AN: BAS Summer Fic Exchange challenge—this is only the prologue. It is intended to explain the mindset of the characters as they head into a night of partying. Before you read:
I have never been drunk. (Story: four years ago, I was an underage student. I could've lost my scholarship if I drank, so I didn't. I was dating a seemingly decent guy. I spent time abroad and we stayed together. Turns out he got drunk a lot and slept around and made such a mess that, a month or so after I returned, we split up. Afterward, I made a solemn promise that I wouldn't get drunk.) So if this is unrealistic, I apologize.
Prince Fiyero Tiggular was thinking—and that, like the handling of explosives, is a very dangerous activity if one is not used to cleaning up the consequences. A stray, serious thought—like a match almost held to a Molotov Cocktail but extinguished before it can do harm—can be handled, but Fiyero had been thinking for three days straight. Tonight, he planned to make good on all of his stockpiled thoughts.
Galinda, Fiyero's flighty girlfriend, had not been thinking—except to absently worry about Fiyero, who was distant and moodified. He hadn't even offered to escort her to the party he was throwing for Elphaba's departure, and that was very bad behavior for a perfect boyfriend. Tonight, she planned to find out why her perfect boyfriend was thinking and she planned to make it stop, no matter what the consequences.
Boq had noticed the tension between Galinda and Fiyero—who the hell hadn't?—and he was blissfully unaware that tension in relationships is very much like a hand-wound clock: too much tension and the whole timepiece will burst, spraying shrapnel on the innocent and the guilty alike. Boq was also blissfully unaware of his girlfriend or the growing tension in their own relationship. Tonight, he thought, he might have a chance at Galinda: Nessa be damned, he would—would die for Galinda, if that is what she demanded.
Nessa was excruciatingly unhappy. The others all had purposes and hopes, but she—chained to her chair, as always, was unable to do anything. She had never been so frustrated in her life. Boq was slipping through her fingers, Shiz's own fairytale couple (who had given her hope for her own love life) was splitting at the seams. Of course, she would attend the party tonight in hopes of winning Boq back. Tonight would be a defining night in her life, Boq's life—everyone's lives.
Elphaba had spent the last three days with her nose in a book. She had missed the tension between Galinda and Fiyero, Nessa and Boq. In fact, she had almost forgotten there was a party—supposedly in her honor—tonight, and was sorely tempted to skip. She pretended she was going because it would be good for her, but really she was going because Fiyero would be there. ("Stupid, stupid girl," she mentally berated herself, "as if he could ever look at you!") Tonight, she intended to overcome her infatuation: she would sit quietly in the corner and watch the brainless prince drink until he couldn't walk straight. Surely witnessing such stupidity would raise her Fiyero tolerance.
Avaric was thoroughly amused. He didn't spend much time observing anything, but it would've taken a much stupider or more studious scholar to not notice the pressure haunting Shiz's favorite couples; Elphaba had overlooked the tension because she was studying. Avaric had not missed it because he was neither stupid enough to not notice or studying hard enough to miss it. Tonight was going to be a good show, if Av didn't get himself so drunk he failed to remember it.
The OzDust was decidedly unprepared for the troupe of Shiz students "celebrating Elphaba's good fortune" and so caught up in their thinking that they were unprepared for the consequences.