Maki's Experiment

Even though maybe if this goes well, there will be more. More of those days that might count.

She’s so stuck in this strange state of anxiety that she doesn’t even really notice any change in her friends and the way they’re acting. That Nessarose spends a great deal of time glowering at Fiyero or that Galinda keeps looking like she wants to say something, but then shuts her mouth.

She’ll kick herself later for being unobservant.

But during this time, her brain keeps trying to turn on her. She hates it, she loves her mind, knows it’s one of her greatest assets, but all it wants to do now is twist this thing that is making her almost unreasonably happy into something awful.

First it tries to tell her that she obviously misinterpreted what Fiyero asked for, that he obviously just wanted to go out with her as a friend.

Elphaba’s embarrassed to even entertain this take. He had been very clear, and seemed to expect that she might think this or at least that she would wonder. He knew her that well at least.

Then she instead decides that she’s just an experiment. That he wants to see how a green skinned girl compares to a normal one.

She dismisses that quickly too. She’s not sure Fiyero could even explain the scientific method, much less decide on a whim to devise, plan and commit to a social experiment. It just wasn’t the way his mind worked.

She does spend more than a few days questioning if maybe he’s just out for the novelty of it. That she’s something new that he hasn’t had before and he has to try it out. Has to see how she looks on his arm. Maybe even he’s just curious if she’s green everywhere…she’s had rude, crude comments of that nature come her way before.

She feels bad that she considered it for so long. It’s what she would have believed of the Fiyero she met in the woods, so quick to turn on the charm. She knows better now, and eventually even in her insecurity, she lets it on.

Besides, they’re going to be outside, and it will be dark. And no one will see them.

And having dismissed all the other possibilities, Elphaba is left with just one. That Fiyero is genuinely interested in dating her.

And she doesn’t quite know what to do with that idea.

The day comes, and she doesn’t say anything to Galinda. While she has managed to surmise from observation- though embarrassingly late- of her behavior that Galinda likely knows what happened, she still can’t find the courage to actually say it or ask her.

And she is curious. Did Fiyero actually tell her, or did she just figure it out? But despite their friendship, Elphaba still feels like keeping her cards close to her chest. Galinda tends to be so effusive about things…Elphaba’s not sure she could take effusive right now. She’s too convinced that she’s going to close and open her eyes and this whole situation will be different. This thought sticks with her until the day comes.

Right now, this is manifesting in her inability to select which dress to wear.

They really aren’t that different- both dark colored and modest, distinguished primarily by trim and subtle styling distinctions, yet somehow she is still paralyzed by the choice. It’s after classes, it’s after dinner. She will need to pick her dress to prepare or she won’t be ready to leave.

It’s with nary a word that Galinda steps behind her, and lays a hand on one of the two dresses.

“This one,” is simply her take. Elphaba picks it up. While she undoes the button loops in back, Galinda disappears into the abyss that is her wardrobe, and emerges holding a pair of earrings.

“Just a little something special,” she says, handing them to her.

In that moment, Elphaba almost says something, but swallows her words. She’ll tell her everything after. She can, it will be safe.

And that’s all the time Galinda spends on the subject, turning her attention to preparing her costume for the harvest moon masquerade.

And with that decision taken off her plate, Elphaba spends her remaining time before the date debating if the night will be cold enough that she should wear her coat.

And also pacing.

She comes down on the practical side, and wears her coat. She can carry it if it's too warm, and it will disguise any goosebumps that appear, whether from the cold or the nerves.

By the time that she comes to this decision, Galinda’s already left for the festivities, a blur in her filmy silver and gold costume and matching mask shaped like a fox face. Elphaba’s been alone with her thoughts and her pacing for maybe a quarter of an hour when the knock on the door comes.

Her hands do not shake, she will insist upon this. They remain perfectly steady.

Fiyero looks nice, but he always does. His hair has clearly been recently combed and all of his clothes are neat and up to date, but it doesn’t look as though he put a great deal of thought into it- it’s not much different from what he usually wears. Like that he wanted to look nice, but not to show off.

(Elphaba is glad, she sees no reason to encourage his peacocking).

