2.6.16
Warning! Do not read this chapter aloud to your grandmother or small children.
You have been warned.
-Rex
7.
"Hello?"
"Hey, babe. What's up?"
"Oh, hey! Sorry I missed your call earlier! I was trying to inhale a sandwich before class."
"Yeah, it's whatever. Are you okay? You sound…" Jenny pauses down the line, and Elsa can hear her nails clicking against something in the background, a nervous habit that her friend has always had, and which Elsa has always found calming. "This is weird, but you sound happy, Elce. Too happy. I dunno. Maybe happy isn't the right word?"
"Er, well. I...um-"
"-No, you sound like, excited or nervous or- wait!" Jenny gasps. "Are you doing your whole manic thing again? When's the last time you slept?"
Elsa hums nervously and rubs the back of her neck. "Last night."
"Don't lie to me. I know you haven't slept well since-"
"-I sleep fine, Jen. Honestly."
"You know it's one am, right?"
"Yeah, and I'm supposed to be studying for a test. Who's fault is it that I'm here late?"
"You wouldn't be in bed anyway, Larsen. C'mon."
"Probably not." Elsa takes a deep breath and taps her pencil against the page of her history textbook. "Anyway, I am happy. It's just nice here. I'm enjoying myself."
"Well, that's good." Jenny sounds relieved, even though Elsa knows that she's probably drowning in envy. "I was kinda worried you'd disappear and I'd never hear from you again."
Elsa pauses. Is Jenny getting sentimental? Admitting that she would miss her counts as sentimental, right? She glances furtively around her empty corner of the library, where she is definitely not supposed to be talking on the phone. Lowering her head, she pulls up her hood to hide her face and, hopefully, her light blue phone case.
"Of course not," she whispers.
"Why are we whispering?" Jenny whispers back.
"I'm in the library."
"For fuck's sake, go home, Elsa."
Elsa shifts in her chair and gazes forlornly at the spread of papers and books on the table in front of her. "I can't."
"Why the hell not? You're gonna do shitty on your test if you don't get any fucking sleep."
"It's just-" Elsa sighs wretchedly and rubs her hand over her face. "I can't concentrate in my dorm right now."
"Bullshit." Jenny snorts, but through the exasperation Elsa can hear a razor's edge of concern."That's code for 'Elsa can't sleep'."
Elsa rubs her face again. "Maybe."
"Definitely."
Jenny still knows her surprisingly well. It's frustrating and endearing and secretly an overwhelming relief. She falls back in her chair and shuts her eyes against the white glare of overhead fluorescent lighting, admitting finally, that the searing headache hammering against her temples isn't going to go away until she falls into her bed.
But that bed still smells like Anna.
And she just can't quite…
"How about I'll start packing up my stuff if you tell me about your day," Elsa says, interrupting her traitorous, mutinous, hopelessly obsessive thoughts.
"Okay, yeah," Jenny drawls, taking the bait. "Let me tell you all about how my fucking step-dick wrecked his brand new truck."
Elsa picks up the first book and shoves it in her bag, snickering softly as Jenny immediately launches into one of her usual vulgar tirades. A wan, hunched grad student flits past her between the stacks, briefly catching her eye down the aisle. His gaze flicks to the phone and he smiles at her knowingly. Elsa smiles back, because they both know she's getting away with something that the daytime librarian, Mrs. Gempel, would pop a cork over.
"God!" Jenny snarls. "That man is fucking resource-rich in stupidity! I don't even know why my mom likes him. He's a complete tool."
"Love doesn't always make sense," Elsa responds reasonably, sloppily packing her notes into a mostly empty backpack pocket. She's too tired to care.
Jenny pauses mid-tirade. "What was that, Elce?"
Elsa's chest clenches and she licks her lips. "Nothing. He's a tool."
"Too fucking right."
She slings her pack over her shoulder and takes the back stairs out onto the cold, icy path around the side of the library building. Jenny complains the whole way home, and Elsa just laughs, backing her up, echoing her disgust. Gary is a waste of oxygen. Gary is a hypocrite. Gary is a violent piece of shit who should be in jail.
Elsa ignores the nagging thoughts in the back of her mind that tell her she's no better.
She changes her pillowcases when she gets home and takes a sleeping pill.
/-/-/-/-/
Unlike the other universities in the area, Arendelle University does not hold an officially sanctioned Oktoberfest event. Instead, there is the deceptively named Charity Week, a raunchy keg-fest beginning exactly seven days before Halloween and ending with a concert and carnival on the quad Halloween night. Anna is bouncing off the walls for days in advance, rushing through the room in a whirlwind to grab clean clothes before whizzing off again, jabbering to Elsa about all the parties and events going on around campus. Elsa is overwhelmed just listening to her roommate's itinerary.
The flyers go up on bulletin boards around campus weeks in advance calling for students to "register their acts and events". It's all kind of a mystery to Elsa. Arendelle is a prestigious institution, and she is part of the comparatively small minority of undergrads who aren't legacy students or at least in some way connected to the school through family. She finds that she is generally out of the loop on Arendelle's word-of-mouth traditions, because even though she did quite a bit of research into the academic rigor and culture of the university back in high school, she didn't spend much time reading into campus events. It wouldn't have mattered much, anyway. A lot of the charity week experience apparently happens outside what one would call school sponsored activities.
