Chapter Text
How did they get here?
Elsa wonders this as she looks down at Hans Westergaard's green eyes. They look up at her with contempt, condescension sprinkled with arrogance, a snarled smirk filled with narcissism and deliberate amusement, as if he knows something she doesn't. The line of his teeth are shadowed with the bright rustiness of blood, his bottom lip bruised with a developing redness from a beating earlier this evening from a guard. He is on his knees, his arms shackled behind him as he hangs forward, chest heaving with pants from his pain. Sweat trickles into the hair of his brow, hitting an old cut hidden underneath the darkened auburn.
He is a devil kneeling there, before her, unwilling and beaten down, forced into this position beneath her as if pushed into an artificial worship, wrists cutting against the rough metal of the shackles, the links clinking together with a quiet, rebellious growl.
"Queen," he rasps, his eyes glaring and beady, heated with a glazed vibrancy. How does she look at him? Are her eyes filled with disdain? Or uncertainty? Does her skin crawl? Does it populate with goosebumps, a firecracker of electricity from the madness he creates in her skull?
She hates him. She knows it. He infuriates her, and she wants to keep him here forever in this personal prison. His own little Hell, a steady decline in his own filth, watching his life slowly fade, his arrogance gradually blunted until the root is erased and no longer there.
Doesn't she want that?
She's never been a vindictive woman. His smirk reminds her of that—he knows it, too. He thinks, will she truly suck his life out of him like a vampire, like a witch and monster? If she can do it to one man, can't she do this to many?
He's told her this before. With nothing to lose, a man's tongue twists into a thousand words, a thousand cuts, and he's done his best to hurt her with them.
He slowly stands, failing at hiding his wince. He turns his head to the side and spits out a wad of saliva and blood at her feet.
"To what do I owe the privilege of seeing you, Your Highness?" he says, his voice guttural, only a puff of breath expelling from his mouth. He is quickly losing his voice, and she sees the banded shadow of bruising along his neck.
He is pale, his skin clammy. His attire is rumpled and torn, old sweat stains marring the once cleanly cut and expensive, finely woven linen fabric.
What does she feel as she looks at him? Fear? Anxiety? Apathy? The slow, coalescing burn of a ponderous hatred, like a fissure in the deepest veins of her abdomen?
She answers several words to his questions. I do not like you, she has said. You will never attempt murder again. You will die here. You were traded by your family for silence, and I gladly accepted.
You will rot here, she said, when he goaded her, punched her buttons with his tongue, sharply and quickly. You will no longer be a man. You will no longer be the man who you are or were. You will no longer know yourself.
Oh, show me then, Queen Elsa. Warp me, rip me apart. Do you think you have what it takes? He smiled at her, a sharp, shrewd smile. She knew then he didn't believe she would. He didn't think she had the guts, the steel in her heart.
As he stands before her now, she must look up to him. He still doesn't believe, as he smirks, as his skin permanently colors into reds and blacks of broken blood vessels, as he loses his voice from cracked vocal cords.
You're a kitten, not a dog, he's told her. You drink cream on a throne. You don't eat the flesh of men.
Yours will be the first, she hissed back.
She dreads coming here. She should not continue, because it is dangerous. The cell is charged with too much energy. Fire builds in her spine and ice crackles at her fingertips, and everything is out of balance, here. There is too much. Too much musk and sweat from him, too much uncertainty and bravado from her.
She can say a lot of things, she thinks. She can say a lot of things and not mean any of them.
"I privilege you with questions," she says. She keeps her back stiff, her shoulders straight. She maintains her bravado, always—the confidence of a queen, even when insecure and faced down by a bloody and bruised specter, a smirking shadow creeping underneath a layer of her skin. She must keep her gloves on when she makes these visits, and he noticed the first day and every day since. He knows. That's the crux of the matter. He sees through her like a window, the sill opened, her frozen breezes obvious and magnified.
"Questions," he croaks, eyes shining like marbles.
Elsa clears her throat, keeping his stare. She will not be weak. She will say words that mean nothing, because she can, because this is a game just as it's always been. Goading and jabbing and twisting, finding which words plunge deep into bone, grinding and filing to the marrow.
"I have different questions, today, Hans Westergaard," she says. She looks down at her hands, spreading out her fingers in her gloves. They are white satin—excessively luxurious and bright in the dim, grimy cage of the dungeon. "I know you think me weak, keeping these gloves on."
She pauses, then she peels them away, plucking each finger up and off. She folds them together, placing them into her pocket.
"Gloveless or not," he rasps, "you'll always be weak."
She smiles at him, eyeing his hair and his clothes, all the way down to his bare feet. "Then I will ask you, now." She raises a finger up to his face, and he jerks away from her. "Oh, are you frightened?"
He grimaces, his throat bobbing with a swallow. "Of course not."
She looks over him. "If I touched your face, what would you do? Would you welcome my freeze? You always enjoy the beating of my guards. Surely you'd enjoy mine."
"You try," he says, chest heaving with effort. "To be—intimidating. You are not."
"If I encased your body in ice," she says, stepping a foot back. An ice sheet materializes from the hem of her dress, hitting his feet and rising up his legs like a flood. "Would you fight against it?"
He grunts. She can tell he is trying not to react, the smirk plastered on his face. Goading, goading.
"Fight? No," he heaves.
She allows the ice to raise up to his neck. He is immobile against the new prison.
"If I let my ice suffocate you, would you plead for mercy?" she says.
The ice cracks with her pressure, pushing into his sternum. He wheezes, head bobbing, but he smiles at her.
"Never," he huffs, his lungs desperate where his words are not.
"If I didn't use my ice at all," she says, the ice vanishing. Hans gasps for breath immediately. "Would it disappoint you?"
"Interesting," he says. "What—you're doing, Elsa."
She glares up to him, trying and failing to mimic his smirk. "If I used my hands to do my dirty work, would you pull away from them?"
Hans stands up straighter. He looks at her darkly.
"What—dirty work?"
She brings her hand up, placing her palm along the bruise banded like a ring around his neck. She squeezes. He automatically jerks away from her.
"Whatever I need to do," she says.
He dissects her with his stare, digging around to find her bluff.
"You? No," he huffs. "You couldn't."
"But I would," she says, stepping forward, closer, her blood like thunder, booming in her skull. "No one is here except you and I. All the guards are off duty. I can do what I want."
"Want?" He pushes up closer to her. He attempts to intimidate, but Elsa tries to remember he is stuck. He has no use of his body. He can only puff up his chest, peacock his strength and audacity. He can only act, just as she can, and—strangely, it's at that moment, when he endeavors to be bigger than he is that Elsa sees how small and how little the influence he has against her. It is her mind that holds her back, as it always has, and it is the feeble movement of his body that breaks her free. The rush of this makes her dizzy, lightheaded with the sense of superiority, of control.
She reaches a hand up to a bruise on his face, pressing her thumb hard into it. He shows no indication he feels it.
"If I press my fingers into every cut you have, would you scream?" she asks.
He presses his head forward, harder. His eyes are barricaded in metal as he watches her. He's angry. It heats the atmosphere, thick and purulent like an infection. "Try," he breathes.
She brings up her other hand, pressing two of her fingers into the redness around his lip. His left eye twitches. She moves to his chest, the bedraggled shirt allowing an open triangle, a shallow cut hinting at the edge. His jaw clenches with her pressure. She digs her nail in deeper, and his breath hits her face. She reaches up to his neck once more, starting gradually. Her hand is too small to do as much damage as the guards before her, but it is enough. He can easily disengage if he wants, but he is as stubborn as a mule. With a grimace on his face, he wheezes, "I'll never scream for you."
"You can't scream if I choke you."
His lips turn up in a smirk, his neck tightening involuntarily with a feeble attempt at protection. She doesn't allow herself to think as she increases her grip, as she feels his reedy pulse in the side of his neck, as his eyes narrow and his chest heaves and jerks. If she thinks about it, she'll let go, and he'll grin at her with his slimy, self-assured grin. He'll lord over her. He'll win.
His body finally relents. He buckles and pulls away from her. He goes to kneel, his body heaving to fill his lungs. The air flowing into his windpipe is loud and gritty.
"Do you…enjoy this, Elsa?" he heaves. He spits again, his shackles shaking with the force of his breaths. "Maso…chistic. Sick, little queen."
"I do not enjoy this," Elsa denies, watching him huff and puff. He's still smiling. He acts unbothered even as he struggles. It riles her. Ice sparks between her fingertips, and his eyes hook on it. "I merely want you to feel how powerless you are."
"Powerless?" he says. "No. Not when…I make you…so angry."
He's right. She is angry. She can't hide her ice—it frosts her arms up to her elbows. She maintains the façade across her face, sculpted calm and cool, eyes as passive as she can make them.
"If your only power is making me angry, Hans, then what a sorry life you lead."
His shoulders shake in laughter. "Oh, Elsa," he breathes. "Every time you visit me, you forfeit. You lose every time you walk past the threshold of my cell." He cuts his eyes up to her. "Didn't you realize?"
Her heart pounds a blistering tattoo underneath her sternum. Her neck is white hot. A swirl of fractured ice spreads from her feet, spikes forming between the lines of her fist.
She steps forward in her wrath, grappling his neck once more. The spikes of ice slice through his flesh, bright red clashing with cold, clear fractals. He gurgles, a surprised breath taken away from him. She glares down into his eyes.
"Now I know," she says, her tone seething. "But I must come down here. I must break you," she whispers. Her fingers tighten, and his wrists strain against his shackles.
"Ah," she says, as they stare at one another. "There's the fear. You're frightened, aren't you? But what do you have to be frightened of, Hans? I thought I was a weakling."
The blood begins to trickle, the droplets becoming a stream.
"I don't have the guts."
He's already pale, but he's becoming ashen. His eyes are becoming small, narrowed, suspicious, and finally—afraid. She feels the fear in his blood, wrapping around her frosted wrist, congealing there with the cold. Congealed fear in his eyes, congealed fear in the parting line of his lips.
It is euphoric—disgustingly and indulgently euphoric—knowing she is winning, transfiguring his arrogant smile into an open-mouthed frown.
She shoves him out of her grip, the lines of red coming from shallow cuts. They will not leave lasting damage, and he'll live to see another day with a few more scars and lingering bruises. His head lolls to the side. She flicks her wrists clean and the ice melts, hitting the stone floor with a pink mixture of water and blood.
They eye each other momentarily. It is easy for Elsa to maintain a withering stare, still on a high from her anger and euphoria. Hans stares back at her, face inscrutable, fear hidden under a blanket of shadow, a stone wall of silence.
Elsa swirls away from him, pushing out of the cell door, and slamming it shut. She turns the corner of the dungeon hallway, and she stops. She presses her back into the rough ridges of the wall, using it for support. Her knees weaken, and she looks down at her hands that are shaking violently. A rogue stain of Hans' blood survives on one of her fingertips. She wants to cry, but she doesn't. She wants to be repulsed with what she's done, but she can't be, because…
While Hans unwittingly showed his fear, her fear is different.
His pulse under her fingers. His blood on her hands. Ripping his leering grin off and mangling it into a frown. Clawing into his wounds, fresh and old.
She is afraid, because he's right. She enjoys it.
She's a monster when she crosses into his cell.
She dreams of pushing her nails into his flesh, feeling it give way, pressing craters along his chest, bruises forming in their wake. He awakens the deepest, darkest trenches in her heart, black desires blotting out her common sense, obscuring her empathy and compassion.
She stands above him, and he upholds his arrogant smirking when she arrives. It's always present at the beginning. His eyes slither to her fingers, waiting and anticipating what they will do.
