Chapter 17

Fiyero always hated when he had nightshifts. Working from nine o'clock to seven in the morning was just not his idea of a fun time, funnily enough. At least if he pulled an afternoon shift, he'd be finished by eleven o'clock and could still get some semblance of a decent night's sleep. At least Corin was on afternoon shifts for a few days, so Fiyero had someone to talk to on a slow night for the first two hours. Although it had to be said that Fiyero wasn't feeling particularly chatty lately.

"You're crabby," Corin noted on Thursday night when he arrived and slumped into his chair at his desk.

"I am not crabby," Fiyero replied tiredly, turning on his computer.

"You're right, you're positively delirious with joy. I don't know what I was thinking," Corin deadpanned, peering at his face. "How's things? Did you and Elphaba 'break up' yet?"

Fiyero ran a hand through his hair. He'd forgotten about that part of the plan.

"Uh, no. Not yet," he said, his chest aching dully. "I guess I'll need to work that bit out, before my family invite her to any more events."

Corin shook his head as he leaned against Fiyero's desk. "I can't believe you guys actually pulled it off. I bet Micah twenty bucks that someone would call you on it. Specifically, Kastle."

Fiyero blinked up at him, not at all surprised that his friends had been betting on it.

"Why Kas?"

"Your sister is a very shrewd woman," Corin said wisely.

Fiyero screwed up his face. "If by 'shrewd', you mean 'a pain in my ass', then sure."

"You know, Yero, I've really missed your cheerful attitude," Corin teased him, clapping him on the shoulder and walking away.

On Friday morning after finishing his third night shift in a row, Fiyero made his way out of the station and towards the parking garage, only to come to a confusified halt to find Micah leaning against the hood of the car.

"You're not working today."

"Nope," Micah confirmed. "Thought I'd take you to breakfast."

Fiyero rubbed a gloved hand over his face. "Thanks, but I am so tired-"

"Come on, Yero," Micah cut him off. "Something's up. We can tell. And I don't have the patience to decipher any texts when you decide to talk. Let's go."

For as long as he'd known him, Micah had always been Fiyero's most sensible friend. So Fiyero gave in, as much as he wasn't ready to talk.

There was a popular diner around the block that they often ate at either before, after or on a break during shifts, if they had the chance. So they walked there without really discussing it, sliding into the nearest booth once they arrived and ordering their usuals.

"Corin wasn't invited to this intervention?" Fiyero asked, and Micah rolled his eyes.

"It's not an intervention. And he was invited, he just decided sleep was more important than your well-being."

Honestly, Fiyero would have made the same decision if the situation was reversed.

Micah graciously waited until Fiyero had some decent coffee in him and their food had arrived before he broached the subject.

"So, the last time we really spoke, it was an evaluation of your acting skills."

Fiyero chuckled. "Yeah."

"And?" Micah pressed. "Did you talk to Elphaba?"

"Sure. We had many conversations."

Micah wasn't impressed. "Did you talk to her about your 'moment' while you were hiking?" he clarified.

Fiyero could practically hear the air quotes.

"We didn't specifically talk about the hiking thing," he admitted. "But yeah, we talked about stuff. You know, relationships and whatever."

"And? It went badly?"

Fiyero toyed with the crust of his toast, staring at his mostly-empty plate as though he was trying to search out constellations among the crumbs.

"I almost said something to her," he said heavily. "After New Year's Eve. I really thought, for a second, that we could try and see if there was something real there."

"What happened?" Micah asked him, taking a sip of his coffee.

Fiyero unlocked his phone and opened the photos Fintan had sent him, the ones he'd gone to delete half a dozen times in the days since, yet had faltered every time. He pushed his phone across the table to Micah, and watched him swipe through them.

"I'm not seeing anything bad in these photos… what am I missing here?"

Fiyero reached over and swiped back to the fourth photo. "This was right before midnight."

Micah squinted at the photo. "You look…"

"In love."

"Which is… bad? For some reason?" Micah guessed.

"I can't be in love with Elphaba," Fiyero insisted. "It doesn't work like that."

Micah raised an eyebrow. "How does it work then?"

"I don't know," Fiyero admitted. "But not this. So, clearly the past few weeks have just… gone to my head. So I just need some time to straighten things out. That's all."

Micah's brow creased. "Have you talked to Elphaba?"

"Not since we got back. I've been working nights, I'm sure she's also… busy."

Micah nodded slowly. "Right. So, to clarify: you were going to talk to Elphaba about the two of you as a couple- potentially. And then you saw this photo, realised you're in love with her, and then decided it was all in your head due to your amazing acting skills. Yes?"

"You know, I could do with a little less sarcasm when talking about my acting skills, but yeah. That about sums it up."

Micah grinned. "Right. Okay. Question: in this potential couple that is you and Elphaba, before your freak-out-"

"Epiphany."

"-Whatever. I assume this means 'dating', yes? Which really either ends with a breakup, or with the two of you being in love. So did you plan on doing what you usually do? Date her for a month and then end it, and probably ruin your friendship in the process?"

It was a logical question, but that didn't mean that Fiyero didn't glare at Micah from across the table.

"I thought if we dated, and it went well, I might fall in love with her eventually. But not- not like this."

Micah looked at him with what could only be described as pity.

"Do you want to know what I think?"

Fiyero had a feeling Micah was going to tell him what he thought whether he wanted to hear it or not, so he screwed up his face and shrugged non-committedly.

"The last time you fell in love- with Sarima- it ended badly."

"That's not a thought, that's a fact."

Micah ignored that. "I understand why the idea of falling in love again is terrifying. I really do, man. But you know that you just can't switch feelings on and off. Even after you and Sarima split, you didn't magically fall out of love with her, did you?"

