Work Text:
If there was a way to torture a man, the Snowgie Singers had discovered it. Hans would know, he was their second lead-vocalist. Right after the Broadway star turned hit children’s entertainer Elsa Arens, of course.
As co-host of the popular educational children’s TV show and traveling music group, Hans had long lamented his life’s turn from attempted equestrianism to his current fate. While belting out a solo on the wonders of keeping your boogers out of your mouth and washing your hands, Hans could only wonder if there was any worse fall from grace. There was. It came in the form of an icy blonde with perfect pitch and easy sophistication. It came in the form of Elsa Arens, who’d launched into her own ballad about wearing oven mitts, promptly stealing the show.
Oh, perfect, perfect Elsa Arens who all the shareholders loved and the masses drooled over. Was there anything she couldn’t do? Whether drawing perfect circles freehanded, being puzzlingly good at arts and crafts, or writing songs that went over inexplicably well with kid and adult audiences, Elsa Arens was the studio’s cash cow.
----
Which is why, during their “Sketch with the Snowgies” segment, the recording studio burst into laughter at her crudely drawn snowman. Turns out, drawing with her left hand while playing “Mary had a Little Lamb” on the harmonica was not her strong suit. It should have been an easy victory compared to his own picture-perfect Frosty, which Hans had produced blindfolded and behind his back. He’d also been singing “Happy Birthday” during the endeavor, but Hans didn’t want to brag too much at his imminent win.
It was not. Not by a long shot. The polls came back clamoring for more of the snowy abomination. The comments under their videos demanded more snowmen, more harmonica, more singing. Worst off, the executives chimed in. They were naming that horrible thing Olaf.
Olaf was a hit. Of all the terrible things that could possibly be made real, Olaf the Snowman was a runaway hit. Which was why, when the studio commissioned an animatronic made for the thing, Hans actually felt pity for the pretty redhead trying to haul Olaf’s mechanical body on stage.
----
“Allow me”, he interrupts, slipping past the backstage curtain and into the wings.
With his good arm, Hans makes easy work of lifting the terrible plush and dumping it neatly in the corner. When he turns back around, the pretty redhead in question is looking up at him wide-eyed, evidently caught between trying to scramble her way up and dusting off the white lint already gathered on her sweater. Extending a hand to her, Hans tries to pull her up with the suave grace expected of a member of the Westergaard line, his years in dressage not deserting him yet. Instead, he overcompensates and manages to knock them both over, landing the girl squarely on his chest.
“I’m so sorry”, Hans wheezes gallantly “Are you hurt?”
“No, no!” the redhead insists, already sliding off of him. “You– I mean, I’m fine!”.
She looks over the edge of the stage, all nervous energy and genuine appreciation for what he’d done. It’s enough to fluster him, making him unnecessarily giddy over the exchange. Hans takes the moment to get to his feet and pull her up on his way, her hand only too soft in his. She glances back at the treacherous ledge that had once separated them.
“Wow! You make me look so easy!” she gushes, smiling back at him before flushing bright red at her statement. She begins to back away in embarrassment, almost falling off stage entirely as her arms begin to pinwheel. Hans catches her waist and they instead fall into each other, beginning their back-and-forth all over again.
Still dressed in the Snowgie Singers’ uniform red and blue, Hans can’t help but be a bit theatrical as he dips into a bow. “Hans Westergaard, of the Snowgies”. It’s so embarrassingly cheesy, but she laughs and curtsies in return.
“Anna Arens, of the tech crew!” she exclaims, as if there was nothing better to be and no one else she’d want to be.
Anna, he thinks, dreamily. What a perfect name. Wait, Arens?
“Anna!” Elsa calls, pulling her sister towards the dressing rooms. The sister she’d so fiercely guarded, hidden from the public, and had publicly dissuaded from Broadway. Anna glanced back, giving Hans a small wave as the two hurried off together.
The sister, Hans noted, who’d fallen straight into his lap.
----
The plan was simple: seduce Anna, mysteriously destroy the Olaf animatronic, start Elsa’s long overdue collapse, and regain his rightful place as lead Snowgie. So far, he’d failed miserably.
The advent of Anna’s arrival had marked the introduction of more characters in the Arens-verse. There was now an abominable snowman, trolls, a talking reindeer, and the obnoxious puppeteer that had fallen into a begrudging friendship with Anna. The masses were obsessed with these new developments, demanding more interaction with the animatronics and more lore be added. That was why Hans had been cast in that particular skit.
