Anna can't sleep. It's almost three in the morning and Anna hasn't slept and couldn't sleep, all because Elsa called it a date. Sure, she probably didn't mean it that way and their customer-employee relationship just so happened to be borderline flirty, but the coy way Elsa'd said it led Anna to believe, to hope that there was the smallest, tiniest speck of a chance that it was, in fact, a date.
Drip drops outside her windows briefly worry her- Elsa might cancel due to weather. That adds to the nerves. Anna got ready regardless. The sleepiness takes over as she stuck a leg in her shorts and paused to yawn, stumble, and shove her other leg through. "Don't say anything stupid," she warned herself.
She creaked her door shut and her umbrella began to echo with heavy pitter patters immediately. She stepped in a shallow puddle, another. A single car in the parking lot had its lights on, illuminating the rain and Anna went toward it. "Hope that's Elsa's 'caaaauuuuse..."
She got close enough for the lights to shine on her body when the car door swung open and Elsa came out. They each paused where they were. "Anna!"
The rain was loud, they laugh-shout their greetings, "hey!", "hi!", and went to meet halfway.
Anna cupped her free hand around her mouth to yell. "It's really coming down, huh?"
"Looks like it! Ah," They were close enough to where they didn't have to yell anymore and Anna lifted her umbrella up to be above both of them. Elsa hesitated before accepting the invitation. "It's kind of nice, though."
"Yeah!" Anna gave a toothy grin. She got a good look at Elsa then, clothes wet from the short walk. Anna in that moment became aware of how much space the coffeehouse counter actually took up and without it, there was hardly any distance between them. It felt like their own little bubble, just them, shrouded from the rain. The sound of it all around them was comforting. She swears she could stay there in that one spot forever, this close to Elsa in this bizarrely beautiful and incredibly circumstantial scene. It doesn't help that the bright light behind Elsa illuminates her like a saint and she thought to herself good luck unseeing that imagery. She gestured behind Elsa to the car, "shall we?"
Elsa nodded and Anna held the umbrella as they walked together to the open driver's side door, "why, thank you", then in through the passenger side. The sound of the rain changed substantially as the doors shut. Anna shook out the umbrella and then very obviously didn't know what to do with it as she sloooowly and uncertainly placed it by her feet. Elsa watched, smiled.
"Are you ready?"
A nod, and Elsa started the car.
They left their parking lot and Anna heard the rev of the engine right before an eager "hang on". They zoomed down a road that was usually so busy, so trafficky, that it now being empty was unheard of. Drops pounded loudly on the windshield.
Anna didn't know what to say, and couldn't say much over the downpour. She turned to Elsa and realized she didn't actually have to say anything. Elsa was in the zone.
The street lights lit up the smallest of spots. They passed a wet playground, normally bright colors oddly muted. The traffic lights refracted in the rain, reflected on the road. Each green until there weren't any anymore.
They drove down a road that Anna'd never driven down, never even seen before. It had wonderfully large houses probably marketed in the millions, yards dimly lit by street lamps and staked bulb lights. Big spaces between them, small fences. Lights out. The roadside drastically changed from suburbs to open field. The city seemed so far behind them, in distance and existence. The rain coupled with the atmosphere provided so much peace, so much freedom.
Anna looked Elsa. The faint light of the dashboard lit up the smallest bit of her soft facial features and caught on her eyelashes. Anna was indeed staring too much, too hard and diverted her line of sight to the window, where she pointed, excited.
"Wow! When did a lake get here?" She leaned onto Elsa's side.
"I can assure you, it was here before the rain." Elsa's amused grin was in full force.
"Alright, alright." Anna sat back in her seat and drummed on her legs. "Do you usually have any destinations or do you drive around with reckless abandon?" She asked.
"It's not really first date material."
"So," flutters surfaced, "you agree this is a first date?" Just that silent smile in response.
"There's a nice 24-hour diner on North, want to go?"
Anna excitedly nodded with a small "heck yeah I do" and Elsa flipped on her blinker to turn onto the next street, even with no one else driving, no one else around, no one else awake.
The diner was a little hole in the wall kind of place, emphasis on the hole. It laid in blink-and-miss alley between a chiropractic acupuncturist's office and a small family-operated spa, which was probably why Anna'd never seen it before, even though it was a street she frequented. They parked in the vastly empty street and Elsa looked over at her companion, who gave a mischievous grin. They sprinted through the rain, laughing, umbrella foregone. The cool morning air contrasted with the warm summer droplets. Elsa held the door for Anna, who mock-curtseyed and stomped her wet shoes onto the mat provided.
There was only one other patron in the diner, nursing a steaming cup and hunched over a newspaper. They opted for a booth nearby. An unusually perky girl greeted them immediately with her pen and pad of paper. Anna asked for a cup of coffee, "and please, please, keep 'em comin',"
Elsa, cool as ever, simply asked for water.
"You don't want coffee?" Anna asked when the waitress walked away.
"I told you," a soft laugh, "I don't do that kind of thing much."
