Chapter Text
Avignon, France - August 2024
“Anyone ever tell you it’s rude to stare?” Elphaba’s back is to Glinda, but she can feel the weight of her gaze, something heavy and warm and still unfamiliar.
“Anyone ever tell you it’s rude to be so damn pretty?” Glinda quips back.
Elphaba turns, smirk rising, “Oh, there’s the quick wit I was so taken by. You’ve lost your edge, Upland.”
Glinda scoffs, “Forgive me, I’m finding it ever so slightly hard to focus with all that going on,” she says, gesturing broadly at Elphaba, who stands leaning against the bathroom counter, pulling her hair up into a loose bun, naked save a towel wrapped low around her hips.
Elphaba feels Glinda’s eyes on her in the low light, the last remnants of dusk evaporating outside, several pilfered candles burning in their stands. The green woman stares back, unabashedly now. Glinda sits at one end of a large claw-foot bathtub, resting her head against the porcelain lip, arm thrown carelessly over the side of the tub.
They’ve been here together for a week now, and Elphaba occasionally has this strange sense that she hasn’t really even seen Glinda. They’ve been so tangled up in each other at every moment, faces always just inches apart, that Elphaba feels she’s hardly looked at Glinda from afar, always pressed too impossibly close.
She takes this one moment to gaze at her from a short distance. Glinda breaks into a lazy smile - a flash of white in the amber glow of the room. The tips of her hair are pulling moisture from the bath, curling even tighter. Elphaba's eyes trace the fine lines of her back tattoo where they bleed over onto the top of Glinda’s shoulders. She tries to take in every curve and sweep of her body.
“Now who’s staring?” Glinda asks, breaking Elphaba from her reverie.
Elphaba flushes, but somehow her voice comes out steadier than her knees. “Can you blame me?”
Glinda meets her gaze and Elphaba pushes off from the counter and takes one slow step forward, into Glinda’s orbit. The blonde raises her outstretched hand and runs a damp finger lightly up the soft skin of Elphaba’s calf, the only part of her she can reach, leaving a trail of goosebumps in her wake.
“Get in the tub, Elphie,” Glinda says, her voice somewhere directly between soft and dangerous. She pulls at the hem of Elphaba’s towel until it pools onto the tile. “Actually,” her voice brightens, “can you grab my drink first? I left it on the counter.”
Elphaba hands her the glass, damp with condensation, and clinks her own against it. “Cheers,” she smiles.
“Now get in,” Glinda demands again.
“Scootch up,” Elphaba gestures, going to slide in behind the blonde.
Glinda shakes her head. “Nope,” she grins. “You’re in front. I’m the big spoon.”
“I am so much bigger than you, though.”
“Yeah, and I can imagine people have been taking advantage of that and making you be the big spoon your entire life,” Glinda says as though it were a great offense.
“My entire life?” Elphaba echoes, laughter in her voice.
“Yes, it’s simply unfair,” Glinda announces. “It’s your turn to be the little spoon.”
Elphaba acquiesces and, with Glinda’s steadying hand, slips into the warm water, Glinda’s chest at her back. “I think you’re overestimating the number of people I’ve bathed with if you’re suggesting I’m often the big spoon.”
Glinda settles her free hand across Elphaba’s chest, pulling the green woman flush against her. Elphaba’s head falling against her shoulder, hand finding purchase on Glinda’s bent knee.
“Humor me, will you?” Glinda sighs dramatically. “Perhaps I just wanted to hold you.”
Something about the words or the way Glinda said them settled somewhere deep and pleasant in Elphaba’s chest. A match being struck - a spark and heat and steady light. Elphaba turns her head and lets her lips brush barely against the corner of Glinda’s jaw, the soft hair curling around it.
They fall into an easy silence. The only sounds in the room are the whispering of the candle wicks, the clinking of ice in their drinks, and the occasional kiss dropped against a bare shoulder or the curve of a neck.
Glinda’s fingers skate across Elphaba’s sternum, her collar bones. Tracing the lines of her as if to memorize by touch. Elphaba’s thumb follows a slow and even arch across Glinda’s leg, fingers curled around the back of her knee. Unknowingly, her hand finds the seam of her surgical scar. Elphaba outlines the scar tissue with a gentle finger.
She feels the weight of the silence shift. There’s nothing discernible about it, but Elphaba feels it anyway - perhaps a change in Glinda’s breathing, a new stiffness in her posture.
Instead of letting it go, Elphaba continues following the scar up and down across the surface of Glinda’s kneecap, not looking at it but feeling the slight ridge of tissue.