She learns from a Sigma Phi Delta sophomore trying to chat her up in the coffee shop (called the Penguin Bar, she now realizes) that Charity Week began innocuously enough as an unsanctioned fraternity event held in the woods just off campus. The senior members sold tickets for beer and donated the proceeds to local charities. There was live music and dancing and, of course, plenty of 'necking'. Everything went off without a hitch until the 70s, when two freshman girls passed out some ways from the bonfire and died of exposure. When the university intervened and tried to ban it, the Charity Day celebration went underground and more kids ended up in the hospital.
"They had no choice but to make an official event so they could keep an eye on things," he tells her smugly, leaning a bit too presumptuously over the counter, "and since then it has expanded into a debaucherous, Bacchanalian, Halloween-themed shit show." He waves his arm around at the coffee shop packed with excited students. "There's costumes, keg-stand contests, dance parties, day-keggers, flip cup competitions, and zombie tag."
Well, okay then.
Charity Week kicks off on a Wednesday this year, and all academic activity immediately grinds to a screeching halt. Elsa pays ten bucks at a booth outside the cafeteria for a blue, long-sleeved shirt with a picture of a penguin drinking a stein of beer and the words "CHARITY WEEK 2015" printed on the front.
"This shirt is your ticket to events this week," the booth attendant tells her.
She pulls it on over her dress and gets a round of high fives from three drunk soccer players in her next class. The TA sways on his feet and rambles rather unsteadily through their biology lecture.
"The Delta Chis are hosting an anything-but-pants party!" Anna squeals later that night, flying through the door. She grabs Elsa by the shoulders and shakes her vigorously. "I need to find something to wear that isn't pants!"
It takes ten minutes for Elsa to convince her roommate, who is shivering in a pair of ripped stockings, cowboy boots, and a long, belted Penguins Lacrosse sweater that she isn't up for it, and when Elsa wakes up the next morning with a tweaked neck she's convinced that Anna's vigorous shaking pulled a muscle.
Like Anna, Sam nearly works herself into a frenzy trying to describe the epicness of the various Charity Week parties.
"They turn a blind eye to most the craziness," she says, grinning across the table over breakfast Thursday morning. "The Greek houses all compete to raise the most money, so public intoxication is, like, a non issue."
This doesn't come as a surprise to Elsa. From what she can tell, anything and everything that will sell tickets for charity, short of gratuitous nudity and controlled narcotics, has gotten the Office of Student Life's rubber stamp of approval. No one seems to be particularly interested in showing up to class sober, including the professors, who have been meeting between classes to drink champagne on the quad next to the apparently semi-permanent dj booth. Meanwhile, in the center of the quad, next to the Founder's Fountain, the seniors have erected a 'jail' constructed crudely from an old shipping container. They've retrofitted both sides with metal bars, courtesy of the metal workers in the sculpture building, and as is tradition, are now running a nice racket charging students five dollars to have people arrested. The boys rugby squad has apparently volunteered to act as bailiffs, chasing hapless targets down in jerseys, short shorts, and spandex between classes, before hoisting them up and hauling them back to the prison amidst raucous cheers from the student body and champagne-soaked professors.
Elsa's been carrying the five dollars bond money in her pocket all week just in case.
As if campus life isn't already frenetic enough with all the jailbreaks, loud music, and drunk professors, there are also gangs of upperclassmen wandering around in costume peddling various services for hire. So far she's seen a boombox-toting dirty-dancing dinosaur flash mob, a bunch of sorority girls with plastic lightsabers wearing giant sunglasses and pink onesies, a choir troupe in Soviet Red Army drag claiming to sing proletariat-approved drinking songs from the Motherland, a juggling unicycle act dressed head to toe in tinfoil, a full pantheon of gender-bent Marvel superhero characters with props, and even a comparatively normal traveling drum circle. In addition to this, the official Charity Week game of zombie tag is already underway, and a good quarter of the student body is running around campus in full zombie makeup at all times, hunting down 'survivors' armed with nerf guns and orange bandanas. (Elsa has been mistakenly shot point blank in the face once already, and she's sort of over it.)
It's fantastically overwhelming, and after Sam subjects her to a dirty dancing session with the dinosaurs and a dozen group selfies with the gender-bent comic book heroes, she retreats to the library, where Mrs. Gempel, fortunately, has banned all alcohol, nerf guns, and zombies.
"So, basically she's banned all fun," Sam complains, waving Elsa off with disgust as she goes sprinting across the quad into a flash mob of zombies dancing to 'Thriller' by the DJ's booth.
Whatever. Elsa needs the quiet.
On Friday, she is staring out the window of a classroom in Grant, overlooking the nearly empty walkway three stories below, when all of a sudden a single girl wearing an orange bandana over her face sprints full speed across the path and swan dives through the icy bushes on the other side. It's so odd and unexpected that Elsa perks up and leans over to try and get a glimpse of where she's gone. Just at that moment, three boys in zombie makeup and shredded clothes go tearing across the path behind her, shouting, moaning, and waving incoherently.
