chapter 13 of don’t read the last page is here!
masterpost
[kristanna / m / multichap / modern au with actress!anna and vetstudent!kristoff]
“You’re welcome to bring a plus one...if there is one, I mean,” he said, and she looked up from the envelope to meet his eyes, suddenly feeling awkward, especially when she saw the question there.
“Oh,” she said, forcing a smile, “I’ll bring Kristoff, then! My boyfriend. Longterm boyfriend.”
Hans just gave her another one of his trademark smiles. “Can’t wait to meet him. He must be someone special to have snatched you up.”
chapter 13: advent
“I-- you’re serious? That’s your only concern? You don’t care about the last couple months of rent?”
“Which I’ll pay, by the way,” Anna said quickly, “if you don’t find someone fast enough.”
Sven shrugged. “Security Guard Dylan already responded to my group email about it, so we’re good on that front.”
“You’re really this upset about the sofa?”
“I’m not upset, Bjorgman, I’m disgusted by the taint that was left on it, and now I’m wishing I had chosen any other word because oh god--”
“Jesus,” Anna yelped, “okay, yes, we’ll take the couch you’ve got now, and I’ll get one to replace this one. The exact same one if that’s what you want.”
“It’s okay if that’s too much to ask,” Sven said quickly, “I was mostly kidding, but I figured you’d be buying a new one for the house anyway so--”
Anna turned bright red. “It’s not a problem, Sven, uh...trust me.”
“Sweet. Oh, congrats, you guys, by the way. I think I forgot to say that.”
“You did,” Kristoff said drily. “We’re deeply offended.”
“Super fucking offended,” Anna concurred.
Sven groaned. “Fuck, okay, fine, I’ll make that carrot cake again. But that’s the only going away present you’re getting out of me.”
---
They were going to look at the house together one last time before she made a final decision. “It’s your house, though, Anna,” Kristoff had said seriously. “Your name on the deed. So it’s up to you.”
“I know. I still want to make sure you like it.”
But he was right, and so she went half an hour early just to walk through it by herself. The realtor had agreed to give her a moment just to wander and take it all in. There wasn’t much furniture; the house hadn’t been lived in for a while, so there were just a few pieces for staging. Anna tilted her head in the living room, trying to picture what it would look like to have a familiar sofa, maybe an armchair, a coffee table so they could still have picnics on the floor.
And then the kitchen, which had plenty of counter space for pancakes but was currently devoid of anything, even a stove; she didn’t stay there long before making her way down the hall to the bedrooms. They were both small, but one had a lovely view of the backyard, where Kristoff had already told her he wanted to start a garden. That would be theirs, then, so she could wake up and see the sunflowers.
The other one...well. For now, maybe it would be for storage, or just a guest room in case they had visitors. Looking at it too long sent an odd feeling through her chest, making her feel almost dizzy, and she turned away.
The front door opened then, and she emerged with a smile to see Kristoff standing in the entryway. She hadn’t seen him in four days, and so she ran to him, and he wordlessly folded her into his arms, settling one hand on the back of her head to stroke her hair.
For a few minutes, they stood and held each other, talking softly about her work and his final exams and how nice the drive up here was, and then she took him by the hand and led him through the house.
It was his first time seeing the interior; he looked over it all carefully, clearly taking note of every detail, and she loved him all the more for it. But she had eyes only for him, for the way his presence suddenly made the house feel full. It wasn’t so hard to picture the sofa now, not when she could see how he would lean over the back of it to surprise her with a kiss on the top of the head, and in the kitchen, she perched on the counter and made sure it was just the right height by leaning forward and wrapping her arms around his neck. And then down the hallway she showed him the bedroom with a mischievous smile. “This one’s going to be ours,” she said, and his eyes lingered on her lips for a moment.
She showed him the other one, too, and they both were quiet for a moment. His hand settled on her shoulder, pulling her close to his side.
“I don’t know that we’ll have much use for this one yet,” she said, peeking up at him from beneath her lashes.
