#this was meant for the santa kristoff challenge last week but i have NO self control

[ahtohallan-calling]

chapter 1 of never wanting anything more (kristanna/t/au loosely based on klaus/fluff and pining and pine trees) is up!

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“You’re full of surprises, Kristoff.”

He is not; he is a man who lives alone in the woods because he does not know how to be anything else, and she is a silverbright comet scorching her way through his life and scattering shards of colors he didn’t know existed.

chapter 1

There is a knock on the door.

There has never been a knock before.

He opens it. There is a woman there who is not at all dressed for the weather. “Hi,” she says, breathless. “I got a little lost, and I saw the smoke from your cabin coming over the trees, so I figured I had better come and ask for help, so I’m here now, asking you, if that’s alright because you see I’m terribly lost and don’t know how to get back to the village.”

He blinks. Hers is the first human voice he has heard in a long while.

“Or-- or I can go back--”

“No,” he says, his voice rough from disuse.

Her eyes widen. “No, I can’t go back?”

“No, not that.”

“Then what did you--”

“I meant no, I can help you. Take the road to the east and turn south at the pond.”

“Right, so east is-- that one?”

She points due north. Perhaps he shouldn’t have answered the door. He looks her over; she is clearly not from Smeerensburg. Her clothes are of fine make, her collar edged with white lace; her hair, too, is worn long and loose, only two coppery braids wound in it. The people here do not have time to worry about looking pretty and so their hair stays up.

The first snowstorms will come tonight; if he does not help her, she just might freeze. And so he steps outside, gesturing in the right direction. “This way is east. Opposite the sunset.”

“Oh, I knew that! Silly me,” she says with a little laugh that sounds like summer, smacking herself in the forehead. “Thanks very much.”

He inclines his head. “Safe travels.”

She sets off, and he heads back inside. He smiles to himself that night as he prepares his dinner, even when his mouth starts to ache, unused to the exercise. He may be a forgotten creature of simplicity and solitude, but even he can recognize a beautiful thing.

---

The knock comes again three days later. Two quick taps, followed by a shuffling of skirts, the faint creak of a board under a heeled boot. Even if she hadn’t been his only visitor he would have known it was her.

She beams at him as soon as the door swings open. “Hi!”

“Are you lost again?”

“No, I know how to find my way home now, thanks to you! Which is why I’m here.”

She holds up a little paper box. He raises an eyebrow, waiting for her to explain. Her cheeks were already pink from the cold, but now they are bright red under her freckles. “They’re thank you cookies.”

“Why would you do that?”

She bites her lip. “Well, you were so kind the other day, so I just thought...I’m sorry if I--”

“No,” he says quickly. “Forgive me. I-- don’t get many visitors. Or cookies.”

“If  you don’t like them-- or me-- I can just--”

He steps back, pulling the door all the way open even though it’s letting in the cold, and gestures towards the table and two chairs, one of which is far more worn than the other. She steps in, biting her lip again, and sits down. It occurs to him that people tell stories about men who live in cabins in the woods, and he hopes she doesn’t believe them. Perhaps it will help, though, if he--

“Do you want tea?” he asks, and she nods.

He’s hoping that fiddling with the kettle with his back turned to her will give him a chance to collect his thoughts, but then her voice comes, lovely and lilting and full of curiosity. “What are those?”

He glances; she’s pointing at the mantel. “Carvings.”

“Well-- of what?”

“Wood.”

She lets out a little frustrated huff. He wants to laugh, but he seems to have forgotten how. “Not what they’re made out of, what are they supposed to be?”

“You can go and look. You won’t break them.”

She does, making soft noises of wonder as she turns the figurines over between her little thin fingers, handling each one with care. “Are these all animals from the forest around here?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re the one who made them?”

“Yes.”

She’s holding his favorite one, a little rabbit with its ears tucked back. She strokes its head with a dainty index finger, as tenderly as if it were full of warmth and breath and life. He had been amused by her; now he trusts her. She sees him looking and gives him a bright smile. “They’re beautiful. How do you make them so lifelike?”

He shrugs, pouring her tea into a mug, the nice one without any chips. “I just watch the animals and carve what I see.”