"What torture do you have for me today, Queen?" he asks. "One of the guards cuffed my ear. Another sealed my eye shut. Will you puncture me with your nails? Will you pry my eye open and stab me with ice?"
"I will if it will make you scream," she says. He smirks and smirks, his one eye glimmering like a spotlight, taunting her.
She wields her ice like knives. He spins his words like barbs. She nicks him with tender cuts, just breaking the skin over the most sensitive areas. His palms. His cheek. The soft skin under his ear. She lures a sharp gasp from him with the last cut, a blaze of triumph flying through her from his reaction.
"Do it, then," he says. "I want to see you try."
It is altered when he goads this way, she thinks. It's changed because he carelessly hangs his body on the shackles, lips shining, black and blue. His left eye is a slit, puckered and red. He is delirious with his pain, and he laughs when she continues to cut him. He grins when she pushes her finger around his swollen eye.
"My dear queen, you'll have to try harder than that."
Scowling, she takes his head in both of her hands. She grips his hair with a merciless pull.
His one eye glances over her. In the moment, Elsa wonders what he feels as he stares at her. He's close enough to spit in her face. If she was in his position, she would do exactly that. She would be stewing in contempt. She would squirm against him, bite his fingers to the bone, growl and snarl, jerk out of his hands.
He does none of these things. He stares at her, and he waits. He's a pitiful sight. She admits it in the back of her mind. He's one big bruise. He's a sack of inflamed skin.
Ice trickles out of her palms into the sides of his face and into the threads of hair. The tips of it become frosted, as if he's walked for hours in a winter storm. The freeze surrounds his temples, encasing his skull and blinding his mind.
His shoddy grin begins to diminish. His right eye begins to close. One deep sigh leaves him. He slurs nonsensical words, valiantly saying, This won't work. You're not trying hard enough.
Then, once his body sags, jaw slackened, exhaustion creeping over him, freezing and freezing, Are you killing me? Is this what it feels like?
At the words, Elsa jerks away from him. His head bobs, and his body continues to hang. He doesn't try to move. She peers at him, but his chest rises and falls in deep breaths. He's passed out.
Her hands shake again. She tightens them into fists, and she ignores the guilt climbing her throat like vomit. She ignores it because she hates him. Because she's better than him. Because he's disgusting and cruel, and he mocks her because she's weak, and she promises to never be weak. He will never phase her.
She eyes his unconscious body, awkwardly hanging, his hands turning dark red from the cuffs cutting into them. He is a pitiful sight, she thinks again.
She goes forward and leans him against the wall, his hands recovering their normal color.
His quiet words ring in her ears that evening, vulnerable and soft and unfiltered.
Are you killing me?
Is this what it feels like?
He is bothered when she enters the next time. His face is curved differently. Neither eye is swollen, yet he is still decorated with the constant bruises and cuts. He smirks at her, but his eyes follow her with suspicion, with a distant wariness.
"Are you afraid, now?" she asks him.
"If you have to ask, the answer will always be no," he says.
"I almost killed you," she says.
"And yet you didn't," he says. "You aren't a killer, Elsa."
I wish I could be. The thought darts unheeded in her mind, and she flinches at the words.
"I can make an exception," she says.
He eyes her, and she's ready for his laugh or his smile or rebuttal of her character. The distant wariness is back, but he smirks. Always smirking, always hiding.
"What will you do, today?" he says. "Cut off a finger? Slice off my ear? Blind me?"
"Fantasizing?" she asks.
"Preparing," he answers.
It surprises her. She's never thought of him needing to prepare for her visits. Or for anything else.
He's sitting on the ground this time. She comes forward and kneels in front of him. She reaches out a hand, and she notices him slightly shift against the wall. His shoulders press back.
She rests her palm on his stomach. "Do the guards feed you, or do they eat your food in front of you?"
His eyes flicker from her hand to her face. "Would you believe a prisoner over your own guards?"
"I've always had my suspicions. How is your hunger, Hans?" A large, blue snowflake appears from under her hand, expanding along his shirt.
His stomach is a taut band. "A different tactic you're playing, Elsa?"
The snowflake blooms bigger. His face denotes no discomfort, but his body cannot hide it. Goosebumps raise along his forearms. A shiver runs down his spine.
"No tactic," she says. Her ice becomes a corset around his abdomen. "No strategy."
Her nails dig into him. Her ice curls around him like an unrelenting hug. He tips his head back and watches her.
"Sure," he says. "No strategy."
Elsa builds her ice. She's learned from previous experience with Anna that her ice can penetrate through skin without tearing it, like water soaking a blanket.
She pushes her hand harder into him, urging the ice deeper. Hans' mouth parts a little, his breath squeezed forcefully out of him.
"What kind of hunger?" he says after a moment. He coughs, his shirt's wrinkles becoming frozen. "You're not talking about food."
"Living," she says softly, taking her hand away from him. The ice lingers. His jaw clenches. His eyebrows bunch. He's miserable.
When he says nothing, she continues. "You're scared of dying. I've seen it, and why? You're not getting out of here."
Hans' bends his knees, shifts around. His shoulders jut forward. He's scrambling uncomfortably, just slight, squirming motions, and he coughs again.
"What did you do? Freeze my stomach?" he huffs.
Elsa swallows her sympathy. It is mixed with the power of control, the disgusting indulgence, and she isn't sure what dominates inside of her. A strange blend of pleasure and guilt.
"Yes," she says.
"My hunger," he says, twisting around. He makes a frustrated grunt. "I don't know. Nobody wants to die."
She watches him. "Not even you? After what you've done?"
"No. Especially not after what I've done."
Elsa frowns deeply. The ice digs deeper, and Hans coughs and coughs. His face pinches. His knees curl up to his chest.
"Why?"
Hans looks up at her. He's angry. It permeates off him like steam.
"I want to watch you fail, Elsa," he says. "You want to break me, and I want to break you." He pushes his head against the brick, pinching his eyes closed. "I will break you, if it's the last thing I do. It's all I have left."
"How will you possibly break me, Hans, tied up as you are?"
He shakes his shackles, growling. The pain is increasing, stomach shriveling in a violent quake. It is a vicious thing she's placed inside of him. It is a lump of crystal ice, a rock in his stomach, his smooth muscle inactive in frozen stasis.
"I will," he hisses. "I will."
His smirk is gone. His arrogance washed. Sweat beads along his brow. Under the haze of unreachable, unrelenting pain, Hans is dressed down to his skeleton. She's passed over his invulnerable shield of skin to his soft, unprotected insides. That's all it took. Less punches to his jaw, more clawing inside his bright red meat. Slipping under his skin in the most literal form.
This is only temporary. As soon as she lets go, he'll recover his grin. He'll bounce back quickly. But for this moment—for this moment, she sees the helpless man who has no future, who is disowned with no family, not a penny to his name. Isolated and alone, utterly and completely, as he should be. Shouldn't he be?
It's all I have left.
She is a monster inside this cell. He is creating a monster in her, and she wonders if this is what he means. He's not breaking her—he's creating something. She can stop it if she wants—she knows she can—can't she?
Every time she passes through the cell door, she leaves part of herself behind. She loses a little, but watching him writhe under her control...she wins a little, too. It outweighs the loss, because he's falling apart. He's peeling open. He slides down to his side, breathing heavily.
"How long...will you watch me?" he asks, his eyes glazed.
"Why?" she asks. "Can you not handle a little bit of my ice, Hans?"
His jaw clenches. She's certain he'd glare at her if he wasn't so preoccupied.
"Of course...I can."
"I'll stop when you ask me."
He growls at that. He'll never ask her. He'd never let her win that way. He'll never give in. There's something admirable in that. Admirable and idiotic.
A minute passes, and Elsa almost relents. She has to walk away from him and glance out the cell window. When he coughs next, it is wet and strangled. Blood and spittle lie beside him, and Elsa lets go of him immediately.
His entire body unfurls. He goes to push himself up off the ground, but his body shakes and he remains on the ground. He is void of strength. He sweats rivulets as his body accommodates the internal changes.
But he smiles, and the monster in her grows and grows.
There's a thing about passion. It twists easily with a tongue, a thought, an idea. An emotion so pliable, jumping between hate, anger, lust, greed, envy. It dips a toe into every sin. It taps its finger on shoulders, turning eyes to look behind them, to pause, to wonder. It's a buildup—a scream caught in the throat, a kick in the stomach, nails cutting into skin.
It is an unfaithful mistress, overflowing Elsa's body like a bounty, leaving her wanting in its wake.
Tonight, they are a meter apart. The cuts on his face are a permanent fixture. His pain is exhilarating. Her heart speeds up when he forgets not to wince, when he slips up and shifts his body, trying to find another position that is not so sore. When he's vulnerable, she thrives. She doesn't feel this way with anything else. It perturbs her. It is unsettling—a dark pleasure she's addicted to. She knows it's unhealthy. She questions everything about it, and she is always uncertain. She doesn't know where this will take them—her torture, his smirking, her bravado, his indomitable demeanor.
They stare at one another. His eyes are dark, the color of a shadowed forest. The whites are bloodshot. He smirks at her, waiting.
"You can maim me. You could find a way to obliterate me, but you still haven't made me scream."
"I want your body intact," she says. "I only want your mind shattered in pieces."
His eyes rake over her. She should be repulsed. She should sneer. Instead, she feels naked, as if he can see beyond her layers and layers of clothing. Her heart scuttles behind her ribcage.
She makes him bleed, makes him grimace, and makes him feel pain, but it is not enough, anymore. Like the greediness of passion, of addiction, she needs something else. She needs to raise the stakes. As barren and forlorn as he is, she thinks, what else is there? What would he be if unshackled? If able to attempt something other than empty words? How can she make him lose his mind when physical pain is not enough?
"If I freed your wrists, what would be the first thing you would do?" she asks.
A glint crosses over his eyes.
"Do it,"he says. "If you're so curious, let me show you."
He'll plunge his fists into her chest. He'll rake his blunted nails into her skin like hooks. But he can't, because her ice would kill him first.
She allows one hand to land on his pant leg, upon his upper thigh. He stares her down and she stares back.
"Pain doesn't deter you," she says, and she is nervous of what she's about to do. It's a darkened blanket, a shadow out of her periphery grasping her with its fingers. "What about pleasure?"
"What about it?" He growls.
Her hand inches up further, and his back claps against the wall behind him.
"You don't know what you're playing at, Elsa," he says. His voice is gruff. This bothers him, and it is so obvious. She nearly smiles.
"I think I might know, but why don't I make sure?"
She presses her hand closer to the seam of his pants. They are thin, a barely there protection against the pressure of her palm, and his jaw clenches. She can almost hear his teeth grind.
"You're naive and innocent," he sneers.
"Am I?" She edges closer to him, and the lines of his face are tight. It's euphoric seeing this allowance of emotion. It splits across his face like a stain, and it drowns out her nerves. "Then why don't you tell me to stop, Hans?"
His throat bobs in a swallow. She has him undeniably pinned, beneath her hand and with her words. He will never say no. He will never ask her to quit. He'll bear it, as defiant as he is. He may even smile. The hate in him must be growing, because she can feel hers growing too—can't she?
Blooming in her chest. Caressing her bones. A hot, burning flare. She adds the slightest bit of friction, and Hans turns his head, glaring at the opposite wall. She's shocked to feel his arousal along the knuckles of her fingers. She almost jerks her hand away from him, but this was her intention wasn't it? So she forces it to stay, watching the cords of his neck tighten with fascination.
"Tell me to stop and I will," she whispers, one, two, three fingers testing and running along the most sensitive part of him. This is how to do it, she thinks. She's curled right under his armor to his soft underbelly. He doesn't look at her.