"No," Fiyero had to concede. "But she certainly helped speed along the process."

Micah ignored that too.

"So, I don't think that staying away from Elphaba now is magically going to make you fall out of love with her."

"But what if I'm not really in love with her?" Fiyero asked. "What if I just think I'm in love with her, because we've spent pretty much every waking minute together for the past two weeks?"

Micah considered that. "Okay," he agreed carefully. "That's a fair point."

Fiyero felt a spark of triumphant satisfaction.

"Well, while you're taking this time, maybe it's a good idea to work out how to get past this whole commitment-phobia thing?" Micah suggested gently. "Or do you plan on only dating girls for no longer than a month for the rest of your life? You know, the force has resources."

Fiyero stared at him. "Are you telling me to go to therapy?"

"I'm not telling you anything," Micah shook his head. "I'm just making a suggestion. Tell me something. If Sarima walked through that door right now, how would you feel?"

"Confusified. She hates diner food. Or she did, anyway."

Micah rolled his eyes at him. "Fiyero."

"Okay, okay," Fiyero conceded with a sigh, sinking back into the vinyl booth. He turned his head and gazed at the door, trying to imagine Sarima walking inside.

"Honestly? I don't think I'd feel anything," he said. "I think it'd be the same if I ran into anyone I used to know."

"Where on the Corin scale?" Micah pressed and Fiyero snorted.

'The Corin Scale' had been born one night about two years ago, after Corin had run into an old classmate at the pub one night; and promptly made them go to a different pub to avoid the guy. Thus, the scale ran from 'flee the scene and avoid at all costs' at one end, to 'make arrangements to meet up for dinner- and actually go' at the other.

He considered it for a moment, wrinkling his nose a bit at the idea of having dinner with Sarima. He didn't want to go that far.

"Small talk," he said finally. "Say 'hello; how's the family?; all the best for your future endeavours.'"

Micah's lips quirked. "Okay."

"I don't love her and I don't hate her," Fiyero reassured him. "I'm neither holding a grudge nor a torch."

He wasn't sure whether Micah believed him or not. But at least he was allowed to leave the diner and go home to sleep.

It was Sunday afternoon before Fiyero felt like he was back on a normal schedule again. No more nightshifts- for this roster anyway- and he'd settled back into being home again long enough to be bored. But not long enough to stop thinking about Elphaba. He picked up his phone and unlocked it, opening his message thread with Elphaba. His thumbs hesitated over the screen, poised to type; before he sighed and locked the screen again, dropping the phone to his chest. It was a pattern he'd repeated what felt like a thousand times since Monday night. So many things he'd almost texted her. And every time, he forced himself to put the phone down without sending or even writing anything.

As he lay on the couch, he stared up at the ceiling. There was a Hell Low marathon on, which ordinarily would have occupied him quite happily. But tonight he was mainly using it to tune out the noise coming from his neighbours across the hall- clearly some kind of belated New Year's party. Briefly, he toyed with the idea of going out, but the thought of showering, changing and leaving the apartment seemed like far too much effort.

Biting the inside of his cheek, Fiyero lazily unlocked the phone again and opened DateDash. He scrolled through the matches absent-mindedly, sending virtual drinks to profiles without ever really seeing them. When his phone buzzed, he almost dropped the phone in surprise and his heart jerked for a moment; a part of him convinced that he'd see a message from Elphaba. But no. It was DateDash, informing him that "Evin29_" had sent him a message.

'Hey handsome. What's a girl gotta do to get a real drink instead of a virtual one?'

Usually, Fiyero was pretty quick on his feet, and a few weeks ago would have rattled off any number of choice replies that was just the right side of flirty without being creepy. But he just stared at the screen now, his mind a blank and his gut churning uncomfortably.

'Hey,' he wrote back finally. 'Wat r u drinking?'

'Ooh, I love a good glass of red wine. You?'

'Not much of a drinker beyond the odd beer,' Fiyero wrote back, which wasn't the whole truth, but was all he could bother with right now.

Evin29_ kept trying for another minute or so, but Fiyero's heart- or any other part of him- just wasn't in it, and he let the conversation fizzle out. He pulled up his own profile on the app and studied it tiredly.

'Here for a good time, not for a long time.'

He'd thought it was quite witty when he'd come up with it, some three months after he and Sarima had broken up after deciding it was time to get back out there. He hadn't changed it since, and it had served its purpose. He'd met a lot of nice women, and some women who seemed nice enough until you met them in person. And they had indeed had some good times, but never a terribly long time. But it all ended either one of three ways: there just wasn't anything there and they only managed a few dates; they hated his work schedule or the job itself; or it got to around the one-month mark and Fiyero found himself comparing it to how he'd felt about Sarima around that same time. It never measured up, and so he ended it. Maybe that wasn't fair.

Maybe there was something to Micah's suggestion of therapy, Fiyero had to admit; although he wasn't sure how he felt about the idea. What in Oz's name would he even say?

"Yeah, my ex cheated on me and that kind of screwed me up, and now I avoid all commitment any time I date someone. I asked my best friend to pretend to be my girlfriend to my family so they'd stop making comments about it, and then I think I fell for her."

And if TV and movies were accurate, the response by the psychologist would be "and how does that make you feel?"

Fiyero didn't have an answer for that beyond "scared."

He didn't want to explore the depths of why he was scared, but there was a voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like Micah, that told him he wasn't going to find the solution on DateDash.

Chewing the inside of his cheek, Fiyero navigated to the settings of his account, exhaled slowly, and then selected DELETE ACCOUNT.

Thank you, the message read. Your account has been deleted. We hope you've found that special someone to share your life with.

"Me too," Fiyero murmured and closed the app.