WARNING: Somewhat NSFW.

~ Chapter Eight ~

The situation continued to deteriorate, albeit very slowly. Anna Zielinski never did sleep with anyone else. Knowing Elsa had given her explicit permission to pursue that option somehow had the opposite effect. That didn't erase her urges, of course; they only seemed to grow more and more powerful, harder to resist. But she kept them in check and was able to avoid the unpleasantness of Elsa noticing as she had during their Smash Bros-athon.

That is, until one Tuesday morning in early February. They had been studying until very late that night and fallen asleep in Anna's bed, snuggling and talking about trivial things. When the morning came, Anna's first thought was a somewhat unpleasant one.

'Oh shit… I need to get off, but I can't get Elsa off. Of me.'

The form of her girlfriend, or whatever they were calling their status with each other now, was sprawled casually over her own body. Warm and soft, and inviting. And she smelled fantastic. Not like a burst of flowers or anything so trite as that - just like another human did after a night of sleep. Lightly salty, with hints of the shampoo from the day previous. Real. And all of this combined with what she looked like and who she was to her turned her on.

'This… isn't a big deal,' she mentally chided herself, biting her lip. 'Just think about something else. Or wake her up, you could wake her up!' But that wasn't really something she wanted, not when Elsa looked so at peace. That felt like a crime. So she suffered in silence.

The operative word being "suffer". It was pure torture; normally she could suppress her desires for quite some time, relegate them to the back of her mind. Forget about them. Not this time. She had done that the night before while they were lying there together with little difficulty. Now, however, she had already been doing it so long that maintaining the barrier between her desires and her friendship-plus-kissing with Elsa was growing increasingly unbearable.

'She's not here just for you to think about banging her,' she commanded herself as her hips began to shift back and forth restlessly again. 'You are friends. That doesn't mean sex, it just means friends. Stop making it into a thing!' Biting her lip, she forced herself to stare at Elsa's face instead of down along her ample curves. That didn't help; she was still fiercely attracted to her regardless of what part of her she was looking at. Her unparallelled beauty only seemed to throw fuel on the bonfire of her need.

Before she knew it, tears were pricking the corners of her eyes. Normally, she didn't have trouble with these concepts; with anyone else, she simply enjoyed thinking about them sexually because it didn't matter one way or the other. With Elsa, however, she had done her best to police her thoughts when she was in the room, knowing that whenever she lapsed, it made her best friend uncomfortable. Other times were open for anything - as the Polaroids had proven.

'Stop,' she told herself more firmly as her body tensed up. 'Stop perving on her, it's not okay when she's here. You wouldn't do it if she was awake, so don't do it now!' Nothing helped. She was going to have to wake Elsa up and slip away to the bathroom.

But then warm lips were pressing against her cheek. Too late: Elsa already was awake. A husky voice whispered, "Hey."

"Morning," Anna whispered back. "You sleep okay? I meant to wake you up last night so you could go back to your room, but it was already-"

A light chuckle interrupted her words. "I'm fine. You okay, though? You seem tense."

"Well… I kinda have to go to the can. Sorry."

"Mm." But Elsa didn't move off of her, didn't roll away. Instead, she moved her lips to Anna's, kneaded up against them. Anna kissed her back with too much relish; privately, she was storing this feeling away for once she was alone. To reflect upon while she was slaking her thirst. They were as soft and delicious as ever, as was Elsa's body.

Which she felt shifting up on top of hers. Felt an arm sliding up and down her side, legs trapping her own legs. Was she dreaming? It was possible; this wouldn't be the first time Elsa had turned especially amorous in one of her nighttime fantasies. But it felt too real, tangible. For a few seconds, she merely traced her freckled fingers through messy blond locks, pressed them into a flannel-covered back. Drank it in. Maybe Elsa was just indulging her, or maybe it was that she was too sleepy to feel uncomfortable with how heavy their make-out session was growing. Fine with her either way.

Until she felt a hand on her thigh. Elsa's hand was on her thigh. That had never happened before - not this way, not while they were kissing. Not sliding up and down along it, not trailing over the front and toward the inside.

"Elsa!" she gasped silently when she felt the hand wandering dangerously close to somewhere she had never expected it to be. "Wh-what-"

"Shhhhh," Elsa hissed directly into her ear. "Just let it go."

Anna gulped as fingers pressed against her through her pants. As they shifted up and down, sending so much joy into her bones that she literally couldn't see for a few seconds. But then she came back to herself and shot her hand down to clasp around a thin wrist, pulling it a single inch backward until nothing was touching her anymore.

"No."

"Isn't that my line, usually?" Elsa snorted.

"Elsa… I d-don't want you to do this. I don't need it, okay?"

"Why? I'm volunteering. You didn't ask, didn't make any demands. It's entirely my decision."

"But you're not getting anything out of it! And I… I don't want you to touch my disgusting body unless you really want to!"

That made Elsa draw back in shock. She was already shaking and full of anxiety, as she could tell now with her face visible. Anna expected that; she knew this wasn't her thing and that it couldn't go well if she tried to force herself. But she was also surprised, staring down as if Anna had announced she was going to take up professional poker playing in Russia.

"You… wait, hold on a second. You think I see your body as 'disgusting'?"

"Obviously! I mean, you don't want to-"

"SHUT UP!" There was slight anger in her voice now, hand-in-hand with the surprise and anxiety. "Don't you ever talk about my Anna that way, there's not a single thing that's disgusting about her!"

