Rating: T
Warnings: fem!Slash, Nudity
Genre: AU, Friendship, Romance, Fluff, Humour
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. All names mentioned do not represent the true persons. All brand names do not belong to the author. No copyright laws or personal privacy laws are intended to be infringed.
A/N: So it's been a while since I've touched this one, but I hope the wait's been worth the while! I haven't been updating for a while because I was off on a family vacation, so hopefully the other talented writers on FF kept your Elsanna cravings sated :P Enjoy!
Oh, and I've bumped up the rating due to slight nudity. And also because, according to my stats page, people seem to skip over things rated K+. Go figure, perverts! :P
Elsa and Anna's friendship was like a flower; the planting is a little awkward and messy, with dirt flying everywhere as the seed struggled to take root. However, once it was firmly planted, a little sunlight and water and a few months of dedicated work helped it to flourish.
Of course, there were little missteps along the way. Anna, enthusiastic and energetic, tended to let her emotions get the better of her logic and accidentally caused Elsa to retreat into herself by probing a bit too much and, from time to time, made little awkward errors like sending Elsa a text message over her phone. Elsa, unused to having friends and close human interaction in general, struggled to overcome her shyness and tried desperately to learn the rules that seemed to dictate the nature of friendship.
One of those rules? It was totally okay for friends to phone you at ungodly times if they felt like it.
Elsa groped for her phone that was blaring "Call Me Maybe" from its position on her bedside table. Anna had taken the time to personalize her ringtone, and, much to Elsa's horror, she now had to hear Carly Rae Jepsen about five times a day.
"What?" Elsa grumbled into her pillow, too sleepy to be more eloquent and too annoyed by teen singers to be polite.
"Heeeey Elsa~!" Anna sang back, cheerfully ignoring her friend's utterly disgruntled voice. "I've got something to tell you!"
"And you can't tell me in the morning?" Elsa mumbled around a mouthful of pillow.
"Nope!" Anna chirped merrily. "Because here's the thing. I was finishing my homework when I looked out my window and I saw-"
"A redheaded insomniac staring stupidly at her reflection, no doubt."
"Hey! I actually saw that the sky was awake, thank you very much."
"That's called the moon, Anna. It's a giant white glowing circle that comes out at night, I'm told. You'd think that you'd be more used to it since, you know, you're the one who can actually see it."
"See, this is how I know you're grumpy. You start making blind jokes."
"Of course I'm grumpy. You woke me up at, what, 3am, just to tell me that you could see the moon?"
"No, I woke you up to tell you that I saw the moon and realised that on a beautiful night like tonight, sleeping be a waste of perfectly good snow."
"… Snow?"
Even through the phone, Elsa could imagine the edges of Anna's lips sliding upwards as she grinned. Her fingers tingled at the memory of Anna's dimples, and Elsa's heart gave an extra thump as she remembered the warmth radiating off of the girl.
"Do you wanna build a snowman?"
And just like that, Elsa felt like she was being torn in half. On the one hand, it was snow. Snow was bad. Snow was cold. Cold was ice. Ice was extremely bad.
But on the other hand, it was Anna.
Elsa sighed into her phone.
"Fine. I'll get dressed. You're just lucky I don't have any lectures in the morning. Where are you right now?"
"On your doorstep."
The reply was so immediate, so cheerfully delivered that it took a few seconds before the implications of her words hit Elsa with the force of a freight train.
"Anna," Elsa said, suddenly struggling to keep her breathing under control. "Are you sitting outside my house?"
"Yup. And if you don't come out in five minutes, I'm going in there and dressing you myself."
Sheer, absolute panic flooded Elsa at those words.
"Anna, you can't see me like this."
"What, do you sleep in an Easter Bunny suit or something?"
Frantically, Elsa groped around for other excuses as she threw herself out of bed, tripping over her feet as she rushed to her wardrobe.
"My parents are here! If they wake up, we're both dead!"
"What are you talking about? Your parents love me!"
"Nobody loves anyone when they're woken up at 3am, Anna!"
"You love me even though I woke you up at 2am." Anna pouted over the phone.
