Why, hello there, my pets.

Here's this. Enjoy some unanswered questions.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.


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Elphaba woke up in pain. She was certain she could feel every cell on her body shifting and protesting against whatever material was now draped over her. Was she burning up or freezing? She couldn't rightly tell, but Elphaba didn't have the energy to figure it out. She did force herself to open her eyes, though, and found herself staring at a familiar ceiling with dried herbs hanging from wooden rafters. There were worse places she could end up, she supposed.

The small house she was holed up in was a one room with a detached outhouse. It's furnishings were rather bare with the bed she was in, a bistro table that doubles as a desk, and an arm chair that had clothes strewn over it more often than not. The window sills and counters served as bookshelves for tomes, recipe books, and really just to hold little knick knacks. Elphaba glanced over toward the table where the owner of the house sat, grinding something up with a mortar and pestle.

Avaric Tenmeadow's face was twisted in concentration with his tongue poking out between his lips. His shirt was hanging over the back of his chair, leaving him only in his underwear and an apron he usually wore when working. There were a few off-colored rough patches at his left hip and a line of indigo running down the length of his outer calf. Her gaze raked up his body again to something on his neck. A scratch maybe? It hadn't been there the last time she saw him. Elphaba watched him work in silence. She was certain he knew she was up but appreciated that he would leave her be.

Eventually, when Avaric was done with his task and Elphaba's pain had eased, she shifted her position to try and sit up. Avaric glanced over at her and back down at his ingredients. Elphaba looked down at her right arm. It was wrapped up with gauze and felt stiff when she moved it. The glass from the broken window, she imagined.

"You were careless," Avaric said to the chamomile in his hands.

"Oh, yeah, the storm blowing out my window is most definitely my fault. I should have prayed for the storm to be kind. You're right."

Avaric sent her a glare before grabbing a glass container from the mess of his work station.

"You know what I mean."

Elphaba pawed at the gauze wrapping, pushing it down her arm and hissing lightly as it rubbed roughly against her skin. An array of blues speckled her forearm, creating a unique pattern around where the glass had penetrated. She scowled and touched the blues lightly. They felt smooth against her fingertip as she stroked downward, tracing from top to bottom. If she didn't hate them so much, Elphaba thought, they might even be mesmerizing. Gradually, though, the blues lightened and gave way to her dry green skin. A familiar color. A safe, comfortable color that Elphaba was content with. When the last bit of rough blue faded, Elphaba glanced over at Avaric to find him watching her intently.

Avaric stood and stretched, his muscles shifting as he raised his arms over his head. Elphaba admired the lines of his tanned body. Crope and Tibbett would be absolutely useless on days Avaric took a blanket out to the beach. If she was being honest, she too would find herself drifting off; but it didn't count if no one saw her. It was silly, she told herself. Avaric acquired that body through no means of his own. He wasn't out there with the workers heaving boxes or doing whatever the hell the sailors did with lines. He wasn't out with Glinda jogging every morning or night. Avaric was a bastard cursed to a family with near-perfect genes and a lifestyle which favored good bodies.

But part of Elphaba was merely a beast, and she would stare lecherously at Avaric like one.

"They would have died," she told Avaric as he kicked a stool to the side of his bed. Elphaba pushed herself up more and mumbled a thanks when Avaric eased her into a more comfortable position.

"They're not your concern. What's the death of two more sailors."

"Tibbett and I put them up in that tent," Elphaba said. She held out her arm as Avaric worked the ointment between his hands and then rubbed up and down the length of her arm. "I would have been responsible if anything had happened."

He hummed in response, but she knew he didn't agree. They'd discuss it later, but once she was out of pain. Avaric was many things, but not a brute. Once he had finished her upper body, Elphaba adjusted her position so he could sit on the bed. It wasn't necessary, but she invited and he accepted. She threw her legs over his and watched him as he applied the ointment carefully.

Elphaba touched the side of his hip where the rough patches still clung, and Avaric squirmed the slightest of bits.

"What happened to your neck?" she asked, trailing a hand up his side to the mark there.

"Don't worry about it," he muttered but applied a little too much pressure of a spot on her thigh that was especially sore. Elphaba let out a gasp and then smacked his shoulder. His lips twitched up in a grin, though.

"What day is it?" she asked when his hands massaged the ointment into her inner thigh.

"You've been out for about three days," he replied.

"Three days?" Elphaba huffed.

Avaric patted the outside of her leg. "Turn around so I can get your back," he said and Elphaba complied. "It's better than it has been, though. The pain you've got is all after affects. There was hardly a burn on your body when I got you here."

"Did you see what those men were after?" she asked. Avaric capped the container, and Elphaba pulled the sheet around herself as she tried to read his expression.

"No, but I could hear them arguing over something. Nothing's washed up on the shore, and no one's seen anything." Avaric untied his apron and hung it on a cabinet handle. "Glinda's got the burly one situated in one of the rooms at the tavern. I heard the doctor say he's feverish and dehydrated. The other one is staying with Boq for the time being."

"Who are they?"

Avaric shrugged before sitting back down beside her. "Vinkuns, to be sure." Elphaba made a noise. Well, she's figured out as much in three seconds and he's had three days. "The conscious one doesn't talk much."

"The last Vinkuns to visit were off chasing some legend."

"I'm aware," Avaric grunted. "So be careful while these ones are so close."

