Elsa really hates being set up by her friends. She doesn't know how they even manage it (apparently they've got all the local single lesbians on speed dial) but she wishes they would stop. Seriously, it's not like she can't find her own date.

"It'll be great," her cousin Rapunzel insists cheerfully.

"What've you got to lose?" Megara chimes in.

"You need to get laid," Eugene adds from his position slouched across his girlfriend's couch.

"That's what you said last time. My dignity. And no, I don't." Elsa considers her response definitive and clear. Evidently, it wasn't nearly severe enough.

"God, Elsa, you're so uptight," Meg sighs, lolling her head back.

It takes everything she has not to flinch at that.

"Come on, Els," Rapunzel whines. "We already told her to be there. It'd be rude to stand her up."

"So un-tell her to be there."

"Or you could just go to the darn thing, Frosty," Meg suggests irritably. Elsa glares, but Meg brushes it off with a single, undulating eye roll. The girl can brush anything off with that damn eye roll. "God, we're not asking you to marry her."


"Hello, are you Elsa?"

Elsa's first impression of her blind date is that she's tall—not six feet, but definitely pushing it.

"Um. Yes, I'm Elsa. It's a pleasure to meet you." A necessary and not particularly painful lie.

"You as well." The woman smiles white teeth against chocolate skin. "I've heard so much about you."

"I wish I could say the same. My friends decided to surprise me with the news that this date was happening an hour ago." Immediately the little voice in Elsa's head that monitors her performance during these sorts of unfortunate interactions tells her to shut up. Two minutes in and she's made date feel unwelcome and herself look like a cantankerous grouch.

But the woman—Esmeralda, that's her name—simply laughs as she takes a seat. Her dark eyes bore into Elsa's. She shifts uncomfortably in her seat. There's something too knowing about those eyes. "That sounds like something Meg would do. Always pushing you out of your comfort zone."

Elsa stiffens. "Oh, you know Meg?"

"Of course. We're friends from the dance studio."

"Lovely." A waiter comes that moment. Esmeralda politely waves off any drinks. Even as the voice in her head orders her to leave the statement be, to not dig herself into a pothole of misery, Elsa finds her mouth opening to ask, "So she's been talking about me?"

"Oh, just here and there. Not too much, don't worry. It's all good stuff. And she has that nickname for you too. Frosty, right?"

Elsa has to give Meg some credit. Frosty perfectly describes her brittle, painful smile in that moment.


"I can't believe you set me up with one of Megara's friends!" Elsa hisses at her cousin, acutely aware that Meg is in the next room over, watching Seinfeld reruns.

Rapunzel fails to grasp the severity of the situation, rolling her eyes as she dumps a bag of popcorn out into a plastic bowl. "What? Do you think I have a phone book for all the area lesbians?"

Elsa reins herself in before she can reply in the affirmative.

"Geez," her cousin continues. "How many gay friends do you think I have?

"Well, just stop setting me up with people. Okay? I don't have the energy to deal with this now."

"Oh come on, Elsa. Esmeralda's a really nice person."

Guilt sinks into Elsa's chest. Grimly, she rips it out and tosses it across the room. She can repent for being the world's worst dining companion later. "I don't care how nice they are," she snaps. "Stop sending me to restaurants to meet people. Especially Meg's friends."

"What's wrong with Meg's friends?"

Elsa flintily regards her flippant cousin. "I don't particularly want to date my ex's friends. Is that too much to ask?"

Rapunzel shrugs. "Why not? Meg's not going to get jealous. Not really. You know she's the one who's been finding all these people—"

"She's the one that's been setting me up?"

An inkling of Elsa's outrage must finally have penetrated Rapunzel's cloak of protective obliviousness, because a hint of earnestness enters her cousin's voice. "Yes. She has. She cares about you. She worries about you. We've all been worried about you, ever since, you know, the two of you…"

"Broke up?"

Hesitantly, Rapunzel nods. "You've been kind of moody ever since."

Part of Elsa wants to rip her hair out. She's living in the same apartment as her sultry, smirking, infuriating ex-girlfriend. She can't get a glass water without being slapped in the face with her insecurities. How the heck is she supposed to behave?

"We were all friends, Elsa. We can be friends again."

I don't want to be friends Elsa whines petulantly to herself. I want to get as far away from her as possible.

"And don't give me that look. I refuse to feel guilty for liking her," Rapunzel states unequivocally. "We knew each other way before you two started dating. She's still one of my best friends."

But we were cousins from the moment you were born. Doesn't that count for something?

