid.”
And while Elphaba will still claim she has too much dignity to try a supply cabinet, it appears that Fiyero has indeed picked up throughout his years some practical knowledge of spots on campus where they can pause and touch without prying eyes.
She thinks her favorite is one of the back library reading rooms. Aside from Elphaba having never seen another soul in them during her year and a half at Shiz, she’s also noticed that there’s a corner that if one or two people wanted to sit on the carpet like children, they wouldn’t be seen immediately if someone did walk in.
The floor is far more comfortable than against a wall in a dark corner too. Far better suited to discovering how much fun kissing is (it’s really unfair), and how much fun what else comes along with kissing is too.
It’s funny- only Nessa and Dulcibear have ever touched her even half as much as Fiyero has, but it’s not strange to her at all. It’s almost intoxicating in fact, discovering how nice Fiyero’s hands feel touching her, even on normal places like her arms or her back. She wants all of it that he’s willing to offer and accept from her in return.
(What she wants right now is to learn the contours of his ear with her tongue. She’d sucked his earlobe once and he’d made a noise loud enough she was almost worried someone would hear. She’s learned what his skin feels like, slipping under his collar, buttons undone enough to see just a hint of the light hair across his chest. But right now she wants to learn his ear.).
She’s interrupted when Fiyero asks, with a faux casual voice and fingers playing with the edge of the neckline of her dress.
“So…when you bruise, what color does your skin turn?”
Elphaba pulls back slightly to look at him.
“Just sort of darker than normal. Not quite as noticeable as on you.”
She can tell from the glint in his eyes that he wants to give her a love bite. She’ll let him, but she will get her revenge too. She’s already made him walk back to his dorm with his hair mussed and a button or two undone.
Again, maybe she ought to feel uncomfortable or find him intimidating, but she doesn’t. As much as he’s kissed her and touched her, her face and shoulders and arms and back, and - he’s gotten his hands under her blouse, though she hasn’t taken it off. Elphaba knows that’s really not that far, but Fiyero’s never felt pushy or impatient. But all of it- it feels so good. And getting to touch him in return too, as much as she likes…all of it just makes her feel almost confident.
Confident enough that it’s during one of these hazy evenings, lit only by dim lamp-light, that she finds herself asking him,
“Have you ever been in love?”
Fiyero leans back, shifting his weight onto his haunches so he can look at her clearly. His expression changes when he sees her face, even in the low light, which makes her glad. She was going for genuine and was worried he might mistake her tone for flippant or joking, or attempting to put words to something she is not anywhere in the league of willing to say yet and she suspects he’s not either.
And Fiyero waits before answering.
“No,” he says simply, but then he continues, “I haven’t. I thought- well, I don’t really believe in love at first sight-”
Elphaba doesn’t either, and she’s glad they’re on the same page.
“-But I do believe sometimes when you meet someone, you can tell they’re going to be important. I thought for sure I was going to fall in love once.”
His voice is different than she’s ever heard before, and Elphaba is entranced.
“Who was she?”
“He actually. His name was Wil, Wilford. He had the dorm across from mine at- well at one of the other schools I went to.”
His eyes have turned faraway, soft and dark, lids low.
“He was really brainy- you would have liked that about him, though he was religious too so probably not that part. And he…I don’t really want to say he took everything seriously because he could be fun too. But if someone or something was in his attention, he always gave you a hundred percent of it and whatever respect was earned. One date and I felt like we’d known each other for years.”
Now Fiyero just sounds sad, and once again Elphaba finds herself terribly sad for him.
“What went wrong?”
“I barely made it six months in that school before I got kicked out. Kicked out in disgrace at that- well, someone probably told Wil that he probably didn’t want to try and keep in touch. Might make him look guilty by association”
Yet another relationship, Elphaba thought, ended because of something other than the people in it. She dimly wonders what got him kicked out of that particular school but doesn’t ask. She scoots closer to Fiyero, and tucks her head into the crook of his shoulder.
