Work Text:
All Hallows Eve
“You ready, buddy?” Kristoff asked his massive horse, Sven, who snorted in reply.
Sven was hitched to a large, flatbed wagon which was absolutely full to the brim with haybales and small children in costumes. Each child was chattering and clambering over one another.
The noise was giving Kristoff a splitting headache, but the draft horse merely bobbed his head in excitement.
“What are you going to do tomorrow when there are no more hayrides, huh?” Kristoff chuckled in amusement as he gave Sven an affectionate pat. "You're going to be moping around until we start up the sleigh-rides, aren't you?"
Sven merely pawed at the ground, eager to begin the night.
Kristoff had never disliked the fact that his family had opened up their farm as a tourist attraction, per se. He appreciated all his adopted parents did to keep the farm alive and functioning during hard times. All the extra work that went into delving into a completely new revenue wasn't what was difficult for him... He just wished it didn’t mean that he had to socialize with so many people.
He was usually grateful when the fall season came to a close. He preferred the work that kept him in the fields, or mending fences, not shuttling loud children through a ‘spooky’ portion of the wooded area on their property.
This year was different, though. He felt an odd sense of disappointment and he wasn’t entirely sure why.
“Hi!” Anna, the tour guide/entertainer-of-children, bounded up to him. “Ready to begin?”
Anna Arendelle. His parents had hired her, the only additional member to their family-run operation, as a historian, of sorts. She would give tours of the farm, making their centuries-old farm seem far more interesting than it actually was. In exchange, she received both a pretty paycheck and some sort of credit for a class she was taking at the nearby college.
Kristoff found Anna to be both a blessing and a curse.
A blessing because she had taken most of the pressure off him when it came to be talking to the kids during the hayride... Correction - yelling at the kids to sit down during the hayride. It had been her idea to make the hayride part of her tour and he found he actually did enjoy the stories she told. Some were insightful and historic, while others were purely fictional and meant to give the kids a scare. Either way, it added a great deal of entertainment to his nightly duties.
The curse was that Anna was incredibly distracting.
He was constantly having to catch her as she tried to jump off the buckboard of the wagon unassisted. Nearly every day he had to unravel her from something she had accidentally entangled herself in. She was always spilling things, or stepping in stuff, or tripping.
And she was always, always, always talking. Whether it be to the customers, his Ma, his sisters, him, Sven, the barnyard kittens, the trees, or the sky, her mouth always seemed to be moving.
At first, all these distractions were incredibly irritating.
He supposed it still was irritating, but more because he would send Sven into the brambles on the edge of the trail by accident as he tried to listen to her.
It was irritating because each day she seemed to sit closer and closer to him as she climbed into the wagon and he didn't know if it was intentional or not.
It was irritating because it seemed to get later and later as they finished chatting while Kristoff unhitched Sven and put him away for the night.
It was irritating because he now struggled to prevent his hand from brushing stray pieces of her fiery hair out of her face.
She was a curse, really.
He supposed he should be grateful that they wouldn't be seeing each other as often after the end of their night. Instead, that odd twinge of disappointment hit him again.
“Sven and I have been waiting for you... and what are you wearing?” Kristoff couldn’t help but ask, a small smirk on his face.
“It’s my Halloween costume!” She exclaimed.
Anna was dressed in a midnight black gown, with gothic and flowing sleeves, complete with an exceptionally tall and pointy wide-brimmed hat, and an old-fashioned twig broom.
He felt himself blushing as he looked at her in her costume a bit more closely. It was a long gown, and there was nothing untoward about the costume, but Kristoff couldn’t help but notice that it was a much lower neckline than Anna usually wore. That, and it was exceptionally tight-fitting.
He forced his eyes up to her face. “What are you supposed to be?”
“I’m a witch,” she rolled her eyes dramatically, “obviously!”
“Hmm. You sure you’re not a vampire or something?”
“Vampires don’t have freckles.” Anna declared. “Or red hair.”
“Right,” he rolled his eyes.
“And what are you supposed to be?" She cocked her hip to the side and crossed her arms over her chest.
He was certain that the motion wasn't intended to make her breasts more noticeable, but they definitely were, and he had to firmly tell his brain to shut up.
“Um.” He coughed. “I’m myself, obviously.”
“That’s no fun!” Anna whined. "The kids want a costume!"
“Fine, I came as an authentic wagon driver.”
“Hmm. You are wearing buffalo print plaid. We could tell them you’re a lumberjack?”
“What is buffalo print?” Kristoff laughed.
“It’s that pattern! The blocky red and black checked pattern.”
“I don’t have an ax or anything.”
“Fine! I suppose you could pass for a rugged mountain man.” She then clambered up into the seat of the wagon, and he had to look away quickly to keep from eyeing her behind as her costume tightened around it.