"'Thing'... as in coffee? Or 'thing' as in c-caffeine in general?" And she was given a shrug as an answer. She wanted to investigate further but the waitress came back with a coffee pot and a pitcher of water.
"Here's a couple menus, I'll give you two a moment to look over them."
Menus already forgotten, Anna began to open container after container of little creamer packs and pour them into her coffee. After about five or six, Elsa- simultaneously intrigued and disturbed- pointed to the remaining few packs of creamer on the table and said "you missed some". Anna, eyes wide and tone sassy, replied, "I wasn't done yet," and continued to open those little containers and dump them into her increasingly lightening coffee until she ran out of the ones provided on the table.
"Done?" Elsa asked as she looked between Anna and her biggest mutation of coffee to date.
Anna stirred her cup. "Only 'cause there's no more creamers."
"Oh?" Elsa quirked an eyebrow, stood, and went over to another table, eyes locked on Anna's playfully. She turned to the other table and her body blocked Anna's view of whatever she was doing. She pivoted back around and in doing so, slowly revealed an arm full of little creamer packets. Anna laughed really loud and quickly covered her mouth. The waitress came by to check up on them and saw Elsa with the ridiculous amount of creamer.
"You girls need more coffee? Another mug, perhaps?" Elsa dumped the pile of creamers onto the table and politely shook her head. "No thank you. This is just for one cup of coffee." Anna lost it then and hid her cackling behind a menu.
The waitress backed away, "I'll, uh, I'll give you guys another sec then..."
Anna hadn't really thought about eating because it's so early. She doesn't even know if her stomach works at this hour. She leaned out from her hiding spot behind the menu to say just that, though by the matching grimace on Elsa's face, it seemed like she felt the same way.
"Pssst, Elsa," she shout-whispered, "want anything?"
Elsa looked over the menu again, pondering, before smacking it shut and resting her palms on it.
"Only a taste of your terrible coffee. Though, can it still be called that?"
It couldn't. Anna drank the whole cup anyway. Elsa of course didn't like it, even though it was a solid 75/25 ratio of milk to coffee. When it was time to pay, Elsa bat away Anna's card and Anna, mocking, asked, "are you ever gonna let me pay for my own coffee?"
They snuck a large tip onto the table as they left. The rain has stopped. The sky was a pale, gloomy grey. The girls didn't take note. They quietly walked to the car and settled for the drive back. Anna almost wondered how long they'll stay in silence.
"Alright, I gotta know." Not long at all, apparently. "How do you stay up this early in the morning? Since you obviously don't rely on caffeine." She yawned.
"I have something even better than caffeine" Eyebrows shot up at the crude accusation. Elsa quietly reached to the CD player, fingers lingered above the play button, and ever so slowly pressed it. Anna's body all but slammed back against the seat as the loudest, hippest, danciestScottish Riverdance music possible began to play. The bagpipes reverberated in her head. She swears that her ancestors, past and future, are able to hear this music. Elsa only bopped around in her seat and made no indication that it's loud at all.
After a while, she turned to Anna to gauge her reaction; wide eyed in half-shock, half-elation, and fully trying to process what the heck was going on. Elsa turned the music down; not all the way, but enough to where she'd no longer need to shout. Her fingers loosely wrapped around the volume dial. They hovered there while she spoke.
"I like to play Scottish bagpipes really loud in the morning. It keeps me going, more than coffee could ever. This CD is one that my mom had, and it's very old so it has lots of skips but that sort of adds to it, you know?" Anna nodded, slowly at first and then picked up speed until she bobbed vigorously, agreeing wholeheartedly. She opened her mouth to say something and found herself speechless. Instead she grasped the top of Elsa's hand and softly pivoted, cranking the music up.
The butterflies she felt from that brief hand-holding only fueled her newfound desire to dance.
They pulled into the apartment parking lot, still bopping in their seats, the vehicle did the same and swayed side to side. Elsa turned off the car and it was abrupt in sudden silence. They got out of the car, Anna yawned and stepped in a puddle and even that splash was loud compared to how quiet everything else was.
"Hey," she rounded the car to Elsa's side, "I wanna thank you. This was really, reeeaaaally-" a hefty yawn interrupted. She smacked her lips together, "-just super nice."
"I want to thank you too." Elsa pat her shoulder. "And also tell you to get some rest."
Anna chuckled and then, in the spur of the moment, hugged her. It felt natural and she looked so warm and soft that it almost didn't occur to her that hugging could've been weird. It might've been weird. Elsa's arms rested where they were before. It wasn't quite an embrace, but it wasn't uncomfortable.
"I work tomorrow, but uh," Anna released Elsa from her grip, "we should definitely do this again sometime."
Another careful consideration of her words.
"I'd like that."
Anna went up the stairs to her apartment, waved goodbye the whole way and only stumbled once, then promptly dove into bed where she had dreams of milky coffee and a girl that she could no longer call just a customer.
"Chiropractic acupuncturist" aka a backstabber aka the slightest inclusion of Hans in this story that I could think of.