It should have been just another friendship skit. After breaking up a fight between Abominable Marshmallow and Olaf, Hans would step in to tell them how to shake hands and hug it out. Elementary stuff for elementary schoolers, which was right up his alley. Instead, when the Olaf animatronic had leaned in for a hug, Hans had reached his arms out too wide. He’d smacked Olaf in the face, in front of a whole crowd of children and their parents.
That wasn’t even the worst part. The animatronic, in the middle of its turn towards him, had suddenly paused. Its pre-recorded voice whined shrilly, tapering off into silence. Then, as if watching in slow motion, Olaf fell flat on its back. Its carrot nose popped off, rolling unceremoniously off stage.
The crowd fell silent. Hans could fix this, he reasoned. This was not yet a disaster, these kids would not be traumatized. He’d only need to improvise a song about boo-boos, sneak Olaf offstage, and rush him to Anna’s animatronic urgent-care.
That was, until some idiot had loudly whispered “Did Olaf just… die?”
The crowd erupted. Kids began crying, parents began dragging their kids out of the room, and someone was throwing Olaf’s carrot nose around in the fray. Unsurprisingly, this was one of the worst bombs in Han’s history in show-biz. Hans was now the villain of the Arens-verse, drawing new eyes to the franchise.
Unsurprisingly, the executives loved it. They’d decided it wasn’t enough to keep the Snowgies on air. No, now they had to milk a movie out of this.
Set in Aren-delle, it would be a movie about a snow queen and her beloved sister battling against good and evil to get back together. Take a guess where Hans, in his recent face-heel turn, fell on that spectrum. Now brought on as official characters, animatronics technician Anna and lead puppeteer Christopher were cemented into the Snowgies franchise. Hans had thought sharing the spotlight with Elsa had been almost too much to bear. Now, the smelly reindeer guy was getting screentime.
Cast as the evil prince, Hans could at least be comforted that Anna was to play the film’s female lead. It would, of course, make seducing her all the easier. Right, the plan might still have a leg to stand on. Hans was suave, cool, and collected. He could certainly make Anna Arens fall in love with him.
----
It makes her confession, delivered in the middle of a late-night dance practice, all the worse.
Finally left alone, Hans draws Anna closer than he lets the world see, searches for something that the world has overlooked. Anna, for all her slips, falls, and occasional malapropisms, is sincere in a way the world has forgotten. There is nothing but faith in her, the kind that people search for their whole lives. When she looks at him, she seems to find something in him he’d forgotten too.
“You don’t have to pretend, you know”, she whispers when they’ve made their way across the sound stage and he’s winded from the trek and she’s breathing so heavily in his arms.
“What?” he asked perceptively.
Anna looks away, a bit of a blush coloring her cheeks. “I used to follow you, back in your equestrian days. I…I saw the fall”.
With that, the illusion is shattered. She had seen the clip of Hans being thrown from his horse, when he’d shattered his femur, humerus, and a dozen other bones, and had been taken off the equestrian circuit for good. He was no charming prince, dashing TV host, or dastardly villain. Hans was simply a leftover, a deviation in a long line of Westergaards born in the saddle. Anna knew he’d spent years in physical therapy, only to emerge with a slight limp in his right leg and numbness in his left hand. She knew he’d been broken. She’d known the whole time.
He can only look down at her hopelessly, suddenly vulnerable and exposed. He lets go of her, turning and trying to run away from the situation. Anna catches his hand, bringing it to rest on her hip. Hans hadn’t noticed until now, but had she always looked so fierce? Had her eyes always been this blue?
“It’s alright”, Anna tells him “I’ll lead.” And lead she does, twirling the both of them across the dancefloor.
----
That’s how Hans ends up in her convertible at the end of the night, riding shotgun as Anna drives somewhere he’s never been, down roads he’d never thought led anywhere. Anywhere that should have been important, nowhere he’d usually be seen. When she pulls into ‘Oaken’s Bakeri’ and orders them hot chocolate and krumkake and declares it a celebration, Hans has no idea what she could possibly mean. When they finally drive out to a starry cliff, watching the city lights blink into existence one-by-one, he asks.
“We’re celebrating us, of course”, Anna tells him “We’re celebrating the rest of our lives and the people we’re becoming. We’re celebrating the people we thought we were and who we’re going to be.”