He climbed up into the seat beside her, trying not to notice how nice she smelled, or how warm her thigh was pressed up against his.
She proceeded to then turn around in her seat and greet the kids in the back.
“Good evening, children!” She declared with a high pitched and raspy drawl. “Welcome to your Haunted Hallows Eve Hayride!”
Kristoff couldn’t help but grin at her theatrics. He gave Sven’s reins a flick and the wagon pulled forward.
Anna then proceeded to give the children both an entertaining and educational adventure. She started by telling a ghost story about a beautiful young witch with red hair who once lived in the very same woods they were traveling through. The kids shrieked as Anna acted out flying on a broomstick through the tops of the trees and pretended to snatch them out of the wagon.
She then gave a history lesson on the origins of Halloween (originally a Celtic holiday called Samhain), why we dress up (or go guising), and the origins of trick-or-treating. Anna assured the children that witches could not fly and there was nothing to be afraid of.
"Some people think the symbol of the broomstick was usually associated with rituals with plants and how high they hoped they would grow." She grinned, gesturing to the cornfield on their right.
Rather than be bored by her history lesson, each child was riveted with what Anna was telling them. So, by the end of the hayride, none of the children were frightened but tittering about how cool Halloween really was.
“Be sure to stop by the farmhouse on your way out! Mrs. Bjorgman has candy for you.” She waved as all the children piled off. “Happy Halloween!”
“So cool!” One child shouted as he hopped out of the back.
“Yeah! Thanks! You’re a very pretty witch!” Another girl declared.
“Oh, well thank you!” Anna gave a beaming smile.
Kristoff had to keep himself from loudly agreeing.
“You’re really good at this.” He commented instead.
“Thanks!” She turned to him and gave him a small grin, a slight blush on her cheeks. “I’m thinking about becoming a history teacher! There is a position that will be opening up next year at the middle school, but I'm just not quite sure yet."
"Why not?"
"Well my sister wants me to come work with her in New York.”
“Oh,” Kristoff said, feeling oddly like he got punched in the stomach. “That sounds cool.”
“She’s the curator at a Museum there and I would be dealing with all these fancy parties and beautiful antiquities! It would all be super glamorous!”
“Well… You know what they say about following where your passions lead you.”
Several kids getting into the wagon distracted her and she turned around to greet them in the same way she had before.
Kristoff urged Sven onward and tried not to think about why he was so gutted at the thought of Anna moving away. It was none of his business.
When they finished their second hayride, his dad brought them each a cup of hot cider to warm them up. As they were sipping and waiting for the next group of kids to come, Anna turned back to him.
“The story about the witch living in these woods is actually true, you know.” She informed him.
“Really?”
“Yeah. Of course, she didn’t actually fly on her broomstick and grab kids from their beds and all that hullabaloo. You know the whole broomstick thing is a myth, right?”
“I did hear your speech earlier.” Kristoff couldn’t help but smile at her.
“Yeah, there were a lot of hallucinogenic things going on in the 1600s.” Anna nodded. “Part of the riding the broom thing stemmed from an irrational fear that women were using broomsticks as a way to pleasure themselves sexually, but of course I’m not going to tell the kids that.”
Kristoff had been in the middle of taking a sip of his cider and with that bit of trivia, he accidentally inhaled, breathing the hot cider right into his lungs.
“Oh god!” Anna exclaimed as Kristoff coughed ferociously. “I’m so sorry! That was totally an inappropriate thing to say! I’m always being told I need to actually use the filter in between my brain and my mouth! Oh gosh! I’m so sorry.”
“No, no, no.” Kristoff finished sputtering. “It’s okay! It’s a fascinating bit of trivia. Just wasn’t expecting you to say… that.”
“Right. Sorry.”
Kristoff managed to glance over at her and saw that she was blushing. Her blush went all the way down her neck and onto her chest. God, why did he have to notice that?
“That’s alright. I actually really enjoy your historical facts… even if they are surprisingly inappropriate.” He managed to grin at her.
“What can I say?” Anna shrugged. “Humans have always been kinky.”
This made Kristoff laugh. A real, full, and hearty laugh and he was rewarded with a beaming grin from Anna.
“Oh, I better stop talking about that sort of stuff, little ears are coming our way.”
She then turned and began her theatrical monologue for the kids again. Kristoff had to repeatedly navigate his mind away from anything that put Anna and the broomstick she was so casually waving about into the same scenario.
Sven whinnied in anger as Kristoff steered them off the path by accident.
“Sorry, bud.” He muttered to his equine friend.
“Are you okay?” Anna asked him, interrupting her dialogue to give him a concerned look.
Why did she have to be so concerned about him? And why did her chest have to be eye level when she was turned around in her seat talking to the kids like that?
“Mhmm.” He managed to squeak out.
Jesus, he hadn’t been such a flustered mess around a girl since high school.
