NOTES: Thank you for all your reviews, both on this story and Estrangerous! I really appreciate them. This chap was fun to write in its own way, because there's no Elsa. Also, because it features Anna being shown outside of her budding relationship, merely chatting with her cousin about it. Call me a sucker for humourous fluff.

~ Chapter Five ~

Two weeks dragged on agonisingly slow in the Zielinski household. Anna was going out of her mind being apart from Elsa, even though they Skyped all the time. Jessie was still there for her to hang out with, but it wasn't the same as before they both went away to college. They had a lot to catch up on, it was true, but less to talk about overall. Still, it was great to visit all the old haunts, like the video store - even though they had relocated across the street into a smaller storefront, since most people just used Netflix or Redbox these days.

Of course, her parents were quite irritating. Even though she was enjoying hanging out with them, her mother continued to harp on about her not finding a boyfriend; she had always been oddly intent about having grandchildren. Her dad, on the other hand, didn't care who she dated and seemed to prefer she not date at all until after graduation. Her aunt, uncle, and cousin Rapunzel came by for Midnight Mass and Christmas dinner, and that helped take the edge off - even if Punzie had an annoying habit of borrowing her hair products without asking.

It was a few days after Christmas. The two cousins were in Anna's room messing around; Anna was hanging upside down on her bed and Punzie was going through her suitcase - which she wished she wouldn't.

"So they don't all wear parkas?"

"Not really, Punz. And we do have summer up there, you know - it gets up to 80 sometimes."

Laughing, she held up a shirt and wandered over to the full-length mirror on her closet door, checking how it might look on her. "That seems hard to believe. I mean, everything we see from the news up there is covered in snow, right?"

"Yeah, yeah," Anna sighed, trying to pry loose one of the pushpins holding a Ke$ha poster in place with her big toe. She didn't really want to pull it out, but she was bored enough to try. "That's more north than where we are. I mean, we do get a lot of snow, but more like Chicago snow, right?"

"I guess." The blonde skipped back to the suitcase and grabbed two other shirts, dropping the first unceremoniously next to the suitcase. It took a lot of willpower for Anna not to yell at her. "But man, I can't wait for when I graduate next year! My life can finally begin - I'll go to college and study the arts, meet cute boys, maybe get a summer job before that!"

"Right, so much fun - working and working."

"Boys are 'working'?" When Anna didn't answer, she merely smirked and switched from one shirt to the other. The second was a lurid pink, one that Anna would rather forget about than wear again; in fact, she was planning to leave it behind in her closet before heading back to campus. "Hey, do you mind if I borrow this when we go out tomorrow?"

"Yes, I mind! You always mess up my clothes and then you don't replace them or anything!"

Pouting, Punzie turned back to look at her. "Oh come on, that was one time with ice cream, and we were like, ten! You can't hold that against me forever!"

"Watch me!"

"Please?"

A few seconds passed with Anna staring at her upside-down face in all its desperate splendour. Then she sighed and nodded, and Punzie giggled in delight and hung it on the doorknob.

"You're lucky you're my favourite cousin," she sighed in a put-upon voice. "You get all the perks my other cousins don't get."

"I'm your only first cousin, dork. Hey, a swimsuit!"

Why on earth had she even packed a swimsuit for college? Most pools in Alaska were indoors anyway, and she was more of a beach girl. "Yeah, great. I'm probably not gonna go swimming in 30-degree water anytime soon."

"Hey, there's something… dude, who's this?"

From her vantage point, she could barely tell Rapunzel had discovered a handful of small white cards. Relenting, Anna rolled over and saw much the same thing, except for the slightly surprised and confused look on her cousin's face. "What?"

"Well, I'm not sure, but I think this is some kind of ancient-technology version of sending Snapchat nudes."

"WHAT?!" The second "what" was much sharper, and left no room for argument. Hearing this, Rapunzel immediately crossed the room and held them out for Anna to see as she struggled to get up and sit cross-legged on the edge of her bed, reaching for the mysterious cards.

It was Elsa.

Immediately, she felt her heart completely stop for a few seconds. The pictures - Polaroids, ancient technology indeed - were of Elsa, and they most certainly were not for all audiences. As far as she could tell, they were still in order, since the first one was simply her standing there in a red lace teddy, smiling serenely. Always the picture of calm, a steadfast friend.

Then she turned to grant a view from the back, hands taking her hair out of its ever-present braid. And then she bent forward to blow a kiss into the camera, one strap sliding down her shoulder. Then…

All Anna glimpsed was something that MIGHT have been a nipple before she slapped the other pictures back on top of it and clutched them to her chest.

"Dude, are you… kinda gay?"

She had completely forgotten Rapunzel was there. "Huh? I m-mean, I have no idea how these got there, I…" But she did know. Elsa had packed her suitcase. These had clearly been planted for her to find later rather than sooner. In fact, Elsa had asked her a few days previously if she was doing much swimming back in Georgia. "Wow."

Squirming, the long-haired girl backed off a few steps, her overlarge green eyes quite obviously uncertain. "Um, do you need me to like, sleep on the couch or something? We don't have to room together anymore if it's gonna make you feel weird."

