Note to readers: Since I haven't updated in ages, it might be helpful to peruse the previous chapter due to an overlap of events. Anyways, enjoy!

Her eyes opened wide in surprise when Anna captured her lips in a clumsy kiss. Anna's plaid shirt was sopping wet, and Elsa shivered as her cousin's arms clasped firmly around her neck, dribbling water down her back and along the curve of her bare shoulders. She gasped when Anna's warm tongue pressed its way passed her lips and filled her mouth, still slightly bitter from the traces of beer and liquor that saturated her breath. Anna clung tighter, and Elsa was dimly aware of the beer cans bobbing in the water, moonlight glistening off the shiny edges, when she closed her eyes and sank into the kiss.

This is real, right?

It was only natural to doubt. The kiss was surreal, like something out of a dream: Elsa leaning over the edge of the dock, and Anna clinging on; arms, lips, tongue, and her body half submerged in water. She could see the moon rippling in the water through fluttering and half-lidded eyes as beer cans danced and sparkled on the reflective surface of the lake. The sound of chirping crickets swelled along the bank, playing in symphony with a chorus of croaking calls from the darkness. As loud as it was, her heart palpitations were louder.

How could any of this be real?

But dreams never left her trembling to the pit of her stomach, or feeling like her head was floating into limbo as her strength slowly left her.

Elsa's eyes were still closed when Anna's lips pulled away, and she half-expected an awkward moment of silence followed by barely passable conversation as they avoided eye contact. But that never happened. Anna still had her arms fastened around Elsa's neck, their foreheads touching. And as she slowly opened her eyes, Elsa could see thick droplets of water gathered on her cousin's lashes. She waited for Anna to open her eyes, still expecting some kind of acknowledgement and dawning realization to what had just transpired between them.

What she didn't expect was Anna passing out, her arms going limp and sliding off Elsa's neck and shoulders as she began to sink into the lake. Just like that, the spell was broken, and Elsa dove into the water after her.

~X~

Hours Earlier

Elsa couldn't have been more unnerved. She and Jane should have been out the door and off to the party nearly an hour before, but she still hadn't decided on an outfit, and her bedroom looked like the rummage bins at Macys after a Thanksgiving Day sale. She went through eight more outfits and a dozen pairs of shoes before she finally settled on a white vintage style summer dress with black floral print and a pair of suede ankle boots. Jane gave her nod of approval on the outfit, the mirth never leaving her eyes as Elsa still wavered over her final decision.

"Relax," Jane insisted as Elsa gave herself another long hard look in the mirror. "There's no way you're not going to get noticed tonight. You could show up wearing a burlap sack, and you'd still be the hottest girl there. After me, of course," she added as she tried on the pair of retro cat-eye shaped Louis Vuitton sunglasses she'd snagged from the dresser, puckering her lips in a mock air kiss.

Elsa laughed and the nerves in her belly began to dissolve.

"I knew there was a reason I still kept you around."

Jane pushed the sunglasses up over her forehead and winked. "It's the British accent, right? Drives all the guys and gals crazy."

"You have the crazy part right," Elsa teased back.

Gals…

Elsa applied the finishing touches to her makeup and dabbed on a touch of passion lip gloss. She couldn't possibly suspect, could she? The thought gave her pause.

"Perfect," Jane proclaimed while Elsa grabbed her cell phone and tucked it into her wallet case. "You look like the quintessential girl-next-door. Kristoff is totally gonna flip."

No, she decided as she listened to her oldest friend prattle on about Kristoff. She's completely oblivious. And she was glad for it.

~X~

"Ugh! I could fucking kill him!" Jane slammed her fist on the dashboard, and Elsa glared at her from behind the steering wheel. Almost as soon as they rolled out of the driveway and off to the party, Jane's twitter feed was bombarded with pictures of her boyfriend posing with fangirls, many of them on the receiving end of some not-so-very-chaste looking kisses. Apoplectic was the word that came to Elsa's mind when she saw Jane's face transition to an expression of absolute rage. It was also the word on her Word of the Day calendar.

"Please don't take your craziness out on my car."

But Jane wasn't listening, far too busy scowling at her cell phone. She flipped through the screens in large angry gestures before she finally shut off her phone and jammed it into her purse.

