AN. Updates may be more sporadic over the next week while I travel for Christmas and things, just a heads up.

Chapter 8

At dinner, Elphaba found herself seated as per Vala's seating plan between Mr Felwick and Petnor, husband of Vala and Huba's middle child, Minali. Petnor was friendly enough, but very quiet which allowed Elphaba to discuss books with Mr Felwick more. Across from Elphaba was Ibrahim, flanked by Mrs Felwick and Kasmira and Vala's youngest sister, Rilla. Fiyero, much to his barely suppressed distress, was seated at the other end of the table, between Tri and Vala.

It took only until the second course for Elphaba to realise Vala's reasoning behind this arrangement. With her nephew right by her elbow, Vala was able to inquire- or interrogate- him about his life, and talk up her own children's achievements in return. The rivalry Fiyero had described was still very much present, it would seem.

When her own family was just Frex and Nessa- at least for the majority of her life, Elphaba was feeling rather overwhelmed by all of Fiyero's family to meet, honestly. Ibrahim's parents, Isibeal and Bianco, were very welcoming from the moment Fiyero had introduced them upon their arrival. Rilla had arrived just before dinner was served, so Elphaba hadn't talked to her much; but it was already clear that Fiyero adored his aunt, and that Rilla had much of the same spark as her mother.

"You haven't considered perhaps it's time to purchase a property, rather than renting?" Vala was asking Fiyero.

"Ah, not right now," Fiyero replied nonchalantly.

"You know, Minni and Petnor have just purchased a block of land to begin building a home in the spring," Vala said.

"I imagine land is somewhat difficult to come by in the Emerald City, Vala," Rilla said dryly, reaching for the gravy boat.

"And we're only building because we're particular about what we want," Minali reminded her mother. "We'd be quite happy to buy an existing home or rent if we could find something."

"Plus, buying in this economy?" Odede chimed in, and there were murmurs of agreement from various people around the table.

"The economy wouldn't be an issue if he was in a better job," Vala pointed out. "I've never really understood the need to desert a long-standing family tradition; but I always thought it was important to raise my children to value family."

Elphaba had heard many a speech over the years from her father about "the value of family" and what that means, and she tensed as she shot a wary glance down the table at Fiyero. He looked unperturbed, and as far as Elphaba could tell, it wasn't an act. But one never did know.

"Not being enmeshed in the family business means you don't value family now?" Kastle asked.

"Hey, if the law was more like it is on TV, maybe I'd be more interested in it," Fiyero added cheerfully. "Because, like, what's even the point if you don't get to stand up in a courtroom and yell 'objection'?"

"Let's not talk about work," Ibrahim said smoothly. "It's Lurlinemas."

"Good point, Dad," Kastle agreed. "Let's talk about Elphaba instead."

Elphaba's eyes widened as seemingly all eyes turned to her. For the first time since sitting down, Fiyero flinched and met her gaze apologetically.

"What do you want to know?" she asked cautiously, looking around the table.

If it was anyone else, she would have expected the first question to be about her skin. But she was sure that Vala's code of etiquette wouldn't allow for such a thing.

"Have you always lived in the Emerald City?" Tri asked.

"No. I'm originally from Munchkinland," Elphaba replied, her shoulders easing fractionally, but not completely.

Fiyero knew who her father was, and Elphaba wasn't naïve enough to think that his family would be ignorant to miss the connection- Thropp was hardly the most uncommon surname in Oz, after all. But Elphaba had never spoken to Fiyero of the specific circumstances that led to her leaving Munchkinland, and if he had ever read or saw it online, he'd never said. But Elphaba couldn't be sure what his family may have heard.

"Oh, I love Munchkinland!" Anton said brightly. "I went to UoM."

"Did you?" Fintan asked dryly. "I'd never know. It's not like you bring it up every college football season."

"You're just jealous that the Cornhuskers keep beating the Rhinos," Anton teased him. "It's not my fault that your team sucks. Right, Elphaba?"

