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Elphaba finds the first note tucked inbetween the pages of her History textbook. She stares at it for a long second, the words barely computing in her brain, and then crumples it up and tosses it into the trash can with startling accuracy from her seat near the middle of the room.
Fiyero makes an indignant noise, and when Elphaba looks at him, his mouth is hanging open and his blue eyes are wide and scandalized.
“What?” she asks, immediately on the defensive.
Fiyero melts, slouching down into his seat, his shoulders drooping and his stupid floppy hair falling into his face.
(It’s not endearing.
It’s not.)
“That could have been important,” he grumbles, crossing his arms over his chest.
Elphaba laughs.
“I promise you that it wasn’t. It was even in the wrong book.”
That gets Fiyero’s attention.
“What do you mean the wrong book?”
Elphaba rolls her eyes.
“It said, ‘You’re beautiful.’ Obviously someone put it in the wrong book.”
She says it like it’s a simple fact of life.
The sky is blue and father hates her and no one would purposely leave a note saying she’s beautiful in her textbook.
See? A simple mistake.
Fiyero pouts all throughout History.
Elphaba ignores him because, honestly, it was just a stupid mistake.
Nothing to get upset over.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
The second note includes her name, which, in retrospect, should have been a big, fat clue.
Elphaba finds it on top of her stack of library books when she returns from grabbing yet another massive tome to add to the pile she’s using for her Law and Logic paper, and she frowns at it for a long moment before slowly approaching like it's some kind of venomous creature about to strike her her.
Elphaba, it begins, and her heart races because huh.
It’s the same handwriting as before.
Surely it can’t mean…?
No, the first note was definitely a mistake.
This one must be too.
(Even though it has her name on it).
She lifts it with shaking hands and lets her eyes quickly devour the words, her heart thumping heavily even though she knows she shouldn’t allow such foolishness to affect her.
Elphaba,
Your smile lights up the room, and your laugh makes me feel like I could fly.
She reads the words and reads them a second and a third time, and then crumples the note and throws it into her bag.
It’s a trick, surely.
Because no one would write such things about her and mean them.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
The third note is tucked halfway under her bag where she’d dropped it at their usual lunch table before she’d meandered off to find something halfway edible.
Elphaba doesn’t let her greedy eyes decipher the words this time before she crumples it and tosses it into her halfway open zipper, a frown pulling at her lips as she drops her tray noisily to the table and sits down.
There are three pairs of eyes on her as she stabs her green beans with probably more force than strictly necessary.
“What,” she growls at them.
Nessa just stares with wide, brown eyes.
Galinda clears her throat.
“So, what has you in such a sour mood today, Elphie?”
Elphaba angrily chews her green beans.
She’s decided that the person sending her these notes must be making fun of her, as has been the norm for her entire life, and as such she has also decided that she is very, very upset at this person.
Elphaba Thropp!
Green on top!
Someone should tell her
That everyone can smell her!
“Nothing,” she sighs, shoulders tense as she stabs another unsuspecting green bean.
“Was it the note, Fabala?” Nessa asks, voice soft as she tries to catch her sister’s eye. “Was it very mean?”
Elphaba sighs.
She hadn’t allowed herself to read the note, of course. But it doesn’t matter what the words said.
The intent is what matters.
“Yes,” she says firmly, and then turns in surprise when she hears a noise of quiet disbelief to her left.
Fiyero.
When did he get here?
“The first one wasn’t mean,” he says, lips pulled into a frown as he stares down at his own lunch, a plate of barely touched potatoes and meat. “It was a compliment.”
“It was a taunt,” Elphaba corrects, sighing as she lays down her fork and then picks it up again, needing something to do with her hands so that she doesn’t dig the note out of her bag so that she can read it.
Despite knowing it’s a trick, she finds that she is desperate to know what it says this time.
You’re beautiful.
Your smile lights up the room.
Your laugh makes me feel like I could fly.
True or not, ill intentioned or not, she’s had nice things said about her so rarely in her life that she craves the words of this anonymous stranger.
It’s dangerous, she thinks, to let herself get sucked in.