"I'm done with that bastard," Jane huffed as she tried to calm herself.

Elsa groaned, keeping her eyes on the road ahead.

"He just moved in, Janey. And you guys promised me no drama."

"He's the one causing drama, Els. Kissing cute fangirls and posting it on twitter! Did he think I wouldn't notice?"

Elsa cursed silently under her breath, then slowly counted backwards from five. Jane was fidgeting with the hem of her dress. Silly, loud, obnoxious Jane was anxious, and Jane was never anxious. She exhaled loudly.

"Those promo photos Zan posted were in pretty bad taste," Elsa acknowledged sympathetically, resting a hand on Jane's knee. "And if you want, when we get back home after summer break, I'll gladly help you dump his clothes out on the lawn while the neighbors watch." Jane smiled at the thought. As out of character as it would be for Elsa to stoop to her own level of crazy, Jane knew she was serious about her offer. "But tonight we should throw caution to the wind, and have fun," Elsa went on. "Screw Zan."

Jane nodded.

"Zan's not the only one that can play around," Jane said slowly, in a tone that told Elsa that her friend was clearly up to something. "If he's gonna play around with cute girls, who's to say that I can't do the same?"

Elsa raised a brow at this but said nothing.

"Maybe that's what I've been doing wrong. Maybe I've just been batting for the wrong team?"

She gave Elsa a wistful look, but Elsa wasn't convinced.

"Or maybe you need to stop serial dating the same person. I hear Kristoff isn't dating anyone."

Jane laughed, the moonlight glistening in her eyes.

~X~

Elsa first noticed a change between them two year before, during her first summer back from college. Anna had just finished up her sophomore year of high school, and Kristoff was struggling as a second year freshman at Aarondale Community College. It seemed that no one but Elsa had noticed how Anna was far more lax with Kristoff in a way that she couldn't quite put into words. Elsa only knew that Anna didn't slap his hand away when he grabbed at her hips during horseplay, or shove him when he stood too close like she'd been prone to.

And Kristoff didn't tease her about other boys with the same intensity that he used to, or pull at her braids with the same playfully brute force. Anna didn't even flinch when Kristoff smudged off a speck of strawberry cream from her cheek and licked it off his fingers during a mostly unmemorable evening at the dinner table. While there was nothing particularly special or alarming about the innocuous changes in the way Anna and Kristoff related to each other, the air between them had transformed into something more, and it nagged at her.

Then, as the summer wore on, dyeing fields from green to a crisp gold, Elsa began to take note of the little things. Like the way Anna wore her shirts; still the same boyish plaid tops, but with an extra two buttons left undone. It was also the inches of denim trimmed from her cut-offs, nothing damning, but it was more leg than Anna had ever dared to bare outside of the pajama bottoms she wore to bed.

Elsa could see that Anna hadn't realized she was doing it. It was a shift that came naturally, like breathing, but the realization that Kristoff had been the catalyst to Anna's newfound burgeoning sexuality had been unnerving. Boyish, fashionably challenged Anna wasn't quite so sexless anymore, and it was increasingly harder to ignore. Elsa hated it, almost painfully so.

But what exactly did she hate? It certainly wasn't Anna's long and lovely bare legs, or the jut of her collar bone and the promising soft pink swell of her cousin's chest that disappeared under the third button of her shirt, teasing Elsa with endless longing. She hadn't been this irritated since the night of the bonfire years before.

It wasn't until the end of that summer that Elsa could put a name to the frustrating displeasure that plagued her. She had been invited to join them at the drive in theater and, for whatever reason, she'd said yes.

"Could be fun," she'd found herself saying unexpectedly.

"So…You'll come?" Anna had looked just as surprised, and Elsa assumed her cousin had expected another decline. After all, Elsa had been turning down most of her invitations that summer.

"I think I could manage it."

"That's great," Anna replied with the lopsided half smile that she often reserved for her. The expression had been so stiff and robotic that Elsa couldn't help but wonder if the offer had been sincere.

The thought had continued to plague her during the show, weighing so heavily upon her that she couldn't relax. She'd barely bothered to say more than a few words that night. Kristoff hadn't noticed, he'd been too busy prattling on about the movie even as Anna flung popcorn at him to shut him up, but Anna had noticed. Elsa could see it in her eyes and in the glances stolen her way.

