Disclaimer: I own nothing but the writing. The characters are from Disney's Frozen. The story and everything around it is mine.
...
A/N: This is going to be a two-parter. It is part of a Kristanna secret santa exchange I am a part of on Tumblr. It features angsty!PTSD!Kristoff and feisty!Anna. It may even get some holiday cheer in the second part. Enjoy!
...
Freshman orientation was a noble thing, Kristoff supposed, on some level. It was a systematic attempt to assuage the nerves of a couple hundred eighteen-year-olds and those responsible for them as they entered the next phase of their life. The problem was he was not eighteen and though this was a new phase in his life - he felt two thousand years too old to participate.
The problem was he was the thick pack of papers he held in his hands with practiced stillness reminded him a little too much of enlistment papers. The Do's and Dont's of Arendelle University were casual guidelines after years of military service, but it was not so much the rules that bothered him so much as the crowd.
He had started in a seat in the back row, but as the room filled he had abdicated his chair and pressed to the back wall. His eyes stayed trained on the entrance slash exit no matter what his position even as he tried to push down the instinct to see each and every unknown as a potential hostile. Six months as a civilian had done very little to soften the overt mindset that had been drilled into him over two tours.
It was this exact predisposition that led him to notice her well before she noticed him.
She was in his chair - the one he had left - though she filled it much differently than he had. Roughly five foot two, one hundred ten pounds, caucasian, redhead, unarmed - the mental tally of her appearance rattled off without his permission. She could have blended into the sea of other freshmen and their loved ones aside from her chosen seat and the person chosen to accompany her.
The man sitting next to her was far too young to be a parent of any kind despite their shared red hair. The way he draped her arm around her shoulder and whispered into her ear and made her giggle bespoke intimacy though she looked too young, too fragile to understand the weight of such terms.
She was unaccompanied otherwise, bracketed by this man and the empty space of the aisle, and he knew it was foolish to feel any kind of kinship to her because of her chosen seat and her lack of legal guardian because she did have someone while he had no one. That thought caused a strange tightening in his chest followed by sharp anger at such a feeling existing.
This was stupid.
He tore his gaze away from her and looked at the packet in his hands. He had figured out basic training with less instruction than this. He needed to be at this orientation about as much as a seagull needed driving lessons. So before the speaker even took the podium, Kristoff slipped out.
…..
The first day of class was a panic attack waiting to happen.
There were so many people moving in hurried clusters from building to building and there was not enough time or resources to determine if any of them were hostile. His Springfield clung to his hip beneath his shirt but it did not make him feel safe.
He had not felt safe in years.
This packaged sardine existence that was university life made the possibility of violence a literal equivalent to shooting fish in a barrel. Yet this university life was something he had always wanted, had literally fought and killed to have, but now he wondered why. To better himself? He was not sure he was worth it anymore.
In the crush of students moving from one class to the next he found himself walking off of the sidewalk in the grassy median between the two large byways. In some part of himself he knew he should attempt to stay the course or at least hang to the fringes, but the idea of being that close to a stranger - that vulnerable - left him uneasy. He'd rather be a clear target on the side where any assailant would ID themselves in an attempt to assault him rather than be another schmuck caught in the crossfire.
Not that anyone would try to hurt him.
Because this was Arendelle University. Good, safe, clean Arendelle University with their fat campus security officers making predictable sweeps of the campus to lull students into complacency, but that was the way it should be. He had fought for this to be the norm for others. He had been in active combat for longer than it would take him to get a degree in order for people to smash together between classes and for overweight, under qualified security staff to be the status quo.
He had done that, was glad he had done that, but there was a switch that had flipped inside of him during that time and he did not know how to flip it back. He could not even remember what it felt like to walk down a crowded path and not expect someone to want to kill you.
He did not know if he could remember.
So when he settled into his back row seat in the auditorium where his Psych 101 class would be this semester, he made sure he had clear visual of all entrances and exits with his back to the wall. For this reason he was the first to see her come in.
