AN. I kind of love Fiyero in this story.
Eight
LIBRARY CLOSED FOR STOCKTAKE.
Elphaba groaned as she looked at the sign that was hanging on the library doors. It was the Saturday before their Politics assignment was due, and she and Fiyero had arranged to meet at the library bright and early to begin working out some of the finer details of their presentation, before Elphaba was due to work at Identity that afternoon at three and then the OzDust that night.
"I did tell you," Fiyero chimed in helpfully from behind her. "Remember, like fifteen seconds ago at the bottom of the stairs?"
"Well, forgive me if I don't want to take your word for it," Elphaba snapped back.
Fiyero pretended to be hurt. "Jeez, you try and convince a girl once that the library burned down and she doesn't trust you. That hurts, Fae."
Elphaba rolled her eyes as she turned to face him. "Well, we're just going to have to find somewhere else to work, that's all."
"There's always my room," Fiyero said suggestively and Elphaba scoffed, although she knew she was blushing.
"Dream on, prince boy."
"Prince boy?" Fiyero repeated, raising an eyebrow.
Elphaba raised hers in reply. "What, you can call me 'green girl', but I can't call you 'prince boy'?"
"Hey, I haven't called you 'green girl' in like a week," Fiyero protested.
"I'm sorry, it's Fae now, isn't it?" Elphaba mocked. "So, I should make up a nickname for you that makes no sense?"
"How about we just find somewhere to work?" Fiyero suggested, changing the subject.
She sighed. "Sure. Any ideas?"
"I already suggested my room, an idea which you rudely rejected. It's your turn."
Elphaba thought for a moment. "We could use a classroom? It's Saturday, they'll all be empty. And I'm sure Dr Dillamond would let us use his room."
Fiyero looked horrified. "A classroom? No way. I see enough of the things during the week."
"Oh please, how often are you in class?" she demanded.
Fiyero grinned at her, and then had an idea. "Wait- don't you live off campus?"
Elphaba froze abruptly. "Yes," she said slowly.
"So, can't we just go to your place? Wherever it is you live?"
Elphaba had to work hard to keep the flinch she was feeling off her face. Allow Fiyero Tiggular to see the crapartment? No. Definitely not.
"I don't think that's a good idea," she stammered.
"Why not? We need somewhere to work, and your place will have food, right?"
Elphaba frantically racked her brain as to whether there was actually food in her cupboards. "I think so," she said vaguely, recalling a faint image of a loaf of bread and a can of soup in her kitchen.
"So, lead the way," Fiyero gestured.
Elphaba was frantically thinking of a place, anywhere they could go, and reasons as to why they couldn't go to the crapartment. But she could think of none.
Reluctantly, she turned and led the way down the library steps, cursing the librarians for deciding to do stocktake right now.
She didn't talk the whole distance between campus and her neighbourhood, and her legs felt like lead the closer they got. She couldn't even look at Fiyero as they entered the building and climbed the staircase to the crapartment, who to his credit, said nothing.
As she unlocked the door, Elphaba uttered a final silent prayer that she'd left the place in some semblance of a presentable state, and opened the door.
"Here we are," she said quietly, allowing him to step inside and bracing herself for his reaction.
As she watched him look around, Elphaba tried to see the place through his eyes. The bare walls and wooden floorboards, making the room look colder than it was. The ancient stove in the kitchen (that only worked half the time) with the single cupboard and icebox for storing cold food. The lone mattress on the floor, covered with a few blankets and pillows. The piles and piles of books lining the walls, in no real order. The single, simple wooden wardrobe in one corner, which had one door propped shut to keep it from falling off. The tiny table and chairs, none of which matched. The two windows, neither letting in enough light to warm the place up and neither having blinds or curtains. The tiny bathroom, visible through the open door with the rust-stained sink and the small tin bathtub. And the old, scratched piano sitting under the window, it's keys yellowed with age.
Elphaba was sure compared to the castle Fiyero was used to, the crapartment- and she- would seem light a huge joke. And she felt like a huge joke too.
And Fiyero saw all of it, as he looked around. But he made an effort not to appear horrified by the primitive space and simply turned to her, seeing her apprehensive expression as she waited for his reaction.
