Megameganftw - The Philosophy Club
Title: The Philosophy Club
Verse: Book
Pairing: Gelphie
Rating: Pg-13 and a half?
Summary: Elphaba thinks. Glinda wishes she could speak.
Word Count: 1,524. I'm so proud.
Note: A trip to the Philosophy Club is not included in this story. :)
It was near the end of term, and it was much too hot to stay inside. Elphaba was stretched beneath a tree in the grounds, a few books strewn about her, papers tucked half-heartedly between the sheets. She wasn’t really working, but that didn’t stop her from menacingly eying anyone who made as if to disturb her. (Nessa had already started towards her and stumbled off again more than once.)
The truth was, it was too hot to work. The whole of Crage Hall littered the lawn, each of the girls in various stages of inactivity. Miss ShenShen was chatting with a girl that Elphaba knew by sight, a skinny little thing with whisker hair and copper wire for brains. Nessa, in one of her Elphaba-divergences, had stumbled over to them, sitting and then staring off at the trees and the clouds or down at her slim white legs, not listening to a word they said. Nanny stood on one foot, sweating gently about the neck and bosom.
Elphaba watched the lot of them. Occasionally her eyes traveled over to the ironwork benches against the high-bricked wall of the yard, keeping an eye on Galinda. Miss Pfannee was looking delighted at something that she had said, her hands fluttering about her as she crowed with laughter. Elphaba thought that she looked as if she were drowning. Miss Milla seemed to have disappeared somewhere. Galinda’s eyes slid over to where Elphaba was and then slid past.
Elphaba noted that Galinda’s curls didn’t glimmer quite as brilliantly when she sat in the shadow of the brick wall. For once, she seemed to have chosen comfort over beauty.
Elphaba made a face, something between a smirk and a frown, and looked away. She too often needled them, perhaps. But there just seemed to be no point to it all. One of the book’s pages fluttered in the wind, and she reached absently to shut it.
All the show, the presentation. And for what? Elphaba wondered what their mothers had told them about life. About love.
Elphaba knew enough about love. She was Melena’s daughter. And even if she didn’t know about Melena’s first rendezvous with the stable boy, all tight skin and hard smell (In the barn; she had thought it romantic.), she knew of the dragonsnaking with Turtle Heart in the sticky afternoon air, soft cries of lies and love that sighed heavily through the house and out into the yard where Elphaba had been told to play.
Of course, she didn’t trick herself into thinking that she knew more about bedroom affairs than any of the rest of them did. But she knew enough to understand that it was nothing so special as the Misses thought it to be. All hype and hope and gentle morning air on their untouched and blushing cheeks. All glitter and glimmering eyes of faraway.
The best to do, Elphaba thought, would be to just get it done with. That first time. And then dispose of the childish idea that anything was ever special.
She gathered her things and went to sweat in the warm closeness of the library. Glinda let a tinkling laugh into the air behind her. Milla’s soft footsteps returned her to the bench and to her friends.
*
A tall, wiry girl stood alone in a room that had slowly fallen silent, mugs scratching warmly across the wood of the countertops, boots stilling on the rungs of scatted barstools, fingers pressed to hushing lips.
Glinda closed her eyes and a happy feeling spread to her toes-or was it the wine?-and she wanted to fall into the warm sounds of Elphaba’s voice and never escape.
*
Elphaba learned soon enough that all it takes is grief, silly globs of saffron cream, and too much wine in order for a society girl to forget herself and her ideals.
Meek orange streetlamps were soaked into the black streets, joined by the silly-swift movements of eight eager pairs of teenage feet, one pair of small, beaded ones beside those of a strong-minded old woman, and the last of a fierce young girl.
They all wanted to go to the Philosophy Club: Avaric because it is the role of boys like him to deign to do so; Boq because he wanted to prove something to himself; Glinda because she wanted to prove something to everyone else; Nessarose because she didn’t want to be alone.
Elphaba wrapped her fingers firmly around the skin of Glinda’s wrist. Even if Glinda did not know it, she wanted to hold onto the silly notion that sex is for love and is not just a toy. It was something Elphaba had grown to love about her, and now was not the time for her to lose herself and her glitter-sprinkled dreams.
*
Glinda rested her cheek against the warm train window, her eyes gazing ahead. There was nothing to see there that she hadn’t seen a million times before-the slow, lazy waters of the Suicide Canal, the side brick wall of the Peach and Kidneys, the pitched, steep spires of Briscoe Hall above the trees. But, somehow, it felt essential to look. Elphaba’s fingers were tucked softly into hers.
She wanted to explain to Elphaba. About the Philosophy Club. She planned on trying that night, but she did not. The small fire in the corner of the room gleamed and glimmered on Elphaba’s hair like warm sparks as she turned away, toward the wall, and stepped out of her frock. It was not the place.
It never really was. The bumps of the road beneath the carriage wheels made her feel slightly nauseated. She grasped loosely at Elphaba’s fingers. If she held onto Elphaba, she reasoned, then she could hold onto herself. Hold onto the world. A half sort of world that was muted warmth and clouds outside. She tried not to catch reflections of her matted hair in the carriage window as she looked out. It reminded her that the world was looking back.
She knew that it would be the last night. Elphaba didn’t necessarily say so, and the drivers of the convoy refused to suggest anything at all, but there was a general restlessness present in the group.
She wanted to say something. Rain fell hard against the glass of the window, more roar than patter. Glinda nuzzled into Elphaba and poised her fingertips against the girl’s back.
That night, with their friends. She had wanted to go. She hadn’t. Maybe. She didn’t know.
She had wanted to be with Elphaba. It crushed in her small chest. It ached her. She knew better. She convinced herself that she was terrified of the storm and clung to her half of the world, wanting only to feel whole again.
Elphaba gently held the quivering figure in her arms, almost able to convince herself that Glinda was terrified of the storm.
Girls who are terrified of storms still believe in something special. Still believe in something special that happens right, candles and soft, strumming music, not a guttering fireplace filled with ash, streams of water down loose windowpanes.
Elphaba wasn’t ready to take those dreams from her. Eventually, Glinda stopped trembling and fell into a fitful sleep.
She wanted to cry.
*
She tripped over a loose shoe as they stumbled into the wall, nearly tumbling him to the floor with her, uneven hard planking and rough smells of rain that had leaked in long ago.
She turned her face to the side and he scratched his thin beard against her neck. It was not an unpleasant feeling.
When they had finished, he wanted to lay and talk to her, stroke the soft hair that reminded him of waterfalls standing still. Elphaba pried herself away, pulled on her boots, and made her way home, thinking that her back would be sore the next day. The moon stole glances at her between gray peeks of cloud as she tried to make herself invisible to the world.
*
Glinda smiled at him across the table-but not too brightly. A smile that labeled her loving wife, but No thanks, not tonight. He took her hand, the underside of his fingers rough, but somehow soft.
It was not what she had thought it would be. On her wedding night, she stepped on a discarded tiara with her small, bare foot and cried out. He gathered her in his arms and carried her to a bed that was gently lit by the candles scattered about the room.
In the middle of the night, she crept out of the room and to the parlor, where the last dregs of a fire hummed away in the hearth. It was good to be away from the soft sheets and the faint smell of blood that the covers didn’t quite mask.
She looked up at the half-moon through the window, smiling somewhere inside herself. Her heart felt expanded in her chest, reaching beyond herself, out into the night. She found that she was sad to realize that her life had turned out exactly as she had always hoped it would.