When they had finished their third hayride, she continued her story.
“The witch I was telling you about. She actually did live right here in these woods. I hesitate to really say ‘witch’ though. She was most likely just a Wiccan.”
“What happened to her?”
“Well, that’s the thing. Nobody really knows. She was apparently incredibly beautiful, and she and the local minister fell in love and were going to get married, but when the town’s people found out they tried to have her hanged. She disappeared, and the minister died shortly after.”
“How did he die?” Kristoff asked.
“Oh, it was nothing sinister.” Anna waved her hand to dismiss any evil notions. “He had already had health problems before, and he just succumbed to them. It was sad though. Some people believe he died of a broken heart.”
“It all sounds very tragic.”
“Oh yes,” Anna sighed, “some of the best love stories are tragedies.”
“I don’t think so,” Kristoff replied.
“Oh?”
“No, of course not. That’s just ridiculous. The best love stories are the ones where they get to grow old together.”
Anna looked at him carefully for a moment and Kristoff felt his cheeks growing red.
“I think you’re probably right about that.” Anna had a small smile playing on the edges of her mouth. “But! Some people do say they’ve seen the ghost of the beautiful witch walking in the woods on moonlit nights.”
“Oh, have they now?” Kristoff was amused.
“Mhmm.” Anna looked both excited and slightly spooked at the same time.
“Right.”
“What, you don’t believe in that sort of thing?”
“No, not really.” He told her honestly. "I've lived with these woods outside my window nearly my whole life and I've never seen a ghost."
“You don’t believe in anything supernatural, at all?”
“I’m not saying I don’t believe in supernatural things… You know, higher powers and all… I just like things that I can see with my own eyes.”
“Well, how are you not sure that everything you see isn’t just an illusion?” She challenged, arching an eyebrow.
“Look.”
He had no idea what possessed him, but he reached down and grabbed her hand. Her fingers were slightly chilly, probably due to the thinness of her costume and the coolness of the air, but he felt a warm rush whenever he touched her.
“If I can feel that, then it can’t be an illusion.”
Anna didn’t say anything, she just looked at the hand he was so carefully holding.
“Jeez,” Kristoff said after a moment. “Your hands really are cold. Do you need my jacket?”
“Hmm?” She blinked once. “No, no. I’m fine. Besides, you’ll get cold then, and it will ruin the effect of my costume for the kids.”
“Well, I don’t think that flimsy material is doing you any favors.” Kristoff shrugged the coat off his shoulders and put it around her. “Don’t worry about it ruining your costume. You bring enough drama to your little history lesson on your own.”
“Thank you… I think.” She grinned at him mischievously.
A new group of kids piled into the wagon and Kristoff was disappointed when he had to let go of Anna’s hand.
They spent the rest of the evening shuttling group after group through the woods, which as it got darker seemed to get spookier and spookier, and Kristoff noticed Anna kept making the ghost story shorter and shorter.
He also noticed that she sat very snugly against his side. It definitely seemed intentional, but he couldn’t decide if that was from the cold, or possibly from fear, or something else. All he knew is he was enjoying it entirely too much.
Before he knew it, it was dusk and closing time. The last group of kids piled off the wagon and wished them a 'Happy Halloween'. Kristoff was about to hop down when Anna grabbed his arm.
“Let’s go through just once on our own.” She insisted.
“But it’s nearly dark, Anna.”
“I know, that’s what adds to the fun.” Her eyes twinkled.
How could he tell her no?
So, he gave Sven a flick of the reins, and the horse seemed to turn back and give him a knowing glance before setting off on the hayride trail once more.
They sat quietly for a while, until they reached the wood, just listening to the sound of the wagon jostling along. The twilight was much more intense once they entered the trees and Kristoff felt Anna slip her arm through his and then laid her head on his shoulder.
His heart started to pound and his mind went whirring at a million miles an hour. She had deliberately laid her head on his shoulder! He wondered if he should say something? Not saying anything at all felt weird.
“So,” Kristoff found himself stammering out, like an idiot. “It’s a bummer we won’t get to see each other as often anymore.”
Had he really used the word ‘ bummer’ ?
“Oh.” Anna raised her head off his shoulder and unwound her arm from his. “Well, I just thought…I mean… I guess you’re right.”
“Wait… what did you think?”
“I mean… I just thought you and I could still-” Suddenly she stopped talking and gripped his arm tightly. “Kristoff.”
He looked over at her quickly and even in the near darkness was surprised to find that she was white as a sheet.
“Anna? What’s wrong?” He glanced in the direction she was staring.
“Nothing… I just. I thought I saw something."
"What kind of something?" He strained his eyes into the woods.
He caught a glimpse of movement in the trees but when he tried to look closer nothing was there.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end suddenly.
