lifted
chapter one – after party for two
Summary: She'd been looking through a different set of lens her whole entire life—the kind that has been dulled by orphan lights and the gray hues of necessity. But he came in with silver frost and tonic grass raining down his enigmatic smile, and with one focused flash, she found herself lifted. Or, the one where falling in love with soccer star player Jackson Overland, had given shutterbug Elsa access to the world of high class living and low class morals.
Prompt: An experience, a moment, and also the music video to Colors by Halsey, and a little fanfiction called Beauty and the Beat—not naming which fandom it was for though.
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 for this story I write.
Peter Pan likes her a lot because she has spunk and grace, a different kind of crazy from the powdered mannequins in pleated skirts and stilettoed heels his school has to offer. So Cheshire grin and volatile eyes, earlier that day he'd invited her to their game with the favor to bring her SLR and a bottle of Vodka. The pictures were for the boys, he had said, and the Vodka was for them to enjoy. She took his offer because she had a lot of liquor to spare—alcoholic dad and all—and she needed new photographs for her art, even if they were just shots of sweaty boys running across grasslands with black tights – because winter was coming—they'd said.
It's a cold day—no doubt about that. The field is glossed and slippery, and many players fall victim to the frozen dews that stained the fresh green grass. The only one still standing is star player Jackson Overland—because the cold never bothered him anyway. He runs freely across the field, laughing eyes and a smirk that could render almost anyone speechless. And with one click, Elsa captures the moment – of everything blue from his cozy hoodie and branded sneakers, to his electric eyes staring across the grassland that separate their worlds, into her own aqua drops of wonder.
"Hey Shutterbug!"
He calls over to her, tousled hair as he lands graceful on his feet. She softly waves back, a small smile on her lips as she draws her SLR closer to her eye, once again taking snapshots of him – head to toe, smile and frown, and the grass that clings on freely to his skin, and the sweat dripping down his nose.
"Jackson!"
Head of their team Jimmy Hawkins calls over and Jack lifts his gaze from the excited blonde sitting down by the benches, towards the brunette boy readily waiting for him. Focus changed, he starts jogging towards the little huddle across the other side of the field, and Elsa zooms further into him, soul exposed and the blue of the sky in perfect contrast with the white of his hair. A smile and another click.
"So how're we going to take down that damn rat Pan?" Jimmy whispers, everyone all gathered around, sharing hushed voices and smoked breaths. "He's been carrying the whole game for that lowly bunch."
"Oh Jimmy, you really do hate Pan don't you?" Jack can do nothing but chuckle, amusement tainted over his eyes as he turns to their captain who only rolled his own brown ones in response. "Alright, leave Pan to me. If there's anyone who knows Pan better than Pan himself, it'd be me—I've got a lifetime of experience with that guy, I think I can take him out of the game."
"Not if he takes you out first,"
"We'll see."
With just a simple nod, Jack dismisses himself from the huddle, moving in position beside Peter, ready to guard and block the red team's captain as Jimmy reluctantly lets go of all the other players, ushering them to get into position. He signals the ref – little boy Hiro Hamada who had been dragged by his big brother Tadashi, just because – as the whistle blows and round two starts. The guys in the middle run for the ball, and Jack swiftly swerves right to block the ball heading Peter's way. But the red-head has other plans in mind, and with smirky lips and sly glowing green eyes, he kicks the ball first—his aim nowhere near the goal or his teammates, instead gunning down for outsider Elsa who is too busy pointing her camera at Jack to realize what is happening.
"Elsa!"
Jack barely calls out in time as the blonde hears her name, looking up a second too late, before being hit smack on her forehead. She drops the SLR, leaving it hanging loosely around her neck as she tips backwards, hand on the small bump forming, just above her left brow.
"Shit."
Jimmy panics, about to run to her aid, when Jackson suddenly shouts, throwing himself in assault at the laughing red head, pushing him hard, down on the grassy floor as a brawl starts between them.
"What the hell man?!"
"You didn't think I wouldn't know what you'd be up to now, did you Frost?"
