A/N

I hope that the fluff in this chapter makes up for the shortness of the last one. Also, I've decided to hold the next chapter for ransom; no update until I get, say… five more reviews. Minimum. *gasp* I'm so mean, I know.

Annas POV

I clomped lazily up the front steps of my house as Kristoff's truck crept back out of the driveway. Said burley blonde could be heard yelling an obnoxiously loud, "See you later, Anna!", before his truck took off roaring down the street.

Trudging through the front door, I was greeted by nothing but the sounds of my own, slightly labored, breathing. Why are stairs a thing? Why is walking a thing? Ugh, you see, this is what happens when stupid birds wake me up early on a Saturday!

I pushed myself further into the house, grumbling under my breath about this, that and the other. Coming to a stop in the kitchen, I glanced up at the clock, noting that Kristoff and I had been out for almost two hours. Would've longer if he hadn't gotten us kicked out of the theatre…again.

Huffing in mild annoyance at the thought, I realized that it was almost half past noon; Elsa should be back! A grin slowly lifted the corners of my lips, my mild annoyance at Kristoff's antics disappearing completely as I withheld the sudden urge to squeal.

I turned and quickly made for the staircase, forcing myself into a somewhat normal gait as I rounded the corner sharply. All previous complaints about the unnatural breath-reducing abilities of stairs were gone from my mind as I raced up them, en route to my girlfriend's room.

Pausing in front of her door and ignoring my own breathlessness, I raised a hand to knock on the solid wood, still wanting to respect her privacy despite my wishes to see her. There was no response, but I could detect the softest of sounds floating from under the crack of the door.

I knocked again and called out hopefully, "Elsa?"

My call was once again met with no response, but the faint melodic noise continued to drift from inside the room.

Slowly, I twisted the door handle, pushing the door inward and poking my head into the room and palming the inner edge of the door. "Elsa?"

Said blonde was perched on an old chair, back to me, singing softly under her breath as she scribbled something into a notebook.

I stepped slowly into the room before closing the door behind me, never taking my eyes away from the siren that was unconsciously captivating every inch of me in all the right ways. As I drew closer, I could make out the thin white wires trailing from her ears, indicating that she was lost in the realm of music.

Crossing the room to the desk she was situated at, I gently rested a hand on her shoulder. The reaction was not at all what I had expected.

Elsa jumped a good few inches out of her chair, spinning to face me whilst simultaneously slamming her sketchbook closed and tearing the headphones from her ears.

Her face relaxed almost instantly as she identified me, soon bringing a hand up to her face to sweep her disheveled bangs out of her face. "Anna," She breathed through a small smile, "You startled me."

A small wave of guilt surged through me and I suddenly regretted disturbing her in such an abrupt fashion. "I'm sorry. I-"

She reached a hand out, clasping my own within it. "It's alright, you don't need to explain anything."

Elsa moved to grasp her phone, which was situated next to her on the desk, and turned the music off.

When she turned back to me, I motioned to the phone, newly revealed information swirling through my mind. "You never told me you could sing."

I watched as she ducked her gaze to the floor, a red hue beginning to tint her cheeks, revealing the light dashing of freckles coating her pale skin as she sunk further down into the chair.

"I've never told anyone actually," Elsa started somewhat meekly, as if expecting to be reprimanded. "I just do it for fun sometimes." A lame shrug of the shoulders, "It's not a big deal."

"But, you're really good at it." I paused, pondering whether to continue the current conversation or ask another question. I made my mind up quickly, asking, "Would you… would you sing for me sometime?"

She regarded me hesitantly for a moment, a somewhat bewildered expression crossing her face as if she were searching for some ulterior motive behind the elementary request.

At her continued silence, I tried to backtrack. "I mean, you totally don't have to. Not if you don't want to, I mean. It's just that, wow, you're really good, and I didn't know you could sing so well, and now that I know I'd just really… like to hear it again…" I trailed off as Elsa began to giggle at my free flying word vomit.

"Sure… I'll sing for you sometime," Elsa trailed off shyly.

I beamed at her and she returned the gesture, albeit, in a much more controlled manner. You know, 'cuz at the moment I feel like my face is going to split in two. Hello creepy clown grin. Mm whatcha say?

After forcing my cheeks into a more comfortable, yet still quite sizeable, smile, I cleared my throat and addressed the other topic floated around in the confines of my brain.