"Is that what you want?" he asks. "For me to stop you?"
She eyes the profile of his face, all blotchy with pale skin and grey bruises. She leans forward. "No," she says. She grips him in her palm and he is trying not to react, his body twitching involuntarily, his eyes trying to focus. "No, I want you to feel this."
He finally huffs after a minute, rolling his head back to look at her. His eyes dart down to her hand for a moment before he looks up to her and smiles.
"If you think this is going to make me bend, think again," he says. "I'll need more than this."
"Oh?" she breathes. His eyes underlie his bravado. They shine like they're alive. "What do you need?"
"More," he says again. "You think I'd lose control without your hand actually on my skin?" he scoffs. Y"ou underestimate me, Elsa. I'm disappointed."
She's never done this before, but he can't win, of course. He might even know. He might be calling her bluff. She moves her hand to the waistband of his pants. "I never underestimate you, Hans. Not after all this."
She dips her hand into his pants, and she finds the smooth skin—almost unbearable, delicate, silky—and she tries not to gasp. She's close enough to feel his stomach clench, and his smile falters a bit. He stares at her, never looking away. She stares back as she feels him, explores and experiments. She tries to find the weakest point, the right pressure to make him begin to crumble, to see his eyes fall away from her.
They don't fall away from each other. Something hits her throat as she does this—watching him so closely as she gently memorizes the most intimate, physical part of his being. Her heart booms like a racehorse. Uncontrolled ice slips out of her fingertips, and he buckles under her. A rush of breath flies out of him.
"Did you forget about my powers?" she asks.
"Of course not," he says smirking. "Do it again."
She does. He leans back into the wall. Her fingers find the end of his length, and his smirk bends beautifully.
"This is someone's twisted fantasy, I'm sure," he says, his voice a level thicker. "Being a prisoner, getting a mediocre handjob from a queen."
She tries not to let the word ring in her mind. Mediocre. She squeezes harder, and he jerks.
"How's that?" she asks. "Better?"
"Your hands are too cold. It's a bit of a turn off," he says in response.
"Then why are you sweating?" she asks. A line of sweat is beginning to bead along his forehead. "Maybe I'm not cold enough."
His bodily reactions steady her. His words are his only defense, after all. His words are all he has.
She keeps her pace rhythmic and constant. He's smirking and says, "Too bad you're so frigid. It's no wonder you're forced to fuck a prisoner. No one else will have you, will they?"
His words involuntarily make her pace increase, her pressure rise.
"It seems like your body enjoys this," she says roughly. "Why can't you control it? If you hate me so much, surely you'd be able to keep it in your pants."
He smiles at this, but his brows pinch. He scoffs and it sounds like a sigh. "Do you even know what that means, queen?"
His words are broken with longer pauses. He doesn't allow his words to sound forced or under duress, even as his neck begins to redden.
"I do now," she says. "You're unraveling."
"You wish I was," he says back. His body is pressing hard into the wall. One of his knees is beginning to bend, and Elsa realizes he's in a bracing position.
She keeps going, their eyes still locked. She leans closer, pressing her shoulder into his chest. At this angle, she can see his eyes are burning bright, the edge crazed, and he must be close.
"Hans," she breathes, icy breath hitting his feverish neck. "Hans. Let go."
"No," he breathes back. It finally sounds like he's breathless. His eyes become half lidded. "No, I...won't."
Her arm is burning. She squeezes harder and harder. She hits the top with her thumb once and twice, and the shade of Hans' face changes color—it surprises her so much that she does it a third time and a fourth, and then—
That's all it takes. She knows when it happens. His whole body trembles. His eyes finally snap shut. His lip curls. He tries his damnedest to the very end to give her the barest emotion, but his expression—she won't forget the split second of when he lost all control. When she pulled the soul out of his body. She has it memorized as soon as she sees it—vulnerable, face pinched, every movement trying to reject the impossible.
It floods her system like a drug. There is nothing like it.
Nothing even close.
Some days, she will bring him pain. Others, pleasure. Yet, like with every greedy passion, every awful addiction and insatiable hunger, she needs more.
More. More touching, more control. More bending and twisting of his pride. More sneers of displeasure, of him trying so hard to avoid the unavoidable sensations and the unwanted release.
He's becoming better at holding back. It takes a little longer each time, it takes a little more effort, a little more attention and unwavering stares, but always, inevitably, he crumbles. She wins.
Is this the part where you finish me? Hans wants to ask her, time after time. The part where you force my body to react how my mind never will? To find the pulse of my emotion, to wheedle me down until I give you the expression you want? The agonized declaration for you to stop or continue because I'm falling apart?
To show you that you're winning? That you're emptying me until I'm dry with nothing left to give?
As she touches him, fingers so intimate and kneading, he wants to ask, What about you, your highness? Do you get off on watching me succumb to your fantasies? Does it exasperate you when I don't make a noise? When I don't react how you want me to?
Do you like how my body trembles under your fingers? The rush of control that fills you? Feeling me spill all over you?
How long will you do this until it's not enough? The edge of pleasure and pain doesn't fill you as it once did. You want more, just like I want more. You want me to scream just like I want you to cry out in frustration, in revulsion, in anger. I want your face to twist with discontent, never fulfilling what you want.
"What's next, Elsa?" he asks her when she finishes with him. He lies against the wall, his wrists perpetually pulling at the shackles. "What else do you want to do to me?"
She looks over him, wiping her hand delicately with her handkerchief. She smiles at him, but she feels the tightness in her abdomen, in her jaw, the needy pull of greed. Of more.
"I want to see what you'll do to me," she says. She comes around him, her hand hesitating around one of his shackles before she pushes a pick of ice into the lock. His left wrist comes free, and the release of weight is jarring. His fingers tingle with life. He can't hold back a sigh.
"What I'll do to you?" he asks, smirking. "Nothing good, I assure you."
"I'd expect nothing less." She continues to sit close to him, giving him ample room to touch her if he'd like to. When he does nothing but watch her and flex his fingers, she grips his hand and brings it to her neck.
"I've choked you," she says. "Don't you want me to stop breathing?" She squeezes his hand tight against her windpipe, her delicate neck. Her pulse is wild, vibrating into his palm like thunder. He watches her and she watches him back. He relaxes his hold, moving his thumb to hit her jawline. Then higher to graze her bottom lip.
She remains still for him, and it's perplexing. He moves his hand down to her shoulder, along her rib cage, to her hip. He pushes his thumb deep into its curve, waiting for her lips to part, for her to make any kind of reaction. She swallows, and it's enough for him. He gives her a tawdry grin.
"Has a man ever touched you, Elsa?" he asks her.
She smiles back at him. The tension of the game thrums between the inches of their bodies. "You don't think anyone has, do you? What would you feel if I said you were the first one?"
"I'd say I don't think you're lying, even though you wish you were," he says, gripping her tighter. "You wish you had more experience. You wish you wouldn't blush every time you feel my arousal."
Redness swarms her neck, and she glares at him. "I'm embarrassed for you. You're smaller than I imagined."
"Because you would know what constitutes as small," he snipes back. His hand lowers to the top of her thigh. She has three layers of undergarments underneath her dress, cushioning her with thick protection.
"Sore point, Hans?" she asks. "Did your brothers tease you?"
He runs his hand down to her calf, finding the lip of her dress.
"Have you thought about what I might feel like, Elsa? Not in your hands, but between your thighs?"
"You're repulsive," she says, eyes catching on his hand. It crawls up underneath her layers.
"You're a twisted little fiend," he says back, reaching up the inside of her thigh. She does her best to keep still, to not move away. Her body is tight, attempting calmness. It's as obvious as a storm on the horizon.
"Are you afraid, Elsa?" he says, one finger hitting the seam of her underwear. "You did this to yourself. Are you afraid you'll enjoy what I do?"
She grimaces at him, but she contradicts her expression by moving onto his lap, bringing his hand higher up to the juncture of her thighs. She pushes herself into his hand, and it's a surprise. Exhilarating and electric and terribly bold.
"Do you need me to show you what to do?" she taunts him. He feels a cold band along his wrist underneath her dress, and he doesn't have to see it to know there's a necklace of ice, delicate and threatening—a juxtaposition, a contradiction—along the joints of his hand.
She is evoking dominance. She is trying to feign power and control, but he can do what he wants to her. He can make his fingers as mean as he's able, even with the ice tied around him like a string. She won't tell him to stop. He wonders if she'll cry.
"Is it your turn to scream for me?" he asks her.
She grins, and it is dark on her face. It contrasts with her innocent eyes, making it all the more devious and artful. The imbalance cuts into him more than he expected, and he unceremoniously pushes his fingers beneath her underwear.
She doesn't expect it so soon. Her hands grip his shoulders. She holds back a cry. He knows she does, because he can feel it shudder through her chest.
"A queen like you, debasing herself with a prisoner. How will you go on after this?" he heckles her.
She tries valiantly not to respond to his ministrations, and they stare at one another as he hits the soft switches on the outside, then delving deeper inside of her. She is hot and slick. Her frosty breath hits his neck. Ice trails along his shoulders and down his chest. It creeps along the walls like spider's webbing. He's winning. She can't contain herself. She doesn't moan or pule, but her eyes tell him the story. He's breaking her down into a melted puddle of water.
"No one will believe you. I'll be the only one who knows we've been this close," she says. Her hands trail down to his groin, and her eyebrows pinch together.
"You're..." she trails. He hardens against her.
"I'm a man," Elsa, he says, curling his lip. It is his excuse as much as it is his defense. He can't control his body like he can control everything else. Her body is too full against him. She could be anyone and he'd respond exactly the same. It doesn't matter if he wants to break her. It doesn't matter that he wants to make her cry, to question her actions, to regret this all.
He bends his finger. Her lips press together, turning white. Her ice begins to wrap around his wrist, constricting him. She tries to protect herself, but he is incessant. He keeps his pace. Her body begins to tremble.
She reaches into his pants and grabs him, and he knew this was coming. He knew, and it still doesn't help. He's already halfway to orgasm, with the heat of her body, with how tender her flesh is, with how desperately she is gripping him with no sound at all. They watch each other. They watch each other unfold. Hans knows her face better than anyone else, now, knees squeezing his hips, her body shaking in his lap. He knows what she feels like when she hugs his fingers, as he milks her mercilessly, as the ice burns his wrist and her hands squeeze until he unravels with her.
They breathe hard, but that's the only sound they make. Their bodies scream but their mouths remain quiet, lips twisting and locking and not saying a word.
When Elsa leaves him, she fixes her skirt, slicks her hair back into her braid. Nothing is amiss except for the glow around her cheeks, a healthy flush with gleaming eyes. A forced orgasm is an orgasm all the same, and it runs through her bloodstream like a hit of heroin, the high she's been searching for, the one thing she didn't realize she needed. They control each other—she used him for her own pleasure, and he made her feel the way he wanted her to. Who wins in this instance? She'll argue she does—she allowed his hand freedom, forced him to pleasure her as roughly as he wanted. She surrendered a level of control only to finish superior in the long run. His body responded well enough. Her heat and intensity inspired his own arousal, again, twice in one evening.
Hans will say he controlled the intensity of her climax. He gave her a level of sensation she's never had. He can lord it over her. He doesn't have to give her what she wants. She needs him for this newfound greediness, this burgeoning need. He sees it in her eyes, as much as she'll deny it. Now that the box is open, now that she knows what could be, there's no going back. It can only build. It can only evolve.
It is her monster. The ripple of uncontrolled power. It is the fiend.
"What do you want from me, now?" Hans asks her the next time. "Will you release my other hand?"
