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~ CHAPTER TWO ~

When Elsa awoke the next morning, she felt a lingering sense of bemusement and contentment that she couldn't place at first. It didn't come to her until a few minutes later, when she walked through the living room to start her coffee maker… and saw the figure sprawled out across her couch.

"Riiight," she chuckled to herself. But she didn't wake her. Instead, she simply tiptoed around into the kitchen, started the coffee, and went back to the bedroom to fetch her underwear and bring it into the bathroom for her morning shower.

As she washed, she considered their situation. Anna was home. The smile on her face was genuine as she washed it; she really did love seeing her sister again after so long. Complicated as her feelings were about her, that was the simple truth. So her choices were to either lament their past, hang onto it and keep resenting Anna for being herself and doing what made her happy, or try to put that aside in the name of having a nice visit. The latter was vastly more appealing.

After all, what would the other path truly gain her? More distance between them. That was no good.

Once exiting the bathroom in her underwear, she had expected to slip into her bedroom and finish dressing for the day. But she was caught up by a "Hey, sister o' mine!" bellowed from the direction of the kitchen.

"Good morning," she sighed, abandoning the bedroom for a moment. "I just need to get dressed for work, it won't take-"

"Before you go, try this," Anna said as she came into the living room with a glass full of greenish sludge. When she caught sight of Elsa, she stopped and gave a low wolf-whistle. "Lookin' good, lookin' good!"

"Sh-shut up," she grumbled, trying to cover as much of her ample chest as she could with her folded arms.

"I mean it, though; simple but sexy. Though it might pop more if the panties matched the bra. Are those cotton? Comfortable, practical… not very sensual."

Her face began to heat up, predictably. "They're cheap. Buying frilly stuff in… in my size is cost-prohibitive."

"I get that; I mostly end up in cheap stuff lately. Or going commando if it's not my cycle." Anna came closer and reached over to pat Elsa's hip. "You meant in the most awesome size, right? You have a beautiful booty; most African men would be celebrating it, not thinking it's too big. And nevermind the guys here who would feel the same way."

"Didn't I ask you to stop teasing me?" she groaned in a weary voice, still fidgeting awkwardly. She hated being on display. No matter who it was, she felt much more comfortable hidden away, either behind clothes or in a cubicle, or in her apartment where no one else ever stopped in. Isolated and quiet.

"Maybe I wanna tease you," Anna said in a low, suggestive voice that made Elsa curl her lip. Then she giggled, "Loosen you up! Get you to live a little! Like, here — just try this, I think you might like it."

Taking the glass of ominous contents, she sniffed. It smelled like fruit, mostly. A casual sip revealed it was not merely fruit. "NNghh! What IS that?!"

"You don't like it?" Anna asked, sipping at the other side. "Huh. Tastes okay to me. It's kale and spinach with pears, kiwi and strawberries. I would have added more stuff, but this was all you had in your fridge."

"It tastes like I'm sucking on a tire iron." Taking the glass again, she took a deep breath and tried it a second time. It wasn't as offensive as the initial taste, but neither was it something she would go out of her way to try again. "Well… alright, I exaggerated. It's not the worst, but…"

"Gotcha; I got the balance wrong. If you do it right, you're not supposed to be able to taste the veggies at all. Guess I'm just too used to drinking kale smoothies."

Debating for a moment, Elsa kept the glass. "Fine, I'll finish it; you did try. But I'm not sure I want another one tomorrow morning, just so you know. Between this and that weird rice from last night, I've had enough culinary adventure for a month."

"Totally fair," she laughed. "And it was quinoa, not rice."

"It was weird. Not bad, just… weird. Like this smoothie. Let me make you something instead; something from our homeland, if your consciousness isn't too 'evolved' for that now."

Pouting, Anna kicked at the floor just like she always did when they were little. "You act like me seeing the world is silly. I like exploring other cultures, not just wallowing in Western ideals and traditions! I like adventure, not knowing what tomorrow might hold! What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing. But what do you have when you're through with all that adventure?" Elsa asked as she walked into the bedroom, still holding the glass of blended madness. "No job, no money, no home."

"Memories, satisfaction, experience. Most people never do even a tenth of what I've done by the time they're fifty! And I'm half that age!"

"Yes, brag about it, why don't you?" Setting her drink on the dresser, she began to dig for an appropriate pair of slacks. "And you're not a frumpy old office lady. Still… I can't say I wasn't tempted to fly out and visit you at one of those places. But you never put down roots long enough for me to plan a trip."

With an irritated sigh, Anna walked forward and gripped one of Elsa's hindcheeks — and not gently. "Told you to quit saying stuff like that!"