He was the first to see everyone come in, but no one else mattered except for her, this girl from orientation with her red braids hanging like streamers around her shoulders. This girl who, for whatever reason, came and sat right in front of him so he could see over her shoulder and catch glimpses of the curve of her cheek when she turned to speak to the girl sitting next to her at the long, shared desk.
He did not think she was pretty. He did not think her freckles were charming or endearing. He did not feel warmth or excitement at seeing her, but she caught his attention which was more than he could say of most things these days.
….
Kristoff did not believe in fate.
He never would.
But when the red-headed girl showed up not only in his Psych 101 class, but in his Chemistry and Lab course, and his Algebra II course, and his Early American History course - it struck him as odd. He was not sure what the odds were of two freshmen unintentionally having the exact same schedule of classes, but based off the fact that none of his other classmates repeated themselves more than once he figured it had to be pretty low.
Still he did not believe in fate, or chance, or destiny, or karma, or kismet, or whatever you wanted to call it. He also did not believe in coincidence. Time in service had bled all of that out of his, so while he did not believe some unseen force of the universe had placed him in the exact same classes as a particularly distracting redhead he knew better than to just write it off as nothing.
…..
He lived two blocks east of campus and three blocks west from where the VA had found a part time job for him.
His apartment was one room, small, but he could see all points of entry from where he had the futon situated in the corner and that was what he preferred. It was just him, after all, and the price was right.
A small box set TV rested on an equally small bookshelf which housed his textbooks, his three chipped, mismatched place settings, and the full, unopened, box set of Scrubs that he had found in the apartment when he had moved in. A portable clothing rack held his small wardrobe alongside his futon and also served to hide the bathroom door that he had removed from its hinges upon first moving in.
It was a neat space, efficient. He would not go so far as to say he liked it, but he had stayed in much worse conditions so he would never complain. He would also not ever call this place a home. It did not feel that way. He was not sure if he would recognize the feeling of home ever again, but it kept him warm in the winter, cool in the summer, and dry in the rain and there were so many that had less than that so he would not complain.
Still, he did buy himself a small succulent to try and make the place feel a little less bleak. He named it Bruce and kept it on top of his gun safe.
…..
Her name was Anna Belle. He saw her write her name in class the first day and almost snickered.
What a ridiculous name.
Her parents must not have been from around here. Why else would they name their child something that rhymed with the city where they lived?
Anna Belle.
Arendelle.
Okay. So maybe he snickered just a little.
….
It was 10:03AM on the first Friday of the fall semester. He was in what he now considered his usual seat in the back of his Psych 101 auditorium. Anna Belle was also in her usual seat in front of him, slightly to his right. The TA was handing out pop quizzes about the syllabus and Kristoff was watching Anna Belle doodle goslings in the margins of her notebook when a loud bang shot through the room.
Reflex took over.
He dove under the large table style desk and reached for his Springfield .45 where it lived strapped to his side beneath his t-shirt. He looked up and saw wide, brown eyes of his desk neighbor peering down at him with confusion.
"You all right, bro?" He asked, but Kristoff could hardly hear him about the blood screaming through his ears, but the constancy of his gaze was a lifeline that kept him from drawing his weapon.
His desk neighbor was not afraid.
If there was danger, he would be afraid.
That realization cut through his raging instinct just enough for Kristoff to register that there were no other sounds of conflict, no sounds of struggle or brutality. No one was screaming. No one was running. The only noises he heard above his own pulse and breath was the shifting of bodies in seats and the shuffling of papers.
"Bro?" It was the brown-eyed student again. He had a silver hoop hanging from the center of his nose and he was fine. Everyone was fine. Of course they were. This was Arendelle University, not a warzone.
Kristoff uncurled his fingers from the handle of his gun, keeping it holstered. He licked his lips and tasted sweat. His limbs shook with unused adrenaline.