It will only end badly.
(Her traitorous heart disagrees, but she’s used to denying herself the things she truly wants, and so she’s able to calmly eat her green beans without digging through her bag like a madman to find and devour the new words).
“How do you know it’s a taunt?” Fiyero asks, his voice soft next to her. She turns, a quick rebuttal on the tip of her tongue, but it dies at the fierce intention in Fiyero’s beautiful, beloved blue eyes.
“Because,” she whispers, shrugging. “No one could possibly think those things about me. So, logically, it’s a taunt. I can’t see any other reason they’d be sending these notes.”
Fiyero’s lips part as if he wants to say something, but the words never come.
Instead he just stares at her, the usual sparkle gone from his eyes and replaced by a hurt so deep that Elphaba doesn’t know how to parse it.
She turns back to her meal, heart thundering in her chest as Fiyero pushes away from the table, leaving his lunch barely touched as he stalks straight out of the cafeteria.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
The thing is, Elphaba craves love and affection just like everyone else.
She’s not made of stone, no matter what people say about her.
She longed for her father’s praise and affection as a child, and gave away nearly every part of herself to her sister hoping to be given something in return.
Instead, she’d been mocked, belittled, and cast aside her entire childhood, treated like the help and not given a second thought beyond what she could do for others.
So it’s not that she doesn’t want the little messages to be real.
It’s that she cannot afford to believe that they are, because if it comes out that someone is taunting her, making fun of her, leading her on so that they can utterly humiliate her… well.
She doesn’t know if she has enough broken pieces left to withstand the fallout of that.
It’s hard to ignore, though, because even though she remains steadfast and refuses to read them, the notes keep on coming.
A fourth slid under her dorm room door.
A fifth tucked in her bag between classes without her noticing.
A sixth and seventh delivered by a bemused first year student.
An eighth left behind for her at the library front desk.
She crumples them all up and shoves them in her bag with shaking hands, resolute in her decision not to read them.
(She doesn’t throw them away, though, just in case).
She has a pretty impressive collection of them amassed in the bottom of her bag by the time she finally snaps.
It’s the fifteenth note, longer than all the others, the loopy handwriting familiar by now, that pushes her over the edge.
My dearest Elphaba, it begins, but she doesn’t let herself read further than that before she’s crumbling it and throwing it across the table of the cafeteria, shocking their little group as she stands and clenches her fists, tears springing to her eyes.
Galinda and Nessa share a look between them as Boq watches her, eyes wide as mashed potatoes drip from his fork to the table, unnoticed.
“I just want it to stop,” she whispers, her words guttural and broken as she lets her eyes sweep the room.
Who is it, she wonders, that’s getting such joy out of messing with her?
Which of her fellow students thinks it’s fun to make her chest ache this way?
“I just want it to stop,” she repeats, louder now, her jaw clenched as she surveys the sea of possible tormentors. “I don’t know what perverse pleasure you’re taking from making me feel this way, but please stop,” she begs, and then she’s reaching for her bag, turning, and bolting from the room. She can feel tears stinging her eyes as she stalks determinedly in the opposite direction of the cafeteria, no destination in mind.
The only goal is that she gets away from here.
From them.
From them.
From whoever is sending her these notes, from —
She hears footsteps behind her before she hears his voice, and she brushes a hand under her eye though she knows it will do no good.
There’s no way to hide that she’s been crying.
“Elphaba, wait!”
Fiyero.
Oh, Oz, why couldn’t it have been literally anyone else?
Why does it have to be Fiyero?
Funny, ridiculous, sweet, irritating, beloved Fiyero?
She doesn’t know when she fell for him, only that it was some time before he broke things off with Galinda. Somewhere between you don’t have to do that, you know and the lion cub. Between one smile and the next, she’d realized that her heart beat funny when she was around him. Her skin flushed and her throat felt tight, but despite the obvious signs of an allergic reaction, she craved his presence.
His stupid jokes and his smiles.
His ridiculous blue eyes and the way he always moves like he’s dancing.
The way he makes her feel safe.
She turns, her green eyes still wet with tears, and waits as he catches up with her.
