NOTE: Here's a bonus birthday present from me to you! A chapter just after midnight - Part 15 on the Fifteenth! :D

~ Chapter Fifteen ~

Anna awoke, spitting out a strand of her own hair and confused why her room was so bright. Why weren't the curtains drawn? Where the hell was she?

And then she got a good look around. The room was completely alien to her; only her suitcases in the corner jogged her memory. Ibiza. She was literally a third of the way around the world from her house. Grinning into her pillow, she kicked her legs for a minute, eventually screaming in random joy. It was real! She wasn't dreaming, she was really in another country!

With Elsa. Sitting bolt upright, she looked around the room and tried to decide what she should do. Take a shower? Find food? No, of course not. The first thing she wanted to do was find Elsa, to confer about what they would be doing for their first day of the unified vacation.

That proved a little more difficult than she had expected. Once she disentangled herself from the sheets and pulled on her shirt and jeans from the day before, resolving to shower soon, she tried Elsa's room first. Empty. Then she looked around the kitchen, living room, dining room, the spare bed, the lavatories… nowhere to be found.

Had Elsa really ran off and left her? It was pretty late in the morning, judging by how much daylight there was outside, but that didn't seem like her. What was she going to do in a house in Ibiza all by herself?

Walking out the back door, she saw the delightfully blue swimming pool and a dozen elegant beach chaise lounges, ready to play host to sunbathers. A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth at the thought of making use of all that later. For now, the mystery remained: where was Elsa?

At last, when she went back upstairs to get her phone to call her, she spotted the sliding glass door at the end of the hallway. In the dark, she had barely noticed, but it led to a second deck. Funny how unimportant it had seemed when she knew she wouldn't be using it soon.

Elsa glanced up from her book the moment she heard the door. Her hand came up to drag her sunglasses off her nose and she smiled wide, earnestly happy to see Anna there.

"Hey, Rip Van Winkle."

Anna laughed quietly, dipping her head. Partly due to her being teased about waking up late… and partly because she needed a moment to recover from Elsa's swimsuit. It was fairly modest for a bikini, but a bikini nonetheless, showing off more stomach and shoulder and leg than she was prepared for so soon after getting out of bed.

"Hey. Um… took me a while to find you, I was afraid you ran off."

"Ran off where? The party is obviously wherever you are." Her grin widened. "Even if you put it on hold by sleeping."

"Sorry, I didn't mean to snooze until noon."

Elsa shrugged, sliding a bookmark into place and laying the book - Pride and Prejudice, without any zombies at all - onto the table next to a coffee mug. "It's okay, really. You're on vacation; sleep in as much as you want."

"I don't want to sleep," Anna assured her, finally walking over to plop down in the nearest chair. "I want to hang out with you, get crazy! What do we do first?"

"Well…" Leaning a little closer, Elsa muttered, "I already had breakfast, but if you want to get ready, we can go grab lunch in town. Just a local place, pick one and see what they have. Then we'll figure out what kind of trouble two cute women such as ourselves can get into."

Already standing, Anna laughed, "When you put it that way, it almost sounds like one of us might end up pregnant."

"Stranger things have happened on this island, I'm sure," Elsa told her with an air of mystery.

One quick shower later, they were getting into a shiny silver car that couldn't have been more than a year old and pulling onto the roadways. Elsa pushed a button or two until she brought up a pulsing techno beat, then turned it almost all the way down to "background noise" level.

"Ambiance, check. Two hotties in shades, check."

"Anna being out of her element, check." Elsa laughed, but she insisted, "No, seriously, I'm totally dependent on you, here."

"That's right. You're mine, all mine! Muahahahaa!"

Shaking her head, she turned to look out her side window. "Keep doing that too often and I'll think you're a supervillain."

"Maybe I am. Maybe I built Ibiza as an elaborate trap just for a random Canadian. Watch yourself, Mayberry."

"If you built this to trap me, it's working. God, look at everything! It's like… it's like every city really should look this way, but doesn't because people back West got lazy, or something! What the hell, you know?"

"It does stay with you," Elsa agreed, turning down another street. "In the best of ways. It's kind of my home away from home… well, home sucks, so this is better. I can get away from all my obligations here, all the contracts and family drama, and… everything. All that's here is partying, sun, sand… I can be alone and free."

"So the beach house is your Fortress of Solitude?"

"Yes, I suppose. Seriously, even if the other girls are there, we're just there to have fun; it feels very different from when we're working together. But if they're not… oh, it's so relaxing. I can't wait to come back."

As they both scanned the multitude of restaurants and stores, Anna asked, "Then why bring me along if you wanted to be alone?"

