Author's Note- This is a slightly belated birthday present for the magnificent Professor Maka, who mentioned more Serotiny!verse fic as a potential birthday fic months ago, and who deserves a far, far better quality than this, for she is most magnificent. Here's to you, ProMa!
Also, shoutout to cthulhu with a fez, who stepped up to beta for me at an ungodly hour because my usual beta is... well... the birthday girl herself.
That said, this is a UA, if you will, of my fic Serotiny, and yes, you will need to have read that to understand this. (But that being said, if you haven't read Serotiny, I encourage you to do so, because I both love and hate that fic and enjoy watching other people react to it.) We diverge from the original timeline of Serotiny towards the end of the fic, right at the point where Maka is in the hospital after being injured on a mission, and Soul comes to check on her.
White hospital sheets were scratchy against her skin as Maka tried to find a way to say that she'd been on assignment with another weapon. It wasn't like she technically owed Soul anything, because for all intents and purposes their partnership was dissolved, but it still felt like a horrible betrayal. It was made even more difficult by the fact that she'd been hurt in the process.
Struggling for words, she sputtered out: "I… um… I was… I went on a- a mission—"
"With Harudori, I know. You've been partnering with her for a couple weeks now," Soul said, his tone even but his eyes blazing.
She couldn't hold his gaze. "Only… only twice," she whispered.
"And the second attempt didn't go so well?"
She shook her head slightly. "Not really, no. The… uh, the kishin egg had a partner in crime the DWMA didn't know about. We took the target out alright, but then her friend got the jump on us and… well…"
"And you got hurt."
"It's not Tsugumi's fault. I wasn't paying attention… honestly, it was her quick thinking that saved us, I'd never have thought she was strong enough to go up against a pre-kishin by herself, but I guess people can surprise you—" She was babbling, trying helplessly to justify her actions, using Tsugumi's unlooked-for bravery as a crutch, but it was no good. No matter what she said, she could still feel the bitter churn of guilt deep in her gut.
"But… you're okay," he stated, once she finally trailed feebly into silence.
She shrugged, then winced as the motion jostled her sore shoulder. "Just stiff, mostly. And dizzy. I've taken way worse beatings than this without even going to the nurse's office, but I have a concussion this time, so I'm stuck here for the night…"
"They're making you stay? Why?" he asked sharply.
"Papa's in the witches' realm dealing with stuff for Kid, and apparently Liz and Patti aren't adequate caretakers…" She rolled her eyes.
Soul frowned. "If you don't wanna be stuck here overnight… I mean, you could come home with me. If you want."
She wanted. Oh she wanted. There was nothing better when she was sick or hurt than being fussed over by Soul. He was a little bit of a mother hen, though she had taken a long time to realize that, because Soul did his caretaking the same way he did everything else: obliquely, and in his own highly individual way.
If she went with him, she would be able to sleep in her own bed for the first time in months. She would take a shower, and use Soul's shampoo since she knew hers would not still be there (and even if hers was there, she'd still probably use his). When she finished in the bathroom she would find hot soup waiting on a tray on her bedside table, along with a couple of acetaminophen tablets and a glass of apple juice to wash them down, and neither of them would mention it directly, but in the morning she would make his favorite breakfast as a thank-you, and…
And truth be told, she didn't have the heart to deny him, not with him standing there looking at her with such concern. It just didn't seem like an option. Soul had always taken such good care of her, not always in ways she had appreciated at the time, but incredibly touching in retrospect. Her head hurt and her heart was so badly bruised by being separated from him, and all she wanted was to go home, to sleep in her own bed, with Soul only a thin wall away.
"Okay," she said quietly. "I'd… like that."
A hesitant glance at him revealed a twitching at the corner of his mouth that might have been a smile.
"She's coming home with me," he informed Dr. Freeman. Then he looked back at Maka and said, "I have a meeting with Kid, but I can cancel it."
She shook her head, and immediately regretted it as her temples throbbed. "No, work is important," she said, trying to sound like she wasn't woozy again.
"You're more important," he said firmly, and it left a bittersweet ache in her chest, because she had forgotten how much Soul cared. He might not love her the way she wanted him to, but he cared so much about her nonetheless, and it felt so good to be the focus of his attention that way.
"Soul, you shouldn't blow it off," she said reluctantly.
Dr. Freeman chose to step in at that moment. "I still have a few boxes left to check off before I'm done examining her, Death Scythe," the doctor said. "And getting her discharge papers in order will take awhile, too. Go on to your meeting."
Soul looked reluctant, which was gratifying, but he nodded. "I'll make it fast," he said, and strode hastily out the door.