She stands before him, arms crossed over her chest. Her eyes cross over him like a line of fire. They are bullets, penetrating deep. She's getting better, he thinks.
In a moment, the shackles behind him snap loudly. He jumps a little, but his wrists come around, completely free. The metal has broken with her ice, the shards sparkling like glass under the moonlight that filters in through the bars. He remains sitting, staring up at her and waiting for her next move. It's never this easy.
"What will you do now that you're free?" she asks. "This is what you wanted, isn't it?" She stalks forward, standing in front of him.
He goes to stand slowly, watching her movements, looking around the bottom of her dress for any threats of ice.
"You could easily slit my throat, and everyone would conveniently turn their heads," he says. He takes a step forward to meet her. "If I make one wrong move, am I a dead man?" He smiles. "Probably not, considering it's you. You're still not a killer."
She calls up ice along her fingertips, sharpening them like claws. She raises a finger under his chin. "If you try to kill me, then I'll try to kill you."
This time, he believes her. He smirks, bringing his hands to her hips. He digs his own fingers into her. "You want to control me. What do you want from me?"
Your life, she wants to say. Your soul. You on the ground in a tangle of your own madness. Intangible things that are impossible.
Instead, she eyes his mouth and brings her hands up. She runs her fingers along the seam of his lips. Her nails hit his teeth.
"Your mouth has been your weapon, wielding your words," she says. "Use your mouth on me as you would use your hands."
A thin, blue glow of ice surrounds both of his wrists and his neck, the threat of her power lingering and prevailing.
"Make me scream," she whispers. "Do you think you can?"
It is a challenge, a dare, a taunt. Her eyes are filled with dusky heat. A lustful predator is enveloping her, and Hans can use this. He can make her believe she has him wrapped around her finger, like a puppet on a string.
He pushes her backward until the wall stops her. He kneels to the ground, and he rips the skirt of her dress with fierce, precise movements. She shifts a little, but he grabs her legs to keep her in place. He doesn't say anything. Instead, he grabs at her underwear and tugs it down, pushing the tulle of her dress out of his way with impatience. He gives no preamble. His mouth is on her in seconds.
Her body jerks, but he presses against her legs to keep them open. She wants to squeeze them shut until his tongue encourages her to relax against him. When he grazes his teeth against her, he hears her sharp, sudden gasp, and it spurs him on. He wants her to keep gasping, he wants her to choke on her breaths, he wants her to roll her head back against the wall and beg him for more and more and more. He wants her to say his name, just a puff of air from her lips, because that will be it. That will be everything.
He moves her legs onto his shoulders and he leverages her up, changing the angle. She presses into his mouth, rhythmic and unrelenting, the pulse hot and burning along the lines of his tongue.
She gives way a minute later, her inner thighs shaking, her legs wobbly and weak. He thinks about letting her slide to the floor on her own, landing with a thud on the ground, but she untangles herself from him first. She pushes off and uses the wall to hold her up. She stares down at him, eyes glancing over the shine hanging on to his lips and his chin.
"You didn't last very long, Elsa," he cajoles, smirking. "I thought you had more control than that."
"Your teeth are sharper than I gave you credit for, Hans," she says back. She fixes her skirt while her eyes settle lower, and she begins to smile. "You're not so unaffected."
"Like I said," he shrugs. "I'm a man."
"Then you can finish off yourself," she says, waving her hand. Icy cuffs hold his wrists in front of him, and he sits back, the shock of the ice sudden and abrupt.
She turns and leaves him. He watches her go, his arousal painful and desperate, bursting at the seams. He thinks he might have lost this time, after all.
From that time on, Elsa keeps Hans unshackled. She lets him roam and prowl around the cell. He's a ragged wolf, starved and bedraggled, hackles raised as his eyes follow her movements.
He doesn't frighten her as much as he used to—ironic, that he seems more harmless now when freed than he did when cuffed to the wall, but it's easier. She can bring him to his knees if she feels at all threatened, if he wheedles her enough, if he angers her. All of his words seem directed toward making her react, and while she knows this might be his intention, her heart beats too brightly when she sees his frown and his pain, the unwitting expressions he makes. He never begs, he always smiles when the shocks pass, but he always gives her what she loves: the shadow of feeling, a flicker behind his mask.
His eyes dig into her like a pickaxe as he prowls. She wonders if he's trying to find what she is—the flicker, the shadow? He wants her to flinch, but she's ready for it. The game gets harder, but they are getting better at playing.
Who will crack first? She thinks. Who will be the first to crumble?
Sometimes, he stands close to her, hovering over her. They leer at each other, their breaths intermingling, tainting the other.
"What do you want from me this lonely night, queen?" he asks her. "My fingers? My mouth? Or will you finally take the leap and plunge your ice into my chest?"
"No," she says. There is one more thing left. Elsa knows it, and she knows he does, too. Her stomach steels. Her heart gallops. They stare into each other—and they are so good at staring. She reaches forward and presses her palm into the tender seam of his trousers. Veins of ice climb out along his hips. "You know what I want."
What they want. She sees it in his eyes every time. He can't hide it. The lust is as prevalent as the greed and the gluttony and the wrath and pride. They swarm his skin like ants. His knuckles tense. His eyes dilate. Their breaths intermingle, because they are always too close.
She pushes him backwards until the backs of his calves hit his pitiful cot. It is merely a cushion that hugs one corner of his cell, but it is enough. It will do.
"Use your hands and your mouth," she says. "But I want this." She grinds her hand against him, and one of his knee buckles. He raises a brow at her, one hand forcefully gripping her hip, the other already moving her skirts out of the way. He leans forward to her ear.
"You'll scream."
It's a promise. It's bordered with triumph. His fingers are pulling at her underwear.
"I won't, but you will," she says. His fingers slip into her skin, dipping and hitting the tender warmth. She exhales, but that's all she allows. She shoves down his pants and grips him just as fiercely. A short grunt is pulled from him, and that's what they give each other. Quiet sounds, silent expressions hidden under deep sensation.
It is frightening how well his hands know her. He hits an insatiable spot, and she grits her teeth and shoves his hand away. Then she shoves him backwards onto the cot, and she quickly follows him, placing herself on his lap and straddling his thighs.
He looks different this way, on his back and pressed down into the mattress. The moonlight glints off his hair, and it looks red instead of auburn. "I'm surprised. I didn't think you'd go through with this," he tells her.
"I hope you've done this before. It won't be as fun as I was hoping if I have to guide you."
He's smirking. "This will be much more painful for you. My fingers can only stretch you so much."
"You're disgusting," she says, her lip curling in distaste.
"You're the one straddling me, Elsa. Take off your dress."
She's never taking off her dress. He will never see what she looks like. He may feel, but he'll never see.
In answer, she moves up on his lap.
"No," she says.
"What a time to be modest—"
She glides over him, and his words end abruptly. His lips are parted, his eyebrows pinch, and his eyelids flutter. She feels it like a shock to her system—the power, the rare slack-jawed expression, and the friction of his flesh against her.
He comes back to himself in a moment, and he crawls his hands up her thighs until he reaches her hips. He rolls her forward, back and forth and back and forth until he's positioned at her entrance. She has nothing to hold onto other than his shoulders—the wall is too far away, and if she used the mattress, their bodies would be too close. Elsa knows that's a silly thought considering everything else, but she doesn't care. The distance matters to her.
She tries to prepare herself. She knows it will be painful before it will be ecstasy. He will not be gentle. He will not take his time. He will try to make her lose her mind, but so will she. She locks her eyes on him, and he takes her challenge. As he brings her back over him, he begins to slide into her, filling her up. It is a deep, deep pressure, and she tries not to whimper. She tries not to shake. Her body accommodates him, but it is sharp, like a knife plunging again and again, and it feels like she's tearing. She bites the inner meat of her lip hard, trying not to cry out in agony. The hands on her hips are unrelenting. The rhythm is a force. She is quaking, and she is not in control of anything. He is guiding her with his grip and his hips and she is spinning out, unstable with her footing, bombarded with too many sensations that toe the precipice of white hot pain and blazing pleasure. It pulls and tugs, pushing forward even as she wants to slow down. A fire blooms, a terrible heat competing against her ice.
Hans flips them over without losing contact, and Elsa can't stop him. Her ice covers them in a thin blanket, and snow lines the walls in white powder, but there is too much. Too much. If she allows any more her ice to expand outside of her, she might start a never ending winter, again. She might turn the castle into an icicle. She might kill Hans, and while that should be fine, it would be fine, it's what she wants, it's not.
It's all she can do, then, not to cry out, or scream, or moan, or expel her voice for some relief. She covers her mouth with her hands, and she lets him continue winding her up, the fire consuming her—somehow more powerful and ravaging than anything else they've done.
He grabs one of her legs for a handhold, and he tries to smirk down at her—she sees it and is consumed with an odd mix of rage and pleasure—but it evolves into a grimace. His face is pinched in concentration, a sheen of sweat lingering along his neck. She bites her hand as hard as she can to keep herself quiet because it's unbearable, she's imploding, she may even be dying from the intensity, and it's just one thrust out of many when she finally feels the snap of her body, when it gives and breaks. She wants to twist out of her skin.
She squeezes him, strangles him. The inside of her clasping around him just like her fingers around his neck. Her eyes slam shut but not before she sees him unravel, too. His eyes are manic, tinted in the color of the craze. He is far from unaffected, and that's enough for her, even if he wins tonight. Even if he wins, he's lost something, too.
Neither try to hide their heavy breathing. He looks down upon her, and she looks up at him. It's a sick kind of fascination, watching the other in the afterglow, with the rush of the high fresh and wet and bright in their system. Hans disengages himself from her after a moment, and they lie on opposite sides of the mattress, catching their breath. Her dress is in a muddled disarray, with her corset somehow loosened, her skirts torn up in some places. She fingers the cotton fabric and the dangling threads.
"Take your dress off, next time," he says. He runs a hand through his hair, readjusting his trousers. "I'll rip everyone you have, and your reputation will become suspicious."
"Are you worried for my reputation?" she asks facetiously. "That's odd enough, coming from you."
"As much as I like to ruin your clothing," he says. "You'll soon be out of dresses to wear."
"You make it sound like you think this will be a normal occurrence."
"It will be," he says. "After this, the normal won't be enough for you."
She turns her head, catching his eye and glaring at him. "You don't know what is and isn't enough for me."
He smirks at her. "As much as you hate me, Elsa, you like what I can make you feel."
It's a terrifying conclusion, she thinks, as she glares harder at him. "Be careful. Your ego is showing."
"It's always showing, Elsa, because you make it so easy. You could barely hold back your moans. I bet you wanted to cry out my name, didn't you?"
Elsa nearly snarls at him, forming ice cuffs around his wrists. She stands up, readjusts her dress, and strides out of the cell doors.
"Only in your dreams," she hisses at him.
His laughter follows her down the dungeon hallways, and she feels ill. She feels very ill. His conclusion is right. As much as she hates him, the sensations are merciless and alarming and disgusting and so, so…
Wonderful.
As soon as she gets back to her bed chambers, she wants it all over again. It is insatiable. The evil, controlling, power hungry, lust-crazed monster inside of her digs its claws deeper and deeper.
How will this end? She thinks, staring up at her ceiling. How will this end?
Elsa begins to wear her night gowns to visit Hans. The first time she does, she feels bare and uncomfortable. Going in to his cell already vulnerable is dangerous and a gamble, and she's nervous—which is ridiculous—but she's as prepared as she'll ever be. She knows what to expect physically, at least.