"I love you a little less right now." Elsa growled as she flung open her wardrobe. Her hands scrambled about as she looked for her sunglasses. Her hands closed around hard plastic and, relieved, she hastily jammed them on her face. She let out a sigh of relief as the familiar weight rested on her nose, the smooth edges pressing against her cheekbones, curved hooks curling around her ears. However, she couldn't relax just yet. Very much aware that Anna could make good on her threat to barge into her home, Elsa quickly dug through her wardrobe, trying to remember the order in which her shirts were hung and her pants were stacked. Even if you were blind, you could still feel the looks people gave you when you wore bright purple T-shirts with lime track pants.
"Time's up!" Anna's voice sang from Elsa's phone, which had been set on top of a stack of towels. "I'm coming in!"
Panicked, Elsa snatched up a bathrobe and clutched it tightly to her chest. She was sincerely regretting her decision to give Anna a key to her house, but after Anna had told her the code to Anna's apartment, reciprocity had demanded that Elsa match the gift with one of equal value. She heard the front door slam shut and the scuffling of light footsteps running up the stairs. Elsa grabbed her phone and hissed into it, hoping that Anna heard her before she could get to Elsa's room.
"Anna, wait! I'm not wearing any clothes!"
The last syllable had just passed through Elsa's lips when Anna kicked open Elsa's door. Elsa flinched behind her wardrobe door, trying to hide as much of herself behind it as possible. The bathrobe covered the essentials, but that still left a lot of skin exposed. Anna stood stunned in the doorway, and Elsa could tell by the lack of any noise that Anna could definitely see her.
A long silence fell upon the two girls as they froze in their respective positions, Elsa hiding behind flimsy wood with a robe held tightly to her chest and Anna standing dumbfounded as her eyes drank in the sight before her. Elsa's signature black sunglasses covered most of her face, but that was the only article of clothing the older girl was wearing. Her normally neatly braided hair was a huge tumble of golden waterfall hanging over her shoulders, an unkempt mess that somehow managed to be radiantly beautiful. Anna's eyes traced Elsa's smooth shoulders, her bare legs, dainty feet, slender back, curvaceous hips and… Anna gulped. Elsa was covering her front protectively, but her sides and back was bare, and Anna could make the hint of a soft, smooth, white globe of flesh where outrageously long leg met heavenly hip.
It took all of Anna's self-control to tear her eyes away from Elsa. She'd made it clear that she liked the other girl, but Elsa had yet to reciprocate her feelings behind friendship, and you did not check out your mates.
"So, uh, this, well, this is unexpected. I think that I'll just, uh, wait outside. Not, outside outside, just in the living room. Sorry. I didn't mean to, you know, um, come in like that. Well, I did, but I wouldn't if I'd know that you, um, weren't decent yet. I should have assed- asked, I should have asked! I'll shut up and wait outside now."
Anna scurried from the room, slamming the door shut behind her. Her cheeks were bright red, her face was flushed, and she felt like she was going to faint. Oh god. She'd just seen Elsa almost entirely nude. She needed to lie down. Groggily, Anna made her way to the couch.
Back in her room, Elsa rested her head against her wardrobe with a sigh. This friendship thing was harder than she'd thought. Just when she thought she was getting the hang of it, Anna had to be fun and spontaneous and do something like this.
When Elsa finally came out, Anna was sitting unhappily on the sofa, swinging her feet. Still mortified by her error, the redhead didn't have the heart to tell the other girl that her bright orange scarf clashed horribly with her green longcoat.
"So, a snowman, right?" Elsa said firmly, having decided that the easiest option would be to pretend that nothing had happened. Anna managed to not vocalise her relief at her friend's proposed solution.
"It doesn't have to be a snowman," Anna replied, snatching up her beanie. Settling the fluffy hat on her head, Anna grinned broadly at Elsa. "We can build whatever you want!"
"The thing is, Anna," Elsa mumbled as she pulls on her boots. "I've never actually done this before. I have absolutely no clue how to build anything from snow. I don't know what anything's supposed to look like."
Anna tried to not bury her face in her hand as Elsa's confession struck her. This was worse than the time that Anna had proposed going to the art museum together. How could she keep forgetting that Elsa was blind? The obvious things were easy to remember and accommodate (don't expect Elsa to run down stairs, remember that her hearing is better than yours, never ask Elsa what she thinks of your new dress, etc.), but it was the little things like this that always caught Anna out.
"Well then, I guess I'll just have to teach you!" Anna said after a moment of silently beating herself up while Elsa took her cane from its hook. "It'll be a learning experience, and god knows how much you love those."