Elsa hates being this whiny, needy leech. The break-up wasn't Meg's fault. Not fully. She can't accuse Meg of cheating or abusing her or being morally reprehensible in any substantial way. This is just what she deserves for dating her roommate and her cousin's friend: eternal discomfort.

As if reading Elsa's thoughts, Meg chooses that moment to waltz into the kitchen and ask, "What's taking so long, Blondie?" as though she isn't the subject of a furtive almost-argument.

Be nice, orders Rapunzel's hazel-eyed stare.

"So, Elsa, how was the date? I know Esmeralda can bend every—"

"It was fine," she grinds out stiffly, slinking from the kitchen into her room.

What you really need to do, the voice in her head lectures, is move out.

But Elsa's too proud for that. Too proud to let Meg know just how much living under the same roof is killing her. And Elsa's too scared for that. Too scared that she'll discover how expendable she really is.


It's stupid, because Elsa knows she's not totally hopeless. She's pretty and polite. So what if she's not a great socializer? Before Meg, she'd had her fair share of girlfriends. Though in comparison, she supposes those early relationships were a bit colorless. After two years of dating, she'd barely noticed a difference when Aurora moved across the country to pursue an acting career. In retrospect the entire thing had probably been a waste. She hadn't really known Aurora at all. Starting a relationship with her had been like switching cereal brands. But it had been okay while it lasted, and when it ended, she'd shrugged off condolences from her friends with a simple, "It's not so bad."

Maybe that's what Elsa needs again, something banal and safe until she gets her feet and sense of self under her again. Someone who sleeps a lot and doesn't say much. Like a hedgehog.

Yeah, Elsa's pretty much done with romantic relationships for the moment.

Maybe she just needs a friend.


That's when she finds herself accidentally-on-purpose running into Belle at the library.

"Is that you, Elsa? I haven't seen you in forever."

Elsa kind of sucks at keeping in touch with people, but Belle is kind and sweet. She lets Elsa ramble through some sort of excuse about being busy for the past…year. She likes books and quiet evenings and Gothic architecture, and it sort of feels like they'd be perfect together.

Then, she mentions that she and Adam are finally engaged, and yes, they're a little young, but not that young, and it's really almost magical, and they'll be sure to send a wedding invitation once they settle on a date. And Elsa remembers why they wouldn't be perfect together.

Even so, it's invigorating to talk to anybody who isn't besties with the resident Aphrodite of the Lesbos (yeah, Elsa's going to leave the nicknames up to Meg from now on). They agree to get together for lunch or something. For the first time in forever, Elsa feels confident and at ease.

The best part is when Belle, trying to suppress an outburst of laughter, tells her she's hilarious.


"No."

"So…you'll go?" Rapunzel confirms hopefully.

"No!" God, sometimes it feels like Elsa is trapped in an unending elementary school Opposite Day.

"Well, you can't sit around the apartment by yourself all night."

Elsa blinks. "Of course I can. Why wouldn't I be able to sit around?"

"It's the principal of the matter," Rapunzel insists.

"Just get in the car, Frosty. It's a party. You'll love it." Meg sweeps out of her room in a long red dress.

Elsa's entire body tenses. "It's a party. I'll hate it. I'd rather just stay home."

"You love parties," Meg declares like it's a law of nature.

"I don't like parties."

Meg rolls her stupid, come-hither, well-don't-you-look-delicious eyes. "You liked going to them with me."

Even Rapunzel stops making noises.

I wanted you to think I was fun.

"I. Don't. Like. Parties." For once, Elsa's word is final.


At first, it was exhilarating.

Meg was enthralling and sinuous. Just dangerous enough to keep Elsa on her toes.

As a friend, Meg had been reasonably considerate—in her own scathing way. As a lover, she had an intuitive grasp of all Elsa's sensitive spots, mental or otherwise, and never seemed to be able to stop herself from prodding at them. And yeah, it was hot.

Rapunzel came up with a million and one reasons to drag them out together. Looking back, she was probably setting them up. And well, it was working.

Elsa found herself attending more social events than she ever had on the promise that Meg would grace the room. God, she was mesmerizing with that sly smile, like she knew all the things Elsa didn't want to admit to herself. At the time though, Elsa had been dating paper-doll Aurora, and no matter how…tempting Meg was, Elsa wasn't a cheater.

But Christ, she'd blushed every time Meg ran her eyes over her dress and smirked, "Aren't you just enchanting?"

Of course it was flattering. Elsa knew she was pretty, especially when she dressed up and put on some makeup, but her personality wasn't exactly magnetic. The thought that someone as…liberated as Meg seemed to be was at all interested in her made Elsa's heart pound.

