Anna is halfway home when she realizes that she forgot Elsa's iced coffee. She's not even sure if the girl would have liked it, but at least she would have known she was thinking about her.
Not that she was, really. Hans had taken up absolutely all of her thoughts. Beautiful Hans with his hair even more ginger than Anna's. His eyes had been so captive, taking in everything Anna said with alarming focus, and she had felt important.
She wonders when she'll see him again. It would be of her on doing, but she doubts that he would mind. One of the central characteristics of being, well, Anna, is that she makes the first move. On anyone.
Even straight girls with whom she shares a house.
It's so easy for her mind to jump back to Elsa. She wonders if the blonde is shy around everyone. She imagines that she is, what with the way that her parents behave. Anna also wonders how she got to be this way. Her best friend has always been a bit quiet, but never withdrawn. A smile used to fill her face constantly, and people would always compliment her on her beauty. She would look down at her feet, but she would always respond with a polite "thank you".
Now, if somebody she hardly knew complimented her, Anna imagines that she would run away and stay in her room for a few days. In, ya know, an adorable way.
She opens up the door with the key she keeps in her back pocket. It clicks, and the magnificently large doors present themselves. She pushes them open, and smiles at the familiar scent. It smells like books and breeze and mint leaves. Mostly, it smells like Elsa.
Elsa.
Whether she wants to admit it or not, she is the reason that Hans doesn't have her number. She is the reason that Anna didn't order a hundred hot chocolates just to talk to the boy. Three months ago, Anna would have excitedly offered herself to anybody who talked to her that enthusiastically. Not that Anna didn't get attention from guys, but nothing ever seemed to go well. She usually ended up hitting him in the face or blurting out something that hurt his insufferably large ego.
This is something, Anna has found, that is not as much of a problem for girls.
Anna has never actually been with a girl, not dating, anyway, but she knows that she would like to. Parties introduced her to the softness of their lips and the sensitivity of their touch and their ability to make her feel things she had never felt before. Her friends taught her of their emotions. Cuddling with those same friends taught her that it was okay to feel at home with a body the same as her own. Discussions with her parents in the last months of their lives taught her that it was okay for her to feel that way, even if some people didn't agree.
Elsa has taught her that it's possible to love—irrevocably and stupidly and really, really passionately—a woman. Even if it's taken her the time that she's been at the Isen's mansion to realize it, she knows that she like likes her. When she sees her she feels jittery, when she touches her she turns to jelly, and she has an overwhelming urge to kiss her. All the time.
Normally, Anna would be excited. Anna is excited. The only hitch is the fact that Elsa does not seem interested, even whatsoever. Maybe subconsciously with her lingering gazes, but when it comes to direct contact, she sucks. She can hardly even touch Anna for a few seconds, never mind hold her close and kiss her in the way that Anna needs.
Anna doesn't give up. She never does, on anything, and this field is no exception. Her personal policy is to ignore sexuality if not expressed explicitly. The redhead has made loads of friends that way, and even met a few girls that she almost dated. Before she realized that they were in a relationship or not in belief of anything other than sexual relations or moving or dying of an imminent disease or something. Okay, maybe not that dramatic, but there always seemed to be something.
She has to figure out if Elsa likes her. The sooner, the better. If she returns her feelings, then she'll never talk to Hans again. She has a feeling that if Elsa does like her, they will make it work. Or at least Anna knows that she will. Probably even enough for the both of them.
Making treats isn't the most forward way to confess one's love, but it's all that she knows. And it got Elsa out, at least a bit, the first time. Maybe making cookies with hearts on it would be more obvious? Or she could just go up to her and talk, but then she risks being met with Elsa's back and a door in her face.
Flowers. Flowers would be an excellent choice. She read a book at Rapunzel's house about the Victorian language of flowers, and how each one communicates something different. If anybody would catch on, it would be Elsa. She's smart, plus she's read at least a thousand books. Anna wouldn't be surprised if that one is among her mental or physical library.
This would wait, though. There would have to be more confirmation of the blonde's sexuality before she went full out flower on the girl.
Smiling, Anna strides into the kitchen. She sits down at a stool and looks up at the cupboards, pretending as if she has x-ray vision to see within. After becoming so familiar with the kitchen, she might as well have. They have the perfect amount of caramel chips for snickerdoodle cookies...