"A-AH!" Elsa finally burst out, eyes wide as dinner plates. She could see her own pupils in the mirror, and see Anna's perfectly at-ease expression over her own shoulder. What was she doing?!

"I don't wanna hear you keep talking trash about your body," Anna went on, not letting go despite the way Elsa was squirming, the deep red in her cheeks at being manhandled. "It's not 'frumpy'. This J-Lo caboose is glorious, and you're one of the prettiest women I've ever known. So don't be so negative about yourself, alright?"

It was becoming uncomfortable. Actually, it had begun as uncomfortable; now it was becoming dangerous. Elsa was loathe to admit it, but far too long had passed since anyone touched such an intimate area, and her body was reacting of its own accord.

This was turning her on.

Shame flooded into the pit of her stomach; it was her sister. How could she be turned on by her sister doing such a thing?! That was just as bad as her sister doing it in the first place, whatever her reason! Why couldn't her mind just rationalise that this particular time, she should not enjoy a firm hand wringing her cheek back and forth that way?

"St-stop…" she managed to pant shakily. It was weak, and not quite enough to be taken seriously.

"I'll let go if you promise not to talk trash about my sis," Anna went on stubbornly, as if she were merely goading her like when they were kids. She didn't look alarmed, and she didn't look darkly satisfied with her actions. To her, this was just gentle teasing and "sibling bonding" — even though Elsa had never in her life heard of siblings bonding in such a way!

"Anna…" It was almost a moan, and she closed her mouth, gritted her teeth. She couldn't sound like that. Not because of this. Not because of her own sister's hand! "P-please?"

"What?" Then she finally squinted at Elsa's reflection. Her fingertips flexed, and Elsa's breath hitched again. "Oh, wow, I-" Cutting her own words off, her hand shot away, and she took a step back. "Shit, I didn't- you're really sensitive, huh? I'm sorry, I just figured you'd elbow me in the face and tell me to cut it out! Waaa!"

Trying to scramble and pull a brave face together at the last second, Elsa turned slightly toward her and managed to sputter, "It's f-fine, I… you were just playing around, I kn- I know."

"Are you okay? Do you need me to leave for a second? Yeah… yeah, I'll respect your space. I'm gonna go drink my smoothie, okay?" With a reassuring smile, she gave Elsa a quick, awkward pat on the shoulder before jogging off toward the bedroom door, closing it after herself.

For a few seconds, Elsa did collapse against the dresser. The chain reaction went through her rather quickly; she was able to take some small comfort in knowing that her body hadn't truly reached "turned on" status until Anna was gone. No, it had only been the beginnings.

But once Anna was gone… breath ragged, stomach tingling. Wetness and lip trembling. As purely physical as it was, there was no pretending that she didn't like feeling sexually awakened for the first time in literal months. And she owed it all to her own sister.

However, she could rationalise. As she quickly grabbed her clothes and began to dress for work, occasionally sipping at her smoothie, she let the arousal fade and began to think to herself. It was purely physical. Anna had manipulated her body in a way that she enjoyed, and said body was very receptive. If anybody at work had done the same thing, hanging on for that long, it would have been the exact same story — though they would be getting a fist in the mouth, or at the very least a complaint filed.

That helped quite a lot; she knew she didn't have any remote desire to have Anna do it again. Nor to do anything further. She could live with that.

Carrying her pumps in one hand and her half-empty smoothie in the other, Elsa found her way back into the living room. As she moved to sit on the couch to put on her shoes, she saw Anna there, fidgeting with her fingers.

"Ah. Well…" So she sat down on the armchair instead.

"Hey, listen," Anna burst out as if she had already been speaking. "Um, about what happened in there; I hope I didn't freak you out or anything. You felt centered chakra-wise, but tantric. Maybe I'm wrong? Anyway, I, uh… I'll try not mess with you anymore."

"Don't worry about that," Elsa told her firmly. She just couldn't bring herself to reprimand Anna now, because she felt like she had vastly overreacted to such a small matter — at least, it was on Anna's end. "It felt… you were kidding around, I made it into more than it was. Water under the bridge."

"You sure? You sounded pretty…" One of her hands came up to cut herself off. "Nope. You said it's water under the bridge, and I will accept your reality. It was…" She stopped, laughed.

"What? Go on."

"It was nice to see you looking a little less stuffy," she added, smiling over at her. And it was a very genuine smile; not teasing, not mischievous. "Maybe I can figure out how to do more of that for you. Without grabbing your butt, I mean."

Rolling her eyes, Elsa finished pulling on the second shoe. "You don't have to do either one of those, thank you very much. I'm very content with my current life."

"Okay." But that time, Anna's tone was definitely nebulous. She was already plotting something. Elsa decided to dread it later as she headed for the door.

