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Don’t ask, he begs silently in his head. Don’t ask. Please, fuck, Galinda, don’t fucking ask.
He’s frozen, staring at the mirror and the reflection of himself and Galinda. His eyes are mostly on her, on the way that she’s watching him. There’s some awful emotion rolling over her expression, like she can’t decide if she’s sad or horrified or scared or repulsed. Like she can’t land on whether to pity him or scoff at him. He’s pulled his shorts on, fully dressed for sleep now, but he still feels naked and vulnerable looking at her look at him.
“Fiyero—” she starts. And then stops. There’s something breathy, aghast, scared, in her voice. “Your legs—”
She stops again, clearly unable to find the words but, for some reason, still wanting to try. Still wanting to have the conversation.
Fine, he thinks, somewhat bitterly. So we’re doing this.
“It was a long time ago,” he says, his voice low and dull. “Don’t think too hard about it.”
“I—”
She cuts herself off again, and doesn’t finish the sentence. In the mirror, he sees her look down at her hands a little uncertainly. Like she’s the one who’s uncomfortable here. Which he supposes is maybe fair. He doesn’t know what he would do in her place either. Is there really a right thing to do or say when you see the evidence of someone you love having once taken their own misery out on themselves? Is there a right way to react when you see the remnants of self-harm littered over the body of someone you care about?
It’s hard to have a good reaction, he figures. He doesn’t really know what would even qualify as a good reaction. Not saying anything at all, maybe. Pretending not to look, maybe. After all, that part of him is hard to look at—Fiyero is well aware of this—so it’s for good reason that he usually so painstakingly covers them up.
The scars are ugly. He knows that. They’re raised and angry, both pink and pale white. They mar the otherwise smooth expanse of skin something like jagged, uneven crosswalks over his thighs. You can walk your hand over them and feel the raised edges like braille passages of his own patheticism—he forces himself to, sometimes, and he hates every moment of it.
They’re bitter, angry products of a time in his life when he couldn’t cope. They’ll linger with him for the rest of his life. He will forever be carrying within him that fifteen year old boy who just couldn’t deal with the realities of his life. He’s grown up since then, he’s gotten clean, he’s found healthier coping mechanisms. But still—that part of his body, that disfigured stretch of skin, will always be fifteen.
“Don’t worry about it, Galinda,” Fiyero says tiredly. He turns around, trying not to show his own discomfort and frustration on his face. It’s not her fault, not really. He did this to himself. “Can we just go to bed?”
He definitely is failing to keep his face neutral, but Galinda just nods a little. She shifts back towards the wall, pulling the covers over herself but leaving enough room for him to join her.
After a second’s hesitation, Fiyero does. He steps over to the bed and slips under the sheets to curl up next to her. Like it’s second nature, Galinda puts her head on his chest and an arm over his waist. Her eyes close eventually, he’s sure, but still: his thighs itch with the heat and judgement of her gaze. It’s a long time before he can fall asleep.
—
He’s more careful after that. He’s better about hiding himself when he changes clothes and someone is in the room—he turns around to face away from both Elphaba and Galinda, makes sure that he’s not at the exact angle of the mirror where either could see him. The three of them haven’t yet gone particularly far in terms of sex, but he pulls back, gives them all more room to breathe and time to think about what they’re doing, a little earlier into their nights alone than he did before.
If any of them are ever going to have any kind of a future together, he knows that he’s going to have to get over this shame he has. The thing is that this is, ultimately, a part of him and a part of his history. There’s no getting around that. This is something that happened, something that he did, and it’s kind of a significant thing. The evidence is all right there, and there’s no ignoring it, not really. He can’t keep up this hiding forever.
It’s just—all of that is easier said than done. Everything about this is easier said than done. He’s never known how to deal with it, and neither has anyone around him. He shouldn’t expect Galinda, now that she at least knows, to know either. It’s not her fault that she’s being weird about it. It’s his own fucking fault.