The glare he gives her is heated, and he seems incensed, angrier than normal. His green eyes are dark, almost black, as he looks her up and down. He stalks up to her in the middle of the room, and though he is not as big in stature as he used to be, he is still intimidating. An emaciated lion is still a lion.
One hand reaches up and takes a fold of the gown between his fingers.
"This is different," he states.
"Easier to manage," she says.
"Easier to replace," he counters. He smirks at her, and she sneers at him. His arrogance remains, no matter what she does or says. It inspires her to forget her never thought. He'll never see underneath my clothes.
Because that is just one more silly thing to protect her. No, if she's going to win, she will do whatever it takes.
She brings a hand up to the strap of the gown and pushes it off her shoulder. Then she pushes the other one down, gently letting her gown loosen in the front. She takes one step back from him and allows the gown to puddle at her feet. She is only wearing her underwear underneath. She did not put on a bra. As she stands on display for him, the room's temperature drops one degree by degree, and she tries to reign it all in because the nerves never disappeared. She's never been so bare in front of a man—in front of anyone—and he's engulfing her whole.
She lets out a shaky breath, clenches her hands into fists before relaxing them, realizing belatedly that she must look terrified, she must look like a scared little runt of a queen, and she can't let him see that.
She's ready for his insults. You're a waif, he'll say. Disproportionate, asymmetrical, too skinny. If you bent too far backward, I'm sure your spine would break.
Instead, he comes forward, fingers lingering on her sides. One travels up to the side of her breast, and she tries to hold back a shudder. His head dips closer, and she jerks away from him. He seems amused.
"What do you think I'm going to do?" he says. Then he bites the side of her neck, and she can't help the gasp that comes out of her. He flicks his thumb across the sensitive flesh of her breast, and he squeezes her hip.
It's new, all of this touching. They don't touch one another like this. She lets her hands come up and land on his chest, mimicking him, her fingers finding the divot of his collarbones. He sighs against her neck, beginning to lick the areas he bites, sucking her skin like he's trying to eat her. Her hands rove to the back of his head, pushing him harder against her neck and her jaw.
The hand at her hip dives down into her underwear, and he coaxes a sound out of her, and she's not even mad about it. She breathes, "Make me moan. Make me beg. I don't think you can."
She allows it in the only way she knows how—making it a challenge, a dare. Will he? Can he?
"I'll make you say my name," he says back. It's how he accepts it. It's how she gives herself leeway to make all the noises she wants, because she can't contain them. As much willpower as she prides herself to have, the connection they build demands release in any way she can manage. She needs to moan and growl, she needs to pant while he loses his smirk underneath the manic haze of euphoria. If not, her ice will take over and he may make a murderer out of her after all.
He lifts her up and takes her to the mattress, lying her down while he barricades her with one arm. His other hand continues to pleasure her, and her back arches against him. She reaches down to the hem of his shirt with her hands, pulling up ineffectually.
"Take it off," she says, but he only smirks. She growls, sitting up and pulling it roughly over his head.
"Demanding tonight," he says.
In answer, she reaches down to his trousers and pushes them down with all her might. She grips him, and he sighs again. It is the most beautiful sound he can make, his smirk dwindling when she touches him this way. He almost seems vulnerable as she runs her fingers along his length.
He thumbs her, hitting the sensitive spots over and over, and it's so powerful, this time. So much faster, her body more accommodating. She forgets her bashful feelings and her nakedness, because suddenly the tightness between her thighs and his expressions are the only things that begin to matter.
She's not sure what she does to him, but she elicits a groan. It is brief and low, but it's enough to make her smile.
"Do that again," she says.
"No," he says, but she squeezes harder, and he complies.
"Damn it," he breathes, and he gives it back to her, hitting her deeper, rubbing in that way, and her head falls back into the mattress.
"Oh,"she sighs. "Give me more."
"Is that begging, Elsa?"
She looks up at him, and she wonders what she must look like, because it wipes the smirk right off his face. His face slackens again, and his cheeks are flushed and unguarded.
"Yes," she says. "Yes, because this is good."
He's still a prince, and he still has princely manners beneath all of his sarcasm and snarls, she thinks, because he listens to her. He pulls her underwear off the rest of the way from their position around her thighs, and he situates himself immediately inside her legs. She wraps her legs around him, and his arms support himself on either side of her. They are close, she thinks again, but she doesn't quite care as he pushes into her. The sharp pressure fades quickly this time. It is no longer a knife, but a silken, beautiful pleasure. She must be making noises, but she loses her coherency. Her bare skin has stripped her down to the needy fiend within her. She is no longer only herself. She reaches one hand to grab his bicep and another presses back into the mattress, needing something to hold onto, needing a steady hold. The temperature of their bodies rise, but the room gets colder and colder.
"Elsa," he says, but it is not a breathy sigh or moan of pleasure. He's calling her to look at him, so she does. "Tell me what you want."
"Oh," she answers. "This is just fine."
"Just fine?"
"Mm," she says, relishing the glint in his eyes, as if he wants her to say something else. "Fine."
He pushes into her harder, and she gasps. "That's better."
"Good," he breathes, and his face is pinching in concentration again. He moves one hand behind her bottom and lifts her up a little, and she has an out of body experience. She finally hears herself, her sharp punches of breath, the sheen of sweat overlying her chest. His eyes find her, and their intensity darts into her stomach like an arrow. It shreds her intestines. Her stomach clenches violently. His eyes close for a moment.
She's close. He must feel it, because his other hand reaches down between them and gives her that extra pressure, that extra push with his fingers gliding over her flesh, and then she sees spots. She loses it. Light-headed and blinded, she clenches her teeth, her whole body seizes, and then she unwinds. Her legs shake as she releases him, and she belatedly realizes he's inches above her, barricaded, the weight of his hips pushing her down into the cot.
It is unsettling, but not all unwelcoming. The mere thought of that punches her back to reality.
"Get off," she says, trying to shove him away.
He huffs a laugh and rolls over. There is no blanket to cover herself with, but she immediately feels too exposed. She sits up and reaches for her underwear and slips them back on with some ungraceful maneuvers, before she goes to stand to get her gown. Her legs are shaky and clumsy.
Hans grabs her wrist before she walks away, and she plops back to the cot. She stares at him, bewildered.
Interestingly, he seems uncertain of what to say. He glances to her wrist that is in his hand, and he opens his mouth before letting her go.
"I…" he starts, then he recovers. "I made you beg."
"Keep it up, then," she says back. "It won't be so easy, next time."
He smirks at her, but it seems different. She thinks it's more the afterglow and the light from the moon. She stands up, shoves on her gown, and heads back to her bedchambers.
She tries not to think about the look he had given her, right before she left. The shadow overlying his smirk, how it softened his face. He did not look angry or hateful. It was the potent post-orgasmic high. It was the moonlight slashing across his face. That's what made him look so serene, so friendly. So approachable, like he isn't a conniving, slimy snake of a man.
Like he's human. Elsa scoffs. Elsa scoffs and wonders and imagines him having a heart, for one irresponsible moment.
The next two times, Hans is too dominant. He takes over her. He controls the pace, the force, the rhythm. While Elsa admits only to herself that she enjoys it, it is not the game. It's not the way she needs to play this, even though she is tired from the days of handling her professional title, of being the queen who listens to her country, who rules kindly but firmly, who keeps relations healthy between diplomats and leaders.
She can't let her guard down, especially during these midnight soirées, but it is almost a relief letting him pleasure her how she likes, even if she lets go of her role and lets him win. They both get what they want, regardless. They get better at the performance.
She doesn't hold back her noises, either. She lets them pour out of her, and she's noticed that it's encouraged Hans to as well. His panting is freer, his groans low from his belly when he makes them.
She notices more in these moments, taking in the curve of his face in the moonlight, noticing the lines of his chest and abdomen. His smirking is still there, but it is less prominent. Smirks dictate his face less, and a more serious scowl seems to temper his expressions when they play their staring game. He is less hidden, and it is a pleasure to see something other than arrogance and narcissism. Elsa hadn't thought anything else could have existed.
One night out of several, she walks into his cell. He doesn't seem to hear her at first. He is sitting on his cot, looking off to his right towards the barred window. His expression doesn't hold a scowl. It holds a frown. His eyes are listless and they almost look...bereft. Sad.
Hunger, her mind flashes the word behind her eyes. He's always had the hunger.
She sits beside him on the cot, and he startles. It is uncharacteristic to be so unsuspecting.
"Elsa," he says.
"What are you thinking about?"
He looks at her, then glances away to the window. A small smile lifts up the corners of his mouth. "Dying."
She blinks. "Dying?"
He shrugs. "How long have I been here? I thought about scratching tallies into the walls, but thought that was a bit melodramatic."
Elsa swallows. "Six months."
"Six months? Huh," he says. "It feels so much longer."
It's a game he's playing, she thinks. It must be, to make her feel sympathy and compassion. To feel guilty, to tug at her heartstrings.
It won't work. She steels herself.
"Don't you dare," she says.
He blinks at her. "What?"
"Play it this way," she says. "Try to make me feel sorry for you."
He begins to smirk. The life in his eyes begins to revive. "I'm not. It's all in your pretty head."
She narrows her eyes at him. She stands up, and her ice creeps from her feet. It begins to encompass him into a pressurized cocoon on the cot. His breathing becomes labored.
"You're getting better," he huffs. "More cutthroat, more suspicious."
More monstrous, her mind says, and she clenches her teeth. She waves her hand and the ice vanishes. He sucks in a few deep breaths of air, rubbing his chest.
She wonders if she can ever believe him, if they ever talked to each other, really conversed, rather than read each other's eyes and physical needs. If they could ever be as vulnerable with words as they are with their bodies, what would happen?
Would it change anything?
When he catches his breath, he looks at her. She stands away from him, her arms crossed over her chest.
"Sit by me," he says. "Like you were before."
She should leave. She squints at him, but she slowly walks forward, back to the cot.
They've never just...sat with each other. Elsa fidgets. She keeps half a foot between them, legs stretched out before her. Silence fills the space, until finally, Hans asks, "What did you do today?"
Elsa almost laughs. "Why? So you can say something cruel about it and I'll choke you until you're unconscious?"
Hans shrugs. "Sure, whatever you'd like."
She stares at him for a while before she tells him. The recounting of it all is exhausting—the meetings, renegotiating taxes, letter writing, opening the courtyard for the villagers to improve morale during the busy season.
Hans says nothing, whether this is to spite her previous statement or not she's not sure. He merely listens. Eventually his eyes close, and his head dips to the side. His temple bumps her shoulder, and he jerks awake, sitting up quickly.
"I—" he starts, trying to smirk it away. Elsa watches him, curious how he'll respond. He seems oddly embarrassed. She suspects he'll say something along the lines of how boring her life is, how much work she has to put forth for so little.
Instead, he hesitates. "I don't know why I'm tired," he says. "I don't do anything."
"At least I know I'm not the only one bored to tears over politics," she says.
Hans smiles at this. It's a real smile—Elsa can tell because it's abrupt and surprised. They stare at each other. His smile starts diminishing.
"I know you didn't come all this way to talk to me," he says. He lays a hand on her thigh. "Tell me what you want."
For the first time in a long while, Elsa swallows. She's almost conditioned to say You know what I want. Or to reach out to his pants, to push her palm against him. The lust inside of her still burns, but it's different tonight. She always wants what he's offering, but there is no edge to tonight. There is no goading or taunting. They are merely sitting together on his small, uncomfortable cot with no expectation.
It's different.
She places her hand on top of his and removes it from her thigh. She shakes her head.
"Not tonight, Hans, but next time."
He looks at her as if he's figuring out something, as if he has done something wrong. He is suspicious in his own way.