She moves her eyes down a millimetre, and they land on Elsa: frozen, in the refrigerator with her back to Anna. Although she knows the girl has detected her, she takes the moment to observe her crush. Her legs are hidden by navy leggings that tuck under her feet, but Anna follows them from toe to hips anyway. After spending a few moments observing her incredibly perky behind, Anna's eyes move up. A blush spreads across her own face at the strip of skin showing between leggings and the beginning of a knitted cardigan. She can see her pale skin, and if she moves just a bit to the left she can see the beginning of a flat stomach. She sighs. Yup, if any girl is going to make her fall head of heels, it's this one. She only stares for a few more moments before she looks away.
Reluctantly done with her ogling, the younger girl giggles. "Um, Elsa?"
"Yes."
"Are you sucking the soul out of the fridge? Or have I paralyzed you in your efforts to do something else?" Anna teases. She can imagine the blonde's cheeks turning the colour of Anna's hair.
"You are an exceptionally rude person," Elsa decides, tugging her head out of the fridge and turning to look at Anna. As suspected, her cheeks are dusted with red embarrassment.
"You are an exceptionally hungry person, it seems," Anna says with a smile. "Here, I can make something for ya."
Her blush furthers. Anna wants to squeal at its adorableness. She also wants to kiss it darker. "No, no, really, you mustn't. You make me three full meals a day."
"Well, three meals of treats. One meal of substance. Before you started, like, talking to me, I was scared you were going to die. Of hunger. Not general me-ness."
Elsa rolls her eyes, but shrugs.
"Anyway, make yourself useful." Her mother used to say this to her in the kitchen just about any time she walked in. "Put on an apron or something. I brought my own, but I think you have some in your—"" Anna begins rummaging through the bottom drawer of the kitchen island. "Aha! Here." She tosses the apron at Elsa's face. The girl catches it with speed, hardly even widening her eyes at the incoming object. Maybe because her eyes have already widened to their maximum size just talking to the younger girl. "We're gonna cook macaroni and cheese. Traditional style."
Anna, Elsa has decided, is most captivating when she's cooking. Elsa can't help that her eyes follow the girl around the kitchen. She thinks she's supposed to be adding flour or something to the bread she was put "in charge" of, but it's much more fun to watch Anna stand above a pot at the stove.
At the beginning, Anna had been explaining her actions with the pretense of teaching Elsa a thing or two. By now, her language is more Anna than it is English, and the older girl is positive that she's just talking to herself.
It's endearing in a way that tugs on the corners of her mouth.
"Add four...then stir...cheddar...two percent...but..."
It may be useless information for anybody besides herself, but if it makes Anna as happy as she looks, Elsa thinks that the talking is lovely.
Anna seems to notice her eyes on her, for she suddenly starts out of her conversation. Her face is sweaty and red from both embarrassment and standing over a pot of boiling ingredients. "What?"
"You're just so...focused. It's incredible."
The younger girl shrugs, like she gets this a lot. "Anyone can cook. You just have to love it."
Elsa shakes her head. "No, not everybody can cook like you. You have a gift, Anna."
The redhead actually snorts at that. "Right. Says the 99.9 percent average. Cooking would probably flow out of your fingers if you stood near a pot and thought hard enough."
Elsa has to hold back her smirk for Anna's benefit. She doesn't want her to think that she's being cocky, or agreeing with her. Without noticing, she has inched up to Anna's side.
"I study materials science. That means I study the structure and properties and all that jazz, of, well, materials. Stuff like water and noodles and cheese. Well, usually it's exceptionally fancier than that, but I could tell you the exact structure of that noodle. With a microscope and detailed ingredient list. Or I could probably just make a good guess without all that, and only have a two percent error." Anna's eyebrows are scrunched together. She hurriedly moves on. "Anyway. That's the sort of thing that you think makes me smart. But if you gave me noodles and cheese and water, I wouldn't know what to do with it. I would know how their atoms would react to one another, maybe even how one's taste buds would react to that combination, but...I couldn't make something delicious. That's what you do. And I think that's infinitely more important."
Anna stares at her with her head cocked slightly to the side.
Fuck, Elsa thinks, I did that thing where I make everybody who isn't in at a top ten university feel like an idiot. Great job, you presumptuous asshole.
"Sorry," Elsa begins. "I didn't mean to confuse you or anything. Basically, I understand the chemistry of things, but you understand—"
"The biology. Well, not really the biology, but the bigger picture. You're the thinker and I'm the doer."