At the end of the day, it all comes back to that, doesn’t it? That this is his own damn doing. This was a choice he made, and it wasn’t a smart one and he’s not proud of it and, however far he gets in his recovery, it’s always going to haunt him a little bit. It’s always going to be a part of him, a part of the wiring in his head.
—
Sometimes it comes back to him. That’s part of the awful reality. Sometimes it all comes back to him. Sometimes the urge to cut hits him a little harder than it’s hit at all in the past two years. Sometimes the urge to self-desctruct washes over him all over again and he can think of no better way than taking a razor blade to his own body. Sometimes the urge to kill himself comes back to him and the only way he can think to stop himself is by ruining his life and his body in the next best way.
Sometimes it comes back to him, is the problem.
And he’s gotten better at dealing with it. He has.
But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t come back. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t still hurt him. That doesn’t mean he’s forgotten about any of it. That doesn’t mean he has moved on—and maybe there really isn’t any moving on in the fullness and entirety of the word. Maybe recovery is something that is always an act in progress, not something that’s ever going to be completed.
The thought is thoroughly depressing. But it might be true nonetheless. Fiyero isn’t really all that sure, but he knows that if there is a completion point to recovery, he sure as fuck hasn’t reached it yet.
In the days after Galinda sees this part of him for what it is, in all its truth, that urge, that itch, that burn, comes back in a way it hasn’t in the year since getting clean. It comes back like a fever, like a delirious daydream. It comes back as an idle thought that turns into twitching fingers. That turns into vague plans.
There’s a shaving razor in his shower caddy. There’s a lock on his door. His roommate will be out of the room for these hours, for these days, for this week of spring break. He’ll be alone. No one will be there to interrupt him and the sharp of the blade pressed to the soft of skin.
There’s a pencil sharpener in his school bag. There’s a screwdriver in his desk. There’s a private bathroom on the top floor of the dorm buildings; it has a lock. No one will be looking for him at these hours. No one will need him at this time. He’d be able to get away with it.
He’d be able to get away with it, is the main thought. It’s the most concerning one, really. He honestly thinks he’d be able to get away with it.
And the worst part is that he doesn’t even really have a good reason to do it. Well, there was never really a good reason to do it. There’s never a good reason to justify that kind of self-injury—he knows that. Or, he knows that now.
But right now, where he is in life at the moment, he has even less of a reason to do it than he ever did. When this started, back when he was fifteen, he was depressed and angry and miserable and hated himself and his life and he couldn’t see any kind of a future. None of those things are true anymore.
Which makes this, now, if he were to do it, less of a coping mechanism and more of a punishment. A punishment for recovering. A punishment for revealing himself to Galinda. A punishment for having ever done it in the first place; given himself something to have to recover from and ruined this part of his body.
Something about that is just a little harder to swallow than it used to be. Something about that is just a little less bearable.
But still: the wanting comes. The wanting to cut, the wanting to hurt himself in any way he can, the wanting to take the life he’s built for himself and tear it to pieces. The wanting to ruin it all.
—
He loves Galinda.
That’s why it hurts so much, at the end of the day. Her being weird about this hurts so much more because he cares so much what she thinks. He cares so much about being who she wants him to be—and this is not who she wants him to be.
No, this is someone broken, and Galinda does not do broken. Galinda does perfection, does beauty, does popularity. Galinda does not do fucked up and beyond repair. Galinda does not do repair to any degree.
And while Fiyero was once able to play his whole being off as being perfect, she can’t pretend anymore. She can’t deny anymore that he’s less than. That he’s something so terribly far from perfect that he has scars covering the entire upper halves of both legs. That he’s something so terribly warped and ruined that you can’t touch his thighs without knowing it. Without physically feeling it.
How can Galinda Upland be expected to put up with it?
—
How can Elphaba be expected to put up with it either, once she knows, if he ever gathers up the guts to tell her? Elphaba, who has never once had patience for self-pity. Elphaba, who spends so much of her time caretaking for Nessa, for him, for Galinda; Elphaba, who would want to fix him, because that’s what she does. Galinda wants perfected things and Elphaba wants things she can fix.