"Do you want to work at the table?" he asked casually.
Elphaba couldn't hide her surprise. "That's it? That's all you have to say?"
Fiyero paused. "Do you have any food?"
Elphaba rolled her eyes, and headed over to check. When she opened the fridge, she found half a cake Idonea had told her to take home when she had done the closing shift two nights before.
"Cake?"
"Perfect," Fiyero grinned.
They settled down to work with their cake at the small table. Fiyero did his usual routine of procrastinating and sighing before actually putting pen to paper, but eventually started contributing- as he always did when they met to work on the assignment.
Finally, Fiyero spoke. He couldn't help himself.
"You know, you should really decorate this place," he suggested, putting down his pen and looking around the room.
Elphaba paused in the middle of writing a sentence. "Excuse me?"
"Dec-or-ate," he repeated slowly, a teasing glint in his eyes. "You know, it's a verb. It means to furnish, provide, or adorn with something ornamental; embellish. Like a rug, or a picture? I thought girls were all about decorating. To make it look 'pretty' or whatever?"
"Well, call me crazy," Elphaba said dryly. "But if there's a choice about paying my bills and decorating the place, I'm going to go with the bills. Funnily enough. Besides, who needs decorations? You're the first person to see this place besides me, and I honest to Oz don't care what it looks like."
Fiyero nodded to the wall behind him. "You've got a piano. That's kind of decorative."
Elphaba stilled. "I guess," she said uncomfortably.
"Do you play?"
"No, I use it as a plant holder," she replied sarcastically.
Fiyero chuckled. "Can I hear something?"
Her answer was immediate. "No. Get back to work."
Elphaba was stiff and self-conscious the entire time Fiyero was in the crapartment. But he never commented about the slight chill that persisted in hanging around the room, or about the bathroom when he asked to use her toilet. And she couldn't really work out why. This was a boy who had done nothing but tease her since they'd first met. And although he'd never been outwardly cruel to her, like Galinda and her friends; he'd never gone out of his way to talk to her or defend her. He mostly just ignored her.
But she was pleased with the amount of work they got done before she had to get ready for work. They'd pretty much finished everything, and had a final meeting planned for the morning their assignment was due to do a final run-through.
Elphaba checked the time and rose from her seat. "I should get ready for work," she said.
"OK," Fiyero agreed, but made no move to leave.
Rolling her eyes, Elphaba grabbed one of her more presentable black dresses that she wore to work and took it into the bathroom to change and to pin her hair up, the way Idonea and Alun preferred it for work.
When she came out, she noticed Fiyero standing at the piano, looking through a small pile of sheet music she had lying on top.
"What are you doing?" Elphaba demanded, striding over and snatching them from him.
He looked slightly apologetic. "Sorry. I was just looking."
"These are private," she said coldly.
"I'm sorry, Elphaba," Fiyero repeated earnestly.
Using her real name told Elphaba he was sincere, and she hesitantly softened. "It's fine. I have to get going. My shift starts in twenty minutes."
Fiyero nodded. "OK, no worries."
They headed downstairs together and when they reached the street, Elphaba paused.
"Fiyero? Please don't tell anyone. About…"
Lost for words, she gestured silently to her apartment building, and Fiyero nodded.
"Sure, Fae. It'll be our little secret," he promised. He knew exactly why. People at Shiz definitely had enough to talk about with Elphaba without knowing where or how she lived.
As he walked away to head back to campus, he smiled slightly to himself. He had his own secret. But he wasn't exactly sure why it gave him so much pleasure that when he'd picked up a book that lay next to the mattress on Elphaba's floor, a bookmark had fallen from the pages.
A little scrap of paper from an old newspaper- an Aries horoscope with a few scribbled words next to the text. "You will meet a handsome, charming and persistent young man today. If you seat him and give him food, he'll go away."
And he certainly wasn't going to tell anyone about a similar scrap of paper that sat in an envelope in his nightstand alongside letters from his parents.
Fiyero and Elphaba never imagined that they were both thinking the same thing about those tiny scraps of paper- they weren't sure why they were keeping them, but neither could bring themselves to throw them away.