Rating: K
Disclaimer: I do not own Wicked.
Author's Note: Happy Friday the thirteenth.

One Dozen Paper Roses

He had been folding the tiny squares of paper for a little over three hours when Fiyero began to lean across the table and play with the delicately twisted sheets of red and pink. He raised an eyebrow as Boq slapped his hand away. Folding up the tip of a small scarlet slip of paper, Boq didn't look up at Fiyero.

"These are not for you?"

"She's going to love them."

"They're not for Nessa." Fiyero sighed. Picking one of the fragile paper roses up by a petal, he stared at it for a second before letting it fall from his fingers. He leaned across the table and tilted Boq's face upwards using his fingertips. Boq stopped folding.

"If you keep moving in on my girlfriend I'll have to take some sort of action." Boq swallowed. "Like hit you or something."

"I can take it."

"Boq, I meant 'hit you where it hurts' and I'd aim for below the belt." Fiyero smirked. "I don't know how much that would literally hurt." It was as the blush rose and spread across Boq's cheeks that Fiyero picked up one rose. "I meant that I would grant Nessa an audience and whisper sweet nothings in her ear. Of course, those sweet nothings might put you in a lonely place."

"You wouldn't."

Fiyero placed the rose in the breast pocket of his shirt and winked at Boq as he stood.

"I knew they were never for Nessarose."

Boq sighed and folded another sheet of paper to make up for the missing rose.

---

Folding her hands and laying them on her lap, Nessarose took a breath before opening her eyes to stare at Boq's door. Her knuckles made an odd ringing sound as she rapped on the door, and her right hand stayed in her lap gripping the wrapped parcel that she'd been searching for since the month before last. Boq answered the door with this roses in hand bundled together by a length of black ribbon. He blanched, but Nessa kept her eyes on her shoes.

"I thought that, perhaps, since we've been going to dances and what not, that I should…Well, I got you a gift for the Saint's Day." Boq reached out with one hand to grip the wrapped present, and Nessa didn't look up until she heard him open the paper wrapped around it. "It's not much, but I thought that you would enjoy it since you like reading about history and what not. If you don't like-"

"Where did you find this?" Boq was staring at the battered book cover with the hand holding the bouquet having fallen to his side. "It went out of print ages ago."

"It was nothing at all. I just thought you would appreciate a complete history of Munchkinland." She blushed as she stared at him. "You do like it?"

"It's…Nessa…" Boq glanced down at the hand holding the roses and then at Nessa. Kneeling in front of her, Boq held the roses out before him and smiled. "And these are for you."

"You made these?" She ran her fingers along the petals, and Boq pressed the paper flowers into her hands. "They're wonderful."

"It is one dozen roses just for you that will only wither when my love for you dies."

-END-

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