She's still laughing as she tries to describe the scene to Sam and her roommate, Mari, over lunch an hour later.
"And then she just dove!" Elsa demonstrates enthusiastically with her arms. "The whole thing was totally surreal. I felt like I was watching tv."
Sam laughs easily, pushing her unruly brown hair out of her face. Mari shakes her head, swiping through texts in a giant smartphone that makes her tiny hands look even smaller. Her nails are perfectly manicured, and Elsa wonders where she finds the time. Mari is always dressed within an inch of her life. She's too pulled together to be pre-med. It's not right.
"You need a haircut, S," Mari says in an exasperated monotone, sparing her unscrupulous roommate a rare glance.
"I know, I know." Sam shrugs her off with a disarming smile. "Hey speaking of zombies, Elce, have you seen Anna? I saw her running around with an orange bandana yesterday."
"Not since Wednesday night. Something about a no-pants party?"
Tapping away furiously on her phone, Mari snorts. "Oh, god, yeah. She and her boyfriend were completely shit-faced. He was like, dry humping her in middle of the room, or something. Hopefully she didn't drunkenly choke on his dick and suffocate."
Elsa accidentally inhales too much soda and coughs. Sam makes a face and sympathetically wallops her on the back.
"Don't die, Elsa."
Across the table, Mari glances up from her phone and scrutinizes Elsa curiously for a moment. "Having you ever caught them fucking?" she asks wickedly.
Elsa isn't sure it's possible for her to turn a brighter shade of red. She reaches for a napkin and wipes her watering eyes, buying herself a few extra seconds. Fortunately, Sam saves the day.
"Anna's never home. She's always at the frat house."
"Gross." Mari's laugh is a little caustic. "I've seen their showers, and can I just say, ew?"
"I know, right?" Sam makes a gagging sound.
"He must have a really nice dick, is all I can say," Mari remarks casually, and Elsa slumps over the table.
Her beautiful, horrible, super-top secret memory of Anna bent over, bare-legged in nothing but a lacey black thong is now tainted by the image of Hans sweating and grunting and erratically thrusting into her from behind and Elsa wants to puke. Maybe if she's lucky, the floor will swallow her up instead.
She forces down some more soda and tries to clear her mind, but she can't quite do it. Sam and Mari leave her after lunch because she's done with the conversation. She's done with them and she's done with talking.
She walks past more feuding zombies and survivors on her way back to the dorms, but her lips don't even quirk. The smile doesn't come back. Elsa kicks at some ice on the sidewalk. It's jagged, brittle, and cracked, a perfect visual representation of everything that she feels inside. It's everything that Anna makes her feel. She kicks it harder, obliterates it, stands there for an extra moment and digs in with her heel until it's been ground in a fine, snowy powder. She's pissed off at Mari, who she's still not convinced is a good person, despite Sam's insistence otherwise, and she's exasperated with herself. She's always been mentally disciplined. She's always been tough. She knows that she's only that way because her father liked to use his belt when he smoked too much crystal, but it takes a lot not to crack up in a house like hers, so it counts either way. She's hard and she knows it.
But Anna…
Elsa shakes her head and trudges on. She ignores the calls from a snowball fight on the lawn, melting down now into dirty slush, churned up like a cattle yard over the course of the week. It's perfect. The image sticks to her thoughts. She knows that she could take a scalpel and cut herself down the middle, peel herself open like a patient on an operating table, and her insides would look just the same, muddy and slushy and all churned up. Anna does something to her. Anna makes her feel things that she hasn't felt since she held that colt .45 in her hand and squeezed the trigger. It's been nothing but the aching void since then, since the anger ran out of jet fuel and burned itself out, since the tears dried up and the fear evaporated, blowing away like dust in the wind. She's been so empty this past year, empty and anxious, empty and angry. It was only the pain, the keen blade of a knife, that could take the edge off.
Now, there's a new edge with Anna. It gnaws and bites just the same, but it flutters, too, and it excites. It fills her up with helium until she feels like she will float away. She knows that the higher she goes, the harder she will fall. That's the truth she has to face. Bones are brittle. Elsa's control is brittle. She didn't fight her way to college just so some privileged, oblivious, redheaded disaster of a girl could fuck her up.
She's got to get her head on straight.
She's got to stay focused.
/-/-/-/-/
Elsa knows that she retreats when she's stressed. She knows that. It's not news, but this time she's sort of annoyed with herself for it. Charity Week parties are in full swing, and she could be out drinking and living it up with Sam, but she has a troubling propensity for social anxiety and agoraphobia when she's overwhelmed, so instead she's sitting on her bed trying to slog through Crime and Punishment while the sound of loud rap music thumps next door.
Her eyes stray to the closet, where her little box of horrors lies hidden under a pile of junk.
Should she…?
No.
Her leg has only just healed. If she lets it go on this way she won't be able to stop, and she needs to be able to stop. She knows the signs of addiction like she knows her own name: increased tolerance, symptoms of withdrawal, heightened anxiety between use, intrusive thoughts about using.