"Relax," Anna managed to make herself say. "You're not in any 'danger', I don't bang clothes-hoarding cousins."

"Okay, okay," Rapunzel managed to laugh, only a little nervously. "That's a relief! I mean, maybe it shouldn't be, but I've never had a gay friend before. You know I don't get out much, with homeschooling and all."

"Yeah, I know. It's okay. And, well, I'm not really 'gay', I'm just equal-opportunity. If it knows superhero movies and it's attractive, I'm down."

"So like, bisexual, or whatever? Cool, that's cool." After a moment of indecision, she forced herself to sit on the bed next to Anna, crossing her legs and scooting a tiny bit closer. "And you never did say who that is. Are you two-"

"It's really complicated." When she shrank back in alarm, Anna sighed and deflated. "Sorry, I'm not trying to be mean or rude. But there's been this whole thing going on lately."

"Seems like a pretty good thing, from the look of those," she snorted, flicking one fingernail against the corner of the Polaroids.

Biting her lip for a moment, Anna stared down at the top picture. The look on Elsa's face wasn't exactly seductive - it was just full of affection. Soft and attractive, but not attracted to anything besides Anna's personality. She'd been thinking a lot about that, and even though the feelings confused her, she did know that she returned them, in part.

"She's… different than anybody else I've ever had feelings for," Anna admitted. "But I think we covered this last summer."

"Yeah, your 'no romo' feels. Not everybody's into that, I guess. But you said you had been hooking up with somebody, right?"

"That's just it; I'm fine with hooking up, that makes sense to me. Sometimes friends can sample the benefits. But with Elsa…" It was going to be tricky to get into this without revealing Elsa's policy on sex. "She wants me to be a girlfriend. And I'm bad at that, but I want it, too, because I care about her so much. I'm just terrible at processing those feelings or knowing how to show them; I can treat her like a best friend, and I can show her I want to drag her into bed with me, but that stuff that's supposed to go in the middle is just hard, okay?"

Rapunzel looked bewildered, but she wasn't running away, wasn't saying "EW" or spouting anything about what the church would think. That was a plus. "So… wow, you're SO gay."

"Thanks."

"I don't mean it in a bad way, just that you're way into this girl. And she's cute! I mean, I can tell a girl's cute without wanting to 'gay' her myself, right?"

"Homo is not contagious," Anna snorted quietly. That made Rapunzel smile in spite of herself. "But yeah, I'm serious about her, I guess. She's my best friend."

"I thought Jessie was your best friend. Hey, did you and her ever-"

"NO."

"Just checking!" After they fell silent for a few minutes, she piped up, "Oh! Why don't you send her some sexy pics back? That'd be like, the same gesture, right? Show her you care just as much as she does." Leaning in, she waggled her eyebrows. "I'm up for a trip into Victoria's Secret if you are."

That made Anna squirm. After a second, she glanced down at them again, smiling quietly to herself. It mystified her that Elsa would even go to these lengths for her, given how she generally felt about sex. It had to have been one of the most difficult things she ever had to do - and she did it for her. "Wouldn't mean the same thing."

"What?"

"She's kind of… meeting me halfway. Let's just say I'm way thirstier than she is, and she knows it's been a while since I got any action." Looking up at Rapunzel, she suddenly blurted, "Help me out with this, okay?"

The blood drained from her cousin's face. "Look, um, y-you know I totally have your back, Anna, but there are just some lines that shouldn't be-"

"Not with THAT! I mean, help me think of something mushy to do! Like, at least partially mushy!"

"Ohhh," she sighed in extreme relief. "Well, I dunno, there's plenty of things. What did you have in mind?"

"If I knew that part, I wouldn't be asking you!"

"Okay, okay! Geez, give me a half-second to think, will you?!" Sinking her face down into her hand, she ran through a few possibilities in her mind. "Okay, what about getting her perfume? Is she that kind of girl?"

"Maybe, I don't know. She does smell nice, but me smelling her usually just leads straight to 'I wanna jump her now' in my brain. I never focused on which perfumes she likes."

"Alright, alright, we got this. How about tomorrow we just spend a few hours in the mall and see what we come up with?" When Anna only looked back down at the Polaroids with something like depression, Punzie squeezed her shoulder. "Dude, you really do have it bad."

"Yeah. Like I said, she's my best friend. Knowing she wants to make me this happy, even if it's in ways that make her uncomfortable? I have to do something about it."

"We will. Promise-promise." Then Rapunzel cleared her throat, obviously stiffening. "Now, um… do I need to go to the bathroom and take my sweet time in there so you can be alone with the photoshoot?"

Snorting, Anna shoved her hand off her shoulder. "Don't be dumb." But she didn't stop staring at Elsa, turning the snap on top ever so slightly. Appreciating every angle. "That would… be really silly… silly, silly Punzie."

"Would you rather be the one who goes to the bathroom?" she guessed.

"Yeah, let's do that."

~ TO BE CONTINUED ~