They'd chosen to camp out on the patch of grass next to their parking spot. Most other patrons had done the same. Others sat on the tail gate of their pickups, toting coolers full of beer. Elsa recognized several of them from her graduating class. She even saw Hans a few car rows ahead of them, making out with a girl she'd never seen before.

I shouldn't have comeshe relented, wondering why she had bothered to come when she and her cousin weren't at all close. And halfway into the movie, as Kristoff and Anna smacked the other's legs with their bare feet, and failed miserably at stifling their laughter, she'd truly wished she hadn't come after all.

"I'm getting popcorn. Anyone want something from the concession stand?" Elsa asked as she rose to her feet. It was by far the most she'd spoken that night.

"I'm fine," was Anna's nonchalant reply from where she sat, leaning back on her elbows, and her legs outstretched on the cool grass. She'd briefly torn her eyes from the screen and glanced curiously at Elsa.

"You're not cold?" Anna asked, eyeing Elsa's strappy top. As hot as the days were, the nights were still crisp and breezy, and Elsa had not bothered to bring a sweater.

"Not really," she lied, remembering the scent and warmth of Anna's jacket just two summers before. "I barely feel it."

"You sure? I could lend you my jacket." But Kristoff had been using it as a makeshift pillow, and Elsa felt even more like she was just in the way.

"I'm okay without it, really," she answered even as Anna yanked her jacket from under Kristoff's head without warning, effectively causing him to yelp in surprise.

Under any other circumstances Elsa might have laughed, but she just felt invisible when Kristoff retaliated by yanking on Anna's braids. She left without saying another word, cringing as she distantly heard Anna's laughter and the sounds they made as she and Kristoff tussled in the grass.

"This is stupid," she'd muttered to herself under her breath as she waited in the long line for the concession stand, staring vacantly at the movie on the large screen. And I'm stupid for being here.

She was still scowling inwardly when she decided to add a box of Raisinets to her order of popcorn.

On her way back to their parking spot, Elsa debated calling Jane and Zan to pick her up. They were likely at Jane's house, binge-watching a BBC Victorian drama and pigging out on butter pecan and rocky road ice cream. It was the evening she had forfeited for movie night with Anna and Kristoff. Elsa knew Zan would welcome the interruption. He absolutely hated anything BBC. And top hats.

Elsa was stuffing her mouth with Raisinets and considering her options when she spotted Hans walking in her direction. She ducked behind a blue Chevy, her cheeks swollen with raisins and chocolate. Elsa was certain Hans hadn't seen her, but she stayed crouched behind the car until he was out of sight. It was only when she looked up that she saw them, and the bag of popcorn slipped from her hands.

Anna and Kristoff were kissing under a blanket of stars, their legs entwined where they sat on the grass and their faces hidden in the dark shadow cast by her Uncle Robert's old pickup. It was something out of a Nicolas Sparks novel. The small town girl-next-door and the handsome cad. They looked so perfect together, just like the star-crossed lovers on the giant outdoor screen. And they shined too, the outline of their shadowed figures set aglow by the luminous light of the picture show and the pale moonlight.

Oh. So it was like that.

It was bitter. And painful. But as much as it hurt, she had no right to indignation. All she could do was hope that summer would hurry up and end before it swallowed her whole. And now two summers later, her mind often drifted back to that memory. The kiss and that damned moonlight and its ugly revelations.

~X~

"He's totally looking your way," Jane teased, pressing a soft elbow into Elsa's side as she pointed Kristoff out of the crowd. "One of us may be getting lucky by the end of the night."

He was smiling in their direction. He looked sharper somehow, sporting a crisp black western shirt that he wore tucked into a pair of dark jeans. And he tipped his cowboy hat like a good boy, but his big brown eyes were fix on Elsa, staring at her like she was some Hollywood starlet.

Elsa elbowed Jane back. "He's all yours."

"Oh please. That boy only has eyes for one girl, and I'm not you."

It occurred to Elsa how much easier her life would be if Kristoff and Jane were actually dating each other. No uncomfortable roommate drama or unsolicited romantic intentions. She had come to the party that night with certain aspirations, nothing she'd dared put into words, but instead she was barraged with the expectations of others.

I just want one moment. That's all I ask.

