This is the first in a series of spin-offs/additional stories in the Storybrooke Downs universe.
For Philyra, who gleefully pushed me off a cliff and into hockey AUs. She's largely responsible for enabling my secret love of Frozen characters and making me put a lot of thought into what Anna, Elsa, and Kristoff are doing behind the scenes of the main story.
For those who like such details, Anna is 23 and Kristoff is 24 in this story.
Anna mumbles to herself all through the supermarket, counting on her fingers and squealing to herself when she finds exactly what she needs. Her cart's getting a little full and she's not quite sure how she's going to get it all back to the house but she'll figure it out. (She doesn't have a car, not yet — not ever? It'd be nice to not to have to worry about a car, but then again it would be kinda convenient to take the kids out and maybe if she talked to the agency they'd find a loophole to work a car into the house budget and — focus, Anna!)
This weekend she's planning on teaching the kids how to bake a cake from scratch. Well, she's planning on teaching the kids how to make everything from scratch, but she figures a cake is a better way to lure them into the kitchen. If they happen to wander in or stick around during the prep for other meals, well, all the better for anyone involved.
She just wants them to know someone loves them enough to cook for them, even if it's just the housemother who lives there every other week.
Anna's glancing up at the aisle signs in search of that one last item to check off her mental list when she rounds the corner and smashes into someone — and she does mean smash, because the eggs the man had been carrying fly out of his hands and break all over the floor. "Oh my God, I'm so sorry!" Anna cries, hurrying around the cart. "I wasn't paying attention to where I —"
"Obviously," the man snaps, bending down to see if there was anything to be saved from the mess.
A chill creeps down Anna's spine as she frowns. Okay, so she'd broken what, two dozen eggs? That's a normal Tuesday for her. There's no need to be rude about it! "Hey, I said I was sorry. You don't have to be mean about it. I'll pay for it, even, since it was my fault."
The man glances up at her and her eyes widen just a little. He's kinda cute and vaguely familiar, with his shaggy mop of blonde hair and guarded brown eyes, and he's built like a lumberjack. A lumberjack whose buttons are straining against his muscles and legs like tree trunks and focus Anna! "Do I… know you, somehow?" she asks, tilting her head a little.
He raises an eyebrow as if he can't believe what he's hearing, then shakes his head. "If you have to ask, you don't."
Her frown deepens as irritation surges through her veins. "Look, Rudey McRudepants, if you can't even answer a simple question nicely —"
"Yeah, yeah, I got it. So, you said you'd pay for this?" the man asks, standing up again and Anna's eyes widen a little more because he's got to be almost a foot taller than her and holy cats.
She gives herself a little shake. He might be tall and good-looking, but he's acting like a jerk and she does not have time for jerks. Her last boyfriend in college, a pompous guy named Hans who she's still shocked she'd been so fooled by, had been King Jerk and she's still nursing the bruises from when she'd punched him in the nose. "Yes, sorry," she says. "Look, I'm almost done with my shopping, just let me get one more thing and I'll meet you at the checkout line, okay?"
The man gives her a look like he doesn't believe her, but he nods and walks away. Anna sighs and looks around helplessly for a moment before spotting an employee. She flags the girl down and apologizes profusely for the mess, explaining the situation. The girl waves her off, saying, "It's okay, happens more often than you think. Just tell the guys up front what happened and they'll add it onto your balance."
Anna grins broadly as the girl goes to get a mop and Anna drags her cart down the aisle for the flour she needs.
The man is waiting for her at the front of the store and she's interested to see that he looks really, genuinely surprised that she's there. "I totally thought you'd bail on me," he says.
Anna silently counts to ten to keep her temper under control and says, "Nope. I keep my word."
There's only one kid running cashier and it's a bit of a wait. Anna checks her phone a few times, a cheap little flip-phone that the agency provides for her - she would have worked for them anyway, but perks like free cell phones and student loan forgiveness really go a long way to sweeten a deal. She ignores the curious glances the man next to her is giving her, mentally going over her list of what she needs to do when she gets back to the house - homework and dinner first, then group activity, making sure the right evening medications get handed out and actually taken, hanging out before bedtime, and then paperwork after lights-out. Anna looks at her phone again and realizes she has just enough time to get all of this home before the kids get back from school, if the line would just move. She really doesn't want to think about what kind of trouble she'll get into if the kids get home and there's no one there. She just got this job, she loves this job! And, okay, there's Kathryn the caseworker, she'll be around because she's there until five every day, but it's not Kathryn's job to make sure the kids don't kill each other, it's Anna's and she's going to be in so much trouble if this line doesn't move — "Are you feeding an army?" the man finally asks.