But there’s no fixing this, not really. There’s just dealing with it, and that’s not exactly any of their strong suits. That’s not really something Fiyero knows how to ask someone to do.
So Elphaba can’t know, because he can’t lose her too.
But then again—maybe he just wasn’t meant to have this. Maybe he wasn’t meant to keep something this good. Maybe he was always meant to lose them both.
But maybe this—thinking he should leave them both—is just another form of his own self-destruction. Another form of his own self-ruination. Another form of his own self-punishment. He doesn’t know anymore. The problem with beginning to self-harm when you’re fifteen is that the habitual aftershocks reverberate through the rest of your life.
—
They’re sitting in Galinda and Elphaba’s room, the three of them, in mostly silence. It’s a comfortable quiet. He’s somehow relaxed as he reads passages from the most boring textbook in the history of Oz. He’s even enjoying himself, just a little.
The frustration and tension of the past few weeks seems to have faded in this moment, given way to something sacred. It’s something about the soft sound of Galinda humming to herself a little, something about the pace at which Elphaba is turning pages in her books, something about the gentle scratch of Elphaba’s pencil against paper. It’s nice. He likes this, being with them. He doesn’t want to ruin it. He doesn’t.
It’s nothing more than a papercut to distract him. Completely unintentional. His hand slips against the edge of the page of his ancient textbook borrowed from the Shiz library, and it cuts open the side of his pointer finger. It’s an accident.
He swears, wincing as he shakes out the pain in his finger. His voice cuts lowly through the comfortable silence, and both Galinda and Elphaba look up to frown at him. Red beads at the bend of his finger and he stares at it for a moment, almost fascinated by just how much of it there is. How ruby it is. How thick it is as it drips down the side of his hand to the crease of his thumb. Then he blinks himself out of the trance, swearing again.
“You alright?” Galinda asks, her forehead wrinkled a little.
“Papercut,” he explains. “That’s all. Is there a bandage in here somewhere?”
Elphaba hums, putting her bookmark at her page and setting aside her own book. She gets up to rummage through the nightstand by Galinda’s bed until she finds a simple first aid kit.
“Hurts?” Elphaba asks, motioning for him to hold out his hand to her.
He does, unflinching as she presses a tissue against the cut to stop the bleeding for a moment. “It’s fine. I have a high pain tolerance.”
“I bet, after everything” Elphaba says, lightly, like it’s nothing, and Fiyero’s heart goes still.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asks, voice somehow both sharp and shaking. It’s nothing, it’s nothing, it’s nothing, it must be nothing—
Elphaba blinks, looking up at him, something guilty suddenly washing over her expression. Then she masks it, well and easily, but he knows her now, knows her well enough to know what that neutrality means at the end of the day.
His eyes snap to Galinda. She’s not looking at him. The blank pages of her notebook must just be so fucking interesting. His voice is a snarl when he says, “You told her?”
Galinda looks up finally, opening and closing her mouth and no words coming out. Elphaba takes the tissue from his finger, making to wrap a bandage around the cut, but he wrenches his hand out of her soft, light touch. There’s so much care in the way that she’s opening up the package holding the bandage and he can’t stand it. The pity, the guilt, the disgust, the judgment, the—
“I can’t believe you told her,” he growls, words bypassing Elphaba to reach Galinda with as much hurt and anger and betrayal as he can muster. It’s not hard at all. He stands up, and his hands are shaking where he curls them into fists at his side. “What the hell, Galinda?”
Something guilty crumples over her expression. It’s a stark contrast to the perfect lines of her makeup, the sharp angles of her eyeliner, the soft blush over her cheeks. She shouldn’t have mentioned it. This was supposed to be his. This was supposed to be his thing to talk about, to share, when he decided to. This was not Galinda’s heart to bare naked in front of Elphaba.
No, she shouldn’t have told Elphaba and she knows that.
Fiyero doesn’t spare Elphaba another glance—he’s too scared of what she might be wearing on her expression just then; much, much too scared of the guilt that might be there, the pity, the disdain, the misunderstanding of it all—and then he stumbles off the bed to storm out of the room. He can’t face either of them, not knowing that they know.