“I guess I…” there’s another break and Elphaba almost feels like maybe this is the first time he’s even articulated this thought, “Maybe that was when I stopped even looking for something that would last because I never thought it would even if I wanted it to.”
Her heart breaks in half at that, and she leans far enough over to pull both of his hands so she can hold them in her lap. She’ll do whatever she can to stop this from being cut short. She wants it to last too.
That thought stays with her too, as the semester comes towards its end and Lurlinemas break looms in the future.
It’s late one evening before exams, Elphaba’s sitting on the floor in Nessa’s dorm. The day before she had volunteered to redo Elphaba’s braids before break, and Elphaba needed to talk to her regardless.
“Who put these in for you before school started?” Nessa wants to know as she gathers the supplies.
“While we were doing back to school stuff, Galinda looked until she found a hairdresser who knew textured hair. She looked scared to touch me at first, but she had this oil I’d never seen before that would let me keep them in for months without damage”.
And they had until her hair started to grow out. Elphaba points. “It’s that bottle there, I’ll spray it on when you’re done.”
There’s mostly silence between them as Nessa begins, pausing to stretch her fingers so they won’t get fatigued too fast or go stiff from exertion. After a few quiet minutes is when Elphaba finally breaks the silence.
“You need to stop making faces at Fiyero. He didn’t do anything to deserve it.”
Nessa doesn’t say anything in response at first, but Elphaba feels the slight change in her hands in her hair.
“I don’t want him to hurt you,” Nessa replies quietly. Elphaba huffs softly. If Fiyero hurt her, he’d have to answer to her first, and Nessa and Galinda would probably be fighting each other for who got to be second.
“And doesn’t it…I know you’ve heard all the same gossip about him the rest of us have. Doesn’t any of it bother you? What makes you think he’s going to take your relationship seriously?”
Elphaba grimaces. She’s not sure where to start. So she begins quietly.
“I know he’s more sexually experienced than me…”
Nessa quietly offers,
“It would be hard not to be.”
Elphaba frowns even as she flushes.
“That’s mean. It’s true, but you know why it’s true and that’s what makes it mean.”
Nessa doesn’t react, but Elphaba feels her shift and hopes that indicates at least a bit of shame, so she continues.
“And it doesn’t bother me about him. Maybe it would if I thought he viewed me as…a conquest or something, but I don’t feel that way. And he’s never come across as lewd-”
Nessa’s voice is softer, but more thoughtful now.
“He does flirt a lot but…”
“But have you ever seen him flirting with someone in an overly sexual way? Or seen his flirting make someone uncomfortable?
Nessa doesn’t answer that, but they both know it’s true. Fiyero hated making people uncomfortable.
“I like spending time with him,” Elphaba admits, “and being with him makes me feel good,” her voice soft and delicate. It’s a strange sentiment to say out loud. “And…maybe it won’t last forever. I hope, I hope it does last…but if it doesn’t it’s not the end of the world.”
At least she will have something she thinks. Something good to remember. She’ll have done something with her life she’d never thought she’d get, taking a risk on her happiness.
“And Fiyero takes things more seriously than you might think. He stayed here the whole summer just to take care of the Lion cub.”
That was the other thing Elphaba needed to talk to Nessa about. She’s a bit more worried about her reaction to this part.
“And…change of subject but…I’m not going back to Munchkinland for Lurlinemas break either.”
She definitely feels Nessa’s hands tighten in her hair when she says that.
“Fabala,” Nessa begins, the childish nickname tripping on her lips, “You can’t avoid Father forever. You’ll have to come home at some point. Father, he…he said some terribly unkind things when you were gone last summer. The longer you go, the worse he’ll be.”
That last bit is probably true, but Elphaba’s thinking about the first part.
“Nessa, I’m an adult. When I graduate, I could find work and move wherever I want. Munchkinland hasn’t felt like home since I enrolled here. I don’t have to go back and live with Father at all if I don’t want to.”
Nessa’s still, taking her words in, her hand still wrapped tightly in the braid she was working on.