Anna starts a little as she gets out of her own head. "What? Army? Oh, no. It's… It's my kids," she says, and everyone thinks it's weird that she puts it that way but they are hers.
The man's eyes widen, a lot more than Anna's have today. "How many kids do you have?" he asks, and she's amused that his voice pitches high at the end.
She presses her lips together to keep from laughing. He really is cute when he's not being rude. "Seven." When his jaw drops, she can't help but laugh this time. "I'm a housemother, silly, it's a group home for foster kids."
Something in his expression changes and she can't pin it down, which is frustrating because she's good with people — she gets people. But this guy has a whole different set of walls up that she's never scaled before and that's kind of irritating. "That's… That's really something," he says finally. He sounds like he's somewhere between awe and humility and that makes her earlier irritation with him fade a little.
"Yeah," Anna says, turning back to the line, which has barely inched forward. "It really is."
He doesn't say anything else the whole time they're waiting in line. He spends a lot of time with his head down, she notices, but he doesn't take out his phone and play with it like most people would. He seems like he's about to say something more but just doesn't know how to start. When they finally reach the front of the line, he helps her unload the cart onto the belt and even loads it back up with bags while she explains what had happened with the eggs to the cashier. As she pays — and thank goodness for agency credit cards because the total on the screen is way out of her pay grade — the cashier finally looks up at her companion and blanches. "Oh my God," the teen breathes reverently. "You're Kristoff Bjorgman!"
The man gives a half-smile. A lightbulb goes off in her mind as Anna vaguely remembers hearing one of her kids mention the name before. "The one and only," the man says, sounding tired already but putting on a good face.
"This is so awesome! Hey, man, congrats on the hat trick against the Bolts, that was amazing! Not even on a power play!"
Anna practically has to wrestle her card back from the cashier, starstruck as he is, and she signs off on the payment as this Kristoff Bjorgman agrees to sign a bit of receipt paper for the cashier. "Sorry about that," he says as she tugs the cart outside.
Anna glances up at him again. "Hockey player?" she guesses, raising an eyebrow.
Kristoff starts to laugh. "You really don't know who I am?"
She shrugs. "When he said your name, I kind of recognized it. Harry, one of my kids, he worships the Bruins, but I have seven sets of interests to keep track of. Sorry if that bruises your ego."
Kristoff shakes his head, chuckling. "Nah, it's cool. Made me feel almost normal for once."
She glances down his well-muscled body and chooses not to make a comment about how normal people aren't built like that. Instead she purses her lips. "And to think I paid for your eggs when you could buy everything in my cart seven times over."
"Hey, you offered."
"I did," she agrees, then looks up at the sky with a sigh. Clouds have rolled in and it looks like it might rain soon. She has too much in the cart to try to walk the twenty blocks back to the house. She's strong, but even she has her limits. She'll have to borrow the cart and return it tomorrow. It makes her feel super guilty every time she has to do it, but some things can't be helped. "Well, hope the rain holds off on me. It was nice to meet you, Kristoff Bjorgman."
She starts off down the road with the cart when he calls after her, "Wait, you're walking with that?"
Anna looks over her shoulder in bemusement. "Yeah. I do it a lot."
His eyebrows go up. "You make a habit of stealing grocery carts," he says slowly, as if making sure he understands what's going on here.
She bristles at the accusation. "And returning them!"
Kristoff shakes his head and beckons. "Come on, I'll give you a ride. It's the least I can do."
She's about to snap at him, but she remembers the time and bites her tongue. She doesn't want Kathryn to deal with the kids alone. Anna follows him not to a BMW, as she expected from a professional athlete, but to a beat up Dodge Intrepid. "Don't look so surprised," Kristoff says as he helps her load her bags into his trunk, packed precariously around various pieces of hockey equipment.
"I thought all athletes drove flashy cars," Anna admits.
