Chapter Text
Fiyero Tigelaar is not a patient man. His father calls him impulsive; his mother says she put way too much effort into making his brain for him to possibly be this stupid. He's been expelled for forgetting to sit his final exams, inspired the writing of a new school 'morals clause', and has broken the same arm twice doing two different stunt jumps off the stable roof at his father's hunting lodge. And yet, somehow, after twenty-three years of running through life at full speed he finds himself falling in love with a woman who demands he slow down.
She doesn't need his money or want his privilege. She doesn't want flashy gifts or need public declarations. She wants his time, wants his thoughts, wants his opinions; she only needs his honesty…and his patience. Time, thoughts, and opinions are surprisingly easy for him to give, but patience has been terrifying and honesty even more so. He knows it's been hard for her, too. She’s been hurt and isn’t quick to trust — or Oz forbid love. For her, Fiyero can try to 'look before he leaps' (as she says), because Elphaba Thropp is worth it.
Anyone else? Well, he’s only human. Which brings us to Tuesday.
Tuesdays are the worst day of the week; the longest classes, the most boring professors, and worst of all zero opportunities to meet Elphaba because she has her sorcery lab, after which she always needs quiet time to decompress. Fiyero understands this, of course he does. And if that decompression time is sometimes spent out for a run with Feldspur, he can understand that, too, since it was his idea. He often takes Feldspur for a ride when he needs to clear his head, and he's spectacularly happy his best friend and his not-girlfriend get along so well. So well in fact, they spend Tuesdays together more often than not, without him. It's great. He's massively happy. Only thing that will make him happier is when Tuesday will be over.
Tuesdays are also half-price drinks and appetizers at the pub in town, so maybe the whole day isn't a loss. It's no Ozdust, but since deciding he doesn't actually want to get expelled from Shiz, not having school night ragers at a technically illegal - although the reasons are bullshit- nightclub are not something he's too sorry to be without at the moment. A good dinner, a few beers, and in bed by midnight when Terrible Tuesday is over and Wonderful Wednesday can start (wonderful because of two classes with Elphaba plus their weekly political science study session).
This particular Tuesday, The Gershwin is much more crowded than usual. Fiyero recognizes most of his Ozian Law 201 class and several of the senior Law students he's met so far drinking deeply with a small crowd of older, somewhat more professional looking folks still in their business clothes, but with their top buttons open and their cheeks already turning pink. A fellow 201 student, and one of the only other Arjiki at Shiz, Kipp Quelala, sees him and waves him down emphatically.
"Fiyero! My lord!" he bows his head in drunken solemnity, nearly colliding with the sticky table top, "I didn't know you were coming tonight, we'd have saved you a seat!"
Fiyero frowns slightly in confusion, "What did I miss?"
"We are celebrating!"
"Celebrating what?"
"It’s the Tony!
"What's a tony?" he tries to clarify, but Kipp is now giggling half in Ozian and half in Arjiki, but someone else finally shouts"It's his birthday!"
He shouldn't, really, but how often do you get to celebrate a Tony? "Well in that case, next round is on me," Fiyero cries, flagging down a waitress and settling himself into the booth.
Fiyero doesn’t entirely remember when he made it back to his dorm that night, but he did remember to take off his boots and leave himself several glasses of water around the room for in the morning, so really it wasn't as bad as it could have been. The banging on the door he could do without, though.
He slouches his way across to the door, pleased to find it locked, and turns the bolt to answer the pounding. He meets Elphaba's frown at eye level, which is surprising considering how much taller than her he is.
"Oh," she says, looking him up and down quickly, "I'm sorry, I didn't know you were sick. You weren't at breakfast, and I…" she hesitates, and had he been fully awake it would have made his heart jump a little to see her flustered, "I didn't want you to be late for law."
He blinks at her a few times, then steps away from the door to let her in if she wants, but he needs to sit back down.
"I don't think anyone is going to be in law this morning," he says, claiming the closest water cup. "I came late and left early and I might still be drunk. No way half of them are even awake yet."
He can feel Elphaba's disappointment from across the room as she closes the door significantly louder than necessary, earning her a startled meow from the orange cat who had been sleeping in the chair next to the door. Her lecture dies in her throat.