“What happened here?” Elphaba murmurs, as softly and gently as she can, face still halfway pressed into the other woman’s neck.
“ACL,” Glinda replies, clipped.
Elphaba leaves another easy kiss to the edge of her jaw. “I know that much,” she husks. “We don’t have to talk about it - not if you don’t want to,” she says casually. “I just couldn’t imagine.”
She feels Glinda soften beneath her. “Imagine what?” She asks, her voice still threaded with a thin wire of angst.
Elphaba picks her words carefully, aware suddenly that there’s still a lot of pain surrounding the injury, even if it’s not physical. “I can’t imagine how hard that must have been,” she says honestly. “Not even just the surgery and the rehab - but the mental element. I don’t think I’d be strong enough to come back from something like that.”
Glinda doesn’t say anything for a moment. The quiet stretches out before them. Elphaba worries she overstepped. “I almost didn’t,” she admits quietly, just above a whisper.
Elphaba stills her hand and waits for Glinda, letting the quiet permeate until she decides whether or not to continue her thought. The candles flicker. Elphaba moves her hand to graze fingers softly across the inside of Glinda’s wrist as it sits against her chest. She hopes the steadying touch is enough to say what she’s not verbalizing: I’m here to listen, let me be what you need.
“It was so dumb,” Glinda starts again with a wet laugh. “It’s not like it was some big thing during a match and I went down hurt. It was a non-contact injury during a normal practice. I just planted my foot wrong and that was it.”
Elphaba hums but lets her continue. “And I remember lying there terrified. I was so scared. Not about the pain or the injury or the months of rehab I knew were ahead. But I just simply don’t know who I am outside of soccer and I was about to have to find out.”
Elphaba picks up her hand and kisses the inside of her wrist. “Did you think it was career-ending at that point?”
“Yeah,” Glinda says plainly. “I was in so much pain and all I could think about was how my life was never going to be the same. I was catastrophizing, I think. But the fear was real.”
“How’d you get over it?”
Glinda presses her face into the side of Elphaba’s head, huffing out a mirthless laugh. “There wasn’t another option. If I wanted to play again, I had to get over it. And I love playing soccer - there was no universe in which I didn’t try to come back.” She lapses into another brief quiet and Elphaba can practically feel her ruminating. Glinda pulls away and sips idly at the gin and tonic still dripping condensation in her hand as a way to buy her more time to think. Elphaba lets her.
“And now I’m healthy and playing better than ever but I’m left with that god-awful scar, and every single time I plant my foot, I feel a certain spike of anxiety and I wonder every time if I’ll ever not feel it,” she rambles. “Or maybe I never actually got over the fear, maybe I’ll be scared for the rest of my career.”
Elphaba takes the stoic, rational approach, not letting Glinda spin out on the emotion of it. “Do you think your game has changed?” She asks with genuine curiosity. “Do you think you’re more hesitant, more wary?”
“That’s the crazy part,” Glinda says, nearly astonished by herself. “As much as I’m terrified of it happening again, I never play it safe. I always go for the hard challenge, I always throw myself recklessly into every play.” She scoffs, as though just realizing this about herself. “I think I’m more scared to lose than to get hurt again.”
“I can definitely understand that much,” Elphaba says. “I hate losing more than I love winning.”
Glinda nods, and while Elphaba can’t see it, she can feel Glinda at her back. “I think it’s a disease,” she says seriously. “We all have it.”
Elphaba raises her hand again, tracing the ACL scar with a graceful finger. “Luckily for you, chicks dig scars.”
She feels the murmur of Glinda’s low laugh resonate through her chest. “Is that why you threw yourself onto the ground in the middle of an Olympic race?” She asks, gesturing with her drink at Elphaba’s right thigh, which has mostly healed, just an echo of the scrape that dashed her three-peat hopes.
“Easy does it,” Elphaba warns. “It’s still fresh.”
Glinda playfully nips at the shell of her ear. “Talk about it,” she demands. “You made me talk about mine - it’s your turn.”
“What is there to talk about?” Elphaba asks rhetorically. “I fell, I lost, I got banged up. That’s all there is to it.”
“Oh wow,” Glinda says slowly, drawing the syllables out. “For someone so good at making me open up, you certainly are terrible at it yourself, babe.”
Elphaba knows that’s not the part of the sentence she should be focusing on, but something about the term of endearment as it falls so seamlessly from Glinda’s mouth flips her stomach and hammers her heart against her ribs.
When she still doesn’t reply, still too struck by how a single word can shake the very foundation of her stoicism, Glinda leans ever so slightly forward, lips brushing against the curve of her ear. “Talk to me,” she rasps, fully aware of the effect of her low voice.
