A/N: Well, it's short, but there's a bonus: it's short enough that you'll have some time to review even if you're in a hurry.
Disclaimer: Wicked is not mine, nor will it ever be.
Fiyero Tiggular had everything: money, popularity, and girlfriend who was completely perfect for him (at least that was what he told himself). There was nothing else he could possibly want.
Yet he couldn't keep his eyes off her.
When he first saw her, he didn't even realize she was green. He just knew that she had to be a great deal different from any other girl he had ever met in his life, and not in a bad way. Though he had yet to know her well, he suspected she was not the kind of girl who spent hours getting ready only to realize her makeup didn't match her shoes. Truth be told, he was tired of that nonsense; knowing someone who stood apart from the crowd would be a breath of fresh air. And Elphaba certainly had several qualities that set her far apart from all of Shiz, if not all of Oz. Except the Emerald City, he couldn't help thinking, and berated himself for it, but only a little. He reasoned he had a right to think of her that way, when he thought her most attractive physical quality was her luxurious emerald skin.
While he watched her, his stomach doing all kinds of impressive acrobatics, Fiyero couldn't help noticing that, in class, she wasn't busy trading nail polish and gossip with Pfannee and Shen Shen. (In fact, she didn't seem to wear nail polish, something that both baffled and pleased him.) Instead, she always sat close to the front, taking notes and listening intently to the Professor. During her free time, she was reading, and he doubted she would look up from her chosen book if a flying Pig landed in front of her and danced a jig. She even read the newspaper. No one else he knew (or admired from a distance) read anything other than the OzDust gossip columns. He doubted Avaric even knew how to read. But Elphaba was completely different. She was...smart.
This intrigued him.
But when he looked at her, he also felt neglected, a feeling he had never felt before. As a child, his parents had doted on him. Now, his friends and teachers adored him, no matter what he did. At best it was flattering; at worst, suffocating. Yet Elphaba didn't seem to care that he was a prince, or that he had money. She didn't seem to care about him at all.
And despite himself, it hurt him.
He understood one day, while he was sitting by the fountain, watching her subconsciously (again), that he was so head-over-heels in love with her that he hadn't even known it until now.
She was that girl.