She had only caught a glimpse of her cousin at the snack table before her attentions were hoarded for the rest of the night. It had only taken that brief moment to bring her heart to a throbbing mess, and spark the impish longing to tease Anna and see her flustered, just as she had been the day before at the carwash. But it was not in the cards. Within minutes of arriving at the party, Kristoff had secured himself at her side, and Jane practically choked on laughter when he asked Elsa to be his date for the evening.

"A date?" She wondered why she hadn't see it coming, especially when Kristoff's interest in her had been repeatedly hinted at by just about everyone at the party. It was hard to miss the winks and double thumbs up Takeshi cast their way every time Kristoff made eye contact, or the way Ryder whooped and high-fived a startled Kristoff before disappearing back into the crowd.

"You want to go on a date? Here? Now?"

"That is, if you don't mind." He looked down at his cowboy boots, a slight flush crawling up his neck. "It's totally okay if you don't want to."

"No," she answered briskly, and for a moment a trace of disappointment shadowed his eyes. "I'd love to."

He was all smiles again. In that split second he went from a shy cowboy to a confident buck. His stature was straighter and taller and his chest prouder. It was sweet, but also a little annoying, she realized. And just like that, casting one last look at the boyish girl with the dusty red baseball cap before she took Kristoff's outstretched hand, an opportunity was lost.

~X~

True to her word, Jane immediately set out on her plan to find a same sex hook up. She spent the better part of an hour shamelessly flirting with a dark-haired mousey Polynesian girl. Even under her dark complexion, the girl's cheeks burned a bright red. Elsa should have been used to Jane's antics by now, but she couldn't deny her own surprise when she spied Jane make a pass at the blushing beauty, brashly stroking the girl's long' wavy hair.

Turning her eyes back to Kristoff, and trying her best to appear to be listening, Elsa wondered if the evening would end with Jane nursing a giant stinging red handprint across her cheek.

"Sometimes I wish I was a bit more like her," Elsa distantly heard Kristoff say. "You wouldn't think it by looking at her, but Anna has a lot of fight in her. She'd put every guy here to shame."

Up until that moment, she'd only half-listened to him talk. They'd spent the past hour engaged in conversation near one of the bonfire pits. Although Elsa was far less engaged than she made herself appear to be. A habit she'd picked up from the many blind dates Jane had set her up on.

"She's a girl, you know. Maybe not as feminine as most, but that doesn't make her into some sort of honorary man," Elsa remarked, fully engaged now. "Don't you think that she deserves better than being lumped in as just another one of the guys?"

"I..I didn't mean-"

"You call her the 'Butch' to your 'Sundance'," she pointed out, wondering how kissing, let alone sex, had come to pass between Kristoff and Anna. "Just what is that supposed to mean?"

Kristoff seemed taken back by the bite in her words, nevertheless he replied, "She's my best friend. And Jane is yours. It's not so strange for friends to tease each other. You and Jane aren't all that different."

Hardly, she stopped herself from saying, biting her tongue and fighting the urge to raise her brows in disdain. Elsa smiled stiffly and, after an awkward silence, they both laughed.

"Why does it feel like our date suddenly took a sharp left turn then pummeled right off the edge of a cliff?" Kristoff said, doing his best to hide his anxiousness behind humor.

"Oh? You mean to tell me that it wasn't your intention to crash and burn?"

Kristoff turned red, a bright tomato red, and Elsa, having given into her caustic inner voice, was overcome with guilt.

"I don't think this is working out," she said in an apologetic tone. She didn't bother to tell him that it never would have worked out anyway, that their date had been nothing more than a polite formality. Elsa knew who she was and what she wanted. Unfortunately for Kristoff, that didn't include certain anatomical appendages.

Kristoff pulled off his cowboy hat and ran his fingers through his flattened hair.

"I guess a first date at a kegger was not the best way to go," he said sheepishly. "Maybe next time we can do something where it's just the two of us?"

Next time? Kristoff had clearly failed to understand Elsa's attempt at an easy letdown. As wistful as he looked, there was no way she was going to let it drag out.

"Kristoff, I don't think you understand-" she began to say when she was cut off by the clamor of people gathering by the snacks table. Their former classmates were moving in herds toward the crowd that had begun to gather, but Elsa could not make out what was at the center of the spectacle that was drawing them in.