"Everything okay up here, son?" Another voice came from the aisle side and Kristoff whipped his head towards it.
It was the elderly, bespeckled professor. He stooped to look under the desk where Kristoff pressed and curled as far into the corner as he could. Kristoff barely heard him over his own harsh breath. The professor, however, was breathing normally. The professor was fine.
His desk neighbor was fine.
Everyone was fine.
He was fine - or at least he would be fine once he got his body to understand it was not in immediate danger.
Kristoff choked on a mouthful of nothing.
"Dropped my pencil." He managed around the knot in his throat.
There was no pencil anywhere around him. He knew that, his professor knew that, hell even his desk neighbor knew that - but he said it any way. He'd say it again and again until it was true and he could forget this happened. He wanted to forget everything that had ever happened, but he knew that was more than just wishful thinking.
With all of his strength, he pushed himself out of his hiding place to take his seat once more. One hundred pairs of eyes were on him - everyone in the class except for the TA who was still collecting the scattered stack of pop quizzes she had dropped. His fists clenched. There had never been a gunshot. He knew that now, but somehow it was worse that all it had taken to reduce him to quivering pile of reflexes he wished he didn't have was a twenty-year-old dropping a stack of paper.
He grabbed at the pencil sitting on the desk in front of him.
"Nevermind. Found it." He said to the professor who looked at him with a level of knowing that was unsettling as the events leading up to it. He was ripping his psyche to shreds, no doubt, and having a hayday with it.
The only mercy in the moment came when the professor turned and walked back down the stairs taking the prying eyes with him. He chanced a glance down at Anna Belle in the moment to find her watching him with an inscrutable gaze and he wished he could hide back under his desk forever. She was - no doubt - cataloguing away this incident so she could use it for whatever nefarious purpose had landed her in each of his classes this semester. She was picking apart his every weakness, his every flaw, until she had the perfect opportunity to strike - and holy shit what was wrong with him?
His brown-eyed desk neighbor leaned over.
"You trippin', bro?"
He looked to his left and saw the glint of fluorescent lights off of the silver nose ring. Kristoff's hands still shook and he swore he could still feel Anna Belle staring at him - picking him apart - and he tried to focus past that.
So under his breath, with a shake of his head, Kristoff replied: "Yeah. Probably."
….
He did not cut any classes that day even though his nerves felt like someone had doused them with lighter fluid and tossed a match on them. He had joined the military so that he could afford college. No one had ever told him that the military may also ruin the chance of him being able to function while actually in college.
He walked the grassy median between classes, trying very hard to not notice the flashes of Anna Belle's hair walking the exact same trajectory as he was, and he hated her and every student able to walk the crowded sidewalk without a care. He hated each student who picked out a seat in a classroom without thought of exit points. He hated the whole of the student body for showing him just how truly different he was now.
By the time his classes were done for the day he was exhausted. He'd felt Anna Belle's knowing gaze follow him from class to class like she was just waiting for him to freak out again. Not that he blamed her. He was kind of waiting for the same thing, but he did not appreciate her waiting for it too.
So by the time he made it to the small apartment where he lived he could barely stand. He fell face-down on his futon and was asleep in an instant.
…..
The overly bright screen of his phone told him that it was 1:33AM and he was certain that incorrect. There was no way he had slept for ten hours straight. No way.
Except that he had and now he was wide awake in the middle of the night with no intention of diving into the abyss of marathoning Scrubs. So he changed into sweats, laced up his sneakers, and decided to go blow off some steam.
The idea of a middle of the night run took him back to some less than pleasant memories of basic training and after, but he pushed that aside. He was choosing to take this run. No one chose it for him. Those other runs had always hovered somewhere between conscious and awake. Now he was capital A Awake. His entire body hummed with energy and he focused on that while he propelled himself down distances marked by street lamps.