They know something about him that he just wasn’t ready to admit to. He wasn’t ready to talk about this, he was never going to be ready to talk about this. He was never going to be ready to deal with it in the face of other people, under their scrutiny and judgement. They know but they don’t—can’t—understand.
There’s something especially painful about it being Elphaba who knows, too. Something that makes it burn even more. He reveres her opinion in much the same way that he respects Galinda’s opinions of him. Knowing that Elphaba knows this stupid, ugly, regretful part of him makes him burn in shame.
He had been young and hurting and he hadn’t been thinking right; it’s something he carries with him so shamefully that he never wanted anyone to know, much less someone he respects so much. He hates himself so much for what he had done, for what he continued to do for two years.
He hates himself for it. Except—the worst part, the part he hates admitting to, but part of the truth nonetheless is that, for a moment, for the briefest of moments in time, it did make him feel better. It did do something to him that he wouldn’t have gotten any other way.
Which is not the attitude to be having about something like this, because the other half of the truth is that he wishes he hadn’t done it. He wishes he had never started, he wishes he had never continued. He wishes he didn’t still carry it all with him. He wishes he could move on.
But the thing about recovery is that not only does it get worse before it gets better, but often, even if it gets better, it will someday get worse again before it gets better one more time. And so again goes the stupid fucking cycle.
—
He has this cousin, about a decade younger than him, and back when the scars were fresh cuts and the hurts were bleeding rather than stitched shut by time, she saw. They were sitting on the banks of a local river and the wind had just blown the fabric of his shorts up a little too far. She was maybe seven years old—too young to see, too young to understand, too young to even begin to try to.
He had been put in charge of watching her for only a few hours. He just had to be responsible for a few hours. And instead he had introduced the seven year old girl to the concept of cutting yourself open when you have pain in you too big for your body.
What’s that on your legs, Fifi? Are you drawing on yourself again? Red paint looks a little like blood, don’t you think?
That had been the moment he knew he had to stop. How could he ever be expected to be anything more than what he is if this is what he’s doing to himself? How could he ever grow if he’s physically cutting himself down to be something smaller than he wants to be? How could he ever lead his tribe, his family, his seven year old cousin, if he’s like this? What kind of example is he setting?
If she were to come to him saying that she was thinking of self-harming, he would do anything he had to in order to stop her. He would say anything, promise anything, move mountains or drain rivers. He knew how bad it was. So why was he so determined to make excuses for his own behavior?
This moment, however, came two years into the addiction and stopping is easier said than done. It took trial and error and it took relapses and it took breaking himself down in other ways just to figure out how to put himself back together in a different shape and it took a different kind of pain, a different kind of strength. But he did it. He got over the worst of it, and the pain scabbed over, and then it smoothed out, and then it was nothing more than a memory.
A memory that’s all too real, sometimes. But still: a memory.
Until Galinda, in his first year at Shiz University, this cousin was the only one who ever saw the cuts. For so long, he was so fucking careful.
He didn’t think it would hurt like this when the other shoe finally dropped. He didn’t think it would hurt like this when something finally gave, something snapped, and he revealed it. He thought he would have control over the moment, he thought he would have an explanation that made sense to ears other than his own, he thought he would be okay with sharing this because he is okay now. He’s better, and so surely exposing this part of his history can’t hurt so bad.
But the truth is that it does. It does hurt, and oh Oz, he was not prepared for it.
—
He storms back to his dorm room as if in a fever. As if in a dream. Nothing that happened in the past hour feels real.
Maybe if he closes his eyes and opens them again, Elphaba won’t know about his greatest regret because Galinda won’t have betrayed the trust he didn’t mean to give her and she wouldn’t have told someone. Told Elphaba. Maybe he won’t have reacted the way he did, maybe he would be able to talk about this without breaking down.
Or maybe, maybe if he’s really, really, lucky, he’ll be fifteen again and holding a razor blade and he’ll just…put it down. He’ll stop all of this before it starts. Before the consequences hit. Before they hurt.