"Turned off by me asking you about yourself?" he asks.
"No," she answers. "It's just..."
Different. It's the only word that can describe it. It's stuck in her head like a broken record.
"We're both tired."
"When has that ever stopped us?"
He leans forward to kiss her neck, biting it gently. Her reaction is immediate. Her pores stand on end. Everything tightens up.
"Hans..."
But it's already too late. He reaches a hand to her breast, feeling her pert underneath the thin guise of her gown. One of her hands reaches the back of his neck while the other one follows the hand on her chest, kneading and pressing.
"You're..." she tries. His other hand reaches up to lower the strap on her shoulder. "You're..."
"I'm what?" he mutters, his breath hot against her. He pulls at her other strap, tugging the night gown down. It puddles on her abdomen, her chest on display. His mouth moves from her neck to her collarbone, her collarbone to her breast. She sucks in a mouthful of air on his contact—he's never done this before. It's always been so manic when she's here. She always nearly begins undressing as soon as she enters, with him giving her no preamble as he touches her.
This time it's...sensual. It's slow. He's using his mouth more, open and wet and hot, making a line down her torso.
She never finishes her thought. You're stubborn, she can say. You're unrelenting. You're insane.
You're talented. You're good at this. You're persuasive. But all these things will only feed his very obese ego, and he needs this least of all.
"You're forgetting," she finally says. "This is a game. We don't enjoy this."
He pauses for a moment, raising his eyebrow at her before continuing. He dips his tongue in her belly button. "Could have fooled me."
Her stomach clenches. Her head falls back, and he kisses her inner thigh.
"We do this for power," Elsa breathes. "We try to control each other."
"Do we?" he asks. He makes a line of kisses down her the joint of her knee. "It seems to be mutually beneficial now, doesn't it?"
Elsa almost growls at how cavalier he's being. She sits up and grabs the collar of his shirt, pulling him up and turning them over so that she straddles his hips, looking down at him. He grins crookedly up at her, arrogance oozing out of his pores.
She violently tugs up on his shirt, pulling it over his head. He lifts his arms to accommodate. Once freed with his torso bare, she mimics him. She presses her mouth to the middle line of his chest, she bites, she licks. She'll one-up him, she'll do it better. She can hear the vibration of his pleasure behind his sternum as he holds back his groaning, and she feels it like a blunt force to her stomach. She controls how much she gives him, and his reactions are more than enough.
Snow begins to cover the line of his cell, and Elsa doesn't notice the building snow drifts until a snowflake lands right beside the spot on his chest that she's kissing. It's a small little glimmer, melting into a tiny bud of water. One lands on his cheek, and it looks like a tear.
Hans blinks around, taking in the white around them. "It's…you're…" he trails.
Control, the word burns in Elsa's mind. She can't do both. She can't give pleasure and resist the tumult stewing inside of her. It hasn't been such a challenge before, after the first time, because she allowed herself to experience the sensations, letting Hans do with her what he wanted. But now, it's…
Different. Different. She hates it, but she likes it, too. The change of pace, the change of feeling.
She leans forward and bites his neck, running her hand down his abdomen, slipping her hand under the waistband of his pants. His words become stunted and barricaded behind his teeth, echoing down his throat. Elsa can almost feel them with her tongue on the sensitive skin of his neck.
"Say it," she whispers against him. "Tell me what you want from me, Hans."
Freedom. Life. She anticipates his answers, because she could see them in his eyes under the light of the moon, his soul beckoning for the outside of his barred window. She wants to hear the confession—his most vulnerable thoughts. Something irrevocably true.
"I want whatever you'll give me," he answers, looking into her eyes for a moment before closing them against the pressure of her hand. "Whatever you allow yourself to give me."
It is hard to determine how genuine he is, underneath her. She pushes his pants down and rocks against him, wanting to coax out the real words he wants to say, the real things he's desperately holding inside. She wonders for a minute more if that's it, if that's all he'll say. His breath comes out in plumes against the icy air, and yet his body is becoming lined with a thin sheen of sweat.
When he looks up at her with half-lidded eyes, he shocks her with a smile. "You could do this forever," he says. "I wouldn't mind."
"I would," she says. As wonderful as the sparks of building tension feel, it is not enough. She pauses to peel away her underwear. When she slides back onto him, his hands automatically go to her hips. He tries to set the pace, and Elsa grips his wrists, bringing them above his head.
"Not tonight," she tells him, creating a sheath of ice around his hands on the mattress. It's a makeshift zip tie, frozen on the cot and immobilized, and he scowls. She relishes it.
"Elsa—" he tries, but his words are stemmed, their faces too close. Her chest is pressed against his, her hands on his shoulders. His lips part into a shallow line, and his eyebrows loosen into a mystified curiosity. She keeps her rhythm against him as their breaths intermingle, and she witnesses every struggle he has against his ice cuffs, his frustration, and soon, his acceptance. He gives up his fight, eventually, and he watches her as if she's the only thing he's ever seen. Any other night it would be intimidating. His eyes are an all-encompassing green, as vivid as winter pine, and she'd blush so easily under his gaze if they hadn't already come so far in their physical endeavors.
He finds her rhythm eventually, matching her hips with his. More friction, more build up. It's slow—so slow—agonizing but steady, and his eyes never leave her, and when they begin hitting each other just like that—Elsa feels his eyes digging like his fingers, touching her just as deeply, a very thorough, jolting barrage of sensation.
But she's not alone. It affects him, too. His mouth becomes a scowl, then his teeth grit, then they relax in a fit of wonder, because it's never been this long, or this smooth, or this slow. The intensity is more. More. It begins growing outside of Elsa's chest, sprouting through the pores of her skin. Her fingers start to claw deeper and deeper into his shoulders. His body begins to shake. There is a forceful tremor between both of them, unrecognizable in its glory, and Elsa's not sure how long it lasts or how long it takes her to catch her breath. Hours can have passed, hours or days. She's not sure when she closes her eyes until she opens them to see Hans looking at her like he's never looked at her before.
"That was…" he says hoarsely, never finishing.
Elsa finishes the thought without prompt.
"Different."
And then he does the most unforgivable thing she can fathom.
He kisses her.
It is a mere press of the lips, chaste and unassuming. It is everything she does not associate with Hans. Innocent. Gentle. Sweet.
She's frozen. The whole room is still with a shock of subzero air. The walls crack with fine, spiderweb lines of ice, breaking the thunderous silence. Elsa takes a while to come to, but she eventually jerks away, staring at him with wide eyes. He stares back at her, surprise evident in his expression.
"I…" he tries. Elsa takes in a deep breath, and his voice breaks through her shock. She begins to grimace, still feeling the pressure of his lips on her own. She rears back and brings her hand around. She smacks him across the cheek with an icy slap, and his head snaps to the side.
"How dare you," she seethes.
He squints his eye as he recovers, bringing up his own hand to cradle his very red, angry cheek.
"Dammit, Elsa," he growls.
"You have no right," she rages. "I didn't allow it. I don't allow it."
"Oh, but you allow me to have sex whenever you want it? I didn't ask you to start this. I didn't ask you to touch me." He scoffs a laugh. "What's a kiss compared to what you just did tonight?"
Steam almost begins to whistle out of her ears. She's angry because of his audacity, but most importantly, she's angry because he's right, and he knows it, and while his cheek swells with broken blood vessels, he smirks crookedly up to her.
She hates him. She hates him. This is all part of his plan. He's trying his best to worm his way under her skin like the little termite he is, eating her bones as if they're made of wood.
They are ensconced in white, in their own alternate world all to themselves. For this night and every night before, it has always been as though the outside world doesn't exist. Now, he's looking at her as if the world outside does exist, because she'll think about this night long after she leaves. She will think of his green eyes as dark and potent as the pine trees that line the edge of her kingdom, the longing he allowed her to see before he realized she was present in his cell—and she'll play with this in her head, pick it apart until she convinces herself this is all his act, this is all disingenuous, he has no honest hair on his skull. He is a menace, and a fiend, a devil in handsome skin, and she can't allow manipulation to twist her heart or her mind.
And, yet, still, she will wonder.
I want whatever you'll give me.
She gives him nothing for a long, long time. She doesn't visit him for weeks. She lets time settle its magic upon them, letting it dull the flying fire and ice that filled her stomach every evening before and after she would visit him. She does her best to let time dismantle the monster built inside of her, because it had grown so large inside of her that it seemed to be outside of her, too, like a vine on a trellis, abundant and parasitic, rooting itself and weaving its home in her heart.
Her will almost bends a thousand times. She almost visits him during the day. She's had many a sleepless night, imagining him on his cot staring up at the ceiling of his cell, out the barred window, fingers trailing against the rough, craggy bricks lining the walls.
She imagines him looking at his cell door, wondering about her, too.
It is a terrible withdrawal. The monster in her rages, ravenous and livid, asking questions that echo in her mind over and over, why don't you visit him? What's one visit? Two?
She needs an outlet for her magic, as it builds up inside of her veins when she has to be polite to the slimy diplomat who touches her shoulder time and again. When she has to smile at the lecherous, old king of Arcadia, who is newly widowed and in need of another queen. When no one listens to her opinion at the Annual Summit of the Ten Countries, because she is young, bestowed with powers she still cannot fully control, naïve, unmarried, orphaned, hardly knowing how to keep her own country running, much less several countries running—why should they take her opinion with anything less than a condescending smile?
She wants to stand on the table, take all of their throats by her ice, threaten them with how little control she does have—make them wish they would have given her the respect she deserves rather than brush her off like a child.
The ice blisters inside of her veins, rupturing them from the force she uses to hold it all back. Quelling her powers has never been so difficult, and she has no other option but to go outside to the forest and scream and create snow monsters and ice cliffs, throw icy knives into the trees and break their trunks like necks and wish she was someone else for a moment or a day or a year.
It's not enough. She falls to her knees and breathes heavily, gazing at the destruction she's left in her wake and wanting to holler and wail and cry out all of her frustration and hopelessness.
It's the last straw. That evening she goes back to visit Hans.
He has a fresh bruise on his right eye, a cut inside of his lip. His left ear is red rimmed with purple, having been cuffed multiple times. He is more beaten up than she has seen him in a long while, and she wonders if he is as crazy as she is—needing something to free him in the pain the guards are only too generous to give.
The moonlight cuts across his figure, and this time he is already standing by the window. He does not look as emaciated or scrawny. She wonders if he has also been like those prisoners she reads about—doing thousands of push ups and crunches in his endless downtime, burning up his energy in the only way he can. She's sure he would have a tattoo if that sort of thing was offered in Arendelle.
"They say it takes twenty-one days to break a habit," he says, looking over her. His arms are crossed over his chest. "It's been sixty. I thought you'd have forgotten all about me by now."
She stares at him, eyeing his thin lips, turned up in his signature smirk. She looks at his shaggy hair, a dark, rusty auburn. He is naturally pale, but the bruises give his face some color.
She takes a few steps closer to him, standing five feet away before stopping. "I did break it," she says, not sure if it's a true statement. "I was feeling nostalgic."
"Were you?" He asks, eyeing her up and down. As long as it's been, his perusal has the peculiar effect of feeling dressed down to her bones. "Or were you just tired of your dry spell, queen?"
She lifts one shoulder in a nonchalant dismissal. She reaches a finger out to touch his lip.
"Still having fun with the guards?"
"A bit. They aren't as much fun as you."
"No one is as fun as me."
"You're sounding a bit arrogant, Elsa. Taking a leaf out of my book?"
"You're not the only one who can act disgustingly conceited."
He grins at her. "Who says it's an act? You know it's my natural form."
