Title: babe, you look so cool
Summary: "Is that all you can offer a good looking girl like me, Jackson Overland?" / She was a slave to her addiction with all the pretty pink powder and the glitter of dust in her eyes. And he didn't care whether the blood on her cheek stained with all the sins he knows she's worth – because she's beautiful in the name of all her mistakes. trigger!warning. jack!elsa.
Prompt: The song Robbers by The 1975, Blank Space by Taylor Swift, and Heart Out by The 1975 as well. Also, there's a quote in Butcher Boy that I fell in love with and thought I should incorporate it here; see summary :D
A/N: I am not, in anyway, suggesting anything mentioned here is appropriate. This could may well trigger unwanted thoughts so if you don't like themes of crimes, drug abuse, blood, violence and possible suicide, it's important you turn back now. This is an entire work of fiction so please do not take anything into heart. References to the songs above are mentioned; see if you can spot them ;D Without further ado, let us begin :)
Disclaimer: I own not Jack Frost of Dreamworks, nor Elsa of Disney. I simply live to admire these two characters. And also, I don't own any prompts – they're merely inspirations of this story I write.
She claimed the name tundra bitch because her gaze was cold like a dead winter's day, and she's never smiled—not once ever. Beautiful as she may have been, no one's ever stood a chance – those devil eyes always demanded more than any normal guy can offer. So Jackson Overland Frost never saw a happy ending in this summertime relationship they acquainted themselves to. Because despite all the beauty in the soft touches and sharing of breaths, there was something terribly wrong in the powder they inhaled and the high they lived in.
They met, sophomore year in high school, a girl so lost in all her insecurities and he's the boy everyone admired. It was a difficult time for all the teens that lived in Burgress, and frosty winter settled in with it's dark nights and bright snow. They did not experience the cliché love at first sight but he was the guy with the pale hair and sapphire eyes—it made it difficult for her not to notice him.
He had a reputation for drinking too much alcohol, and she was the good girl that took notes in class. Complete opposites in the social world of high school, an imbalance beyond compare, yet so similar in their love for all the immoral the world could offer. And even with the good grades and that clean slate, she's a sinner beyond the naked eye.
So when fate decides to intervene, they crossed each other one early Monday morning, halls void of whispering eyes and prying mouths. She was calm and regal as she walked through the tiled room, ice in every breath she took, and he stood by his locker listening to the kind of music people forgot existed.
"Good morning, Tundra."
He muttered absentmindedly, eyes fixated on the screen of his phone, and she gave a small nod to acknowledge the greeting. She would've thought it ended there, but he had so much more in mind.
"Why are you always here so early?"
He asked in a tone of nonchalance and she wanted to ignore it, but there was something endearing – and quite possibly charming – in the sincerity the blue in his eyes held.
"It's nice to be early. You don't miss your classes, and you don't get into trouble."
"That's a very good reason."
"And yourself; why are you always coming to school late?"
"I prefer missing my classes, and I don't really care much for getting in trouble."
"I know boys like you Jackson—I don't like boys like you."
"And you may find, it's not really fair for you to easily categorize me like that."
"And I suppose you're not a hypocrite – calling me Tundra and all."
"But you answer to the nickname, so I assume you don't care."
"Just because I don't care, doesn't mean it's not wrong."
And it was true – he had bitterly realized.
It was that small interaction—such a petty conversation—that got him interested in her. Never mind the fact that ever since then he's started to notice how pretty she actually is, and he thinks there's simply more to her than the elegance and grace of a queen, and the image rumors have vividly painted of her. And he swore by his heart, he would figure it all out – figure her all out.
So he started talking to her more often. Not just simple hellos, and goodbyes, or small smiles and brushes of the shoulder. He sat with her in class, talked to her at lunch. And slowly he started to realize, there was nothing so icy about Elyssa Mari Arendellia—after all.
She never questioned his motives—which he was thankful for—and she got so much prettier every single time they met, it just about killed him. It was all in her eyes and sweet mocking mouth that he couldn't help but longed for. Oh God—if only she felt the same, he would pray.