"I thought you said we were all done," Maka said, eyes narrowing at the doctor accusingly.
The older woman gave her a knowing look. "I thought you might need some time to compose yourself before being stuck one-on-one with him," she said. "And there's no sense in him hovering around while we wait for Miss Harudori to get back with your— oh, speak of the devil!"
Tsugumi had just poked her head hesitantly into the room. "Maka-senpai? I brought your clothes."
Maka was discharged with strict instructions to rest and to avoid strenuous activity for at least a week; Soul was likewise impressed with the absolute necessity of waking her up every one to two hours whenever she slept during the next twenty four hours or so. None of this was news to them— they'd cared for each other after concussions before. It was oddly nostalgic, somehow.
Soul got Maka home and shuffled her off to the shower to wash of the eau de kishin while he wandered into the kitchen in search of something to feed her. It would have to be something light, not heavy in her stomach in case the concussion made her queasy, probably something warm would be best because she always wanted comfort food after getting out of the hospital. It would have been so much easier to find something decent for her to eat if he'd bothered to keep the kitchen stocked after she left. He didn't have any potatoes or popcorn, and the last of the peanut butter had been scraped out weeks ago, so PB&J was off the menu. Hell, the closest thing they had to fruit was a single apple that had been misplaced in the vegetable crisper and had wilted into something wrinkly and brown he wasn't sure he wanted to touch. Honestly for the last two months or so he'd mostly been surviving on Tsubaki's—
Wait! Tsubaki had brought over soup a few days ago! That would be perfect, Maka loved soup!
As he poured out the creamy broth into an iron saucepan, he pondered his meeting with Kid earlier.
He still hadn't been able to give Kid an answer about his death weapon assignment. Kid had been exasperated with him, which wasn't really surprising, but at least he'd accepted Soul's request for more time to think it over.
He knew Spirit was right, and he was going to have to make a decision eventually, but he couldn't give a firm answer right now. Maybe if he hadn't seen Maka in the infirmary he would have been able to make up his mind, but now…
Now he had a chance to fix it.
He still didn't understand what exactly had gone wrong, but Maka was here now. Tomorrow when she was feeling better, maybe they could talk and try to deal with this. He couldn't get the sound of her crying on the phone out of his head, and he knew the reckoning was coming soon. Either they'd figure this out and become stronger for the experience, or…
He didn't want to think about or. Or wasn't an option.
For now, though, he could hear the water turn off in the shower, and turned his attention back to the soup, adjusting the heat to ensure it would be ready by the time Maka was dry and dressed.
Soul had done his duty diligently, waking her up hourly and asking each time if she needed anything— more soup? something to drink? another Tylenol?— and it was unexpectedly painful. His attention made Maka feel so loved, and she knew it wasn't the kind of love she wanted to receive from him. But she was just too weak to resist enjoying it.
It was sometime around two a.m. that she woke up of her own volition. A glance at the clock told her it was a little early for Soul to come wake her, but the water and gatorade he'd been pushing on her all day had done his job for him. She slid out of bed and padded down the hall to the bathroom, noting as she went that there was a light on in the living room; outside the muffling walls of her bedroom, she could hear the TV turned down low.
Once she had finished her business in the restroom, she wandered into the living room. Soul was sprawled out on the couch, vacant eyes pointed in the direction of the TV screen, but not really appearing to take anything in.
For a second she contemplated just going back to bed and putting off the awkwardness until tomorrow. Things had been tense today, but he'd been so focused on taking care of her that they'd avoided most of the weirdness so far. It would be so easy to just crawl back into her soft, warm bed and keep on ignoring the elephant in the room… but Maka Albarn was not built for avoiding the issue.
Decision made, she stepped into the living room and approached the sofa.
"You don't have to stay up," she said, sitting down next to him. "You can just set an alarm."
Soul shook his head, not looking at her. "I'd rather not."
Maka was about to accuse him of being overprotective and stubborn, but then she actually got a good look at him. He looked… well, he looked bad. She'd been too busy trying not to make eye contact earlier to really see him, but now, in the lamplight turned down low and the sickly glow of the television, he looked unwell. There were dark circles under his eyes and his hair— which he fussed over nearly as much as Liz did— looked oily and unwashed. He also seemed to have lost weight.
"Seriously, Soul, you should rest," she ventured. "You look like you haven't slept in a month.
"Three, actually," he muttered.
Three months since he proposed. Three months since their fight. "Three months since… Soul, you haven't been sleeping well since I left?"