Fiyero snorted before Elphaba could say anything. "Fae doesn't do sports," he replied, and the Fae rolled off his tongue so effortlessly and naturally that Elphaba was taken aback for a moment.

"He's right," she admitted, clearing her throat and smiling weakly. "And even if I did, I went to Shiz. So, I probably should support them."

"The Sapphires had a decent team this year," Fintan allowed, although it seemed to hurt him to admit that.

That carried the focus away from Elphaba, thankfully; and the subsequent questions that Kastle and Tri aimed at her, she was able to answer more comfortably. The questions were mostly about her hobbies and interests, and a little about her work.

"How did you and Yero meet?" Jip asked her. "Through work, right?"

"Yes," Elphaba confirmed. "I was at the station, and he thought he was hallucinating."

"I had hit my head," Fiyero admitted sheepishly, when Tri and Kastle laughed at him, not unkindly.

This was what Elphaba had been expecting- the interrogation about her and Fiyero's supposed relationship.

'Just wing it. Say whatever and we'll go with it' had been Fiyero's advice, which made Elphaba nervous. She never felt truly comfortable improvising and if she slipped up and made a mistake, the truth was an awkward explanation. But the conversation kept moving, and the interrogation never came. In hindsight, Elphaba should have suspected that certain parties were merely biding their time.

After dinner, Vala and Huba directed everyone upstairs to the nursery where the children were occupying themselves. The small table set up for them was littered with the remnants of ice cream sundaes, and Fiyero distinctly spluttered as he saw them.

"Why do they get ice cream while we had to eat that awful fig pie Vala serves every year?" he hissed to Kastle.

"Because you're not five," Kastle retorted.

"Since when is there an age limit on ice cream?" Fiyero demanded.

Kastle sighed a long-suffering sigh.

"Don't act like you enjoy that fig pie, either," Fiyero told her. "You hate it as much as I do."

Kastle hushed him.

Tri and Novus immediately slipped away to the small room off the nursery where their daughters slept under the watchful eye of a hired nanny; but everyone else found seats around the room. Minali and Petnor's five children ranged between two and eight; and as they swarmed the adults, Fiyero couldn't help but see some logic to his aunt's point in keeping the kids upstairs during dinner. It was chaos, but Fiyero kinda loved that.

No doubt helped by the mass amounts of sugar consumed for dessert, and the anticipation of the brightly stacked pile of presents that sat alluringly beneath the tree (large, but far less lavishly decorated than the tree downstairs), all six kids were positively buzzing with excitement.

"I don't think Cillan actually understands Lurlinemas just yet," Minali laughed to Fiyero and Elphaba, scooping her youngest up into her lap. "I think she's just excited because everyone else is. But this is the first year Avish gets it."

"It's so much more fun when they understand it," Kastle enthused. "Elphaba, do you have nieces or nephews?"

Fiyero winced and hastily turned to his sister, but Elphaba answered readily, although her shoulders tensed.

"My sister has a two-and-a-half-year-old and a three-month old," she said carefully.

"Oh, what a shame to be missing that," Minali said sympathetically.

Elphaba nodded faintly.

"Gift time!" Huba announced cheerfully, commanding everyone's attention and eliciting cheers from the children.

These days, this part of the tradition was a little different from when Fiyero had been a child himself. All the grandchildren got a gift each, but the adults did what was in theory, a Lurline's Lucky Lot exchange, however Fiyero couldn't remember the last time it had been truly anonymous. Everyone always seemed to know who each other had. Beyond that, it was only Kasmira, Vala and Rilla who exchanged individual gifts. Fiyero didn't really mind- the less people he had to find gifts for the better, in his opinion. He'd been given Tri this year, who was blissfully easy to shop for, and he'd added Elphaba's name alongside his on the tag without a second thought.

"Here you go, Uncle Yero," Noak said brightly, who had been enlisted to help Huba hand out gifts to the adults. He handed Fiyero an oddly shaped gift that was so badly wrapped, he knew immediately who it was from.