She was always so composed, the ideal image of a sickeningly innocent girl that could make any boy that fell in love with her change for the better. So it took a good long while for him to catch on—she's not at all completely flawless. Despite the make-up that covered her bruised and pale skin, when you get close enough to truly see beyond the mask of her eyes, you would know – she was flawed by the pressure that drove her perfection.
It was halfway through junior year when he found out about her. He took her to a Christmas party his best friend – Harry Horrendous Haddock, the quirky boy with a girlfriend so brave and intimidating – hosted. As expected, she didn't drink or smoke. And her clothes were tight and conservative, he thought he might've fallen further in love with her.
"Are you enjoying yourself?"
"I'm okay."
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah."
He gave a small nod and left her be with the promise to come back and check on her later that night. She was okay with him leaving her, she really was. It was Jack's territory after all, and it's a whole world she didn't belong to. So she spent the rest of the night sat on a curb by the back door, a couple of smokers out. She coughs as if it's something so grotesque, when she knows it's blatant hypocrisy on her part.
"You're Elsa Arendelle, aren't you?"
A girl asked, pretty, short black hair, green and pink streaks sprayed on her fringe.
"Yes, I am."
"I heard about you. You're the tundra bitch."
"I suppose that is my nickname."
"I'm Tatiana Faye. You can call me Tooth."
The girl extended a hand, manicured nails painted black, and her eyes dark in the shades of the faded yellow light. She grinned, a pretty little one that Elsa could've sworn that if she were a boy, she would have fallen hard in love with her. And the organic drug stained the tips of her fingers, and she smelled just like her addiction, and Elsa understood. So she took the hand and shook it, with a small and polite smile.
"Do you want to try?"
"No, thank you."
"Really? I've got a guy here that can offer you any drug you want."
"Any drug?"
Her voice had that amused doubt in it, and she almost gave away a mocking smile. But she held herself back and tried to conceal the truth of who she really was.
"Yeah—hey Sandy!"
A small and stout man waddled over to them, hair so golden—she was certain it had to be dyed. He had sandy dilated eyes, and a lazy grin that told the story of his high. He never spoke, but signed, and Elsa sort of understood.
"Hello, Sandy says."
Tooth translated for her, and Elsa nodded.
"Is he the guy?"
"Yup. Anything you want, he can offer it to you."
"Oh."
"Do you want anything?"
"I don't think so."
"There's temptation in your eyes, Elsa. That's not something you can hide, specially from a girl like me."
Elsa caved in. And half an hour later, she was laughing with Tatiana and Sanderson – Sanderson Mansnoozie, that was Sandy's full name, and a beautiful name it was indeed. Pretty dust misted over her wide eyes, and all she saw were bright colors of a psychedelic dream. It was beautiful being stuck in the abyss of something so detached from reality. When Jack stepped into the scene, he was furious.
"Tooth, what the fuck did you do?"
"What now, Jack?"
"What'd you do to Elsa?!"
"Please, she was begging for it."
"Tooth, fuck off."
Completely unknown to all that surrounded her, Elsa merely stared off in a daze, her body shook and her mood slightly lifted. Jack's hold on her wrist, a warm touch that almost transported her back to reality, was something alien and brand new. And somehow she remembered—he was not supposed to know.
"Jack."
She tried to explain but he was so mad it scared her. So she never uttered another word. And he dragged her back to the car, and sat her there, whilst he stormed back into the house, loud swearing directed at Tooth and Sandy. She didn't know that he worried so goddamn much about her, because she never thought it possible. All she could think of was how lovely the drug was to her, and how she wished he'd share the experience with her. Because over the course of these high school years, pills that pulled and blotches of paper were all that ever got her through.
She woke up in an unfamiliar bed the next day, all wrapped up in a plaid shirt too big for her, and her face a dirty mess. He was sitting on his bedroom floor, drinking what appeared to be a bottle of beer, and she wasn't really sure what to make of it.
"How long?"