He smiled fondly down at her. “We’ve got time to figure it out.”
---
And that was that, and suddenly Anna was standing in the middle of her own bedroom, staring at all the piles and wondering where to begin.
Elsa slipped in, still in her work blazer. “How did signing everything go at the bank?”
“Great, yeah, super easy. The mortgage guy kind of did a double-take when I came in with the realtor and kept offering me lollipops off his desk.”
“And?”
“Well, I ate them, obviously.”
Elsa snorted. “I meant how did the rest of it go.”
“Oh! Oh-- well.” Anna held up her copy of the deed. “I’m a homeowner now.”
She was quiet for a moment, toeing the only box she had bothered to put together yet. The only item in it so far was a photo album. After a minute, she dared a glance at her sister.
“Do you think Mom and Dad would be proud of me? For...this. For everything.”
Elsa squeezed her hand. “Of course. For absolutely all of it. Mom would be begging to come watch you at work so she could cheer you on from the sidelines, and Dad would be teaching you how to fix....oh, I don’t know, rusty pipes or whatever can go wrong in a house.”
Anna laughed. “Thank God I have Kristoff for that then.”
“They’d be proud of you for that, too. They always liked him.”
“You think?”
“Oh, I know. Remember how they waited up all night to see you come home from prom?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Mom and I had placed a bet on whether or not you two would get together that night. Dad wouldn’t admit it, kept saying ‘that’s my baby girl, she’s too young for a boyfriend anyway’ but he was the one peeking through the curtains.”
Anna leaned her head against her sister’s shoulder. “I miss them.”
“Me, too.”
---
Rehearsals were getting more serious now that the first scenes were set to be shot at the end of the month. Not that Anna had been taking any of this lightly; she’d been driving everyone crazy by humming her songs every waking moment. Even Kristoff had very gently pulled her into his arms as she stood singing the new song that had been written for her-- “Under the Stars”, a cheesy title but really almost as pretty as “Once Upon a December-- while she made French toast in her kitchen; they’d finally been able to spend a night together, and Elsa had graciously pretended she had had plans to spend the night with Honey, anyway.
“Baby,” Kristoff had said, pressing a kiss behind her ear. “You know I love you more than anything.”
“Mmhmm,” she mumbled in between the bridge and the third verse, dipping another piece of bread.
“But can you please, please sing something else?”
She glanced up at him, her cheeks pink. “Sorry, I know I’m being annoying, it’s just--”
He kissed the tip of her nose. “You want to get it right. I know. And I promise that it sounds amazing already.”
She had convinced him to sing for her instead, and then they’d spent the rest of the morning laughing and eating their breakfast and going through furniture websites to pick out a bed.
That was what was distracting her when she ran into a broad chest with an armful of music, dropping her iced coffee on her shoes in the process. “Oh! Jesus fuck, I’m so sorry, I didn’t get any on you, did I?”
She didn’t dare to meet his gaze until she heard a laugh; to her relief, it was only Hans. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, his green eyes bright with amusement. “I was distracted, too, so it’s half my fault. Running lines in your head?”
“Uh-- yeah, something like that.”
“Awesome. Are you ready for our scene practice this afternoon?”
She wasn’t, but she nodded anyway. They were blocking out the dance scene, the one where Anastasia and Dmitri realized they were falling in love. She had the lines down already, and she’d been practicing the dance itself plenty with the choreographer, but it was the other stuff that made her feel nervous, the longing looks and sharp intakes of breath that made up a good ohmygodIlovehim scene. It didn’t help that this was Hans Westergaard, who this past awards season had been nominated for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor. He hadn’t won either, but there was already talk that he’d be up again for his part in a war drama, and just the fact that his name was attached to this project was a huge deal. “You can match him, Anna, seriously,” the director, Destin, had said when he’d noticed she was nervous before their first rehearsal together. “You just haven’t had the chance to prove it yet. Well, here it is now.”