"That's no reason to involve an innocent bystander!" Jack practically screams, grabbing Peter's collar and pulling his should be, would be but not really best friend so close—their breaths mingle in heated confrontation. "Jesus Christ, what the fuck is wrong with you man?!"
"You're not the only one who knows how to get on the other's nerve." Peter merely smirks. "I know just how to drive you crazy—and then some more."
"It's a friendly game Pan, no need to be an asshole."
"A game's no fun if you're not serious." Peter spits at Jack, all dazzling green eyes and pretty boy curve of the lips, taunting Jack with every breath of a word he speaks. "Of course, you know that better than anyone—don't you?"
"Tsk."
Jack pushes Peter off, stalking out of the grassy area towards the bleachers where Elsa was struck. The said girl is found frowning with the back of her hand on her forehead, completely unaware of the storming presence coming her way, too busy nursing the bruise beginning to form between her arched blonde brows. Peter snickers behind Jack, a fist bump to the closest person he can find—one Felix Knight with the scarred face and faded blue eyes.
"Let's get out of here."
The red head shrugs, slowly brushing off the blades of grass that stuck to his field shirt, gesturing for the rest of the boys behind to get a move on from the unsightly scene. Jack ignores them all, finally close enough to Elsa for her to notice him and his towering grace.
"You okay?"
"Just a tad." She hisses at him, grabbing her SLR and clutching it close to her heart. "What was that all about?"
With a sigh, Jack holds out his hand for her to graciously take—which she does, helping her stand herself up.
"Pan just being a dickhead—like the usual."
"I'm not usually the target of his dickheadedness though."
She smirks, hand still tight around Jack's own, her dainty little fingers smooth and fragile like the toxic flutter of her eyelids.
"Well, be careful around him anyway." He warns, letting go of her hand and turning around. "Go home Shutterbug, game's over."
Elsa stands there, watching his back walk away, allowing the silence of the empty field to take over. All the other boys crowd themselves towards the locker room doors, and Jack swiftly pushes past them on his way out of the gigantic field. Once every last one of them have left, she moves on to pick up her SLR, bringing it up to her face, a single blue eye focused onwards through the eyepiece, watching from afar as Jackson stalks up the hills with his bag over his shoulder and back turned to face her through the distance. And with a single tap of her finger, she takes the shot. She doesn't even noticed she's walked too far away just to take it.
As soon as Jack and the many others are out of the way, an arm is slung over her shoulders, and startled—she drops her beloved camera. She turns to look the culprit dead in the eye, and Cheshire grin meets her glare with sparkling eyes that dare to spell trouble. There beside her is none other than the infamous Peter Pan, Jack's self-proclaimed best friend whose elven ears stand up in the hunt for something fun and exciting.
"Well little missy." He cheerfully taunts her, hand delicately wrapped around her right shoulder as she tries her best to pry him off. "Looks like it's just you and me."
"Give it up Pan, I'm not playing into your dumb games."
She thinks she sounds really smart, finally finding the courage to take his hand in hers and lift it off her shoulder. Turning, she makes her way to the bleachers she once sat at, arriving to start packing her stuff up, cheeks a little red from the frosty bite of the wind, her hair a little tangled with the breath of autumn air.
"And what are these games you speak of?"
Peter tilts his head innocently, eyes blinking as she snarls at him, biting her tongue in fear of lashing out to one of the most dangerous residents within the confines of Corona Sin Clair's high school halls.
"Please leave me alone."
She tries to speak in finality before she slings her bag over her shoulder, walking off with her camera in one hand. Peter watches for awhile, never letting go of the sly plastered proudly on his lips.
"Interesting little snow bunny." He murmurs to himself, he snaps his head up to call out to her again. "Let's drink the Vod Arendelle, you promised."
With a deep and tired sigh, Elsa shoots a heated glare towards the red head boy. Sliding a hand inside her bag, she grabs the half liter bottle of clear Vodka, throwing it to the ground, barely caring if it shatters into a million pieces and the alcohol spills. Fortunately, all it did was roll its way towards its rightful owner, and Peter steps on it right on time with his grass covered football shoes, stopping it from rolling any further.