She sets the rabbit back on the mantel, lining it up with care, before coming over to accept the mug. “They’re cinnamon sugar, by the way.”

“What?”

“The cookies. That’s the best kind I can make-- well, the only kind, really. Do you want one?”

He nods, and she hands him one, looking nervous as he takes a bite. “It’s good,” he reassures her, and she lets out a little sigh. In fact, it is sort of dry and not quite sweet enough, but he takes another bite anyway. “Aren’t you having one?”

“They’re your cookies.”

“To do with as I wish?”

She nods, and he gives her a quick flash of a smile. “Then I wish you would eat one.”

Her face brightens, too, and he wonders if it is because of him or because of the treat. She takes a bite and pulls a face. “These aren’t good at all.”

“I like them anyway.”

She tilts her head a little, confused, and he shrugs. “No one has brought me cookies, thank-you or otherwise, before. So these are the best I’ve ever had.”

“Well, that’s awfully sad, isn’t it?”

She’s trying to be funny, but the fact is that is sort of sad, really, and they both realize it at the same time and look away from one another. He takes a sip of tea and wonders if she minds that he didn’t offer her any sugar. He’s about to ask when she clears her throat.

“So-- I’m Anna, by the way.”

“Anna,” he repeats, the name soft and warm like honey on his tongue, and a smile blooms on her face.

“And you are…?”

For one absurd moment he almost says I don’t have one, but then he remembers-- “Kristoff.”

“Nice to meet you, Kristoff,” and this time when he smiles he doesn’t stop.

---

The next time he hears the knock, he’s not in the house; he’s halfway across the yard with a bucket of hay. She doesn’t see him and turns to go. For a moment he just watches, curious about why her shoulders are suddenly drooping, but suddenly sense returns to him, and he calls to her. “Anna!”

She spins on her heel, giving him a smile that goes all the way to her eyes. They are very blue; he has noticed them before, but today he notices a little extra. “Kristoff! I was worried you weren’t here.”

“I’m always here. I was just feeding the reindeer.”

Her eyes go wide. “Can I see?”

He nods, and she darts across the yard to him like a sparrow flickering from place to place and lands right in front of him, bouncing on the balls of her feet. He offers her a not-so-rare-anymore smile and leads her over to the stable. She gasps when she sees them, takes in their shaggy coats and velvety noses and branching antlers, and stops in front of Sven, who regards her curiously.

“Can I pet them?”

Out of habit, he answers in the reindeer’s voice, the one he made up years ago when he first realized how vast alone could be. “Sure you can, go ahead.”

He freezes for a moment, feeling his cheeks turn scarlet, and she looks up at him, and this close he could count her freckles and the stars in her eyes. “You’re full of surprises, Kristoff.”

He is not; he is a man who lives alone in the woods because he does not know how to be anything else, and she is a silverbright comet scorching her way through his life and scattering shards of colors he didn’t know existed.

He ducks his head, putting his hand on Sven’s neck, the place that always needs scratching. “Here-- this is his favorite spot.”

Her hand joins his, petting the reindeer with the utmost gentleness, and her fingers brush against his but neither of them pulls away.

After a minute Sven makes a happy huffing noise, and she jumps back, startled. He cannot help but laugh, the sound creaking out of him like a trodden floorboard, but she smiles at him anyway. “So-- I came to ask for your help again, Kristoff. If that’s okay.”

He likes that she keeps saying his name, likes the way her lips purse against the end of it. “What do you need?”

She digs in her satchel, pulls out a penknife and a little block of pine. “Will you teach me to carve the animals the way you do?”

He does not know if it is a skill that can be taught, but he nods anyway and starts walking, leading her back to his cabin. “What for?”

“My children.”

He nearly trips over the invisible brick she has dropped. “Oh-- so you’re a--”

“Not mine, really,” she explains quickly, as if she knows the reason he stumbled. “I’m a schoolteacher down in the village.”

“They still have one in Smeerensburg?”

She wrinkles her nose as he holds the door open for her. “I don’t think they want to. The adults, at least, not very fond of learning about the outside, especially not from an actual outsider. But the children-- especially the little ones-- they want to learn. And it’s Christmas coming up, and some of the very small ones...well.” She peeks up at him through a fringe of tawny lashes. “I’ve seen the shoes they’re having to wear in this weather, and...I don’t know that there’ll be anything under the tree.”