She shook her head and realized she’d spaced out before answering. “Um-- yeah. Can’t wait!”
Hans smiled at her, that mysterious grin that had spawned countless thirst tweets. “Me, either.”
---
Kristoff’s back was to her as he worked, fiddling with a tiny screwdriver and a massive bedpost. She knelt beside him with a weak smile; he had insisted on building the bed they’d picked himself, even though it was his only night off this week and she had offered to just get someone to assemble it for them. But that was why they’d gotten one from Ikea anyway, although they could have afforded better; Anna was paying the mortgage and for most of the items in the house so that he could spend the next year focusing on clinicals and studying for his board exams. He’d reassured her it didn’t make him feel weird to let her pay for so much, but still he didn’t want to quit his job at Starbucks entirely-- “so I can still take you out on my own dime”-- and insisted on “earning his keep”, whether that meant doing whatever he could around the little house to get it ready for them to officially move in or picking her up when she needed to make a swift exit to avoid paparazzi or just kissing her as much as she could possibly want.
“Just a second,” he said, not looking up as he finished putting two pieces together, “just gotta-- there!”
He turned to her with a grin. “It’s only taken me an hour, and I’m almost a third of the way there.”
To his horror, she burst into tears instead of laughter. “I have to go away again,” she managed to get out as he immediately pulled her into his arms.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay, Anna, don’t cry. We did it before, we’ll do it again.”
“To Russia. They want to do some location shit. For three weeks.”
“We made it six weeks last time, hey?”
“This time it’s over Valentine’s Day.”
Kristoff laughed gently. “So we’ll celebrate early.”
She sniffled against the collar of his shirt. “But I don’t want to leave you.”
“It’ll be okay. I know how to work FaceTime on my own and everything.”
“But I love you. And this is stupid. They can just green screen me in.”
She was being a baby, she knew; she was getting paid a stupid amount of money to go to a brand new place and stay in a hotel and wear gorgeous dresses and act alongside a bunch of people way more famous than she was. And three weeks really wasn’t bad at all, especially when now they’d be spending time every day together so they’d have more than enough chances to make up for lost time.
But still-- she loved him, and she would miss him, and she just wanted to be sad about that for a little while, and so he held her until her tears dried.
---
Sam had a bottle of champagne waiting for her when she stepped into his office after a long day of hair and makeup testing. Her hair was still twisted up into a regal updo she knew would take half an hour to take down and brush out; she’d have to enlist Kristoff’s help in getting all the pins out. It was rather at odds with the Buchanan High sweatshirt she was wearing, the only thing of his she could wear without attracting suspicion since people just assumed it had always been hers. Already her Wikipedia page had way too much personal information on it, too many little details about her life that let people think they knew her.
“Two hundred fifty thousand followers today, kiddo! Quarter of the way to a mill! Lena’s over the moon.”
“Is that what you had me drive all the way over here for?” Anna asked, flopping into a chair.
Sam steepled his fingers. “No. Just wanted to, you know, check in.”
She ignored the glass of champagne he slid across the desk to her. “And you couldn’t just call me?”
“Your director did. Said he could tell you’re running yourself ragged before filming’s even started, but that he can’t get you to slow down long enough to have a chat.”
“I’m Anastasia in Anastasia, Sam. There’s a lot to do.”
“I know,” he said gently, “and I know you can do it. But I don’t want you to burn yourself out this early on in the movie or in your career.”
She didn’t look at him; instead, she focused on sliding her finger around the rim of the glass, wondering if she could make it ring like she used to do to cups of water in restaurants to annoy her sister.
“They hadn’t hired your permanent hair and makeup person yet. So I pulled some strings.”
She looked up then. “Really?”
“Yeah. Lucky for you Miss Nattura just wrapped some--”
“Horror movie, yeah. Trust me, I’ve heard all about it.”
“Still dating your sister, then?”
Anna grinned. “Want to come over for dinner sometime? We can make faces across the table at them when they start being gross.”