"Thanks, bud," Fiyero replied, glancing at the label and feeling the odd urge to smile at the sight of 'For Yero and Fae' on the label.

"Here, Fae," he said, passing it over to her. "It's from Jip."

"How could you tell?" Jip asked.

Fiyero grinned. "Because you're awful at wrapping. Honestly, it concerns me that you're responsible for building things."

"Building things, not wrapping things," Jip laughed, holding up their hands in defence. "I hope you don't mind if I wrote 'Fae' on the tag, Elphaba. I wasn't sure if you were an Elphaba with an E or an A, so it seemed safer. But we weren't sure if you often went by Fae, or if that was Fiyero-specific."

Elphaba hadn't made a move to unwrap the gift, holding it on her lap like she'd never seen a gift before.

"Oh, I- I don't mind," she said, looking over at Jip. "I mean, Fiyero started it and is the only one that uses it, but I don't mind."

"Open it," Fiyero urged her, nudging the gift gently.

"You should-"

"Nope," Fiyero said firmly. "Go on."

Elphaba glanced at him uncertainly before tentatively beginning to open the gift. When she pulled the paper away to reveal a small garden gnome statue, posed with one arm outstretched with an offering of poppies enclosed in its fist.

She blinked at it quizzically, but Fiyero just snorted.

"Thanks," he said to Jip. "It'll go great with the others."

Jip grinned. "You're so welcome."

Elphaba could only assume there was a joke involved here somewhere, and while she couldn't remember Fiyero ever mentioning a garden gnome joke to her, she was sure that as Fiyero's girlfriend, it was something that she should know. So instead of asking questions, Elphaba merely handed him the gnome.

"I'll explain later," he muttered as he took it from her and she nodded in acknowledgement.

"So, where exactly did 'Fae' come from?" Fintan asked them.

"Oh yes," Kastle jumped in, turning to Elphaba. "I've been wondering that too, and neither Mom or Julyan knew."

Fiyero jolted with a sudden rush of adrenaline, his mouth going slightly dry as his mind scrambled to find a plausible story. Elphaba, however, just blinked and shrugged one shoulder.

"Autocorrect, apparently. And then it stuck."

Fintan snorted with laughter. "Of course it was. I'd expect nothing less from Fiyero."

Kastle groaned. "Did he do that thing where he pretended that he did it on purpose? Is that how it stuck?"

"Something like that," Elphaba agreed.

She made eye contact with Fiyero and he could only raise an eyebrow at her in marvel, hoping that conveyed his admiration. Elphaba just gave another small shrug.

"You know, the people who really cared about me would stop making fun of me and just ignore any mistakes I make," Fiyero pointed out.

"So what does that tell you?" Fintan joked.

Fiyero's cousins and sister took great delight in telling Elphaba their favourite mistakes Fiyero had texted them over the years, much to Elphaba's amusement and Fiyero's annoyance.

Their parents and the Felwicks', having exchanged and opened all their gifts and dutifully admired that of the grandchildren, returned downstairs for after dinner drinks not long after; while Kastle and Anton said their farewells and headed home with Noak. Fiyero's cousins were all staying the night at their parents so had no need to leave, although they did relocate from the nursery to yet another parlour decorated in shades of white.

"So, 'Thropp'," Novus said to Elphaba, as they sat around making light conversation. "Any relation to the Governor Thropp of Munchkinland?"

Tri shot him a warning glance, elbowing him in the side. Elphaba smoothed out the skirt of her dress needlessly, clearing her throat.

"That would be my father," she confirmed.

Novus nodded and said nothing, but Elphaba felt sure that she detected a subtle change in the atmosphere.

"Hey Elphaba, we're going out on New Year's Eve," Tri said, swiftly changing the subject. "Nothing crazy, just a night without kids. You and Yero should come," she urged.