Elsa glares down at her twitching fingers. Traitors. The book in her lap isn't helping tonight either. She's trying to keep her attention focused on something productive but her thoughts are elsewhere, and Raskolnikov has been whining incessantly for two chapters. He reminds her so much of herself sometimes (ubermensch thing aside). It's like looking in a mirror. She flips the page and rolls her eyes as he ruminates again at length on the guilt that's eating him up from the inside out. That's what happens when you kill a person in cold blood. What did he expect?
Elsa huffs. It's really starting to get on her nerves.
She's only just decided to ditch her book and pull out the box for a quick little fix, a little something to calm her thoughts, when the telltale click of a keycard sliding into the lock outside catches her attention.
It's Anna, of course, loud and sloppy drunk. Elsa's annoyed, but surprised to see her at all, figuring that it would be days before the redhead extracted herself from festivities at the Delta Chi house. Anna leans too heavily on the handle as the door swings in and crashes with it into the wall. Her cheeks are red, and her loose hair is mussed, cascading like fire over the white parka that hangs open from her shoulders. Beneath it, her green dress is rumpled in a few suspect locations. There's an orange bandana tied loosely around her neck and smudges of black and grey stage makeup on one cheek, smeared down the side of her neck and onto her clothes. Purple hickeys and fading crimson bite marks litter her collar bone, left behind by a mouth that Elsa refuses to think about.
God, her roommate's a total hot mess.
Anna's fingers peel away from the metal handle, the only thing helping her maintain her balance, and the door slams shut.
"Elsaaaaa!" She sighs boisterously, tripping over her own boots. "Boys are sooo dumb!"
As she says this, she rips her bag from around her torso and flings it across the room. Papers spill out and flutter to the ground like autumn leaves, and Anna just sighs at the sight like she's staring at an elegant flock of snow white swans.
"Keep it down!" Elsa hisses, glancing at the door. "You're gonna wake up the RA."
"But it's Friday!" Anna laughs brightly and spins around on the spot like a clumsy ballerina, dress fanning out around her thighs. "And it's Charity Week! He's out partying with everyone else!"
"Not if he's on duty tonight."
"Why are you even home, Elsa?" Anna stumbles towards her, boots slipping on some of the detritus that has fallen out of her bag. "Shouldn't you be making out with hot boys somewhere?" She sighs and slumps against the closet door. "Or hot girls." She smiles dreamily. "I don't judge."
Elsa flushes as more wicked, traitorous images flood her mind.
"Oh, your cheeks are red!" Anna laughs, and Elsa grinds her teeth. "Did I embarrass you? Awww."
"How much did you drink?" Elsa asks curtly, tossing her book aside and rising from the bed. "You're a wreck."
"Fuck you," Anna says petulantly, flicking her wrist, "I'm a beautiful disaster!"
She stumbles around the room for a moment, shrugging off her coat and tossing it in the general direction of the closet. Elsa tries not to be annoyed that she is doomed to live in a perpetual junk yard, it's not a good use of her energy, but her hands curl into fists anyway. This is not how she had planned to spend her evening, babysitting a drunk roommate covered in zombie paint and stale beer and the evidence of recent sexual trysts with Hans. Her heartbeat starts to pick up, and she swallows against a suddenly dry throat.
Anna finds her bag, upturned in a heap, and starts to rummage through it. She's muttering incoherently to herself, and Elsa just watches, annoyed and fascinated, frozen in the middle of the room. There are more bite marks on Anna's shoulders, plainly visible now that her coat has been shucked, and what could maybe be scratch marks. Elsa isn't sure. Her roommate looks really beat up. She notes the indentation of bruises on Anna's thighs and nearly stumbles when a bout of sudden dizziness slams into her.
"Aha!" Anna holds a bottle of tequila aloft, triumphant. Her teal eyes burn with pride and glee, fierce as they meet Elsa's. "Wanna drink, sexy roommate?"
Elsa quivers. "I think you've had enough."
Anna stands up with surprising grace and advances on her. "C'mon, Elsa. Have a drink with me."
"Anna, stop-"
"-You need to loosen up." Anna rolls her shoulders, and slinks closer, right up into Elsa's face, until Elsa can feel hot breath rustling the hair that's fallen loose from her braid. "You're so uptight all the time." Anna snorts and sways as she reaches to uncap the bottle. "Don't you ever jus' wanna…" She wraps her lips around the neck of the bottle and slugs back a quick, hard swallow, pulling away moments later with a wet pop and a delighted, almost feral grimace. "Don't you ever jus' wanna chill out?"
Elsa feels the blood rushing to the surface of her skin before she notices that she's staring at Anna's lips, and by then it's too late to pretend that she isn't affected. Her heartbeat is a veritable thunderstorm in her ears, deafening, terrifying, powerful. Her fingers are throbbing. Her lips are swelling. Her flushed skin is buzzing, painfully, and she aches in places that make her want to whimper and collapse at Anna's feet. It's more than she can process. It's more than she can handle. She is furious. She is shaking. She has never experienced such an overpowering hunger before, and she isn't even sure what she wants. All she knows is the way that Anna's mouth, glistening with alcohol and warm saliva, make her lust for more.
It wakes something dark inside her.
Elsa reaches out and snatches the bottle, gripping Anna's wrist firmly, hard enough to bruise, as she slides it from her hand.