"Fiyero what the fuck is that?" she asks, pointing at the orange fluffball who was absolutely not there the last time she was in the dorm.
Fiyero turns his head too quickly at Elphaba's uncharacteristic swearing, also noticing the cat for the first time that morning. Next to the chair is a large, empty cardboard box and three classes of water, one knocked over onto the tiled floor.
"That's a cat," he says matter of factly.
"You got drunk and stole a cat!?"
"Not stole, rescued. Look at the poor baby, he's filthy!"
Elphaba huffs. "He's also clearly socialized or he would have scratched you to ribbons."
"About that, actually…" he looks at his legs, which he now realizes are pantsless, and inspects the poorly bandaged sizable scratch across his thigh from where he learned the box he was carrying the cat home in had a notable gap in the bottom and the gentleman inside was not enjoying the bumpy ride. There hadn't exactly been a plethora of options to carry the poor fellow home in, and the box was far too large for someone in Fiyero's state of inebriation to be balancing with a moving cat inside. He'd found him wandering around outside the bar, clearly too friendly with the drunk patrons to be feral, and too dirty and far away from the residential part of town to have snuck out that night. He'd lured the fluffy thing into the box with smashing success, thank you very much Elphaba, and set him up with water and a blanket once back in the room.
Elphaba pinches her nose, not having it in her to actually scold her friend when she knows she would have done exactly the same thing.
She sighs. "Ok, ok, just grab a shower. We'll set him up in the bathroom while we're in class, and then figure out what to do next when we get back."
"That's a lot of we" he says, his eyebrows perking up.
"Well," she looks over at him and she's lucky he's drunk or he would see how soft her expression is and he'd know exactly how far she lets her mask slip before replacing it with practiced certainty, "do you what to see how many other places he can scratch up when you give him a bath by yourself?"
Fiyero watches as the cat stretches and yawns; all 20 claws and a mouthful of teeth clearly visible. He gracefully slinks down off the chair to rub against Elphaba's boot and mew, his filthy tail sending dust and orange fur sailing into the air. Yeah, they both really need to be washed.
"Thank you," Fiyero mumbles, gathering a set of clean clothes and heading into the bathroom while Elphaba collects the various water cups. He watches her look through this little cubby of dishware and select a small bowl, pouring the water into the easier to drink from dish and setting it down in front of the cat.
As he expected, over half of their law class is missing, but it doesn't stop the professor from talking for their entire two hours anyway. When Fiyero is able to peel his eyes open, he notices Elphaba's notes aren't just about vocabulary. She also has a spare piece of paper with a checklist: find meat, bath, litter box, missing posters, vet visit, and some smaller writting he can't make out. When the professor finally shows mercy and releases them, Elphaba is all business.
"Okay, you need coffee-" Lurline bless this woman —"and kitty needs meat. So when you go to the cafeteria, see if you can find some chicken or fish or anything that's plain that he can eat. I'll go back to my room and very carefully steal a shoe box from Galinda and bring it and my unscented soap back to your room. Okay?"
He doesn't actually have time to say okay before she's running off, but that's not unusual. An hour later and both Fiyero and kitty have been fed, a morning edition of The Shiz Gazette has been gleefully shredded and stuffed into a shoebox as a temporary kitty toilet, and there is nothing else to do to avoid their next task: bath time.
All three of them are in the bathroom. Fiyero and Elphaba have their shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbow and Elphaba’s skirt is tied in a knot at her side to keep it from soaking in the tub. Kitty is blissfully unaware of the next step.
“Are you sure you can’t levitate him?” Fiyero asks as he gingerly steps into the tub, having lost the coin toss and now being the one to sit in the water and hold the cat while Elphaba scrubs him down. Technically, getting into the water is the gentlemanly thing to do since all of his clothes live here, compared to Elphaba who would have to either strip down or walk back to her room soaked - but who was he to pass up an opportunity to see her wet and disheveled? He’s a coin-toss-loser sitting fully clothed in a shallow bath, that’s who.
“No,” she says glumly, “I don’t want to risk it. I still sometimes send things flying and I don’t want to hurt him.”