It was a simple question. And though she wished she didn't remember the night before, it was kind of impossible for her to lie to this guy. Mainly because, over the one year that they've known each other, he seemed to see right through all her bullshit.
"Since first year."
"That long, huh?"
"I suppose."
"Is that all you take?"
"Yes."
"That'll undo you one day."
"And I suppose alcohol won't."
She was right again. But he resisted the urge to yell at her, and tell her that that wasn't really the case here. To hell whether he kills himself with all the liquor he drinks—fuck that. He doesn't care whatever happens to his body as long as she's okay with her pretty face and her innocence – that innocence that never actually fucking existed in the first place.
"Why would you do it?"
"Don't fucking ask me that because you know fuck all about me."
"I'm asking because I fucking care."
"Oh wow, how noble of you Jackson Overland. But fuck you, I can take care of myself. And I don't need your hypocritical ass on my fucking case."
"Don't you fucking get it?"
"No I don't. Why don't you just go and fall out of love with me already?! All that you thought I was is a lie!"
He was just as confused as she was. Why wasn't he out of love with her already—anyway? She was clearly living one big fat lie – and the look in her eyes won't let him forget that so easily. So why couldn't he stop caring? Why couldn't he just—not?
It scared him, and he was so fucking afraid to admit it – that everything she's done, and everything she's doing, it was all he ever wanted. Because he didn't really care if she was in love with that hallucinogenic drug, or if she cared a little too much about her grades. The contradiction within her existence reminded him that he liked her, no matter what he found.
"You clearly don't know how love works."
"Then why don't you explain it to me, huh?"
It was a rhetoric challenge. And despite the fact that she was not really expecting an answer, he kissed her anyway. She gasped as his hand crawled under the plaid shirt, and she was kissing him back with closed eyes. He tasted so much like all the wrongs in her life – from the drug abuse, to the lost parents and the unforgiving sister. And she was entertainment to his mouth.
Never had two people been so right for each other. The tundra bitch and the alcoholic—what a scary couple that was. And they started something scandalous, and amazing, and she fell in love with him the way she fell in love with the LSD. A small try, a curiosity sparked, to an obsession she couldn't seem to ever live without. And it was just as deadly as it was wonderful.
They found friends that loved the same things they loved. The kind of people that liked to hide under fire escapes and smoked rocks and browns. Tooth became Elsa's best friend. Aside from their fucked up morals, she was the only girl among the group – and therefore, would've automatically understood her the most. And she loved it because there's no bullshit behind Tooth and her purple eyes.
"What do you think of Jack?"
"I think he's alright."
"You've got the guy pretty smitten."
"He has me by the neck too, so we're kind of even."
"I'm kind of jealous."
"Really?"
"Been liking him since the third grade."
"I'm sorry."
"It's okay. You're more like the kind of girl that would suit him best."
And the best thing about it was that, there was no bitterness in the way she said that – rather, plain admiration. And they got along pretty well, even though she was the bad girl in class who spat at teachers and is the known slut of the school. Because she saw more than just beauty and façade with Tatiana. And she never minded prostitutes like her in the first place.
Though Jack was never one to take the kinds of things Elsa was so into, he did promise to do anything for her. No established relationship or anything, there were feelings and he just couldn't stop giving in to what she wanted. Because what she wanted was, and is everything he wanted. So he tried the pills, and the pretty pink powder. And the experience was less than favorable but she promised him, he'll get used to it.
"I don't see what's so good about this."
"Clearly, you haven't lived yet."
"I beg to differ."
"Well."
"It's still different, hearing things like that from you of all people. That balaclava you wear is perfect to hide the shit that you do."
"It's not that I'm a necessarily bad person. I just need a little bit of break – some sort of an escape, that's all."
"Will you ever stop?"
"Will you ever stop with the alcohol?"
"I don't think so."
"There's your answer."
"Our children would be terrible."
"No."
"Really now?"
"Not if we don't leave them to make the mistakes we've made."
"Are you saying it's the parents' fault?"
"Yes. More often than not."
"Well, I think so too."