~ o ~

All morning, Elsa's mind drifted between her work and what happened in front of her dresser. The more she thought about it, the less guilty she felt; she had done nothing. Anna was the one who crossed a line, and she did apologise for it. Therefore, there was no sense in her torturing herself over what was beyond her control, was there?

Not that she had a lot of success in letting go of anxiety and events that she had no control over. But she could try. And she did… over, and over, and over.

Part of the problem was her physical needs. Over the course of the past year, she had been carefully, steadily encouraging her own mind to ignore her body, until the body simply stopped putting out those signals. With a few moments of personal space-invading, Anna had taken all of that work and thrown it out the window. She was horny. She wanted to do something about it, but had no one to do anything with. It presented a very annoying problem, especially when she had no space of her own to use to figure out what she might or might not do on her own.

Not that she had ever done that. She tried, but the occasions had been rare and full of self-hatred. It felt wrong to take so much pleasure with her own body, to do it without a partner to enjoy things with. Having her loins aflame in the middle of her cubicle was making it harder to resist, but she still wasn't sure she had any interest in doing that on her own.

Maybe just this once, she considered when she noticed the clock was getting close to lunch. There wouldn't be time to go all the way home, and she didn't dare do it anywhere in the office. But the change of task to eating would at least help take her mind off the heat building on the cushion of her office chair. She had made it a year; she could make it a few more hours.

Still, if she was going to need the apartment to herself, what would she do with Anna?

"Smoothie time!"

Yes, that was the answer. She would have Anna go get them more ingredients for her infernal concoctions. That would give her at least-

Wait. That hadn't been her thinking out loud. It had been someone talking to her. "H-huh?" she asked as she looked up her cubicle entrance to see…

"Do you want one?" Cindy Arbeit was asking her, a pleasant expression in place between her ringlets of strawberry blond hair. "I know you usually turn them down, but apparently the place on the corner just added mango to the menu — real, fresh mango! Not frozen."

She wanted to turn it down, because she had just about enough smoothies for one day. But something about the way Cindy said "you usually turn them down" gave her pause. Maybe this would be enough of a change in routine for her, and she could satisfy Anna's "you have to loosen up" nonsense.

"You know, I think I will," she said amiably, taking off her glasses and laying them beside the keyboard. "Hang on, I'll just get my wallet from my-"

"No, no!" Cindy hurriedly told her, a smile lighting up her pale features. "My treat! God, I've been trying to treat you to something for months!" With a little shrug, she leaned against the nearest cubicle wall. "What do you like?"

"Um… not kale."

"Hmm?"

"Nevermind," she laughed nervously. This was probably the longest she'd ever held a conversation that wasn't strictly about work-related topics. "Um, mango? Or am I supposed to pick more than one thing?"

"Mango is fine, silly. You wanna come with?"

That was too far outside her comfort zone. "N-no, I have some things to catch up on here. But I might join you when you get back." There; a compromise.

"Lovely! Back in a few."

Then she was free to let her mind wander again. Which she did; it wandered back to all the wrong places. But already, she felt a little better for having talked to Cindy for a moment or two. The distraction was quite good.

Then she saw the email notification in the lower-right. It was a dating site she had used a while ago; she almost never bothered to even open the emails anymore. Not a single date had led to a second one — even the few that resulted in one-night stands were always underwhelming, and made her feel like even more of a loser when they never called again.

But she was bored. Already annoyed at herself, she clicked.

"Hans Westerberg," she read aloud in a murmur. He was handsome, if not even close to her type. But he was better than the last few she had bothered to open, sporadically as that was. Part of a large family, owned a classic Porsche, and liked chamber music. The sideburns did not entice her, but that was a minor enough detail that she could overlook it.

"'Looking to mingle with somebody single'," Anna read over her shoulder. "Huh. What a tool."

"A-ANNA!" she gasped, literally almost falling out of her chair; only grasping the lip of the desk kept her from doing so. "What the f- what are you doing here?!"

"Came to bring you some lunch!" she piped up, holding aloft a little plastic container that looked like mainly rice and assorted veggies. "Stir fry; I put an ethnic spin on it, but I promise I didn't add anything too weird."

Again, Elsa felt her cheeks burning. She knew it was partly a leftover side-effect from what happened that morning; Anna had been present for it, and this was merely association. But it was also that Anna had caught her dabbling in online dating, which many viewed as a pathetic backup plan when regular dating failed. How often was she going to have to feel acutely embarrassed because of her invasive sibling?

"W-well… thank you," she finally forced herself to say, patting her hair down and then taking the container. "But I didn't know you even knew where I work."

"I didn't before today. But I saw a few bills and letters and junk on the kitchen counter. Nancy Drew, eat your heart out!"