“And I don’t. I’m tired of being the weird green girl whose father hates her. I know people will probably be awful to me wherever I go but at least I won’t have the baggage of being the Governor’s daughter somewhere else.”
Nessa doesn’t say much after that, just keeps on braiding. Before she’s done, she does at least ask,
“What will you do if you don’t come back to Munchkinland after graduating?”
Elphaba doesn’t know. She tells Nessa that. She doesn’t know what she wants to do after Shiz. Madame Morrible hasn’t mentioned anything about the Wizard to her this year yet. She tells herself that it was a longshot anyway, that she shouldn’t have depended on it.
But even with that little disappointment, the prospect of her future being entirely open to her still raises her up.
She’s even a little sad as the semester ends and campus begins to empty as students return home for the holidays.
Galinda pleas with her to join her in Frottica over break again, but Elphaba gently puts her off. She’s not entirely sure she’s even recovered from their summer visit yet.
She sees Nessarose off with an extra hug, though the younger girl is still a touch distant.
Fiyero hangs back an extra day longer than most before departing. He’s even a little nervous about returning home, since he’s been gone over a whole year.
Campus is bare enough on his last morning that they can get breakfast together without prying eyes, and no one sees her return to his dorm for the last bit of time they have before he has to leave. Elphaba’s down at the thought of him leaving, so when they’d sat down together, she’d actually turned and swung her legs onto his lap and laid her head on his shoulder.
(She tries not to think too much about the bed sitting on one side of the room. It’s a tremendously interesting distraction. The squashy couch that divides Fiyeros’s side from Boq’s stills what little nerves it causes.)
The couch is where they spend their remaining time discussing next semester plans and making very clear to one another how much they’re going to miss each other over the next few weeks.
The impending complete loss of physical touch is making Elphaba feel a little desperate too, even as they have to periodically pause kissing to talk.
“...and I want to take another course in Bio-”
Elphaba pauses, because she’s noticed that Fiyero is transfixed. She tilts her head slightly to follow his gaze to where it’s falling on her shoulder.
Her face is kissed red and her blouse disheveled with a couple of buttons undone, and she realizes that Fiyero is currently staring at…
“Fiyero, please advise me of why you seem to find my slip strap so fascinating.”
“There’s another one under here too,” Fiyero retorts, reaching up to nudge the nylon strap aside, revealing her bra strap underneath it. They’re not special or pretty, they don’t even match, but he’s still staring. She snorts.
“I’m assuming you must have realized at some point that I do indeed wear undergarments.”
“Oh believe me,” Fiyero replies, still transfixed but now grinning, “I’ve thought about it plenty, but now I have a bit of reality.”
She flushes a bit at the idea that he’d spent any amount of time thinking about her underwear.
“You’ve spent plenty of time touching that area, you must have seen it…”
Fiyero briefly lifts his head to tilt it at the window which is letting in the bright winter sunshine.
“I know you won’t stand for library slander, but it is far too dark down there to get a good look at anything. Besides,” he shifts and gathers her up, tightening his arms around her middle, “I’m not going to see you until the new year, I have to find something to take home to keep me warm,” he concludes with an ever so slight whine.
Oh she can’t have that, and inside pushes down, shoves down really, the urge to say he’ll be disgusted by the sight of her green skin, he won’t, she knows it, he won’t.
She leans back on her heels a touch.
“How long do we have before you have to leave?”
He glances at the clock.
“Ten minutes or so? Otherwise Feldspur will whine at me the whole way home.”
She reaches for the remaining closed buttons on her blouse and considers how badly it would stretch her slip to slide it down over her shoulders.
“I will not have you obsessing over a strap all break,” she tells him in a dead serious tone as her fingers work the buttons through their holes, “So, it seems I should wish you a happy early Lurlinemas.”
Her blouse slips off easily and at the sight of her green shoulders, Fiyero bursts into the most sincere smile she has ever seen him wear and the lightness of laughter pushes itself upwards and through her.
It’s the holidays after all, and she deserves a gift too.
