Jelsa oneshots inspired by songs
Jelsa, oneshot, modern AU (Meet Me Halfway: Chapter 30)
Elsa stirred when the mattress dipped beside her, followed by the slow tug of the blanket. The air was cool against her skin, and she blinked, vision adjusting to the soft dark of the room. The warm weight beside her settled, and she turned her head, voice still thick with sleep.
Jack’s voice was quiet, careful. “Around one.”
He slipped under the blanket, and the heat of his body reached hers almost immediately. She reached out instinctively, her hand finding the curve of his waist, drawing him closer. She pressed a kiss to the bridge of his nose, then his mouth, barely a brush, just warmth against warmth.
“I’m sorry I woke you,” he murmured, his breath curling over her cheek.
“No, I just fell asleep,” she lied, voice soft. She turned onto her side, his arm sliding beneath her neck as he settled behind her. She pressed her back to his chest, fitting there like she always did. His hand drifted across her waist, slipping under her shirt, finding her breast like it always did. Just muscle memory, a quiet ritual.
But the words came hollow from her. Something else had taken hold. The guilt hadn’t left her for days, it clung to her skin, weighed down every breath. It was everywhere, like static behind her eyes, in her chest, humming beneath every conversation. She could barely exist inside her own mind without feeling it twist, unrelenting, cruel in its consistency.
She wanted to roll over, look into his face, and say everything, the real things, the sharp things, the things that would cut and might not heal. She wanted to tear it open, this thing she was carrying. Let it bleed out in front of him.
But fear held her still. Because if she lost him… If he left… She wouldn’t come back from that. Not now. Not with how much she was losing.
The grief had already carved her out. If he left, there would be nothing left to carve.
She swallowed, her hand finding his beneath the covers, fingers brushing against his knuckles. He didn’t pull away. Instead, she felt his fingers soften, open, like he was letting her in.
She closed her eyes, clutching the feeling. Memorizing it. As if knowing the shape of his touch could tie her to this moment. As if it could protect her from what was coming. She tried to memorize his fingerprints.
Jack’s chest moved against her back, a quiet hum vibrating against the top of her head. That sound, the way he sighed through her hair, it nearly undid her.
This was going to break her. No matter how gently it happened. No matter how long she waited. This was going to hurt.
“Jack,” she whispered. Her voice was barely there, the syllables pulled straight from the center of her chest. Her fingers traced along his hand again, needing something to tether herself to.
He didn’t speak, just let her hold on.
She took a shaky breath. “Tell me I can keep you.”
It was a selfish ask. But she didn’t care. She needed to hear it. She needed him to say the words, to name the hope she was too scared to believe in.
“You have me,” he said, low and steady.
“No,” she said, a little louder. “Tell me I can keep you for a long time.”
Tell me I won’t have to lose you too.
The silence that followed crushed the air out of her lungs. It wasn’t long, but her mind stretched it into something jagged. What did the pause mean? Why would he wait to answer? What was he trying not to say?
Then his voice, quieter than before, but firmer. “You can keep me,” he said. “I’m yours to keep. For as long as you want me.”
His arms tightened around her, pulling her into the center of his body like she was something fragile he didn’t want to slip away. And if she’d been even the tiniest bit sleepier, even just a fraction less awake, she would have told him. She would have whispered the thing sitting heavy at the back of her throat:
Your faithless love's the only hoax
I believe in
Don't want no other shade of blue
But you
No other sadness in the world would do
Jack moved quietly through the dark, his steps soft against the floorboards, careful as ever. Elsa slept still beneath the blankets, her breathing slow and even, face turned slightly toward the window. She looked completely gone from the world, and he hoped she was in a deep sleep because he knew she was exhausted. He didn’t want to disturb that. He slipped into bed, mindful of every shift of the mattress, every rustle of the blanket. The room was dim, quiet except for the soft tick of the clock and the slow rhythm of Elsa’s breathing
But she stirred, and it made him feel guilty.
“What time is it?” Her voice was soft and laced with sleep, the words barely more than a breath.
The warmth of her hand immediately found his waist almost immediately, tugging him closer with that unthinking kind of trust that always undid him. She tilted her face up and kissed the bridge of his nose, then his mouth, a feather-light press, not meant to stir anything, but it did anyway. It always did. Even the smallest touch from her managed to move something in him, some part of himself he didn’t have words for.
“I’m sorry I woke you,” he whispered, his voice close to her skin, his breath catching on her cheek.
“No, I just fell asleep,” she murmured.
He wanted to believe her. Her voice was too careful, her words too even. And he knew her well enough by now to hear the difference.
She rolled to her side, and he moved with her, slipping his arm beneath her neck, pulling her gently back against his chest. She fit there the way she always did. His hand found her waist, the edge of her shirt, then slid beneath it, finding the curve of her breast on instinct.
Something about her felt… off. She seemed so fragile. She felt so far away, she felt so muffled from him. He could feel it in the way she moved. In the quiet tension laced through her muscles. In the way her fingers found his beneath the covers, brushing, hesitant.
Jack didn’t say anything. He just let her hold on.
“Jack,” she whispered, so faint he almost missed it.
He didn’t answer. He just stayed still, open. Let her come to him.
Her fingers traced over his hand again, slow, memorizing. His chest ached. He wanted to pull her closer, kiss her shoulder, tell her that everything would be alright. But they seemed like empty promises at times like this. He could feel her pulling away slowly, and he didn’t want to lie to her.