When he gets there, throwing himself onto his bed, he realizes the papercut is still bleeding. He doesn’t have the will in him to find a bandage. He just holds his hand up to his eyes and he stares at it. At the drying blood over the joint.
Distantly, he remembers the way Elphaba had so gently wiped the blood away with a tissue. The way her hands had been so soft on his own; palms uncalloused and touch easy and confident. Unafraid to touch him and unafraid of him touching her.
He loves her, is the problem at the heart of it all. And there are things you don’t share with the people you love. Not because you don’t trust them or don’t love them, but because there are things in this world that you’ll never be ready for other people to know about you. There are things too private, too secret, too intimate, to ever give away to someone you want to respect you.
The worst part, really, is that he hadn’t even gotten to be the one to tell anyone. It had been an accidental glimpse that he didn’t really discuss with Galinda. It had been a whispered rumor during Galinda’s nighttime conversations with Elphaba. And oh Oz, who else has she told?
—
In addition to dating her, Galinda is his best friend. And being mad at your best friend is one of the loneliest things you can be.
So Fiyero spends much of the next few days in his room. He doesn’t know how to face Galinda, much less how to face Elphaba. In retrospect, he can admit that maybe he overreacted by storming out of their room.
Neither of them had actually given any sign of wanting him gone, it’s just that he couldn’t stand to see his fifteen year old’s self shameful, stupid decisionmaking reflected in their view of him today. He didn’t want to talk about it and didn’t want to deal with it, and so he left. Not the most mature thing he’s ever done, but it’s also not the worst decision he’s ever made—no, there are much worse things that take that prize.
Still, he hides in his room. He takes his meals from the dining hall and then eats in his bed. He gets crumbs lost in the bedsheets and can’t bring himself to care.
Everything feels numb, in a way that it hasn’t in a long time. He’s been feeling so much better since getting to Shiz—more alive, more authentic, more like a real person. He’s been feeling warmer, been feeling brighter. Maybe not happier, necessarily, but still: he’s felt real, recently.
And it’s been a welcome feeling, though it comes with caring that he’s failing two classes and though it comes with romantic feelings too big for his heart and though it comes with an occasional bone-deep sadness.
It’s been welcome, because it also comes with caring about anything at all, it comes with love, it comes with laughter that takes over his body and makes him forget about anything else. It’s been welcome, because for the first time in a long time, he’s been feeling human.
So this numbness coming back to him as if with a snap of the fingers or a click of the door lock is painful.
He thought he had gotten over this. He thought he had gotten better. He’s more than a year clean. He hasn’t had to push away the passive suicidal ideation in probably half a year now. He’s been laughing more, been smiling like he means it. He has friends he honestly cares about and who honestly care about him, the real him.
But he’s getting bad again, and he hates it. He hates it, but he also isn’t doing anything to prevent it.
—
It’s not until Elphaba comes banging at his door that Fiyero starts to drag himself out of it. His roommate has been spending the past few days in his girlfriend’s room to escape Fiyero’s “bad vibes, dude; I’ll see you when you’re over it,” and so no one but him is there to open the door when Elphaba relentlessly pounds on the door.
He knows he looks bad when he opens it, and he sees her clock that state of being immediately. Her eyes narrow on him, on the bags under his eyes, on the slump of his posture, at the slow way he turns his back and trudges back to the bed once the door’s unlocked and she’s been let inside.
“What’s wrong with you?” Elphaba asks sharply, stepping inside and closing the door behind her.
Fiyero raises his eyebrows at her, sitting down on the bed and pushing his hands under his thighs. “Blunt as ever, I see. Ouch.”
Elphaba winces a little at that, looking just a little admonished. “You look tired, that’s all. And you’ve been missing your classes again.”
“I thought we were on spring break.”
“It’s Wednesday. Spring break ended three days ago.”
Fiyero looks down at his feet, kicking at the floor a little. “Ah. I lost track of time, I guess.”