“Not fair,” Elphaba says with an unsteady lilt to her voice.
Glinda shakes her head, laughing. “What’s not fair is thinking you're exempt from talking about your feelings. I know it bothered you,” she gestures again to the lingering injury. “How are you feeling now?” She asks, pulling Elphaba impossibly closer into her chest, arm curling around strong green shoulders. Elphaba leans back into her, letting Glinda hold her tightly.
“Do you want the honest answer?” Elphaba asks.
“Obviously, yes, Elphie.”
“I’m fucking annoyed,” Elphaba says, plainly and without any malice. “I lost and I hate losing. I didn’t even lose because someone else was better than me - I could almost stand that.” She lets out a long exhale. “But I lost because of a freak accident and I’m not even allowed to be mad about it.”
Glinda nods but says nothing, urging Elphaba on.
“I’m not mad at the runner in the other lane, honestly. At least, I don’t think so. I’m just frustrated with the circumstances of it all. I don’t know that I would have medaled in the hurdles, but I didn’t even get the chance to try, to show my ability. And because it was a crash, I have to be a gracious loser, which stings in a different way.”
Finally, her tirade slows, frustration replaced by understanding. “So anyway,” Elphaba drawls, slowing her speech. “I lost, it sucked. I’ve hardly wanted to think about it, much less talk about it.”
“I guess that’s one of the differences between our sports,” Glinda says sagely.
Elphaba tips her head back to try to see the blonde. “What do you mean?”
“Just that, when I make a mistake, I take responsibility,” her hand comes off Elphaba’s chest and mimes holding it up in apology, as Elphaba has seen her do on the field, “and then I move on and reset. You don’t get to make a mistake - not that this particular instance was your fault, but in general, if you make a mistake, you don’t win.”
Elphaba nods slowly, “I’ve never thought about it that way.”
Glinda kisses the side of her head easily and says with a tinge of wonder or awe or anxiety, “That’s so much pressure. Zero room for error.”
“Well, someone else erred for me and I didn’t want to talk about it because I was annoyed and embarrassed,” Elphaba admits. “But we’re naked in a bathtub in the south of France, so I guess I got the girl anyway.”
Glinda tosses her head back and laughs openly and loudly. “Yeah,” she chuckles, “I would say the girl has been acquired.” She pauses briefly. “Did you really think that I would be less into you because you didn’t medal in one race?”
Elphaba grimaces. “How fucked up would it be if I said ‘yes?’”
“A little,” Glinda admits, voice still tinged with leftover playfulness. “I don’t care if you never win another race as long as you live,” she says, turning slightly more serious. “Look at me,” she pushes Elphaba's shoulder, who sits up and cranes her neck around. “Your success as an athlete doesn’t matter to me. Of course, I want you to do well, but I will like you regardless.”
Elphaba shimmies herself around, sloshing water until she’s sitting across from Glinda, knees pulled up to her chest. Glinda’s face is painted with an amused smile as the bathwater returns to relative stillness. “You better be saying something important right now, I was enjoying being the big spoon,” she teases.
Elphaba ignores her. “I was embarrassed. I looked at you and saw literally one of the most accomplished athletes of all time. And somehow you’re interested in me?” It’s not really a question but Elphaba’s voice hitches at the end all the same.
Glinda goes to speak, but Elphaba raises an eyebrow and holds her drink out, one finger extended from the glass, effectively shushing the blonde.
“You told me to talk - I’m talking,” Elphaba warns playfully, and Glinda holds her hands up in surrender and mimes zipping her lips closed. Elphaba smiles warmly and continues, “Anyway. After I ran you over at the airport, my coach told me I was crazy for not recognizing you because you’re ‘the face of women’s soccer.’” She puts air quotes around Dillamond's phrase.
Glinda rolls her eyes hard but keeps her promise and doesn’t interrupt verbally.
“It didn’t take long to realize that was true - you’re, like, famous as shit. And then, yes, I felt like I had something to prove. And I thought if you knew I wasn’t all that, if I couldn’t hold a candle to your talent, then you wouldn’t be into me.”
The confession rolls off of Elphaba’s tongue before she can stop herself. She’s not even sure she realized it was true until she said it. Neither of them says anything for a brief second. Elphaba takes a sip of her drink, eyes focused on the sky darkening outside the window but she can feel the weight of Glinda’s gaze on her.
“Believe me,” the sprinter says with a nearly self-deprecating scoff, “I know how lame that sounds.”
The candles burn, wicks sputtering.
