Archive of Our Own ^beta

Galinda "Glinda" Arduenna Upland the Good Witch of the North — and, by a misprint of the Ozmopolitan two years ago, also, somehow of the South — understands better than most people the power of a title.

A well-placed label can carry tradition. Bestow wealth. Raise armies. Shape lives.

For Glinda, the removal of one silly little letter marked a stance taken.

The addition of alliteration endeared an entire country to her cause.

It’s a matter, really, of proper branding, which is why Glinda’s especially distraught to be sitting on the floor of the Palace library in the middle of the night unsure of what to call herself.

The morning after the melting, with her fingers still cold and pink from the Vinkan well water dripping between the stones of Kiamo Ko, a Munchkin girl asked if Glinda had been Elphaba's friend.

The title, at the time, seemed too trite for all the ways Elphaba Thropp crawled under Glinda’s skin and stayed there, burrowed.

But Glinda had no other options.

She wasn’t a rival or a lover or an ally — just a friend.

She said yes, then.

That is, she admitted that their paths did cross.

As if the semantics mattered now anyway. Elphaba was gone.

Fiyero, too.

And sweet Nessarose.

And even Biq.

So, you see, Glinda’s really very much not a friend anymore. She’s not a fiancée, either.

The library is beautiful — built from a richer, deeper green jade than the rest of the Palace, a welcome break from all of that positively dullified Oscar Diggs green. She really should have frequented it more between press tours and dress fittings in that busy, exciting time before, because now, when the certain slant of light passes through the large windows in late winter, all she can think about is how much Elphaba would’ve loved it, and how it’s her job to enjoy it for the both of them because Elphaba can’t.

Next to her, the Grimmerie opens to a new page. Discoveration.

“Hush, you,” she taps at the time-torn leather around its edges. “I can find it myself.”

It knows she can’t read it yet. There are other times, in the long and winding aimlessness of Saturday afternoons just as she pours herself a glass of gin, when she’ll feel as though it’s taunting her — turning to that damned Mendification spell all petty and passive aggressive. Tonight, though, she finds herself grateful for the sound of the parchment rattling.

Everything is too quiet — a drowning, sweeping not sound enveloping her, the not fiancée and not friend — and she hates it. Louder than laughter or applause, silence had a way of letting so much unpleasantness seep in.

For a clock-tick, she considers calling in a guard. The Wizard’s gramophone had been moved up three flights of stairs to sit next to her bar cart, and it would take two guards at most to move it back down here again, but maybe then the deafening quiet could end.

Except, well. Someone on staff has already been talking to the press about her wanderings through the Palace at early dawn. Just last week, a source in the kitchen reported that she hadn’t had dinner sent up to her quarters in months.

Better, she thinks, to manage without botherifying anyone, using her own voice and the fluttering of the Grimmerie to keep her thoughts from growing too loud.

"Molecularification," she says, running her thumb over the spines on the medium rare shelf. "Monkeys…Aha!"

The Maladaptive Mysteries of Mourning, Volume I.

“Told you so,” she says to the Grimmerie, who, she swears, huffs.

Elphaba did a horrendible job teaching it manners, really.

Her to-do list is far too long. Truthfully, there hasn’t been a time in the past year where it hasn’t been. To start, she had to disprove all those rumors and speculation about her fitness to lead. And then, there’s that nosey reporter from Applerue calling in to investigate the imprisonment of Madame Morrible. That little girl’s damned tin boy or friend or thing has started distribuficating anti-democratic pamphlets among the Munchkins, and her closet is in desperate need of a cleaning before spring. 

Oh, and thank you cards. Lurline, being Throne Minister comes with such an awful amount of thank you cards!

But whenever she lies in bed, just on the cusp of tomorrow, she keeps picturing the widow she met on her listening tour.

Jirea from Quox, the Snow Leopard whose coat was the same faultless white as Glinda’s bedroom ceiling.

Jirea had been there to talk about recompences for the damage wrought by the Wizard’s anti-Animal policies, and Glinda couldn’t focus on anything but the scarf she had tied around her neck. It was summer then, in the middle of a heat wave, and Glinda could hardly breathe in the knee-length gown she’d been stuffed in let alone think about accessorizing.

With apologies, dearest, she said, feeling a droplet of sweat run down the curve in her spine. This is all very important, and I promise you have my utmost commitment to betterifying the Animal cause. But, and I do hope you don’t find this forward, how do you stand that thing?  

The line snaked out of the room. Someone in the far back coughed, impatiently, as Jirea explained the tradition. Back home, in the Thousand Year Grasslands, a white scarf was the mark of mourning.

Her husband had been a doctor, you see — one of the first Animals to get rounded up during the Wizard’s raids.

Glinda is very much not a widow. Fiyero broke the engagement just in time to ensure that she couldn’t be, and Elphaba…Well, Glinda only ever really had a few months with Elphaba. A few maddening, lovely, too short months, while Jirea got to love for an entire lifetime.

Still, she liked a good fashion statement, and it seemed freeing, almost, to have such an outward manifestorium of all her mourning. She wanted to be marked, formally, as a not friend and a not fiancée and not a person at all but rather the shadow of all those she lost.

Glinda the Grieving.

That’s what all of this is, anyway. Isn’t it?

Glinda, stationed between the M and N shelves at the wee hours of the morning, unable to sleep with that green bottle stiff and still under her pillow.

Eating nothing but takeout Quadling noodles, Elphaba’s favorite study snack.

Incapable of sitting too long in the silence.

It was grief, all the way down.

The Grimmerie doesn’t like being held by Glinda, but it’s warm, so Glinda has started holding it to her chest absentmindedly, letting the heat sink into layers of fleece and satin as she reads about mourning customs in Munchkinland.

Jirea and the tribes in the Thousand Year Grasslands wore white.

The Munchkins wear black.

She supposes she should’ve figured. Vaguely, Glinda recalls the articles she read about Nessarose before that horrid house. In every photo, the newly appointed Governor looked so harsh and stiff. During her daily press briefings, Glinda would run her thumb over the printed black of her mourning dress and think, first, Good riddance.

The death of Frexspar Thropp was just about the only good thing that came out of that otherwise unfortunish meeting with the Wizard one fateful day spring semester.

After that rather inappropriate thought, she’d usually marvel at how much like Elphaba Nessa had become, metamorphizing from white ruffles and red lace to dark bodices and sharp lines. They must’ve had the same tailor — some Munchkin whose specialification was mourning clothes, measuring Elphaba year over year while her shoulders lengthened and her hips grew.

It would be nice to carry on the tradition. Glinda donning black, mourning Elphaba, who had always been mourning — Glinda's sure — Melena. An endless chain of girls, standing in the dark blank shadows of the women they've lost.

But Glinda knows before she’s even done with the paragraph that she won’t be able to pull it off.

Black looked dreadful on her skin tone. There was a reason it wasn’t a part of her brand, and she can’t jeopardize the public’s trust in her pink-toned, blue-hued Glinda the Good — not when the Animal Repatrification Act is just about done with its final round of edits.

Outside, for the first time since autumn, rain falls instead of snow. The later she’s awake, the more the patter against the windowpane starts to sound like screams, so Glinda reads aloud, her thumb stroking the edge of the Grimmerie and her knuckles pressing its binding tighter.

"In the region of Qhorye—are you paying attention?" She looks to the book, which has started to push back against her grasp. "Good. In the region of Qhorye, widows wear shells or feathers. It seems to be some sort of way to acknowledge the bridge between the living and the dead. Well, that’s rather sentimental."

She snaps the book closed and settles on that for a clock-tick. It should be easy enough, she thinks, when she stops her morning walk with Feldspur to pick up a pigeon feather and slip it under her corset before Council.  Every time she shifts to address an assemblage of tax collectors from Pertha Hills or a baker from Wend Fallows, she feels its quill digging into her sternum.

It’s not unpleasant, actually. She finds by the end of the day that she appreciates having a physical reminder of her loss as sharp and frequent as those flashes of green she keeps seeing in her periphery.

But by the middle of the week, a rash breaks out, angry and red as it climbs up her chest and threatens to peer out over the top of her neckline. So, she heads back to the library and finds the thousand-page anthropologic study of Ozian mourning, tired and tearing through traditions more quickly.

On page 298, in a footnote about Arjiki burial rites, Glinda learns that Vinkans cut their hair. 

Like most things that are born from the floor of the library at midnight, it is a bad idea.

Still, she finds herself standing in her bathroom with her kitchen shears over her curls, snipping.

The shower is running, filling the room with enough steam that she can’t see anything but the handful of loose blonde in her grip, and Glinda remembers the time that Elphaba interrupted her, mid-secret, on the tulip field behind campus to pluck a ladybug out of her pigtails.

It’s good luck, she said then, and they watched as the ladybug spread its wings and flew off her finger into the air.

Luck, she laughs to herself. Fat lot of good that did her.

She decides not to look at herself in the mirror later, once the steam has cleared. Instead, she runs her hands through her hair and feels where it stops abruptly, harsh and jagged and exactly how her entire life has felt since that dawn at Kiamo Ko.

Pfannee schedules an emergency hair appointment the second he sees her. Nadab screeches at the start of her fitting, grasping his lapels in shock. The jacket is an upgrade from the one he’s been sporting for years, torn off her shoulders in the Hall of Windows, but Glinda can see the white of his knuckles through blue fur when he gasps, and she’s worried he’s going to rip the collar clean off.

Her entire marketing team makes her sign an agreement that all future cosmetical decisions be considered as a group. Pfannee looks more serious than she’s ever seen him when he says, “Democracy,” — that strange ideal Elphaba gushed about in Dr. Dillamond’s class — “Hangs in the balance.”

Glinda the Good’s Grooming Gone Wrong! will be the headline on the front cover of the Ozmapolitan that week, despite the dissolution of more than half of the Gale Force by Glinda's order mere days before.

In the weeks that follow, her hair grows. She resents every inch.

*

Her hair is the first thing Elphaba comments on when she lands on her balcony, stepping through the open door.

“You cut your hair?”

Glinda’s rather unimpressified.

Ever since Elphaba’s first visit to her quarters on the night of Glinda’s wedding, she’s heard her voice bouncing off the walls. When she’s racing through the apartment looking for her other heel before Citizen’s Day, she hears, Careful, your dress. When she’s standing on the balcony, tapping her toe to the button that will surround her in a sheen of shiny, soapy pink, she hears, Well, we can’t all come and go by bubble.

The words are new, sure, but the voice is familiar, so Glinda doesn’t jump. She doesn’t even gasp.

In fact, sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by draft proposals and thank you notes, the first thing she feels is anger.

The force of it after so many months of such cold, tingling numbness bowls her over, really, boiling incessant and demanderating from her toes to her temples.

It may be that her mind is just playing rude tricks, moving from voices and flashes of green to one real, breathing body. 

Or that the Grimmerie, so like its original owner, has grown stubborn and impatient with Glinda’s refusal to learn its Mendification spell and decided to take matters into its own hands. Or, its own covers, she supposes.

Perhaps for once, Elphaba had been wrong every time she insisted she didn’t have a soul. Perhaps, like all those scandalocious gossip rags liked to report, the ghost of the Wicked Witch of the West is here to haunt her into speeding along that public library project collecting dust in her office downstairs.

Or…

Or it could be Elphaba.

The real Elphaba, alive and well and seemingly perfectly capable of sending Glinda a note or a sign or another crack in her window, even though it cost her far too much to replace the glass the first time.

In any event, Glinda’s imagined feeling Elphaba’s presence in her apartment again at least a hundred times. Once for every night she's managed to fall asleep since the melting.

None of those dreams start with “You cut your hair?” and none of them end with Glinda picking up her ink well and throwing it towards the window.

It’s only after the glass shatters and black ink bleeds into white that she allows herself to believe that she’s not sleeping — that Elphaba may actually be here, approaching her slowly like she could pounce.

And she does. Pounce, that is. In a fit of pink silk and her Sunday foam curlers.

"Elphaba Thropp, I hate you!"

She says it as she slams her body against Elphaba’s, moved all the sudden by the very solidness of her — the certain smell of bergamot and pine — and pushing until they hit the window.

She says it as she pounds her fist against Elphaba's chest, soft but sure and real and here.

She says it as the anger dissolves, fast, into a crack in her voice and two buckling knees.

And still, as Elphaba catches her and holds her up, lowering them both to the ground with care.

Her sobs turn into hiccups when she spots Elphaba's hands on her waist. Her fingers, spindly and steady. Her arms, strong. Her shoulders, squared. Her stare, soft.

Elphaba looks uncomfortable, and once the haze of anger and surprise clear, Glinda’s hit with the realization that Momsie would be horrified.

There’s a sacred etiquette to hosting, after all, and attacking a guest — even an unexpected guest, of which Elphaba Thropp is without a doubt at the very top of the top of the list — is against every principle detailed in Momsie’s beloved copy of The Ozian Hostess’s Guide to Hospitality.  

"I'm sorry for throwing the ink well at you," she says.

"That's alright, Galinda," Elphaba responds, and Glinda lets out one horrendibly loud sob at the sound of her voice, still like velvet. "Your aim is kind of shit."

“That was entirely intentional,” Glinda sniffles. “I’m good at sports, remember?”

They don’t say anything else. She’s not entirely sure where to start. Instead, they sit against the cold glass of the window until the sun starts to set, and Elphaba untangles her arm from behind Glinda, already starting to explain.

It's harder to fly in the dark, she starts to say. She’s only just gotten a hang of moving around without the broom, and so, it would be best to get back.

Glinda is too shocked and tired and confused to refuse to let Elphaba go for the third time in her rather short and tragically eventful life.

But in all that painful quiet that she leaves behind, Glinda wonders at her words.

It would be best to get back.

Not home. Just…Back.