He nods and pulls out a chair for her before going for his own knife and a block of wood from the chest in the corner. “We can fix that.”

---

Her hands, so careful with Sven, are surprisingly clumsy and impatient with the wood, and so sometimes her bears have pointy noses or the deer have squared-off backsides, but she is proud of her work and so is he, and he knows that the children she so worries over will treasure them just the same as any toy from the shops of the southern cities because they are made with love and that is a thing that is all too precious in this cold world of theirs. He works alongside her, making tiny boxes carved from a single block. She marvels over them, begging to know his secret for making them open without a hinge. “Magic,” he says, and she laughs and nudges her elbow against his.

After a couple of weeks of her near-daily visits, they are running low on supplies, and so he takes her out into the forest, but not until he has draped his warmest scarf around her neck and tucked her hands into a pair of mittens. They are so big they slide off when she drops her hands again, and so he helps her pull them on once more, and this time he ties little pieces of twine around her wrists to keep them in place.

“Too tight?”

Her eyes are soft as she looks up at him. “No, they’re perfect.”

“Good. This wind off the lake will freeze you solid in a half-hour if you’re not careful. Can’t have that, can we?”

It’s a bit of a walk to the clearing where the linden trees grow; pines surround the cabin but the wood isn’t as strong, won’t hold up as well against the unrelenting force of little hands. Despite his careful wrapping, she still shivers a little; her coat isn’t suited for this weather. He crooks an elbow, offering it to her, and she tucks her mittened hand there gladly, drawing close to his side.

When they reach the clearing, she helps him pick a tree that looks “like it won’t mind helping,” in her words. She has made a good choice; it’s old but not so old the wood will be difficult to work with, just broad enough that it will provide plenty of wood for carving and for the fire but not so heavy that he won’t be able to drag it back with them. He instructs her to sit on a stump and shucks his coat, draping it over her shoulders. She tries to protest, but he shakes his head. “I’ll warm up fast doing this,” he reassures her.

And he does, sweat prickling at his forehead as he makes one swing after another, the axe biting through the trunk with practiced ease. He has been very careful to make sure that when it falls it is far from where she sits, but still he glances nervously over his shoulder before making the final blow.

She offers to help him drag it back, but he waves her off. Her eyes are wider than he’s ever seen them as they walk. “How can you move that by yourself?” she asks, her voice hushed even though no one else is around to hear.

He shrugs. “It needs moving, so I move it. That’s what I’ve always done.”

She whistles, the sound low and admiring, and even though she’s still wearing his coat he feels warm all over.

They pass a pond on the way back, and he makes the mistake of glancing at it, catching a glimpse of their reflection and feeling a hot bubble of shame well up and burst in his gut. Even bundled in layers of wool and fur she is delicate, graceful, cornflower eyes and crystalline smile, and he resembles the mountains he has lived among his whole life, rough edges and ragged hair and a smear of dirt on his jaw.

He doesn’t talk the rest of the way back, just nods when she goes inside and offers to make tea while he chops off a few pieces from the trunk for her to carve. He takes the pieces in and offers them to her; in exchange, she holds up a steaming mug. He savors it, the warmth of the drink and her company, relishing every last drop because it is the last.

When the cup is empty, he meets her gaze. “That should be enough to get you through. Won’t need to come back up here.”

She frowns. “But I need help figuring out the ears, still.”

“You’re doing well on your own. No need to bother coming back.”

He takes their mugs, turns his back on her to wash them, hears her quietly hang up his coat and scarf, then feels her come up behind him. “I need help with the mittens.”

He turns, and she holds up her hands. He pulls the knots loose and frees her hands, letting his thumb trace over the inside of her wrist for just a moment, memorizing the smooth silk of her skin. She shivers beneath the touch, and he pulls away, knowing the shudder must have been one of disgust.

“Hurry back,” he says gruffly, turning away again. “Before dark.”

Her booted feet walk slower than usual across the wooden floor; he hears the door creak and start to close, but then she pauses.

“Goodbye, Kristoff.”

His chest aches. “Goodbye, Anna.”