Then she said it. “Tell me I can keep you.”
For a moment, he couldn’t think, he couldn’t breathe.
She needed comfort, he could hear it in her voice, in the way it trembled on the edge of breaking. She wasn’t asking him for promises. She was asking for something to hold onto. Something to believe in. Part of him wanted to give her more.
He wanted to say forever. He wanted to say I love you. All the feelings that could never fit into sentences which had made a home out of his heart. He knew, when he looked at her, even when she was angry or quiet or distant or sad, that she was it. The person. His person.
But she was already drowning in grief, barely keeping her head above water. He couldn’t hand her the weight of his heart and ask her to hold that too.
“You have me,” he said, his voice steady. It was the truth, even if it wasn’t all of it.
“No. Tell me I can keep you for a long time.”
He froze, just for a beat. Not because he didn’t want it. God, he did. He wanted her for as long as she’d let him stay. But her voice cracked when she said it. Like it was a prayer. Like it was too fragile to survive the wrong answer.
He could feel it building in her. The silence between them wasn’t empty and comfortable anymore, it was loud and deafening to him. It thrummed in his nerves, syncing with his pulse, and he knew there was a lot of thing she wasn’t telling him. He could feel it in the way she clutched his hand. He didn’t need her to explain, he knew. He’d seen the way she carried herself these last few days. The way the sadness had taken root in her posture, her voice, her eyes. She was coming undone in slow motion, and she didn’t know how to ask for help.
He understood then. It wasn’t about him, not entirely. It was about everything else she was losing. Anna. Certainty. Time. Love. Herself.
And in that moment, what she needed was not a declaration. What she needed was something quiet, something solid. The truth.
So he softened his voice and gave her what she needed. “You can keep me,” he said. “I’m yours to keep. For as long as you want me.”
He pulled her closer, his arms wrapping around her like they were trying to shield her from the world outside this bed. He wanted to. To protect her against everything because she deserved none of anything she was going through. She melted against him, and he could feel the effort it took for her not to cry.
She just curled deeper into him, her breath slowing gradually, her fingers still laced with his. He felt the way her body settled, inch by inch, tension unspooling like thread as exhaustion finally won. She was asleep within minutes, soft, uneven breaths.
He kissed the top of her head, barely a brush of lips against her hair. Then buried his nose there for a moment, letting the scent of her, lavender and honey and everything that felt like home, sink into him.
The words hovered behind his teeth. I love you. I love you so much I don’t know how to live outside of this.
Sometimes Jack watched her like she was already halfway gone. It wasn’t even consciously most of the time. Just something made him feel like she was fading at the edges, like light through sheer fabric, and there was nothing he could do to hold it in his hands.
He still loved her. That part would never change.
Jack Frost knew that the Elsa he’d first met, sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued, almost carelessly warm, biting in all the right places, that brilliant pulse of thought and color, that Elsa felt so far away now. He wasn’t sure if she’d gone quiet, or if she’d just gone deeper inside herself.
He didn’t blame her. God, how could he? Her sister was dying. That kind of thing doesn’t leave a person untouched.
But still, some nights, like this one, he’d lie there in bed with her in his arms and realize he didn’t know how to reach her anymore. Sure, she’d press her body against his, let his arms wrap around her, even breathe in sync with him like she used to… but her mind was somewhere else entirely. Somewhere far. Somewhere she never invited him to follow. He didn’t know how to ask to be let in without sounding like he was asking too much.
He was afraid. Afraid of overstepping. Afraid of saying the wrong thing, the kind of thing that would make her fold even deeper into herself. Afraid that one day she’d just stop turning toward him altogether. That the silence would stop being a moment and become a permanent state.
He didn’t want to be another burden on her back. She was already carrying the end of someone she loved deeply; he couldn’t be another thing she had to manage.
So instead, he tiptoed around her sadness. Never avoiding it, just not trying to solve it. He didn’t offer advice unless she asked. Didn’t push her to talk. Didn’t try to lift it when she was too tired to lift her own head. He just stayed near her. Sat beside her on the floor when she didn’t want to sit on the couch. Cooked dinner even when she didn’t eat. Held her when she let him. Let her go quiet when she needed to.
Some days, that felt like the right thing. But others… others, he wondered if he was disappearing alongside her. He knew that she cared about him, but he also knew that grief made everything foggy, and he wasn’t sure if she could still see him through it.
What scared him most wasn’t that she’d change. He already knew grief changes people. It carves them out. Makes room for new versions of themselves. He was prepared for that. He could love her in a hundred different forms. What scared him was the thought that she might change in a way that made love feel like a distant memory. That one day, she might look at him and only feel tired.
He didn’t want to lose her to this sadness. He didn’t want to hurt her. He just wanted her to stay. He thought about telling her sometimes, just blurting it out. “I know you’re slipping away. I know it. I feel it. I miss you even though you’re right here.”
But what if that made her feel worse? What if it made her ashamed of her grief, made her believe she was hurting him too? She didn’t need that. She didn’t need guilt on top of pain.
So he kept it all inside.
All the I-miss-yous, and the I-love-yous, and the quiet ache of watching someone suffer in silence while pretending they were still whole. He buried it deep, let it churn quietly in his chest like water that never boiled.
He never knew love like this. The gentle, terrifying kind, where you’re loving someone with everything you have and still not sure it’s enough to hold them in place.