Blinking up, stunned, Anna finally managed to collect a few words and string them together. "I- but y-you… and you're asexual, so touching me must b-"

"That's not it at all, it's not about finding you unattractive! I just…" Sighing, she bit her lip for a moment as she trembled. Anna automatically raised one hand to cup her shoulder, and Elsa placed her own over it. Instinct. "Didn't I explain this well enough before? I don't feel a connection between sexual urges and people. So even though you're beautiful and perfect, and I love being with you and even touching your body, I don't want to have sex with it. That's all. It's not about whether or not I like you, or find your aesthetic visually pleasing, or am 'disgusted'. Which I never was, okay?!"

"But… okay, I have to admit something to you." Would this really be wise? It might come off making her seem even stupider. "I did some research, or tried to. Looked up asexuality. And I read that a lot of asexuals are 'sex-repulsed'. So I kind of figured… I m-mean, this is my bad for assuming and not trying to confirm it with you, I guess, but wouldn't bringing up you being sex-repulsed just make you more uncomfortable? So… I thought if I just avoided the topic as much as I could, it would make you less annoyed that I'm not asexual, too, and…"

Elsa's anger melted away as she stared down at Anna. "Okay, I guess that makes sense. You were wrong in some areas, but you didn't do anything wrong. That's my bad for not explaining my sexuality very accurately."

"And mine for jumping to conclusions." Then she tilted her head slightly. "You… were really going to do it, weren't you? Get me off even though it weirds you out."

"I was." Then she squirmed slightly. "And it does weird me out, but… not as much as it used to. Isn't that crazy? I still don't want to do anything beyond hugging and kissing, not for my pleasure, but thinking about you doing stuff, or doing stuff for you? It doesn't send me into a panic anymore. So I thought… maybe we could try…"

Anna was already shaking her head. "Don't. I mean, if you really are determined to do that, I'd love to participate and all, but I'd be pretty miserable about it later if you admit that you were even the tiniest bit uncomfortable. You don't have to be crying huge tears for me to feel that way. I want you as a one hundred per cent willing bed-partner, or it's totally off the table. Do you get me?"

"Yeah," Elsa said with a watery smile. "And thank you." Now they were both almost-crying, so Anna did her best to dry it up, swiping at her own cheeks. "That doesn't mean I'm giving up on helping you out once in a while. I even came pretty close just now! But you're right, I don't think I'm ready to touch you like that quite yet. Can you forgive me?"

"Forgive you?" Anna burst out. "I mean, you forgive me all the time for being a horny idiot, so why would I even think about holding it against you for wanting to help me? I'm not that much of an idiot!"

Chuckling, Elsa leaned in to kiss her nose. "Nobody's saying you're an idiot but you."

Then they were engaged in another deep kiss, rolling around in the sheets, hair and arms and legs tangling. It confounded Anna that Elsa eagerly wanted this and didn't want to go further, but she had finally come to accept them as two distinctly separate activities. This was just extreme cuddling; sex was another matter.

"Now I really gotta run to the bathroom!" Anna laughed self-consciously about four minutes later.

"Why? Just do it." When Anna squirmed, she raised a finger and pressed it against her lips. "No, I really mean what I'm saying. I want you to. And I trust you to keep your hands to… yourself."

Unexpectedly, Anna found herself blushing in a way she hadn't done in a long time. Why? She had done a lot worse with several other people - in public places, even. She found herself gulping and averting her eyes, head swimming.

"What? What is it?"

"I…" Then she realised what it was. "I've never… done that in front of someone."

"Sure you have. You've had sex and all that, right?"

"SO not the same thing. This is just me, with myself, but you'd be here watching, and- what about those sounds I make? I know you've heard them before once in a while, and they freaked you out, so I don't w-want to push-"

"They didn't freak me out," Elsa sighed, stroking her fingers through Anna's bird's nest of a hair. "Made me feel odd, yes, but I didn't jump out any windows."

"But you don't know what it's like to feel turned on, so making you listen to me would be like… I don't know. Messed up."

A few seconds passed with Anna breathing heavily before Elsa cleared her throat. "That's not technically true."

"What?"

"I do get turned on, Anna. Most people do. With me, it's actually fairly uncommon, but it does happen now and then. That's not what asexuality is."

"But… that's how you explained it to me. That you never wanted sex, ever."

"I don't. Being turned on doesn't mean I want to do anything about it." Now Elsa did look uncomfortable, even though she hadn't a moment earlier when actually offering to let Anna take care of her urges in front of her. "I resisted telling you about this at first because I didn't want to confuse the whole situation, and it was easier to leave it at 'no sex' so you would know I really meant it. Yes, I do experience sexual desire, but it's never connected to anyone or anything. It just comes along and then passes. I did try to do something about it once but that was not a fun experience and I decided it's not for me."

"But how do you know? Maybe you were just doing it wrong."

"Maybe I was. But I'm confident that I have no need or even vague desire to try again. Not 'pretty confident' - entirely." After saying such words with a deadly serious tone, she allowed herself a tiny smile. "But if that ever changes, believe me, you will absolutely be the first one to know."

It seemed Anna had been given a lot to think about. Unfortunately, she was having a hard time thinking while her body was craving action. Always helpful, Elsa picked up Anna's wrist and moved it until her hand was draped over her own hip. Dangerously close to ground zero.

"B-but what will y-"

"Just kiss me."

~To Be Continued~