After college, Aurora took off, and Meg moved in with Elsa and Rapunzel.

"Will you two just start bumping uglies already?" complained Flynn as soon as he heard the living arrangements. Elsa threw a shoe at him, but turned bright red when she noticed Meg staring at her from the side of the room, a wicked curl twisting her lips.

"You're so hot when you're mad," she whispered into the shell of Elsa's ear.

It really hadn't taken much after that.


THUMP!

Elsa jerks awake to the sound of the apartment door slamming shut. Muffled giggles echo from the entryway, as her roommates announce their arrival home in a flurry of footfalls.

"Shh! Elsa's probably sleeping!" Rapunzel scolds.

"Already? On a Saturday night. Geez, Frosty needs a life."

Elsa glances at the clock beside her bed. 11:08. It's not that early. It's nearly midnight.

"Hush. You know she hates when you call her that."

"No. She lo-oves it." The extra oomph on the word "love" is the only sign that Meg might be a little drunk. "Anyways, welcome to the palace," she says to someone Elsa can't see.

Did they bring guests? Elsa groans to herself and considers the pros and cons of getting up and locking the bedroom door. The creak of the bed might alert them to her wakefulness, and chances are they'll stay in the living room anyways.

"Thanks for having us," an unfamiliar voice replies, male, clean cut, earnest.

"Yeah, really. We don't want to intrude," another voice adds, female this time. "Especially if you're roommate is sleeping. We really aren't even that big on the whole party thing."

"Ah, don't worry about it!" Is that Flynn? "Our house is your house." Sometimes Elsa wonders how Rapunzel puts up with him, but she swears he's got a tender side.

"This isn't even your house, Flynn," Meg points out drily. For once Elsa applauds her commentary.

"But seriously, don't worry about it," Rapunzel interrupts. "Hans can be such an asshole sometimes."

"Don't we know it," the guy says.

"And Frosty doesn't have work tomorrow so she can suck it up like a big girl," Meg adds.

In her bed Elsa bristles. Any camaraderie she may have felt a few moments before dissipates. She's sick to death of Meg acting like she knows what Elsa wants better than Elsa herself. Would it kill her to have a little consideration?

"Now can I get you something to drink?" Meg asks, every word squeezes past her lips, lubricated with seduction. Elsa imagines her leaning over some faceless, nameless girl on the couch, hips and lips jutting out just so. She remembers being that girl, trapped between the cushions and Meg's body and loving it.

To her shock, what reverberates through the room next is a bolt of laughter, not bell-like or charming, but a frank, unrestrained guffaw at Meg's expense. "Sure. If you promise not to make that face again," the unknown girl says after she re-gains control of her spasming throat.

Elsa can feel Meg's feel lapse into a lethal pout. It makes her skin crawl.

"What look?" she asks in a low rumble.

But for whatever reason it seems to bounce off of her mystery guest. "That one. It kind of reminds me of a cartoon reindeer."

"Anna," the mystery male voice admonishes.

"Oh! Not that you're a reindeer! Or anything. You're really pretty." At that, Elsa pictures the molasses smile spreading across Meg's face. "But I'm not really looking for anything right now. Can we just be friends?"

Disbelief. Probably pooling in Meg's eyes. It's already slapped all over Elsa's face.

"O-oh. Burn!" Flynn calls from what sounds like the kitchen.

"Shut up, Flynn." A breathy sigh. "I suppose. Buy you're missing out."

"I'm sure it'll be to someone else's enormous advantage," the girl—Anna, was it?—offers diplomatically.

"Can you stop hitting on my sister while I'm in the room now?" complains the guy.

"Doubtful," Meg informs him promptly.


Elsa pads out of her room bright and early on Sunday morning into a war zone. Bodies are sprawled across the living room furniture like corpses. Rapunzel's long, knee-length hair has her boyfriend in a stranglehold. An unfamiliar blond man is conked out on the armchair, looking for all the world like a sack of hay. On the sofa, Meg lies with her arms around the legs of a strange girl—Anna, her memory supplies wearily—with reddish hair mostly hidden under a square pillow.

"God, it looks like you people had the world's least pleasurable five-some," she finds herself muttering.

An unexpected snort erupts from behind the couch pillow. Elsa leaps about three feet into the air.

"Sorry! Didn't mean to scare you," the redhead husks, removing the pillow from her face. For someone who spent the night on a sofa, she doesn't look half bad. A pair of pigtails has kept her burnished hair more or less in place. "I was trying to work up the energy to get up and introduce myself, and that was just really funny."

