ANOTHER YEAR LATER

        “So you never actually told me if you’ve officially replaced Nick or not.”

        “Hm?”

        Jonathan looks up from his books. They're both back at his college this year; it's his last before he goes to med school, and he wants to make it count. Anna's been watching him study for the past half an hour and hasn't said a word - which she's actually quite proud of, although if she voiced these thoughts to Jonathan, he'd probably point out that the plate of cookies in front of her (which are chocolate chip this time!) were probably helping out.

        “You never told me,” Jonathan repeats, closing the textbook he's making notes from. “Have you just taken the job off Nick, or...?”

        “Ah, yeah, about that...” Anna shifts uncomfortably in her seat opposite him, unwilling to look him in the eye.

        “Is there something you aren't telling me?” Jonathan's eyes narrow.

        “Well...” she trails off, then sighs. “Nick may have actually got up to do the job tonight. And he may have actually gone to do it. And I may have remembered that we have a spare sleigh. And I may have decided to take the spare sleigh. And I may have driven that spare sleigh here,” she looks up at him for the first time during her word-vomit. “Maybe. It's possible.”

        “That's a lot of may haves,” Jonathan says, eyes twinkling. “You got any actual definition in that explanation?”

        Anna blushes. “I just...really wanted to see you.”

        “And now you can stay the whole night,” he grins. “Sure you don't have any ulterior motives?”

        She didn't think it was possible to blush any more than she is already, but her theory is quickly disproven. “W-what?” she says quickly. “No!”

        “It's okay if you do,” Jonathan responds lightly, returning to his notes with a knowing smile on his face.

        “Jonathan McQueen!”

        “That's my name, don't wear it out.”

        “How dare - wait, what?”

        “What?”

        “Wear it out?” Anna frowns confusedly. “How can you...”

        “As in, don't use it too many times,” he looks back up from his work to explain. “It's just a weird phrase we have.”

        “You have lots of weird phrases,” she murmurs into the cookie she picked up while Jonathan was talking, taking a bite.

        “We do,” he agrees with a chuckle. “But back to what we were originally saying...”

        “Which was completely wrong,” she cuts him off with a warning in her voice.

        “Was it, though?” Jonathan smirks.

        “I - yes!” Anna cries, but when Jonathan's smug smile doesn't detach itself from his lips, she huffs and rolls her eyes. “You are incorrigible.”

        “Thank you.”

        They lapse back into silence, Anna watching him as he continued to make notes. “You have nice handwriting,” she comments after a while, eyes roving over the thin delicate characters as he scribbles them onto the page.

        “Uh - thanks,” Jonathan looks slightly surprised, and when Anna points it out, he only shakes his head with a smile. “Nothing. I just haven't had someone compliment me on my handwriting since, like, the fourth grade.”

        She frowns. “Why not?”        

        “Well, I guess it's the kind of thing people stop noticing or caring about,” he says thoughtfully. “Unless your handwriting is awful, in which case people never shut up about it,” he adds as an afterthought.

        “You guys are so weird,” Anna shakes her head. “It's like you only ever see the bad side of things.”

        “I guess you're kinda right,” he agrees. “But sometimes we see the good in things. Like...like Christmas! Everyone's happy around holiday season, right?”

        “That's true,” she concedes.

        “That's the reason it's my favourite time of year,” Jonathan tells her. “Well, that and the fact that I get to see you.”

        Anna's heart does the weird thing again, and she sighs to herself. She's in deep. She's in real deep.

        “Well, I still think your handwriting is nice,” she says, changing the subject with about as much subtlety as a gun (she's never been good at subtlety. It's not her...what do humans call it? Forte?).

        “Thank you very much,” he shoots her a smile that makes her toes curl. “I bet yours is nicer.”

        At this, Anna drops his gaze immediately, feeling a flush beginning to creep up her neck. “Ah, mine? N - no...”

        “Aw, c'mon,” to Anna's horror, he rips off a piece of paper and slides it across the table to her, accompanying it with his pen. “Show me.”

        “Th - that isn't necessary - ”

        “Just one sentence!”

        “I don't - ”

        “One? For me?”

        “Uh...I don't think I can...”

        “Why not?”