"Drink it yourself, asshole."
"Oh, but where's the fun in that?" Picking up the bottle, Peter stalks his way towards Elsa, smirk still in place as he neared her. "My Queen, we had a deal."
"Fuck you."
Circling around her, Peter buries a hand in his pocket before taking out what seemed to be a squared piece of printed polaroid. Upon seeing the item, Elsa growls, about to attack. Peter only laughs, dangling the piece right in front of Elsa's wide blue eyes.
"You really are a petty little girl." With that said, he grabs hold of her braid and pulls her right into him, his breath hot against the tip of her nose. "Unless you want your beloved best friend to see this, you'll come drink with me, okay."
Pocketing the photograph, he begins to walk away from the field, gesturing for Elsa to follow. She stands seething, before ruefully obeying, hot tears burning around the corners of her beautiful eyes, desperation sinking in her heart.
"I hate you."
She mumbles, and he only turns to give her a small glance over, before frowning to himself.
"I know."
Ruggedly walking off towards the boys' locker room, he leaves Elsa alone to her thoughts, mind reeling over that polaroid picture left clutched in the hands of someone like Peter Pan. As a shutterbug, the camera had always been her strongest weapon against all – she could have no friends, no grades and family, but she'd always had that minxy little thing hanging loose around her neck, ready to aid whenever. But there she is, at the mercy of the very thing she worships, and she knows it all too well—that it had been her mistake all along.
After a few short breaths, Peter emerges from the locker room, grin back on and the bottle proudly wrapped by his strong callous fingers.
"Well Queen Elsa, let's go drink then."
"I don't know why you're so obsessed with drinking alcohol—it's fucking disgusting."
She mumbles, almost tripping over her words as she hastily walks on ahead of him, towards the parking lot, throwing herself inside Peter's cherry red branded convertible as soon as she arrives. Ignoring her, Peter sits up front, opening a cooler happily placed on top of the shotgun seat, taking out ice cold bottle of Smirnoff Ice and tossing it back to Elsa sitting in the backseat. She catches it easily with her nimble fingers, eyes blinking meanly at him through the rearview mirror.
"If you want, this could be a permanent thing."
"What—being your drinking buddy?"
She harrumphs, finding it difficult as she tries to pry open the bottle in her hand. Peter, seeing her troubled face, turns back, jerking it off her hand before bringing the lidded piece up to his mouth before biting the bottle cap off with the sharp of his fangs.
"I meant being our own personal photographer—for matches." Peter mumbles, handing her the bottle as the clouded drink spills a little over his car seat. "We could use one."
"Why?"
"For outside matches and stuff—you're a journalist for the school paper right?"
"So?"
"You can write our articles. I mean, we'll be aiming for that championship at the end of the year, so we're going to need coverage on our journey—from a small town private school band of misfits to the state champions for the under eighteens." He says excitedly, pearly whites visible through his wide grin. "Doesn't that sound awesome?"
"And if you lose?"
Elsa taunts, tucking in strands of fallen platinum hair behind her ear, eying the side of Peter's face closely, the red hair messily covering those glowing greens.
"We won't."
"But if you do."
"Then drinks' on you—Shutterbug."
Annoyed, Elsa chugs the rest of her bottle, and Peter hands her the big bottle of Vodka with an amused smirk. He let their fingers brush as she takes the bottle off his hand, meeting his sly with the harsh glare of her bright blue orbs.
"Don't call me that."
"And why not?" Peter shrugs her off, taking a bottle of beer from the cooler, and cracking it open once again with his bared teeth. "Jackson seems to like that nickname. Is it because he's the only one allowed to call you that?"
"Shut up."
He feels like poking fun at her, so he continues on relentlessly, loving the soft spot he's found in the ever so infamous ice queen who had always been too cold, too untouchable—unreachable—with her piercing gaze and sharp tongue.
"Or is it because it's a tainted—yet meaningful—name concocted when you were writhing in non-stop pleasure—"
"Stop."