He looped the campus, the neighborhoods surrounding it, ran by his work twice, but never felt the drag of fatigue. So he pushed harder. He'd already clocked four miles when he decided he would run in one direction until he was tired then and only then would he turn back around and run to his apartment.
Yeah.
That would show himself to take a ten hour nap in the middle of the day.
That'd show him good.
The city of Arendelle was a seaside community despite the university being three miles inland. So when he finally felt the first sea breeze hit his face he could not help but feel the energy of the ocean in his blood.
It felt good.
Not many things felt like much of anything anymore, especially not positive things, but this did. This felt good and he'd chase that.
He turned to take his run down the deserted coastal pathway. The wide path was normally littered with open air storefronts, street performers, and tourists. Now, in the dead of night, it was abandoned. The only sound was the pounding of his feet and the surf echoing his heartbeat. The ocean kept time for him and set his pace.
He was near his ninth mile when he caught sight of her.
At first he was certain his eyes were playing tricks on him.
No one would be out here at almost three in the morning. Well. At least no one besides him, but there she was.
Her skin was so pale it almost glowed beneath the street lamps, acting like a beacon in the dark. Her red hair swam in tangled waves around her bare shoulders. He looked around to see if he could find a companion walking with her, but there was no one. She was alone which was dangerous and stupid.
He did not know what the proper thing to do in this situation would be. His paranoia told him that this was no coincidence and that she had known he would be here tonight, but how could she have known when even he had not? And besides, even if she had, what threat could she possible pose him? He could knock her over with a strong breath.
Ten yards out, he slowed his face to a halt and got a good look at her. Jeans like a second skin, a sleeveless blouse as thin as a spider's web, and high-heels that accounted for her hobbled steps. And even at this distance, he could tell she was drunk as a skunk.
She did not seem to notice him until she was about five yards away. She stopped, swayed, and blinked in his direction.
"Hey!" She was loud, so much louder than he expected a person of her stature to be. "I know you." Her consonant slide into her vowels. "You're the guy who freaked out in class about his pencil." She pointed a finger in his direction and wobbled two steps towards him. "Why does anyone freak out about a pencil?" She kept approaching him but his feet stayed glued to the path. "Is it lucky or something?"
He was going to tell her that he had absolutely not freaked out even though he totally had and that there was no such thing as luck but she kept on rambling.
"Is that why you're out here? You're looking for your lucky pencil? Are you going to freak out again? Are you freaking out now?" She was close enough now that she tried to poke him in his chest, but missed and stumbled towards him.
He caught her shoulders in his hands.
The weight and warmth of her sent a shock wave through his entire system. When was the last time he had touched another human? Moreover when was the last time that it had mattered? Not that this matter, but still.
He blamed his runner's high for his heightened reaction.
"What are you doing out here?" He blasted past her pencil talk to questions of his own.
She leaned into his grip, seeming to crave the stability. "My boyfriend threw another party and I got bored so I left, okay?"
Her tone changed markedly for the worse at the mention of her boyfriend. Kristoff's mind flashed to the redhead man she had been with at orientation a week ago and made the connection.
"Where's your boyfriend now?" He asked in code to see if she was alone as she seemed.
"Back there." She jerked her head backwards. "With all the other drunk jerkfaces."
"How far back?"
"You wanna know the address? Cuz I know it."
"Sure."
"1323 Wayfair Way." She hiccuped. "Happy?"
That address was nearly a four mile trek from where they stood, so no. Happy was not the word that struck him immediately. The sensation was more closer to staggering disbelief. Four miles in those high heels she teetered on so precariously now was a special form of torture.
"Where are you going now?" He let go of her shoulders and she swayed towards him again. His hands resumed their position to keep her upright and at a sane distance.
"Home." She blinked up at him, wide eyes glassy. "Well. Campus, I guess."
That was three miles in the other direction. He had just run it, logging the distance mentally, and there was no way she was making it the rest of the way in those heels. Hell. He doubted her ability to finish out the trek stone cold sober and in sneakers. If the rest of her was as fragile as her shoulders felt in his hands - he doubted it very much.