Considering he’s the one about to get hurt, Fiyero slightly wishes they could risk it, but he also accepts her answer without further comment.
She picks up the kitty and slowly lowers him into the tub, giving him a chance to get used to the temperature and the sensation. To their surprise, he seems to be alright with just standing in the water, both of them giving him head scratches and pets with wet hands. Elphaba soaps up her fingers, lathering him up while Fiyero gently holds him still. It’s going surprisingly well - until it’s time to rinse. Wet hands are one thing- a bowl full of water on his back is another.
He bolts and both humans lunge at the same time, which in hindsight wouldn’t help calm anyone down, let alone a stray cat. He’s now soapy and slippery, so Fiyero’s hands slip around, not able to hold him still anymore. The sloshing water isn't helping either. He instead scoops the cat up and holds him to his shoulder, gently pressing him down with both arms across his back. Fiyero feels the claws digging in, getting purchase and tearing the shirt, but after a few seconds the cat is no longer trying to escape, though he’s absolutely not retracting the claws any time soon.
“Ok I got him,” he tells Elphaba, “just dump the water over both of us to get it over with.”
She dumps a full bowl of water over both of them, but since the cat is clinging so high up on Fiyero’s shoulder it lands more over his face than he expected. Fiyero splutters and should be upset, but Elphaba’s apologizing and laughing as his hair sticks to his face and it’s honestly the best sound he’s ever heard. The second cascade of water is more on the cat. As Fiyero gently rakes his fingers through the soaked fur to get the bubbles out he can feel the poor animal relaxing as he realizes he’s not actually being drowned.
“See,” Fiyero says in a calm voice, “it’s gonna be ok little guy. We’ve got you, almost done.”
Elphaba is extra gentle about rinsing the enormous fluffy tail as Fiyero winces from the renewed depth of the kitty’s back claws in his chest, but she’s as quick as she can be under the circumstances. Finally, she steps back and grabs the giant towel from the rack and drapes it across the cat’s back. She gingerly tucks it around the cat’s side, then starts to pry him off of Fiyero’s ruined shirt. Wrapped up in the warm fabric, the cat allows her exactly one minute to rub his head dry before he starts frantically trying to squirm his way out. Elphaba talks to him in the same calm voice as Fiyero did, cooing and mumbling about what a good boy he is and how they’re going to take care of him as she tries to at least touch the towel to each bodypart. Fiyero watches her with soft eyes; her hair is falling away from the bun she’s pulled it up into, and her attempt to stay dry was completely futile. Her crisp blue shirt is soaked across her chest where she’s holding the towel and her skirt is clinging to her legs where the heavy cotton got splashed during soaping. Usually Elphaba would be distraught at being seen so un-put-together, but now her focus is solely on the cat in her arms and she has no idea how beautiful she looks. She gives up on drying.
“Good enough” she says, and sets the cat on the floor before opening the bathroom door. The soggy ginger mass sprints out and under the bed - as Elphaba expected - where he can hide and lick himself in the warmth of the blanket they set up under there for him. She turns and offers a hand to help Fiyero out of the bathtub. Once he’s up, she immediately turns her attention to the scratches on his chest. She leans in close, her fingers hovering over the ripped fabric, and winces a little in sympathy.
“We should clean those up,” she says, before something changes in her face and she takes two solid steps back, her hands pulling away from him as if she burned them. “Or, you should I mean. You don’t want me touching- I mean- I’ll just-” she turns so fast she slips a little but she’s out the door and closing it behind her before Fiyero can even say anything. He stands there dripping, trying to understand why she left so quickly. He peals off his trousers, shorts, and shirt, putting on the dry slacks they’d set up on the sink. He finds his bandaid box in the oversink cabinet as usual, though half the contents are scattered on the little shelf from his drunken-self putting it away open and upside down. He half expects Elphaba to be gone when he opens the bathroom door again, but instead she’s laying on her belly with one arm stretched out under the bed, heaping praise on the cat for being “So brave.”
He clears his throat but she doesn’t reply. He tries again, “Elphaba, can you help me out?” He could do it himself, but it would be easier for her to do it, and he maybe likes the idea of her hands on his chest. He’s an opportunist like that.
