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Somehow, Lawine knows what she’s going to say before Kanne even opens her mouth.
“No,” she says preemptively but Kanne’s already sprawled halfway across her lap, diving for the remote. She knees Lawine in the ribs with her awkward fumbling and Lawine smacks her on the head for that one.
Kanne finally digs the blasted remote from out between two cushions and she points it at the screen. Elsa freezes mid-step, animated snowflakes suspended in the air around her. Her mouth is still open, caught in the middle of her song.
“Pleeeeeeeease,” Kanne whines, making her eyes big and wide and clasping her hands together like that’ll do anything to help her cause. Lawine’s been roped into one too many of Kanne’s shenanigans and her sprained finger still remembers the toll her last plan had taken on her.
“No.” Lawine tips her head away and now Kanne is practically seated in her lap trying to get her to face her again.
“Come on! Your hair is kind of the right color too!” She grabs a fistful and tugs for emphasis. The feeling definitely does not make her bristle like a cat whose back of the ear has just been scratched and Lawine definitely does not feel a rush of warm pleasure shudder through her body. A small smile spreads across Kanne’s lips and it spells disaster. “Oh, how the turns have tabled.”
Lawine flips her on the ground and yanks both of her pigtails as hard as she can for that one. She only lets her up when Kanne starts begging for mercy, swearing up and down that she’ll never dare to piss Lawine off again which is exactly the same thing she said the other twenty times she pissed Lawine off. Elsa is staring at them judgementally from the screen, the shot of her standing in the center of her ice palace burned long enough to leave an afterimage. Something warm pools in Lawine’s gut and so she cuts her gaze away from Elsa’s unblinking eyes and studies the structure around her instead. The special effects are rather impressive for a kid’s movie and while the palace isn’t exactly designed for practicality with how many little whorls are carved into it, it paints a pretty picture, she has to admit that. It could use less gaps in the walls–it’s practically begging for a frontal assault–but the chandelier’s a nice touch, it could be snapped at the stem in a Hail Mary if intruders made it in deep enough.
“It’s not going to work,” she says, even as she’s tracing the linework, calculating the structure. Kanne smiles at her, all teeth.
“Wanna bet?”
Lawine looks at her, eyes bright and glinting with something dangerous, and knows she’s already lost.
Kanne makes her tromp out to the nearby river with one of her purple throw blankets wrapped around her shoulders. She feels ridiculous in this mishmash of a get-up, her blue winter coat and the sloppy knot of hair that Kanne calls a braid trailing down her back. At least she’d managed to talk her out of the paper tiara before they left her house.
“I look ridiculous,” Lawine scoffs.
“No, no, not at all,” Kanne says but it’s off-set by the fact that she’s taking her phone out of her pocket and surreptitiously snapping pictures. “You look cute!”
Lawine tips her face away at that, the words burning through her cheeks.
“Ba-Kanne,” she grumbles and Kanne grins because Lawine only says that when she’s lost.
“Head to the center!” Kanne hollers as she sprints back towards the shore. Lawine tramps through the mud in cold-as-fuck weather, ignoring the way the icy water seeps through the cracks in her boots. The temperature is riding the line of freezing–just warm enough to remain liquid but still plenty cold enough to make her skin ache like hell. The wind whips her stupid braid into her own face and Lawine’s left coughing up her own hair, the tips of her ears practically frozen. Kanne’s lucky that Lawine likes her enough to put up with her antics. (Wait, what?)
There’s a flash of color at the corner of her eye and Lawine’s ingrained danger senses, the same ones that probably kept her ancestors from eating colorful poisonous berries, start ringing like alarm bells. She spots Kanne carting a large box that looks suspiciously like a Tribit Stormbox.
“Tell me that’s not a boombox,” Lawine sighs heavily.
“It’s not a boombox,” Kanne lies straight through her chattering teeth. Lawine puts her face in her hands and groans. She should’ve known this was a bad idea. She can list the number of ideas that Kanne’s had that haven’t been completely idiotic on one hand.
“One two, one two three!” Kanne belts out because she’s been watching too many American films and has a twisted perception on what a rock star is supposed to be. She slams the play button with far more force than necessary and the opening piano music starts.
Lawine refuses to sing as she works because she has limits and self-respect but clearly Kanne is not restrained by such mortal things. She belts the lyrics out loud enough that the birds nesting in the nearby trees abandon their homes and fly towards the sky like it’s Armageddon.
They make the base first, Kanne lifting the water high enough for them to have a little round platform to stand on and Lawine freezes it instantly. It takes an absurd amount of precision to combine two peoples’ power like this, freezing the water at its apex, capturing it when it’s just solid enough to form a coherent shape, but Kanne and Lawine have had nothing but time together and they build together as easy as breathing. Kanne does the linework and Lawine’s the colorist, filling in the gaps she leaves behind. Her work is leagues simpler than what was shown on-screen and Lawine knows Kanne can sense her sneer without even turning around.
They make the pillars next and Lawine’s got a little more control over that. She leaves intricate gaps in the ice that form little whorls once the water’s receded. Kanne’s having far too much fun hollering her way through the chorus to notice, curving the water inwards towards the top to form the curved roof. If Lawine’s too slow to freeze it, the water will end up splashing down on them and yet neither of them is worried about getting drenched.
“And I’ll rise like the break of daaaaaaawn!” Kanne sings–although screams would be a more accurate term–as she shapes the chandelier above them, doing a sloppy imitation of the one in the movie. It’s probably got half as many spikes and Lawine tries her best but the sides aren’t all even–the extraneous parts raining down on them in little droplets.
And then Kanne’s belting out the final note, holding it long enough that her face starts turning red and they’re done. Lawine sits down hard on the ice, glancing up at their little ice palace and then over at Kanne. She’s smiling so wide her grin threatens to split her face and when Kanne lifts her gaze to meet hers, cheeks rosy red and panting hard with astonishment at what they’ve built together, Lawine feels her breath catch in her throat. She does the metaphorical equivalent of tripping over her own two feet, her chest clenching tight as she stares.
And then the ice beneath their feet cracks, a hairline fracture in the floor. Kanne meets her gaze for one heartstopping second and then the crack explodes into a thousand tiny pieces, the entire structure falling apart into pieces. Lawine feels the ground beneath her feet give way and remembers to cover her head with her arms as she falls.
She gets a mouthful of cold freshwater and relaxes her muscles, even as their whole makeshift ice palace comes tumbling down on them. She trusts Kanne to carry the two of them safely to shore and she delivers, an unnaturally strong current pushing them back to shallower waters even as it washes over her head.
The two of them land starfished on the shore, the air punched straight out of their lungs. The ice is still cracking in large chunks in the center of the river and their teacher is going to kill them when she finds out they’ve frozen over half the water. Lawine’s too busy losing feeling in all her fingers to care.
“Awwww,” Kanne whines, flicking a wet clump of hair out of her eyes. “I didn’t even get to take a picture!”
Lawine lies flat on her back on the riverbank, mud staining Kanne’s blanket and her messy braid completely undone. She turns to face her with her cheeks flushed and warm, her heart racing like a rabbit beneath her skin. She knows even as she’s saying it that it’s a mistake, that indulging Kanne is like taking the first step down a landslide, a path there’s no coming back from.
“Let it go,” she says and the look on Kanne’s face is almost worth the embarrassment.