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In the nights following the dance at the Ozdust Ballroom, Elphaba found it very hard to sleep.To be fair, her dorm room had never felt all that restful. Every inch of the small, shared space was Galinda-fied to the point of sensory overload. The wall of glittery shoes, which caught even the tiniest slivers of light like disco balls. Clouds of flowery perfume battling competing clouds of fruity shampoo. Pink clothes carpeting the floor – clothes that Galinda always seemed shocked to find still crumpled wherever she’d left them. That was the kind of person that Elphaba’s roommate was: she made messes for other people to clean up.That is, until the Ozdust Ballroom. As much as it had hurt, realizing that her smart new hat was the latest kick-me sign some cruel girl had decided to pin on her, the betrayal was as natural to Elphaba’s school career as homework. There had always been cruel girls. Elphaba knew how to stride through the pranks with her head held high; Oz knew she’d had ample practice.Galinda’s sudden kindness had been much harder to bear. What was Elphaba supposed to do, watching her own hulking movements made beautiful on Galinda’s lithe frame? Her default in a crowded room was to scowl, scare, make the artichoke jokes before anyone else could – but the crowd embraced her the way crowds never had, and Elphaba found herself at a loss. All she could do was let Galinda lead her in her first ever dance, her roommate’s perfume/shampoo combo smelling sweeter than it usually did.The makeover was even worse. Elphaba had prepared herself for every rotten thing the world could dump on her, but she found herself flattened by a manicured hand tucking a flower behind her ear. From that moment on, she became possessed by odd, uninvited feelings. Tremors in her stomach and a fuzzy hotness in her head. She considered asking Madame Morrible if she knew what the affliction could be, but the last thing she needed was the Head Shiztress beginning to view her as weak.By throwing herself into her studies and the caretaking of Nessa’s every need, Elphaba was mostly able to distract herself from her new condition. At night, however, there was nowhere to run from her rebelling body. Lying prone in her glittery room, listening to the rise and fall of Galinda’s gentle breathing, Elphaba burned with something like shame.-“Elphie?” Galinda whispered in the middle of the eighth sleepless night since the dance.Elphaba balled her hands in her sheets, focusing on the familiar discomfort of the green bottle under her pillow. “Yes?”“Aha! I knew it.” There was a creak as Galinda swung her legs off of her bed. “What was rule number one of your journey to popularification?”There had been a lot of rules over the past few days. Elphaba should have been taking notes. “The hair? The tossing - ?”“Beauty sleep.”Elphaba yelped at the sudden weight on her bed. Galinda could move in total silence when she wasn’t wearing her ridiculous heels.“I can handle a challenge,” Galinda said. “Your complete and utter lack of fashion sense – fine. The greenity – who doesn’t love a jewel tone? The way you yell at anyone who looks at you funny – and sometimes you spit when you do that, I don’t know if you’ve noticed - ” “It’s late,” Elphaba said, rubbing her temples.“Yes! It’s very late, and yet you’re still awake, which means that you’re going to have those horrible bags under your eyes again. A challenge is one thing, but if you’re not going to do the basics, I may need to take my talents elsewhere.”“Be my guest,” Elphaba said, pulling the covers more thoroughly around herself.“Oh, Elphie, you don’t mean that, do you?” Galinda flounced across the bed, crushing Elphaba’s shins.“No, I suppose I don’t. You know, there’s a nice big bed waiting for you right across the room.”“Why haven’t you been sleeping?” Galinda asked. “You were practically snoring in Dr. Dillamond’s class today, and I can hardly blame you, but you usually love that kind of snoozifying stuff.”“I’m not used to being away from Nessa,” Elphaba said, which technically wasn’t a lie. “There’s never been more than a wall separating us. I worry about her.”“Of course. But she’s doing so well – and that sweet Biq just follows her everywhere. Doesn’t that make you feel a little better?”