They kissed again. The kind of kiss that ruins you—just a little bit—because it burns. And she looked so fucking good with her hair all messy and everything from the shadow in her eyes and face in dusty foundation, God only knows he'll never fucking leave her.
"I fucking love you."
And they became some sort of a couple. The kind that didn't live for the sweet moments or stolen kisses. They were like miscreants falling in love, everything in their life planned out for the crimes their souls were willing to commit. And eventually they blew out all their money on useless things they thought they needed, and they had to find another way to get through the life of the addicted. So they planned a heist, conspiring with Tooth and her boyfriend, a man with grey hair, ten years older than the lot of them. He never got along with Jack—always thought he was out to steal his girl—but Elsa adored him.
It was due on a school day, and Elsa refused to come – and those involved thought it ridiculous—a drug addict like her, still caring about shit like that, doesn't she know her life isn't going anywhere? But Jack is Jack and he doesn't care about grades and all the works, so he does her part of the plan. It was a small robbery, in an unknown pit stop between the havens and their simple town.
(The guns are out and shots are heard. They get the dough, and he gets shot.)
He's bathed in blood and spilled alcohol, but they bought the drugs before they tended to his wound. Because getting Elsa her escape was more important than his life at stake. He feels better with the powder in his system, confusing hallucinations for painkilling. But the one thing he needed to numb the burn from the scar of his wreckless behaviour arrived three hours later, worried and crying.
They found each other by his bathroom sink, and his hand is dyed red but that doesn't stop her from kissing him. And with his soiled palm against her face, they kissed and they fucked. With remnants of the LSD on his tongue, she licks it off and gets high on herself. She was a slave to her addiction with all the pretty pink powder and the glitter of dust in her eyes. And he didn't care whether the blood on her cheek stained with all the sins he knows she's worth – because she's beautiful in the name of all her mistakes.
"Should we stop?"
She asked him, breathless on the bathroom floor, and he hesitantly nods.
"I think it's time."
"Just one more."
And the summer before senior year, they repented for all the sins they have committed. His silver hair glistens through the kaleidoscopic lights of their daydreams, and fucking and kissing whilst on their high was the best feeling in the world. But they know this kind of lifestyle won't last any longer. It won't be easy detoxing but if that's what she needs, and if that's what'll keep him alive—then screw the drugs.
Sometimes, she misses hearing colors and seeing noises, but that's all in the past—she hopes. And they continue the rest of summer doing things normal couples do. But it would prove, that everything—even the good things—never did come easy. They find themselves losing the one thing that kept them together. Because love—they find—was never part of the equation in the first place.
The wreck of their blooming romance withers on the night before they're back for senior year. He finds it bitterly accurate how much he predicted came to light with the summer of their relationship facing it's end.
"Are you going to gun this relationship down because you can't put your misplaced anger somewhere else beside me?!"
"You think I have misplaced anger? Well—fuck you then."
"Think? Jesus Christ, I fucking know."
"And how would you? You're never home—you're always fucking about with that goddamn prostitute."
"Tooth is my fucking friend and you have no fucking right to call her that."
"Why? Isn't she one anyway?"
"You know fuck well why she does what she does—Goddamnit Elsa, you were her best friend. Just because you lose one thing you had in common with her, doesn't mean you get to treat her like shit and start stabbing her behind the back."
"You don't fucking understand and you never will! All you care about is your booze and these addicted friends of yours—"
"Don't act as if they were never yours!"
"I don't care if you hang around with them Jack, I really don't. You have the right to be friends with people who likes the same things you do. But I care about the fact that I'm losing you to them and you're leaving me behind."
She breaks down in front of him and his eyes go wide. He takes small step back, arms limp against his sides. There's unfinished bottle of liquor, rolling and draining on the kitchen counter, and a revolver sitting on top of it. And the lights are off because they can't pay their bills, and their house the smell of burning cigarette.
"I think we should break up."
"Are you being serious?"
"Yes."
