I do not own Frozen.
"A, are you ready?" Jane asked.
"Oh, I'm ready," Anna rubbed her hands together. She tugged at the harness around her waist and rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet. "I was born ready!"
"Really A? You were born ready to rappel down the exterior of a skyscraper?"
"I'm psyching myself up for this, gimme a break."
The night was dense but cool, heavy after a late spring shower. May in New York was frequently pleasant, but wet. Jane had almost called off the whole thing for fear of the shorter girl slipping against rain-spattered panes of glass. And probably because Anna wasn't the most coordinated girl she had ever come across. Two black ropes had been triple-threaded and knotted with the efficiency of a sailor, checked over five times, secured to an anchor and run through a crank of Jane's own design, so as to allow for a more controlled descent on Anna's part. The blonde had fretted and Anna thought it the perfect time to make inappropriate jokes about Jane adjusting and clawing at the clothes covering her midsection.
"Is this tight enough here?" Jane asked, yanking a strap that wrapped around the top of Anna's right thigh. The strap looped down under her crotch and circled back around below her butt cheek.
Jane's hands were bare and Anna was euphoric.
"How tight is it supposed to be?"
"Well, you don't want it cutting off circulation," Jane explained. "You'll still need to be able to crawl through an air vent, so not so tight that it will limit your range of motion."
"Here, I don't think it's too tight, but you tell me," Anna boldly shoved Jane's hand down toward the top of her leg.
Jane stared intently at the strap, then slipped two fingers under the woven fibers and wiggled them about, sliding them all the way around to the back of Anna's butt and then forward in between her legs towards regions unmentionable. The light pressure of two foreign fingers on her thigh's interior probably wasn't the best course of action prior to climbing down a skyscraper.
Especially beautiful, slender fingers that can probably type like, two jillion words per minute. I wonder how fast they move—
Anna shifted her weight and the spot Jane touched burned, shooting magma-like heat into her bloodstream. Jane looked up, but didn't move her hand.
"I think it's a good hold. Most complaints for seat harnesses concern the tightness of the thigh straps around the groin area."
Jane wriggled her fingers again in the same spot, and Anna's cheeks flamed furnace hot. Anna tried not to squirm, opting instead to focus on not hyperventilating.
"Yeah, f-feels… g-good," Anna's voice broke.
And then Jane smirked at her, the vexing temptress.
"You're not just referring to the strap, are you?"
"You know I'm not, tease," Anna growled.
Jane pulled her hand back and rotated the metal cinch of the load-bearing carabineer.
"Aren't you going to make sure the other one's not too tight?"
Way to go, Anna. Desperate much?
"We'll be on this roof too long if I do that," Jane replied, eyes roving over the mechanical crank. Her tone was flat as roadkill, but in the dimness of the cityscape, Anna caught a high rogue blossoming along Jane's cheeks. "For real this time, ready?"
"Born ready."
They strode toward the ledge, headlights and taxi service bulbs twinkling in orderly little lines; ants to the hills of suburbia, Pennsylvania, Jersey, Connecticut. Anna glanced over the edge and a wave of vertigo catapulted a constricting sensation north to her head. She grabbed onto Jane to steady herself.
"Don't get too worked up over the height thing."
"I'm not afraid of heights," Anna clarified. "Just adjusting."
"You're not afraid of anything," Jane said, and took Anna's face in her hands.
It felt better than she thought it would, having Jane's bare hands on her skin. Even if it was just her cheeks, or the blonde woman's thumbs brushing the jaw line just below her ear. Hands cool from night air, on skin tingling from eager adrenaline rushes. A lovely juxtaposition, Jane's white, tissue-soft finger pads memorizing the arches of her freckled nose bridge, the rounded cheekbones Anna once found inhospitable to touch. No one had ever lingered over her face with such perspicacious scrutiny before, like if they looked and studied hard enough, they'd unlock the secrets of the universe.
She should know by now that Jane had myriad ways of making her feel special.
So why the hell do I feel so nervous about all of this?
Jane's fingers strolled down Anna's neck toward her pulse point and Anna had to stifle the whimper wanting to burst from her windpipe.
"Your pulse is flying, are you sure you're okay?"
"I'm just a little anxious," Anna explained. "And your bare fingers on my skin after so long… that's not really helping the situation."
"I've touched you before."
"But at my insistence. This feels… different. You, just grabbing me, willingly. I like it." Her own hand came up to cover Jane's at her face, and she risked another glance over the side. Her equilibrium didn't waver this time, but the nerves remained. Anna turned into the downy caress and steeled herself with a breath.
It's just her touch. I'm still unaccustomed to it…
"You may be happy that I've vanquished this dependency, but the gloves serve their purpose well," Jane said, withdrawing two pairs from a pocket. She slid hers on easily and handed the other two to Anna. "Specifically, used to prevent rope burn and maximize grip. You'll like them."
Gloves on and backs toward the edge, Jane grasped the rope before her in her dominant left, her right holding the trailing cord behind her.