"Having an appreciation for fine literature and good music doesn't make me an antisocial loser who can't have fun, Anna," Elsa countered, slightly miffed at Anna's playful accusation. The two of them, now outside the house, could speak freely and as loudly as they wanted. "It just means that I'm a civilised being who has transcended you and your barbarian kin."
"'my barbarian kin'?" Anna echoed. "You'd better not be talking about the guys from my mountain biking club!"
"Of course I am! Who else would be insane enough to enjoy those, those railroad-riding monstrosities of death?"
"Elsa, rollercoasters are fun."
"Louis Armstrong is fun, Anna. Reading is fun. Puking whatever sandwich you had for lunch all over the floor is not fun."
"I didn't puke," Anna grumbled as she pushed open the gate to the park, holding it open for Elsa. "I merely recycled."
The snow that Anna had promised was indeed falling gently from the sky, and it had already settled several inches thick on the ground. At this hour, the park was utterly deserted, and the only company the two friends had as they trekked their way to where the snow was thickest were the lampposts, the stars and the moon shining brightly above them.
Excited, Anna dragged Elsa to a fresh pile of snow, gloved hand tightly clutching gloved hand.
"Here!" Anna proclaimed, and she promptly shoved Elsa's hand into the snow. Elsa gave a highly undignified squawk in surprise, and tried to pull her hand away. Anna rolled her eyes in response. "It's just snow, Elsa, geez."
"There's no such thing as 'Just snow'", Elsa mumbled. "Snow is evil."
"It's not that bad." Anna chided. "Snow's like really cold play-doh that falls from the sky. You can make so much from it!"
"Some of us have very limited imaginations," Elsa said dryly. What the hell was play-doh?
Anna snorted at that.
"Elsa, you're taking an Architecture major, and you're saying you don't have imagination? Look, I'll show you." Anna took both of Elsa's hands in hers, arms reaching around the other girl's waist to grip her wrists. Elsa shifted, uncomfortable at the sudden closeness as she felt Anna press into her from behind. "You just take a lump of snow, pack it really tightly together so that it holds its shape, and then you can mould it into whatever you want. If you're really ambitious, you make a little ball and then roll that in the snow so that more and more snow sticks onto it, making it bigger. You do that three times until you've got three big balls of different sizes, stick them on top of each other, and then ta-dah! You've got a snowman!"
Elsa didn't respond, far too concerned with the feeling of Anna's warm body resting against her back. Anna took a moment before she realised how closely together they were. Abruptly, she let go of Elsa's hands and hastily stepped back. Memories of smooth white skin flashed through the redhead's mind.
"I'll, uh, go start work on the snowman's torso. You just keep making that ball bigger. If you need anything, then, um, just shout, okay?"
Elsa nodded shyly, cheeks glowing as the blind girl blushed. She quietly set to work packing the snow tightly, hoping that Anna couldn't see her crimson face. Anna turned away, face just as red, and took out her embarrassment on the torso of their snowman, her ball crumpling into a flurry of white under the force of her shaking grip.
The two girls worked like that for a while, a warm but nervous silence descending upon them. Finally, Anna turned away from her ball (well, it was supposed to be a ball. Anna's nervousness combined with her fidgety fingers had somehow given her globe three corners) to check on how Elsa was doing. Elsa's head jerked upwards at the sound of Anna's footsteps, her boots crunching in the freshly fallen snow.
"How is it?" she asked, turning towards the noise. She was biting her lower lip in anxiety again, a habit she'd thought she'd lost when she was sixteen. Gulping, Elsa took a step to the side to show Anna the fruit of her labours.
"It's great!" Anna exclaimed, clapping her hands together. A bit too loudly.
Elsa's chin dipped in disappointment.
"It's terrible, isn't it?"
"No, of course not!" Anna protested loudly. She quickly stepped towards Elsa, hoping to console the older girl. "It's perfect! This will work out so well-"
The next thing Anna knew, she was sliding across the snow, having stepped on a sheet of ice just underneath the fluffy whiteness. Her arms pinwheeled as she struggled to gain her balance, twin braids streaming like ribbons of fire in the air. Elsa, unsure of what was happening, cocked her head to the side, just as Anna crashed right into her.