She flashed him a wicked grin, feeling much better than she had ten minutes ago, and gripped his shoulders steady as she straddled his lap. "Are you worried about little ol' me?" Avaric rolled his eyes but without heat. "Do I make your cold heart burn," she continued while her fingers danced down his chest, over the ripple of his muscles, and past the band of his underwear.

"You know I worry," he replied heavily, licking his lips and watching hers intently.

"Because your my superior?" she whispered, pulling her face back when Avaric moved his forward. "Because you're in control? You don't look so in control to me."

Elphaba bit her bottom lip as she grabbed him, and Avaric used up most of his willpower to keep from taking his eyes off her. Her lips hovered over his as his breath came out in quick bursts. And then she stopped. Avaric blinked, and she waited until he had his bearings before shoving him back hard against his mattress. He moaned something incoherently as Elphaba positioned herself over him then ordered him to take her hips as she lowered.

She loved the looks his face made when she rode him. The complete pleasure that danced across it. Sometimes the agony when she wouldn't let him set the pace he wanted. They way he tried to savor those moments right before he let go, when she rode him so hard and so right that he was a blubbering mess. Elphaba loved that she had the power to do that. To turn someone like him, so powerful and intimidating, into putty.

So she was especially peeved when, right before that moment, someone knocked incessantly on Avaric's door.

"Are you kidding me?" Elphaba hissed and slowed her pace, blindly glancing over.

"Leave it," Avaric snapped.

"Fuck," she ground out when he gripped her hips tight and pounded into her.

Elphaba fell forward, pressing her chest against his and meeting his lips in a hot and messy kiss. She may have been silent. She may have cried out. She honestly couldn't say. The only thing she could comprehend in that moment was the pressure building up in her core and that fire just before the two of them were toppling over the edge.

Oz. Her full weight collapsed and draped over Avaric, and he let her stay there until they both weren't wobbly messes. They traded a few wet kisses and a few more chaste ones before Elphaba felt stable enough to make it to the door.

"Shit," Elphaba chuckled, wrapping the sheet around herself again as she stumbled over to the door. "The apothecary is out of commission," she called to the unwanted visitor with another laugh.

She threw open the door after Avaric had tugged on a pair of pants. Both of them blanched at the Vinkun standing on the porch, the burly man's friend.

"I was looking for you, actually."

Elphaba and Avaric frowned at the Vinkun.

"How did you know she'd be here?" Avaric asked, coming beside her.

The Vinkun blushed deeply, "I, um, Master Boq said you sometimes, er, consorted."

"I'll skin him," Elphaba muttered.

The Vinkun looked incredibly uncomfortable standing before them. His eyes darted between them in a careful way not to look below their necks. Elphaba was quite content to speak with him like that, but Avaric was a more compassionate person it seemed and told the Vinkun Elphaba would change first.

"Be careful," he warned her as she pulled on a dress that Glinda must have brought over while she was down and out.

"This isn't my first show, Tenmeadows," she responded with an eye roll. "I work at a tavern, not a happy rainbow cupcake shop."

"Your imagination is truly impressive."

"You've never complained about what my imagination has thought of in the past."

"Just go deal with that mess," Avaric said, waving her away. "I've got orders to deliver before heading back North next week."

"Yes, sir, Your Majesty." Elphaba curtsied, and he threw a twig at her.

"Get out of here, woman."

She left him to his business with a laugh as she shut the door behind her. They weren't a thing. They had a thing, but they weren't a thing, as she often reminded Glinda. Neither of them would be able to give the other what they wanted, and it was something they knew well enough. It was physical. Avaric understood aspects of her past, her life better than anyone else, and being able to let out those pent up frustrations was something she enjoyed. So she liked sex. So she liked sex with Avaric. Sue her.

The Vinkun was waiting across the street from Avaric's when Elphaba saw him. He was sitting on the fence, picking at something on his pants, and beating his heel against the wooden support beam. She scowled at him as she approached and crossed her arms over her chest.

"You're already at a disadvantage, sir," Elphaba said and began walking the two blocks toward the tavern. "I'd be much more agreeable had I wandered out of that house on my own time."

"Somehow I highly doubt that," the Vinkun replied.

Elphaba made a noncommittal noise. He probably wasn't wrong.

"I need your help," the Vinkun went on.

"I don't know who told you or why you think I can help, but I'm just a tavern wench. I serve beers and tell people to go home." She rounded the corner and could see her poor tavern with a large sheet stretched over where the window had once been.

"I saw you jump," the Vinkun said. Elphaba felt her heart drop but refused to show it. "I saw, well, you know..." he added and trailed off with a furrowed brow.

"It was a long night, kid," Elphaba pressed. "The storm threw off everyone's senses, and no one would blame you for misremembering details. Some of our dock friends came to help you and your brother, and they're who you saw, I'm sure."

"Look," the Vinkun snapped, grabbing Elphaba's sore forearm. She jerked away from him, sneering and brushing past him. "I know you did something to my brother. Not some dock workers. I know who I saw. I don't know what you did, but all it'll take is one word for the entire Arjiki Guard to come swooping down on this place until we find out what."

Elphaba stilled and looked over her shoulder at the Vinkun.

"The Arjiki? I beg your pardon, but who exactly are you?" she asked, though she had a terrible suspicion.


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I swear, I swear, this is a Fiyeraba fic. Just, you know, in due time.

Soooooo yes. Keep it real, review (or don') (but please do), and I'll see you next week.