"Where's your phone?" He asked and she screwed up her face.
"Are you asking for my number? Because I already have a boyfriend. At least - I think I do. He's going to be pretty mad I left another party." She rambled. He only half tried to keep up.
"No. I'm calling you a cab. You aren't walking anywhere." He looked over her again to see if she carried a purse, a bag, anything - but came up fruitless.
"I left it at the party. Don't want him calling me." She stumbled out of his grip and almost tripped. "Don't want anybody calling me anything. I can handle myself."
She started her pained, hobbled walk in the direction of campus and he was tempted to let her go her own way. He did not owe her a damn thing and if she was stupid enough to want to try to walk seven miles alone, three sheets to the wind, in the middle of the night with absolutely no form of protection whatsoever it was totally not his problem. He looked away from her back towards the direction where he wanted to be running away from her and he almost did. Almost.
But then he looked back over his shoulder and saw her stumble step after painful step and he knew he could not leave it at this.
He could not go to class for the rest of the semester with Anna Belle's seat empty in front of him because she got murdered between here and campus all because he wanted to keep running. He groaned.
Why was this complete stranger so hell bent on ruining his life?
"Hold on!" He called and jogged to catch up with her.
She whirled which was never a good idea when drunk in heels and he barely kept her from careening to the ground by catching her arm in his hand.
"Oh. It's you." She giggled and the sound of her laugh sent a chill down his spine.
"Yeah. It's me. We're going to get you home before you get yourself killed or worse." He stooped and tried to scoop her up in his arms, but she drunkenly dodged him.
"What are you doing?"
"You cannot walk anymore in those stupid shoes. I'm carrying you." He bent again in attempts to sweep her up in his arms, and again she stumbled just enough to evade him.
"What? No. My parents warned me about strangers and you are a stranger."
She was all sass, but he did not care. The sooner they got back to campus the sooner she was no longer his problem and that moment could not come soon enough.
"Fine. You want a piggy back ride instead?" He was half joking but her eyes lit up at the proposition.
"Are you serious?"
He did not have time to answer before she scurried behind him and tried to climb him like a tree, stranger talk clearly forgotten.
"Whoa there, feisty pants." He ducked down, reached back, and caught her slim thighs in firm hands to hoist her onto his back.
She was small. He knew that. But what he had not known was that he had carried backpacks heavier than she was by some measure. He had scaled mountains with supply packs more awkward than she was in all of her drunken glory. He'd hauled injured comrades twice her size away from combat. Yet the weight of her pressed against him, wrapped around him, took his breath for a moment.
She settled against his back. Her arms encircled his neck. Her legs were like a vice around his hips. She held him so tightly it was as if she was trying to attach herself permanently.
He heard and felt her sigh.
"I haven't had one of these since I was little." She pressed her cheek to the back of his sweaty shirt and sighed again. "Everything was so simple when we were little. Right? Like - what happened to that? Why did we let it go?"
He was used to drunken philosophers, but he was not used to them being a woman plastered to his back. Her warmth seeped into his skin. He could smell the waft of hairspray, gin, and honeysuckle. His mom had a honeysuckle bush, but it had been a long time since he had seen it - or her.
A twinge of guilt twisted his stomach.
"Things change." He started a brisk pace, hoping that if he jostled her a bit she would lose her death grip. "Let's get you home."
….
The dorms at Arendelle University required residence to swipe a keycard in order to get inside.
Anna Belle's key card was seven miles back at a party and it is all Kristoff could do to not just let her sleep on the stoop. The three miles back to campus had been torture enough. His body, so conditioned against its own needs, had come alive against her constant contact. A part of him he had considered long dead stirred with new life and he could not be more horrified. His only comfort in those long three miles had been that he would be rid of her soon and that she was probably too drunk to remember any of it. He had not considered that this may not be the end of the road.
