second chapter bros! gah, this one is longer than i thought it would be... but i hope you all like it and that it doesnt bore you! haha! enjoy!

"Come on, come on!" Anna exhilarated as she tugged on Kristoff's tense arm, the burly man trying to keep his stance strong but failing as he stumbled after her.

"Anna," he sighed, shaking his head as he got jerked by the little ginger in an adrenaline rush. He was still a little groggy from the nap he took back on the plane, and suddenly getting launched into a whole new country right after he snapped his eyes open was something he needed to adjust to. The humid air, the alien accents, and the putrid scent of strong coffee that seemed to waft through the air wherever they went is a bit alienating. And in the sea of jostling people they've passed through at the airport was a quick reminder that this wasn't home anymore. They were in fact far, far away from home.

It made his stomach clench into knots after knots of homesickness.

One thing he was glad about was that the hotel they've booked in had a personal driver to pick them up, who waved at them at the airport and drove them to the hotel approximately 20 minutes (not like he was counting) with the ancient buildings and foreign people they've passed outside the cab in a blur. When they reached the hotel, Kristoff immediately collapsed on top of his bed, wanting nothing more but to resume his disrupted slumber way back at New York. And when he barely had a second to shut his eyes, Anna came barging in on him on a completely new "tourist outfit" or so she says, thrilled that they could wander around Paris at the very first day.

The first day of the trip didn't really consist of immediate tours, so they were free to go wherever they wanted to. Or stay in the hotel and keep things cool.

But Kristoff made it clear he didn't want to get his butt off the bed he was sated at.

After Anna's few attempts of getting him on his feet (smothering him with a pillow and a failed attempt to drag his feet off the bed), she finally won him over by looking up at him with googly eyes she famously calls as—The Puppy Pout. A secret weapon she's learned to use on him over the years. Pouted lips, crinkled eyebrows, and batted eyelashes added for dramatic effect.

And of course, like all the other times she's used it on him, he couldn't say no.

So he just rolled on his back and threw an arm over his face before releasing a guttural sigh of defeat that Anna immediately squealed a cry of success in response.

After throwing on a faded Football tee ever so recklessly and getting dragged out by the arm (and partly persuaded by her puppy eyes), they made their way through Paris, squandering in local shops and mini cafes that mesmerized Kristoff how ever so bubbly Anna was even in a blisteringly hot day. Her lime green sundress stuck on her back, sticky with sweat and her bangs was a mop on top of her same clammy forehead. And still, she still seemed to look like all the other deep tanned tourists snapping pictures everywhere they went, well, only more jittery than the rest.

Anna's already bought Elsa souvenirs, a stylish purse, a cute hairclip, and finally thinking her mountain of gifts would finally suffice when she added a 'My sister went to Paris and all she bought me was a lousy keychain' engraved keychain that made her laugh out loud in the store when she read it, earning a respectable number of glares from the tourists inside the shop. She knew she just had to buy it for Elsa.

She's even made Kristoff swear that he wouldn't tell Elsa anything about it. Which he did doubt he'd actually be telling, since he's never even sent a normal SMS to her sister before hesitating if she actually hated him for being so close to Anna or if she was the same social butterfly as he was. And when the sun rose at its peak they had lunch at a local sandwich shop, Kristoff full with his platter of sub sandwiches and Anna bloated with the platter of assorted chocolates she bought somewhere nearby too.

But there was something that Kristoff couldn't shake off his chest, it was the fact that in every minute of their stops Anna would stop to swoon over couples and spill out how fortunate they were to be staying in in the world famous City of Love.

He swallowed at the thought of it.

Love.

She's broken, right? Then why would she want this? Why here? With him of all people? He must've been losing his mind and he secretly wished Sven was here to bark at him to snap him out of his daydreams.

He would steal sideway glances from her, how much he's observed how guarded she is. Yes, she laughs, throws her head back when she has a little too much fun on her own inside jokes, eyes bright when she sees fun sights she's seen before in movies or magazines or how she practically jumped up and down when she mistook one of the random tourists as Angelina Jolie. But there was something to it, in the middle of her laugh he would notice how her eyebrows would perk up for the faintest second before she dissolves back into her usual smile, clearing her throat or awkwardly nodding at whatever he was commenting about now and how limited her touches were.

Though it felt like a slap in the face, what bothered him most were her eyes. They were bright, yes, but there was something deeper to it. Her eyes were an alloy, a pool of blue, that would some times stretch into gossamer in all its innocence. But the crinkle in the corner her of her eyes and the flutter of her thick lashes proved it wrong, she was hiding something. Guarding it, as if her life depended on it. She's done such a good job masking it over the summer, but he sees the pain resurface with the simple reminder that: They were in the city of love.

Alone.

Just the two of them.

And Kristoff felt a little guilty about it.

Of course, Anna would only like to visit the ever famous City of Love with the man she's going to spend her life with, right? But maybe he's just invited for the fun of it, like a reward. For being a great friend, for being there when she needed him, for having someone to bicker with, for having someone to snort and laugh with without getting judged, for having an escape on Sundays after band practice, for being the only person close enough to hear her deepest secrets, raw and true beneath the stars between coffee under a shabby condominium in New York on late nights.