It's Elsa's turn to look perplexed. "Yes, exactly. Sorry, I thought I had lost you. Not because you're stupid or anything—you're not—but because you gave me that look—"
"Elsa," Anna says. The blonde really likes the way she says her name. "Don't worry about it. That's the nicest—and longest—thing you've ever said to me. I feel like maybe to anyone ever." Is it that obvious that I'm a shut in? "Thank you."
"You're welcome."
A silence settles over the girls. It's not uncomfortable. Elsa has always thrived in the quiet. This is where she grew up, and where she still lives.
She's not even quite sure why she's able to be within a few feet of Anna, most of the time. The girl is loud, even when she's not talking. Her actions are huge in the way a clown's are, and her smile can take up a room just by itself.
Somehow, it doesn't make Elsa shy away. It just makes her want to move closer.
But you can't, she reminds herself. It's wrong.
It's becoming harder and harder for Elsa to believe that this is true. It's impossible for her to push down her feelings, and she can't see how something that makes her feel alive could possibly be bad. She's been informed of the scripture against it, seen the protests, been told stories of "hell witches" in the early 1900s. Then she saw perfectly happy gay couples at her school, in fiction, and out in public. There can't be anything that wrong with it.
And maybe for other people, there isn't. But she has her father, and she can't just not have him in her life. Even with her scholarship, it would be his money that would pay for her residence if she decided to move away. If she came out to him, fully and proudly, she would be alone.
It's just hard for those thoughts to stay coherent when Anna is in front of her, flitting around again now, being enthusiastic about everything from teaching Elsa how to make bread to cracking eggs. She makes it impossible for her not to love her.
You don't even know what love is.
This, she knows, is true. She hasn't loved anybody, really, in her entire life. And nobody has ever loved her. Besides, she guesses, her cuddly fluff ball of a best friend. Olaf has given her more than one lecture on the importance of love, and how he loves her, and how she loves him even if she doesn't quite understand why. It's easy enough to say that she loves the tiny, supremely flamboyant boy. But to tell somebody to whom it could mean so much more is a feat close to impossible.
Anna, who loves her parents and Elsa and the students in her classes and probably the spider that's making its way across nearby window, would not understand Elsa's confusion.
"Hello?" Anna says, laughing. She snaps her fingers a few inches in front of Elsa's face. Elsa's eyes had been trailing her, yet she hadn't quite been listening to her words.
"That bread isn't going to bake itself!"
The two cook in reasonable peace. Elsa still watches Anna, and Anna mostly talks to herself. But it's the only thing non-academic thing the pair has done since they were little. It's a step, although Elsa doesn't know in which direction. Or even if she's ready to take it.
Elsa sits in her bedroom with her sketchbook, and draws Anna for the tenth time that week. It's hard to draw somebody that she isn't looking at, but she thinks that she's almost captured the exact dip in her nose. The freckles are going to be a feet, though.
In this sketch, picture Anna is flipping something—Elsa hasn't decided yet—on a frying pan with a look of concentration on her face. Even in her sketch form, Elsa gets flustered when she draws Anna's body. She has to put down her pencil for a second to stop her shaking. It reminds her how very much time she's spent observing it.
It's then, like a bolt of lightning, that it hits her. She's too infatuated with her to ignore it. She's most definitely gay. Even if she's not ready to do something about it; even if she can't do anything about it, she has to realize it. After a few hundred confused journal entries and sketches of girls, the fact is screaming at her.
"Agh," Elsa yells. The panic that is always just under the surface seeps into her veins and courses through her body.
Fucking disgrace. Dirty whore. Abomination.
It's the shivering and the words that, even now, are resurfacing that make it so much easier to just ignore it.
If she accepts her sexuality, this feeling could haunt her permanently. Maybe it will become a part of who she is. Each time she kisses a girl, the words will be there screaming. No more normal Elsa, who can at least sometimes function and go to school and play video cames. Just swirling fear, shivering, questioning, lesbian Elsa.
Gay Elsa.
Despite that terrible part of her that cringes at the thought and screams louder, it seems fitting. Like her brain is saying finally.
So it's for that part of her that Elsa hugs herself, brings herself over to her bed, and crawls under the covers. She allows the terrible words to roll through her and scrunches her eyes closed. Eventually, they will have to end.
And, soon enough, they do.