"We can go to campus security. They can look you up in the student database and let you in." He had read that in the orientation packet.
"No, no, no, no, no, no…" she pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes and plopped down on the dormitory steps. "They will know I have been drinking and they can't know that cuz I can't be drunk yet. I'll get kicked out of school or something and then my sister - oh! Oh no! My sister is going to murder me."
Kristoff was not certain what Anna Belle's sister had to do with any of this, but she did have a point. Arendelle University was a dry campus and he had not even considered the fact that she was well under legal drinking age. While he was not sure expulsion was on the table, there would be very real consequences if The Powers That Be found her wasted on campus.
"We could call your boyfriend. There's phones on campus we could use and -"
"No. No we cannot call my boyfriend." She gave a pinched laugh. "Not that he would help anyway. He's such a jerk when he drinks." She looked up at him from where she sat, eyes wide and watery. "Are you a jerk when you drink?"
He did not know how to answer that, was not ready for the weepy hysterical part of this evening to start. Plus Anna Belle was starting to look a little green around the gills and he knew he needed to get her off campus before a security patrol circled around to find her vomiting on a sidewalk with him alongside her.
"All right you." He put his hands under her armpits and lifted her to her feet with little effort. "If you aren't going to let me call anyone then you're going to have to come with me."
He walked down the steps and paused in front of her. She slumped onto his back without further prompting, his hands catching her thighs once more, and her cheek finding its place against his back.
She sighed, a familiar feeling now, and that thing stirred in his gut.
"Where are we going?" He could barely make out her mumbled words.
"Somewhere you can sleep this off."
She muttered something unintelligible and the burrowed closer against him. He gritted his teeth.
Somehow two blocks felt an awful lot longer than it actually was.
….
He managed to unlock his apartment door with her still attached to his back. She'd been muttering things under her breath the entire time he walked them to his small apartment but he had not tried to make out any of them. She was at the point in her drunken journey that the buzz was fading into shakey sadness. He knew that place well.
He needed to get her some water, some food, and some sleep immediately before she dissolved further.
They got inside and he could not put her down quickly enough. She swayed at the rough dismount, her face taking the pale, piqued shade of impending sickness. He steered her to the bathroom and she seemed to know what to do from there. She sank to her knees and heaved into the open toilet bowl.
Her tiny shoulder shook with each wretch. She looked so small, so fragile, kneeling on his bathroom floor. He was not well equipped in the art of drunk comfort, but he joined her on the cramped floor and pulled her hair back over her shoulders. It was sticky with hairspray. He had the fleeting thought of what her hair would feel like unsaturated with styling product, but he dismissed that. That thought was literally the bottom of what he needed to be thinking about right now with this petite hurricane in his living space.
She stayed over the bowl for several minutes after the purging had ceased. He relaxed his grip on her hair and awkwardly patted her back. It was better this way, he knew. Throwing the stuff up out of her system was far better than letting it work its way through and in turn would be much easier for him to get her out of his apartment in the morning.
Finally she slumped back so her spine pressed into the wall behind her. Her hand cupped her forehead and she choked on a breath. He closed the lid and flushed. Standing he took his cup from the sink, filled it with water, and offered it to her. She took it with shaking hands.
"You may want to rinse and spit." He said before she put the cup to her lips and she nodded. She tried to press up to stand, but with the cup, her choice of footwear, and her condition it was a difficult task. Her grabbed her elbow to steady her and led her to the sink. She rinsed, spit, and repeated four times. Water splashed the front of her already thin blouse making it transparent. The hunger stirred in him again and he looked away. The only reason he was feeling this way was because of years of deprivation. He knew better than to associate physical need with actual affection.
He reached past her into the medicine cabinet and pulled out a bottle of mouthwash.
"Here." He poured her a cap full. "So your teeth don't rot."
She took it and swished and spit just the same as she had with the glass of water before and then just stood there. Her small hands gripped the edges of the pedestal sink for dear life. Her breaths came in shaky gulps.