And he leaves. He takes a bag with everything he could ever need in it and runs away, from the only relationship he ever liked. She's left with everything, the house, the leftover drugs and alcohol, and the inability to pay rent. So she packs her things up as well, and leaves, because sooner or later she'll be evicted and it's better to go looking for something now than later.
Elsa with the platinum hair, and the cerulean eyes, sits by her sister's front porch, smoking a stick of what she promised to never ever touch. But she's given up the LSD and she doesn't really want to go back, so she finds something else to atone for her loneliness.
"Elsa?"
The door opens, and her own blue eyes stare back at her broken figure. They're wide and completely innocent – something different in contrast to who she is – and they reveal, something Elsa would never have thought she'll ever see. The warmth of a welcome, and forgiveness.
"Anna?"
"Are you okay? Come in—you poor thing."
And if only the world realized that running away never did anything good, and if pride never hindered the human mind, we would all find, that miscommunications would be less likely to appear. And that's something Elsa finally gets. Because she's sitting in a fire lit living room, warm with a mug of hot chocolate, and a sister crying tears of happiness – and it takes her this long to see all the years that she's missed thinking Annabella would never want her back.
"I'm so glad you're home Elsa, welcome home."
"Me too."
But her world doesn't parallel with Jack's as he finds himself almost left for dead on the roadside of his favorite club. There's that empty revolver just by his side and siren cries don't sound nearly as nice as that of the chimney crackling with fire. Cherry red lights burn and the paramedics almost lose hope. Because there's just too many substance in his system and alcohol was the least of all their worries.
It takes Elsa two weeks before she gets back into school. Happiness, a foreign name, now the only motto she has in her life. But that all seems to crumble when the news of Jackson Overland splashes across the school, leaving many people to thrive in the scandal of his summer expeditions. And she cries before she visits him.
"Hi."
She shyly walks into the room, all white walls and beeping sounds that remind her, he's not dead just yet.
"How are you?"
"I feel fucking wonderful, as you can see."
He grins, nothing sarcastic. And she sees the needles pierced through his skin, and the dead look in his eyes.
"You said we'd stop together, right?"
"I'm sorry."
"You should've told me."
"Mine was different. Yours was LSD, that's all you ever took. I had nicotine and tar, alcohol and the weed, and cocaine and heroin. I would've never let you go through what I did."
When she sits on his bed, there's melancholy in her eyes. And she presses her palm against his cheek like the day he covered himself in the blood of their addiction.
"I started it, didn't I? If I never let you taste it, you would never have."
"It's okay."
Their foreheads touch and she wants to kiss him. He's all in a hospital gown, wrapped up in bandages and he still looked so fucking great. And in his eyes, she was still the most beautiful girl to ever exist. And she looks better now without the pale lack of sleep.
"Babe, you look so cool."
She throws her head back laughing, whilst he kisses the soft of her knuckles. When she looks back at him, a smile ghosts over her lips and she leans in forward to breathe down his ear.
"Is that all you can offer a good looking girl like me, Jackson Overland?"
A/N: I'm so confused with what just happened, I'm sorry. But if you haven't gotten the story yet, basically Elsa's a good girl addicted to LSD, and Jack's the resident bad boy who's an alcoholic. They become friends, he finds out her secret, they go out and he starts trying a bunch of drugs to please her. Somewhere along that, they get a house together, and they can't pay for anything anymore so Jack robs a store with all their other friends, he gets shot, Elsa is afraid of that happening so they stop. But because she lost her one way of escaping she throws all her frustration out on Jack, who she doesn't know still takes the drugs, and that's why they still can't pay for their bills. They break-up, Elsa reconciles with her sister who never actually hated her, and Jack attempts suicide and then that's about it. Sorry if it came across as very complicating, that was never in my intentions. I did research, LSD, though not physically addicting, is psychologically addicting in a way that though your body does not crave for it, you however will fall in love with the sensation it gives you, you crave for it. The first half is done well, I suppose. The second half is just lazy writing. I'm so sorry. Please review—constructive criticism is welcomed, flames are not. Not yet re-read :)