Her finger falls to his chest, and her hand splays out against it. She can't feel his heart, and she wonders if it's hidden under his sternum, as black and blue as his face.
His grin fades away as they look at one another, and the atmosphere immediately darkens. The temperature drops. Snow lines the floor and the walls. Elsa feels all of her magic seeping out of her, like she's a balloon ready to burst, an overstuffed cushion. She breathes out in relief, the diminishing burden beautiful and blissful. Her eyes close as she relishes the sensation, her shoulders dropping from her ears and—how long have they been so tense?
Hans hands come up around her face, and her eyes open, her heart jumping at the sudden contact. She's not sure what she's expecting—a cruel and condescending smile that she's so used to from every other male she's encountered, perhaps, but she receives the opposite. He's frowning, his eyebrows knitted together as he cradles her face, and she should back away from him, from this gentle touch, as gentle as his one and only kiss was, but she finds she doesn't care so much. All she cares about is this unwinding pleasure twirling out of her muscles.
"Why are you here, Elsa?" he asks her. It sounds like, What's wrong?
"You know why I'm here," she says, and it falls out of her out of verbal memory, a knee-jerk reaction, even though she wants to say, I'm here because I need you.
That's a scary thought, too. When has she ever needed anyone?
His forehead hits hers, and they breathe in one another. His breath is warm. Hers is freezing. His fingers braid into her hair. Her hands raise up to his shoulders and her fingers grip along the ridge of his shoulder blades.
How is it, she thinks, that she can release all of her powers on her own, squeeze them out of her system when the stress of holding back is too great, and it can only relieve her for an hour or a day?
Standing here before him, it is different, just as the last time, because her powers are blunted and calmed, the storm inside assuaged with the sensation of another.
"I won't kiss your lips this time," he says as his hand drops to the straps of her chemise. "I'll do whatever you ask."
It's a peculiar submission of power. She looks at him, her suspicion running high against the softness of his tone. She surveys him with sharp eyes, determining his angle for the evening, teasing out the double meaning of his words. His face doesn't give away insidious or beguiling intention. He's merely watching her as she lets him undress her. Her gown falls to the floor and he runs a hand down her side. She's never cold but goosebumps follow behind the trail he makes. He kisses the top of her shoulder, and the action is so intimate Elsa has to force herself from stepping away from him.
Instead, he takes a step back from her. He pulls his shirt over his head and drops it to the side on the floor. Then he pushes his pants down and steps out of them. Suddenly, they stand before one another, him completely naked and her with only her thin underwear keeping her hidden from full view.
It's too intense for her, standing before one another so openly. She has to forcibly keep her arms from hiding herself as his eyes scuttle over her. She looks over him and blushes. He seems very comfortable, the smirk that had been absent now creeping onto his face.
"What's wrong, Elsa? Shy?"
"Shut up," she huffs. "I'm not shy."
He steps toward her, placing his hands on her hips. His length presses against her stomach, and her mouth parts a little. "It's okay if you're shy, but there's no reason to be."
Elsa averts her eyes. "Why are you being so nice to me? You should be making fun of me instead, or telling me how unbecoming it is for me to be degrading myself this way."
He raises his brow at her. "I didn't think you came here because you enjoyed our verbal attacks. Besides, we've exhausted the topics pretty well, haven't we?"
She bites her lips together and stares at his collarbone. It doesn't matter. She presses harder against him, and he squeezes her closer.
"You can tell me what's bothering you if you want," he says.
She stares at him. "Why do you want to know?"
"I just..."
She waits for the lie she knows he's waiting to say, for his devious plan to become clear.
"No reason," he says. He begins leading her toward the cot.
"What's your motive, Hans?" she whispers. "What do you want me to tell you? Do you want me to talk about the outside world? Do you want me to tell you how it is moving on without you? What you're missing?"
He softly lies her down on the cot, pressing his weight into her. Elsa admits that the feeling is exquisite.
"Would you believe I was asking out of pure curiosity over your well-being?"
Elsa almost laughs. "No."
"I didn't think you would," he says. He sits up, his weight lifted, and gazes down at her. He is a giant with his height, and the eyeful of her is searing. He curls his fingers under the band of her underwear and Elsa lifts her bottom up as he peels them off.
"You forget," he says, as he kneels down, his face right above her navel. "You're one of the three things I think about in this cell."
He trails open mouthed kisses down to the juncture of her thighs. She wants to tell him that she's never forgotten the things he thinks about because she's never known.
Her thoughts are scattered for a moment as his tongue rolls across her. She takes deep breaths and comes back to herself.
"What are the other two things?" she asks.
"I think you know," he says, and he's quiet for a long while as he uses his mouth for more important things than forming words. When she's wound up enough, he must hear her and feel it, because he takes his mouth away from her. Her ice digs into his back with frustration.
He smiles at her knowingly as she glares at him, breathing heavily.
"Freedom and death," he says. "And you."
"Freedom and death can mean anything," Elsa says. She pulls him up to settle back on top of her. She squeezes her legs around his hips. "What do you really think about?"
She's baiting him, but she's also intrigued.
"Why so interested, Elsa?" he asks. He positions himself at her entrance. "Want me to confess all about my grand plan to escape? Do you want me to tell you that I'm lying?"
He pushes into her and her head falls back. She moans with the motion, and his hand lands beside her shoulder. He shudders, his breath shaky.
"There's not much else to think about in here," he whispers.
"Confess," she rasps. "Your great escape."
"I can't," he huffs. "I don't have one."
"Liar," she says, her tone high and uneven. She is coming undone quicker than normal, and she tries to suppress it.
"I wish I was lying," he grunts. He picks up the pace. Her hand find his forearm beside her and claws into him. She wants to scream, teetering on the edge, finding that eclipse with her blood rushing and her ice bursting through her. It scrapes against her veins, and she can feel it, and she cries out from the pain and the irrepressible pleasure.
"Elsa," Hans pants. "Elsa, look at me."
Her eyes eventually loll open, and she sees stark white. Winter has taken up the entirety of the space. Icicles protrude dangerously from the ceiling, dipping four feet into the room. The window and the door is shielded by a wall of thick ice.
When she looks up to Hans, his hair is dusted with white, patchy shining spots of ice along his chest. He reminds her, in the moment, of a beautiful ice sculpture. His eyes are hazy and wild.
"Oh, Hans," she pants, no longer herself. She's another woman in another world, and he is not a man who wants her kingdom. "Oh, Hans."
There is a manic rush, suddenly and violently. Elsa is blinded by white, unable to differentiate her body from her snow and from the wild pleasure that they create between each other.
And then it ends in one more burst of passion and ice. Elsa has never been so affected before, so lost in the rush of her power, in the frenzy of release.
They stare at one another after it's over, Hans holding himself over her on his elbows, the ice melting against him with the mixture of his own sweat, his auburn hair darkened and damp along his temples and his sideburns.
"Are you alright?" he asks, glancing from her face to her arms. She can see his own arms shaking, his chest trembling with the effort to hold himself above her.
"Yes," she says, feeling her pulse in her forearms, her stomach, between her thighs. She's mildly surprised he's asking until she sees dark streaks traveling from her elbows to her wrists. She holds them before her, and they look like a bad injection. The streaks are a dark purple, bordered by red. It looks worse than it's ever been. She panics momentarily, and Hans gently removes himself from her. He takes a seat beside her, grasping an arm and doing his own investigation. He trails lightly up a streak with his fingers. Elsa takes a minute to calm herself, inhaling deep, soothing breaths.
"It's just my ice," she says, finally trusting her mind not to falter into abundant alarm. She eyes her other arm. "This has happened before, just not so...ugly."
Hans holds her arm like it might break. "Elsa..." he sighs. He brings her wrist up and runs a thumb along the crease, along a thick band of purple. She exhales a deep breath, watching how tender he is being with her and wondering about his heart again.
"It heals in a day or so." He begins caressing the skin up her forearm along the broken path. This makes her begin to panic again.
"That doesn't help," she says.
He glances up to her but continues. "How would you know?"
She shrugs. "I've never liked people touching me like that."
"I think you do like it, after all of this."
"I tolerate it because it doesn't mean anything."
"It could mean something, if we cared."
She laughs, bordering on manic. "You, caring? Please."
He gets to her elbow, hesitating before giving her one kiss into the notch. "No," he says. "If I could care, I'm sure it would be different. He starts to frown. I didn't know this could happen. You need to be better at handling your ice."
She glares at him. "It's only gotten this bad the past few weeks. It's fine."
"It's really not."
Elsa looks away from him, sighing. "This helps."
"What?"
"Doing what we're doing. It's my outlet. Nothing else seems to help. That's why I'm here, tonight."
"Then I guess I now have a reason to live, don't I?"
She looks to him to see if he's smirking, or smiling knowingly as if he's holding secrets behind his tongue. He isn't doing either. He's merely staring at her arm, running a thumb over the middle of it. A small frown decorates his lips.
"You don't have to do that, Hans."
He glances up to her. "What?"
"Act like a concerned party. It won't help your cause."
He sets her arm down carefully against the cot. "What cause is that?"
"Freedom. Death."
He waits for a moment. "You forgot to say you."
A twinge curls in her stomach. "I didn't forget," she says. "I don't apply."
"But couldn't you?"
This is a strange word game they're playing. Elsa isn't sure what he's trying to get out of it. Her remorse? Her care?
"I don't think so," she says. "Besides, if I did, I would never trust your motives, anyway."
"No," he says, and the look he gives her pulls against her skin. It cuts her like her ice, and for the life of her she can't feel any differently, even when she knows she should feel nothing. "You will never trust me."
Because his look, underneath the smirk that is not arrogant—in fact, it is pitiful and barren, as though he has no energy left to make it full of his usual sneering narcissism—and underneath the white reflection of snow that surrounds them in his bright, green eyes, is sadness. She only knows because she's so intimately acquainted with the emotion, and because staring at each other is what they spend so much time doing.
He reaches a hand up and runs his fingers over her fringe, tucking her stray hair behind her ear. They stare at one another for a long time, hiding behind the snowdrift. It protects them from the eyes of the stars and the moonlight.
"When will you leave me?" he asks her eventually. "You've stayed much longer than usual."
She glances at her arms, and she can still feel the pressure of his lips on the inside of her elbow. She wonders when this dynamic between them evolved into this mangled mess. When she looks at him and the melancholy that borders his face, she wants to feel that deep fissure of burning hatred. It used to fill her like lava. The magma seems to be cooling under the implosion of her ice, and she doesn't like it.
"This will end soon," she says. "I've let this go too far."
Instead of answering her, he says, "You said my name, tonight."
Her stomach curls. She did. She moaned his name. "I didn't scream."
"No," he says, and his smirk is back. "But you said my name. That was what I really wanted."
She frowns at him. "I thought you wanted to break me."
He looks at her for a moment, his smirk turning wry and the melancholy still hanging along the edges. "I think we've both broken a little bit, Elsa."
She begins to panic again. She stands up quickly, grabbing her clothes and shoving them back onto her body.
"Does it frighten you, Elsa, that you might not hate me?"
"No," she hisses at him. "I do hate you. I will never like you. I will never forgive you. You can keep your delusions if you want, because there's not much else to think about in here, is there? Isn't that what you said?"
He says nothing as she combs her fingers through her hair and readjusts her nightgown. He says nothing as she leaves, but she feels his eyes follow her as she walks towards the door. She waves an angry hand, and the snow and icicles vanish, leaving the room spotless and clean. It is as if all of what they have done to each other in this cell vanishes with it.
Halfway to her room, his face invades her mind. In her bed, his words trickle through her ears. They taunt her.
Does it frighten you, Elsa, that you might not hate me?