She wishes she asked where “back” is. She wishes she said anything at all.

Like, I love you. Or, I missed you. Or, No, please don’t leave me again. Not when I just got you back, you cruel and wicked thing!

She wants to tell Elphaba about the late winter light in the Palace library. She wants to ask her about the Grimmerie’s attitude and if there had ever been cold nights in whatever little hovel she lived in where she’d hold it to her chest to keep warm.

She’d like to tell her about Jirea and the listening tour.

That she’s drafting another revision to the Animal Repatrification Act.

That she’d like it to be perfect. Or, at the very least, good.

That she’s grown disgustified with the Gale Force ever since that business with Fiyero. Before then, really, they always gave her the creeps.

Oh, and with showtunes as well. Elphaba had been right, years ago at Shiz. They were unrealistically and incessantly optimistic.

In the days that follow, Glinda rolls her desk chair out onto the balcony, sitting in the cold and thinking of other possible topics of conversation, waiting.

She’d be out there now, in fact, if it weren’t for a late season snow forcing her inside, where she has to stare at the carpet stain — more blue now than black, sinking ever deeper into the fibers. Oz, she mucked that one up, didn’t she?

If Elphaba didn’t come back, Glinda can’t blame her. She runs her hand over the mess, expecting the ink to mar her fingers, and she wonders how she might be able to fix this.

Nothing says ‘I’m sorry’ like a baked good, Larena explained once while Glinda sat on their kitchen counter in Frottica, kicking her heels against the cabinets. And no baked good says ‘I’m sorry’ like Granny’s muffins.

It could work. At least, it’s better than sitting in the silence while the snow dusts the city in one final coat of white.

So she tries, ruining two shirts, three aprons, and a carton of eggs that a member of the Palace staff trudged through the sleet to buy. All the while, she begs the Grimmerie for a spell that could make the tops of her muffins stop sinking or exploding or, Oz, burning to a crisp.

“I hate you,” she says to the Grimmerie as the kitchen fills, again, with smoke. “And your little bookmark, too.” 

That night, she sends a note to Momsie through priority mail.

Momsie,

Urgent. Hypothetishly, what baked good says ‘I’m sorry about the sorry state of my I’m Sorry Baked Good?’

Respond swiftly.

Yours,

Glinda. 

On the fourth day without Elphaba standing on her balcony, Glinda stuffs one muffin into her mouth, gags, spits it out in the trash, and tells herself that’s the end of waiting and wondering. Elphaba had been an apparition. Perhaps, evidence of a brain bleed, when taken with the fact that she’s been talking to tiny green glass bottles and annoying semi-animate books. She asks ShenShen to schedule an appointment with the doctor, and she resolves to go to bed early, even if all that really means is that she’s staring at the ceiling in her bedroom instead of at the papers on her desk trying to remember if Elphaba’s hands were warm when they held her and if her freckles were in all the right places. 

But Elphaba shows up on the fifth day, like she never left at all.

Glinda comes back from Council to find her sitting on the couch, frowning at an article in the Ozmapolitan. For a clock-tick, when she looks up, panicked at the sound of the door opening, they stare at each other, frozen.

In the week that Glinda has spent leaving her balcony door unlocked, waiting, she’s rehearsed a few greetings. None of them are: “Don’t move. I have muffins!”

At least, it’s a smidgen better than the last time.

Her mother has yet to respond to her mailing, despite its priority label in bright, brick red. So, Glinda arranges the best remaining sad, black dough balls into letters that roughly spell, I’m sorry and presents them to Elphaba with a flourish.

Brain bleed or apparition, Elphaba’s smile is the same. Pink and gap-toothed. All too lovely.

At the sight of it, Glinda sobs again. It’s rather embarrassing, really. There’s a proper way to cry like a lady — each tear politely waiting its turn, preferably — but all she’s been managing these days are the most unattractive heaving wails.

She says she sorry. For all the sobbing. 

And the ink well.

And the muffins, which, she'll admit, might be a tad burnt.

Oz, there are probably other things, too.

There’s so much to say sorry for, and she’s still waiting for Momsie’s reply, but once she gets more recipes, she can keep the apologies going with cookies and brownies and coffee cake, too.

It wouldn’t be enough, but it would be something. And Elphaba deserves something, really, and—

Glinda’s hiccups are cut off by Elphaba suddenly reaching for the platter and picking up the darkest muffin. She bites, right through the middle.

“Delicious,” Elphaba tries. There are black specks on her teeth, but Glinda can’t tear her eyes away from the crescent shape she bit into the crumb. 

“Elphaba,” Glinda says, slowly, pressing her finger into the dense dough left behind.

“Glinda?”

“Elphie,” Glinda says again, still poking the muffin. “I’m sure you’re aware by now, but nonetheless I’ll ask you kindly not to freak out. You see, I’m afraid ghosts don’t eat muffins.”

“Ghosts don’t do anything on account of the fact that they don’t exist,” Elphaba says.

“And what about brain bleeds?”

“What about what?”

“My brain bleed,” Glinda says.

“You have a brain bleed?”

“Well, I thought I did,” Glinda says. “But you took a bite.”

“I did, yes.”

“And it’s there,” Glinda adds, sticking her finger into the muffin again. “Very much not in my head.”  

“Glinda.” Elphaba touches Glinda’s arm. Her hand is cold. Glinda remembered wrong — there had been ever so many things to keep track of. “Have you been drinking?”

“No!” Glinda says, heat rushing to her cheeks. “No. I’m—And you’re—Alive! I thought you—Well, when you said you were surrendering, I thought—I didn’t know how, really, just that if there’s anyone who would follow through on such a bullheaded attempt at—It would be—And then, it did seem rather dramatic, but I was always trying to teach you about showmanship, so I thought—I thought—I thought.”

She looks at the platter of muffins and gasps. “Oh, Oz! You’re alive, and I’ve poisoned you!”

“Poisoned?!”

“Not in the purposeful sense,” Glinda says, slapping at Elphaba’s hand as she reaches out to inspect the muffin. “Lurline, what a host. Momsie’s going to have my head. To poison the undead. Or, I guess, the not dead. Ha! Not dead, and me, not—” She shakes her head. Not a fiancée. Not a friend. Though, now, not…not. “Where are my manners! You need to eat!”

“If those muffins are all you’ve got, I’m really okay,” Elphaba says. “Not that I don’t love them, they’re delicious, as I said, I just…I’ve been cutting back on my ash intake.”

On cue, Elphaba’s stomach grumbles, and Glinda does what she’s done almost every night for the past six months.

She puts in an order for Quadling noodles from across the street.

"Two," she repeats to the staff at the door. "As in: More than one. Less than three. One, two."

She waits for some acknowledgement when Crill, the delivery boy, holds the bag out. "I got two," she says to him. "I can't possibly tell you why. You wouldn't believe it if I—Well, but I—The point, dear Crill, is I got two!"

At the kitchen table, Elphaba has sorted Glinda’s paper into piles, and if it were anyone else messing with her elaborate Thank You Note system, she’d tell them how very rudified it is to touch other people’s things.

But it’s Elphaba.

At her kitchen table.  

“Aren’t they divine?” she asks instead of blushing at the sound Elphaba makes after her first bite.

The noodles taste different tonight after so many months eating them alone with the gramophone crackling into the quiet. They’re colder and gummier and Glinda finds that when she finishes, she’s not at all fulfilled.

For the first time in a long time, she wants pizza. And popcorn, too. And praline, the kind that gets stuck in her teeth, from that little shop in Settica. And, well. Everything.

She wants to try everything, again.

*

So, Glinda is not a widow. Not in the technical sense, and now, not in the metaphorical sense, either.

She's a friend.

A good friend.

A best friend.

And she doesn't need a library or a cranky old spellbook to teach her how to do this.

When Elphaba lands on her balcony next, Glinda offers her a drink. She puts on one of Oscar’s records, a slow, crooning song that sounded so sad a few weeks ago, but feels almost romantical now.

Ever since Chistery first found her in the attic of the Palace with a bottle of whiskey and a toe on the edge, she isn’t really allowed to drink. Most mornings, he’d dip his head into her office to make sure her eyes were open and her head was clear. The last time he stopped over, he traded a box of tea for the contents of her liquor cart.  

But she did have one bottle of gin hidden in the cabinet for bad days and worse nights — of which this is finally and blessedly neither.

She climbs on the counter to reach it and feels the smallest, strangest trill in her chest when Elphaba’s hands hover over her hips to help keep her balance.

She doesn’t want to — not really — but she considers what it would be like to stumble off the edge. The space between her skin and Elphaba’s hands would disappear completely, and Elphie’s nails would press hard enough to make marks, and now, standing high enough on the counter that she can see the dust on the cabinets, she grows dizzy.  

They spend the night laughing, mostly. She's not entirely sure what about.

The fight in Munchkinland, and the prickling heat Elphaba’s slap left on her cheek.

The sound of her melting through the closet door.

Somehow, it all seems so extremely, impossibly, achingly funny, and Glinda finds herself wanting to scream.

But instead, she takes another sip. And another until her whole body is warm. The songs shift to something slow enough to sway to, and she reaches her hand out to Elphaba to dance.

Glinda sleeps better that night. It could be the gin. Or the record’s melody, echoing through the walls. But once she rests — really rests — she’s able to finish those thank you notes.

Which means, thank Oz, she can tackle the closet and all those ballgowns that Madame Morrible sewed her into, now three tide turns out of date.

Through the piles, she finds the crepe fabric of the dress she wore that first night at the Oz Dust. The stiff pin-stripe of her uniform. The skirt she bought in the Emerald City on that one short day they had together, and the sweater she wore the whole winter prior because it always made Elphie, adorable Elphie, lose her breath.

She hangs each of them up, one right after the other, and smiles.

All the most garishly pink and outlandishly sequined numbers are sent to Nadab for scraps. But everything dark she saves for Elphaba. Sure, winter had been shifting more confidently into spring, but Elphie still needs something more substantial than that fabulous organza she’s been flying from here to “back” in — no matter how much Glinda liked seeing her arms through the fabric.

On her next visit, Glinda hands the clothes to Elphaba and shrugs.

"It's nothing, Miss Elphie," she says, before Elphaba can stutter a thank you. "I’m just thoughtful that way."

She buys Elphaba groceries next — a few apples, fresh juice, and a mushroom pie from a stall at the market — and then brings her the stack of books from the library that Glinda had been setting aside in the medium rare section for months without really knowing why.

On one particular night, Elphaba lands on the balcony with her own takeout — vegan pizza and a salad. She says, “I haven’t seen you eat anything green since I got here,” and Glinda’s picking reluctantly at the leaves when Elphaba jumps to ask her about her day.

For a clock-tick, it’s almost as if they’re back in the Shiz cafeteria at a table filled with textbooks complaining about Madame Morrible’s new assignment. Glinda could cry at the mere thought of it, but she’s been doing that rather a lot these days, and so instead, she straightens her shoulders and tells Elphaba about Hustece, the old stick-in-the-mud governor from Wiccasand who is worried about, of all things, the tax implications of her repatrification act.

Taxes, she says, when there are entire species being subjugated, could Elphie even believe it?

“I swear, democracy can’t come quickly enough,” she huffs, now stabbing more enthusiastically into her lettuce. “Once all Ozians have the right to vote, I won’t have to deal with any more of these crusty old cabbages who don’t know the first thing about proper manners. Or tailors. Or skincare! Dear Oz!”

Elphaba stays silent, reaching for another slice of pizza.

It doesn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter.

But Glinda rather expected a bigger reaction.

She’s got the best moisturizer in all of Oz, but even she knows how many years this job has already taken off her life.

Of course, she’s doing it for the greater good. But also, maybe, she’s a little bit doing it for Elphaba and the warm electricity of being told by her best friend that she’s actually, really, positively doing good.

“Am I pronouncifying that right?” she finally asks, widening her eyes. “Democracy? That thing-a-ma-bob you used to drone on about at Shiz? I’m not sure how, yet, but I’m thinking it would be good to give it a try.”

Eventually, she gets the response she wanted. Elphaba drops the pizza on her plate and rubs her fingers together to rid them of semolina before reaching for Glinda's hand and squeezing. "That's great, Glinda. That's so…great."

The fluttering trill from the night with the gin answers back — swooping down into her stomach and up through her chest until her cheeks flush, hot. She holds onto it, as best she’s able, while Elphaba digs into a series of inane questions about the infrastructure bill Glinda is introducing to the Council this week.

Elphaba has a comment, she says — though it’s really more of a pedantic suggestion, but Glinda tries not to say so — about the provisions on page 28, line 22b.

It appears that wherever “back” is, Elphaba is still getting the Politics section of every Ozian newspaper.

What a joy.

Glinda hates her job sometimes. Most times, really, with the most boringified conversations and the tightest corsets and her hand cramping from thank you cards.

But she likes getting to talk to Elphie about it always, and more nights start to pass just like this one: Elphaba, sitting across from her, arguing about a line edit in her newest executified order.

Sometimes, it’s easy enough that Glinda can pretend like everything is as it once was.

Except, Glinda’s still no good at silence. Or sleep. While she knows now that Elphaba’s death was fake, her screams were real enough to haunt Glinda still, joining in Oz’s worst harmony with the shouts of Fiyero as the Gale Force dragged him away.

In Munchkinland.

Mere yards from young Nessarose’s body.

So much loss still hung so heavy between them.

Also, Elphaba smiles now when she sees her. She also hugs her tight enough that Glinda wonders if they ever really have to let go, and this is new, too. Something about all that time and all that loss has softened Elphaba’s edges, so she leans into Glinda with her nose in Glinda’s neck for every hello and every goodbye and all those pesky little lulls in conversation.

There’s the rain as well.