"Hey, what's going on?" Kristoff asked Peter Panning as he walked passed.

"It's Anna," Peter replied smirking broadly when he paused. "She's challenging Ryder to a beer-off. Shot-gunning style!"

"A beer-off?" Elsa asked as she stood, her confusion was plain on her face, but she would get no response. Peter had already disappeared into the crowd, and Kristoff was rising, ready to follow after him.

"Chug! Chug! Chug!" The crowd chanted as Elsa pushed her way through. It didn't take her long to realize that Anna was at the center of the spectacle, her face red from copious amounts of consumed alcohol as she sucked down from the bottom of a beer can. Jane was there as well, offering moral support in the only way she knew how, by leading a small group of onlookers in a chant.

"Farm girl! Farm girl!"

Anna appeared completely oblivious to Jane's enthusiastic support, her cheeks glowing brighter with each can of beer she shot-gunned. Flynn Ryder, on the other hand, was all about pleasing the crowd, flexing his arms and strutting out his bare chest even as he chugged down his beers.

It was probably one of the most idiotic things Elsa had ever witnessed her cousin do. Certainly dumber than the time Anna had jumped down the hayloft, donning an umbrella, onto a pile of loose hay and fractured her wrist when she was eleven. All part of a misbegotten attempt at reenacting Marry Poppins. Elsa wanted to be horrified like she had been back then, but she couldn't suppress the interest and fascination that she felt as she watched Anna make a fool of herself. But it was more than that. She was attracted, her body completely conscientious of Anna, like an electric current fluctuating in her veins. Even at her most imprudent, Anna somehow managed to impress her.

A hand brushed against Elsa's in overt familiarity and she suddenly realized that Kristoff was standing beside her, trying to take her hand in his. Pretending she hadn't noticed, Elsa crossed her arms over her chest, her eyes still fixed on her reckless cousin.

"She's something special, isn't she?" Elsa said absently as the crowd cheered loudly. Even though she had given her thoughts form, the words had been meant for herself alone, but Kristoff was within earshot and understood something quite different.

"Oh, she's quite special," he laughed.

Anna was on her fourth beer when she finally lost her momentum. She couldn't take another drink, and the beer streaming out of the bottom of the punctured can wet her mouth and poured out the corners of her lips.

"Looks like we have a winner," Tadashi Hamada pronounced before timer had declared the true end to the spectacle. Ryder stood victorious at Anna's imminent defeat.

Is everyone here an idiot?

A countdown began, signaling the impending end of the competition. Elsa rolled her eyes and shook her head, refusing to take part, but a smile had tugged at her lips. The countdown had not yet ended but Ryder was already the winner. Kristoff wasn't convinced.

"Just wait for it," Kristoff whispered into Elsa's ear. And a heartbeat later Ryder was bent over, vomiting ounces of beer, and Tadashi was holding a tipsy Anna's arm into the air, pronouncing her the winner. Elsa burst out laughing.

What happened next was a bit of a blur. Hans, angry and flustered, had pushed unapologetically through the crowd. Merida was not far behind, pausing near Jane and the 'Farmer girl' chanters.

"You're just a loser," Elsa heard Merida snarl at Han's back, even as he continued forward toward Anna and Tadashi. "And now your little whore knows it too!"

It wasn't the Merida that Elsa remembered. She was spiteful and cruel, and something in the way Merida spoke seemed to enjoy the venom of her words. Hans never turned around to answer her as he continued in Anna's direction, but he seemed bigger somehow. Angrier.

And Anna, drunk and unsteady as she was, laughing blithely even as Hans towered over her, hadn't a clue. One moment she was laughing and the next she was on the ground looking disoriented and confused as she pressed her finger over her nose, where Hans had landed his blow.

"You bastard!" Kristoff yelled as he bolted, pushing and shoving through the bodies of onlookers. Elsa didn't think to react, she just squeezed through the crowd behind him. As she followed she could hear him grumbling under his breath, his hatred of Hans couldn't have been any clearer.