"Who's we?" Fiyero asked, slipping a hand onto Elphaba's knee which made her startle for a moment, before he gave her a gentle, reassuring squeeze.

Tri waved a hand around the room. "All of us. I think Kas and Anton are coming- Kas was going to make sure Anton's parents can watch Noak; and I invited Julyan and Seeley too. So it's no one Elphaba won't know."

Fiyero glanced over at Elphaba. "Maybe. We haven't really made plans or talked about anything. We'll see."

Tri seemed satisfied with that answer.

Elphaba's hand was tightly clutched around the glass of wine that Petnor had handed her upon sitting down. Novus's seemingly innocuous question about her father still hung in the air; that moment of placing one foot on the floor in the middle of the night and waiting to lower the second foot, while expecting something to grab your ankle at any moment. And Elphaba was suddenly incredibly aware of Fiyero's hand still resting on her knee. As though reading her mind, Fiyero squeezed it again, in what may have been intended as a comforting gesture, but only resulted in Elphaba almost spilling her wine.

"Sorry," she cleared her throat, brushing off Fiyero's hand as she got to her feet, placing her glass on an end table. "Um, bathroom?"

"I'll show you," Minali offered, getting to her own feet.

Once they were in the hall, she smiled at Elphaba. "I hope this hasn't been too much for you tonight."

"Not at all," Elphaba said quickly. "It's been nice to meet everyone."

Minali smiled at her. "You and Yero make a lovely couple. He seems really happy, which is so nice. His breakup with Sarima was so awful, Tri and I worried he'd never let himself have anything real again."

Elphaba's cheeks were burning. "Beyond DateDash, you mean?" she asked and Minali laughed.

"Exactly. I mean, I met Petnor on a dating app, so I know they can work, I just didn't think Yero was letting himself be open to it, you know?"

She reached out and squeezed Elphaba's arm as they came to a stop before a door. "I'm just really glad that he brought you home."

Elphaba didn't know how to respond to that. "Thank you," she said finally, and made a grateful escape into the bathroom.

She wished she'd grabbed her bag on the way, or that she was wearing anything with pockets so she had her phone on her. She was suddenly desperate to talk to Galinda.

But she did actually need the bathroom, so she did what she had to do and washed her hands, before smoothing a few stray hairs and studying her reflection in the mirror with a sigh. She made a face at herself, straightened her shoulders, and opened the bathroom door. She was not expecting to find Fiyero standing directly before her and she jumped a mile, wavering on her heels as she lost her balance.

"Whoa, sorry," he apologised, gently grabbing her by the elbow to steady her.

"You could have stood like a foot to the side, so I don't have a heart attack," Elphaba said weakly, one hand over her hammering heart.

"Sorry," Fiyero said again with a small smile. "I was literally about to knock. I just wanted to see if you were okay."

Elphaba raised an eyebrow. "In the bathroom? I've been toilet trained since I was three, just FYI."

Fiyero laughed. "Good to know, but I meant like… generally. Are you okay?"

Elphaba hesitated, not expecting the question. Fiyero glanced around and then gently steered them both into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. Elphaba backed up until her back was resting against the sink and she sagged against it, staring at the floor.

Fiyero leaned against the back of the door and waited.

"Did you know?" she blurted out eventually.

Fiyero didn't pretend to misunderstand. "That your dad's the Governor? Well, yeah. You've told me that."

Elphaba closed her eyes. "No, not that," she said quietly.

Fiyero shifted position slightly. "Ah," was all he said.

The truth hung in the air between them, rather loudly for all that was unsaid.

"I'd heard rumours, before we met," Fiyero finally offered. "I'm guessing it was bigger news in Munchkinland than it was here but there was still… speculation. Internet and all. But there wasn't any…"

"Proof?"

Elphaba opened her eyes and lifted her gaze to meet his, offering a shrug in response to his apologetic wince.

"Emotional abuse and neglect doesn't leave bruises," she said dryly. "At least, not physical ones."

