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dedicated ;
“I really appreciate you doing this,” says Elsa, for the ninth time, and sends another side-eyed glance his way as she finishes her signature with graceful flourish. She passes the clipboard back over the counter to the attendant, nods in thanks, and faces him fully. “Anna should really be the one trying her own wedding cake, but…”
Jack finds the reproachful look on her face a bit funnier than he should. “Caught up in school work?”
Elsa’s professional composure breaks—victory number one—and a brow slants low, wry and unamused.
“One would think,” she begins, with artful precision, “that a Master’s thesis proposal would merit a bit more… forethought.”
“Well, I mean. She’s got the whole weekend, so. It’s still before.”
“Indeed,” Elsa huffs, and Jack is smirking, but she doesn’t see because their hostess is just now arriving.
There’s some welcome chatter that Jack has a hard time paying attention to, and then their hostess is already leaving them again, apologizing and promising to be back just a moment later! for whatever reason, Jack doesn’t know.
“Have you ever done this before?” Jack asks curiously.
Elsa pitches her voice low, like she’s trying not to be overheard. Is she trying to be courteous of her volume? (In an empty, overly-large reception vestibule?) Does she think he’s talking too loud? Is she embarrassed? (Is she embarrassed to be here, doing this—with him?)
Now there's an interesting thought.
“Sampling wedding cakes?” Elsa clarifies, the tiniest twinge of sarcasm—victory number two—and yeah, okay, Jack has to admit that it was sort of a dumb question, but he had to ask.
“You never know,” Jack shrugs. He smirks again at the desert-death-dryness of her total lack of amusement. Cold and dry. High and dry, like Anna left Elsa, all so she could work on a paper that she probably should have started working on a long—
“Hey,” says Jack, the moment something occurs to him. He follows her example and softens his voice, as if he’d rather the world didn’t hear, but he takes it one step further, literally, by leaning closer into her space. By the look on her face—she notices.
“What?” she eyes him, leaning back.
“Where’s the fiancé?” he asks, but he’s not really looking at her. He’s pretending to be super interested in that floral arrangement thingy in the far corner of the room, right next to where their scatterbrained hostess is talking to somebody else. “Does he have an essay to write, too?”
Elsa’s mouth tightens. “No.”
That’s the only information she gives. Jack glances down at her, and he knows that he’s grinning, and that maybe he should really tone it down a notch. But he can’t help it.
Elsa’s eyes roll so hard and so sudden it’s a wonder she doesn’t give herself a headache. Actually, she might, if Jack doesn’t give her one first. “Sven is sick,” she explains, almost begrudgingly. “Kristoff and I were going to try to go together, but he needed to make an emergency appointment at the vet.”
“Huh,” notes Jack, chewing on his cheek. He still hasn’t moved out of her space yet. She still notices. “That’s fair, I guess.”
Elsa continues to eye him. He’d like to say that it doesn’t make him nervous, but. “Anna didn’t tell you?” she questions, incredulous.
“Not really.”
Her eyes widen, and Jack begins to feel the onset of actual Nerves. He pointedly watches in the direction of the hostess, who seems to be readying herself to rejoin them, and pointedly does not retreat, because that would be too noticeable and also sort of like giving up the ground that he’d gained from his earlier moment of boldness. And also because Elsa is the kind of woman who can smell weakness from a mile away, and the chances are that she’s already starting to see through him, anyway.
Now that she’s actually looking.
“You agreed to come today without any sort of explanation?” she prompts.
“I mean,” Jack shrugs, casual and collected, like a cucumber. Or is it cool? He’s probably not, but he can pretend. “She pretty much just called me up and said, ‘hey, you want free cake?’ and that was all I really needed.”
(Actually, it was, “Hey, you want to go eat free cake with my gorgeous sister?”
But that’s really just on a need-to-know basis, and Elsa does not Need to Know.)
“Of course,” Elsa sighs, far more downtrodden than Jack thinks she really has any right to be, considering she’s about to embark on a journey of unlimited free cake samples on a gorgeous Saturday morning at a beautiful venue with a handsome fellow at her side, come on.
“Good morning!” chirps their hostess, flocking towards them with certified Customer Service, albeit seven minutes late, and then proceeds toward all the pleasantries of starting off their session. When it comes time for actual introductions, again, because this woman is a hot mess and only ever got as far as Elsa the first time around, she looks straight to Jack and says, “So how is the happy couple this morning?”
Sick as a dog, Jack almost jokes, almost follows it up with, Actually, with a sick dog, technically, or Working like a dog, as if dogs wrote thesis papers, but instead he cuts Elsa off and says:
“Fantastic, thanks,” and smiles. He shakes the hostess’ hand with glee, and feels Elsa’s shock burning ice-cold into the side of his face. It’s not as bad as he might have thought—if he had thought, beforehand, that is—and now that it’s done, he might as well roll with it. “Ready for marriage, ready for cake, ready for samples.”
The hostess laughs brightly, though probably because it’s her job and not because she actually finds Jack funny. Normally, Jack is, but at the moment he is focusing on Acting and his Mission and Not Getting Punched. He’ll snap back into action soon enough. Hopefully. As soon as they get moving and the cake platters get placed, he’ll be golden.
As soon as Elsa says something, maybe.
Which she doesn’t, at all, even through the endless tirade of information that the hostess throws out at them as they make their way through bright-lit hallways, all white with fresh paint and cheerfully-colored paintings, everything in matching palettes and open skylights. They dutifully follow their hostess into an open courtyard with lilacs and other nice-looking flowers and trees and things that Jack doesn’t know the name for but recognizes thanks to flower-child Bunny-roo, and it’s as they’re passing a noisy fountain—as Jack is starting to regret this game, and starting it without Elsa’s permission, or knowledge, or anything at all—that Elsa commands his attention by discreetly placing a hand over his arm.