He pauses when he reaches her, hands on his knees, lips parted as he pants from exertion.
She wants to tease him for being out of breath but before she can, he’s whispering into the silence surrounding them,
“It was me.”
Elphaba reels back as he stands to his full height, one hand reaching out to wind around her wrist as her bag falls from her shoulder to the ground, the notes spilling out across the concrete.
“Wha… what was you?” she murmurs, tongue darting out to lick her lips as her gaze flickers between Fiyero’s earnest blue eyes and the papers spilled at their feet.
“The notes,” he whispers, fingers tightening around her wrist when she tries to instinctively pull away. “I wrote you all of those notes, Elphaba. I didn’t know how to say those things out loud to you, so… so I wrote them down, instead.”
She stares at him for a long moment, disbelieving.
Why would he…
“Why would you… why would you want to make fun of me?” she whispers, and she sees the exact moment that his heart breaks. His eyes dim, and his fingers fall from her wrist. She snatches her hand back, pressing it over her heart and covering it with her other as she watches him deflate before her eyes.
“I would never make fun of you, Elphaba,” he whispers, gaze cast downward at all the crumpled papers at their feet. They’re mocking her with all of their unread words, all of the things Fiyero had wanted to tell her but could only find the courage to write down instead of speak into existence. “I would never… Oz, do you really believe me capable of such cruelty?”
And no, she doesn’t.
Not really.
But …
“It’s almost easier to believe that than to think that someone could… that you would…”
Love me.
She can’t say the words, though.
She can barely even think them.
She swallows and presses her palm tighter into her own chest as if she can hold all of her feelings inside, fresh tears springing to her eyes as Fiyero bends down and begins to collect all of the notes that had spilled from her bag.
“Did you even read them?” he asks, voice small.
Elphaba shakes her head.
“No,” she whispers, though as he collects them, smoothing each one out before stacking them on top of the other, she desperately wishes that she had, because now he’s going to take them away.
He’s going to take them and walk away from her, and she won’t have ever read the words he’d written to her, the vulnerable, heart-felt truths he shared with her over the past few weeks.
She’ll have ruined whatever chance she had with him, all because she was too stupid and insecure to see what was right in front of her.
“Fiyero,” she whispers, and she feels her knees buckle when he turns to look up at her, still squatting on the ground, shaking hands smoothing out the notes he’d written that she’d never even looked at.
His blue eyes are wide and wet, lips parted as he rises, fourteen pieces of paper clasped tightly in his hands.
It should be fifteen, of course, but the first note, his first note, is gone forever.
“Fiyero, will you… will you read them to me?” she asks, her voice small as she reaches one hand out to tangle in the material of his shirt. She doesn’t pull him closer, doesn’t know if she can stand to have him closer, but she wants to tether herself to him all the same.
Fiyero licks his lips and catches her gaze, uncertain.
“Yeah?”
Elphaba nods jerkily.
“I… I thought someone was—was making fun of me… because no one has ever said those things to me,” she admits, blinking fresh tears from her eyes as she looks anywhere but at him.
“No one has ever told you that you’re beautiful?” Fiyero asks, voice softer now that he realizes that her insecurities lie in herself rather than in believing him capable of being cruel to her. “No one has ever told you that your smile lights up the room?”
Elphaba shakes her head as Fiyero reaches up to gently untangle her hand from his shirt. He doesn’t push her away, though, instead entwining their fingers and using his grip on her to tug her over to an empty bench under a flowering willow tree. He sits and pulls her down next to him, and then smiles shyly as he smooths out the papers he’s laid carefully across his thighs.
“Dear Elphaba,” he reads, his voice quiet and reverent in the stillness before the lunch hour ends and the courtyard becomes filled again. “It breaks my heart that people are capable of such cruelty. That you have dealt with such cruelty in your life. I swear I am not being cruel in writing these notes. I am simply being truthful — you are the prettiest girl I have ever laid eyes on, and I want nothing more than to hold your hand.”
Elphaba squeezes his hand where it’s still clasped in hers.
He shoots her a quick, shy smile, and then reads the next note.
