Story Summary: Glinda may look and sound just like Annie, but Oscar's new lover is altogether different.
Notes: Oscar/Annie, Oscar/Glinda. Cross-posted to Archive of Our Own.
Unsaid
Ethereal.
Yes, that was one good way of describing Glinda.
Oscar wasn't sure if that pale glow was involuntary or some kind of enchantment, but the girl - (Woman, he corrected himself. She was a woman, and quite possibly much older than him) - emitted the most dazzling light when she came.
Annie had glowed in an altogether different way. She would smile softly at him after they made love, eyes full of such affection it killed him inside to know he would inevitably leave her.
Looking back, Oscar recalled sun drenched hair and hazel eyes. He first glimpsed Annie in muddy boots and a dusty brown dress, those blonde locks braided and tucked behind her ears. She was another farm girl living in a state full of earthy women, but this one, even covered in muck, had surely fallen from the sky. Her smile was bright and laughter infectious. She was an obedient daughter, kind to strangers and animals, but mischievous enough to sneak away with Oscar whenever possible. Annie was a rare splash of color on the gray Kansas prairie. They were only teenagers when they met. He broke her heart at sixteen and again at twenty-six. It hardened her.
Oscar hardly ever took responsibility for his mistakes, but the guilt over this one lingered. He had kept the only woman he ever loved at arm's length, for years. They shared a checkered history of broken promises, and by their final parting, Annie knew Oscar's shortcomings well. His strengths, too, and his squandered potential. This friendship made Annie the only woman he could ever speak to honestly, without pretense.
The day of the twister wasn't the first time Oscar had confessed to Annie his dreams of greatness. He shared his aspirations the very first day they met. It was probably why Annie fell for him, he liked to think. Not because she hoped he would accomplish remarkable things, but because he dreamed at all.
He knew now that good, practical men like John Gale were hard to come by, and rarer than good women like Annie. As much as he loved her and still longed for her, that would never change the fact he had run as fast as he could in the opposite direction. There was no going back. Annie deserved her newfound happiness, and Oscar couldn't begrudge her that.
His old friend knew him well, but it took ten long years to know and accept it. Glinda knew everything about him within ten hours. Quite possibly within ten minutes.
Glinda moaned crystal music and watched Oscar's face with lidded eyes - emerald-flecked irises, her pupils dilated. Her gaze eerily dismantled him piece by piece, and it was discomfiting, watching her watching him, so Oscar shut his own eyes and gave into pure sensation.
The witch had laid him on his back and straddled him, sinking down onto his hard flesh to take her pleasure from him as he had from his many conquests. Unlike those poor girls who got so close but never came before he did - who didn't even know what an orgasm was - the witch's hands expertly caressed her own body as she gyrated her hips to bring herself to climax. She shut her eyes when she was close, and it was those times he saw her glow, her pulsing light like a star's.
Afterwards, the witch glanced down again, a small grin tugging at her lip. She didn't look smug. Oscar knew smug. He'd seen it often in the mirror. But her expression still made him feel like he'd lost some kind of game. What, he didn't know. Or what the rules were.
Glinda sped up her pace and rode him harder, still watching his face. Oscar ran his palms over her soft thighs, her buttocks, her lower back. He kept his eyes shut tight and dug his fingers into her skin. The witch evoked loud, throaty sounds from his lips, and he imagined with embarrassment being heard and discovered. He held out as long as he could, before the pressure became too much. He surely looked ridiculous to this beautiful witch, he thought as he came, as any man did at that moment.
Oscar relaxed and caught his breath. He felt deliciously undone by Oz's angelic guardian of the South. She traveled in a pink bubble, for goodness' sake! It was true Glinda's heart was pure and unmarred by hatred, but he had discovered she was not opposed to a good roll in the hay.
"Come here," Oscar growled playfully, pulling her down to meet his lips. She had mercifully held back musical laughter until now, as she rose to get up, only to be grabbed around the waist and yanked back into bed. The witch retaliated by tickling him. He squirmed to escape, but Glinda had him pinned again.
They kissed with closed mouths, and she nuzzled his neck, lips close to his ear murmuring his name - his real name. He was Oscar, to her, not Oz. A flawed con artist she believed could be a good man. He had become, at the very least, a better one than he used to be.
He whispered her own name back, but nothing more. They had sworn never to utter "I love you" - though he could picture Glinda mouthing it, her lips so like Annie's - after what had happened with Theodora, but Oscar's heart was full of love, and he hoped hers was too.
Glinda was the previous Wizard's only child, and heir to the throne. She had more claim to Oz than Oscar ever would, and the days he forgot this - when he snuck into his vault and childishly played with his riches - she rolled her eyes and sternly listed all the things a real ruler did. If Oscar were just a floating head now, he had to delegate tasks, but that didn't mean telling his subjects, "Figure it out somehow." People lined up - appointments made far in advance - for wisdom, for wishes granted and problems solved.
"Sit down and think critically, as you did to defeat Evanora." Glinda bristled at having to remind him at all. For all intents and purposes, she was Queen now, not his Advisor. She had her own corner of Oz to rule. Responsibility for her people's safety weighed heavily on Glinda, and the witch would not tolerate doing Oscar's own work for him.
In the future, Glinda would drift in and out of Oscar's life much as he had Annie's. A young Oscar would become just a fond memory of hers, once he was an old man taking advantage of a gullible populace, slipping back into the sleazy habits of his youth.
"So those are fireworks," the witch had said in wonderment the night they defeated Evanora, and Oscar would never know just how proud Glinda had felt at that moment. Her eyes sparkling with mischief that week as he laid out his plans, watching Oscar embrace Oz, was when she fell in love with him.
Glinda loved the Wizard of Oz, in spite of herself. Even with his history, with all his flaws and immaturity. Even though he was no wizard, and was one century her minor! Rather than profess such love aloud, she expressed this with her body. Oscar would almost always whisper it himself anyway. The witch would press a finger to his lips but couldn't do much to quell his endearments when he was buried inside her. He wouldn't say it in the daylight but moaned it in the dark, and that much the witch deemed acceptable.