“For half a week,” Elphaba says dubiously. Fiyero shrugs, and Elphaba sighs a little. She walks over to the bed to sit down heavily next to him. “What’s going on then? No one’s seen you in a while, and we’re worried.”
“I’m not going to do anything stupid,” Fiyero mutters. He moves one hand to rub at one thigh, at the old itching. “I’m over that. I am. You don’t have to worry.”
Elphaba is quiet for a long moment. Fiyero doesn’t look at her, until her shoulders sink a little. “I’m worried because you’re my partner, Yero. Because I care. Not just because I worry you might…”
“You can call it what it is,” Fiyero says dryly, when she trails off into silence. This conversation might as well be happening between Elphaba and some other man or maybe just some shell of a body, because he doesn’t feel nearly grounded enough in this moment to participate. He turns away. “I’m not going to break if you say the word ‘cut.’”
Elphaba is looking at him, and Fiyero wants a little to wilt under her watchful, knowing gaze. Maybe he is going to break if she says it. There’s simply something about the way she looks at him that makes him feel so terribly, terrifyingly seen.
“Galinda shouldn’t have told me. I’m sorry she did.” He shrugs listlessly, and she continues. “But I’m not sorry I know.”
“What?”
“I’m not sorry I know,” Elphaba repeats. She’s still looking at him when he turns to her in a flinching motion. “Knowing just means that I know another part of you, and I want to know all of you. That means the real and the sad and the mask you put up and the things you hide with it. I want all of you, Yero. I’m greedy like that.”
He swallows hard, staring at her with wide, dry eyes. “Oh.”
“Yeah,” Elphaba says. Her mouth is in a flat line, and her eyes are narrowed on his face. Intense, but in a good way. In the kind of way that makes him feel worth looking at. “Contrary to some people’s belief, I do actually want to be with you—with you and with Galinda—which means that I want to know everything.”
“Everything,” he echoes.
Elphaba nods sharply. “And so I’m sorry you couldn’t tell me about this yourself, when you were ready to, on your terms, but I don’t regret knowing—” and she stumbles a little over the words, but she continues honestly anyway, she continues— “that you cut yourself. That you felt some hurt so deeply that you did something I don’t understand. Knowing just means I know you better, and I know how to love you better. And that’s a good thing, isn’t it?”
Maybe it’s her words or maybe it’s just time or maybe it’s coincidence or maybe it’s the sheer force of her care for him, but with that, the numbness seems to snap. Shatter. And he can feel tears pricking at the rims of his eyes, welling up in his throat, watering down the drought of desert in his chest.
“Ah,” he starts softly, lost in his wonder for her, “so you do love me, don’t you?”
Elphaba’s eyes narrow further on him. “I do.”
“I…”
I didn’t realize, are the words coming to mind. But that doesn’t feel quite true. He did know that, really. It’s just that it didn’t feel unconditional or nonjudgemental until this moment.
But he doesn’t say that. He says, instead, a murmured confession, one that’s just as unconditional in its honesty: “I love you too.”
—
“I told her because I didn’t know how to help you,” Galinda says quietly. She can’t look him in the eye. “And I thought she would know.”
Fiyero closes his own eyes, exhaling slowly. Sitting there in the otherwise empty dining hall, he feels distant from his body. He stares at the pad of paper he had been sketching random thoughts on, all imperfect doodles and thick lines and sharp angles, he sees something he hadn’t meant to draw.
He had been working on a sketch of the robin sitting on the branch outside of the window, but in the clipped angles of the wings he can see the angles of his scars. The thick and thin and ridged and smooth lines of them. The webs of scars are in the mazed lines of the feathers. The sharpness of the bird’s beak is the sharpness of a blade. The curve of the head is the bend of his wrist when he made the slicing motion downwards against his thigh.
“You didn’t have any right to do that,” he starts. “It wasn’t your place.”
“No,” Galinda agrees. Her voice is so timid that he opens his eyes, almost unable to recognize her.
“It was my business,” Fiyero adds. She nods, a small, scared movement. “You didn’t—don’t even know the full truth. It wasn’t your story to share.”