"Um, yes, good morning," Elsa manages as her good manners kick in.

"Better morning for me than the rest of these guys," the stranger remarks, slowly disentangling herself from Meg's grasp. "But yeah, good morning to you too." She flashes a smile so sunny Elsa swears she sees gold in it. "I'm Anna, and you're either Elsa or an intruder."

Watching Meg fumble for something else to cuddle with, Elsa kind of feels like both. "Yes, I'm Elsa." Does her voice normally sound that croaky? It is sort of early in the morning.

Anna bends down and places the pillow in Meg's arms, letting the sleeping girl latch onto it. "Nice meet you," she says straightening.

"You too," Elsa echoes like a drone. The voice in her head kicks her a few times. Metaphorically speaking. "Can I get you anything?"

"Any chance you could point me towards a bathroom?"

Elsa gestures with her chin and the girl disappears behind the door, but not before giving her another blinding smile. For some reason, Elsa finds herself calling out that there's an extra toothbrush in the medicine cabinet if she wants to use it.


"Look, Elsa, I know when we ended things, it was on a bad note. But I'm really trying here." Elsa is startled out of her deliberate inattention by the rare note of sincerity in Megara's voice. She sets the stack of plates on the counter and turns to face her. "I want us to get along," Meg implores softly. "It hurts that you won't look at me, but I sort of get it, alright? What do you need from me?"

Elsa knows exactly what she needs, what they both need, but she still feels so darn guilty when she asks for space.


Falling in love with Aurora had been less of a descent and more of a bilateral agreement, decided upon after a year of dating. Surely if they were together at all, after so many months, it must be love.

With Meg, love was like careening downhill, descending faster than her legs could keep up with until she was somersaulting into a disheveled pile of emotions and desires.

They were complementary; they had chemistry; and they were in love.

And Elsa had been deluded enough to think it could work.

The first months were blaze of intoxicated enthusiasm on both sides. Meg lavished her with invitations and concert tickets. She seemed determined to show her new girlfriend off to her extensive circle of friends and acquaintances in the space of a few weeks. They spent weekends holed up in one of their rooms in a tangle of limbs and bliss.

Until she started dating Meg, Elsa didn't really think sex could be something one was good at. Meg corrected that assumption almost immediately. And if she were hesitant, to say, thread handcuffs through the bedpost, all it took was a sultry pout and a don't-be-a-killjoy-Frosty to melt the rigidity in her limbs.

For a long time, the relationship had felt soaring down the side of the mountain. Liberating and blinding.


"We're going to meet some friends, Elsa. You wanna tag along?"

Tagging along is the story of Elsa's life. She's never quite fit into the get-together gang. Sometimes she wonders how she became friends with Meg at all. The answer, of course, is watching her, waiting for a response as she attaches an earring to her earlobe.

"I think I'll stay home, Rapunzel."

"Okay." Without further comment, her cousin turns away and shouts, "Hey, Meg! Are you ready yet?! We're going to be late."

"Better than being on time!" is the unfazed reply.

"I thought you were trying to impress Anna," Rapunzel calls back.

Meg emerges from her room, twirling until her purple dress swishes around her thighs. "Yeah, impress her with this," she clarifies, gesturing to her body, "not my punctuality."

"So you're ready?" Rapunzel demands.

"Ye—nope. Forgot my earrings." Skirt whooshing majestically behind her, Meg disappears back into the cavern of her room.

"Anna…" Elsa lets the name hang uncertainly in the air a few moments, as if the image isn't already perfectly clear in her head. "Isn't that the girl who was here last week?"

"Yep. We met her and her brother Kristoff at Hans's party. And well, you know how Hans can be."

Elsa has no idea how Hans can be, but she nods anyways.

"How do I look?" Meg struts back into the room and strikes a pose.

"Like an idiot," Rapunzel answers pointedly. "Let's go already."

"A hot idiot."

"Like that's any better."

As the pair cross the threshold, Elsa blurts out, "You look nice."

The smile she receives in return is stunningly genuine. For once, she finds herself wishing that they'd been a little more insistent she join them.


She meets Belle and Adam for lunch at a café.

He pulls out a seat for her. She helps him spear a piece of pasta with his fork.

Elsa worries for them. They seem so alarmingly happy together. What happens five years from now? Ten years from now? Will it all still be okay? Will Adam's unpolished manners, which have brought an indulgent smile to Belle's face since their college years, eventually grate on her nerves when, at yet another dinner, he boorishly rips chunks of steak apart with his teeth?

Does it ever last?


The first months elapsed. Then they crashed.

