ANOTHER YEAR LATER

  “And what time do you call this?” Jonathan teases, raising an eyebrow at her as soon as she steps out the fireplace.

       “I'm sorry,” Anna huffs, dusting herself off and swinging her sack over her shoulder. “I spent, like, an hour waiting for you at that college of yours in New Jersey, and then I realised you weren't even on my New Jersey list, so I checked the Georgia list and saw you were back on that one, so I figured you must've gone home for Christmas, so I finished off New Jersey and New York and Pennsylvania and came straight here so be thankful because now I have to double back and do both the Carolinas and both the Virginias. Which won't be fun.”

       “Aw, you did all of that just for me?” he needles, following her to the kitchen table that she's already gone over to.

       “No,” she corrects in a deadpan as bites into the first cookie she can grab from the plate that is ready and waiting. “I did it for Flynn.”

       “Is that so?” he slides into the chair opposite.

       “It is completely so,” she says through a torrent of biscuit crumbs. At the sight of the smirk beginning to appear on his lips, she raises a finger to point at him warningly. “And you can wipe that grin off your face, too.”

       “What grin?” he asks.

       “That one that makes you look like a conceited know-it-all,” Anna retorts, but it doesn't have much bite. Jonathan clearly notices, because the aforementioned grin only grows in magnitude, but he has the intelligence not to say anything, reaching across the table to grab a cookie and take a bite.

       “Mm,” he hums. “These are good.”

       “Such modesty,” Anna mutters, rolling her eyes again. “How's college?”

       “Tiring,” Jonathan sighs. “And stressful.”

       “Oh,” she says, eyes alight with sympathy. “That doesn't sound fun.”

       “It's not,” he agrees, sighing again. There's a pause, then a mischievous glint makes its way into his eye. “There are perks, though,” he says lightly.

        “And what are those?” Anna questions, brow raised.

        Jonathan smiles and leans back into his chair. “College girls,” he says breezily.

        Both Anna's eyebrows are raised, now, but she lets a smirk creep across her face that matches that of the boy sitting across from her. “Oh?” she asks, her tone even.

        “Mm,” he nods, still smirking. “Because damn, they are hot.”

        “I'll bet they are,” she retorts in a similar tone, then, on the pretense of being interested, she moves round the table to the seat directly next to his, sits in it, then leans in, lips near his ear. “Got your eye on any in particular?” she questions in a murmur.

        Anna can see him going pink, and smiles to herself in satisfaction. “Well - I - uh...”

        “Thought not,” she snickers, moving away to laugh at his expression.

        “That was mean,” Jonathan pouts in response.

        “Aw, I'm sorry,” she ruffles his hair. “Has your pride been wounded?”

        “What's with this new sarcastic Anna, anyway?” he questions.

        “I don't know,” she replies in a thoughtful tone of voice. “It's just...I don't know.”

        “Oh,” he nods seriously. “Yes. Definitely. That clears that up. Couldn't have been clearer if you tried.”

        “Shut up,” Anna says, slapping his shoulder. “If I'm being sarcastic, you're just being mean.”

        “Me?” Jonathan gasps, rubbing his shoulder as he does so. “Mean? Never.”

        “There it is again!”

        “If I'm so mean, how come I made you cookies?”

        “You didn't make them,” she sniffs, taking another bite. “Flynn did.”

        “Oh, really?”

        “Isn't that what you always say?” Anna gives him an innocent look, hiding her smile behind the cookie in her hand.

        Jonathan narrows her eyes playfully. “Well, even if Flynn did make the cookies, who stayed up for you, hm?”

        “You had selfish motives.”

        “And what motives were those?”

        She finishes off the cookie and dusts the crumbs off her fingers, smirk now in full view. “You were just so desperate to see me.”

        “Was I?”

        “Clearly.”

        Jonathan turns serious, then, taking her hand and beginning to trace light patterns on the inside of her wrist. The action sends a pleasant series of tiny shivers down her back. “Okay, maybe I was,” he admits sheepishly, not looking at her, and oh God, she can feel herself doing that thing again where her insides go all warm, and why does Jonathan have to be so...Jonathan?

        “You were?” she questions breathlessly.

        “Of course I was,” he looks up with an amused expression. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

        “I – I don’t know...” Anna’s a little distracted by his close proximity, and she wonders if it’s acceptable for her to kiss him now? Or should she wait until later? Or maybe he doesn’t want her to kiss him at all? Oh, what if he actually meant it about those college girls? And he was trying to break it to her gently? Or –

        “You’re doing that thing again,” Jonathan jerks her out of her thoughts, palm warm against her cheek.

