~ Chapter Four ~

"I'm sorry."

Shaking her head, Elsa Caulfield merely sawed more vigorously at her mountain of pancakes. They were six deep and laden with syrups of varying flavours. Anna's, however, had bananas all over them, and cooked into them - plus a banana syrup. "Bananaception" was what they normally called it. On happier days.

"You have nothing to be sorry about. You merely expressed what is allegedly a very normal interest in… in that kind of thing. I just wish you'd learn to take 'no' for an answer."

"You can't even say 'sex'," Anna observed - and saw Elsa twitch. "God, does it really bother you that much?"

"It does. I mean, obviously you picked up on it, but I haven't… taken the time to sit down and talk about it. That's my fault, I guess." Sighing, she set down her knife. "And I'm never going to get these cut up."

"We'll ask the waiter to bring an electric knife. Now, tell me. Don't let my reactions or the pancakes or anything sideline you, just… go for the goal, all at once."

Nodding, Elsa took a sip of her coffee. It warmed her stomach and spread to her limbs, helping to abate the tiniest bit of her tension. Not enough, but enough to help.

"I'm on the asexuality spectrum, Anna. I've known it for a long time, ever since sophomore year of high school. All my friends had already tried masturbating, or even more than that, and I just… didn't care. Never felt those urges. It was so worrying; I thought something was wrong with me, that I was broken inside. Wrong. It seemed wrong that I didn't share those feelings all my classmates were having."

Though Anna was listening, she didn't seem to be processing everything. "Wait, so… you've never had sex, I get that. It happens at different times for different people. But how can you know you don't even want to? That's not even a thing in my mind."

"Just don't."

"But… you and I, we've kissed so many times! I figured you were just shy, and if enough time went by-"

"What, that I would put out for you?"

"NO!" Squirming, she leaned in slightly and said in a lower voice, "Well, yeah, but obviously that's not the only thing I want from you! I just like your body, and I want to explore all of it. And let you explore mine. Like, as a separate thing from us being friends."

Again, Elsa was doing that blush that looked less flattered and more alarmed. "Please don't say things like that to me, okay? It… doesn't give me the feeling that you want it to. It just hurts, since I can't be that for you."

"Oh. So not at all. I'm…" And then it seemed to crash down on her. Firstly, that she had been throwing unwanted advances in Elsa's direction. Secondly, that she and her were never going to enjoy that particular pleasure with each other. It was a one-two punch that she hadn't been prepared for.

"Anna?" Another few seconds passed as her breathing grew more shallow, as she stared off into the distance. Elsa scooted forward and put her hand on top of her friend's. "Earth to Anna?"

"No," Anna sniffled as she jerked her hand away. It felt too nice. She couldn't think those thoughts about Elsa anymore, they were forbidden. "No, I've been hurting you, I- you have to get away from me."

"Don't be stupid," Elsa sighed weakly. "It's not that drastic; I know you'd never force yourself on me or anything. All I'm asking is you tone down the, um… advances."

"But that's all I know! If we're not literally friends-and-nothing-else, the only way I can show you how much I care about you is with my fingers and lips - and I want to so bad it burns! The way you make me feel loved with all those little gestures? I can't do that, it's not me, I can barely understand it from your direction, and… and I need you to know that I care about you, so what do I do, huh? What the fuck am I supposed to do?!"

Seeing how upset Anna was really threw Elsa. It had been abysmally obvious how much Anna wanted to "further their relationship", but she'd never thought of it as important to her before. Not truly important. Not something that made her feel this much worse about herself if she went without.

"Anna… if you really n-"

"Stop right there," Anna snapped. "I never, ever want you to go down that road. If it's hurting you, then it's hurting you, and it would literally make me sick if you did that to yourself for me and me only."

It was a relief, and it also made her feel so loved she thought she might burst. "Thank you. Really, I mean it - you have no idea how much I needed to hear that! Even though it's going to make things harder for us, I… I couldn't stand it if I lost you the way I lost her."

"Her?" Still breathing hard, the redhead forced herself to stop and take a sip of her own coffee. "So, um, your ex wanted you to do it, and you told her no, and that didn't go well, huh?"

"Pretty much."

"That's harsh," Anna admitted. "I mean, I symapthise with her a little, but God… she didn't even care that it was upsetting you?"

"Oh, she did, but in the end she thought I needed to just suck it up and try it. And I refused, and she left me. Simple as that."

Leaning forward, Anna took Elsa's hand. "That's not gonna happen with me. We're friends forever, right? Like, until one of us dies of old age. I don't care about the rest as long as that doesn't change."

Nodding, Elsa brought Anna's hand up to her lips and kissed it. It made Anna squirm slightly, but she did smile in the end. That set her to thinking, to turning over all of their interactions. There were things about them that had clued her in very slightly along the way, and she had been subconsciously gathering them all together to draw a final conclusion someday. It seemed that day was now.

"Anna… have you ever considered that you might be aromantic?"

"Elsa," she sighed, "I know I suck at showing you how I feel, but you don't have to rub it in."

"No, I'm serious. You told me about your last few attempts at relationships, how they kind of fell apart and they called you 'cold'. And then there's how you are with me."

Clearly, Anna was almost afraid to ask. "How am I with you? If you don't mind me asking."

"Well, other than trying to have sex with me, you treat me more like a best friend than a girlfriend. We hang out, play Halo and Mortal Kombat, watch movies… and when I do anything special, you look at me like I'm trying to show you up instead of just trying to show you I care. At first, that used to piss me off because I thought you were rejecting me, but I finally began to pick up on the truth as we went along."

"The 'truth' that I'm incapable of romance? Do you really believe that?" When Elsa didn't answer, she sat up straighter, both hands clamped down on the edge of the table. "Hey, I can do it! I'll show you real romance! You just wait until I get back from break - I am gonna show you so much romance you'll be up to your eyeballs in it!"

"Did any of what you just said sound romantic at all?"

A little at a time, Anna deflated until she was slumped down, eye-level with the mouth of her coffee mug. "Well… maybe… not so much."

"Yeah." Elsa smiled slightly. "I love hearing it, because I know now that it's how you are, how you express love. But it's not 'romance' in the traditional sense. Or even in the non-traditional sense. It's Anna-only romo."

"So you really think I'm… what, messed up?"

"It's not like that. Being aromantic doesn't mean there's sommething 'wrong' with you, just that your interpersonal relationships don't have that… extra thing that is 'romance'. It's a difference, but it's a good difference. To me, anyway."

Slumping forward even more, chin resting on the plate in front of her pancakes, she groaned a long, mournful note before speaking again. "It's not good. You don't want sex, and the only way I can really show you how much I care is - you guessed it - with sex. So we're screwed."

"I'd rather not be, actually."

"Fuuunnyyyyy," Anna sneered. But she started to smile afterward, as did Elsa. "You're a dork."

"I'm your dork, though."

"SEE?! See right there? How do you come up with cute stuff like that to say all the time?!"

"Who knows? Maybe I'm magic?" However, by then Anna was flicking a banana slice at her head, and she was doing her damndest to simply get the hell out of the way.

~ TO BE CONTINUED ~