He deemed it one day, she would be here, in the crooked streets of Paris greeted by streetlamps in everywhere she went, a huge smile on her face that never wore out, hair copper as ever, but it wouldn't be him she would be dragging. He had imagined the man she would marry as someone more princely than he, gallant and buoyant with pronouncing his love for all of Paris to hear. Like Hans, without the cheating part of course. And he imagines a silhouette of a man kissing Anna beneath the Eiffel Tower with sparks flying everywhere. And he knew it would never be him.

It made his stomach lurch before dropping in an endless pit in his stomach. He waves the thought away with a animalistic shake of his head.

"Kristoff!"

He jerked his head up to the calling, broken off from his mild stupor. He didn't even notice that she's peeled away from his arm, and now, they were suddenly at the foot of the Eiffel Tower. He squints his eyes and strains his neck to look up, the top of the tower seemingly touching the blue skies.

He looks back just in time to see her fish out her phone from her purse.

"Kristoff!" she smiled widely at him, stretching the arm with the phone and excitedly dangling it in his face. "Snap me a picture next to the Eiffel Tower so I can show it to Elsa ASAP!" her smile only grew wider when he obliged with a simple nod, taking the phone from her wiggling arms and took a step back, which proved to be useless since she's already ran straight a few meters from him before striking a dramatic pose.

He sighed, masking a dorky chuckle with a cough as he snapped the picture when the suns rays illuminated behind her.

Snap!

"Another!" she called, startling a few tourists that were taking pictures of their own.

Snap! Snap!

Before the pictures could even process, she's already ran her way back to Kristoff, head bobbing in anticipation and leaned in close to his chest, smile still nailed on her face. "Let me see! Let me see!"

A warm smile was blooming over his face now as he watched her, and in an instant all his worries seemed to flush away. He was still concerned about her, scared even, but knew she would come at her own time. So he tore his gaze away from her as she chattered something about how Elsa would be so jealous of her, but he didn't hear her words. It was her voice that sang a melody to him, eyes trained on the top of the tower, hands in his pockets, sun hot on his cheeks.

Snap!

Suddenly his head jerked back to her, slightly baffled. A mischievous grin spread across her lips as she laughed, phone in hand. He knew exactly what she had done.

"Hey!" he frowned, one eyebrow shooting up at her skeptically. "Please don't tell me that you just…"

"Okay, okay," she waved an apologetic hand over her face, laughter dying down before she looked up to meet his gaze again. "I know you're not the most photogenic person, and that your Facebook display picture is Sven instead of your actual face, but hey! Look!" she flashed the phone in his face. "You look really attractive here!"—His heart skipped a beat—"Well, a bit emo because you're looking out of the field instead of a normal human being that smiles at the camera but hey, you look really good!"

He felt a blush spread like wildfire on his cheeks, but he manages to mask it as he guffaws at the idea. "Okay, you got me. Now what are you going to do about it?"

"It'll put a check on my bucket list," she snickered as she took out the small cramped notebook out of her purse and flipped through the pages.

"Wait," his eyes widened. "W-What? You put me in your bucket list?"

Looking at him through her lashes, she suddenly feels small and embarrassed. "Well, um, yeah. I kind of want to have lots of pictures on this trip… including pictures of you and me. But I know how uncomfortable you are when a camera strikes up your face. But this is a once in a lifetime experience. And we're in Europe for goodness sake! Please? Can we just enjoy this? You know, together if that's not too much to ask…"

A quick flashback sends him back with her words, how in most of his pictures with his adopted family left him with a frown or a thin line of a smile. He was once caught laughing in a photo, taken by Elsa herself when he laughed at Anna when she made a goofy face in attempt to make him smile for the camera. And it did, and he slightly cursed the moment that he was caught off guard. But now it was different. Anna was asking him to take pictures with her on this trip. With her. And for the slightest moment all his nerves sang a million yeses, his heart flutters and his head feels light and he needed to clear his throat to seem casual and nonchalant about it.

"No," his words caught her attention, finally looking up from the phone she was fiddling for the past minute. "It's not too much to ask. It's okay. As long as it's not selfies, it's tolerable."

She beamed.

Right before she could ask a random passerby to take their picture, she hears a snap from his own phone.

"Hey!" she frowned, smile melting away in the heat of the sun. He dangles the picture of her on his phone, smile a little too wide and her nose looked misplaced in a blur.

"Hah," Kristoff smiled teasingly, dangling the phone in her face. "Just because I agreed to actually have pictures on this trip doesn't mean I can't have a little fun. Also, it's mean to take pictures of people without them knowing, okay?"

"So why did you take a picture of me without knowing?"

"Revenge," his smile only grew wider. Without retreating or forgiveness, she clicked the camera of her phone and accepted the challenge. A photo war is ensued.