Glinda used to love the rain in Frottica. She could see Mount Runcible from her bedroom window, and every time the storm lifted, a rainbow would stretch out over the peak as if Lurline herself had just stopped crying.

Now, she can’t stand it.

Any water, really. Months ago, her shower leaked, and the sound of water hitting porcelain kept her nerves frayed for weeks.

Which is why she’s particularly grumpified tonight, on the living room floor between rounds of Vinkan Rummy — even though Elphaba’s thigh sits warm against hers and there’s a tray of cookies between them.

“It’s still raining,” Glinda grumbles as Elphaba shuffles.

“I hate it,” Elphaba responds.

She hadn’t known, but she supposes it would be quite the hassle — all those clouds and thunderclaps getting in the way of Elphaba on her travels “back.”

“Oh,” Glinda aims for noncommittal when she hums, the cloying plea on the edge of her voice lost to a lightning crack. “Can you not fly in the rain?”  

"I'd—" Elphaba sighs, furrowing her brow. "I'd rather not."

“Well,” Glinda bends the corner of her card.

Since Elphaba started coming around again, she’s improved her hosting skills. Now, when Elphaba lands on her balcony, Glinda opens the door with an Oh, hello!

She buys baked goods instead of making them, too, which explains the cookie that she breaks the edge off of.

She’s so good, in fact, that what comes next comes naturally, the words slipping out before she has a chance to stop them. “You could always stay here.”  

“I couldn’t,” Elphaba’s gaze hasn’t broken from the window. She looks more than tired. “I wouldn’t want to impose.”

Even amid all the ways time has changed them, Glinda knows Elphaba well enough to know that it’s not mere inconvenience turning her knuckles a mint green around the edges of her card deck.

Perhaps, for every nightmare that Glinda’s had since that night at Kiamo Ko, Elphaba’s had one too.

It could be so simple to ask about them. She could say, I understand, you know.

I was there, and sometimes, I—

But there are many things like that they haven’t yet talked about yet.

Glinda’s not sure that they ever will.

The hardest part of every bad dream is waking up to find that she’s alone. Maybe quite possibly Elphaba feels the same, and it’s this, the prospect of helping Elphaba sleep easier tonight — and not that nervous fluttering in her chest — that makes her firmer when she tries again.

“It must be such a long way back to…” She pauses, still unsure where Elphaba lay her head at night. “Back.”

“I could sleep on the couch,” Elphaba offers, and Glinda lightly slaps Elphaba’s knee where it sits, neatly pressed against hers.

“Don’t be ridiculocious,” she says. “My bed is bigger than anything we shared at Shiz! And besides, I know you’re out of practice with this whole thing, so I won’t hold it against you but really, Elphie, how many times do I have to tell you: this is what best friends are for.”

And she knows how to do this, really! Best friendlihood is high on the list of skills she’s mastered, alongside hosting and crying like a lady and convincing the Grimmerie to open even if she can’t really read it.

But that night, she struggles more than she anticipated with the feeling of sharing space. It’s been a while, she’ll admit. Even when Fiyero lived at the Palace, they kept to their own quarters. It was easier for him on the nights when the search kept him out for all hours and easier for her when her press briefings began before the sun rose.

How funny that she used to throw around intimacy so easily back at Shiz. She would twirl around their dorm room in her skimpiest nightie and relish at the way Elphaba’s eyes followed her form.

She felt alive, then, from the top of her head all the way down to her toes, and there have been moments since when she’s tried to find that feeling again — when Fiyero stood at the end of her bed, stripping off his shirt or when she lay alone with a hand just under the pretty pink bow on the elastic of her underwear — only to conclude that it must’ve been something far away and fleeting. Just the feeling, maybe, of being young and being silly.

But here she is after a long work week spent arguing over the most borifying budget bill staring down at her pajama drawer, surrounded by the same buzz of nerves. 

It didn’t matter, of course. Elphaba had seen her in her finest ball gowns and her barest bath towel. But it was a slumber party — their first in far too many years! — and she felt she owed it to Elphaba to look nice.  

“Is something wrong?” Elphaba asks from the doorway to the closet, and Glinda decides, then, on a pink set with lace. ShenShen helped her pick it out back before, when pajama sets were her greatest concern. She had said, Fiyero is going to lose what’s left of his mind.

“Nothing at all, dearest,” she responds, handing Elphaba the darkest nightgown she has — purple silk and a lace trim.

She expects the feeling to dissipate as she steps into satin or tiptoes through the kitchen for two mugs of hot tea. But Elphaba emerges from the bathroom with all her harsh lines softened by violet, and Glinda worries that this whole plan has backfired because she feels as though she might never be able to get to sleep.

"It's just like old times," she says, bouncing on her knees on the mattress and ignoring the sharp stab of all that has passed between them since their last slumber party. It’s very much not like old times, but they don’t have to talk about that. Not now, with Elphaba looking so heartbreaking in Glinda’s nightgown, her back against Glinda’s pillow on Glinda’s bed. "We should tell each other something we've never told anyone before. I’ll go first."

“You always do.”

“Tsh,” Glinda bats at Elphaba’s leg, waiting for the quiet to settle before she tells her with more earnestness than she’d like that she missed her.

“The hair,” she starts, blushing. Suddenly, she’s aware of how cold it is in her apartment and how thin her top is. “The hair was for you.”

Elphaba stares at her, confused, and Glinda continues.

"I cut it because of a—Well, it's silly now. But at the time, I thought you'd—" Elphaba’s eyes are so much greener in person than in any one of her many memories. She finds she can’t look directly at them now. "It's an old Vinkan tradition. Mourning, and all that ballyhoo. Terribly embarrassing, all things considered! But you know how bad black looks on me."

Elphaba tsks, the smallest flicker of disagreement. She reaches out to twist a strand of Glinda’s hair around her finger.

"I know, the longer hair suits me better," Glinda adds, attempting to distract from the pink blooming on her cheeks. "ShenShen keeps saying that the length better frames my face, and I suppose I don’t dis—"

"I like it," Elphaba interrupts. She looks young, then. Despite the new freckles weathered over her face and the wizened lines around her eyes, she smiles at Glinda, and who gives a flying Monkey about the nightmares and the hugging and the rain? For all Glinda knows, Elphaba might as well be a first year back at Crage Hall, untouched by time and terror.

The room is still enough that Glinda’s sure Elphaba can hear her heart beating.

That must be why her eyes drop, quick and coy, to Glinda’s chest and then her lips.

Strange, Glinda thinks. That tick of Elphaba’s, and the way it makes Glinda’s heart flutter. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think—But, no. That would be—Of course not!

Elphaba takes a slow, shuddering breath, and when she meets Glinda’s eyes again, the line is back between her eyebrows.

"Fiyero is—"

Right.

Of course not!

Glinda knows about all the guilt that Elphaba carries. She saw it bare and open the night after the Oz Dust, when Elphaba explained about the milk flowers while fiddling with the hem of her robe.

But there are only a few times that it’s been aimed straight in Glinda’s direction, and it’s almost always because of that Oz-damned name.

Fiyero.

"He's alive. Too."

The heat in Glinda’s stomach that had been steadily growing all night curls up and hardens into something cold.

She supposes it's her fault.

She really should've asked what Elphaba meant every time she said, I've got to get back. It had been on her mind, truly. There was just always more important topics to get to — like what Elphaba thought about Feldspur’s new Mare and whether she liked the blue or pink dress for Glinda’s press conference next weekend.

And, alright. Maybe a part of Glinda knew but didn’t want to know. Because now that it’s lingering in the air between them, she wishes she had another ink well.

The first was gifted by Popsicle when she moved into the Palace. For all your most important correspondence, xx Popsy. It probably cost less than the dry-cleaning bill for the stain in the living room, which, by the way, she can still find if she sits at just the right angle on the couch.

She wonders if she could send another urgent mailing to Frottica. She needs at least two more ink wells. Three just in case it hadn’t been Nessa’s legs under that house.

Then again, maybe she’s not really angry enough for all that glass-shattering and ink spilling.

In actuality, she finds herself feeling…silly. Rather humilified, if she’s being honest.

To have mourned something so furiously and so frivolously not once but twice. Oz, how embarrassing.  

The Lion had been using his supposed courage to vie for a spot in the Council, and while Glinda believed that all Animals deserved to have a voice, she really did hate him. In this moment, with the rain pouring and the scent of chamomile drifting between them, Glinda feels another sharp stab of distaste for his mangy mane and the tail that always slinked nervously into his hands while he talked.

Nothing good came from that Lion, all the way back to that cage on the very first day, when Glinda knows now that everything had really started.

It's appropriate, at least. If Elphaba was going to walk around her apartment looking at her like they just got back from the Oz Dust, and if they were going to discussify their days like they were camped out at a table at Shiz, Glinda might as well feel as though she’s back in Dr. Dillamond’s classroom, waking up with her hair covered in poppy seeds and two empty chairs beside her.

Right?

She tries her best to smile, fluffing up the pillow and turning to lay down. "Good. That's good."

Outside, thunder booms. She waits for the lightning while Elphaba puts a hand on her bare shoulder.

"He's not the same," Elphaba tries to explain. "I had to—with the Grimmerie."

At the sound of its name, the book in the corner of the room startles.

"Oh, hush, you old book!" Glinda mutters, but her voice cracks. “She wasn’t even talking to you!”

"He's different now," Elphaba continues, despite the interruption.

“I know, he’s got Oz’s worst attitude, Elphie, I’ve been try—”

“Not the book. I mean Fiyero.”

When Glinda closes her eyes, she imagines them in a shack somewhere in the middle of the desert. Sand stretches as far as the eye can see, but they have each other to keep warm on cold nights.

How quaint.

If Elphaba had a shack and an ocean of sand and a Fiyero, with all his horrendible jokes, what was the point of any of this at all? It seemed rather meaningless when Elphaba could bake her own apology muffins and pick up her own vegan pizza and play Vinkan Rummy with an actual Vinkan and wake up from a nightmare never having to ever to be as alone as Glinda had been for all these months.

Maybe, Chistery sent them a message after he found Glinda in the attic room for the fifth time, staring out over the terrace.

Maybe, Feldspur tattled. He’d complain to Fiyero about how boring she’d become, turning down every invite to go out dancing with a No or an I’m tired or a Next time, maybe.

Or it was Dr. Dillamond. Oz, she worked so hard to get that Goat reinstated just for him to turn around and tell Elphie about the time she showed up to his classroom crying! All she wanted was a bit of advice, and it was hardly her fault that he was wearing that chic white cardigan that Elphaba loved so much.

Growing up, Momsie dragged Glinda to visit Granny in some old, sterile building that smelled like roses and death. Glinda loved her grandmother, but she hated those visits. Granny couldn’t remember Glinda’s name, and she spent hours rambling about how things used to be back when the Ozmas reigned and kids still knew manners.

Hell and Oz. Glinda realizes now, watching the rain with Elphaba’s hand burning against her bare shoulder, that she’s Elphaba’s Granny — a chore born of guilt and her troublingly strong sense of responsibility.

Lurline above.

"You should, um," she tries to talk around her sniffle and finds that she can't. "We should find a way to tell him you won't be home tonight, then. He's probably worried."

"Glinda, I'm sorry I didn't tell you," Elphaba starts, but Glinda's already thrown back the blankets and stood up from the bed. She regrets, immediately, the pajamas she's picked, because now she's embarrassed and cold and half-naked and mad.

Stupid. She races to the other side of the room to grab her robe and slip it on.

"I could probably send word. I assume Feldspur knows? I don't think he minds a trip through the rain."

"Glinda," Elphaba pats the mattress. She sounds exasperated, and Glinda understands. There were plenty of times when Glinda visited Granny to find that her mind had been lost to the early setting of the winter sun, chattering on about the most mind-numbingly ridiculoscious nonsense. "Come back to bed."

"No, no, I couldn't remotely sleep," Glinda says over her shoulder. Funny, a few minutes ago she thought the same thing and felt so entirely different. "Not knowing that your—Well, your…Fiyero is out there! Probably worried sick. I know I would be, if I were—"

She stops herself.

Glinda didn’t even have the chance to be worried sick. She watched Elphaba die, wondering for months how it could even be possible when she remembers, so very clearly, the way the sun reflected off the droplets on Elphaba’s arms when she swam in Lake Chorge on long weekends at Shiz.

"He's not my Fiyero, Glinda."

Glinda can't seem to find any paper at her desk that isn't a draft of her latest reform bill. She supposes it’ll have to do. "Yes, yes, agency is so important in a relationship. But I don't exactly know what to call you two, so—"

"It's not a relationship," Elphaba tries. "Would you please just come back to bed?"

"Dearest Fiyero. Is that the best way to begin?" She flips page 73 of the bill around and starts to scrawl on the back. "I don't want to seem too friendly, not with—Well. I don't exactly know how to address my newly undead ex-fiancé. And I wouldn't want to step on toes."

"You wouldn't be—" Elphaba sighs. "Glinda, please!"

When Glinda turns, she finds that Elphaba has moved from the headboard to the foot of the bed, where she leans toward her.

And Oz, Glinda had so many other nightgowns to give her. Ones that buttoned right up to the neck and made her feel, in the middle of the night, like she was choking.

Stupid, she thinks, for the second time that night.

"He and I aren't—" Elphaba shakes her head. "It's not like that."

Glinda waits, watching her. She never really liked having Fiyero in her room. All that green and gold really clashed with her pink, and every time he left, the sheets would smell like gunpowder and his cologne.

She thinks she can smell it, still.

"Does he know you're here?"

She doesn’t say with me, but she thinks maybe Elphaba can hear it.

Elphaba nods.

“It’s not like that,” she repeats, and Glinda stands from her chair, the wood creaking. The sound echoes between them as she crawls back to her side of the bed, turning out the light.