        “Thing?” she frowns, but her reflex action is to lean slightly into his hand.

        “Yeah, the one where you go off into a different world and leave me behind,” he says lightly, bringing up his other hand to brush some hair from her face gently.

        “Oh,” Anna says dumbly. “Sorry.”

        Jonathan chuckles and presses a kiss to her nose. “I guess I can forgive you this time.”

        “Always known for your grace and compassion,” she mutters wryly, and Jonathan lets out another laugh.

        “What is it with you and sarcasm this year?”

        “Sorry?”

        “Hm,” he leans in and kisses her softly. Anna feels her heart do a weird skippy thing that she’s come to associate with him (which is probably not a good thing? Like, at all?) and ghosts her hand gently over his blonde hair, familiarising herself with the curls, dedicating them to memory. She feels like it’s the least she can do, map out every single square inch of skin she can reach, learn him all off by heart, something to keep with her for the three hundred and sixty four days she doesn’t see him.  

        “I have a question,” he says, pulling away. She immediately misses him, already feeling a little colder.

        “Okay.”

        “Earlier...when you said I wasn't, like, on your New Jersey list...”

        “Yeah, we have lists,” Anna cuts him off, rolling her eyes with a smile.

        Jonathan's eyes brighten almost instantaneously. “Seriously?” he asks excitedly.

        “Seriously,” she confirms, laughing.

        “What do they even say on them?”

        “Well, usually the name is a good place to start...”

        “Anna!”

        “I'm serious!” she says with another laugh. “But okay. Name, age, naughty or nice...”

        “Naughty or nice?”

        “Haven't you heard the song?” Anna questions in a dry tone of voice.

        “Well, yeah, but - ”

        “There you have it,” she cuts him off with a grin. “You know, all these questions could probably be answered if you actually let your mom put on that Christmas playlist she puts so much effort into making every year.”

        “You know about that?”

        “Of course I do,” she says dismissively, but part of her hopes desperately that he doesn't find it too weird. It's not her fault. All this moving at a different speed to humans means she has about five times longer to do everything and yes, that does sometimes result in detailed inspections of people's living rooms and a lot of snooping. Anna sees bits and pieces and tries to fill in the gaps herself; it's something she's always been strangely good, not solving anything as such, but making educated guesses, leaving as few blanks as possible.

        Now, though, Anna doesn't want to have to fill in any blanks about Jonathan and his family, not when he's there to fill them in for her, so she says abruptly: “What are your parents like?”

        Jonathan blinks in surprise. “My parents?”

        “Yeah. What are they like?”

        He arches an eyebrow at her. “You are not yourself tonight,” he muses. “But okay. If you really want to this.”

        “I do,” she assures him. She watches as he takes a deep breath and begins to paint her a picture with words.

        Diann Lee and Miles McQueen met one summer when he worked at a drive through diner and she would go through every evening and the only thing she would order would be his number. He would constantly refuse, determined to avoid any distractions that could stand between him and the internship at the animation studios he had been vying for so desperately, fresh out of college.

        By the end of the summer, Jonathan's mom had become a lot more than just a distraction, especially when it turned out she was the only other candidate applying for the same internship.

        “They still won't tell me who got it,” Jonathan says with a laugh. “But they both have jobs as storyboard artists now.”

        By now, both of them are stretched out on the couch, Anna's head resting on his chest. A thought occurs to her suddenly.

        “Is that where you get your crazy icing skills from?”

        “I guess so,” he replies, voice laced with amusement at her phrasing. “But it's just a hobby.”

        At her request, Jonathan tells Anna all he can about his parents; how they argued over naming him for an entire week but both thought of Flynn's name at the exact same time, three hours after he was born, how his mom pretends not to know all the words to Dancing Queen and his father always insists that the tears he sheds at The Lion King are from admiration of the animation and nothing else.

        Anna takes a strange comfort in the stories, closely interwoven and well remembered by Jonathan. She can start to put together an image of the McQueen family on a night that isn't Christmas Eve, happy and smiling and together, and even after Jonathan's dozed off and she's pressing a kiss to his forehead before moving to retreat back up his chimney, her heart aches slightly with the reminder that it will only ever be just that; a distant picture in her mind that she will never see in reality.

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a/n: haPPY NEW YEAR!!!!! it's twenty to four in the morning i'm tired out of my mind and i wrote half of this on my phone so i imagine there's enough mistakes here to last anyone a lifetime SORRY IN ADVANCE I SHALL EDIT TOMORROW MORNING
heres to an amazing 2k14!!!!1!