Hans wonders, then, if he’d ever really wanted to be the Snowgie’s lead vocalist or follow the Westergaard line into dressage. He wonders how much of his life is paper thin, how much of what he wants is shallow and sad. He stares out into the city, into the apartments and houses and families whose love and admiration had inspired his career change. Hans wonders if he really belongs in their midst, if a life spent making them happy would make him happy too. Hans wonders if he would be happy, if love was enough.
----
It’s at another late night practice that Hans begins to understand Anna’s faith. While practicing their duet, Hans tells her her voice is lovely. It’s true. Anna’s got the kind of voice that makes rain clouds disappear and the sun shine down on Earth. To deny that would be blasphemy, so why had Elsa hidden her away?
She only blushes and tucks her fringe behind her ear, expression somehow both open and guarded. Anna looks faraway, like she’s puzzled this question over a million times in her mind.
“Elsa lived that life, y’know. She spent her whole life training to be a star, sometimes the only times I’d hear her voice was on the tapes our parents would record. When our parents died, I only got to see her on movie screens. But she never wanted that, not really. People loved her, but no one really knew her.”
Anna looks at him, really looks at him. She searches his face, seeming to find whatever it was she was looking for before continuing.
“She never got the chance to grow up and she wanted more for me. She knew I had more in me too. And by being part of the Snowgies, we can both have more.”
It almost makes him angry, the way Anna ends their conversation on that bittersweet note. A whole life spent centering Elsa, and what did she have to show for it? An entire childhood spent in comparison, never reaching her sister’s heights. A convenient child, only too happy to be let back into her sister’s life at Elsa’s convenience. It almost makes Hans angry because Anna’s life is too familiar, brings back too many memories. Anna believes in people, because belief is the only thing she has left of them.
----
That’s why, after three long years as co-hosts, Hans finally goes to Elsa’s dressing room. As expected it’s perfectly organized and tastefully decorated, typical Elsa. Well, it would be if it weren’t for the mess of papers scattered haphazardly across her desk, filled with lyrics and melodies to songs still being composed and rewritten and rerecorded. Elsa looks up from said desk, bleary eyed and drained.
“Look”, he says “you need to stop doing this all on your own.” Since Elsa had become the studio’s moneymaker, she’d also become one of Snowgie Singer’s executive producers and personally wrote the music she and the rest of the crew sang by herself.
“If this is about your–”
“It’s not,” Hans interrupts, slamming a neatly paperclipped stack of papers onto her desk “it’s about these”.
Inside are tens of songs that Anna and Kristoff had been workshopping, the stories they were building, and the suggestions they were making for the show. Getting them all together had been like pulling reindeer teeth, but Kristoff had obliged under the condition that Hans campaign for a more even screentime split. Apparently Sven the reindeer was as much a part of the main cast as the rest of them, thank you very much. It was all so headache inducing, but apparently dignity was the price you paid when working with reluctant allies.
Elsa gives him a pointed look before thumbing through the pages, eyes widening at times and seeming to stifle a chuckle at some parts. Hans knows the feeling, he’d read through their scripts too. He had to admit, they had some good stuff. Dignity, indeed.
When Elsa finishes, she stares him down, evidently trying to figure out what’s his motive. What good is he getting by sharing the spotlight, expanding on the Arens-verse, and accepting his role as TV bad guy?
Not much, Hans had to admit. But he might get to see Anna actually happy, so that would be a plus.
“I’m not going to tell you what to do. Hell, I can’t tell the suits what to do. But you should know, you don’t have to do it alone, especially when there are so many people who care”
Ugh, now he’s proselytizing, what has being “good” done to him? Honestly, embarrassment was a horrible way to die and he’d just signed his death warrant.
But Elsa seems to consider it, actually setting the script on her desk and opening her laptop. Already starting an email, he sees the header reading “Shift in Role Responsibilities” and her proposed change in the program. He leaves without a word, having done what he’d come there to do.
----
A few weeks after their movie, which had also been a confusingly near-universal smash hit, Anna finds him in ‘Oaken’s Bakeri’ as per their usual routine. Over the past few months, they’d been meeting up once a week to talk about their lives and their work, away from the view of their usual company. Today, Anna finds him hidden in a slightly obscure corner of the shop, with a piece of chocolate cake already set on the table. She sits down, already going on about her day and her grievances and what’s been keeping her up at night and what movies she thinks they should watch. Today, when she dips her fork into the piece of cake, she’s left spitting out a handful of chocolate shavings and a rather chocolatey ring. It’s a terribly awkward, gauche way to begin the rest of their lives, but Hans was starting to enjoy it. With Anna around, he didn’t mind looking so happy. After all, seeing was believing.