*

Quickly, this becomes their routine.

Glinda still doesn’t know where Elphaba and Fiyero live, but when the sun sets, Elphaba looks out the window and sighs.

She says things like, I guess I must be getting back.

Or, At least it’s getting darker later now.  

And Glinda will put a hand on Elphaba’s shoulder or her knee and say, Well, my bed is rather big. Bigger than either of us need, even, and better than whatever cot Fiyero’s got you sleeping on.

Also, not to put too fine a point on things, but, well, it still is quite cold this time of year, isn’t it? And my apartment is delightfully warm.

It’s just good hosting, really. As she scrambles over Elphaba to get to her side of the bed, she tells herself this is merely a necessary redirect after all of those horrendible, tear-stained early visits. Glinda Upland, daughter of grand hostess Larena Upland, is finally back on track.  

She chalks the rest up to coincidence: That she enjoys waking up next to Elphaba even more than she likes going to bed by her side. That even though she still sees the shadows on the wall of Kiamo Ko every time she closes her eyes, it’s nice to open them and feel the weight of another body in the grey light of dawn, knowing it had all been one very long, very wicked bad dream.

They begin to learn about each other again. Or, rather, to relearn, because Glinda supposes there had been a time when she knew about Elphie’s habit of stealing the blankets or the way she talked in her sleep. But all of those memories had been worn out over the years, revisited until they were rendered threadbare, and so every single detail feels new.  

The Palace staff liked to whisper all sorts of things about her. She ate too many sweets. She didn’t eat at all. She was particular about her hair. Or her clothes. Or her baths, which had to be exactly the right temperature and not a single degree off. Once, when she was walking through the Palace grounds, she nearly tripped and the footmen swear she levitated.  

Easily the most frequently whispered rumor and speculation is that she worked too hard and for too long.

We call her the Twister, an unnamed source reported in The Daily Ozzette. On account of the fact that she’s never not moving.

There was a reason for this, of course. For the longest while, the promise she made on the balcony of Kiamo Ko was the only thing that got her out of bed.

But Elphaba makes pancakes one morning, and Glinda cancels her meeting on traffic patterns through Kumbricia's Pass. She promises soup for dinner — homemade bread, too! — and Glinda hands Pfannee her draft of the May Day Illumination speech to finish in her stead.

And all the while, Elphaba will listen to her complaining about Hustece and infrastructure bills and bad takes from the press, and she’ll say But you’re doing so good with such an honest fervor that Glinda feels as though she’s on fire.   

So, they’re kind of sort of roommates.

They’ve been here before, too, haven’t they? By accident, of course — the most important miscommunification of either of their young lives. But this time, Glinda’s determined to be intentional about it.

Even though most of Elphaba’s clothes are made from scraps of Glinda’s hand-me-downs, she clears out half of her dresser drawers, and she doesn’t say anything when her decorative shelves start filling up with the drabbest, brownest, most moldy-looking books.  

“I had another key made,” she explains when she presses cold metal into Elphaba’s hands before work one morning. It feels rather forward, and she’s not entirely sure why. “I can’t be keeping the balcony doors unlocked. I’m a public figure after all.”

“Yes, you are very important, Glinda,” Elphaba jokes, but she’s running her nail over the ridges of the key, smiling, and Glinda’s stomach flips.

Yes, roommates. Exactly as it had been before.

Well, not exactly.

There’s still that whole hoi polloi about the hugs and the rain and the silence. Each week, Elphaba steps out to check on Fiyero, and Glinda makes her shower every time she comes back. I’m allergic to straw, Elphaba, she says every time. Couldn’t you have picked a less irritating medium?

When she does, slipping out of her cloaks and into a towel, Glinda attempts to count the dozens of puckered purple-green scars dotting her back — new. Or, at least, new to Glinda.

But still, it’s nice knowing that as far as they’d gotten from themselves, they could still come right back around to the beginning.

Because that's very much how it felt to Glinda. Like the beginning.

She used to read the most scandalocious books at Pertha Hills Preparatory School for Fine Youngish Ladies. They had princesses and knights and dragons that remind Glinda a bit of Madame Morrible — all fishy and twisted. Every single one ended the same way.

Happily ever after.

She supposes their story should end similarly, shouldn’t it? Glinda had been nearly a princess, Elphaba was gallant enough to be a knight, and all those pesky dragons had been slayed or sent off to other worlds in musty old hot air balloons.

Yet, when Glinda leaves for work under the weight of Elphaba’s eyes at her neckline, she feels as though she’s vibrating — an eagerness bubbling all the way down to her toes that feels inexplicably, after all they’ve gone through, like the start of something new.

Or, maybe, it’s just the wine. She allows herself a glass at the end of the week and resolves to lie to Chistery when he asks on Monday. She needs it. See, the Animal Repatrification Act is ready for a vote, and now that a Wolf in the Glikkus has announced his bid for a representative seat, tensions on Council are high.

It’s all so very good, of course.

That’s what Elphaba had been reminding her every night that week when she came home to a dinner that had long since grown cold.

That anyone at all can run is great. That an Animal is running is fantastic.

“Better than fantastic, Elphaba,” Glinda grumbles around her wine glass, considering the cards in her hand. “Splendiferous. At least give me splendiferous.”

“Absolutely splendiferous,” Elphaba concedes. “Astoundifying, really.”

“Thank you,” she says, reaching for the bottle to pour another glass.

Yes, it’s the wine.

And a little bit Elphaba’s praise, which bristles in Glinda’s chest.

But mostly the wine.

Oh, and the heat!

As spring shifted into summer, she has the sneaking suspicion that there’s something wrong with her apartment’s cooling system, because almost every time she sits across from Elphaba she finds herself flushed.

Elphaba wins the first round, raising an eyebrow quietly and shuffling without pause. She’s wearing that purple nightgown again. It’s her favorite, it seems. Glinda’s, too.

Glinda likes watching her win. Elphaba’s hands are fast, and her brain is faster, and every time she lowers the last card in her deck, she lets out a huff of relief instead of smiling. Glinda swears she can feel that breath curling around her hips and twisting up to her chest.

Dashing, she thinks, is something close to the right word. Elphaba winning makes her look dashing.  

But Elphaba losing? Well, that’s just delicious.

“Hmm, look at that,” Glinda says, keeping her tone steady while Elphaba’s jaw drops. Her fingers trail over the spread of cards that she laid down in quick succession. “I won.”

"Impossible," Elphaba whispers.

Glinda should really be more offended. But she knows, after many nights of playing Vinkan Rummy both here and on their dorm floor at Crage Hall, that Elphaba is an impressively sore, incredulous loser.

It’s painted all over her face — in the line between her brows and the dark of her cheeks and the sharp bounce of her eyes as she assesses Glinda’s hand once, twice, and then a third time just to be sure.

It’s the wine — and the heat! — but Glinda gets the most preposterous vision of pressing her lips to Elphaba’s cheeks just to cool them down.

“Read it and weep, Elphaba Thropp,” Glinda hums. “I won and you—”

She leans in closer, that eagerness in her chest from the wine and the broken cooling system and Elphaba’s nightgown urging her forward. The closer she gets, the further it spreads until she’s practically prickling with it.  

“Lost,” she murmurs. 

"You cheated," Elphaba says, and Glinda waits for her to lean back. Instead, they stay nearly nose-to-nose, close enough for Glinda to feel the jump of Elphaba’s throat reverberate in the base of her spine. “I don’t know how you did, but you cheated.”

“Nuh-uh.” When Glinda shakes her head, Elphaba’s eyes flit to her lips. She’d been doing that more lately, ever since she started sleeping over. It’s not polite to comment on — really, it’s hardly Glinda’s place to notice — except every time Elphaba’s eyes drop, Glinda wants to run or dance or scream, so filled as she is with this something that she could very nearly burst.

It reminds her of that dream she had of them at school where Elphaba’s lips pressed against her neck. She’d only had it once. Or twice, maybe. She hadn’t kept count, embarrassed as she was that she woke up each time with her hand between her legs, wanting.

“Fair and square, Elphie. Say it.”

"I'm not going to say it."

"Say it." She inches in closer, until there’s hardly any space left between their lips.

There’s no question, then, of leaning back or starting another round. The entire room, the whole Palace, all of Oz becomes contained in the feeling of Elphaba’s breath hot on her lips.

“Glinda,” Elphaba nudges Glinda’s nose with her own. “Good game.”

They can still be roommates, Glinda thinks as their lips collide. She thinks about Milla at the sleepover in grade school, and ShenShen at Shiz on a dare.

A kiss is a kiss is a kiss.

Except, Elphaba sucks in Glinda’s bottom lip, and that fluttering trill she’s been feeling for months in her chest suddenly settles into a cold burn, pouring hot down her arms and between her legs until she can’t feel her hands at Elphaba’s neck or her knees pressing into the rough thread of the carpet.

It’s rather fleeting — that realization that this is very much not something that roommates do. There are, after all, more important things to think about. Like the way Elphaba’s mouth melts around Glinda’s tongue when she presses at the seam of her lips and the feeling of her pulse pounding against Glinda’s thumb.

Glinda’s always wondered at the way Elphaba moves through the world, so careful and sure. She stepped with a steadiness that Glinda could only feign — the result of years of trying not to make too much sound against the creaking hardwood of Colwen Grounds.

She kisses Glinda the same way, placing her hands on Glinda’s hips with a slow kind of certainty that Glinda wants nothing more than to shatter and break. She lets out a breath at the touch, shakier than she anticipated, and Elphaba pulls back.  

“Glinda, Oz—” She shakes her head. “I don’t know why, I—I’m sorry.”

If anything else mattered at all, Glinda would laugh. Of all the things they have to apologize to each other for, this falls to the far bottom of the list. Four or five pages down at least. Scribbled on the back. In the margins.

There’s a bakery two doors down that makes the most fabulocious croissants. If this is something they need to say sorry about later — if that’s what’s going to keep Elphaba’s hands on her hips and her face close enough to taste — she’s willing to buy it out completely.

“Do it again,” she says. She’s not entirely sure she recognizes her voice, whiney and rough and spreading her blush from her cheeks to her neck, down. Down, down.

“What?”

Glinda straightens her shoulders and scoots closer.

She’s not an impatient person. She’s just alternatively patienced, and she finds it impressive that she’s able to sit here under the dark eyes of Elphaba’s wide gaze, turned on and waiting.

“Elphie,” she huffs when a half of a clock-tick goes by with Elphaba’s eyes flitting between hers, debating. “If you don’t—”

“You can kiss me, you know,” Elphaba argues, and here they are — pulled right back to the beginning again. Elphaba’s not uncertain, even now. She’s just scared, her voice wobbling, and Glinda knows how angry she tends to get when she doesn’t want to care but does.

So, she helps. Her hand moves from Elphaba’s neck to her jaw, running a pink, manicured nail over the freckles on Elphaba’s cheek bone.

“I suppose I could, couldn’t I?” she hums, scooting even closer until their knees touch. “You make such good points, Elphie. I’m not sure that anyone has ever told you that before but you’re really rather sma—”

The end of her sentence — whatever it had been, Glinda’s not so sure now — is lost to the hitch of her breath and Elphaba kissing her again.  

Glinda’s hand finds the back of Elphaba’s head and pulls her closer. Suddenly, there’s entirely too much space between them.

For as long as she’s known Elphaba, she thinks, there’s been too much space. She’s only just now realizing how utterly cruel it is that they slept on opposite sides of the dorm and fought on opposite ends of the cause.

And always, always, there was something in the way.

Madame Morrible’s cloying claws. That Oz-damned Lion cub. A man.

Oz, a man.

All that complification narrowed down and smoothed out into the sound of Elphaba’s groan.

Glinda knows how to kiss. Along with hosting and best friendlihood, this is something she knows how to do.

And she knows that she knows how to kiss because she’s been told more than once that she’s good at it. She knows exactly when to sigh and when to smile and when to brush a nail, lightly, over the baby hairs on the other person’s neck so their knees go weak. A kiss is like a dinner party — there is a time for these things and an etiquette that makes even the messiest dish seem proper.  

This is not like that at all.

There’s teeth, for starters, pressing into the soft part of Elphaba’s bottom lip. And tongue, lapping up the length of Elphaba’s neck. The sounds that bubble up and out of her when she feels Elphaba’s cold fingers against the bare base of her back aren’t anything but instinct, burning between her legs and pounding in her chest.

When Elphaba does finally strip off Glinda’s shirt, it occurs to Glinda to blush. Act demure. Giggle, even, because boys always liked it more when she seemed shy.

But the green in Elphaba’s eyes have all but turned black, and Glinda can’t think about what’s good or perfect or even remotely appropriate sitting half-naked across from her roommate, who is newly covered in Glinda’s leftover lip gloss and spit.

She can only think about how much she needs more, and for how long she’s needed more — months, probably, ever since Elphaba’s arrival.

Or before then, even, in that year at Crage Hall every time Fiyero lay between her legs, and she couldn’t stop picturing Elphie.

So, she’s forward when she straddles Elphaba’s hips and grabs Elphaba’s hands to guide them to her chest.

So, what?

It’s hardly her fault that Elphaba is so infuriating with her sounds and her hands and her breath hot on Glinda’s neck, so sure in everything but suddenly, maddeningly, hesitant about this. With her hands still on Elphaba’s, Glinda arranges Elphaba’s finger and then her thumb around her nipple and then waits, pressing her teeth into Elphaba’s neck.

Elphaba jerks at the feeling, pinching, and Glinda grinds down in response, her hips on smooth satin.

It’s not nearly enough.

She pulls at the hem of Elphaba’s favorite nightgown, which has caught in the fold of Elphaba’s knees and all the places where Glinda’s thighs press in. “Off,” she breathes. “Now, please.”

