He's going to write a song for her.
Or not going to, rather, he's had the melody rattling around in his head since the day they met. When he'd felt her soul like it was a bonfire, a blindingly bright sear of a determination and purity he knew would be forever branded on his retinas, that unnamed intoxication being near her caused in him wrapping him like smoke.
But he's finally going to write it down; his devotion to her in writing, spelled out in sharps and flats.
It surprises him that the DWMA has a music room, and he thinks it would surprise everyone else, too, because it looks like no one's stepped foot inside for at least a decade.
Cobwebs drape the corners, the few chairs and desks coated in undisturbed layers of dust.
In a cabinet he finds two scuffed-up cellos leaning exhaustedly against each other, a few violins in a derelict pile, a heap of ragged bows bundled together like kindling.
The floor sheds sheet music with every step; picking a few up, the names of the composers send his mind reeling with anti-nostalgic imagery. Mozart: his teacher barking with any variation of tempo; Chopin: being reprimanded for not changing tempo in rubato areas. Schumann: not enough happiness (The Happy Farmer can go to hell); Elgar: too much happiness.
It was all too bipolar for seven-year-old Soul, who still maintained a spark of childlike naïveté, whose eyes held less glowering surliness than they do now.
His gaze shifts to the corner of the room, where a baby grand piano sits, drowning in dust. The bench creaks as he sits, and the fallboard replies just as creakingly as he tugs it up and back.
The black-and-white grin of the keys is achingly familiar, the sound of the middle C (surprisingly in tune) like a siren's call; he feels so sure of his movements though the closest thing to a real piano he's played in years sits in his mind with the grinning Little Ogre and an ever-skipping jazz record.
He begins to play the melody he's mapped out mentally from the purity of Maka's soul; at first, just tiptoeing the melody with his right hand, graduating to left-hand accompaniment.
It's softer than the dark, jarring piece he played for her when they met, an alloy of sorrow and hopefulness. To anyone else, it'd be beautiful, tug-at-the-heartstrings, make-your-mother cry music, a lovely sentiment to have written something for the one you love.
But to him it's not sentiment. In fact, he doesn't see it as him having written the piece at all. It's the song of her soul; as sappy as that sounds, that's literally what it is.
He can hear it when they resonate, when she climbs onto the motorcycle behind him and her arms wind around him almost crushingly (because she won't admit that it still scares her, just a little), when his lazy grin earns him one of her own, like a momentary personal sunbeam.
Her soul sings to him, him and no one else, and he can only play along in return.
His mind whirls with these thoughts as he plays, numb to his surroundings, until he hears a sharp rap on the door.
Through the small rectangle of frosted glass, he can see his meister peering inside, frowning, inquisitive. His fingers freeze on the keys.
"Soul?" Her voice is muffled. "You in here?"
He huffs out a sigh and stands up. "Yeah," he calls out. "Hang on."
He open the door, and there she is, all wide green eyes and pigtails and white-gloved hands twisting nervously in front of her, almost hovering on anxious energy but floating back down when she sees him. "There you are!" She smiles at him, and he can hear it again: her soul picking up where he left off. When it's her in person, he only hears the melody; he supposes that makes him her accompaniment. "No one knew where you were, so I started wandering and got sort-of lost..." She trails off sheepishly.
Ducks her head in past him, ash-blonde hair ghosting over his shoulder. "What is this place?"
"A music room, I think. I just sort of found it," he says, watching her gaze sweep the room until it lands on the baby grand.
She gasps. "A piano? Were you playing it?"
He always brushes off piano when she brings it up, asks him why he hasn't played for her again. He always says it's because there's no piano around, but now there is she'll surely demand it. He nods, and her eyes shine like Christmas lights, soul-song pealing out happily.
Sure enough: "Will you play for me?" She looks so hopeful, so happy it makes his head spin, and it hurts to deny her.
"Soon." Her face falls, but still retains some joy at the promise in his voice. "We should probably get going; Blair's probably set something on fire again."
Her voice crashes against his ears, a crestfallen tide that never fails to make him want to take back whatever he's just said, fluff up her ego (or id or super-ego; he vaguely remembers her reading something of Freud's and trying to explain it to him) like a pillow and bask in her joy. "Alright." She steps back and they set off down the hall; out the windows the sun, beginning to drowse in the sky, slowly sinks toward the horizon.
They return home to find that Blair actually has set something on fire, but it's only the curtains this time.
As they put it out, her soul sings softly to him, shifted to a more melancholy tone. He hums along absentmindedly, languidly beating at the curtains with a wet towel while that damned cat races around the living room, yellow eyes wide and terrified, fur sticking straight out as though electrocuted.
He's going to write her song down (not that he needs to), and he's going to play for her.
He doesn't know when, but it'll have to be soon. Soon because he promised her, soon because he's not sure how much longer he can stand not saying the things he's been aching to since the the day they met.
But for now he just lets her chase Blair around and sifts his fingers softly through her hair when she presses her face into his shoulder and muffles out that she's going to kill that cat and now they'll need to buy new curtains.
He dreams of mile-long ribbons of sheet music unfurling from pages and winding around him like mummy linens, of Maka peeling them away with gloved hands and grinning down at him when she uncovers his face.
She was, after all, the only one who was ever able to help with his nightmares.