"What were you drawing?" I waved a hand vaguely in the direction of the desk without taking my eyes away from the blonde before me.

"Ah," Elsa rubbed a hand along the back of her neck, "I hadn't meant for you to see that yet."

"Oh, okay," Was my simple response. I couldn't help but feel both slightly excited and slightly disappointed at the statement.

"I'll show you when it's done?"

My grin increased in size once more and a simple, "Great," slipped past my lips. And just like that, the disappointment vanished.

xXxXx

Elsa's POV

I couldn't resist the urge to smile back at Anna when her face lit up once more… not that I would ever want to hold much back when it came to the redhead. I'd smiled more when in the company of that girl than I had in the last decade. It was as if some unseen force of nature was hidden behind her cheeks and the sun itself was released when she flashed a grin.

Even as she turned her back to me, gazing innocently out the window, I could still see the brilliant flash of her teeth as the sun radiated from her very being, and suddenly, like a punch to the gut, I realized the very magnitude at which I had come to care for this girl.

I shook my head at myself, crossing the room from the desk to the foot of the bed and sitting lightly upon it, my own lips still upturned at the thought of the girl in front of me.

"Sooo…" Said redhead drawled, snapping me from my daze as she plopped next to me on the bed. "Where did you go earlier today? You weren't here when I woke up."

Well shit. There goes the happy moment.

"I… uh..." I held a breath and twisted my fingers together in my lap, my stomach following the lines of a very similar movement as I contemplated my response carefully; I had absolutely no clue what Anna would think of me going back to my father's apartment.

"Oh, not much really, Anna. You remember my father? The one that's been abusing me for last ten years and the one that tried to punch you in the face? Oh, yeah, I just went back to say hi. Isn't that great?" Yeah, no fucking thank you.

Anna's brows scrunched together in confusion at my lack of response, and her smile dropped by a fraction, plainly losing its sincerity.

Of course I would be the thing that erased that smile.

As she opened her mouth to speak, smile dropping completely, I cut her off by practically blurting out an answer over her. "I went back to my father's apartment."

I pursed my lips and lowered my eyes to the floor when her own eyes widened a considerable amount and she inhaled a sharp breath. I bit my lip, burning the carpet into my eyelids, and made no move to speak again.

"H-how did that go?"

Slowly frowning at the floor, I searched myself for an answer. It had gone better than I had expected, but the end result was absolutely nothing close to what I had anticipated. Though I supposed that 'one-upping' my father, his words not mine, mind you, did supposedly count towards an overall positive visit.

Anna's voice rang out almost frantically beside me, and I realized that I had taken far too long to answer. "You're okay, right? Nothing bad happened?"

The utter concern laced behind the words hit me like a train and rendered me momentarily unable to respond in, what most people would consider, a normal fashion.

"Wha-? N-no, no. I-I mean, yes, I'm fine. I just, uh, I grabbed a few of my things and left." I pointed around her to the wooden box that lay on the desk several feet away while opting not to address the somewhat hostile confrontation I had been greeted by my lovely father with.

Anna's eyes followed the trail of my finger and she released a breath, eyes then flicking back to meet my own as her fingers clenched and unclenched repeatedly around her hem of her shirt. "I'm glad everything went okay…but I…I really wish you would've told me." She paused and I swore that I could physically feel the tears that sprung into her eyes before she dropped my gaze. "I mean, what if he had done something to you? What if…? I wouldn't have… I don't…"

Reaching over, I took one of her hands in both of mine, running my thumb lightly over the smooth skin. Anna twisted in her spot almost immediately, throwing an arm around my abdomen and burying her face into my collar.

Repeating the movement and tightening my grip around her torso, I willed myself to swallow the lump that had formed in my throat. I remembered the last time we held each other in almost the exact way, rolls reversed. It was the day I had shown her my bruises, my cuts, my scars. It was the first time that I had shown true vulnerability around her, physically, mentally, and emotionally, as I let my walls be breeched for the first time in a decade.

I lowered my nose to the back of her head, finding purchase in breathing in Anna's oh-so-familiar scent. There were only several tears shed, on my part at least, but the absence of shaking shoulders on Anna's part bode well for her too. And so we sat, still clenching and clutching at each other's bodies as if they would float away, the two of us both finding comfort in the embrace.