"El, you don't need to tell me if you don't want to," Fiyero said quietly. "If you do, I'll listen. But… it's your story. It's always been your story, no matter what made it onto by the internet cesspool. I don't need to know anything."

Elphaba swallowed, nodding as her eyes drifted vacantly to the doorknob behind Fiyero.

"I've only ever told Galinda the full story."

"That's okay-"

"I do want to tell you," Elphaba cut him off, straightening up. "But not now."

Fiyero titled his head and offered her a smile. "I guess the bathroom at my aunt and uncle's house on Lurlinemas Eve isn't the best place for this," he agreed and Elphaba chuckled.

She smoothed her dress unnecessarily before heading to the door. Instead of moving aside or turning to open the door himself, Fiyero surprised Elphaba by pulling her into a hug.

"Want to head back to my parents?" he offered.

"Would Vala consider me incredibly rude if we did?"

Fiyero scoffed, pulling away. "Kastle and Anton have already left. And Vala has abandoned half her guests, which I would think is ruder than outstaying our welcome."

Elphaba chuckled and agreed. As they stepped into the hall, Fiyero casually linked their hands. Elphaba said nothing.

"Wait!" Tri and Minali exclaimed in unison, the moment they stepped through the doorway to join the others once more.

Fiyero and Elphaba both immediately halted, Elphaba looking around in alarm because the only thing that made sense to her was that there was a spider nearby. There was no spider, but when her gaze landed sharply on what was above their heads, she thought that would have preferred there was a spider.

"Oh come on," Fiyero groaned when he spotted the mistletoe. "What are we, fifteen? This is your doing," he pointed to Tri accusingly, narrowing his eyes at her.

"No!" Tri defended herself. "It was Minni."

"Jip hung it," Minali added hastily, gesturing towards them.

"On your orders, because they're the tallest," Fintan said.

"It doesn't matter who did what," Tri said dismissively. "Either way, you have to kiss. It's the rules."

Fiyero's eyes flickered between the mistletoe, his cousins and Elphaba warily. Elphaba just stood there, frozen on the spot, her cheeks aflame.

"Come on, Yero. Since when are you shy?" Fintan teased.

Fiyero scowled at him, sighed and then ducked his head slightly to brush his lips against Elphaba's cheek, his hand resting on her lower back.

"Happy now? Have we avoided the mistletoe curse?" he demanded.

Jip and Tri booed, while Fintan gave him a thumbs down.

"Lame," was Minali's verdict.

Fiyero caught Elphaba's eye again, the unspoken question clear in his gaze. Elphaba's cheeks were burning, but she nodded ever so slightly.

Fiyero's hand slid more firmly around Elphaba's waist as he stepped closer to her, far more tentatively that he should have been if they really had been dating for the past few months. Elphaba appreciated that either he felt as awkward as she did about the prospect of the kiss, or he was trying to be chivalrous, but honestly. With a composure she didn't entirely feel, Elphaba mentally shook herself, turned towards Fiyero and closed the distance between them in a perfectly chaste kiss.

She could feel Fiyero's flicker of surprise as their lips met, and she hoped it wasn't outwardly visible to his cousins. The scattered applause they gave in return would suggest that they bought it, nonetheless. One crisis overcome.

As they pulled apart, Fiyero's head was tilted slightly, his eyes bright and soft with admiration.

"You always surprise me, Miss Thropp," he murmured so that only Elphaba could hear.

Elphaba's face warmed once more, although she could only trust that Fiyero meant that as a compliment.

"Do you think there is a mistletoe curse?" Tri asked Minali thoughtfully. "Because there should be a movie about that."

"There is," her sister nodded. "It's a Quillark movie. I think it's actually called The Mistletoe Curse. It's probably on VidPort- want to watch it?"

"Yes!"

"And that is our cue to leave," Fiyero said hastily, dropping his hand from Elphaba's waist to grab her hand.

She didn't protest.