Sighing, she opened it and inhaled. Against her expectations, the jumble of grains and veggies was quite appetizing. "Mmm… well, Nancy Two-Point-Oh, you seem to have outdone yourself. Thank you." In a murmur, she added, "Not that it's anything besides creepy for you to hunt me down at work…"

"Happy to do it, Sis." Then she lowered her voice. "Now, about that Mr. Burnsides over there…"

"What?" Following Anna's line of sight, she spotted the dating profile and grimaced. "A-Anna, wait. Before you get too excited, that's just-"

"He's cute. You should go for it." The scrawny girl perched on the edge of Elsa's desk, smiling gently over at her.

That wasn't as bad as Elsa had been expecting. Still didn't mean she wanted to discuss things like this. "N-no. He wouldn't be interested in me. I'm not interested in me, so why should he be?"

"Hey, clearly he is! This site doesn't bother to email you unless you match, right? You should message him back." Reaching for the mouse, Anna ignored the irritated twitch from Elsa as she scrolled down. "Yeah… he says he wants to meet you and see where things go." Then she reached for the keyboard.

"Anna-"

"Just sending… 'What… time… and where?' Done, not embellishing." Her finger hovered over the enter key as she glanced back at her sister. Then she sighed. "You really don't want to meet him?"

"I… didn't say that," she grunted. Of course, she should have expected that was all Anna would need before she smashed the key, sending the message. "Y-you- OOOH, why are you so infuriating?!"

Rolling her eyes, Anna leaned back against the desk even more, folding her arms over her chest. "I waited to see that you really are interested in him, and you weren't saying 'no'. But sometimes you really do need a little push, Sis. You have to live while you're alive!"

"But you push so much! Can you just…" Sighing, she began to massage her temples gently. "I'm fine. This is fine, you haven't hurt me, going on one date won't hurt me."

"Of course it won't! I wouldn't have done this if…" An awkward silence stretched for a few seconds. Then she asked in a more subdued tone, "Do you want me to go?"

The question caught Elsa off guard. Looking up sharply, she demanded, "What? Why would I want that?"

"Because it seems like ever since I showed up yesterday, you've been annoyed that I'm here. I get that I didn't call ahead, and that was pretty irresponsible; I wasn't observant of your space, you're the Alpha and I'm the Beta. But I thought you'd be happier to see me than this."

Setting aside the container of rice, Elsa rolled her chair over to Anna and grasped her forearm. "I'm sorry. You're right, I haven't… you really threw me off, I wasn't expecting to see you again. I thought you liked it so much on the other side of the planet that you'd… never come back."

"Never? Not to see my favourite sister?"

"I'm your only sister."

"Then obviously, you're my favourite," she scoffed, earning her an eyeroll and a grin. "And… okay, I hear what you're saying. But I'm here, and I won't stay gone as long as I did again. Promise-promise."

If they hadn't been in the office, one of the places Elsa felt least comfortable showing emotion, she would have hugged her. Instead, she simply squeezed her arm tighter and hoped the message was clear. From the way Anna beamed down at her, that seemed to be the case.

"O-oh!" said Cindy, blinking in flustered surprise. The two smoothies in her hands were momentarily forgotten. "Am… I interrupting something?"

"No, no," Elsa hurriedly assured her, taking her hand away. "This is Anna; Anna, this is Cindy."

"Namaste," Anna said simply.

"R-right." Cindy looked her up and down, the sandals and the khaki shorts, the ratty old pocket tee with the little hole by the ribcage. "And… how do you two know each other?"

"She's my soul sister," Anna answered, patting Elsa on the shoulder. Though Elsa privately wondered why adding the word "soul" was necessary, she figured that would only make explanations more irritating, so she left it alone. "Maybe you can be, too, Cindy; you brought smoothies, which is the quickest way to my heart!"

"O-oh…" Glancing down at her hands, she started to offer both of them to Anna and Elsa. "Of course! I mean, I always like making new friends! My stepmother used to joke that I'd make friends with mice if I could!"

Holding up a hand, Elsa said, "Anna can have a sip of mine; you don't have to give up your smoothie for her."

"Yeah, I was kidding," Anna assured her with a wave of her hand as she stood. "I just came to drop off some rice I made. Aloha, ladies!"

They both said "Aloha", somewhat stunned into repeating the phrase as Anna flounced out. After a few more seconds of listening to her cheerful whistling making its way all the way to the elevators, Cindy slowly turned to her as she handed over the cup of frothy orange liquid.

"Seriously, who was that crazy hippie?"

Elsa merely let out a long, weary sigh as she sucked at the straw. At least that smoothie was delicious.

~ To Be Continued ~