"What?" Pulling to a stop, Elsa turned to look at her. "Oh- no I didn't mean- no, I really wanted you here! Please don't think otherwise!" Pressing her lips together for a moment, she slid her hands up and down the steering wheel, composing her thoughts. "You're not like them. You and I are just friends because we're friends - well, and because you're a fan, but you're not as… well…"

"Gross?"

"I was going for a word like 'obsessive', but yes, gross works." They shared a smile before Elsa went on. "I've always wanted to bring someone here who wasn't a coworker, or a Facebook-official boyfriend I'm supposed to be dating for press-related reasons. You're the first person who…" She fell silent.

"Go ahead," Anna insisted in a quiet voice. "I won't judge."

"The first person who I felt like sharing this with. Who I wanted to. I… that's probably silly, but when I realised we wouldn't get to hang out anymore, and then thought about you coming, I jumped on it - went right past all the 'but you can't do that' crap and asked you, stupid as I knew the idea was!"

"And I'm so glad you did." Unable to help herself, she reached over and drew Elsa into a hug, prompting and odd little squeak from the pop star. "This could have been a beach house in Alaska for all I care; if it's important to you and we get to hang, then that's all I need."

After a few seconds, Elsa did begin to hug back. "Thank you. Thank you for coming, I… oh, I'm getting all sappy. Who's the gross one now?"

"Both of us, probably," Anna said, prompting a laugh from her friend. Then she drew back and said, "Let's just park here, see what we find."

"I like the way you think!"

~ o ~

An hour later, they were both stuffed to the gills with seafood. Elsa hadn't eaten nearly as much as Anna, but they were both groaning from full bellies, a "to go" box tucked into the car before they took to strolling. Maybe she could work off a few calories that way.

Anna was glad she switched out her jeans for shorts after her shower; walking in long pants would have been suicide under a blazing sun. Meanwhile, Elsa's gauzy shirt just barely concealed her form, allowing for ample breeze. Anna was beginning to be less alarmed by all the glimpses of flesh, albeit marginally so; the extended amount of time paired with the growing strength of their friendship was helping quite a bit. Even if her gay brain-squirrels wouldn't put the nut down completely.

But the one thing that had almost vanished completely was her hero worship. Getting to know the real Elsa Valentine was such a trade-up from drooling over her picture on the front of the CD - or the ceiling of her room, as she was somewhat ashamed of now. Even if Elsa never spoke to her again after they went back to their separate lives, she couldn't go back to seeing her as an object of desire. All Elsa was to her now was a great friend… who just so happened to sing and joint-own houses on random islands.

And was majorly hot. That part, she couldn't quite forget, ever.

"What do you do for fun around here? Besides shopping, and eating, and sunbathing."

Elsa grinned behind her shades. "Ohhh, this city really comes alive at night. But that's not for you." She wagged an index finger in her face very animatedly. "I promised your mother we'd be good and eat all our vegetables, and look both ways before we cross-"

"Stop!" Anna giggled, slapping her bicep, and Elsa laughed too. "But… yeah, I don't know about doing all that. I've never been 'clubbing' or whatever before."

"Oh, we don't have to; I just thought you might like to try it. See how it fits you."

"But I'm not old enough, am I?" Anna's eyes narrowed. "Is it twenty-one here or eighteen?"

"Eighteen. And believe me, with a lot of these places, they don't even care if you're a year or two shy; Snow's slipped into a few of them."

"Crazy…"

Elsa bumped their hips together. "Look. If you go with me to a club and you absolutely hate it, I won't make you go to another one for the rest of the trip; I swear it. And I won't go to one by myself, either. We'll just do touristy things, and hang out by the pool, and watch a bunch of movies. Trust me, I'll be fine relaxing in whatever way works, but as far as I'm concerned, this is your trip."

Beaming over at her, Anna whispered, "You're giving me a lot of power, here."

"All the power. In fact, after this, we can go back and sit down, and look through some stuff online, and plot out every day except Cannes."

"Trip itinerary? Doesn't that take some of the… y'know, magic and mystery out of it?"

"A bit. But if that's what you want to do…"

Anna did contemplate that offer for several seconds. Then she shook her head. "No. No, I… spend a lot of my time doing things by the book. But this is Ibiza; this is another world. Let's just see what happens."

"Let's," Elsa whispered, lips taut from the sheer radiance of her smile. "And the first thing that will happen is… shopping!"

"Wha-AAHH!" Anna yelped as she was dragged into the nearest clothing boutique, sandals flapping loudly in their wake.

~ To Be Continued ~