"I think you've had enough."
Anna shivers. "Yes, ma'am."
Something in Elsa responds, and it's like magnets in her bones, pulling her closer. Elsa grasps at the last vestiges of her self control. She might as well be grasping at straws, because she knows she won't be able to get a firm grip. The bottle is cold and hard and real in her fist. It's unflinching, unyielding. It's distracting. Elsa puts the bottle to her lips and tips her head back, taking three, ambitious swallows of the pale, amber liquor. Her eyes, nose, and throat burn. Her tongue tingles. Her chest warms as the tequila flows south, spreading anesthetizing fire into the organs beneath her ribcage. It'll soon reach her head, she knows, but it's okay. The sharpest edges are dulled now.
"Holy shit…" Anna murmurs, and now Elsa remembers her.
Her hand finds her forehead, hot and flushed. Her fingers curl into her messy bangs.
"That was freaking hot."
Anna reaches up to touch her lips, sticky fingertips brushing across swollen skin.
It's finally too much.
Elsa snaps. There's no other word for it. The fuse has burned down and it feels like a stick of dynamite is exploding in her head. She releases Anna's wrist and shoves it away from her so sharply that the other girl gasps.
"Get the fuck off of me, you-" Elsa cuts herself off before she can say something awful and turns her back, shoulders shaking, hands balled into tight fists.
Seconds pass in excruciating silence, and she's sure that Anna is about to storm out, yell at her, cuss her out and call her bitch, when, suddenly, a low, gravelly voice speaks up into the gulf between them.
"Me what?"
The hair on Elsa's neck stands on end. Anna's tone, it almost sounds as if…
She turns around to face her roommate, expression baleful and tight, but what she sees causes her eyes to widen, and her jaw to drop.
Anna's face is flushed so red that the freckles on her cheeks have almost disappeared. Her breathing is shallow and labored, chest rising and falling swiftly. Elsa's eyes stayed fixed on her bruised collarbone for a second too long. When she remembers, guiltily, to raise them, she realizes with a shock that her roommate's eyes are completely dilated, bright blue irises swallowed up by black pupils. She looks….
Aroused...
Wait.
"Stupid what?" Anna prods again, taking a hesitant step forward.
Elsa shakes her head stiffly.
"No, tell me. What were you gonna say?"
"Anna, no. Just lea-"
"Say it," Anna implores her.
Her voice is tight and strained. The tip of a pink tongue flicks across her lips and disappears again. Elsa watches it like a cat watching a mouse. She can't think to stop herself. Her thoughts empty like liquid spilling from a jug onto the ground.
The redhead takes another daring step forward, and her voice drops to a whisper. "Elsa, say it."
Elsa swallows hard. A spell has settled over them both. The air in the room is thick and viscous, and it's taking half her concentration just to breathe. Her extremities throb as adrenaline floods her bloodstream, and she's becoming dizzier trying to restrain herself. New urges swim to the surface, shouting their demands, tugging whatever strings they control, willing her to obey. Elsa tells herself not to obey. She commands her body to stand down, but she can feel the heat scorching her heaving chest. She can feel the hot blood throbbing in her face, her pelvis, her legs. She recognizes the fire for what it is, but it's different. It doesn't scald or destroy, it burns like a fever, and urges, it thirsts. She cannot find the cold anger that she has clung to for so long. It slips through her fingers like a greased rope each time she grasps for it.
Elsa knows that she is losing it.
She knows that she is going to regret what she says next.
Her lip trembles, and the words escape as a rough whisper. "You stupid slut."
The effect on Anna is instantaneous. She stumbles a bit and bites her lip, eyes rolling back into her head. Her fingers clutch at the edges of her dress, and the fiery blush spreads to every bit of skin in sight, until all her body seems to glow.
"Say it again," she murmurs, "please."
Elsa's face twitches. Her nerve endings buzz like she's stuck her finger in an electrical socket. Her mouth clicks open and shut a few times. The anger surges, but it's different. It's keen and greedy. It's aggressive. It's possessive.
"Don't touch me, you stupid slut."
Her roommate shivers violently all over, and suddenly, like a lightning bolt of clarity from the heavens, Elsa understands.
"You...you like this," she whispers.
Anna hangs her head. It's as good as any confirmation she could give.
Elsa stares at her in utter shock. She doesn't know how to process this information. She's not sure if she should process this information. Reluctant gears turn in her head anyway.
"You're a masochist?" She glances furtively at the door, like someone is going to hear them from the hall.
"No, that's you," the redhead replies dryly, unsteadily, and it's rather alarming how quickly she's sobered up.
Elsa instinctively crosses her arms, tucking them against her sides. "How did you know?" She hates how vulnerable she sounds.
"I've seen them." Anna gives her a small, sad smile. "The scars on your-"
"-Right." Elsa cuts her off, clenches her jaw, and turns away.
She backs up and drops onto her bed, puts her head into her hands. She has to admit that there is part of her that has always hoped, no, yearned that someone might notice, notice and speak up. She knows that she's been ruining herself all this time, slowly, deliberately, methodically. She's the monster. The monster is herself. She's trying to hurt herself. She's trying to…
But someone's noticed now, so shouldn't she be happy? Shouldn't she be relieved? She's not either. She's ashamed, and pissed off. Her fingers itch for something sharp.