“Dear Elphaba,
You care for others so deeply. So, so deeply that I worry you sometimes forget to care for yourself. But don’t worry, I’ll do it for you. It would be my honor.”
Elphaba bites her lip to hold the tears at bay, suddenly remembering all the times that Fiyero had brought her a bottle of water or slipped extra snacks in her bag when she was working late in the library. He always made sure to annoy her so much that she never noticed the snacks until he was long gone and she couldn’t return them, and it had made her smile every time.
“Dear Elphaba,” he continues, smoothly sliding the fifth note to the bottom of the pile as he reads the sixth. “I sometimes find that I cannot pay attention in class because my attention is on you. I know you’d yell at me for this, but I cannot help it. You are like the sun, and I am blinded by your brightness. It is my pleasure to be caught in your orbit.”
He continues to the seventh note, the one that the bemused first year had delivered.
She’d yelled at the poor boy, and he’d run off quickly as she’d shoved the note into her bag with prejudice.
“Dear Elphaba. You plague my dreams. I dream of your lips, dark green and calling to me like a siren. I want to kiss you all of the time, did you know that? I wonder how your lips would feel under mine. Soft? Chapped? It doesn’t matter. I want to kiss and kiss and kiss and kiss you. I want to hold you in my arms and show you all of the ways that I want you.”
The eighth, left at the library desk for her.
“Dear Elphaba. You were simply beautiful today in history, yelling at Professor Dickwad. That’s his name, I’m sure of it. Or at least it is now, because fuck him. I wish I was one tenth as brave as you. I want to be. I will be, one day. I’ll stand beside you, next time, I swear. I’ll stand up with you, and then we can get detention together. I think we could be a good team, don’t you? Like that day with the lion cub?”
Elphaba wipes at her eyes as she remembers Fiyero waiting for her outside of detention, a sandwich and a cup of tea in his hands because he’d known she’d be starving that late in the evening.
Fiyero glances up at her as he slides the note beneath the others, offering her a small smile as she scoots closer on the bench, her head resting on his shoulder as he whispers the words from the notes that she’s been too scared to let herself believe.
“Dear Elphaba. I know I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating. I cannot take my eyes off of you. You are… stunning. And I know you hate your green skin, but can I just say that I find it mesmerizing? I don’t think I love it because it’s green, though — I wouldn’t find green skin on anyone else enchanting in the same way. I think I love it because it’s you. It’s a part of who you are. And it breaks my heart that it has shaped you in such a way that you cannot believe the words I write in these letters to you, but you wouldn’t be Elphaba without it. You’re passionate and you have a thirst for justice, and I think that your fervor for change comes from the fact that you, too, have been unfairly judged your whole life. I don’t look at you and see green, dearest Elphaba. Instead I look at green, and I see you.”
Elphaba reaches a hand up to wipe at her eyes as Fiyero clears his throat and reaches for the next letter. He turns toward her and for a moment she thinks he’s going to address her directly, but instead he just presses a feather light kiss into her hair before continuing.
“Dearest Elphaba. You held my hand today, and I KNOW it was only to keep me from punching that prick Avaric, but what you don’t know is how immediately your touch calmed me. I was burning with anger, but the second your hand wrapped around mine, I was calm. You make me feel calm. You ground me. You’ve changed me. And I can never thank you enough for that.”
His words wash over her like a balm to a wound that has been open and weeping since childhood, and she feels parts of herself knit back together, parts that she didn’t know could feel whole again.
His notes speak of his admiration for her, his desire, his inner thoughts and reflections, and while they heal parts of her that have been long broken, they also flay her wide open, open to a new kind of hurt and pain because what if his admiration doesn’t last?
What if she lets herself believe him, and then he leaves her, too?
She’s caught in a web of uncertainty, desperately wanting to trust his words and his touch and the little kisses that he presses to her hair, her temple, her forehead between each note, but unsure if she can.
And then, finally, the last note.
The one she’d thrown across the cafeteria.
She imagines him running after it and then running after her, and she feels her heart break anew because she doesn’t deserve this man, this sweet, kind, thoughtful man.