Galinda swallows, finally looking up at him. She asks, hesitantly, “Do you want to tell me? The full story. I—I’ll listen now, Fiyero. I will.”
Fiyero stares at her for a moment. He could. He could tell her everything he was feeling and thinking the first time he did it, the second time, the third time. The last time. He could try to explain it all.
But it wouldn’t be sufficient. He knows that. There aren’t enough words in any language to explain how he felt, or why he did what he did. It’s not really something you can make someone understand, not unless they’ve been there before too. Even then, it’s just a specific, personal thing. Even then, it’s not something that words can justify.
He could try. He could put words to the memory. He could cry about it, he could beg for her to understand just why it’s so important to him that he’s the one in control of this secret.
Except he won’t. This, at least, needs to be his alone. At least for the time being.
“No,” he says quietly.
Galinda looks a little like she’s going to cry again, and Fiyero doesn’t really know what to do about that. Something between them has changed irreparably, he thinks, and she must know that too.
“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” he adds, and somehow finds that it’s true. He does trust her.
This is just…this isn’t about trust or love, not really. This is a story he doesn’t know how to tell to even himself, who lived through it, who made those choices. This isn’t about trusting someone else or not trusting them. This isn’t about learning how to share his life history with someone he loves, because he does love her. This is instead about him needing to learn to live with himself.
“It’s not,” he emphasizes, when Galinda’s broken look doesn’t shift at all. He averts his eyes, staring down at the page holding a bird that is about to fly that is also a deep wound about to heal.“It’s just…this is something I need to keep for myself. Just…right now, I need it to be mine. It’s something I need to finally come to terms with before I figure out how to tell anyone else.”
She nods slowly, her mouth in a thin line. “Okay. I understand.”
He knows she doesn’t understand. He can see it in the way she’s looking at him when he glances at her out of his peripheral vision. He can see it in the way she’s toying with her fingers. He can see it in the way she looks so unsteady, so uncertain. But she’s trying. He can see that too. She’s trying, at the very least. That’s all he can ask.
—
One of the things he’s found that calms him in moments when he wants to hurt something, whether that be himself or someone else or just whatever breakable object’s closest, is drawing. He takes a charcoal pencil and he takes a page from his much-loved sketchpad, and he draws lines. He draws line after line after line. Thick ones, thin ones, shaky ones, perfectly straight ones. In dozens upon dozens of rows. Just lines across a blank page. Again and again and again.
He’s doing this when Galinda spots him in the library. She sits down next to him with a flounce, glances at his sketchpad, and then starts talking as if nothing is wrong. As if nothing has ever gone wrong.
Fiyero isn’t sure if she’s picked up on his mood and that’s why she’s doing it, and he’s not sure if she’s even picked up on the fact that sitting with her like this helps. But he knows that he’s having feelings he doesn’t want to deal with again, except then Galinda is there and she’s talking about their Ozian poli-sci homework and how awful their professor is and it’s a drone of senseless one-sided conversation layered over his lines and lines and lines and—and he starts to feel better.
Galinda and Elphaba each have their own ways of getting to him when he’s distant in his head, when he’s drifting and far from where anyone else can reach him. This is Galinda’s way, he thinks. This is how she loves him best.
She doesn’t tell him in words that he’s going to be okay, and she doesn’t necessarily force him to talk about things he isn’t ready to. Not anymore. But she distracts him from it, she takes his mind and focuses it on something, gives him something to ground his wandering onto.
She reminds him that there is a world outside of his head, and it isn’t ending. It isn’t falling apart. It’s boring homework and it’s Elphaba’s Animal rights campaign ups and downs and it’s falling asleep during class and it’s loving each other. It’s not ending. Nothing is ending, not right now. No—right now, something is beginning.
—
It is spring in Gillikin, he is sitting by the canal that runs through Shiz’s campus watching Galinda wade out of the current. She’s walking out of the canal and up the bank to where he sits. Elphaba sits next to him, her head on his shoulder and her eyes fond on Galinda.
He is thinking of his future.
He is also thinking of his present.