“You’re one to talk. How’s the boyfriend?”
“Great. Thanks for getting that photo taken down before it hit TMZ, by the way. I have no idea how they got it or even recognized us. We’ve been really careful. I hardly even see him anymore, seriously.”
“I know,” Sam said with a sad smile. “And it’s only going to get worse.”
---
Sven said the 23rd is great. Looks like Friendsmas is on :)
.
yaaaay it will be so fun
how did ur last final go?
haha final final
.
Well, I think. I’m heading to the house now to meet the guys who are bringing the kitchen stuff. How is your day going?
.
good just singing all day going to lose my voice by tonight
but i’ll figure out how to say thank you for meeting those guys anyway 😘
.
Please tell me this is one of the days you finish early.
As she was about to fire off another response, heat in her cheeks, Hans cleared his throat beside her. “Anna, hey!”
“Oh! Hey, what’s up? Want to run lines again?”
He grinned, and she returned it; that had become something of a routine for them over the last few weeks, running lines together over sandwiches in his trailer. “Yeah, of course. But right now I wanted to give you this.”
He handed her a heavy, ivory envelope; she opened it with a raised eyebrow. “What’s this?”
“Read it and see, goofball.”
She laughed as she scanned the gold-edged piece of cardstock inside. “New Year’s Eve at your place?”
“Yes, I’ve invited the whole cast. And the important members of the crew. You’re welcome to bring a plus one...if there is one, I mean,” he said, and she looked up from the envelope to meet his eyes, suddenly feeling awkward, especially when she saw the question there.
“Oh,” she said, forcing a smile, “I’ll bring Kristoff, then! My boyfriend. Longterm boyfriend.”
Hans just gave her another one of his trademark smiles. “Can’t wait to meet him. He must be someone special to have snatched you up.”
--
“Do you really like it?”
He laughed as he unfolded the massive blanket. “It’s perfect.”
“It’s like, seven feet long or something. So it’s big enough even for you. And look, I got them to put a K on the bottom. So it’s official, I can’t steal it from you.”
Kristoff raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Uh-huh. If I do, you can kick me out of bed.”
“I think that breaks most of the rules we set for these presents.”
“There were only two rules!”
“Yes, and one of them was ‘it has to be a present for both of us’.”
“So that’s only half of the rules. Which is fifty percent, which isn’t a majority.”
She stuck out her tongue, and he rolled his eyes good-naturedly. “Remind me why I ever thought it was a good idea to help you with your stats homework?”
“Because I helped you with your Milton project. And because you had a crush on me,” she teased. “Ha-ha.”
“You definitely had a bigger one on me.”
“Oh, I did for sure,” she said cheerfully, moving from where she had been sitting on the other end of the sofa to sit on his lap, leaning back against his chest. “Especially that year because you grew like six inches.”
He unfolded the blanket all the way and draped it over them both. Anna sighed contentedly and nestled closer against his chest. “See? It can be for both of us sometimes after all.”
“Are you already falling asleep?”
She nodded against him with a yawn, her eyes already closing, and he gently nudged her shoulder. “I didn’t get to give you your present yet.”
“This is enough,” she mumbled sleepily.
“Trust me, you’ll want to see this.”
“Mhmm.”
“Before the party. Because it’s kind of for Sven too.”
“Well, we have like two hours before they’re here. So let me nap for one.”
He kissed her forehead. “You’ll need time to set it up, though.”
“Is it a Wii?”
Kristoff blinked in surprise. “How did you—“
“You’re dropping so many hints right now it’s not even funny. Also, I tried to hide your present in the second bedroom’s closet and found it there.”
“Goddammit.”
“It’s perfect, though,” she reassured him, pressing a sleepy kiss to his jaw. “Can’t imagine a more perfect present.”
“Now you’re just trying to butter me up so I’ll stay here and hold you while you nap.”
“Is it working?”
He sighed, but a smile was playing at the corners of his lips. “Sweet dreams.”
She was already asleep.
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