They’re moving too quickly, she knows. When she shucks off the nightgown, throwing it onto the couch behind them, she finally finds the breath to pause.

She thought she’d seen plenty of Elphaba over the years.

Between showers and in dressing rooms and on that long weekend in Lake Chorge, she learned about the way the skin on Elphaba’s shoulders rippled over muscle when she straightened her back.

But she’s never seen her so naked and so…still.

Nearly every part of Glinda wants to move — friction, really; she needs friction — but with all that she’s lost over the years, it’s become a habit to try to save everything to memory, and she definitely, absolutely, without a doubt doesn’t want to forget this.

Elphaba’s strong. She’s steady, all the way down to the curve of her arms and the shape of her waist.

She’s green, too, of course. The most gorgeous shade, better than every jade column in the library in late winter. Glinda’s never found a building in all of the Emerald City as gleaming as this, and she’s looked.

Her skin is marred — by the marks Glinda’s already left, spurring that simmering spark between her legs, but by scars, too. Scars that Glinda still doesn’t know how to ask about.

She’s moving too slowly now. The silence has stretched too long between them, and she sees the bob of Elphaba’s throat as she swallows, self-conscious.

Her gaze jumps from scars to freckles to Elphaba’s nipples, dark and hard and pebbled, and she presses a hand to Elphaba’s chest until she’s lying on the ground.

There is risk to taking to her time. The longer she waits, the easier it could be for either of them to decide they need to stop, and her own body is pleading with her to speed things along. When she shifts, she feels herself — wet and needy, spreading out onto her upper thighs.

But she wants this to last.

She really wants it to last.

When she takes a nipple into her mouth, she thinks about how careful and controlled Elphaba always is — whether she’s ordering takeout or losing a card game or kissing.

But there had been moments, hadn’t there?

A few precious, privileged moments where Elphaba is utterly unable to be contained.

That first day in the courtyard at Shiz, when her voice echoed off the Lurlinesque pillars. In Munchkinland, cackling just above her.

Glinda can feel it now in the fingers that are tugging at her hair and the hips that rut up against her stomach.

She finds she’d rather like more of it.

So, when Elphaba says “Please, Galinda, I—" still so annoyingly polite, Glinda’s hand trails lower, under the waistband of her underwear without pause, even though she’s never done this before and she’s not entirely sure what comes next.

She guesses, following Elphaba’s sigh as her fingers find her wetness.

And then, she doesn’t have to guess or wonder anymore, does she?

“Oh,” she says as two fingers slide easily over Elphaba’s clit. Elphaba’s nails dig into her shoulders, and Glinda finds she’s grateful for the sting — for anything, really, to give her own body something to latch onto. “Oh, Elphie.”

She moves her fingers in circles and waits for another sound — any sound. When it doesn’t come, she looks at Elphaba and finds her biting her lip.

Glinda thinks about wherever Elphaba had been hiding all those years, and how much she’s still hiding now.

She’s desperate to be done with all of that.

“You can tell me, you know,” she says, brushing her nose against Elphaba’s. “That you like it. I mean, if you like it. I’d…want to hear.”

“Okay,” Elphaba breathes, but Glinda’s hand has stilled. “It’s good. It feels so good just—more, please, Galinda.”

Then, “Yes.”

Louder. Rougher. Real.

“That’s right,” Glinda whispers. Her hand moves faster, and her circles grow steadier.

Glinda would’ve told anyone who wondered that she knew every version of Elphaba. That’s what best friends were for, after all.

She knew how kind Elphaba could be.

How gorgeous she always was.

How furious she could get.

But this Elphaba, rocking against her hips so openly and wantonly, is new. New and brave and, Oz, so beautiful.

And Glinda wonders how it is she’s gone this long without knowing this part of her. Or how she’ll ever go back to looking at the other versions of Elphaba Thropp the same way again.

Hopefully, she thinks — because she can’t help but start to want the next time before this time has even ended — she’ll never have to.

“You’re so good,” she breathes.

Every time she’s ever seen Elphaba let go, she bends the very rules of Oz with her. Gravity shatters, magic explodes, and Glinda’s usually always irrevocably changed one way or another.

This time is no different. As her moans grow louder and her hips get unsteady, it’s just as mesmerizing and Oz-shattering as ever.

For months, ever since Elphaba showed up in her living room, Glinda felt like she was standing at some very high height. On a chair, maybe, reaching for the top shelf of the cabinet. Or at the edge of a balcony, overlooking the city as the wind whipped at her face.

She felt it in her stomach and the tips of her toes and the flip of her heart every time Elphaba so much as looked at her, and every day, she peered over the edge and wondered what it would be like to fall.

Now, with just one more roll of her fingers, they drop in one devastating swoop. Who she is — friend, roommate, hostess, public figure, Glinda the Good — hardly matters at all. She’s just a touch, and a kiss, and a whisper — “There, Elphie. Just like that. You’re so beautiful like this. So perfect and—”

Elphaba has gone quiet again, her whole body tensing. The cards beside them flutter, and the balcony door cracks. Again.

Glinda hasn’t seen Elphaba perform an ounce of magic since she got here, aside from whatever it took to fly from here to back. But now, it seems to be sputtering back to life, all because of her hand and her mouth and her name on Elphaba’s lips.

She didn’t know it would ever feel like this.

She didn’t think it could.

“Galinda—!” Elphaba breathes, and in a clock-tick, the room begins to settle.

“Oh, Oz.”

*

Glinda can think of little else, now.

She can’t walk through her living room without remembering the first time she saw Elphaba Thropp come. She can’t sit through fittings with Nadab without wondering how many layers of tulle will exist between her skin and Elphaba’s mouth after her charity dinner, when she gets back to the apartment tired and wanting.

She thinks, when she stalks into the throne room for a meeting with delegates from Quox, that everyone must know. The sounds she pulled from Elphaba that morning must be written on her face or pressed into her skin, and every day, she waits for the tabloids to pick something up.

But, no.

Chistery stops by for lunch. Pfannee fusses with her hair. The editor-in-chief of the Munchkin Gazette leads another interview with her about the skyrocketing price of corn, and no one guesses.

It’s a feat, really, given the marks Elphaba leaves like a trail up her neck, down her chest, and around her shoulders. She apologizes afterwards, standing in the doorway of Glinda’s closet while Glinda hunts, half-naked, for the day’s clothes, and there’s not a hint of shame or penitence in her tone — just pride.

Glinda’s not entirely sure what to do with herself, if she’s being honest. It’s all so different than it usually is — worlds away from Avaric’s sweaty hands over her chest in her bedroom in Frottica or Fiyero’s stubble against her thigh in his dorm room at Shiz.

She says as much one day, kneeling in the shower while the water starts to run cold. Her lips are nearly purple when she presses them to Elphaba’s hipbone, and Elphaba chuckles, tugging at her hair to say, “You’re a tad insatiable, my sweet.”

Even in the freezing water, Glinda blushes. "I just didn't know it could feel like this, Elphie."

She waits for Elphaba to agree, looking up at her as water runs in her eyes and finding, instead, a pinched look of discernment — the same stare Elphaba fixes to all Glinda’s messy, red-lined drafts of legislation.

For weeks, this is how it happens.

She shakes the Grimmerie, begging and bartering for a spell that will clear up the dark circles under her eyes, and she’s slammed with a thought or a memory that only makes sense now that she knows what it is to actually want and receive.

Her first Theory of Sorcery teacher, Mrs. Muddle.

Kissing lessons with Milla.

And Elphaba.

Oh, Elphaba.

In that infuriating frote hunched in the corner of their dorm room, her face scrunched up and her fingers wrapped around a pen as she scribbled a letter.

Sparring in that blue wrap, her hair pulled up so Glinda could see the tendons moving in her neck.

Hiking in those boots with that skort, every step so frustratingly sure.

So, she finds new words.

Labels and titles have power. They assign meaning, and as she stumbles into this one, she starts to speak louder when she addresses the Council.

If only she knew what to call them, too. They are something greater than roommates, now. And something far more beautiful and terrible than friends.

In another universe, she supposes, all the things they get up to in their bed or their shower or on the kitchen counter while Elphaba waits for the bread to rise would qualify them as girlfriends.

And what, pray tell, is she supposed to do with that?

Just like roommatedom and best friendlihood, Glinda knows how to be a girlfriend. She’s rather good at it, truthfully, in the sense that she gives the most thoughtful gifts and knows how to dress for dinners at restaurants with white tablecloths. She’s great with parents, and — and! — she’s quite flexible, which she wouldn’t otherwise quantify as a primary feature of good girlfriendliness except it’s been remarked upon often by every boy she’s ever dated in a leering way that has always skeeved her out until Elphaba Thropp came along.

But having a girlfriend — holding the door open and buying jewelry and bringing home flowers — well, it’s new, isn’t it?

New, so new.

And she supposes if having a girlfriend is anything like being a girlfriend than she’s sure to be good at it. But, well.

Elphaba doesn’t have a father to interrogate her intentions. She had two, and she’s lost two, and for that reason and countless others, Glinda’s not sure Elphaba would care either way.

And, apart from the balcony or the bathroom, there are no doors that Glinda can hold open with a bow and a gallant, After you!

Glinda worries about this more than she should, she knows. That tin thing has talked about starting a new political party, and Elphaba knows of a few Foxes that were turned away from the train station in Quadling Country because they didn’t have their papers — Yes, still, even after all her speechifying and legislatificating! She’s not sure why people refuse to listen! — but on her walk with Feldspur she can’t think about anything but the reality that a ‘girlfriend’ without any dates or parents or dreamy romantical hand-holding through the cutest streets of the city is just a girl who is a friend, good for shopping sprees and tea parties and all the things they used to do before Elphaba started doing the rather wonderful things she does with her mouth now.

So, it’s not exactly a surprise when she finds herself asking Elphaba out one night as she ties her bonnet and the whole room fills with the scent of rosemary and mint.

“I’d like to take you out,” Glinda says. “A dinner, maybe. Like…A date.”

Truthfully, the words slip out without much consideration, and she’d have appreciated sorting through more of the finer details before offering, but then, even in the dark lamp light, she can see Elphaba’s cheeks darken.

Later, as she’s dictating letters to ShenShen, she thinks about that blush and the way Elphaba nodded so simply. It occurs to her that — barring some sad little pit that served gruel in the impassable desert, which Fiyero wouldn’t even be able to eat — she’s likely planning Elphaba Thropp’s first date.

Oz.

Elphie seemed so solid now, padding through her kitchen or lounging on the couch or grinning with every game of Vinkan Rummy she won. Glinda forgets, sometimes, that she’s the same girl who twirled the ends of her braids around her fingers nervously after her first non-funereal party at the Oz Dust.

Then again, that’s likely what dying will do to someone. Glinda wouldn’t know. She’s always been absurdly, annoyingly, apparently alive.

Not just a date, then. A first date. The best date, as only the best girlfriend-haver, Glinda Upland, will allow.

And yes, of course, Glinda has to run a country that’s still newly emerging from years of fascist turmoil. But if the Ozians knew how Elphaba crawled into bed the night Glinda asked her out — shy, even after everything — she’s sure they’d understand.

Glinda starts simple. Elphaba liked takeout from the Munchkin diner across from the Palace. They made blueberry corn cake just like Dulcibear, and she’d always order an extra serving of fritters to stash away for later. The owner, a Mule named Caphis, is nice enough when Glinda has ShenShen pencil him in for a brief conference on the promotion of small, Animal-owned trades, and she offers to read all the binders and business plans he carries in with him, but just as he’s leaving, she puts a hand to his mane and says, “Do you mind staying an extra clock-tick? There’s something I’d like to discussify, and I’d so appreciate your discretion.”   

She checks the menu three times between that meeting and their date. She tests at least five different outfits, inviting Nadab over when Elphaba’s out on her weekly visit to Fiyero, and she walks around the outskirts of Palace grounds, slipping between the gates when the guards are distractified, to pass the diner at least twice — just to make sure it’s there and ready and cloaked enough in the shadows to keep them both safe.

She doesn’t, however, anticipate Hustece storming into her office to complain about a new proposal from a representative in Nest Fallows. His face is a rather unattractive shade of red, and he talks for an entire hour, pushing off her meeting with Chistery and delaying her discussion with the Quadling farmers, so by the time she ends her last meeting, the sky outside the Palace windows has already turned dark.

There’s no time to get ready at the apartment. Instead, she slinks into her slip dress in the Palace bathroom, grimacing at her face in the harsh, environmentally hazardous lighting — she’s been trying to get these bulbs replaced for months — trying to trust that she looks nice enough.

As if it matters.

In every try-on with Nadab, she’s gone on and on about how important it is that she looks good. He lends her the most gorgeous sparkling highlighter, and she uses her favorite shade of lipstick, and not once in any of her preparations did she consider that Elphaba — beautiful, stunning, perfectified Elphaba — would look even better.  

Of course she would. She always did.

But it’s new for Glinda — showing up for a date and getting tongue-tied, like all those horrendible boys who would take her out for fancy meals just for the promise of a kiss at the end.

"You!" Glinda shoves her shoulder. Her bare shoulder. Glinda’s not sure she’s ever seen Elphaba in a blouse like this one, high-necked and sleeveless. “How dare you! I said dress nice, not ‘give me heart palpitations.’”

“Thank you, I think?” Elphaba tugs at the fabric around her neck. “You look lovely, too.”

This is all Nadab’s fault.

For every glam session they’ve had in the past several months, she’s talked about Elphaba’s arms — how the Grimmerie, which has taken to hissing at her anytime she even attempts to ask it for beauty advice, must be feeding Elphaba tips on toning because her muscles really do seem, well, magical — and all the while, Nadab had been working behind her back to dress Elphaba like this.