This, what he has now, is something he once didn’t think he’d ever get. This, what he has now, is something he didn’t think he’d ever earn, ever deserve. He never thought he could be as happy as he is at this moment. He never thought happiness was something that he could hold in his hands so tangibly.
And oh, the things that could come. The things that he could do, that they could do, that they all will do. There are so many things in the world that he hasn’t seen, that he doesn’t know of yet, that could bring him joy. There are so many things worth sticking around for, and so many things worth taking care of himself enough to actually enjoy.
Part of him thinks that none of it will ever compare to this feeling he has now. This love he has for the people around him, this contentment he has with the moment. It’s not an abundance of happiness, not really. But still: he’s happy he’s here at all. Here to see this, here to feel this.
This: Galinda, smiling; Elphaba, sighing against him. This: the sun on his skin, the rush of water in his ears. This: the grass under his palms, the dirt between his fingers. This: Galinda, waving a little; Elphaba waving back, just a wiggle of her fingers. This: Elphaba, murmuring something to him that he doesn’t catch because he’s so caught up in the novelty of having her so near and so gentle. This: Galinda, calling out their names.
This: life, life, life, life; and all that comes with it.
Galinda wrings out her skirts as she approaches them, but she’s still dripping a little when she sits on the blank on Fiyero’s other side. She’s careful not to get him nor Elphaba wet—the two of them had decided to bear the brunt of the heat and humidity without getting their clothes all soaked, but Galinda had said she would simply pass out if she didn’t get in the cold water that instant—but she still gets as close to the two of them as she can.
“You look pleased,” Elphaba notes, smiling a little at Galinda.
“The water was refreshing,” Galinda says, shrugging a little as she pushes her hair back in a smooth motion. She sighs a little, tilting her face up to the sun. “What a beautiful day.”
Elphaba laughs a little, the movement nudging the crown of her head against Fiyero’s neck and tickling at his skin. “It is a nice day.”
Fiyero doesn’t know why he says it, especially given that he’s technically three days late to the confession and that nothing has provoked the thought and that he’s tried to shut down all discussion of this since it first came up. He doesn’t know why he’s even really thinking of it, beyond the fact that they’re at a river and he’s with the people he loves most in the world and that they, miraculously, seem to love him in return.
Still, he says it. “I’m two years clean now. A, uh. A couple days ago was the anniversary.”
Elphaba lifts her head from his shoulder, and they’re both looking at him. He can’t bring himself to meet either of their eyes, can’t bring himself to try to figure out what they’re thinking. The words are out there now, and that’s that.
“I know it’s not that long, in the grand scheme of things,” he mutters. “But…it’s a start. It’s a start.”
Silence meets his words, but just for a moment. Just for a moment.
Then Galinda puts her hand to his cheek and guides his face over to look at her. Her hand is wet and cold but it’s familiar and he loves her. She’s smiling, something shining in her eyes. He almost wants to wince away, but he can’t bring himself to move. He just looks at her, caught up in the curl of her lips, in the bright of her lipgloss, in the pride in her expression.
“Fiyero Tigelaar,” she starts. “Be proud of yourself. You worked hard to get here. I know I—I can’t fully understand, and that’s okay, but I know I’m proud of you. And thank you. For trusting me. Us.”
Fiyero swallows, trying to find any number and any kinds of words that could explain at all how he feels. But nothing comes to him. So he just kisses her lightly, and presses their foreheads together. He closes his eyes, breathing in deeply. “Thank you.”
On his other side, he feels Elphaba’s hands wrap around his waist, her chin hooking over his shoulder. She presses a kiss to his neck and he sighs a little at the comfort in the motion.
“I’m proud of you too,” she says quietly, murmuring into the warmth of his skin, into the crook of his neck. “And I’m so glad you’re here, and you’re with us.”
“Me too,” he whispers. The sun is so bright above them, and he hears the river singing beyond them. He finds that he’s telling the truth. He’s so glad he’s here, and he’s safe. Safe in their hands—safe in his own. He breathes out, and in. “Me too.”