But he clearly has put some thought into tonight, because he has a basket in one hand, and a lantern in the other.

He grins, and Elphaba’s heart skips a beat.

“I went by the set up earlier and liberated us some snacks,”

He steps back, and with a deep breath, Elphaba takes a step out into the hallway. She steps to his side, and they begin to walk.

Fiyero’s still chatting. He lifts the lantern slightly. He goes on for a bit about how since the poppy fields are on a slight hill from the rest of campus, they should get plenty of lights from the fire and fairy lights set up for the masquerade, but he still thought he should bring it just in case.

“How very practical of you,” Elphaba comments and the smile on his face stretches out to the corners of his eyes.

She’s grateful that since both his hands are full, she doesn’t yet have to entertain the possibility of holding his hand again. There’s only a scant few others in the hall as they leave to make for the back of campus, all dressed in their costumes and paying them no attention at all, but Elphaba still feels like it might be too much. The prospect of holding his arm though…No, still too much.

Especially when she realizes how much she wants it.

“Do you do this back where you’re from?”

Elphaba jerks her head, having gotten lost in thought again and not realized Fiyero spoke. He’s not good with silence, she has noticed that before. Maybe they can work on finding a balance. She has never been shy about speaking her mind, but she also doesn’t feel the need to fill a comfortable silence.

Even though it weirds her out to realize it is comfortable.

“...did you ever attend the harvest masquerade in Munchkinland?”

They’re on the path leading off campus, voices soft and steps softening, at least hers. They can hear each other out here, and there’s no longer any worry that others will over hear.

“Uh, no. I know some communities did masquerades in villages, but we never went to the one in Nest Hardings. Father…he was never big on fun of any sort.”

It wasn’t easy to admit still, and she worries that it sounds self-pitying, but Fiyero takes it in stride, and belays her words by telling her the way the festival was different in the Vinkus than it is here in Gillikin.

The sun is well on its way down, only a dim glow on the horizon as they make their way into the poppy fields.

The lights below them on campus are twinkling and the fire has been lit, but they are both blurry in the distance. And it turns out Fiyero had the foresight to pack a blanket for them to sit on. Elphaba’s heart skips a beat at how much thought he must have put into things.

He’s still talking about the Vinkus’s harvest traditions, and has been for nearly ten solid minutes.

She sits down cross-legged, smoothing her skirt as he removes the food he’d packed. Apparently, he’s managed to sneak or sweet talk some of the cinnamon squash pies off the kitchen’s supply for the festival, as well as some popped corn and a whole bottle of cider.

When Elphaba takes the first sip of her cider she winces a little.

“Oh, this is hard cider. Usually in Munchkinland it’s just unfiltered apple juice…”

Fiyero stammers a bit before she rolls her eyes and takes another drink.

“I know how to handle a drink, and Galinda talked enough that I can be almost certain you’re not just trying to get me drunk”.

His face softens, and Elphaba takes the opening.

“Did…did you talk to Galinda, about tonight? Before you actually asked me?”

“I asked Nessa actually first, and she must have told Galinda about it. She seemed to think I was playing a joke.”

Elphaba nods, and takes another sip. Fiyero studies her.

“Doesn’t that upset you?” he asks, “That your own sister assumed anyone asking you out was obviously playing a joke on you?”

Elphaba takes another drink.

“Until recently, I would have assumed that too. Besides, I’m glad she decided it was worth standing up for me now. She’s never done that before.”

She probably wouldn’t have even thought she could.

“But she’s your sister-”

“She is my sister, and I love her, but I know who she is. She can be terribly self-absorbed and after a lifetime of people treating her like she can’t do anything, part of her believes it even if she’s very loud about the reverse. Besides-”

She takes a bite of a squash pie, and chews before continuing, This is helping to assuage any guilt she might have felt about making Nessa go home alone last summer.

“-from the gist I got from you, I’m pretty sure you’re the one she was actually insulting. She was claiming you were obviously too shallow to look past my looks.”