"Oof!" A puff of hot breath hung like mist in the cold air as Elsa was driven into a tree by the ginger-haired girl. The blonde slammed into the hard bark, not so much hurt by the impact as she was bewildered by the sudden warmth that had tackled her around the midriff. Elsa's head cracked against the wood as her neck whiplashed. "Ow."
Elsa uncertainly groped around her middle to grab the other girl.
"Anna? Anna, are you okay?"
The redhead didn't say anything, and instead burrowed her head closer to Elsa.
"Anna? What happened?"
"Please just let me die now," Anna mumbled, utterly mortified by her clumsiness. "I don't think I'll be able to face you for at least another year now."
And just like that, the atmosphere lightened. Elsa let out a small, tinkling laugh at the younger girl's dramatic shame, and Anna tried to dive deeper into Elsa's scarf in a futile attempt to escape from reality. Elsa managed to find Anna's back and she gently ran her hand up the younger's spine to rest in her hair.
"Oh, Anna." Elsa chuckled, stroking the auburn locks entangled in her fingers. "What am I going to do with you?"
"Let me die from embarrassment?" Anna suggested into Elsa's coat.
"If a blind girl has to catch you when you fall, there's really no hope for you at all, is there?" Elsa laughed.
"So do I get to die now?"
"Oh well," Elsa said, ignoring Anna's melodrama. "I guess I'll just have to stick around with you forever so that I can always be there to catch you."
At that, Anna finally peeked out of her hiding place in Elsa's embrace. Uncertainly, she looked up to see herself reflected in the dark lenses of Elsa's shades, and to see the slight smirk of the blonde, who smiled down at the younger girl.
"Really?" Anna breathed, hoping to the high heavens that she hadn't misheard.
"Really." Elsa confirmed. She gently untangled Anna's arms from around her waist and pushed away from the tree, wincing. "Well, now that I've got a lovely bruise waiting for me in the morning, I think we can call this a night. If I'd known snowman-building was this dangerous, I'd have avoided it for the rest of my life."
Anna laughed, feeling her heart soar with relief as she realised that Elsa wasn't just forgiving her for nailing the elder into a tree: Elsa was saying that everything, including the bedroom fiasco, wasn't anything to worry about, and that she'd always be there for the younger girl. She linked her fingers with the blonde's, smiling happily as she swung their arms cheerfully.
"Well, if snowman-building's too hardcore for little miss perfect, I guess we can always just go back to my place and have a cup of coffee instead." Anna teased.
Elsa made a face.
"You know I don't really like coffee. It's way too bitter. There's only two reasons I drink the stuff, and the flavour isn't one of them. Can't we just get some hot chocolate instead?"
"If you insist," Anna chirped merrily. She led Elsa out of the park, a spring returning to her step. She glanced curiously at her friend. "So, why do you drink coffee if you don't like it?"
Elsa shrugged as she tapped her cane from side to side. While she certainly trusted Anna not to let her slip on a puddle or stray onto the road, her knee still protested loudly at a memory from last week of a fire hydrant that Anna, distracted by the smell of éclairs wafting from the bakery, had neglected to mention.
"I need the energy," Elsa explained. "A lot of the time, I have to stay up late doing my homework or finishing the required chapters for that week. If I didn't have coffee, I'd barely be able to do half of the work I normally do."
"Sounds like someone's a caffeine junkie!" Anna sang as she danced around a frozen puddle. "And what's the other reason?"
Elsa grinned at the question. She clasped Anna's hand tighter, feeling the warmth of her fingers seep into her own cold ones.
"Well, I have to have some excuse to visit Starbucks every day to see you, don't I?"
Anna blushed a bright red at that. Declining to answer, the sophomore pressed herself against Elsa, and the two walked to Anna's apartment for a 4a.m coffee side-by-side with their hands linking them tightly together.
When the sun rose and rays of light heralded the coming of morning, the new day found Elsa and Anna passed out on Anna's couch, Elsa reclining on the sofa cushions with Anna drooling on top of her, a mug rolling across the carpet.
To Be Continued
A/N: I'm not entirely happy with this, but I think that it's okay overall J It's tough getting back into writing after a break, but I think I'm getting my groove back! :D Anyway, leave a review if you could! If you can't, that's fine as long as you enjoyed this chapter!
Keep reading, keep writing, and keep being awesome everyone! :D