He shrugged. "Apartment's too quiet without you. Kept having nightmares."
She didn't have a response to that, but she felt like she had to say something, and he'd opened up (even if only a little bit), so— "I've had a hard time sleeping, too. I keep lying awake, staring at the ceiling. It doesn't help that all the mattresses at the Gallows are all hard and uncomfortable. Or at least, the one in the guest room is."
"Why not come back, then?" he suggested, and it was just a little bit too casual to be a genuinely disinterested invitation. Maka wondered if he knew that even her willpower probably wasn't going to be strong enough to rip her away now that she was here.
"I know it'd be awkward," Soul continued, "but I miss you like hell, Maka."
She nodded. "Me too."
"So you're staying, then?" He looked so hopeful it gave her a stomachache.
"Don't think I can make myself leave," she said honestly. The dim light— or maybe it was the concussion— seemed to make it easier to face this, boosting her courage.
"Good," Soul said. "This place isn't home without you."
It made her heart stutter, and in that moment there was nothing at all she wanted more badly than to scoot over and lay her head on his shoulder the way she had dozens— probably hundreds— of times before, but she didn't dare. Just because she couldn't stand to be away from him any longer didn't mean she had to give him any more ammunition. It would deny her the comfort of the closeness they'd shared up until that horrible night they had fought, but it would be worth it just to be able to talk to him again.
"I'm sorry this has been so awful," she said. Then she sighed softly and said, "I probably shouldn't come back. It's not a good idea, but I just miss you too much to leave now that I'm home."
Soul's expression was sour as he stared resolutely at his lap. "Guess I should be happy about that, at least. But we'll figure this out, I guess. And I'll try not to make it weird, okay? I mean, you not feeling the same way sucks, but I'd rather have you in my life as a friend than not at all."
The words were like a smack to the face, and Maka spent several seconds analyzing their echoes before admitting that she could not understand his meaning. "What do you mean 'I don't feel the same way?'" she demanded. "You know perfectly well how I feel! You're the one who doesn't have feelings for me!"
"What are you talking about?" Soul asked, and though he still maintained his usual calm, even cadence, it was somewhat undermined by the fact that the volume of his voice had increased significantly.
"I'm talking about you trying to use my feelings for you to keep us together— which, by the way, is fucking stupid because you should know the last thing I ever wanted to do was break our—"
"Maka!" Soul interrupted her with a shout, but his voice was lower— though certainly not calmer— when he continued: "Why the hell would I 'use your feelings' to try to— what? What is it I'm supposedly trying to control you for?"
"To keep me from leaving!"
He raised an eyebrow. "What, were you planning to?"
"Not until you proposed and fucked everything up!"
"Oh, yeah, proposing to the girl I love, such a fuckup," he said sarcastically.
Even with her blood running hot, the words made Maka's heart stutter happily, but she was terrified of believing it. Falling back on her oldest response to fear, she channeled it into anger. "If you love me so much," she sneered, playing her trump card, "how come you never came after me?"
"Because you told me not to!" Soul shouted.
"When?" she asked, flabbergasted. This was just too much. "You can't rewrite history, Soul!"
He actually growled in frustration, lurching to his feet and, to her consternation, stormed over to the fridge. He yanked a piece of paper out from under a magnet, stalked back to the sofa, and shoved it at her. She took the paper reflexively and read the words written on it… in her handwriting.
Don't come after me. We obviously don't want the same things, so it's better if we don't see each other. You can have the apartment.
"A good weapon always obeys his meister, right?" Soul said bitterly.
Maka's hands were trembling as she stared at the hastily-scribbled note. To be honest, she barely remembered leaving a note at all, let alone what she'd written in it. She'd been too desperate to get out of the apartment. But this… it was so callous!
She raised her eyes to meet his, shell-shocked. "Soul…" she breathed.
The fight seemed to have gone out of him, and he collapsed back onto the couch next to her. His body language spoke more eloquently than his tongue; he was hunched over, head down, and the defensive posture reminded her of how he had been when they first met. It was painful to see, and the urge to lean up against him, to straighten his spine with the strength of her own, rushed over her again.
"I don't wanna do this," he said softly.
"Soul, we have to deal with this, or we're never gonna be able to live in the same—"
"I know we've got to deal with it, I get that, but can't we just… talk? We don't fight, Maka! Not seriously, anyway."
"Until now," she said sadly. It was really true. They bickered plenty, but that all fell in the range between good-natured teasing and minor disagreements over inconsequential things. Actual fights were rare, and she couldn't even remember any that had lasted longer than a couple of days… and even those longer arguments were unusual. "Fighting sucks."