        “Um,” Anna shifts. “I...don't know what to write! Mind's completely blank. Just, you know, lack inspiration, I guess - ”

        “Lack inspiration.”

        “Uh huh. Guess those old...uh...those old rivers of imagination and oceans of creativity have just dried up, you know...”

        “Creativity?” Jonathan raises an eyebrow. “Anna, it's one sentence.”

        “Which can be nothing but amazing!” Anna's sure her voice is a little too high-pitched for it to be normal, but can't Jonathan just drop it? “Only the best for you, Jonathan!”

        “I don't understand,” he shakes his head. “Can't you just - ”

        “Sorry, but no,” she cuts him off, sliding the pen and paper back to him. Jonathan's frown only deepens.

        “Anna - ”        

        “Can we just change the subject?” she can hear the tremor in her voice and God Jonathan  -

        “I don't understand, what's wrong with - ”

        “It's just handwriting  - ”

        “Exactly! So why is it such a big deal?”

        “It's a big deal because I don't have handwriting!” she blurts out, before slapping her hand to her mouth in embarrassment. Is there, like, a treatment for this? Because she's very extremely sure that it's some kind of disease. Blurty-mouth disease. I always say the exact things I try to avoid saying syndrome. Something.

        “What do you mean you don't have - ”

        “I mean I don't!” Anna interrupts. “I...I can't write, okay?”

        There's a long silence. Great, she thinks. Now he thinks I'm an idiot. Of course he does. No one likes an illiterate person.

        “But - you can read.”

        Anna blinks in surprise. She was expecting Jonathan to say quite an array of things, but that was not one on her list (her list. Her Christmas list. Ha ha. Ha ha ha. God, she needs to stop with the Christmas puns.). “Yeah,” she agrees. “But writing is way different to reading.”

        “Why did you never...”

        “No reason to,” she shrugs. “What am I gonna write sat in the middle of the North Pole?”

        “But your lists.”

        “Typed out,” Anna dismisses.

        “Oh.”

        “Yeah.”

        “Well - ”

        “God, you must think I'm so stupid now - ”

        “What? Anna, no - ”

        “I mean, look at me, you're off studying to be a doctor and I can't even write - ”

        “Anna.”

        “ - which is something even Flynn can do, right? Like, God - ”

        “Anna.”

        “ - I talk so much about living to be thousands of years old but I can't even write out my own name - ”

        “Anna!”

        “And I just - what?”

        “Shut up,” Jonathan rolls his eyes. “You're not stupid.”

        “Are you sure about that? Because I literally just told you I'm illiterate. Well, half illiterate. Is that a thing? Like, someone who can read but not write? I mean, obviously it's a thing, since I am it, but I'm just wondering if it's sort of a widespread thing or if I'm just - ”

        Jonathan sighs and leans over the table, kissing her before she can let out another syllable. All thoughts of half-illiteracy flee Anna's mind, and a few moments later he pulls away and says dryly: “Well, that's the most effective silencing method I've come up with so far.”

        “Huh?” she says dizzily.

        “So articulate,” he replies with a wry smile. “So, you want me to teach you?”

        “Mm - wait, what?”

        “Do you want me to teach you?” he repeats patiently.

        “Teach me what?”

        “How to write.”

        Anna's eyes widen. “I - uh, you don't have to - ”

        “I know,” Jonathan cuts her off. “I want to.”

        “But - ”

        “It won't take that long, since you already know how to read. Plus, we have all night, remember?”

        She thinks it over. It's strange, the idea of having an entire Christmas Eve with Jonathan, instead of a few stolen half hours - all because her brother's finally getting off his lazy ass to do his job.

        “Okay,” she whispers eventually. The smile on Jonathan's face is enough to make her feel like she's discovered the cure for cancer.

        “Awesome!” he beams, quickly moving round the table to sit next to her, bringing his notepad with him and flipping to a fresh page.

        “So, we'll start with what's clearly the best letter - it starting off your name and the alphabet and all - which is A,” he says with a grin, neatly forming the capital and then the lower case letter next to each other at the top of the page, before holding out the pen to Anna.