The duplicitification! The treachery! The betrayal!

On Glinda’s first ever date, she wore the most adorable pink dress that fluffed out around her hips, and Avaric stood in the doorway of her parents’ house blinking for far too many clock-ticks.

She never had the same power over Fiyero, who himself knew his way around a hairbrush and a palette of blush, but there had been something close to shock when she walked down the stairs at Shiz in that gorgeous orange and pink number Pfannee picked out.

She always thought they both were acting quite silly. She knew how to dress, sure, but it was only a dress, some well-placed curls, and heels that made her calves look scrumptious.

Now, she’s impressified that they’d been able to look at her and still had enough of their faculties to be any brand of charming at all.

“For the lady,” she tries, nearly knocking them both over when she pulls out Elphaba’s chair.

The basement is…a basement. But Caphis hung twinkling Lurlinemas lights from the ceiling, and there’s a candle — by Glinda’s request — on the fold-out table, which makes everything feel a tad more romantical. Sitting across from Elphaba and watching the way the flames’ flicker and twist over her face, Glinda realizes it’s the first time she’s seen Elphaba outside of her own apartment since Kiamo Ko.

She realizes, too, that she wants to see Elphaba everywhere, now.

In the moonlight on Mount Runcible. In the sun at Lake Chorge. In the streets of Frottica at spring and the woods of the Great Gillikin Forest in winter.

She supposes this is a good enough start — they’re out, one floor away from being in public, being served by someone who isn’t a flying Monkey or a Goat or a talking Scarecrow they’d both dated in another life.  

Glinda warned Caphis in advance, of course. About the green and the Witch of it all, but she still holds her breath when he comes downstairs to take their order.

She’s surprised to find him nodding familiarly to her instead.  

“Fae,” he says, and Elphaba’s eyes jump to Glinda’s.

Sometimes, it happens just like that: A flash of the lives they used to have, passing without question.

Elphaba orders for the both of them, more knowledgeable about the cuisine, and Glinda should hate it. At least, she used to, every time Fiyero would close his menu at her favorite Gillikin restaurant, saying, And for the lady, she’ll start with…

But lately, she’s loving a lot of things like she used to hate.

Like cuddling after sex and first dates and Elphaba knowing more than her and looking better than her and being absolutely heartwrenchingly charming completely by accident.

“Can you talk about something else complificated?” Glinda says when they can hear Caphis’s hooves clacking against the floorboards upstairs. “Like the history of Quoxian politics or the biologification of a cell or, oh! How about that book you read on the—”

“Glinda,” Elphaba chuckles, pouring them both a glass of wine. “We have all night, you know.” 

She starts by telling Glinda about Dr. Dillamond’s new research project, which Glinda knows about in bits and pieces from the few times she visited him after the melting. On mornings when the bright sun and blue sky felt particularly mocking, she would cancel her first few meetings and hop on the train to Shiz just to hear him say her name — all those consonants jammed and stuck on his upper palette.     

She means it when she says she’d like to learn more, though. The issue is that Elphaba is wearing lipstick, and Glinda doesn’t know where it came from or how it tastes. 

“Glinda, you’re not listening,” Elphaba says, halfway through their first course.

“I am!” Glinda says before leaning over the table to try Elphaba’s soup. “I am; I am. The historism of Animal organizing in the reign of King Pastoria. Fascinating, really.”

With the second course — the fritters Elphaba likes so much — she tells Glinda that Fiyero wants to see her again. She says, “He wants to file a complaint with the Throne Minister for stealing his roommate.”

“Well,” Glinda stabs a fork into the soft belly of a fried pepper. “You were my roommate first.”

“I’ll be sure to tell him that,” Elphaba promises, and they plan for coffee sometime next week.

It’s a nice date. It’s her best date, really — better, even, than the time Fiyero took her to the most expensive restaurant in all of Oz and they walked out at the end of the meal searching for fries, still hungry — despite the cobweb in the far corner and the pallets of soda stacked up behind them. The table is wobbly, and the draft makes her shiver, but the wine tastes good.

For a clock-tick, they are girlfriends. Glinda’s foot brushes over Elphaba’s ankle. Elphaba’s fork makes its way into Glinda’s mouth. She says, “Sorry what were you saying? I’m distractified by your beauty” enough times that Elphaba begins to roll her eyes, and they talk about their days and their weeks and their schedule next month.

For a clock-tick.   

No longer.

Because there are other titles, aren’t there? She’s still Glinda the Good. Elphaba’s still the Wicked Witch of the West. There are still so many memories stretching between them.

Elphaba is in the middle of a story about little Nessarose and a tantrum about a plate full of asparagus — it’s rare, Glinda is thinking, to see her smiling like this — when a server upstairs drops a tray of dishes, and at the sound of all that clattering on the ceiling, they jump.

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Glinda says quickly, but her tone is tight, and her breath is shaky. “Really.”

Nessa.

They were talking about Nessa, but the sound is still too close and too echoing for either of them to imagine anything but gingham curtains in the wind and that Oz-damned house, so Elphaba clears her throat.

“Did I tell you about Dulcibear’s grand-nephew?” she starts, and Glinda tries to keep focused.

Only, she hadn’t noticed that the door is just behind Elphaba, and she never talked to Caphis about whether it locked.

The longer she watches it, the easier it is to imagine torches through the small window at the top.

Hunt her. Find her. Kill her.

She shudders, surprised to find that her hand is shaking as she reaches for the bottle of wine.

They decide on dessert to-go. As soon as they’re through the apartment door, Elphaba kicks off her heels and carries the bag of chocolate cake to the bedroom.

“This is a better way to end the night, anyway,” she says, and it’s not fair at all because tonight was about Glinda being charming and dashing and sweet, but here’s Elphaba, too kind, patting the pillow next to her. “Don’t you think?”

But Glinda will not be deterred. Almost all proper first dates ended badly, after all, and Elphaba deserved an evening that went on too long and left them too full.

So, she spends two days wrestling with the Grimmerie for a spell that can teach her how to cook, breaking a nail and earning the rudest papercut on her thumb. Failing that, she goes back to the library on her lunch break, straight to the shelf between contact sports and coronations.

“I need you out of the apartment on Saturday,” she says when she comes home that night with a folder full of recipes she thinks she might understand.

“It’s nice to see you too, Glinda,” Elphaba says.

“Go for a flight,” Glinda continues, unzipping her dress. “Grab tea with Dulcibear and that adorable new grand-nephew. Do something that isn’t lying on our couch reading another book about thermodynamerism.”

“I thought you liked that I knew about thermodynamerism.”

“I do!” Glinda says. She stops and replays her own words, realizing the mistake. “And we should absolutely schedule time for you to tell me all about it. Maybe in the shower. Or in bed. Or anywhere else in this apartment where we can be completely naked without that family of Bluebirds peering in through the windows, but in the meantime—”

“Out of the apartment,” Elphaba responds. “Saturday. Got it.”

Elphaba stays true to her word, leaving a note on her pillow that weekend that reads, See you at sunset — E.

“Isn’t she the sweetest?” For all the Grimmerie’s petulance, it sighs in agreement. Glinda tries not to take its favoritism personally. She understands. Elphie is hard not to love the most. “Now, take your time, hurry up. We’ve got a dinner to make!”

The more time stretches between now and the melting, the more confident Elphaba has grown with leaving the apartment. She checks on Fiyero once a week and works on that old Goat’s research every Wednesday, and in between, she likes to find Animals in the city that she can talk to about what Oz is really like under the too loose enforcement of the newly passed Animal Repatrification Act.

But almost every time she’s gone, Glinda is too, her heels clacking against the halls of the Throne Room with a pastry in one hand and an agenda in the other while Pfannee drones on about approval ratings in the Vinkus.

It’s strange to pad through her apartment on a Saturday morning alone, walking through the memory of how quiet everything was before Elphaba came back.

She can’t stand it, actually. The note Elphaba left still smells like her, and there’s a mug half-filled with tea on the kitchen counter, and Glinda knows Elphaba is alive, but the whole space feels entirely too still, so she puts a record on Oscar’s gramophone again — a song her Popsicle used to sing from the hallway when he came home from work — and tries not to give into the panic of her past.

There’s too much work to do, anyway.

She has pasta to roll and sauce to cook and bread to bake and salad to toss, and she’s only budgeted enough time to do everything twice.

But, well, the sauce is quite stubborn, set as it is on turning black. The bread, too, doesn’t rise even though she asks it very nicely to try, and the noodles are mushy, and the salad looks sad.

Halfway through her third attempt, Elphaba walks into the kitchen, just as Glinda burns her hand on the pot in surprise.

The day can’t possibly be done already.

"Oz damned it," Glinda sticks her fingers in her mouth to ease the pain, racing to the sink.

"Glinda?"

Elphaba is carrying tulips. She’s wearing that lipstick from the diner again, and she looks so very romantically windswept while Glinda watches her in a bra, a pair of pantyhose, and an apron stiff with sweat and canned tomatoes.

"The sauce is burnt,” she huffs. She tries to make her voice sound like anything other than a pathetic whine. As with most things today, she fails. "And you're early."

"You said to come back when the sun is setting," Elphaba says, placing the tulips on the counter. They’re all pink. Glinda’s favorite.

"When the sun has set," Glinda clarifies. "Oh, Lurline! The bread!"

She opens the oven door to a puff of smoke, throwing a brick of burnt bread onto the counter, where it joins the sad black sauce and a salad that has been out so long its barely green.

“How sweet,” Elphaba starts, scratching a nail against the bread’s crust and leaving a trail of ash. “You made a meal with all my favorite colors.”

“Hush,” Glinda gripes. Still, she can’t help but step into Elphaba’s arms. Ever since the second batch of sauce, the gramophone’s been sputtering out silence, and all she wants to do is cry.

Elphaba smells so good, despite flying around Oz for hours.

Lurline. Glinda forgot to even shower.

“I wanted it to be perfect.”

There are few things she misses about dates with people who aren’t Elphaba Thropp. On the whole, it’s all so much better.

But Glinda likes white tablecloths. The formality of a fancy menu and a waiter wearing black and the way a good meal in romantical candlelight with a pair of eyes watching her could make her feel pretty.

Elphaba deserved to have that, didn’t she? Not the basement of a Munchkinland diner or the smelly, burnt confines of Glinda’s government-appointed kitchen.

“It’s perfect, Glinda,” Elphaba lies.

She wishes, not for the first time, that they were anyone else. Glinda can be Galinda again, using her architecture degree to build bridges worthy of beautiful bronze plaques in Pertha Hills and Elphie can study and smile and swim in lakes, unmoored from the histories they carried heavy between them.

“But I wonder—” Elphaba starts. “I mean, I don’t want to be a bother, but when I was flying home all I could think was how much I wanted takeout.”

Still. If they were anyone else, Elphaba wouldn’t know what to say to make Glinda feel better.

“I would hate for all of this to go to waste,” she continues. “But you know how picky I can be. And, well, I’m feeling very particular.”

Glinda sniffles.

“I spent all day making this delicious meal, Elphie,” Glinda says. “So, it’s really rather rude of you to suggest that we—Well, when I put my heart and soul into—But. I suppose. If—If that’s what you really want—”

“It is,” Elphaba cuts in. “And I won’t take no for an answer.”

“In that case I guess I have no choice,” Glinda says, noticing for the first time all day that she’s hungry. “I’ll go fetch Crill.”

*

They aren’t proper girlfriends, then. Well, not the kind that gets dressed up to go to the theater or argues over the check at the end of a romantical meal. Still, ever since their almost-second-date, Elphaba starts regularly bringing home tulips every time the flowers in Glinda’s favorite vase start to droop. Glinda buys her vegan pumpkin pie the week that Munchkinland celebrates their harvest, and when it snows for the first time that season — just one week later, an unseasonably early start — Elphaba lets Glinda drag her out to the balcony to collect the flakes on their tongues just like she did all those years ago at Shiz.  

At least, Elphaba’s here and warm, grumbling about fire safety while she strings green and gold lights up on their tree.

At least, they’re alive, and it’s Lurlinemas, and after years of working through the holiday, Glinda feels festivish enough to throw herself into the celebrations again, burning three batches of gingerbread Munchkins only after spilling a bottle of molasses on a very grumpy, very sticky Grimmerie.  

Fiyero comes a week early with Vinkan spices for mulled wine and two hand-knit sweaters — he’s had to learn a few handicrafts, he explains, poking a thumb through a new, frayed hole in his torso — and Dulcibear mails them jars of honey with a card inviting them to her place in Mossmere “anytime.” Dr. Dillamond sends Elphaba home from their weekly research date early with a book on the histories of Ozian fashion, and Chistery stops by the morning of Lurlinemas for brunch.

Glinda spends the entire holiday feeling rather stunningly and simply in love.

It’s not a surprise anymore. It’s not a secret either.

Just a fact — the kind that is true — and every time she says it, it means something new.

I love you in the closet at Kiamo Ko, smelling like rust and tasting like tears.

I love you before bed with her hand pressed to Elphaba’s sternum, the green in Elphie’s eyes just barely visible in the moonlight.

I love you with one foot out of the door, five clock-ticks late for her early morning meeting with Hustece.

I love you between breaths as Elphaba kisses the soft spot under her belly button, her hands wrapping around the outside of Glinda’s thighs asking her, wordlessly, to spread her legs.

Maybe, it’s all they need. Everyone who knows them well enough to love them knows the ways time and hurt have curled around all their labels and warped them into something new.

But after a month of Lurlinemas parties with Councilmembers, Glinda keeps standing in the hot steam of the shower imagining what it would feel like to introduce Elphaba to the people she complains about at the kitchen table every night. Between shampoo and conditioner, she holds out her hand to the tiles on the wall, and says, “Oh, and have you met Elphie, my—?”