"Let the crank do the work. It'll be just like an elevator."
"Remind me again why I get the training wheels?" Anna wasn't too keen on putting her life in the hands of a machine.
"Because there's no way in hell I'm letting you rappel down a skyscraper on your first time."
"I think you underestimate my abilities. I'm not nearly as clumsy as you think I—"
Anna yelped and was lowered over the side of the building, Jane having zapped the crank into motion at Anna's whining.
She could do nothing about the crank itself; so, Anna focused on keeping her feet in front of her, her body angled towards the windows and not twirling around like some spastic cyclone. Anna pushed off mere inches, swinging out over the very solid, very skull-shattering asphalt below. She landed as softly as she could against the window panes, but winced at every impact. Jane had given her a brief lesson on form, warned her of adding undue pressure on the rope. The blonde, however, was so skilled at the maneuvers that she matched Anna inch for inch, no mechanical crank guiding her down. She was powered by muscle memory, poise, and experience.
She makes it look like a damn cakewalk.
It took longer than Anna thought it would, their incremental sinking toward floor eleven. Though they halted at floor twelve, the one that housed the Russian maid service offices.
Jane retrieved what looked like an industrial level suction cup from her securely strapped duffel, and then set to work etching a circle with a diameter of about twenty inches into the glass pane of the window. She attached the suction cup to the circle and went over it with her diamond-tipped tool once more, wriggling the pane with the handle of the suction cup as she popped it out of place. Jane took a quick glance below her, then pressed a button on the mechanized suction cup thing. The glass circle fell and shattered against the sidewalk. No one looked up.
"You could have hit somebody!"
"I always check first. Come on," Jane said.
Anna watched as Jane swung through the window and onto a desk, supporting her body weight with her gloved hands and arching into a front walk over. Her feet were silent as they made contact with the carpet. Anna clambered through, one leg hitched over the lip of the circled glass, the other dangling ridiculously over the Manhattan business district.
"Jane!" Anna stage whispered. "A little help— oh, no, no, I got it—"
She rolled over the lip of the glass (miraculously!) without filleting her torso, landing in a struggling clusterfuck of limbs, ripped shirt, and tangled harness on the floor. Jane looked down at her, rolled her eyes in a long-suffering manner, and attempted to gather her up.
"I'm cool, I'm cool," Anna said a little indignantly, swiping nonexistent dirt from her black trousers. She wrestled with the rope at her waist. "Now what?"
"Infiltration."
Jane led Anna through the upper floor to the elevator, owl-like eyes watchful for cameras and alarms. Anna kept up as best she could without tumbling into corner ferns, which was more difficult for her than she would care to admit.
It is literally insane that I can be as poised as a model in front of criminals when I'm on a job, and a complete blunder when I'm trying to sneak around. Subtly was never my strong suit.
Through some feat or another, they ended up in the air vents above floor eleven, shuffling in the dark with Jane leading. Though cramped, the experience jettisoned Anna back to the memory of crawling along to Jane's apartment for the first time.
How far we have come.
What hadn't changed much, was the blonde's phenomenal butt.
No wonder black is her favorite color. Her cheeks in those pants make me feel like a degenerate.
"We should do this more often," Anna whispered.
"What? Break into places? We do this frequently."
"No, go in through the air vent."
"Why the hell would we do that? Even I don't like this part of the job."
"Yeah, well you don't get my view."
"A, focus."
"Right, sorry."
More crawling, and the further they went, the more cautious Jane became. Anna could see it in her movements, the regal stretch of the wrist from her forearm, the controlled shifting of her thigh as she pulled, but never dragged, her calves further into the vented passage. Jane stopped abruptly and so did Anna, the blonde turning over her shoulder and raising a finger to her lips. Anna couldn't hear, and couldn't see anything over the bulky duffel Jane had lashed to her back. So when Jane started moving forward, slipping viper-like downward through a hatch, Anna prudently followed. She glanced below and saw Jane, hovering by her fingertips over an armed room. The corner motion sensors sported active red alarm lights in the darkened office. Couple those with the cameras in every corner, and Anna deduced that this office space contained more classified information than Jane's initial readings led them to believe. The blonde systematically disabled the slew of electronics with sweeping hand motions and ballet-like arms extensions.
Graceful, in a strange, technology-imploding way.
"Jane?" Anna whispered.
Jane shushed her, minty breath little more than a sibilant whistle between her teeth.
The blonde pointed a finger to a frosted glass door, two dark, blocky shapes moving back and forth in front of the entrance.
Guards. Likely armed.
Anna could hear a garbled sports commentary through the glass.
Shit just got real.
A/N: Might have thrown a few people when I said we could see the end of the tunnel on the last A/N. Keep in mind the first two acts were split between 115k, so we still have quite a ways to go here. Maybe 50k to wrap everything. IDK for sure, but I probably should have said we're 'getting there' as opposed to 'arriving in the station'. Hope that clarifies some things, and thanks for your readership!