Title: Am Thinking
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Wickfic; bookverse. Thoughts on thinking.
Disclaimer: Not mine; Gregory Maguire's.
"Glinda didn't really lose consciousness, but the uncomfortable physical nearness of hawk-faced Elphaba after that undesired act of desire made her want to shiver with revulsion and to purr at the same time." Wicked, p. 162
She knew that things were easier for her, because she didn't think as much about them. Because she couldn't think as much about them. As long, perhaps, but Elphaba could think much deeper, so the volume of her musings must be that much larger. At times, she was grateful for this impaired understanding, this lagging-behind in comprehension, because it made everything simpler. It made crawling into bed with Elphaba that first terrifying night simpler, once she had finally caught a sideways glimpse of herself in the mirror and the root of her desires had dawned on her immediately. It made touching Elphaba easier, always in the quiet of the night, so that she began to experience the quiet and the dark and the touch as one thing, as if her body could now understand multiple sensory details as one, as if Elphaba had changed her very biological make-up. And it certainly made being touched by Elphaba easier, because it let Elphaba slow her own thinking. All that was necessary was for her to spend an extra few minutes before bed, toying with her hair or fussing about, planning an outfit for the following day, and Elphaba would move easier inside her, or around her curling fingers, knowing that all the hard thinking was done for the time being. It was those times that Elphaba returned from the library to find a candle still burning by her bedside while she read—even if it were only a sorcery text, which were, in the World of Elphaba, "barely academic, even for you"—those were the times when it was equally likely that she would crawl into bed with Elphaba, her lover, and Elphaba, the disgruntled roommate who responded to having her sleep disrupted by turning her face to the wall. And it was confusing, too, because she knew that Elphaba liked when she read, and when she wanted to talk about what she had been reading. Elphaba loved when she thought.
She just didn't want to love her when she thought.
She tried very hard to not be upset by it—indeed, if she were in the mood for a little irony, she would tell herself just to not think about it—but sometimes she was and she did and it wasn't pleasant. It was as if she were two people to Elphaba—friend and lover—and the two were irreconcilable. Not that she didn't understand, even empathize, because Elphaba was many things to her, too. Sometimes a teacher and sometimes a confidant and sometimes a comrade-in-arms and sometimes a critic and sometimes a warm body in bed beside her that she loved so hard it hurt her to breathe. There were daytime and nighttime Elphabas: Elphaba who made her mind stretch and twist and grow, even against its own will, and Elphaba who made her body writhe and reach and rise, very much in accordance with its own will, which it was quite often happy to take into its own hands, so to speak. But she knew all of her Elphabas lived in the same skin.
It wasn't that she didn't feel any desire for Elphaba during the daytime, it was just that, generally, she was able to keep it under control, to put it in the closed part of her mind where nighttime secrets lived. Maybe that was the problem: her mind was full of walls and doors and secret compartments, many of which she couldn't navigate on her own, while Elphaba's mind was an open plain over which she exercised minimal herding jurisdiction. In any event, she was able to separate one Elphaba, who harrumphed her way through tea (if she were forced to attend in the first place) and who lived inside the nearly-insurmountable heights of her own appearance, from the other, who was finally learning not to lie so stiffly when they were done, to let herself be gently held, who smelled like wind when they started, and wind and sex when they finally fell asleep.
She often wondered what went on in Elphaba's mind when they made love, whether everything was being written off as unimportant or carefully catalogued along with the rest of the masses of information she absorbed like a sponged and filed away for future use or whether it was being subject to dryly sarcastic commentary or whether, and this was the most interesting and optimistic possibility of them all, Elphaba simply wasn't thinking during those times. Once she had finally started listening, she realized Elphaba had a whole wealth of information and ideas to share. The thought that there were more in there that wasn't being shared simply because of its subject matter seemed rather unfair. You oughtn't accustom a person to moments of insight unless you're going to be consistent about it, that was her motto, which fueled the surprisingly skilled movements of her tongue and fingers. There are many ways, she had discovered, of obtaining information, and not all of them involved interrupting Elphaba's reading. But although her hands and mouth and skin taught her a great deal, they never taught her what was going on in Elphaba's mind. It would seem that, as ever, only Elphaba could teach her that, and only when and how she chose.
She knew she wasn't as good a thinker as Elphaba was, not as deep and not as practiced at marathon consideration. She was barely any smarter under the scratchy commissary blanket on Elphaba's bed, only a little less inhibited, a little more used to getting what she wanted. She hoped she didn't distract Elphaba from those serious thoughts when she chose to fall asleep under that same scratchy blanket, knowing Elphaba would wake her up before Ama Clutch arrived with the tea in the morning, hoping that if she moved slowly enough, Elphaba would not recoil from her encompassing embrace.
She tried very hard not to be upset by the divide in between when Elphaba loved her for thinking and when Elphaba didn't want to love her because she had been thinking. It meant that Elphaba wasn't quite clear on which girl she loved, and how, and maybe even why, which was a disconcerting thought. She knew she loved all the Elphabas in her life equally, if differently, although lately Elphaba had inquired quite sharply during one of their talks if differentiations in quality didn't automatically imply something about quantity. They hadn't been talking about themselves, or even about sentiment, but it was pretty clear that Elphaba was thinking about all of the people in her life who wrote off their disregard towards her as a difference in "quality", in "the kind of love" they had. And she had not said anything in reply for a long time, but had gone over to Elphaba's bed and, by laying a hand on the knee drawn up towards the bony shoulders, broke the proper distance required of propriety that they always maintained between them during the light of day. She knew she couldn't explain it to Elphaba, that demonstrations of size were useless, because she couldn't begin to comprehend the size of her attachment to each and every one of Elphaba's sides; that arguments of language were useless, because Elphaba thought deeper and harder and stronger than she did and would worm her way through any argument presented her; that even the vaguely metaphysical vocabulary of the hardest sorcery book she had gotten through was pointless, because it was too impersonal to be emotive and not nearly academic enough to be substantial. She couldn't prove her love through by thinking out loud.
So she did the next best thing, by clambering up next to the curled figure and taking that severe, beautiful green face in her hands and kissing her as soundly as she knew how.
She hoped Elphaba knew that her kisses were thoughts, too.