"—under his hot and sweaty body as he made love to you while the fact that he was your best friend's boyfriend drummed desperately inside your head—"
"STOP."
"—yet you chose to ignore it, allowing a devil like myself to see and take shot at the evidence of your scrupled life."
Elsa clutches the big bottle in her hands, before swiftly taking in a drink off it, hungry little drops of alcohol dripping down from the corner of her mouth. After swallowing hard, she turns to continue glaring fiercely at the boy who dare call her out with the double bladed truth she'd been defending herself from all this time.
"I don't want to talk about it."
"You're a dirty bitch." He retaliates, turning to look her dead in her skyline blue eyes, his lips upturned in what Elsa can only read as a volatile and vicious curve. "You act so innocent about everything, hiding behind the sidelines and your petty little camera when the truth is—you're just desperate to join into this world of bourgeois styled life with the champagne coating our fingers and the clear taint of the Vodka washing over our sinless bodies."
"You're not sinless."
He looks back up ahead, through the clear glass windows of the car, across the field of stained grass and dew covered posts. Over the hill there lay houses, decorated in fancy paint work and carved walls and grand windows with eloquent designs. Across the other side saw an acre of land filled with mundane buildings, apartments stacked together and squatters cramped in one corner.
"News flash girly, your wealth isn't going to buy you into this hierarchy I've built—social strata and everything, you play our rules and live by our control." Peter clutches onto the steering wheel in front of him, hand moving in a gesture for his keys. "And if you want to be with somebody like Jackson Overland, then you obey his master."
Elsa sees this and moves forward to stop him, only for Peter to jerk his hand out of her reach, and plug in the key to the hole, turning the car's engine on and revving it up. He begins to drive out of the parking lot, hands shaking.
"Pan you've had too much to drink." Elsa swallows, moving forward to grab the key out of the hole when Peter suddenly turns the wheel, she throwing her back into her seat, the bottle of vodka spilling over her plaid school uniform. "Stop the car Pan, I'm getting out!"
"And here I am, giving you access to the world you have longed to jump into—and you're hesitating?"
Frustrated, she stands herself up, bending over and slapping Peter, the impact shoving him against the wheel as it turns again. The car swerves to the left, barely stopping in time before it hit the fence standing by the massive field. Breathing in from her position, Elsa sternly growls, standing once again, up at the back seat, before grabbing hold of her bag.
"Everything you say about me is wrong."
"Really?" Peter laughs wryly, dry throat and everything. "Try me."
"I don't need to prove anything to you."
He smirks sloppily at her, taking the fallen bottle of almost half empty Vodka, before chugging almost all of it down.
"You're an idiot."
"Face it Elsa, I know everyone better than they know themselves." He speaks cheekily, grabbing her shool shirt as she stumbles forward, his alcoholic breath hot against the tip of her nose. "And I know a pretender when I see one."
"And why is that?"
"Because who better to see his own kind than he himself."
Pushing Peter off her, Elsa begins to pack her stuff, hastily throwing everything into her bag, not a care of whether or not she'd been grabbing hers or Peter's stuff.
"Fuck you."
"Jackson would be thrilled to find out his sweet little fuck buddy has been hanging 'round his best friend, blackmailed into submission—right?"
Elsa takes hold of the previously full, now half-empty bottle of Vodka, throwing the remnants of it all at Peter's amused eyes. The red head screams at the sudden burn, he covering his palms over his lids as Elsa slaps him once again before grabbing her bag without bothering to close it, tears searing her ducts and her lips quivering in disgust.
"I fucking hate you Peter Pan, go burn in hell asshole!"
With that said, she jumps over the closed car door, running away from the parking lot, camera dangling freely against her neck as she struggles to keep the rest of her stuff together – books falling out of the wide open bag and important pieces of paper and homework carried by the merciless autumn air, flying against red leaves and the salty drops of frustration from her eyes.
Peter now all alone, leaves a small gap open between his middle and index fingers, enough to see through the blonde girl running away from his reach. And then he laughed.
"Foolish girl—didn't anyone ever tell her not to piss Pan off."