Chapter 17
A/N Thank you for your response. I hope you enjoy this little chapter.
She's asleep when he finally gets there. It occurs to him that must mean she trusts him. He doesn't bother getting undressed or waking her up. He just shrugs his coat off and crawls up behind her, moving his arm to fit around her waist and pulls her back against him. He pulls the pins from her hair and buries his nose in it. He loves that hair. Thoughts and memories of it haunted him after she left and they do so now, when they're not together. He always makes sure to pull every last pin from her hair, even in the middle of the night, when he wakes up for no good reason and watches her until he falls back asleep.
He's spent so many hours just looking at her that he's pretty sure he could draw her from memory and forget not one detail. That is actually what made him realize the truth. The fact that he knows every inch of Elphaba's face, knows every curve of her body. They spent so little time together, but that is what made their time precious, made every hour count. So he remembers all of it and he knows all of her. Down to the way his fingers fit around the curve of her hips, slide onto her waist. He's never had that with Glinda. Years together and he could not, not to save his life, recall every detail of her face.
It's not anything Glinda has or hasn't done. She is a striking woman, not just lovely but truly striking, and her beauty seems flawless. Maybe it is. He wouldn't know.
He's not in love with her.
He is in love with Elphaba. He's in love with Elphaba so so much. The intensity of it scares him a little, when he thinks about it. Sometimes, at night, when he is back in the Palace, and listens to Glinda's soft breathing on the pillow next to him, he tries to imagine Elphaba beside him and the longing he feels then drowns out the loud sense of guilt.
He wonders too, in those moments, when the longing eases and guilt rushes forwards, if what he feels for Elphaba is so strong because it was always meant to be that way, was always going to be that way, or if part of the intensity is that it's a love he shouldn't be feeling. The time they spend together is stolen and could be taken away from them any time.
And sometimes...sometimes he thinks about it with all the objectivity he can muster and he wonders...He doesn't want to believe it but he can't be completely sure if this kind of love and passion is what makes people have affairs. And if these affairs are a result of such passion and love, or if it is the other way around.
Most of the time, though, he knows that the answer to that question doesn't matter for him. He is just in love with Elphaba.
With the worry lines around her eyes, that shouldn't be there at her age but are because she's seen too much, did too much. Knows too much. And she doesn't run from responsibility, and she doesn't forget.
With the corner of her mouth, the left one, because it pulls upward into a smirk when he says something thoughtless.
With the scar on her hip, thin but ragged, from when she pulled her skin on barbed wire but couldn't move because of the guards nearby and had to wait, and remain as still as possible, for an hour and a half until the new shift started.
She'd told him the story in too matter-of-fact a tone and scorned his worried expression because she'd been through worse and would go through worse still. He hated that story, but he loved it at the same time. He worried for her always but there was a part of him that was proud of her for sticking it out, all of it, to do what she believed in.
He is proud and frustrated at the same time and he doubts that combination will ever turn into just one or the other.
With the sound of her voice, deep but clear, and the way she murmurs his name as she falls asleep sometimes, with her face pressed into his arm or his side and her hair all over the bed.
With the sparkle in her eyes that gets brighter every week, when she arrived to find him waiting for her.
He loves even the things he doesn't like.
It contrasts sharply to the love he feels for Glinda, which demands focus and attention and is forgotten too easily. He does love her, and he does feel guilty. But he doesn't feel like he's cheating, and that isn't a good thing, because that is what he is doing.
The thing that bothers him most is that he doesn't know which of the two he is really unfaithful to.
Because he feels more guilt about being with Glinda, than he does about his nights with Elphaba. And that makes him morally deplorable. Like he had been before...before her. Before Elphaba. Before he discovered what it was like to fall in love, fall in way, way over your head and still feel like you're on top.
He doesn't want to be that boy anymore, would have sworn he wasn't. Now, it turns out, he hasn't changed as much as he thought he did. He's still lying to those that love him, still keeping secrets from those that trust him.
And instead of feeling more guilt, he feels less.
Because, in the end, he loves her. And that is all he needs to justify what he's doing.
That's all he needs.
A/N Unfortunately, for me at least, I have to go in for dental surgery tomorrow (yuck) so the next chapter will be a few days but I have at least two updates planned this week so it shouldn't be too long.