No, crashed would have been too sudden a word to describe the sensation, even though it captured perfectly the brutality of waking up those final mornings next to someone they'd come to hate.

For Elsa it hadn't been a collision so much as a depletion. After rushing down into the valley for months, she began to feel tired. Little aches and pains became unbearable. The thorn bushes she'd leapt over so energetically in the early stages of their relationships snagged at her clothes and tore at her skin. She wanted to stop and rest and sleep, but Meg seemed indefatigable. Elsa was exhausted.

Meg's thrill-seeking stopped being exciting. It seemed ridiculous and irresponsible. Elsa didn't want to go out every weekend. In the beginning, she'd been willing to accept Meg's lifestyle simply as the expression of a more carefree personality, but after a while she began to wonder if it would kill her to spend a little more time at home. Or show up on time. Or at least not antagonize Elsa's parents.

Her up and down music "career" suddenly struck Elsa as a pretext to attend as many parties as possible. Though she throve in the limelight, Meg seemed to lack the ambition to actually make anything out of it.

And she didn't appreciate the growing vein of condemnation in Elsa's questions.

"So where's this party at?"

And, "What's your plan after?"

And, "Do you really think that's good for your image?"

Meg had shaken her head and stared at her in disbelief. "What do you mean my image? Who do you think I am? Taylor Swift?"

By the same token, Elsa's social restraint and careful temperament, once tolerated as quirkiness, started to drive Meg crazy.

"Come out with me tonight?" she'd ask.

"I think I'll stay in."

"You always stay in. I want to spend time with you."

"So stay with me."

"We're always at home. Why would we stay home?"

"I like it here."

When she did go out and subject herself to the kaleidoscope of Meg's "bandmates", it always felt being dumped in a cage match. Or an FBI interrogation. Or a noisy, epilepsy-inducing club with a bunch of mid-functioning alcoholics living off each other's trust funds.

Perhaps she resented them a little excessively.

Though they never said it to her face, she was pretty sure they didn't like her all that much either. Randy especially had a way of being repulsively polite while suggesting that she should take a hit of whatever he was offering to help her "loosen up." All he managed to do was make her very determined to wind herself up tighter. Phil, a former talent scout, reliving his glory days by shoving his way into a younger crowd, was downright lecherous. Even the nicest of them, mezzosoprano Ariel, couldn't seem to help implying that Elsa was a corporate sellout with every other sentence.

So Elsa was done.

But then she wasn't done, because Meg was still there, still shockingly pretty, still heart-wrenchingly vulnerable with those lavender eyes. And Elsa was vulnerable too. Other than her parents, she'd never been so exposed to another person before. Meg had smashed through her walls with a sledgehammer, had seen Elsa naked, had watched her nerves fray and her insecurities surface. Elsa had let herself be dragged into so many things she never thought she'd do in the name of love. Maybe Meg was the one, and they'd just gone through a rough patch. It felt like they'd already invested too much emotion into the relationship, and Elsa wasn't accustomed to simply giving up.

When Meg asked, "Can't we just give it another chance?", she agreed.

So they were on again.

Only this time, Elsa wasn't running, wasn't pumping adrenaline.

When Meg teased her, she wilted.

When Meg reached out to tuck some hair behind her ear, she drew away, feeling like a play mannequin.

When Meg came home, she dreaded the inevitable confrontation almost as much as she relished in the verbal release of her unhappiness.

She shrank deeper and deeper into herself, stewing and gnawing and hurting. Eventually, as Meg ran out of patience and Elsa sank into a hailstorm of self-wrought misery, the entire system would collapse and Rapunzel would perform the minor miracle of putting them back together again.

By the time Meg finally admitted, "It doesn't feel like this is working," Elsa was just numb.

Breaking up with Meg, for real, was a relief. Rapunzel had tried to comfort her crying cousin, but in truth Elsa didn't need sympathy. The tears were clean and strangely uplifting. Some mysterious muscle came unclenched in her chest.

Then, she woke up the next morning, and Meg was still right there, sipping her coffee like nothing had happened.

For a long time, Elsa thought she was trapped in the world's worst nightmare. But now she suddenly realizes that the door has always been unlocked. She only has to get up and open it.


Two-shot. The next chapter is half-written. I swear I will get back to Leave it Be as soon as I wrap this one up. Thanks for your patience. This was originally an idea that was to be included in Dream Girl, but that story already ended up so much longer than I had expected it to be and this basically felt like it could be its own story.

*Sorry to anyone who read this earlier and wondered why they were reading the same thing twice. I must have copied and pasted twice into Doc Manager.