Elphaba stands up slowly and takes the box he’s holding out for her. She looks at it pensive, clearly trying to decide how to ask the question she needs to ask.
“Are you sure you’re ok with… I can go get Kipp..or Galinda.” She’s still looking at the box, and Fiyero hates that she won’t meet his eyes, her usually direct, unwavering shelf suddenly so wobbly.
He could take this moment to make a declaration about how badly he wants her to touch him, or to curse the name of everyone who ever made her feel like her touch was poisonous, or to recite Arjiki poetry about the beauty of green in the mountains. But all of that would require acknowledging there might be a reason for him to hesitate at having her green fingers touching his person, and he doesn’t want to do that. Instead he plays the fool, as he prefers to do.
“Why?” he asks. “Does it look like it needs stitches?”
She looks up at him, finally, then to his shoulder. “No?”
“Then there should be enough bandages in there.”
She holds his gaze just long enough for her to nod lightly, then returns to her task-focused self. As she presses the last bandage in place her fingers linger for just a second longer than necessary.
“Thank you,” he says, his voice lower and heavier than he expected it to be. Her eyes dart up, registering for the first time just how close their faces are since she stepped into his space to assess the damage. She steps back, silently putting the tube of antiseptic cream back into the box and closing it with a decisive snap.
“I’m gonna go call the vet, see when he can fit us in,” she says, a deep emerald blush visible across her nose. She steps into her boots, not bothering to lace them, and slides her bookbag across her shoulder as she beelines out the door, her vest and jacket forgotten on the chair.
A week later, nobody has replied to the missing/found posters, or checked in with the vet about a lost cat. Fiyero and Elphaba are experts at not saying things they're both thinking very loudly, and it's become clear they are both not talking about the fact that the cat doesn't have a former home to return to.
"He can't stay here you know," Elphaba finally says during her now daily visits. She always says it's just to check in - Has anyone claimed the cat? Is he doing alright? Does Fiyero have enough supplies?- but to Fiyero's immense joy the pretense falls away quickly as Elphaba and the cat curl up in the armchair for a snuggle, or lay down in a sunbeam on the bed like they are now. She slides the cat off her belly and onto the comforter, sitting up and facing him with a seriousness he wasn't expecting.
"If they find him they'll kick you out of the dorms. It might not mean expulsion, but it will make things messy with the headmistress and you've worked so hard this term, Yero."
The earnest acknowledgment catches him entirely off guard, so he deflects with a joke, "I'll bunk with Feldspur, it'll be fine."
Elphaba rolls her eyes and lets the topic drop for now, instead making herself busy collecting her notebooks and the pens the cat hasn't stolen to get ready to go back to her own room. "Well, wherever he lives, he really needs a name."
"He has a name," Fiyero says.
"Oh?"
"Katlinite."
Elphaba's eyes narrow, "Well, that's certainly a name. Why?"
Fiyero hesitates, another deflection already on his tongue. He knows Elphaba struggles against her own knee-jerk reactions when they're alone together. Her biting retorts are still usually instant but, at least with him, she follows with a real response more often than not. Sometimes he swears he can hear the voice inside her head stopping and starting sentences in order to choose the most accurate way to say what she means instead of just going for the quickest or meanest phrasing. She was vulnerable with him when she said she's worried about his housing and he didn't reciprocate, but now he can give her the same effort.
"Do you want the long answer or the short one?" he asks.
Curiosity blooms across her face, "The long one."
"So, Feldspur's name is a pun," he starts, checking her face to see if she's still interested after his indirect beginning. People who don't want to really know, who are only being polite, don't usually keep listening after this point. She is. "Feldspar - with an A- is the name for most of the minerals in the Earth's crust. But he's a Horse so… Feldspur with a U …like spurs."
He watches as Elphaba tries and fails to swallow a smile. He keeps going, now talking with his hands, too, as his enthusiasm rises to meet his embarrassment. "And feldspar - with an A- when its weathered can become kaolinite. So… Katlinite. Almost like… Little Fledspur," he finishes somewhat lamely, embarrassment winning as he realizes that the pun is far from obvious now that he's said it out loud.
But instead of looking at him with boredom, or like he's weird, Elphaba is grinning ear to ear.