Fiyero briefly looks taken aback and his eyes get a mildly vacant look that gives Elphaba a brief flash of the gears in his head turning and it makes her laugh. She swallows another bite of pie, and lays half back on the blanket, her hands behind her head. Sunset is fully upon them, the sky pinky dark with a star or two making themselves known.

“But I don’t want to talk about that anymore. Tell me more about the festivals where you grew up, they must have been different from the rest of Oz.”

And so he does, telling her about the harvests and new years and the wild pig hunts in summer. He’s animated when storytelling, his hands telling as much as his face and his words.

It’s…lovely. And it’s so different from what she would have expected from the gossip that preceded him, from Galinda’s chatter. She wouldn’t have expected any of that to be how he acted either though. That was what their time in the woods had done for them. Fiyero might still show off or boast a bit when the others were around, but he didn’t seem to see the need when it was just the two of them. Unless he was trying to annoy her at least. He seems to think that that is fun on occasion, and on occasion she feels it’s worth indulging him.

Fiyero must have gone on for another quarter of an hour when he realizes that he’s been doing almost all of the talking and takes some popped corn to chew, and stretches out on his side, facing her, before asking,

“What about you? Any fun traditions from Munchkinland?”

Probably, she thought.

But she shakes her head.

“Until I came here, almost anything of the sort I wasn’t allowed to join in. I liked going into town or the lake or the library with Nessa, that was about the extent of my fun…but it was always nicer when there weren’t others around to stare or laugh or tease.”

She shakes the memory off. She doesn’t want to go back there, not tonight. Not with Fiyero laying so close, on his side face propped up and watching her.

“That’s why I was so excited to enroll here. Hearing Madame Morrible actually call my magic a talent…I actually thought I might be able to learn something. That one day people might praise me, talk about what a wonderful witch I was…before mentioning my skin.”

She never, Elphaba realizes, believed that the comments would stop. Just that they might be preceded by compliments. That she might be liked in spite of her green skin, not regardless of it.

She had never had hope for that until Fiyero, she realizes, the thought catching in her mind like a step missed on a staircase.

“So you like studying with her?”

Elphaba nods.

“She’s one of the greatest sorceresses of our age. I’m learning so much….but…”

She chews her lip before admitting.

“...I don’t like the way she treats Galinda. She may not be the most gifted student, but she’s always paying attention and she tries so hard.”

It’s one of those truths that she’s never uttered aloud, and not one that requires much comment. It’s something she’s not sure she would have even mentioned if not out here, not in this company, and she can’t really put her finger on why.

But eventually, Fiyero returns with,

“Good thing she’s never had to teach me, she might self-combust.”

Elphaba pulls herself back up to a sitting position, and Fiyero mirrors her, though his posture is more relaxed. She leans to one side, and bumps her shoulder with his. The contact is warm and her skin tingles, but she doesn’t let that overwhelm her meaning.

“You sell yourself short. You always do that, you shouldn’t. Besides, you don’t know. Maybe you’d be really good at sorcery.”

He shakes off her comments with one of his usual grins and a flip of his hair. Elphaba thinks it’s a worthy point to make. Magical education has been waning in Oz and aside from the knowledge of the art, knowledge about the art is fading too. Elphaba has no idea if magical skill is something that’s genetic, learnable, or a bit of both.

But she doesn’t think filling the response with more words is what is needed at the moment, so she lets her shoulder keep touching his, and slowly, so very slowly, lets her head dip and rest just so slightly on it too.

Fiyero shifts and her heart leaps into her throat again, but all he does is rest one of his hands on top of hers. The sky above them is a deep blue-black and the masquerade below is in full swing, a sea of lights and swirling colors.

It’s beautiful, and the moment feels beautiful too.

But Elphaba’s mind is always searching, so she finds she has to ask, her curiosity refusing to be idle.

“What made you want to ask me out?”

Fiyero looks at her askance again.

“You do realize that you let me talk for a solid thirty minutes tonight about the culture of the Vinkus?”

Elphaba blinks.

“What does that mean? I was listening to you talk about yourself.”

Fiyero makes a face that she doesn’t recognize. It isn’t ashamed, not embarrassed either. There’s a hint of what looks like disgust, but not at anything in particular.