“A little.” Elphaba’s legs were beginning to fall asleep. She drew them out from under Galinda, hugging them to her chest. “But not knowing where she is and what she’s doing…if something were to happen…”“She’s not a child,” Galinda said gently. “And you’re not her mother.”She has no mother because of you, said the brittle voice that lived at the back of Elphaba’s head. Partly her father’s, partly her own.Galinda sighed. “You really should stop glowering all the time. You’ll give yourself wrinkles.”“As shocking as this might be to someone as invariably vapid as yourself, my appearance is not always at the top of my mind,” Elphaba snapped. “I have real problems to worry about.”It wasn’t like Galinda to go more than a moment without babbling about this important party or that fancy new dress. As the silence between them stretched on, Elphaba waited, keeping herself stone-still. Soon, the fury would come. Galinda would request a new roommate by morning, and the past week would become nothing but a blip in the natural order of Elphaba’s solitary life.The covers were yanked out of Elphaba’s grasp. Elphaba cringed against the headboard; Galinda didn’t seem the type to start a physical fight, but you never knew, with the popular girls. As Elphaba had learned the hard way during childhood, the preppy ones were often the most vicious.Galinda clamored up to Elphaba’s side, snuggling herself under the blanket. “Someone’s cranky,” she said cheerily, wrapping an arm around Elphaba’s shoulders. “Which makes sense, doesn’t it? You’re beauty sleep-deficient. You’re suffering from a lack of BS.”“Galinda - ”“Don’t you worry. I know just the thing.” Galinda rested her cheek on Elphaba’s head. “This is what momsie used to do when I had bad dreams at home. You’d be surprised what a good hug can cure.”“Why are you being so nice to me?” Elphaba blurted out.Galinda’s thumb stroked a small circle on Elphaba’s bicep. “I suppose someone has to be,” she said. “And for the record, your appearance is a real problem.”Elphaba tried and failed to hide a laugh. Although she kept telling herself that she’d insist Galinda return to her own bed in just one more minute, she awoke the next morning still cradled in her roommate’s arms, feeling blissfully refreshed. -According to Galinda, the bags under her eyes had started to abate. Small wonder, since Elphaba was sleeping like a log. Each night, Galinda would wordlessly slide into her bed after she finished brushing out her golden hair; Elphaba would keep her arms meticulously pinned to her sides, fully expecting her delirious stroke of luck to come to an end. But Galinda kept coming back.As much as Elphaba cherished the amount of energy she now had every morning, the nightly ritual wasn’t exactly helping with her mysterious ailment. When she passed Galinda in the halls, thoughts arose unbidden of the way Galinda’s breath warmed her ear as the sun started to pour throw their dorm window. Elphaba found herself staring at the Gillikinese girl during class, earning dirty looks from Pfannee and Shenshen. Her face was perpetually flushed, her palms unpleasantly sweaty. Of all the magical outbursts she’d dealt with thus far, this might have been the worst.To her horror, it wasn’t only her gossip-minded classmates who were beginning to take notice. After a particularly dreadful performance in her weekly seminar (she could barely keep her wand in her sweaty hands), Elphaba was asked to see Madame Morrible after class. The disappointment on her face brought up a lump in Elphaba’s throat.“Now, Miss Elphaba,” Madame Morrible said, shuffling some papers on her desk. An emerald sheet of stationary fluttered to the floor by Elphaba’s feet; she was able to read the words ‘FROM THE DESK OF THE WONDERFUL WIZARD OF OZ’ before forcing her attention back to her professor. “I’m hoping you might be able to assist me with locating a missing student.”“Oh – of course, who - ?”“My star pupil,” Madame Morrible said. “A viridescent young woman who’s as hard-working as she is naturally talentated. Do you have any idea where she might be hiding?”Elphaba wilted. “As a matter of fact, I’ve been looking for her myself.” “We all have our off days,” Madame Morrible said, softening slightly. “Although it seems like you might be experiencing one of the rarer ‘off months.’ If this seminar is proving to be too much for you, I’d prefer to know now.”“It’s not,” Elphaba said, hands clenched at her sides. “I’m sorry, Madame. I don’t know what’s come over me lately.”“Do you mind if I posit a guess?”Elphaba nodded, glad for any input.“It was good of you to include your roommate in our studies,” Madame Morrible said carefully. “Too good, some might say. As much as Miss Galinda might wish she possessed your way with the magicks, she will never achieve a tenth of your abilities without Wizardly intervention. She’s slowing us down, my dear. You’ve already taken too much of your precious time trying to clear the cobwebs from that blonde brain.”“With all due respect, Galinda is smarter than you think,” Elphaba said, that hot fuzziness in her head flaring up. “Sure, she might need a training wand for her training wand, but she’s trying. She really is. She thinks about your lectures long after you stop giving them; when we’re studying, she asks me so many questions I can hardly supply the answers fast enough. ‘What gives potions their potency?’ ‘Why are some spells purely somatic, while others make you speak?’ And she’s thoughtful in other ways, too – ways I never would have assumed, I’m embarrassed to admit, if you hadn’t forced us together. She can be quite empathetic when she allows herself to be. Did you know that she went against her friends just to make me feel like I wasn’t all the things I am – a freak, an outcast? Imagine! Someone who looks like her, risking her place in our idiotic social hierarchy for someone who looks like me.”Elphaba caught herself rambling. She began to apologize, but the look on Madame Morrible’s face quelled her words.Her teacher was watching her the way that Nessa’s childhood cat used to watch birds. Stock-still and laser-focused. Madame Morrible’s eyebrows had climbed considerably up her forehead, her lips slightly parted. She looked as though she’d just made some fascinating discovery.“You’re quite right,” Madame Morrible said, snatching up the fallen piece of stationary. “Perhaps Miss Galinda is more powerful than I’ve given her credit for.”There was a rap at the door. A man in a bowler hat and thick, round glasses stuck his head in. “So sorry to interrupt,” he said, flashing a unnaturally white smile. “When you have a minute, Madame, I’ve got the cage that you - ”“Yes, very good,” Madame Morrible said. “You’ll have to excuse me, Elphaba, dear – my schedule waits for no witch.”“Of course.”“I appreciate you staying for a few minutes,” Madame Morrible said as Elphaba slung her bag over her shoulder. “This has been a most enlightening chat.”-On the nights that Galinda spent at Fiyero’s, Elphaba was plagued with dreams.In them, Elphaba looked down to find her forearms devoid of any green – they were gloriously tan, albeit thicker than she was used to. Her braid no longer trailed down her back; she could hardly feel her hair at all, there was so little of it.Galinda appeared soon after these discoveries, running her fingers through Elphaba’s short hair, over the tan arms. Elphaba tried to ask her what was going on, but her voice came out deep and wrong. As Galinda began unbuttoning Elphaba’s red vest, Elphaba noticed a large, ornate mirror – or a glassy lake, or a window, it varied by dream – and saw that her body was Fiyero’s. She always woke with a start, almost rolling off of her depressingly empty bed.One night, after Galinda had left for her date with Fiyero, Elphaba prepared to go to sleep like she was heading off to war. She slipped on her scratchiest nightgown, put her hair in her tightest braid, and read a hundred pages of A History of Munchkinland’s Anti-Animal Atrocities. Even as her eyes grew heavy, Elphaba forced herself to get through another few chapters, determined to only drift off when her mind was as far as possible from anything soft and pretty.The next thing she knew, Elphaba was staring at her Fiyero-reflection, Galinda’s hands moving up those insanely tight Winky pants. “Wait,” she tried to say. “It’s not what you think - ”Elphaba was jerked back to consciousness, awaiting the usual near-collision with the dorm floor. Instead, she connected solidly with another person lying in her bed. Panicking, she began stumbling through one of the incantations she’d been practicing for her seminar, her hands clumsily imitating what Madame Morrible had taught her. “Sweet Oz, don’t hex me,” Galinda said, grabbing her wrists. “Still so jumpy. We’ll add that to our list of things to work on.”