He hovered awkwardly, uncertain if she was going to vomit again or start sobbing, and wondering just how in the hell he got exactly here in the first place.
She pulled her feet out of her heels one at a time, shrinking five inches with a hiss. He looked down. Her little toes and the skin of her heels are worn raw and blistered. He'd had blisters like that before and he felt her pain for only one instant before he reminded himself that if she had not been so insistent on walking miles in those impractical shoes she never would have been in this position and neither would he.
She really must have wanted to leave that party. The thought popped into his head - unwelcome - and he shoved it aside.
"Hey. Come over here. We'll get you cleaned up."
He took her elbow again, gently - so gently, and steered her shaking form over to his futon. She sat on a shaking exhale. The still-made covers pulled towards her. It was strange feeling to see her sitting there. He had not had company in the six months he had held this apartment for a lot of reasons, but mostly because no one he would call a friend knew he was back in the country.
He did not want to dwell on that though, she he went back to the bathroom to fetch his first aid kit. It was a heavy-duty one from the field, complete with suture kits, scalpels, and a collapsible stretcher, but thankfully she wouldn't require any of the more intense medical cares he could provide. He set the case by her feet and opened it up.
He felt her eyes on him, but he did not look up. Instead he picked up one of her feet and rested it on his thigh. She had slender feet with short, curled toes painted the with chipped, pink polish that he may have found endearing in another life. He took out a sanitizing cotton swab and ripped the packaging open.
"This is going to sting." Was the only warning he gave her before he swiped it across the torn skin of her pinkie toe.
She shouted, and not in a dainty restrained way. She howled and he lurched back.
"That hurt!"
"Sorry!" Her eyes were dry with pain and it drew the apology from him like venom from a wound. "I warned you."
"It still hurt." She repeated. "Just because you know its gonna hurt doesn't mean it hurts less."
He was struck by that, but he had no ability to say why. So instead he muttered another apology and pulled out a tube of antiseptic instead. He smeared clear paste over the her afflicted skin before covering it with gauze and medical tape. When he completed one foot he went to the other and kept the sanitizing swab far away.
The moment her feet were bandaged he pulled back with trash in one hand and his kit in the other.
"You need sleep." He took two steps, three - four - five, back from where she sat so delicate and bewildered on his bed.
"Everything is spinning."
"Take deep breaths." He coached. "And find someplace to focus your gaze."
He took his first aid kit back to his bathroom before making quick work refilling the glass from the sink and bringing it to her.
"Drink this." He handed her the glass, trying not care when her fingers brushed his, and went to his mini-fridge.
There were not many options there, but he had some bread, cold cuts, and an apple. He pulled them out, sliced the apple, and retrieved one of his three plates. He placed the sliced apple, deli meat, and bread on the plate and brought them over to her.
"Eat this." He balanced the plate on her knees and she laughed.
"Drink this." She deepened her voice. "Eat this." She laughed a sad, short laugh. "It's like I'm in Alice in Wonderland."
He had no commentary for her storybook reality. The sooner she was asleep the sooner he could relax. Maybe. Or maybe like the rest of this evening it would become his newest, most exquisite form of torture.
She brought and apple slice to her mouth and sucked.
He looked away.
"You're being really nice to me." She said, but he didn't look back at her.
Instead he looked around for something, anything, to do other than look at her. He landed on watering Bruce.
"No I'm not."
"Yes you are."
"No. I'm just keeping you out of trouble since you seem incapable of doing so yourself." He picked up the plant and headed towards the bathroom sink.
"But you didn't have to. You could have left me behind."
She was talking nonsense. He knew better than to try to reason with a drunk semi-stranger, so he turned his tap on to a drip and counted the drops as they landed on Bruce.
"You could have." She said again, talking as she ate. "But you didn't and you carried me and fixed my feet and gave me your food and that is something nice people do. That is why I think you are nice."
Ten, eleven, twelve….