“All my other dates, people I took for coffee or to parties…the closest any of them even got to asking about where I grew up or what our culture was like was asking if I had a crown or lived in a castle back in ‘winkie country’.”

Elphaba frowns.

“These people surrounded you, fawned over you as much as Galinda did, but didn’t want to learn anything about you?”

Fiyero grimaces.

“I figured out pretty quickly that most of them didn’t actually like me, they liked what they wanted me to be. And I decided it was easier to pretend to be that person…than to admit the truth.”

Elphaba frowns even harder. This is starting to make things make sense in her mind.

“What did they want you to be?”

“A beautiful charming prince without a thought in his head. It doesn’t bother him in the least that most of Oz looks down on where he comes from. That if he weren’t royalty, these people would probably do the same. And it doesn’t bother him at all that everyone just wants him because he’s a good-looking prince and cares nothing about who he is.”

Yeah, this is really explaining a thing or two, Elphaba thought to herself.

“When I’m with you Elphaba,” Fiyero continues, “I feel like I can actually be myself, and I feel good about it.”

It’s such a small thing when said aloud, but Elphaba has never felt more honored in her life. Because her whole life, she’s always just known that people wouldn’t like her no matter how she acted, just because of how she looked. She can understand being upset that it’s all people seem to care about, even if it meant they treated him better than they might.

But again, it’s a proclamation that requires no words, and so Elphaba lets the silence stay. Like she’d thought before, it’s comfortable.

The harvest moon is waxing, bulbous and rising in the night sky above the festivities, and the stars appear one by one, adorning the scape. Fiyero idly points out constellations, talking about how traditionally tribes used them to navigate in the night. Elphaba offers stories of the magical properties attributed by the ancients to celestial movements.

“Claptrap and superstition, the bulk of them, but it is true that certain types of magic are stronger at times of the day or the year…”

She feels warm and almost content. She hadn’t expected that with the amount of nerves that this night had brought upon her. But she finds herself thinking that she could stay out here leaning on Fiyero’s shoulder for as long as the world would allow.

But there is a point where she feels the need to say,

“We should probably think about getting back.”

Fiyero hums softly in response.

“We should.”

And neither of them move.

And Elphaba summons up the courage to ask,

“Shall we do this again sometime?”

“Oh definitely.”

Such simple words, that somehow makes a goofy grin sprout itself on her face with almost no effort. But still…

They’ve both shifted, and are sitting straight up, though still looking at each other, hands still nestled.

“But-” she starts, and Fiyero’s face falls for just a moment and that makes her heart drop and she rubs her thumb against his wrist just to reassure him.

“But-” she continues, “I don’t want us to be seen together in public yet.”

Fiyero looks momentarily confused.

“We get seen together all the time?”

She swats his wrist lightly. She doesn’t think he’s being deliberately obtuse.

“You know what I mean. I’m going to tell Galinda everything once I get back. And I know that Nessa knows already, and I imagine she’s told Boq already, so it’s not like we’ll actually be keeping it a secret…”

“You don’t know,” Fiyero says thoughtfully, “Keeping it secret might be fun.”

Elphaba feels her cheeks flame. She had never admitted to anyone that she had often found herself favoring that flavor of romance story.

“I know that people are going to talk. They’ll whisper and gossip…and probably say things straight to my face too. And…I think I can handle it.”

Her hand is still on his arm, rubbing fondly.

“But I need time to adjust. And…I want to keep you to myself for a little while.”

Fiyero nods softly. He leans to move the basket and lantern closer to them, but his movements are slow. He doesn’t want the night to end either, and he makes no effort to

Her skin prickles though. She knows that a date brings along the possibility of certain events. She studies Fiyero’s face, eyes bright and open. He’s been very kind, very understanding. She knows he won’t make a single move without asking, so she decides to take things into her own hands.

She slides her hand up Fiyero’s arm, towards his shoulder, so she won’t spook him .

She rests her hand there, and leans in to kiss him. There are no fireworks, no angels singing. But Fiyero’s lips are full and soft, and she can feel him smile against her mouth and a chuckle escapes her.