The mattress dips beside her as Anna sits down. Elsa instinctively shifts away from her, but her roommate doesn't seem to take offense.
"I don't know what I am," Anna says, slowly, "but I like being dominated. I like rough sex."
Elsa tenses. "Why are you telling me this?" she asks, mumbling through her hands.
Anna doesn't respond.
"I don't know what you want me to say." Elsa mumbles after a beat. "That's...messed up."
"So's cutting yourself," Anna replies drily.
Rage flares white hot behind her eyes and suddenly she can't breathe she's so angry. Anna doesn't understand. The stupid bitch doesn't understand a fucking thing. Raised with a silver spoon in her mouth, flouncing around campus like some kind of ridiculous, ginger Barbie.
Anna's breath hitches, and Elsa realizes that she's actually glaring at her. The blush of arousal returns to her roommate's freckled cheeks and her rage flares again, cracking inside her like a whip.
When she strikes Anna hard across the face. It stuns them both.
"Don't look at me like that!" Elsa growls, instantly ashamed.
With a red, smarting welt on her cheek, Anna looks like she's struggling to breathe as she ducks her head and mutters a very dutiful, "yes, ma'am."
"Stop calling me ma'am!"
"Should I call you something else?" Anna asks, confused.
Elsa can feel herself growing more flustered and agitated by the second. "Quit fucking with me! This isn't a game!"
"Definitely not a game," Anna parrots slowly, but her eyes are fixed on the blonde's lips. "Definitely not."
"Stop it! Serious-"
"-Hit me again," her roommate says earnestly. "Please?"
Elsa's head spins. The world is falling away under her feet. This isn't happening. There is no way this is happening to her. She feels like a character in a reality prank show. In fact, she half expects a camera crew to jump out of her closet the second she agrees.
Wait, agrees? Who said she was going to agree?
Anna leans closer wearing an expression that looks something like a sultry mixture of lust and hope. It makes Elsa's stomach do (not entirely unpleasant) flips.
"Pretty please with a cherry on top? I promise I won't tell anyone."
The redhead bats her eyelashes flirtatiously, and there's a soft slur in her words reminding Elsa that she's drunk, that she's covered in bruises and marks, that Elsa still has a liquor bottle clenched tight in her fist. She lets it drop to the floor.
Anna moves to grab it and Elsa blocks her.
"Oh, come on! Elsa, please!"
"If you drink anymore you're gonna pass out."
"You're being-" Anna's voice catches, and she hiccups. "You're being dramatic."
"Yeah, no."
Anna huffs, and scoots closer. She's almost begging now, and Elsa kind of likes it, being supplicated. It's kind of heady. It's almost like having real control.
"It's my tequila."
"You're underage."
Anna whines, and Elsa wants to kick herself in the face for finding it so attractive. "So?"
"So, you could get arrested for having this."
Anna makes a quick swipe for it, and Elsa slaps her open palm against Anna's forehead in her haste to push her away. When her roommate's breath quickens again she realizes what she's accidentally done.
"Jesus, stop!"
Anna's laugh is thick and syrupy. "Do you hate it when I push your buttons, like this?"
No.
Elsa's throat bobs.
Anna watches the tiny motion hungrily, blue eyes flicking up to catch her own. "You know how to make me stop."
"What?"
She nods and points at the angry welt on her cheek. "Hair pulling and name calling would also be good, but I'll take what I can get."
Anna leans in and Elsa realizes that the redhead's nose is almost touching hers, that her fingers have curled into Elsa's shirt without her noticing. Anna sighs, and Elsa's heart flutters. Her body prickles. A thousand tiny goosebumps peak on her alabaster skin. Anna is so close that she can smell her, and Elsa's knees weaken. She would be leaning against a wall, stumbling for something to steady herself against, if she weren't already sitting down. The tangy scent of tequila mixes flawlessly with Anna's orange ginger body wash and the saline musk of sweat. Elsa breathes it in and tries to hang on.
Then Anna's fingers find her neck and it's too late to go back.
"Okay," she breathes.
"Really?" Anna grins.
"Shut up," Elsa grumbles. "Let's get this over with before I think better of it."
But her roommate has other ideas. She's already climbing up off the bed, running her fingers haphazardly through her fiery red hair, combing out some of the more obvious tangles. It falls in wavy curtains around her bare, freckled shoulders.
"What are you doing?"
"You'll see," Anna singsongs.
Elsa's heart skips a beat as she comes around to face her, and slowly, carefully, kneels down onto the carpet at her feet.
"What are y-"
"-Shh." Anna's sucks her bottom lip between her teeth and pushes Elsa's knees apart, settling a bit unsteadily between them. She turns her face up expectantly. "Okay," she purrs, "ready when you are."
It's wrong. Anna is really, really drunk and Elsa knows. She knows. But her insides are twisting and turning, and there is something powerful expanding in her chest, threatening to split her open. She is sick with nerves. She is flushed with anger. She reeling and out of control, and starting to panic, but then Anna puts her hand on her knee and lets her fingers slide along the rough denim, gathering sparks as they climb higher and higher, until they're brushing her pelvis. Elsa's mouth falls open, and blood pounds in her ears, and her skin prickles, and Anna's fingers are doing things to her body that she doesn't have the vocabulary to describe.