"I had no idea you knew so much about geology," she says.
"Rocks are cool," he says with a shrug. "If I could choose I would have been a geology major, but neither my parents or my ego would allow it." It's true; his parents wanted him to study something that would make him a better ruler and his ego wanted him to study something that people envied or admired. He's shallow like that sometimes.
“Law shows better than dirt” he says.
"Well," says Elphaba playfully, "maybe next time someone calls you stupid you should throw one of your really cool rocks at them. Or maybe I will," she adds with a warm smile.
She's still smiling as she puts on her boots and waves goodbye to them both. The warmth in Fiyero's belly stays until he falls asleep.
More often than Fiyero likes to admit, Elphaba is right. Katlinite can't live in the dorms and he absolutely doesn't want to be on an administrative shit list if he can avoid it. The obvious answer is to turn Katlinite over to a shelter or find someone in town to take him, but he really, really doesn't want to do that. Riding around town with Feldspur, they try to come up with a different plan to keep their newest addition when the next most obvious, though significantly less logistically simple, solution comes into view.
The FOR RENT sign in the yard of the house across the pedestrian bridge from campus is perfect. It only takes the remainder of one Terrible Tuesday to sign the papers, order some basic furniture for delivery, and get most of his room packed up. Feldspur compliments him on his determination and initiative in setting things in motion without his usual foot-dragging.
But when Elphaba comes into his room on Wednesday morning and sees almost everything packed up she looks like she's going to cry.
"They kicked out you out!?" she asks, her eyes wide and panicked as she takes in the neatly stacked boxes waiting for the movers. She stands frozen in the doorway, immediately beginning a frantic apology, "I'm so sorry Fiyero. I shouldn't have encouraged you to keep him, but I liked coming over, and we should have left him at the vet or something and instead I just got carried away and now you—"
Fiyero realizes with a terrible drop in his stomach he's completely forgotten to tell Elphaba his plans. He takes two quick steps towards her, scooping up Katinite on the way to keep him from slinking through the open door.
"Nope, nope stop that," he says as he flops Katlinite into her arms, effectively breaking her train of thought. "I'm not kicked out, I'm not in trouble, and if I was it was my choice not yours. So just, stop, ok?"
She accepts the cat, but still looks at Fiyero with panic.
"You were right," he says plainly, her panic momentarily blinked away by shock at how easily he admitted that. "He can't stay in the dorms and I don't want to get in trouble. So I got a house," he explains like it’s obvious - since to him it is- "I'm moving in tomorrow after the furniture gets delivered."
The speed at which Elphaba switches from panicked and guilty to simply incredulous seems to cause her physical pain. Her eyes press shut tightly and her fingers splay out with each syllable as she says "You bought a house for your cat!?"
"No," he answers with a small laugh, "I rented a house so I could keep my cat. And," he adds as an afterthought, "cook some decent not-Shiz food. Katlinite is happy to keep eating flavorless chicken but I'm not."
Elphaba huffs, not a laugh exactly but at least she’s calming down. She flounders for something to say before deciding on simply, "You're ridiculous."
He shrugs, then steps back to finish closing the box he'd been working on before she came in. He gathers up his bag for the day while Elphaba sets the cat up in the bathroom - just in case- before he suddenly remembers something.
"Here," he says, tossing a small keyring to her from out of his bag's side pocket. She catches it, her eyebrows scrunching together as she stops walking to stare at it.
"What's this?" she asks lamely.
"Your key," Fiyero answers, his own eyebrows coming together in confusion at her confusion.
She doesn't reply, but looks up at him with an unreadable expression.
"Just because it's off campus doesn't mean you're suddenly unwelcome." He sees the gears turning in her head and a refusal forming on her lips so he speaks before she can. "Don't you know it's bad luck to separate a witch from her familiar? I can’t have that."
She doesn't say anything, but she nods, her chin tipping down towards her chest in an attempt to hide the smile spreading across her face. She slips the key into her skirt pocket and starts walking again. He could tell her about the writing desk and highback chair he ordered for her, but as he watches her walk with a little extra something in her step, he decides to wait. Elphaba may not like surprises, but he loves to make her smile enough to risk it.