"No kidding."
She flopped back against the couch, leaning her head back against the cushions to stare at the ceiling. "Where do we even start?"
Soul leaned back as well, arms crossed over his chest and eyes glued to the water stain shaped like Admiral Ackbar. "Did you mean it when you said you had feelings for me?"
"Yes. I love you."
He let out a long, slow breath. "I thought so. I always thought you did." His voice wavered a little bit, like he might be about to cry, but when she looked over, his eyes were dry.
"I never thought you did," she said, and he tilted his head to look at her. "For awhile I hoped… after Asura, you know? Sometimes I thought you looked at me like maybe you liked me, but then you never said anything official. I figured if you wanted to be more than friends you'd say something."
"Well, why didn't you say something if you wanted it to be 'official?'" he asked.
"Because I thought you didn't!" she protested. "I wasn't going to ruin what we had just to get a love confession off my chest! But if you knew how I felt, why did you never tell me?"
He shrugged, still gazing at the ceiling. "Figured we were on the same page. Once I had kinda sorted out my self-esteem issues, I realized you flirted with me a lot, and it wasn't hard to read you after that. I thought you'd done the same."
"Yeah, well, you know what they say when you assume," Maka said bitterly, looking away again.
Somehow she wasn't surprised that he had picked up on her feelings. Soul was always exceptionally good at reading people, and she didn't think she'd been very subtle, which was half the reason she'd assumed he didn't share her affections in the first place.
"Seriously," she continued, collecting her thoughts, "just assuming that I'd somehow magically know about your feelings was really stupid of you. And not fair to me, either. Soul, I spent years of my life trying to reconcile myself to the fact that you didn't want me and probably never would, and that's… that's really fucking terrible."
Soul nodded, still facing her but avoiding her eyes. "If it's anything like the last three months have been for me…"
She felt dizzy, both from the concussion and from the strain of trying to find her footing after having her worldview violently wrenched out of the perspective she'd been used to for far too long. "And that's the other thing," she said, "Even if you do love me, why would you just decide 'Oh hey, dating is so cliché, why don't we just get married instead?' Like, what the hell is that, Soul?"
"It's hard to explain."
"Well fucking try, because you owe me an explanation, buddy!"
He looked utterly miserable. "I thought we were both headed in the same direction. We loved each other, and I'd wanted to marry you since I was… god, I think the first time I actually thought about it I was sixteen or seventeen. And it wouldn't really be much different from what we had, right? We'd still live together, still be together most of the time, we'd just… add a new dimension to it."
"Sweet death, Soul, what the hell kind of logic is that?" she protested, voice rising again despite her resolve to stay cool-headed. "I appreciate the sentiment but shouldn't you at least have kissed me or asked me out before going straight from friends to marriage?"
"And shouldn't you have tried to turn me down gently and talk about this instead of picking a fight and running away like a damn coward?" Soul retorted.
Maka let out an angry growl and jumped to her feet, ready to tear him a second asshole, but the sudden motion did her no favors. The headache that had been numbed down by the sleep and painkillers had been building backup the whole time they'd been arguing, and when she stood so suddenly, her brain reminded her very forcefully that it had been concussed barely eighteen hours earlier. Her vision swam as her temples throbbed and she dropped right back down on the couch with a hand pressed to her forehead as if she could relieve the pounding in her skull through pressure alone.
Soul's hand was on her shoulder. "Hey, Maka, are you okay?"
"Y-yeah," she said shakily. "Shouldn't have stood up so fast." Maybe it was kind of fortunate, in a way. The shock of pain and dizziness had iced over the fire in her blood and stilled the fury she had been about to unleash on Soul.
"Maybe you should go back to bed," he said, and the concern was obvious in his voice. "Dealing with our baggage right after you've had a concussion is stupid."
"You're stupid," she muttered, rubbing her temples, but her heart wasn't in it. She took a few deep breaths through her nose to steady herself, and tried to reestablish her train of thought. "Look, you're right. I may possibly have… projected some of my own fears onto you and overreacted because of that. But this isn't just on me, Soul."
Headache settled down to a dull roar, she looked over at him, and the look of genuine remorse in his eyes was gratifying. For three months she'd been dealing with everyone blaming this whole disaster on her because she was the one who'd left, and she couldn't stand it. Plenty of people had blamed her mother, too…
But Soul wasn't her father, and she wasn't her mother. She wasn't. Somehow in the last few months she'd forgotten that. She'd been frightened and she'd felt backed into a corner, and she had bolted, just like her mother did when the going got tough. But she remembered, now, that she wasn't Rei, she was Maka, and Maka Albarn didn't run away from what scared her. And Soul…
In a soft voice, he said, "I know. I didn't realize it earlier but… you wouldn't have been ready for me to ask you that even if we'd been dating already, would you?"