Elsa had never known the reason behind Kristoff's rivalry with Hans. The two had a mutually destructive dislike of the other. Near the end of their senior year, long after the two had declared war on each other, Hans slept with Kristoff's unfaithful girlfriend during a week-long school trip to the science conservatory. He'd made certain Kristoff got an eyeful from his cabin when Hans clandestinely lead her into his. In actuality, it had been a girl who Kristoff had only dated a few times, but that's not the way he had seen it. Elsa suspected that Hans only dated the girl for the months that followed just to rub it in Kristoff's face.

Kristoff had managed a stunning revenge a few years after, taunting a drunken Hans into a drag race on the streets of his own university. Jane had heard the story from Tadashi and Ryder, both whom had been there that night. Kristoff had slammed on the breaks at the sharp roundabout and skidded safely onto grass, but Hans' reflexes were compromised by alcohol, and he was too late to react when he pummeled his sports car into the founder's statue.

He'd fractured more than just the bones in his right leg that night. He had also wretched his relationship with his father, his academic standing, and his financial support.

In the end, the reason that ignited the men's mutual dislike was probably irrelevant. It could have been a minor slight, a misunderstanding, or maybe a simple innate aversion. Whatever the reason, everything they'd done to each other since then had more far reaching consequences and dashed all likelihood of mending fences.

So when Kristoff cursed Han's name heavily under his breath, Elsa couldn't help but wonder if it had to do with Anna at all, or if it was merely a reaction to seeing Hans come out on top. It was a terrible thing to think, and she knew it. They were best friends after all, and maybe a small part of her resented what Kristoff and Anna both meant to each other.

By the time they reached Hans and Anna, the roles between them had completely flipped. Hans was on his knees, crying as he cradled his face, and Anna stood empowered over him, her fist clenched and shaking. Orange hues from the surrounding bonfires diffused in her disheveled braids like flames, illuminating her eyes with orange and gold flecks. And she was lovely.

~X~

"Your cousin's actually kind of hot," Jane observed, looking Anna up and down as if she were a department store mannequin on display. Anna wore the beer hat unabashedly, suckling down on the straws as a group of her former upper classmates gushed around her. The girls had all been linked to Hans in one way or another during their high school years, and had an axe to grind. "The hat definitely has to go, and she could do with some glamming up, but the fundamentals are all there."

Elsa kicked her.

"Ow! Seriously? Are we twelve?"

"Stop screwing around, Jane."

"I dunno," Jane replied glibly. "I think the problem with me is that I haven't been screwing around at all so far."

"And just what does that mean?" Elsa asked, already suspecting Jane's intentions.

"Maybe I've been hitting up the wrong girls tonight."

Elsa's jaw clenched and the temples of her forehead tightened. She can't be serious. But this was Jane, and she was always serious, even when she wasn't.

"You know she's my cousin, right? And she's not like that." She crossed her arms stiffly over her chest and a frown hooked into her brows.

Jane flicked another glance in Anna's direction, and Elsa could once again see the metal gears turning in her friend's head. "I wouldn't be too sure about that," she replied coyly before giving Elsa a wink and setting off with resolve in Anna's direction.

The night was still relatively young, but it already seemed a wash. Tadashi and Peter had only just finished setting up the speakers, and within seconds, music filled the night sky. It wasn't long before people started dancing; couples, and small groups of boys and girls filled the open area. Naveen Prince broke into a painfully awkward dance routine while his longtime girlfriend, Tiana, tried to pretend she didn't know him. The boy looked like a walking advertisement for muscle spasms, and Elsa might have laughed along with some of the other onlookers had she not been so fixated on Jane and Anna.

Even from where she stood, Elsa couldn't miss the flirtatious look Jane was giving Anna. She counted two, three…no five times that Jane made subtle physical contact. Jane seemed almost incapable of not touching Anna. She played all her usual moves too; the soft flip of the hair, the coy twirl of a loose tendril around her fingers, and the soft laugh as she leaned forward and pressed a hand on Anna's arm. Any boy would have been hers by now, but Anna seemed completely oblivious and impervious to Jane's charm.

Then Jane leaned in and uttered something into Anna's ear, resting a hand on her shoulders. Anna suddenly became quite flushed, and Elsa immediately tensed in response. The moment Jane grabbed Anna's hand, Elsa took a decisive step forward, ready to intervene as a designated third wheel. Then a giant blond head blocked her line of sight.