Mostly, she wants to brag about the woman whose Lurlinemas gift entailed a handwritten syllabus, an unstickified Grimmerie, and a promise to resume the sorcery lessons that once ended famously in tragedy.

She wants to tell everyone about the notes that Elphaba scribbles in the margins of her proposals, which usually make every piece of legislation so much harder to pass and so much better in practice, and when she finally dissolves the Gale Force once and for all, she’d like to tell Cherrystone exactly how she knows about his troop’s anti-Animal violence despite the checks he slips to the press to keep it all under wraps.

One night, when Elphaba gets snowed in on her visit to Dr. Dillamond, Nadab comes over for drinks and Glinda asks him about his new beau.  “And are you—I mean, have you—?”

She wants to know if they’re official. Like, ‘officially official,’ and he nods, lifting his hands to spell out p-a-r-t-n-e-r.

Like…Like they’re working in tandem, almost.

She thinks about this later, during their weekly sorcery lesson. On Sundays, Glinda wakes up early enough to grab the freshest scones from the bakery, puts on the vanilla-scented lotion she thinks the Grimmerie likes, and waits for Elphaba to begin class by checking in on the homework from last week as if she hadn’t watched Glinda grumbling over spellbooks on her side of the bed every night.

She’s still hesitant about magic, Glinda can tell. For every hour that Glinda spends levitating coins, she begs them to move onto something — anything — more useful, and Elphaba insists.

“We need to learn the basics,” she says, the floating coin spinning just a clock-tick faster. “Magic is fickle and if you’re not—”

She shakes her head.

Even now, years after she sat across from Glinda and told her about Nessa and the milk flowers, Elphaba’s governed by the pesky forces of fault and blame. For a day or two after every visit with Fiyero, she’s taut enough to snap, and once or twice, some headline about that tired tin travesty — Biq, Glinda knows now, though she refuses to call him by his Lurline-appointed name — makes her glower.

“We need to be careful,” she decides. “It’s good to start small.”

Glinda can’t complain, really. It’s enough just to watch Elphaba’s magic at work again, zinging sharp and electric around the coin and the lights and the bowl of soup that she carries from the kitchen to the living room without spilling a single drop.

Glinda’s magic moves slower. It always has. After one particularly discouraging session, the Grimmerie scuttles away from the mere potential of her touch.

“It’s so dramatical,” she gripes, pressing her fingers to her forehead, where a familiar ache has begun to throb.

“I’m afraid it gets that from you, my sweet,” Elphaba responds. Then, gentler, she adds, “I hated it for a long time, you know. My magic. But I think, maybe, we need to figure out how to love it in order for things to work as they should.”  

“Well, that’s silly,” Glinda huffs. “I’ve never loved anything more than magic except for you.”

Elphaba raises an eyebrow. Clock-ticks ago, Glinda slammed her hand on the table, just shy of the Grimmerie’s leather binding, and shouted, This is so STUPID!

She supposes they really are very similar. Elphaba Thropp and magic, that is. They both drive Glinda up a wall, pushing her until she’s forced to push right back. She has them to blame for the crick in her neck and the utterly exhaustifying mandate to do good, and she simply wants nothing at all other than them by her side forever and ever.

“If you love it so much,” Elphaba presses a kiss to Glinda’s forehead, right where she can feel her pulse thud. “Act like it.”

She tries.

Alone in the bathtub, Glinda seeks out the lukewarm spot in her chest, coaxing and coaxing until it heats up and spreads. Her magic seems cautious, like it could run away at any moment if she moved too loudly or too fast, and she’s reminded of how it felt the first day at Pertha Hills Prep when she walked through those big oak doors and then walked right back out again, shy and scared despite Momsie’s promise that everyone would, without a doubt, love her.

The only other time she felt so afraid had been right here at the Palace, several floors down, arm-in-arm with Elphaba.

The first time, she puked. Right in the bushes, spattering onto her perfect first-day Mary Jane’s.

The second time, she breathed, bolstered by Elphaba at her side.

“You can do it, you know,” she whispers to the skittering hum at her fingertips, remembering how it felt to believe so wholly and irrevocably in something just because of a little bit of love. “You can do anything.”

She expects it to be explosive, like Elphaba’s magic tended to be. But it feels like breathing, and nothing bursts at all — the water just stays warm longer than it should, and the bubbles turn her favorite shade of pink.

Partners, she thinks. In the sense that Elphaba makes her better in every way that matters and, as she slips between the sheets smelling like her favorite rose-scented bath soap, she hopes Elphaba can say the same.  

They continue their sorcery lessons through winter. When the weather finally warms enough for Elphaba to fly again, she spends three long, distressifying days away from the apartment in meetings with Animals trying to find a new place they can call home.

Glinda likes her apartment. Well, she likes it more now that Morrible is more than just a one floor away and Elphaba has added her boringified books and her blossoming plants and all those delectable oils that make her skin smooth and her hair shiny.

But she’d enjoy it if Fiyero could visit without tabloids reporting about the Scarecrow’s presence in her private chambers.

And lately, she’s had the silliest daydream about Elphaba kneeling in a garden with the sun shining over her skin, gentle and good as she plucks a pepper that she’d grown by hand.  

While Elphaba’s gone, Glinda practices her magic. She moves from the bathtub to the kitchen, pouring herself a glass of orange juice and turning it blue. By the time Elphaba comes back, standing at their counter trying to decipherate her own handwriting, Glinda can snap and bring Elphaba’s glasses right to her hands.  

“Thank you,” Elphaba says, slipping them over her ears, returning too quickly to her notes. Glinda’s nails tap against marble, impatient. “And good job, I suppose.”

“Hm!”

“Now—” Elphaba scoots her notepad between them. Elphaba is amazing at calculifications and physicks and all the histories of Oz, but her drawings are horrendible. Really, Glinda should’ve been there with the sketchbook Chistery gifted her for Lurlinemas. But even more than green-skinned undead Elphaba Thropp, Glinda the Good on a house-hunting adventure would’ve attracted too much chatter. Elphaba points to a smudge on the corner of the page. A tomato, maybe? “This one has a clawfoot tub.”

“A requirement,” Glinda says. When her hand brushes Elphaba’s, she finds that she’s still cold from the flight.

"I know, but—" Elphaba flips the page to another sketch, darker and less legible than the last. "This one has Lurlinesque arches—"

"Original?"

Elphaba nods.

It takes two weeks of bickering, but they buy a bungalow on the southwest side of the city, just outside of Kellswater in an Animal-heavy neighborhood with a red door and a stone chimney and a weeping willow out front that lets just enough light into the living room while still shielding them from nosey neighbors.

There is, indeed, a spot in the backyard for Elphaba to grow peppers, and an adorable patio where Glinda can sit in the shade and watch.

“Also—” The keys jangle as they walk up the stone path to the front door. “It squeaks.”

“It squeaks?” Glinda asks, though the prickling warmth of Elphaba’s magic has started to prod at her neck.  

Elphaba nods. “The floors. They’re so old they squeak.”

Glinda doesn’t prefer flying. In the Bubble or otherwise, gravity dropping out from under her always made her stomach flip unpleasantly. But Elphaba’s magic feels smooth and steady now, and Glinda finds she’s particularly weak for it on the rare occasions Elphaba trusts herself enough to use it, so she reaches for Elphaba instead of protesting, and they float through the threshold of the first place they can both properly refer to as home.  

There’s no furniture yet. Elphaba was responsible for finding the place, and Glinda’s responsible for decorating, but the press has been up in arms about the election of that Wolf in the Glikkus, so she hasn’t had time. This means that when they do hit the floor, there’s nothing but hardwood to land on.

It does squeak.

With enough haggling at the Neverdale flea market, she buys an antique Quadling rug for the living room — ink-stain free — that they christen in the same way they christened the living room carpet in her penthouse at the Palace.

Momsie finds the perfect high back armchairs at a maker’s studio in Frottica after Glinda spends their whole visit to Lake Chorge complaining about the lack of seating in the living room, and Nadab dates the most talented woodworker whom she commissions for a coffee table.

Of course, they break up a week before the table is meant to be delivered, so every time Nadab comes over, he intentionally “forgets” to use a coaster, but the piece is divine — water-rings notwithstanding.

The rest of the house fills itself like the years fill with days and the days fill with meetings, and Glinda tries to content herself with partners. It works, she supposes, even if she feels rather certain that they’re so much greater than all of that.

*

Feldspur, apparently, agrees. After a few years, he takes to calling them wives.

How’s the wife? he’ll ask, trotting along the path of the Palace grounds between meetings. Glinda is too tired to correct him.

Fiyero picks up on the joke, and perhaps it’s his cajoling — Elphaba, would you please tell your wife that she doesn’t need to purchase a whole straw bale every time I visit? — that gets Elphaba thinking in that adorably obvious way of hers, her brow furrowed and her questions leading.

On a rare Saturday off from campaigning for a pro-democracy governor in Munchkinland, Glinda’s hissing “Cuticulate! Manicurify!” at the Grimmerie in the hopes that it can help her with her nails when Elphaba puts down her newest book of short stories to ask if she ever regretted not marrying Fiyero.

It’s summer again. Rather, it’s that grey, uncanny space between the seasons when all of Oz decides it’s warm enough to pretend, and they’re stationed out on their patio watching the sun set over Kellswater.

Fiyero left mere days ago, but he brought cherry blossoms with him when he stopped by. They’ve bloomed in the Vinkus, he explained — rows and rows of perfect pink covering the streets of Red Windmill in petals.

Glinda gasped when she saw them. Oh, Oz! We had these at our wedding, didn’t we, darling?

She hadn’t been thinking, of course. Fiyero has changed in so many ways, but his smile is the same, and when he held the bouquet out to her, grinning, she had been overcome by how young they once were and how impossible now would’ve seemed back then, all those years ago when she stuffed herself into a white satin gown and marched down the aisle.

"Not in the slightest, dearest,” Glinda says easily, her fingers twirling over the bends and folds of the Grimmerie’s cover. Under her touch, it sighs. She supposes that’s progress. “Glinda Tigelaar has the most horrendible ring to it. Far too many hard consonants, it hardly rolls off the tongue."

The Grimmerie refuses to cough up a useful spell, Elphaba finishes her book before it gets dark, and Glinda assumes they’re done with the conversation until a week later, when she’s standing in the mirror, asking Elphaba to zip up her dress before the Wizard’s Ball.

It’s a meaningless Emerald City tradition, but Glinda’s learned that sometimes the key to effective politicking is keeping spirits high. This year, at least, they added honorees — a Bear cub from the Lesser Kells who wrote an essay on Animal equity and a solicitor dismantling the legal implifications of the late Governor Thropp’s Munchkin travel ban.

She needs to go, truly. But she’d much prefer to stay at home, counting the fireflies as they bounce over the lake.

How funny. Ages ago, she’d look for any excuse to dress well and dance.

Time has done so very much, hasn’t it?

Nadab worked hard on this dress, nursing his newest broken heart by expending all of his creative energies on what matters most — clothes — and it really is gorgeous. White with pink accents in a fabric so smooth and creamy she’d think it was milk.

If she squints, they might be back at the Palace. Elphaba might still be the Wicked Witch instead of Dr. Dillamond’s anonymous research assistant “LFB,” smelling like smoke and evening rain.

Only, Glinda’s hips and cheeks have softened now, worn out by age and warmth and love. Her hair is a tad overgrown, darkened by time just around her temples but still not past her shoulders. Every time she cuts it, she remembers how it felt to hold the kitchen shears to her curls.

She still likes the reminder of how much she lost once upon a time.

It helps her see that she’s gained so much more.

Elphaba forgets to tell her she’s beautiful, distractified by some thought that Glinda watches cross over her stare. If she weren’t already running late, and if the Bubble could move at a higher speed, Glinda would hassle her about it.

As it is, she spends the whole night wondering. Through every shutter of the flash bulb and all those rants from Hustece about emerald mining in the Glikkus, she imagines Elphaba’s pinched eyebrows and wants, desperately, to ask her what’s wrong.

By the time she’s home, she smells like sweat and champagne, and Elphaba is too sleepy to keep her thoughts to herself.

“You looked wonderful tonight,” she says, flicking off the light.

"Thank you," Glinda mutters into the pillow.

"Like a bride," Elphie adds.

She shouldn’t groan, really. It’s…a sentiment, certainly. Sweet if not a little sad. But Glinda’s feet ache from her high heels, and there’s an elementary school in Wend Fallows to open tomorrow.

"Go to bed, Miss Elphaba."

It’s very probably actually Larena’s fault. After all, between visits from Fiyero and snide remarks from Feldspur, Momsie mentions it in every letter.

Or heavily hints, like only a proper lady from the Upper Uplands would.  

Of course, we'd love to come and visit sometime in autumn, she scrawls in her latest postcard from a marsh resort in Quadling Country. But you do have to tell us if you have any prior engagements. That is, autumn is such a beautiful and romantic time of the year, duckie, the perfect time for a party.

The headlines, too, don't help.

Years ago, they hadn’t even given her a chance to mourn Prince Tigelaar's tragic and untimely death before they started to pair her up with new paramours.

They haven’t stopped since.

Cherrystone was first, before she sacked him and half of his commanders.

Then, for years, a dry old Gillikenese walnut named Chuffrey — a friend of Glinda’s father’s who had been present for a terribly awkward dinner party during her tour of the North a few months ago.

Whatever the reason, Glinda knows it’s not in Elphaba’s nature to ask her outright. And it’s not in Glinda’s nature to offer.

The closest they get is a black velvet box for Glinda’s birthday one year — a pink pearl ring to go with her favorite earrings. When Glinda opens it, she shoves Elphaba lightly into the pile of wrapping paper at their feet. “This isn’t—?”