"You probably didn't even know that apples are like my favorite food. So is bread. You gave me both which is a nice thing to do."
Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one….
"Some people say they are nice but they never do nice things. You are the backwards of that which is better."
Twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight….
"Hey! Do you want some of this?"
He cut the tap and looked back at her. She was holding the plate towards him from where she sat and it blocked her face. On it sat two slices of apple and a half eaten piece of bread. He grabbed Bruce.
"I'm good. Thanks." He was actually starving. Between missing dinner and his impromptu cross-city trek he had worked up quite an appetite but he was not going to eat her food.
He set Bruce back on the gun safe at the foot of his futon and looked at her. Her eyes were sagging. Her limbs hung at her sides. She must have already forgotten her offer of food because she was munching on the second half of her bread slice now.
He grabbed the small trash can from his kitchenette and brought it over by the bed. He set it down by her knees and she looked up at him with glassy eyes like he meant something to her and that made him uncomfortable. This whole thing made him uncomfortable, but especially that.
"You should get some sleep." He said and pointed at the trash can. "If you need to puke again, do it in there. Not on the floor."
She followed the direction of his point and nodded obediently.
He bent to take the plate off of her knees when she grabbed his wrists. Her tiny fingers barely wrapped their width but her grip was surprisingly strong. The unexpected touch sent his heart to his throat. Surprises were not his forte. He thought to pull away but did not want to upset her. So he stayed still, stooped over, hands on the plate, eyes on the two remaining apple slices.
"Hey." She was whispering now which made no sense since they were the only two in the room. "Hey - you." She whispered still and this time he craned his neck back to look at her face.
She was so close at this angle that he could see bread crumbs stuck in the corners of her lips. He could see the smallest and faintest freckles over the bridge of her nose where her makeup had worn off. He could see the green ring around her pupils in the center of blue eyes.
"Yeah?" He whispered too, but didn't realize until it was too late.
"What's your name?"
The question struck him as so odd because he had known her name for days, had laughed about it even. In his mind it had made sense somehow that she would know his name as well, but that was not the case. Of course it wasn't. He was stupid to think it was even for an instant.
"Kristoff." He spoke full voice this time.
"Christopher." She still whispered.
"No. Just Kristoff."
She nodded as if she always knew that.
"Kristoff?" She met his gaze with unblinking solemnity.
"Yeah?"
"Thanks for being you."
With that she leaned up, leveraging herself against her grip on his wrists, and kissed him.
Well - she kind of kissed him. Her mouth, sticky from apple slices, landed halfway on his cheek and halfway on his mouth. It could have been a mistake, a sloppy drunken slip, for her mouth to land on his at all - but he could not be sure. Regardless the sensation alone was enough to send him running out the door again. Electricity shot through him and he had to force himself to stay completely still as she pulled back and let go of his wrists.
She grabbed the apple slices, one in each hand, and began to eat them as if her world had not just completely shifted. It took him a moment before he could command enough brain power to stand and take the plate to the kitchen sink on stiff legs.
Anna Belle held no special charm for him. Plus she had a boyfriend and she was nowhere near worth that kind of trouble. His physical reaction to her half-kiss was deprivation partnered with serious unused adrenaline, he told himself.
He kept those thoughts going until she fell asleep ten minutes later.
Then he redoubled them.
…..
Kristoff did not believe in fate or coincidence or any of that crap that indoctrinated the gullible consciousnesses that had never seen true injustice. He didn't believe it at all, but as his eyes adjusted to the dark he could just barely make out the curve of her cheek, the slip of her shoulder in the shadows he felt something move. He could almost hear her breathing from where he secured himself with his back against the door, absolutely nowhere near her, not wanting to be any closer to her.
And no. You would never convince him that destiny or anything of the ilk brought this girl to his apartment but by the honor that bound him to fight he'd be damned if he did not spend the rest of the night trying to sort out just exactly how it happened.
...
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