"Can I have this dance?" Kristoff had suddenly sidestepped in front of her, his hand extended and a wide grin fixed on his lips. She peer around him and saw Jane dragging a reluctant Anna onto the dance floor. Her cousin's cheeks were swollen with beer.

Yes, this night is a total wash.

"I….sure," she conceded. "Let's dance."

It didn't take long for Elsa to discover what a terrible dancer Kristoff was. He was incapable of moving his hips in a way that would suggest he understood the meaning of rhythm. And his hands were molded into fists, held so tightly and close to his chest as he stiffly swayed his torso from side to side that Elsa couldn't help but compare him to a boxer eager to take his first swing.

As bad as Kristoff was, Anna was worse. Except when Jane took her by the hand and spun around, Anna's arms hung limply at her sides as if they were nothing more than décor. And she shuffled her feet awkwardly with so little effort; she barely seemed to be moving at all.

Anyone looking could see how out of her element Anna was on that dance floor. And still, Elsa wanted to be the girl who dragged Anna around and annoyed her endlessly the way Jane was doing. When they swapped partners, pairing Anna with Kristoff, Elsa let her indifference slip for the briefest of moments, but it had been enough for Jane to notice.

"You look miserable," Jane said a little too loudly.

"I'm fine. Ecstatic."

"Then I think you're confusing joy with misery."

Except for two dances, Kristoff had stolen her dance card for the rest of the night. At one point, she silently pleaded to the party gods that the speakers would catch fire and put an end to the footloose torment. Or she could just slip away when Kristoff wasn't looking. Certainly less complicated, and required no magical miracles. But just as she was considering her next move, Anna beat her to it. No sooner had Jane spun around, that Anna ducked and vanished off the dance floor. Jane called after her, but Anna was nowhere to be seen. Elsa would have also lost sight of her had it not been for the plastic beer cap bobbing its way through the crowd.

"What a buzzkill," Jane moped.

"Is she sick or something? I'm surprised she's still standing after all that beer," Kristoff remarked.

Without missing a beat, Elsa gave Kristoff a gentle push in Jane's direction.

"I'll go get her, Janey" she told her friend, and turning to Kristoff, she added, "and she can fill in for me until I return."

Before either of them could make any protest, Elsa hurried in the direction Anna had disappeared.

She never did go back.

~X~

The water was colder than she had expected, sending a ripple of cold tremors up and down her back. Then, as Elsa struggled to paddle her legs to keep afloat, she realized what a mistake it had been not to take off her shoes before jumping in after Anna. The bank went silent for a moment, not a single frog or cricket dared utter a sound as she splashed loudly, pulling a half lucid Anna above water.

"There's water in my shoes," Anna whined as Elsa eased her hands onto the platform.

"Water in your shoes is the least of your problems," Elsa replied incredulously, wondering how Anna could sound so coherent when she was clearly wasted.

"I, I'm f-fine," Anna sputtered groggily as a light cough tickled her throat. She latched onto the dock and pulled her torso out of the water, pawing forward on the wooden deck. Elsa was behind her, her hands firmly fixed on Anna's hips as she helped guide her onto the platform. Elsa climbed out after her cousin and lay down beside her, taking a moment to catch her breath.

The ache in her lungs subsided and Elsa turned on her side, finding herself staring into Anna's eyes, their faces just inches apart. And here we are again.

"You were not fine. Don't do that ever again," Elsa said with unmasked irritation in her voice. She wanted to play the bad cop, but Anna looked at her with such drunken euphoria that she could not bring herself to give her the verbal lashing she deserved.

"I'll try not to," Anna answered, her eyes fluttering drowsily. "But no promises." There was an oddly tender pause of silence, then Anna reached for a wet clump of hair that had fallen over Elsa's face. She brushed it aside and her mouth parted as if to speak.

"Something wrong?" Elsa asked, feeling her chest begin to tighten again, recalling the kiss they had shared just moments ago.

"No, nothing. It's just…I can see the moon in your eyes. It's so pretty."

Anna had such a serious look on her face underneath those drunk and glassy eyes that Elsa felt compelled to laugh.

"Are you gonna try to lasso it in, then?" She joked, and she nervously sucked in her breath, wondering what Anna might do next. But Anna didn't flinch a muscle. Her eyes were still exploring the shape of the moon reflected in Elsa's blue irises. Something about the way Anna's stare probed into hers made Elsa's skin tingle and her pulse flutter.