Glinda finally speaks, pulling Elphaba’s attention back to her. “You know,” she starts quietly but clearly, “I watched your Trials.”
Elphaba nods, “You mentioned that before.”
Glinda hums. “I couldn’t sleep. I had just gotten back from camp and I was jet lagged and I couldn’t sleep so I flicked on the TV and the Track and Field Trials were on. It was like 1 am.” Glinda looks wistfully across the tub at Elphaba, who is finally uncurling her legs and intertwining them with Glinda’s.
“It was the middle of the night, and suddenly I was watching this woman absolutely blow everyone out of the water,” Glinda says with a smile that glints sharply in the candlelight. “So yeah, I looked you up, sue me,” she shrugs. Elphaba huffs and still doesn’t meet her eyes. “There wasn’t much, honestly. But it didn’t matter, I was already smitten.”
“That cannot be true,” Elphaba argues.
Glinda cocks her head, thinking. “I guess ‘smitten’ is the wrong word. I’m smitten now, for sure, but I suppose that didn’t happen immediately.”
“Told ya,” Elphaba quips, happy to be right.
Glinda continues, ignoring the green woman. “I did think you were insanely hot. I was attracted to you right off the bat.” Elphaba feels her eyes roll back before she can stop it - no one has ever been instantly attracted to her, and she can’t tell if Glinda’s story is a piece of revisionist history. Glinda huffs, “Elphaba, I am trying to pay you a compliment.”
The green woman screws her face up in an apology. “I guess I’m not entirely used to that.”
“You’re going to have to get used to it, I’m afraid,” Glinda replies, blue eyes sparkling dangerously. “So anyway,” she moves on, “I looked you up and, while there wasn’t a lot, what was there was striking. I was immediately intrigued. You’re just so good-looking,” Glinda smiles, shaking her head lightly at the memory.
Elphaba isn’t totally clear where Glinda is going with this story but she lets it happen, hoping that Glinda will re-find her point somewhere along the way.
“I’m going to compliment you again - are you ready?” Glinda jests, smirking. “I thought you were insanely hot - even just from the snippet of your qualifiers that I watched. You’re handsome and utterly gorgeous, and there was just something about the way you carried yourself that I was very taken by.”
Elphaba feels herself blush and hides a sloppy grin behind the lip of her glass.
Finally, Glinda arrives at her point. “All of this,” she gestures at the conversation hanging in the warm air, “is just to say - I liked you before I even met you. Before I knew you were charming and smart and thoughtful and excellent in bed,” Glinda says, and actually, honest-to-god winks, swooping something in Elphaba’s chest. “So no, Elphaba, you don’t need to win every single race for me to be impressed by you, for me to be into you. That happened a while ago.”
Elphaba takes a deep, steadying breath, unable to fully name the emotion lodged somewhere in her throat. She narrows her eyes and looks at Glinda - her face honest and open and lit by half a dozen candles and something akin to hopefulness.
“I like you very much,” Elphaba says finally, hoping the tremor in her voice comes off as genuine instead of frightened. “I appreciate how direct you are, too. I’m not always good at subtleties, but I like that I don’t have to guess with you.”
Somehow, Glinda smiles even more deeply, eyes bright. “I don’t want to waste any time talking around how I feel. Not with you.”
She’s perfect, Elphaba thinks before she can stop herself. “You’re perfect,” she says before she can stop herself.
Glinda sighs heavily, “I know,” she says, face contorted into a faux-grimace. “It’s a burden.”
Elphaba slowly shakes her head, grin blooming despite her best efforts to stave it off. “You’re something else, G.”
“Come here,” Glinda demands. “Kiss me. You’re too far away.” Elphaba obliges quickly, setting her glass down on the tile beside the tub and leaning forward into Glinda’s space, cupping her jaw with a damp hand, thumb swiping gently across soft lips.
Glinda closes her eyes and leans into her touch. Elphaba replaces her thumb with an even press of her lips, and Glinda responds immediately, hand coming to grasp at Elphaba’s elbow, tongue licking at her bottom lip.
The green woman pulls away before the kiss can get anymore heated, lingering a hairs breadth from Glinda.
“See what I mean?” Elphaba asks, eyes still closed, lips brushing against Glinda’s as she speaks. “Perfect.”
She feels Glinda huff out a quiet laugh before their lips meet again. She’s not even sure who closed the distance first; all she knows is that Glinda is here, still here, still kissing her, still choosing her. Something warm and unfamiliar settles into Elphaba’s chest as Glinda’s hand cups the back of her neck, and, for once, she doesn’t interrogate it. For once, she lets a good thing be good. Elphaba kisses her back with everything she has.