She nodded. "I have… a lot of unresolved issues about marriage. Maybe someday, but not right now."
"And… and you really didn't know how I feel, did you?"
"No."
It was a testament to just how deep their bond was despite the three months gone that she could see just how deeply he felt that single quiet syllable. It was clear from the tightening of his mouth and the slight twitch of his eyebrows that her incomprehension of his feelings was painful to him.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I thought you would understand just… Maka, it feels like every thing I've done for the past half a decade has been me showing you how much I love you. I… figured you'd realize." He shook his head. "Guess I shoulda known better. You're more about the verbal thing."
That coaxed a laugh out of her, a soft, hiccupping little laugh that to her mild horror got a bit stuck in her throat and brought a sting to her eyes. She blinked rapidly, trying to clear away the budding tears before Soul noticed, but of course he did.
"Hey, c'mere—" He opened his arms, inviting a hug, and she scooted over into his embrace with no reservations, because she missed him and she loved him and he loved her too and she just couldn't stand not touching him right now.
Laying her sore head on his shoulder felt incredibly good, and she bit her lip in an attempt to keep more tears from leaking out, because he smelled so familiar. But she was going to be a grown-up about this and not just fall apart because things finally felt right in her world again; that was something to laugh about, not cry, so she was going to take deep breaths and hug her partner and defer the emotion until she could express it in a non-embarrassing—
Soul sniffled.
"Soul?" she asked tentatively. "Are… are you crying?"
"No," he said, in a voice that very clearly demonstrated otherwise.
"You are."
"Well, so are you!"
She gave a watery giggle and buried her face into his neck. "Only a little."
He huffed out an annoyed breath. "Can't help it. Cool guys are allowed to cry a little when they reconcile with their partner."
Maka smiled against his skin. "You must be really self-conscious," she said softly. "You haven't pulled out the 'cool guy' line in years!"
Soul's only response was to hold her a little closer.
They sat like that for awhile, wrapped up in an embrace that was equal parts catharsis and compassion, and allowed time to pass around them. Maka let a few insistent tears of relief leak out, and if the damp spots on the collar of her pajamas was any indication, so did Soul. Eventually, though, Maka sat back.
"I don't know about you, but I'm exhausted and my head hurts," she said, wiping at her damp cheeks. "We can talk more in the morning, but right now I need to go lie down."
"Yeah. Sorry. I didn't mean to bring up the heavy stuff until you were feeling better," Soul said.
She shrugged. "It was a conversation we had to have anyway. It's probably better that it happened at night, anyway. It's easier to talk honestly in the dark."
He gave her a toothy grin. "Yeah, it is."
Maka got to her feet, more slowly this time, and walked in the direction of her bedroom. Before turning into the hallway, though, she paused and looked back at Soul, who was still sitting on the couch, looking a little bereft, and smiled softly.
"Do you wanna maybe come join me?" she asked. "I could use a cuddle buddy."
"I'm nobody's 'cuddle buddy,'" Soul said, trying to look very offended and failing spectacularly because he was smiling too much.
She snorted. "Yeah, right. You're a snuggle-slut and everyone knows it, Soul."
He gave a very theatrical sigh. "Alright, if I have to," he said, getting to his feet eagerly.
Settling down into her bed took some time, because her mattress was small and Soul was not, and the lingering awkwardness of three months' separation and a lifetime's worth of miscommunication hanging between them didn't help. Once they had negotiated the mechanics of spooning and the politics of cuddling with your recently-reconciled partner, sleep came on them with surprising ease.
Tomorrow, Maka would wake up with Soul's head on her shoulder and the sound of rain on the window. Tomorrow, they would talk more and try to wade through all the hurt that had built up over the past weeks. Tomorrow, there would be more shouting and more tears. Tomorrow, they would firmly agree that boyfriend and girlfriend were stupid words and that partner had served them pretty well so far, so there was no reason to change the label just because the context had changed.
But tonight, it was enough just to lie together and slip quietly to sleep.
A/N part deux- So there you have it, folks! Doesn't really change the outcome at all, just the timing and the phrasing, but hey, I never claimed this would be particularly creative. I'm proud of the title, though, which is a subcategory of serotiny in which plants release their seeds when dried in the sun. Which is probably a few leaps of metaphor that only make sense to me, but I don't care.