"Make me stop," Anna goads wickedly, eyeing the bob in Elsa's throat. Her fingers slide higher until they're curling into the waistband of Elsa's jeans. "Make me stop before I do something crazy." She licks her lips, but then hesitates as comprehension slowly dawns on her face. "Or, wait… Elsa, do you actually want this?"
Elsa hits her again, and Anna takes it with grace, loose tendrils of red hair whipping around her face as she jerks to the side. She stays perfectly still for a moment. A small, pink tongue darts out to moisten her lips, and Anna's eyes slide shut. Her narrow chest is heaving.
Elsa flexes her hand and feels the sting in her fingers. Her mind is full of confused, disconnected thoughts.
"Again?" Anna breathes in. "C'mon, Elsa. Don't punk out now."
Her teal eyes flick open and snare Elsa's, and suddenly the blonde knows exactly how Odysseus must have felt, tied to the mast, straining against his bonds as the sirens sang to him. She might be a virgin, but she's not naive. She knows seduction when she sees it, and Anna's voice is making the spot between her legs pound.
It's like she's leaking.
"Elsa?" Anna whispers. "Please, Elsa-"
Elsa strikes her again, and this time Anna gasps and bites her lip to stifle the loud moan that threatens to escape. It makes Elsa's hair stand on end. She doesn't wait this time. She can see the request forming on Anna's lips and she absolutely cannot stand to hear her voice again so soon. There's no telling what it'll make her do.
She slaps Anna harder, and a breathy whimper passes her lips. A light sheen of sweat is forming on her brow, and some of her hair is sticking.
Oh, god.
Elsa is absolutely transfixed. What the hell is this? What the hell is she doing?
Anna curls her fingers harder into Elsa's waistband, laughing softly, darkly, as she alights upon the metal button and flicks it open. She wrenches the denim fabric aside so she can tear at the zipper and drags it down. The sound is nearly deafening in their tiny room, and Elsa is breathing so fast. She is so lightheaded. She's going to pass out.
"Let me say thank you," Anna slurs, pressing her nose into Elsa's crotch, and oh jesus christ this is so wrong and she needs to tell her to stop, but-
"Ahhh," Elsa's head falls back, and Anna breathes in, digging her nails harder into the small of Elsa's back.
"Does that feel good?"
"I- fuuuck."
Anna laughs and then she's pushing Elsa back with a hand on her chest, and tugging at her hips. Elsa only gasps again as her jeans slide off her thighs and the cold air hits her flushed skin. She shivers and sits up as Anna is struggling with the fabric bunched around her shins.
"What are we doing?" she asks, rhetorically, because, of course, she knows exactly what they're doing, and she can't think about anything else.
She rushes to help Anna kick off her jeans.
"Fuck, you're so beautiful, Elsa." Anna's hands slide along her liberated calves, and everything beneath them burns like the brightest wildfires in the west.
Anna creeps up on her haunches, slinky and sweaty and flushed, pausing to press light kisses to the wounds at Elsa's thighs, then surges forward to snare the hem of Elsa's underwear between her teeth. She tugs, ravenous, forceful, and Elsa's breath hitches, her will to resist further unraveling. Anna's fingers creep under the flimsy, cotton fabric, ready to pull, and Elsa just lifts her hips.
Sharp teeth clamp down on her thigh, and Elsa jerks, groaning.
This pain is different.
This pain feels good.
Anna licks and soothes with her fingers, with her mouth. She sucks until the blood under Elsa's skin wells to the surface and blooms dark red; mottled and maroon like red wine. She leaves marks that sting, and Elsa makes no move to stop her. She's won't deny herself this.
She can't.
When Anna's silky lips find her core, dripping and aching, they moan together in unison. It's filthy and sloppy and the vibrations from Anna's mouth make her hips jump off the bed. Elsa's so keyed up. Her muscles are so tight. It feels incredible, like nothing she's ever had. Her eyes roll back into her head, and her fingers tangle in Anna's hair. It's everything she can do to hold herself upright, back arching as a curious tongue swirls around her entrance. She suddenly feels so empty. There's nothing she wants more in the world than to be filled. Her hips buck unconsciously as Anna drags her tongue up and flicks, and then there are new sounds falling from her mouth, breathy, needy, wanton, trembling sounds. Elsa squeezes her eyes shut, tries to focus on her breathing, on Anna's soft, exploratory strokes.
"You taste good," Anna murmurs, lips trapping, sucking, tugging until Elsa groans wretchedly. "Fuck. I knew it. I knew you would."
Elsa trembles, fingers clinging tighter to the wild, red tendrils of Anna's hair.
Anna inserts a long, slender finger, thrusting in slowly until she's knuckle deep, and Elsa falls apart. It hurts, but it feels so good, like working a knot out of an aching muscle. She can't catch her breath again. Her hips start to move and she's not even sure what she's doing, but it's amazing. Her head is full of lightning and sparks.