My fingers absentmindedly brushed through the disheveled locks around me, my eyes drawn to the single strip of white that flowed almost unnoticed amongst the sea of auburn.

I thought about the in-progress drawing in my sketchbook and Anna's earlier request.

If a picture can paint a thousand words, what can a song do?

I cleared my throat silently, words already forming in my throat, melody already flowing through my ears.

"I never thought that you

would be the one to hold my heart.

But you came around and you knocked me

off the ground from the start.

You put your arms around me,

And I believe that it's easier for you to let me go.

You put your arms around me and I'm home."

I took a slow breath in, a smile unconsciously tugging at the corners of my mouth as the words flowed forth.

"How many times will you let me change my mind

and turn around?

I can't decide if I'll let you save my life

or if I'll drown.

"I hope that you see right through my walls.

I hope that you catch me 'cause I'm already

falling.

I'll never let our love get so close.

You put your arms around me and I'm

home."

And suddenly, nothing else mattered. No problem seemed big enough, no task important enough, there was no coherent thought work thinking. At that moment, in my mind, nothing else existed. Nothing but me, Anna, and the words flowing melodically from my lips.

"The world is coming down on me and I

can't find a reason to be loved.

I never want to leave you but I can't make

you bleed if I'm alone.

You put your arms around me,

And I believe that it's easier for you to let me go…

I hope that you see right through my walls.

I hope that you catch me 'cause I'm

already falling.

I'll never let our love get so close.

You put your arms around me and I'm

home."

I pause as the music between lines sweeps through my head and my eyes flutter shut, inaudible guitar chords and drum beats blurring any other singular thought.

"I try my best to never let you in to see the truth.

And I've never opened up,

I've never truly loved 'till you put your arms around me,

And I believe that it's easier for you to let me go."

Again, a line break. Music swirling, soothing, flowing unhindered in what was the clearest mindset I could ever remember residing in.

"I hope that you see right through my walls.

I hope that you catch me 'cause I'm

already falling.

I'll never let our love get so close.

You put your arms around me and I'm

home.

You put your arms around me and I'm

home."

My eyes were still closed as the last word rung through the still air, surrounding the room.

I heard more than felt Anna shift as she settled into my lap, rising to, I assumed, make eye contact with me. I obliged her, pulling myself away from the tune still bounding through my head, and as the icy blue of my own eyes met the teal of Anna's, more feelings were conveyed, more unspoken thoughts were understood than that of what hundreds of hours of conversation could have revealed.

The warmth of Anna's smooth palm greeted the flesh of my face as her thumb ran slowly along the line of my cheekbone. The feeling of Anna's lips against my own had become the most natural thing in the world, and as they moved passionately across my own I wondered how I had ever lived without them.

Unlike a fair amount of our previous lip-locks, this one was a constant, steady paced entity of true meaning and purpose.

When she eventually pulled back to rest her forehead on mine, we both wore smiles that would put the sun to shame, such smiles that were reserved solely for each other as we breathed as one.

Anna let loose a giggle as I twisted, flopping against the bed and pulling her down with me. Laying side by side, looking into her eyes I couldn't help but press another kiss to her lips.

After another few moments I turned, grasping the top of the blanket where it lay at the head of the bed before pulling it down to awkwardly envelope the two of us where we lay sprawled horizontally atop the bed's plush surface. I twisted my arm around Anna's waist, pulling her almost flush against me while simultaneously tucking the blanket around the two of us. The very tips of our noses brushed together in the small space, and never in my life had I ever felt so content.

Anna's arms snaked around my back, holding me close before she giggled again, seemingly without reason.

With prompting from my single raised eyebrow she explained, "We're like a burrito," Before erupting once again into a fit of chuckles, me right along with her.

The laughing died down eventually to be replaced by a welcome silence, Anna and I simply resting together and basking in the quiet, content moment. No singular thought twisted through my mind, only a single emotion making itself known throughout my body for the first time in forever: happiness.

With the warmth of the comfortable embrace in Anna's arms, along with the lulling of her steady breaths, and even against the earliness of the hour, my eyes closed, darkness and a smell that could only be described as 'Anna' clouding me as I drifted off to sleep.

A/N

The song Elsa sings is 'Arms' by Christina Perri. I highly suggest listening to it.