Anna chased after Kristoff off into the foot of the tower, trying to get all the less pleasant parts he liked of his face. She got a close up of his nose that made him look like a cartoon character that came into life, and another picture looked like he was a banshee screaming when she got lucky enough to direct the phone right up his nose.

She laughed at her collection of photos stopping to curl and sling an arm over her now slowly growing stomach pain from laughter, the rest a blur, and began to run when he raged toward her, also laughing at their silliness. Most of the people around them were already eyeing them unpleasantly and it was only a matter of time before some guard came to halt them from their childish antics, but they were having too much fun to care.

After ducking under an ice cream cart, running across the field and jumping over couples having picnics, he tackles her to the ground, phone still in hand and they roll in the grass still laughing their heads off without a care. He pins her to the ground and she struggles out of his grasps but fails, and he starts taking pictures of her one after another, his phone creating a snapping vibrancy in the air as they continued laughed.

Finally, when his phone beeped and warns him that its memory is half filled in less than a minute, he stops to look at her beneath him, completely enveloped by his shadow with a few traces of light peaking behind him hitting parts of her face, his arms either side of her head as he tries to catch his breath.

But the view of her was intoxicating.

Her hair was a mess, tendrils escaping from her braid still mopped with sweat. Her cheeks were radiant under the sun, dress soiled on the ground. Her smile, wide with laughter a minute earlier softens as she looks up to meet his gaze, and he almost mistakes that look of content with a look laced with love.

But at the moment, he knows he has wrecked the walls she's built for so long. It all fell with a single tumble down the grass. And everything about the moment was infectious, the honesty and serenity of it all was almost touching.

The world around them stills for a moment, the birds around them sang and the people continued to chatter oblivious of the two young adults in one corner of the field looking like they're reenacting a scene right out of a chic flick movie. But it was more than that. It was better.

He had to fight the urge to run his fingers over her skin, her neck, up to her cheek and idly thumb over her now crimson skin. He had to stop himself from burying his nose into the crook of her neck and get lost in the scent of lavender in her hair. He had to fight back the need to lean over and press his lips to hers, to finish off and to end the need he's been feeling all the while.

But he doesn't.

He gets ahold of what was happening and sits up immediately, free hand finding the back of his neck rubbing awkwardly when he regained his composure. Still shaken with the their momentous actions. But now his head was swamped with worry, that his body odor from their sprint was bothering her, or if he had gone too far, or if she didn't even like what they had done and he just—"Sorry," he mumbled shyly, suddenly unable to meet her gaze. "I didn't mean for it to go like this…"

He feels her shift next to him. "No, it's okay," her hand touched his shoulder, sending a jolt of fuzziness run across his body, waking him with a burn. "It was fun. We should do that more often."

And with her words, the whole world is gone for a second, and he looks back at her, eyes soft with a warm smile spreading across his lips. He wanders for a scant second if she could hear his heart thunder against his chest. He lolls his head to the side, her mirrored smile reassuring him that the glares and thoughts of other people around them didn't matter. It didn't matter if they thought that they were a silly couple, young and in love because in truth, he didn't know if they were, either.

And he wished they were.

Finally, after a minute or two of drowning in each other's gaze, Anna jumps up on her feet with a shake of her head the blush still intact, brushing the dirt off her skirt before stretching a hand; a peace offering after their little proclaimed war. He smiled as he took it. It was a truce.

"Okay," she giggled as he dusts the mud off his jeans. "Next, we need a real picture together. Next to the Eiffel Tower. Elsa and Sven would love to see it, I just know it!"

He gave her a little shrug he guessed she didn't even see since she's turned her back on him to find a random passerby to take their picture. And while she does, he scrolls on his phone absently, still miraculously intact on his hand the whole while.

There was a picture of her running that made her look like she broke her back, a blurred picture where she had two heads, and another one with her eyes blazing red from the radiance of the sun.

But one picture catches his attention, the last one in the album. It was her, lying on her back, flowers in her hair, the moment he had pinned her to the ground and he chuckles in relief that it's not blurred at all. Her smile was genuine and the freckles she says she hates that bombarded her skin like sprinkles made her look like a work of art. He couldn't stop smiling knowing that he had a rare treasure no one else would ever have, and his heart leaps out his chest feeling like the luckiest man living on the face of the earth.

She was beautiful.

When Anna came back, hauling some other tourist by the wrist and shoving her camera up her hand, she wrung her arms around Kristoff's and smiled as the camera took aim at their faces. Their posing made a blush creep its way up Kristoff's neck, but forced back a tight smile for the camera. He felt her stiff against his touch, probably rebuilding the wall that guarded her heart. But this time, he wouldn't let her.

He was going to make things work this time, he decided.

And when Anna peeled away from him showering the tourist of her gratefulness, Kristoff was left at the foot of the tower mind in a haze at war with himself if he should make the rare picture of Anna his next wallpaper before she came back to drag him off someplace again.

He began to hesitate when he heard her steps trot back to him, and with a shake of his hand and a tap on clear screen he's made up his mind.

He does.

reviews are greatly appreciated!