When she does eventually go back to Hans, she stands at the cell doors for a few minutes. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. When she enters, Hans is standing at the cell window again. Before he turns around, she says, "This is the last time."
He glances to her over his shoulder. "Are you certain?"
No, she wants to say. She's never certain about anything concerning him.
"Like you said, I think we've both gotten what we wanted. Not exactly how we planned, but we did."
He walks over to her, and they stand in the middle of the room. It is blistering when they are face to face, eyes scalding and intense.
"You finally said my name last time," he says.
"Is that your definition of breaking me?"
He smiles. "You lost control enough. You let yourself go enough. So, yes, I would call that breaking."
"And what is yours?" she asks. "Your breaking?"
He touches her cheek, and she stands as still as she can. Frost builds in her palms in case she needs it to push him away, in case he begins to dig any deeper under her skin.
"Oh, you already know it, Elsa. Don't you see?"
His eyes try to coax the answer out of her. She thinks she knows—but it's a bit too terrifying.
"You're mistaking physical pleasure for something that it's not," she says.
He shrugs. "Isn't that what you wanted to fool me into believing?"
"I didn't even know you could believe in something like that."
He laughs abruptly. "You're right. I didn't either. I guess you should be applauded. You've twisted me beyond belief."
She steps back from him. "You're a liar."
He follows her. "I know you'll never believe a thing I say. What did you say last time? This doesn't matter because it doesn't mean anything?" He brushes her bangs out of her eyes, leaning forward and pressing his lips to her ear. "Then let me show you how much it doesn't mean to me."
Ice forms into a ball in her fist. "Get away from me."
He ignores her. "The sex we have isn't violent. I forget who we are every time. I always want you to feel the pleasure you came here for—it used to be for control but that's not what it's about anymore. Hell, I kissed you when I didn't even know I wanted to."
A blast of ice pushes him back like a shove. He lands on the floor with a grunt.
"Stop it," she says. "I don't care what you think. You're right. You're broken, and you're mad, and you're right where I wanted you to be. This is the last time."
He grimaces up at her. "Don't act like I'm alone in this. You keep coming back because you need me."
Her fists become ice cubes. Her heart becomes a glacier. Even if he's lying to her, she can see him for what he is: a man whittled down to nothing but his flesh and bone, all alone except for the punches of her guards and the physical attachments they create for one another. The moon haunts him, the stars taunt him with dreams he will never have. Her ice gives him another kind of freedom, just as his touch lessens her burden of power.
She stalks to him and stands above him. His nostrils flare as he looks up at her, and there is a cloud of anger between them, a furnace emanating. It is a charge that hums through the room.
"This will be the last time," she says. A cuff of ice curls around his neck, and his breath puffs out in plumes.
"Will you replace me with another prince?" he asks. His hand finds her ankle, wrapping around it in his palm. "Trust me. You're going to miss this."
"I won't miss your arrogance," she answers.
His glare turns into a smirk, and he pulls her leg. Her knee buckles, and she ends up straddling his hips.
"You'll miss our passion," he says.
"I will? I think you will."
Hans grins up at her, reaching up to touch her face.
"Yeah. I will."
Then he grips the back of her neck and pulls her down toward him. He kisses her for the second time, and it is not gentle or sweet. Elsa is so shocked that it takes her a moment to realize what he's doing. Her eyes snap open when his tongue invades her mouth.
She pushes back forcefully and goes to slap him, but he catches her wrist. Ice flies down her hand to his forearm, his shoulder, his neck.
"What do you think you're doing?" she seethes.
Hans coughs and chokes against her pressure. "It's the last time. What does it matter?"
So flippant. So careless. What does it matter?
She peels her ice back from him slowly, and his chest heaves with large breaths.
"Fine," she says. "You're right. What does it matter?"
She steels herself as she grips the sides of his head. She feigns confidence as she always does with new things, and she presses her lips to his. It's different when initiating the kiss. There's power in it, but it's also sensitive and soft. It's a silly thing, really. It's only coupling a small amount of skin together. It's nothing compared to what they've done before, but it's electric all on its own. Words are stemmed and quieted as they form a current between their open mouths, pushed back down into their throats. A rush runs through them, her chest on his, their lungs pushing into each other. His tongue enters her mouth with little probing, their breaths intermingling. His warmth clashes against her chill. He moans into her and she sighs and as they lie on the cold, hard floor together, it feels as if they could care.
As they peel off their clothes, their mouths connect, hungry and insatiable, just as much as the rest of their bodies—their stomachs, their arms, her legs around his hips. Her nails dig into the backs of his shoulders, and the ice cuts into him like knives. He pushes into her deeper and deeper, closer than he's ever gotten, and Elsa cocoons them inside the shell of her power. They are one being, suddenly, as his hands cradle her in large palmfuls, as her thighs squeeze his sides. They give and take in equal measure, and everything from before is gone. There is no pain, no hatred, no arrogance or bravado. They are stripped down to what they've hidden from each other for so long, down to their bare bones. They give and take in equal measure, not caring about the infliction of pain or the troubling consequences of relinquishing control, because in this moment, what does it matter?
When they lie together in the cocoon of snow and ice, insulated from the outside and warm from the heat of their pounding blood, it feels like it could have mattered, once.
It could have mattered, if things had been different.
"You could kill me, you know," Hans says when the frantic haze has died down. "I don't think I'd mind."
She eyes him. "Kill you?"
He looks up at the ceiling. "I have nothing else. The means of death is the only thing I do have, and I don't think I'd want death to find me any other way." He smirks at her. "You've already given me a pretty kind of freedom with this. Pain and torture and pleasure." He runs a finger down her forearm, which has mostly healed from their last encounter. "The only other thing I want is death. Death by your ice sounds poetic."
He says it like he's taking about the weather. He is nonchalant and apathetic, aloof, inscrutable.
"You really want me to kill you?" she says after a moment, watching his fingers trail her skin. "That's really what you want?"
Hans catches her eyes and holds them for a long time, searching.
"Yes."
The one word is as simple as it is serious. Elsa begins to feel her eyes fog. She crystallizes her tears so they won't fall.
"I...I can't do that, Hans."
He smiles at her sadly, thumbing her cheek. "Sure, you can."
"No," she whispers. "I can't."
He stares at her for a while before gently grasping her wrists. He brings her palms around to hold the sides of his head. "I know what it feels like," he says. "It's not that bad. It's like going to sleep."
She frowns at him. Her teeth begin to clench.
"Stop it," she says.
"Just a zap," he continues. "It would be quick. Right through my head."
Elsa begins to shake her head. Her throat constricts, and her words are barricaded.
"Come on, Elsa," he says, a heat behind his words. The melancholy of his eyes evolve into anger and desperation. She can finally see despondency pooling in his pupils. "Come on. No one would care."
"I wish I could," she finally breathes. "I wish I could."
"Please." He pushes her palms harder and harder. She feels the give of the tender skin of his temples. "Do it. Please."
She has never seen him this way. His jaw is buckled, and his green eyes are tinged with red, and there is self-loathing in them—another kind of hate, another kind of want, very particular brands of emotion.
"Hans," she whispers, and she is not sure what to say. She desperately wishes the monster would come back. The anger, the hate, the fissure in her stomach. It would make it all so easy. She would relish his misery and his pain. The deep, sudden and abrupt pain. Deeper than the physical. More than she could possibly inflict by her own two hands.
She would have loved it, once, would have grinned a sharp, unforgiving smile, because she realizes, in that instant, that he had been truthful. Perhaps for the first time in his life, he had been truthful.
He is broken. His pieces are on the floor. They glitter up at her like shards of her ice.
"I don't want to be here anymore," he tells her. "I don't want to be here."
One tear falls down her cheek, then two.
"I'm sorry," she says. It's all she can offer. A meek apology in the face of his plea.
Finally, his hands relieve their pressure on hers. Her fingers begin to tingle with life, restricted from blood flow with his hold.
He reaches down to wipe away her tears. He is kind under the umbrella of his sorrow. It cloaks him, and she can finally see him.
"It doesn't matter," he says. "Just like everything else."
"I wish it did," she chokes. She's empty and bereft. That ugly passion, that atrocious shadow behind her soul had built and built, had grown outside of her skin like a specter. Where could it have gone? How did it leave her?
She wonders if it's crumbled somewhere, dismantled under the threshold of this cell. Perhaps it has broken free, torn out of her veins just like her ice.
Just like her heart.
Elsa keeps her word. It is the last time. She may still be growing into her role as queen, but she is nothing if not loyal to herself.
Hans doesn't see her again, but he is surprised when two months later, his guard arrives to his cell, begrudgingly holding a small briefcase and a satchel. He has a twisted scowl on his face, as though he has pulled the short straw and would rather be anywhere else.
"The Queen has made a...decision about your fate, prisoner, he mutters. He sets the briefcase down and reaches to his side to unclip the ring of dungeon keys from his belt.
"You will be escorted from Arendelle to the closest neighboring country. You are not to cross country lines. You are not to show your face here or anywhere where the queen will be. You will not pass into the Southern Isles, as that restriction will still be in place from the agreement between Arendelle and your home country. If you break any of these prohibitions, you will be arrested forthwith, imprisoned, and executed. Do you understand?"
Hans stares at the man, quickly trying to accept all the words thrown at him. He takes in the briefcase, the keys that are now being placed into the lock.
Does he understand? Not hardly.
"...yes," he says. "I understand."
"Wonderful," the guard harrumphs, throwing the cell door open. He throws the briefcase into Hans' chest. Hans elicits a surprised and forced oof.
"You will change into the clothes in the briefcase. I will then escort you out of the castle and into the forest. The satchel contains provisions that will keep you sustained for a number of days. Do you understand?"
Hans blinks, and he feels as dumb as he must look. He nods, opens the briefcase and quickly changes. Once finished, the guard roughly grips one of Hans' wrists and leads him through an old, cobwebbed pathway. There are no windows, and shadows absorb them until they come upon a rusted door. The guard pushes it open, sighs, and they continue along a backroad into the changing leaves of the forest. Autumn is in full swing, and Hans is disoriented, trying to regain his bearings of the world.
They walk one mile or two, but it feels like a boundless trudge with infinite trees and foliage, before the guard shoves him without decorum. Hans stumbles to the ground, cushioned by dead leaves and twigs.
"Legends say this place is full of magic," the guard says. "Arendelle's prisoners used to be taken out here, instead of holding cells. Magic eats at the brain, makes men turn animal." His beady eyes rove over Hans with disdain decorating his mustache. "Or maybe it's because they got lost, couldn't find their way out of here. This forest is a maze if you don't know the way. Regardless, I hope you rot," the guard says in farewell, turning and stalking through the trees. Soon, his footsteps become faint and silent, drowned out by the sounds of wildlife.
I hope you rot. The words take him back to Elsa's, from such a long time ago. You will no longer be a man, she had said. You will no longer be the man who you are or were. You will no longer know yourself.
Hans wonders if it's true about this place, then immediately begins to hope it's true. If Elsa's magic wouldn't eat his soul, he'll take the second best option. Perhaps it is this forest, leaves red like his spilled blood, left cleaned and forgotten in the small, congested walls of his cell, that will take his life. And when it does, he will imagine Elsa's frost, trickling into his brain like an endless sleep.
Because it could have mattered, once. And if he could have cared about anyone but himself, he is certain it would have been different.
As he lies on the forest floor, the arms of the trees stretched out overhead, he thinks about her face, the burning passion and hate and want and torture. He thinks about how she said his name. He thinks about her ice and her tears and how she couldn't kill him. She couldn't kill him, but he died in that cell.
He knows he did, because he loved her, anyway.