She wants him, to be clear.
But she doesn’t deserve him, and she’s scared for the moment that he realizes it, too.
“Dearest Elphaba,” he begins, and then he sucks in a breath, his fingers tightening around hers as he prepares to read the final words he’d written to her. He continues though, because even though he’d professed her to be the brave one, he’s always been so much braver than her in matters of the heart. “I don’t know if you’re reading these letters. I don’t think you are. Or, if you are, you have no idea that it’s me who’s writing them. So, here’s the truth. The raw, unfiltered truth: I am in love with you, Elphaba, and I don’t know how much longer I can keep it inside. And I know that admitting it in a note is cowardly, but I have tried to tell you and every time I do try, something happens. We were interrupted or I chickened out or you smiled at me and I forgot what words were. Regardless, I feel like I can say it here because I’ve already shared the deepest parts of myself with you in these letters. So there it is, the truth I’ve been dancing around for so long: I love you. I love you I love you I love you.”
Elphaba doesn’t realize she’s crying until Fiyero brushes a tear from her cheek.
He smiles when her eyes meet his, his gaze impossibly soft as he brushes his warm thumb across her cheekbone long after the tear has dried.
“I love you,” he whispers, and it’s different, somehow, hearing the words directed at her and not merely read aloud to her from the note he’d written. “And I know that you probably don’t believe me, Elphaba, and that’s okay because I don’t care how long it takes, I’ll spend the rest of my life proving to you that I do, that I do love you and that you’re worthy of that love. I’ll—”
“Fiyero,” Elphaba whispers, cutting him off.
Which, cutting people off is rude, but she knows that if she lets him keep talking he’ll never stop and then she can’t kiss him, so truly, it’s for the greater good.
“Yes?” he whispers, eyes wide as his tongue darts out to wet his bottom lip, his gaze dropping to her mouth as she parts her lips to respond.
There are so many things she wants to say.
So many, many things.
Thank you.
I believe you.
I love you, too.
But she can’t force any of those words to form in her mouth, her heart beating so fast and hard that she feels like she might pass out.
“Elphaba?” Fiyero murmurs, blue eyes uncertain and wary as he watches her carefully. His warm hand is still cupping her cheek, though, and she can feel his heart beating rapidly under her palm where it’s pressed to his chest.
“I…”
I love you, too.
The words won’t come, though, and Elphaba growls low in her throat, pulling a shocked and surprised look from Fiyero before she just leans forward and presses her lips against his.
It’s a terrible kiss, as far as kisses go, her teeth biting into Fiyero’s lip and their noses bumping together. He grunts in pain and then cups her face in both hands, and then he’s guiding her into something more gentle, his lips wet and warm, and oh.
Oh, that feels nice.
She whimpers when he pulls back, blue eyes half lidded and lips parted as he stares down at her, his palms still hot and huge against her cheeks.
“Yeah?” he murmurs, smiling besottedly as she nods.
“Yes,” she murmurs, her fingers tightening in the material of Fiyero’s shirt as she pulls him back toward her. “Whatever the question is, yes. Now kiss me again.”
Fiyero laughs, and does just that.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
Try as she might over the next few days, though, the words don’t come.
Either she gets distracted by staring into Fiyero’s beautiful blue eyes, or they’re interrupted, or she just can’t force the words out past the fear and uncertainty clogging her throat.
Whatever the reason, though, she finds that it’s so, so difficult to tell him what she’s thinking, what she’s feeling.
She holds his hand and kisses him and lets him wrap his arm around her in public and she tells him, cheeks flaming and eyes unable to meet his, that she likes him.
But the harder words, the more vulnerable words, the words that open her up to the possibility of pain and heartache?
She can’t force those words out.
It’s during History that she gets the idea, though, when he catches her eye and winks and slides a scrap of paper her way without taking his eyes off of their new History teacher.
Lunch under the willow tree today?
She catches his eye and nods, and right there, right in the middle of class — which is truly alarming, and Fiyero must know that she loves him, too, if she’s willing to miss part of a lecture for him — she begins drafting her first note.
Dearest Fiyero…