"It can be," Elphaba says. "If that's what you wanted."

Glinda slides it over her finger, which is still sticky with cake frosting.

“I’d like it to be a ring,” she decides, watching the room warp in its reflection. “Just a ring.”

“Oh, just a ring?”

“A fabulocious ring,” Glinda adds, hastily. “Splendiferous, really. Rather thoughtful. I’m swooning, truly, Elphie. You can’t tell on account of how poised I always am, but you know how much I love a romantical gesture and this ring is just the—”

“You’re welcome, my sweet,” Elphaba interrupts Glinda with a kiss, slow and easy. “Enjoy your just a ring.”

The truth is, Glinda probably wouldn’t mind being married to Elphaba Thropp — that is, if Elphaba wasn’t still technically dead and absolutely against Glinda’s frequent offers for a pardon.

It’s just that before Elphaba — before Shiz and the Grimmerie and Chistery stopping by for tea — Glinda used to think all she was put in Oz to do was get married.

When she was little, Momsie would place her in the basin of her bathroom sink and preach about wifelihood while she got ready for Popsicle’s business dinners. She enrolled her in etiquette classes as soon as Glinda could talk under the premise that it would help her find a husband, and once she could hold a sewing needle without poking her eye, she took home economics classes to learn how to keep said husband happy.

Walking down the aisle had always seemed like a chore. And then, when it finally happened, it became a nightmare.

Now that her pillows smell like Elphaba, she doesn’t dream about Kiamo Ko as much. But sometimes, when she closes her eyes, she sees Fiyero as he used to be, standing on the other end of the aisle, lifting the barrel of his Gale Force gun and holding it up as she walked closer and closer until she felt cold metal against her nose.

Marriage was meant for another life.

Another Glinda, really — the kind that never met Elphaba and knew nothing about tariffs and hadn’t felt the warm prickle of magic in her fingertips. A Glinda who didn’t have an ounce of desire to spend Saturday nights at home playing Vinkan Rummy on the floor with her not-wife.

She rather likes this Glinda. It’s taken a while, but she appreciates being a tired Throne Minister with ‘just’ a pearl ring, a jar of her favorite spicy home-pickled peppers, a streak of good luck, after what’s felt like years, and a properly winning hand.    

How could she not?

*

It doesn’t matter, Glinda thinks as she watches Elphaba rub flour off Dulcibear’s snout from where she stands on the staircase into the kitchen.

Then again, the next time she finds Elphaba scared and awake in the middle of the night staring at the living room wall with her toes tucked into the couch cushions, she thinks maybe it does.

Some days, when the sun streaks in through the windows in her favorite shade of pink, falling just over Elphaba’s cheekbones as she reads, Glinda will call her my love.

And then, she’ll remember how Elphaba went to the Animal market on Tuesday and refused to pick up the lemon bars Glinda liked because the tooth doctor had enough gall to report that she had a cavity. She’ll think about the Sunday afternoon that she spent drifting her hand temptingly higher on Elphaba’s thigh while Elphaba droned on about Hustece’s proposed bill edits, and how, on Fiyero’s most recent visit, Glinda went to bed early and heard them laughing about memories they shared that she’ll never have.

My love. The issue being there are rather a lot of days when Glinda simply can’t stand her.

She tries, too, my pretty.  

This one is as easy as it is obvious. But it’s too small, isn’t it?

Elphaba has only gotten more gorgeous with age, after all. Her freckles deepen with the time she spends in the sun, and sometimes, Glinda catches her leaning close to the mirror, like even she's surprised she's lived long enough to have wrinkles and stretch marks and some grey curling at her roots.

In the end, what breaks her is the very thing that started all this ballyhoo in the first place: Jirea, the Council’s newly elected Quox representative, highly endorsed by one Glinda the Good.

In their first meeting together, she invites Glinda to dinner next month.

“Well, I think that could work,” she says. “I just have to check with my—”

My. My. My.

She cuts herself off with a tight smile.

“My schedule. We’ll be in touch. Now, do tell the boys I say hi!”

It’s the rain, and the way Jirea tilted her head at her stutter, and the pearl ring she twirls on her pointer finger. At this point, she tells herself on the painfully long commute home, the label is really just a matter of convenience. There are dinner parties to attend, after all! Invitations to accept.

As they cook that night in comfortable silence, Glinda feels that nervous trill fluttering in her chest again. It reminds her of Quadling take-out and twin beds and being desperate to stay awake until tomorrow.

“What is it?” Elphaba finally asks around the edges of her book when Glinda steps out of the bathroom, stumbling over the leg of her vanity and cussing.

“Why do you always assume there’s an ‘it’ to ‘what’?” Glinda snaps. She’s on edge, and she’s not certain why. They’ve argued about where to put the bedroom lamp and the best method for removing couch stains and, Oz, the most painfully politicky politics for years. Elphaba has seen her through too many goodbyes and a few stumbling hellos and one particularly nasty stomach bug that made her all sweaty and disgustifying, and through it all, she’s still wanted to kiss her.

There is no reason that she should be nervous to ask this question.

But still, her earrings clatter too loudly when she throws them into the box on her vanity. She crawls onto the bed, sighing.  

The years have taught her how to like the quiet again. When they’re in it, Elphaba can read. Glinda can draw. The rain can patter as loudly as it wants outside the window, and they can tell each other — with a hand on a knee or a head to a shoulder — that they’re safe.

She regrets having to break this one.

“Elphie,” she starts with an unskilled huff, causing Elphaba to raise an eyebrow between sips of tea. “What are we?”

“Darling, I—What?"

"I mean," Glinda runs her nail over the embroidery on Elphaba’s nightgown. "What am I to you?"

"You're—" Elphaba pauses, setting her mug down on the nightstand. "Glinda. Galinda, I guess. Legally, still, right? You're you."

On the shelf, the Grimmerie wiggles. Glinda knows, without looking, that it’s dying to open to a new page.

Likely, that spell for Discoveration.

To detectify what is right in front of you, the perfect spell for the smartest woman in every room who is also, somehow, the most oblivious.

Maybe, it has picked up a few bits and pieces of Glinda over the years. Snark being at the top of the list. If only it learned the importance of the Upland art of tact as well. The two are really meant to go hand-in-hand.

“That’s not what I’m asking,” she says.

“Well, what are you asking?”

Glinda’s not sure, really. They passed the acceptable threshold for this conversation years ago, and she feels rather small and silly trying to have it now. Besides, her fingers are tiptoeing up Elphaba’s calf, and she’d really prefer not to talk at all. Not anymore. Not now.  

She makes it under the hem of Elphaba’s nightgown before Elphaba’s hand grabs her wrist.

“Is this really what you interrupted my reading for?”

Glinda attempts to pull her wrist back, but Elphaba’s fingers hold tight.

“No,” she grumbles. It’s the truth, really. She had other plans for how this conversation would go, but now that she’s here. Well.

If she can’t use her hand, she might as well use her mouth, pressing her lips to Elphaba’s knee and smiling when Elphaba, despite her protests, opens her legs just enough for Glinda to scoot between her thighs.

She’s warm for once. Delightfully so, what with the weather starting to turn cold again, and Glinda snatches her hand back to bask in it, pressing a nose to her favorite patch of stretch marks along the inside of Elphaba’s thighs.

Elphaba stopped wearing Glinda’s nightgowns years ago, finding her own warm flannel on daytrips out of the city. Hers are longer, regrettably, but they button right down the front, and Glinda loves how it feels to work her way down Elphaba’s form button by button before rolling the fabric off her shoulders and laying her bare.

Her thumb brushes over the underside of Elphaba’s breast, and she waits, listening for the telltale sound of Elphaba’s breath hitching. When she finally flicks a finger over the deep jade bud, Elphaba lets out a noise that sounds so close to relief incarnate that Glinda can’t help but replace her hand with her mouth, smiling with her lips around Elphaba’s nipple as she hears her moan.

She’s gotten ahead of herself, she thinks, releasing her breast and moving up to Elphaba’s lips, where she tastes like salt and the butter from dinner. Years have passed since she held her on the living room floor, but Elphaba still kisses the same — steady and sure, while her hands reach for the hem of Glinda’s nightie.

It’s all so distractifying. The speed with which Elphaba shimmies out of her underwear before she tugs off Glinda’s. The feeling of her nails on the small of Glinda’s back and up her shoulders and against her scalp.

Still, Glinda wonders.

Elphaba Thropp, my—

“Baby,” Glinda tries, whining when her hand slips into the downy patch of black between Elphaba’s legs and finds her wetness. She doesn’t like to sound so needy, not when she knows that Elphaba will tease her for it later, but it’s been a busy season at work, and she hasn’t touched or been touched in days.

At the brush of Glinda’s fingers against her clit, Elphaba twitches, breaking their kiss, and Glinda bends to press her lips to Elphaba’s neck.

Elphaba’s asking for more. In her moans and the jut of her hips and the tug of her hand in Glinda’s hair. More, faster, now.

But Glinda slows, pressing a polite kiss to her right breast. Then, because she doesn’t prefer to play favorites, her left, too, moving her way down Elphaba’s stomach and feeling the muscles underneath her lips jump.

Elphaba Thropp, my—

“Darling,” Glinda moans against Elphaba’s clit when she finally tastes her, her tongue dipping between Elphaba’s folds. The word is lost to Elphaba’s groan and the weight of her foot settling on Glinda’s back.

Glinda’s wet, too. She feels it when she presses her thighs together, spurred on by Elphaba’s taste and the sounds she makes when Glinda licks her, over and over again.

When she gets to watch Elphaba like this — free and cared for and full of her, rolling her hips despite the hand Glinda’s pressed to her torso — she often thinks that she could come just from this. One of these days, she might actually try.

There’s a lot about this life she never expected.

She never thought she’d care about budgeting bills. She never thought she’d prefer to go unnoticed at the market in their town, and she never thought she’d like that they only have one sink in their bathroom, so they have to take turns spitting their toothpaste out.

But she’s the most surprised that this hasn’t gotten old. The initial awe of it all — that fast, furious hunger that she couldn’t shake in those early weeks — has dissipated into the loveliest, most solid kind of knowing.

For example, Glinda knows that when Elphaba begins saying her name — her full name, the “Ga” unsilenced — all breathy and slow, Glinda needs to focus on the pressure of her tongue encircling her clit, steady but building.

She knows, too, that when Elphaba’s legs start to shake and her words get lost, Glinda’s going to cruelly and deliciously pull away completely.

And she knows that when she does, Elphaba will whine — letting out a short and pained huff that Glinda finds addictifying.

There isn’t much time, based on the way Elphaba’s writhing, and usually she wouldn’t care, but tonight, Glinda wants to do this together.

So, she crawls back up Elphaba’s body, stopping to kiss all her favorite marks — the mole by her belly button, the dip in her abs. She lingers on the soft skin above her nipple, sucking enough to leave a mark, and Elphaba’s begging now, so far away from shy as her hand moves from Glinda’s hair to her jaw, pulling her up until they’re kissing again.

This is her favorite part if she’s being honest. Kissing Elphaba while still tasting her on her tongue feels like some sort of divine rite.

Her leg lifts over Elphaba’s easily, all muscle memory.

Elphaba Thropp, my—

“Gods,” she whimpers, as she sinks onto Elphaba’s leg and presses its warmth against her core. She’s almost too wet; there’s hardly enough friction, but Elphaba’s lips are on her jaw, and then her neck, and when Glinda begins to grind, she can feel Elphaba’s arousal and her own spit rubbing up against her thigh.

Elphaba keens, lowly, wantonly, her hands finding Glinda’s hips and pushing her forward and back.

Oz.

Then, it’s just the rhythm that matters.

The sound of Elphaba’s breath quickening again, sweeter and hungrier for having been forced to wait.

The pace of their hips.

The way everything, all at once, burns.

My. My. My.

“Oh,” she breathes hot into Elphaba’s neck because she’s close, and Elphaba’s tense, and there’s just enough time for her eyes to find Elphaba’s before Elphaba snaps. “Oh, my Elphie.”

That’s all it takes, really, for Glinda to follow.

In the quiet of their bedroom, the rain patters against the window more and more slowly until there is only the sound of their breaths and Elphaba’s heart against her own. Elphaba’s eyes start to close, and the hand trailing up and down Glinda’s arm slows to a stop, but Glinda hears those words, still.

My. My. My.

My Elphie.

Who ran cold most days and has grown greyer and softer around the center.

Who has loved Quadling noodles since college but has recently begun learning from a local Ostrich family how to make her own.

Who can’t admit when Glinda wins a game of cards.

Who prefers poppies over cherry blossoms but brings home tulips as a compromise.

Who still, also, doesn’t like the rain. Or Hustece. Or the majority of the Gillikenese that insist every other year on voting him back into office.

Who made the most perfect noises during sex and liked to hold her afterwards, even when it’s quick or inconvenient or on a living room floor.

Who loved Glinda in all the ways Glinda thought most impossible, and who made Glinda love in new and impossible ways, too.

“My Elphie,” she whispers into the hollow of Elphaba’s chest. It sounds right, finally. Good. She likes the way it feels against her lips, so she tries again, whispering the title into the beautiful, green crook of her neck, too. My Elphie.

Against her cheek. My Elphie.

On the furrow quickly deepening between her brows. My Elphie.

“My Galinda,” Elphaba responds, without opening her eyes. This, too, sounds so sweet.

Mine. Yours. Hers. Ours. Had it always been this simple? Had it always felt this true?

“Can I help you?” Elphaba asks, halfway to sleep.

“No, not at all, dearest,” Glinda says, but she kisses her again. Long and slow and easy. “Go to bed. You’re keeping me up. I swear to Oz, it’s almost tomorrow!”

*