"The idiots do. Some of us have other things to spend our money on. Besides, Sven here got me through a lot. I can't just let him go."
Anna bites her lip to keep from grinning at the fact that he named his car and gets in the passenger side. He turns down the radio as they get going — NPR, another unexpected fact about him that's a little bit endearing — and she directs him back to the house.
The kids are walking up the sidewalk from the bus stop as Kristoff pulls in front of the house. Anna bounds out of the car with a grin and a wave. "My favorite munchkins, just in time to help with groceries!"
Her older ones groan, but the littler ones smile a little at her enthusiasm. She counts it as a victory - at least they react to her over-the-top antics. She swiftly puts them all to work as Kristoff gets out of the car. Harry, her twelve-year old who is obsessed with the Bruins, freezes. "Holy fuck," Harry whispers.
Anna sighs. Harry's been in and out of four foster homes in the last three years for behavioral problems, the least of which is his inability to stop cursing. It's an ongoing problem that she's hoping to cure soon. "Language, Harry."
"But Miss Anna, it's Kristoff Bjorgman! You got a ride from Kristoff Bjorgman!" Harry whisper-shouts. Anna hides a smile behind her hand.
"Yeah, Miss Anna did," Kristoff says, bracing himself on his knees to be at Harry's eye level. "Because I was kind of mean to her at the store and I didn't know how else to apologize. You're Harry, right?" Harry's eyes might fall out of his head, they're so wide, and Anna's melting a little at the little gestures Kristoff is making — using Harry's name, getting on his level, reaching over now to shake his hand like he's an adult worthy of respect. "It's nice to meet you, Harry. Maybe you and your friends could come to a game sometime."
Harry's head whips around to look at Anna so fast that she's afraid he might have hurt himself. "Can we, Miss Anna? Please? A real Bruins game!"
She bites the inside of her lip. It's not in the budget, they used up their house field trip last month to go out to the zoo because Hillary had wanted to learn about penguins. "We'll have to see —"
"I think we can work something out, don't you think so, Miss Anna?" Kristoff asks, looking at her. Their eyes meet and he winks. Her heart stutters a little and what in the world is going on?
"Uh, yeah. We'll talk about it. We have to check with — with the agency," she says, regaining her composure. "Harry, sweetie, you've got some stuff in those bags that need to go in the fridge, you should go in."
He does, with a lingering look over his shoulder at Kristoff before disappearing inside, and Anna gathers the last of the bags in her hands. She bobs a short, mock-curtsey at him, smiling wryly. "Well, thank you for the ride, Mr. Bjorgman. And for charming Harry."
He smirks a little at that. "Not a problem at all, Miss Anna No-last-name."
"Yeah, Miss Anna is fine," she says. No reason to get too attached, he won't remember her in a week anyway.
"So when I tell the ticket office to hold eight rinkside tickets, put it under 'Miss Anna'?" he asks as she turns to head up the walkway.
She almost drops her bags in shock and whirls around. She stares incredulously, not really caring that her mouth has fallen open. "Wait, you were serious about that?"
Kristoff leans against his car, arms crossed over his chest. "I don't make it a habit of lying to kids, especially kids like these ones. You're doing something really special here, I meant that. Not many housemothers are willing to put this much effort into taking care of the kids." She wonders how he knows that and then she wonders if it's prying too much to look up his Wikipedia page later instead of actually asking him - and she wonders why she's suddenly shy about asking how he knows. Kristoff grins. "It's nothing, really. We like to give back to the community, and what's better than giving some kids a great night out? And their cute chaperone."
She's horrified to realize she's blushing. "Well, that's — I mean — Fine," Anna squeaks, squaring her shoulders. She's no blushing maiden, she can handle flirty hockey players. "Thank you very much, Mr. Bjorgman. I accept."
He reaches over and shuts the trunk. "Not a problem, Miss Anna."
"Hey," Anna says as he gets back into the car. He glances over his shoulder at her and she smiles mischievously. "It's Adgarssen. Anna Adgarssen."
He grins again. "It's nice to meet you, Miss Anna Adgarssen."
She lingers a little too long on the sidewalk as he drives off before shaking herself again. What a contrary man, she thinks, walking up the path and into the house. "Okay, kids, homework time and dinner's in two hours! I mean it!"