"Anna?"

"Do you know the story about the moon and the sun?" There was a slight rasp to Anna's voice as she spoke, her words were soft and breathy like a warm breeze. But Elsa was still captivated by Anna's mouth, recalling how her cousin had consumed her, teasing her tongue along the valley between her lips, a sensation that had not since left her.

"No, I don' think so," Elsa answered, increasingly flustered by Anna's closeness.

"It's actually not a very good story. Pretty awful, really."

"Then why even bring it up? Are you a sad drunk?" Kristoff probably knew this side of Anna better than Elsa ever could. The thought alone made her heart ache and her stomach clench.

"I don't know. But it's all I can think about right now. Especially the ending."

"You can tell me about it if you want." She'd never admit it to anyone, not even herself, but Anna could have been reciting the alphabet forward and backwards and Elsa would have encouraged her to continue. Just so she could listen to the sound of her voice.

I could get lost in you.

There was a slight hesitation in Anna's breath, then her lips parted, "They were siblings," she said, the reluctance never quite leaving her eyes. "Brother and sister. And they were always having love affairs with other people. But the brother desired his sister. He wanted her, enough to sneak into her bed at night and pretend to be one of her many lovers."

"And she him found out?"

"Not right away. But she had her suspicions."

"What did she do?"

Anna bit her lower lip and knotted her brows. "While they were….you know. She reached for his face and covered it in black soot." As if to illustrate her words, Anna instinctively touched Elsa's face, brushing her fingers along the curve of her cheek. "He was exposed, and she was humiliated."

Elsa swallowed against the dryness in her throat.

"This is a pretty awful story."

"Then they ran away, so far away that they ended up in the stars."

"Why would she run off with him?"

Anna shook her head, fighting the sleepiness weighing down her lids. "It wasn't like that. She was so ashamed of what had happened, and she told her brother that they could never see each other again. But he refused," she paused again, closing her eyes briefly, already beginning to lose against the alcohol in her veins. "He just couldn't let go. And even though she is the brightest of all stars, sharing the same sky, he is just a moon. His light is so weak, tainted by the soot she smeared all over his face, that he will never reach her."

"You said that you couldn't stop thinking about this story," Elsa said slowly, suddenly wondering why Anna would bring up the story at all. An odd and sinking feeling began to settle in her chest, carving an emptiness from within.

"It's crazy, right? Those two were wrong for each other. For so many reasons, really messed up reasons. What he did was just awful. But I keep thinking about how he'll never reach her. She's practically at his fingertips, and he'll never have her. And it's not even him I'm thinking about, it's that feeling, you know?"

Anna rubbed her eye, and a deep yawn escaped her. Her eyes were now scarcely slits between her barely open lids.

"Yes, I think I know."

But that was a lie.

Elsa didn't think anything. She knew. She had an intimate relationship with desires that would never bear any fruit. For years she had clung on to those useless longings, even when she'd been certain that she had finally moved on. Yet, in that moment, lying wet and cold under the stars, it occurred to Elsa that she could not move on because she still lived inside the very place she denied; within the calcified yearnings of her heart.

"It's pointless to want something you shouldn't." There was something accusing in the way Anna spoke. Her cousin's words were daggers, but Elsa could not discern for whom.

Then without warning or provocation, Anna leaned forward and pressed a soft and lingering kiss on Elsa's cheek. Her warm breath left a simmering ache that pooled into the pit of Elsa's stomach, holding her hostage to a sudden and familiar longing.

"What are you...?"

"I'm not very good at keeping promises."

Elsa's brows twisted up as Anna's reply slowly sunk in. They clearly had not been talking about the same thing earlier, but Anna was neither aware nor concerned. Elsa's head filled with questions, and desperately wanted answers, but Anna's eyes had never reopened after the peck on the cheek, her head went limp and her face fell forward, tucked into the curve of Elsa's neck.

"Anna?"

She waited for an answer, but a moment later she heard the soft rasp of Anna's rhythmic breathing. And she was as warm and inviting as the sun.

...to be continued...

Author's Note: I'm not very satisfied with this chapter, but it'll have to do. There's still a few more chapter's to go before the end.