        She bites her lip and frowns at the paper slightly, before accepting the outstretched writing implement and bringing it to the paper. She's about to attempt to imitate the shape he's drawn when she stops short. “Wait,” she says slowly. “Which hand should I use.”

        “Whichever one feels natural.”

        “How do I know what feels natural?”

        “You just do.”

        Anna's frown deepens. At the sight of it, Jonathan elaborates further; “One hand will be able to do everything way easier than the other one, which basically won't know how to do jack shit.”

        “Well, when you put it that way,” she murmurs, bringing the pen back to the paper. Slowly, she begins to copy the shape that's already drawn on the line above, trying to recall how Jonathan had formed it. After a few tries, her as are becoming steadily more legible, and Anna feels a surge of pride at the sight.

        “See!” Jonathan says triumphantly. “Easy! And I reckon your handwriting's gonna turn out to be gorgeous.”

        Anna chuckles. “Why, thank you, Mr. McQueen. But hold on, I wanna try something before we go to the bs.”

        She switches the pen to the other hand and brings it steadily to the paper once more, forming an at least decent letter a after only a few tries.

        “Woah!” Jonathan says, voice hushed in what sounds like awe. “You're ambidextrous!”

        “I'm ambiwhat?”

        “It means you can write with both hands,” he explains. “Anna, that's awesome!”

        Anna pauses. “It is pretty awesome,” she agrees with a smirk. Jonathan rolls his eyes, but the smile remains on his face.

        “Oh, modesty,” he sighs.

        “My best quality,” she retorts without missing a beat. “Next letter?”

        By the time they've reached z, Anna is far more focused on Jonathan than the workings of the English alphabet he's attempting to teach her to write. It's not that she's not interested, it's just that, well, he's more interesting, with how warm he is next to her and that goddamn smell of his, the one of wood smoke and brown sugar, and also his hair and his fingers and -

        “Anna?” he's looking at her, brown eyes shimmering with concern, and she almost growls in frustration, because of all the people who had to be up six years ago when she was doing Nick's job for him, why did it have to be this extremely attractive male?

        “I'm going to kiss you now,” she says to him suddenly in a breathless sort of voice, and for once, she doesn't regret her I-blurt-things-out-itis, because, well, she is about to kiss him, she's going to now, and she thinks he might be about to say something, but the words never leave his mouth, his lips quickly occupied with something entirely different.

        Jonathan is a kind of drug, she muses as she drags her hands through his hair. Not just his lips and his hands and his skin - more - she's addicted to the sound of his laugh and the way he talks about his younger brother and how he sticks his tongue out a little when he writes, and oh, it's much, much more than just his lips - but, she tells herself as they both somehow end up on the couch and he's trailing the aforementioned lips along her jaw, she supposes that's also a thing.

“Jonathan,” God, she should not sound that wrecked, “is your roommate - ?”

        “Went home for break,” he mumbles against her neck, and she feels a strong jolt of - something rush through her, powerful and heady.

        “Hey,” she says, dragging his lips back up to hers and kissing him gently. “Wanna know something?”

        “What?”

        “I like you,” she whispers against his lips, smiling a little. “A lot.”

        She can feel his smile curving to match hers, and it sends a surge of warmth running though her. “I like you too,” he murmurs in response.

        “Good...” she hums, running her hands slowly through his hair and smirking when she feels a shiver run through him. “So...is this the part where we take our shirts off?”

        (They do. They actually take off a lot more than their shirts, but, uh, Anna doesn't know if it's a good idea to think about the resulting set of events or the ones that followed her saying the thing about the shirts because it's possible that she goes bright red whenever she thinks about it. Maybe.)

___________________________________________________________________________

a/n: oOOoOoH SWEET MAMA IS IT GETTING HOT IN HERE MERRY FRICKIN CHRIIIIIISTMAS TO ANNA U GO GIRL

ok there's like one semi the spectacular now reference here i'm sorry i couldn't help myself

i won't go into details but i literally risked life and limb to bring u this chap bc it's twenty past three in the morning and im downstairs and i shouldn't be also the desktop was being a fuckin dick which means all of this was typed out on internet explorer which means pain so basically pls leave me some love

and ya ok hope u enjoyed the make-out session i know u all did don't try 2 deny it u lil perverts

- mariam