“You didn’t have to do that,” she says quietly, under the stream of the hostess’ words and literal flow of water, both. Jack is still crediting himself with not falling over in surprise, so it’s pretty hard to hear. “She still would have honored our appointment, even as alternates.”
The answer isn’t as hard to find as he might have thought. “Yeah,” he shrugs. “I know. But what’s the point of going through this whole wedding planning process if you’re not gonna enjoy the actual process itself, you know?” Before she can counter his logic, he adds, “I know Anna actually really wanted to be here, and is sad that she’s missing out. But now today is more of, like, a crazy Jack-and-Elsa adventure than her couldn’t-be-rescheduled cake tasting. This will make her less disappointed.”
They walk in relative silence as the hostess leads them into another wing of the gigantic restaurant, this time onto a private terrace. Jack tries not to look too overwhelmed by the intricacy of the napkins.
“I suppose you’re right,” says Elsa, finally, as their hostess flits away from their table to check in with the manager. Jack drops the napkin he was toying with, and his clumsy hand makes an embarrassing clattering noise with at least two pieces of his fine silverware. Elsa does not react. Her face is calculatingly calm. “Anna would appreciate this.”
Thank god. “See? Exactly. Why not try to make the most of it and add a little extra fun to it? She’s gonna find this hilarious.”
Elsa’s brows draw together slightly. Is this really such a strange thing to do? Is the idea of playing around like this really that weird? Uncomfortable? Undesirable? What, woman, what?
“Hilarious?” Elsa echoes.
“Well, yeah,” Jack tosses his head, and struggles to find that sense of easy-going calm that usually works so well. He’s making this up as he goes. “This is the kind of stuff that Anna lives for, right? And like, these lighthearted dumb pranks aren’t too far on the disapproval scale, are they?”
“On which scale?”
“Anna is going to eat this shit up. Which, you know, is—well, great, because she can’t eat the cake, which is the whole point of—anyway. It’s gonna be funny. And we’re gonna have to really sell it to keep it going, you know? Shenanigans are bound to ensue. It’s gonna be great. Think of all the cake we’re about to eat. Think of the stories. Anna’s gonna lose her freaking mind.”
A single, speculative brow had raised high at some point during his little speech, and Jack has no idea of the meaning of it, not until Elsa holds his gaze and meaningfully clarifies, “Sell how?”
“Oh. Oh,” says Jack, and feels a tiny piece of him die as warmth rushes to his cheeks. “I just mean like. You know. Stories and shit. Backstories. Our story. Because we’re dating. Or engaged—or pretending to, anyway, or something. Okay, yeah. Sorry. I just—for the record, I totally didn’t mean it like that,” but now that it’s there, on the table, he’s thinking about it, and this is not a respectable line of thinking to be having at a fancy as fuck restaurant with napkins more expertly-crafted than a goddamn spaceship.
Elsa considers him.
He notices.
“All right,” decides Elsa, leaning back in her finely sculpted terrace chair. Jack feels something shift, like a changing of the tides, or the winds, or the way the cookie-cake crumbles, and he isn’t sure if it’s for the better. “For the stories,” she repeats.
“Yeah,” Jack nods, biting back a grin but also feeling sort of like he’d really like to backflip and hide under the neighboring table. Or maybe dance on top of it. “For Anna.”
“Hm,” Elsa muses, with a speculative gleam. He’s about to defend himself further, at least before their hostess finally makes it back, but— “Are you a good actor, Jack?”
He blinks, totally thrown. “Uh. Not bad, I guess.” Pranks have to count for something, right? Plus: “I’ve… talked my way out of a thing or two.” He blinks again. “Um. Are you?”
Elsa tilts her head to the side, briefly, short and clipped and all casual-business. “I have a lot of practice, I suppose.”
“Oh,” says Jack in surprise, because this is news to him. “Did you study it?”
Elsa’s smile is wry. “Not officially.”
Jack isn’t really sure what to say. He doesn’t know why, but he gets the feeling that there’s more to it, that there’s more to what she’s told him—or what she’s trying to tell him, or what she’s just straight-up not telling him, more like—but he can’t put his finger on it, and it’s in the midst of all of his pondering that Elsa leans conspiratorially over the table towards him, just as the hostess is making their way back across the terrace, and Jack feels himself being drawn closer, like a magnetic pull, leaning over the ridiculous place settings and fine glass goblets—
“I am a very dedicated actress, you should know,” she tells him, eyes gleaming like a warning, and the second he realizes it’s mischief his stomach drops out, “It has been a very long time since I have indulged in a prank, myself. Take heed, and remember: you started this.”
“I—?”
“For Anna,” she declares, with something of an actual grin, and Jack’s head is already spinning and he can feel the hostess drawing nearer behind him but Elsa only breaks the grin out wide, leans back, and whispers, “You’re on.”
Jack watches, slack-jawed, as Elsa transforms her actual Smirk into a beatific, polite-professional, courteous smile and receives their hostess with total aplomb. The events of the last fifteen minutes replay in his mind, but still, nothing makes sense.
Has he actually just convinced Elsa to play fiancé with him at a wedding cake tasting under the official Motivation of cheering up her sister?
As if on cue, self-proclaimed accomplished actress Elsa of Arendelle swings a warm and admiring gaze in his direction, and the rest of his stomach bottoms out.
Shit, freezes Jack, near-panic. Absolute shit. These next two hours were going to be the absolute worst/best two hours of his young, wild life. And also, inevitably, complete and utter torture.
Either way, this cake had better be fucking delicious.
//