“Is it tomorrow?” Elphaba said blearily. “Why aren’t you with Fiyero?”“No, it’s still tonight. I left.” Galinda released her wrists, flopping her head down on Elphaba’s sternum. “Men are beasts. Did you know that? Primitive, uncaring beasts.”“What did he do?”“He didn’t propose. Again.”“Well, it’s only been - ”“Forever,” Galinda spat. “I’ve worn out my wardrobe. I’ve seen the inside of every restaurant within fifteen miles of Shiz. How much longer until he makes up his mind?” Elphaba hoped that Galinda couldn’t feel her heartbeat ticking up. Chewing on her lip, she focused on keeping her breathing even.Galinda seemed to take her silence as a condemnation. “What? You think he already has?”“I’m sure he’ll propose soon. Maybe he’s waiting for the right moment.”“He’s never waited for anything in his life. If he wants something, he takes it.” A tear plopped onto Elphaba’s chest. “Why doesn’t he want me?”Elphaba gingerly patted Galinda’s back. “He does. You know he does.”“I don’t know anything anymore,” Galinda sobbed, the floodgates fully opened. “I feel so – average.”“If he doesn’t want you, then he’s lost his mind entirely,” Elphaba said, wiping away one of Galinda’s tears without thinking.Galinda’s sobs subsided. She pressed her ear harder against Elphaba’s chest. “Are you alright?”“What - ? Yes. Of course I am.”“Your heart’s pounding.” Brow furrowed with concern, Galinda sat up, examining her roommate closely. “Do you need to go to the infirmary?”“No,” Elphaba said tersely. Galinda was too close, her perfume overwhelming.“Are you sure? We could ask the nurse to come here, if you’re not well enough to move,” Galinda said. As she leaned forward to put the back of her hand on Elphaba’s forehead, her knee bumped between Elphaba’s legs. Elphaba might have been able to explain away her sharp intake of breath – another strange symptom, the same as her pounding heart. But there was only one explanation for the way her hips jerked up, as much as she’d tried to deny it. Barely visible in the dim light, Galinda’s eyes widened in recognition. “I’m sorry,” Elphaba said in a rush, her own tears beginning to prick at the corners of her eyes. “I’ll leave. I’ll move rooms. I’ve tried – you have to know, I’ve tried so hard not to want - ”Galinda kissed her. Only the lightest, briefest touch of her lips, but it was enough to stem the flood of Elphaba’s apology. Then she kissed her again.Her first kiss, Elphaba thought hazily. She hadn’t thought that she’d ever be kissed. It was one of the many little facts of life that Elphaba had resigned herself to only knowing in theory. Friendship, romance, kindness, touch. Things meant for normal people. Things that, with Galinda’s lips on hers, suddenly seemed possible.Galinda’s knee pressed between Elphaba’s legs for a second time. She seemed to like the strangled sound that Elphaba made against her mouth; in an uneven rhythm, she ground her thigh down, her hands flitting over Elphaba’s nightgown like birds unsure where to land. Elphaba’s hands lay uselessly on the bed – she should use them, she knew, but her body was coming apart at the seams, and it was hard enough making sure she kept filling her lungs with air.“You’ve wanted me?” Galinda murmured, kissing sloppily along Elphaba’s jaw.“Yes,” Elphaba whimpered, the building pressure growing unbearable. “Desperately. Gods – gods – Galinda – ”As Galinda’s teeth gently grazed her throat, Elphaba felt the pleasure peak. Trembling, she chanted Galinda’s name like a prayer until it abated.For a moment, Galinda remained hovering over her, her hair falling on Elphaba’s face. Elphaba had read enough books to know that it was good manners to reciprocate, a thought that excited as much as terrified her. Still shaky, she reached a hand up to touch Galinda’s waist.Galinda recoiled as if she’d been electrified. Faster than Elphaba’s addled brain could process, she stood up, shrugging off her nightgown and stepping into yesterday’s dress. The door slammed shut behind her, rattling the frame.