"I probably imagined it," Anna said quickly, her eyes still glued to the spot where Kristoff thought he had seen movement. "It just looked like… Can we get out of here now… please? This is really scary.”
“Sure. Come on, Sven.” Kristoff firmly snapped the reins.
Anna continued to grip his arm the whole way back, her fingers digging into his bicep. He tried not to let her fear affect him, but he couldn’t help but feel like the woods seemed much more sinister than they had a moment ago.
He tried to keep his eye on the path ahead of him, but his mind began to play tricks on him and he kept glancing into the trees.
Sven seemed to sense their worry and whinnied nervously, his big head bobbing up and down.
“It’s alright, buddy.” He tried to sound as confident as possible and he flicked the reins again. “Let’s go.”
When they finally exited the woods and were in view of the farmhouse and the barns, Anna’s grip loosened and Sven seemed less spooked.
Kristoff steered Sven directly up in front of the horse barn. When they’d stopped he jumped down and offered a hand to Anna, who took it, then sagged against him as soon as her feet touched the ground.
“Whoa, Anna, are you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.” She muttered into his chest. “That was just so scary. I totally thought I saw that ghost I'd been talking about all night.”
Kristoff didn't say anything. Because if he were honest, he would have to tell her he was fairly certain he saw it too.
He didn’t want to think about it. His views on the supernatural felt decidedly challenged.
He realized she was still leaning against him heavily, so he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close.
"It's alright." He murmured. "You're safe now. I've got you."
They stood still for a long time, Anna burying her face into his chest and gripping him tightly while he rested his cheek against her head.
Anna finally mumbled something into his chest.
“Huh?” Kristoff asked.
"So, do you like me... or what?"
"Uh, um-" He stammered, completely taken off guard by the question.
"Because I get the impression you do. You talk to me even when I'm annoying, and you are always helping me out, and you're nice, and I've caught you checking me out once or twice-"
"Yes, Anna," He cut her off before she could continue, "I like you. A lot."
“Then are you going to ask me out?”
“I- uh. Yeah. If you want me too.” Kristoff found himself grinning.
“I do if you want to.”
“I definitely want to.”
“Well, then why haven’t you yet?”
“I guess I was just trying to work up the courage.”
“You literally just rode through a haunted forest, possibly faced down a ghost, and you’re scared to ask me out?” She laughed incredulously.
“Yeah. You’re just so smart, and funny, and pretty, and just so warm…” He found the words falling out of his mouth so fast he couldn’t stop himself and she was blushing. “I just didn’t think I had any chance.”
“I just spent the past four weeks riding along with you on hayrides, completely unnecessarily.”
“Actually, you were incredibly helpful. You don’t know how wild those kids can get when they don’t have such a captivating teacher.”
Anna giggled. “I’m sure you used to do a fine job corralling them before I got here.”
“Yeah, but you can actually hold their attention and inspire them. That’s not an easy thing to do. You really have a gift.”
Anna seemed struck for a moment. “Huh.”
“So… Um…” He reached up and rubbed the back of his neck. “Could I take you out sometime? On a date?”
“Where are you taking me?” Anna grinned.
“I know a place that gives great Haunted Hayrides?” He teased.
“Not funny.” She put a finger into his chest. “I’m never going through those woods again.”
Kristoff kept it to himself that he didn’t believe her for a second. “Maybe we could go get dinner or something?”
“Great, I’m starved! I bet your mom has something absolutely amazing cooking right now.”
“I meant just the two of us,” he chuckled, “at like a restaurant or something.”
“Mmm. How about we do that for the second date?” She smiled and then suddenly she was up on her tippy toes and before he could blink she was kissing him.
He was only surprised for a moment, then he was quickly kissing her back. He pulled her in tight and would have gladly lost himself in everything Anna for the remainder of the night if Sven hadn’t whinnied impatiently.
“Uh, right.” He said, pulling back slightly. “I need to unhitch Sven, and all that.”
“I’ll help.” Anna offered.
When he glanced up over Anna’s shoulder he could see the luminescent figure of a woman standing at the edge of the woods. He would have assumed it was a trick of the moonlight, but what the sliver of moon that had already risen was obscured by clouds.
He would have been afraid but he saw the woman smile at them.
“What is it?” Anna asked, and she started to turn to look over her shoulder.
“Nothing. Why don’t you stick to ghost stories and leave the heavy lifting to me.” He grinned down at her.
“Excuse you, I take offense at that. I am super strong!”
“Oh, I don’t doubt it. I just want to hear what other spooky Halloween tales you can concoct and then maybe you’ll hold me tight on the way up to the house.”
“That is such a corny line.” She scoffed, but he could see she was pursuing her lips together tightly to keep from smiling. “A good line. But still corny. If you want hugs you can just ask.”
He glanced up at the woods again to see the ghost still smiling after them.