"Ungh," she moans. "Fuck."
And Anna adds a second finger.
Oh.
That's…
Whoa.
Her orgasm hits like a bomb and it wrecks everything. It blows everything apart. Elsa is devastated. She is obliterated. She feels so much that she fills to the brim and overflows, crying out raggedly into Anna's hair like she's dying. It feels like dying, doubled over on the bed, thighs clenched around Anna's ears, hooked around Anna's shoulders. Anna's lips are wrapped tight around Elsa's clit, fingers pumping gently to coax her down, and Elsa can't anymore, but it feels so amazing that she never wants to stop. Please, god, don't let it stop. Her cries turn to open-mouthed gasps. Her muscles spasm and twitch.
Jesus fuck.
What the ever living fuck was that?
Is it supposed to feel like that? That good?
Anna laughs, breathy and husky, like molasses dripping off a hot knife. "I like how you sound." She presses a searing kiss against Elsa's inner thigh and wipes her mouth. "You sound amazing."
Elsa opens her mouth to reply, something that will probably be mostly incoherent, but a sharp knock at the door startles them both. Elsa nearly kicks Anna in the head in her haste to pull away. Anna extracts her fingers too fast and it stings. Elsa hisses through her teeth. The redhead shoots her an apologetic look.
"Hey!" A voice carries through the door, followed by another swift knock. "It's Kristoff! I heard yelling! You guys okay?"
"Shit," Elsa hisses, glancing in a panic down at her sweaty, naked legs.
"Bathroom," Anna whispers. "Hurry. I'll talk to him."
"You're drunk!"
Anna scoffs. "This ain't my first rodeo, partner." She nods at the bathroom door. "Go."
Kristoff starts to knock at the door more insistently, and this time Elsa doesn't question it. She rises from the bed and sprints across the room, taking care to close the bathroom door softly behind her. Breathing hard, she shrinks down to the floor and presses her ear up against the wood, listening carefully to the conversation outside.
"What were you doing?"
"I slipped and fell-" Elsa can hear her roommate laughing nervously. "It's sort of a mess in here, so-"
"-Be more careful."
"Okay, sorry, I-"
"-Are you sure you're okay?" Kristoff sounds suspicious. "You looked flushed."
Elsa is filled with sudden panic as she remembers the tequila bottle, hastily capped and tipped on its side next to the bed. Would Anna even remember to move it?
"Yeah, I was, um…" Anna pauses. "Okay, so I was at a Charity Week event at the Chi Omega house."
"You boyfriend is a Chi Omega, right? Hans or something-"
"-Yeah, Hans! We were dancing and stuff."
"Is he here?"
"No, um-"
"-Who's in the bathroom?"
"Oh! That's just Elsa. She's getting in the shower."
A short pause follows, then, "Hey, Elsa! Is that you?"
Elsa swallows the lump in her throat and leans closer to the door. "Who is it?"
There's another short pause, and then, finally, Kristoff seems satisfied, because he bids Anna goodnight with a parting warning about noise violations and the door clicks shut. Elsa takes a deep breath. She turns and lets her back press up against the door.
That was way too close.
/-/-/-/-/
She can't face Anna again and she can't stop shaking so she strips down and takes a hot shower. Her fingers quiver as she unties her braid and combs out her hair. Dark bruises are forming on her thighs and she knows that she'll have hickies there tomorrow. She may as well have burned herself again because the marks feel shameful, indelible.
The water scalds her, but the bruises don't wash off. She scrubs until her skin burns, even though she can't get under the surface where the real fire still rages.
She is so, incredibly, unbelievably screwed.
There is no scenario where this ends well. None. Maybe she's not the most optimistic person ever, but Elsa is pragmatic. She's considered every scenario she can possibly think of in twenty minutes and let them play out in her head. Best case? Anna goes through a messy breakup with Hans and rides off into the sunset with Elsa on a white stallion. Except, wait. Does she want that? Is that really what she wants? Elsa isn't so sure. Anna is attractive, but she's mysterious, she's chaotic, she's a bull in a china shop, and Elsa's life is definitely a china shop right now. Anna is a force of nature with no boundaries and no will to temper herself. How many other kinks is she hiding? Does she always cheat when she's drunk? Did those other scratches even come from Hans? Elsa has a million questions, like what does any of this mean to Anna? Does it mean nothing? Because Elsa's not quite sure she can handle that.
Which, speaking of, is Elsa even a lesbian? God, who knows. It's not like she's spent a bunch of time fantasizing about women.
And then there are her secrets, the one's she's kept so close to her chest, because here, in the little town of Arendelle, a college town that is more students than full-time residents, Elsa has no history. Anna doesn't know her crimes. She doesn't know that Elsa has taken a life.
Elsa dries herself off in a daze. Everything is blurry around the edges. Everything is a little bit stop motion. She leaves the bathroom with a towel wrapped around her torso, shivering again, uncertain of what she'll find, but as soon as she steps out she realizes that she shouldn't have worried.
The room is empty. The tequila is gone.
Anna's papers are still scattered everywhere.
Elsa crumples onto the floor and cries.
She feels scattered everywhere, too.
/-/-/-/-/
A/N: So, how about them apples?
