Please let me suffer in my demi!Soul headcanons and the soma-ridden hellscape that is my mind at one in the morning.
Soul didn't know what was supposed to make a woman desirable. He knew that classy, elegant women, a picture of his mother and every girl that Wes had ever brought home were the sort his family encouraged, but every painted-lipped smile, modest and controlled, every silk-clad waist he was forced to hold for a dance back in the times before his parents had given up on making him like his brother had filled him with nothing more than thoughts of when he could leave, of why this was what people wanted.
He got older, he left home, and he carved himself into an image that rebelled against every idea his family had ever poured into him. Desirable women were curvy and confident, and maybe this was what he'd been missing back in ballrooms full of narrow, modest girls. But sultry eyes and wandering hands filled him with nothing more than the boredom, the distaste, that had settled in his stomach long before he even knew that something else was supposed to fill his mind.
Maka Albarn was a blessing and a curse, filling him with something, but not the right thing. Not the thing that would make him understand what she was so sure every man was preoccupied with, not the thing that would make him feel like there was at least one human way in which he wasn't broken. But the connection he felt to her was something substantial and fierce in it's own way, something that was surely better than any desire he was supposed to understand by now. And their partnership was all the better for it, as repulsed by sex-minded men as she was, built on a mutual disinterest and the trust that that wouldn't change. In the world of weapons and meisters, and the world of friends, that tiny, broken piece of his human nature didn't really play that big of a part.
Years passed in peace, in at least one aspect of his life, as any kind of desirable person drew him in no more than his devotion to his meister, his admiration towards his best friend. But one day his loyalty buzzed another excuse in his mind, another distraction, as he turned down another girl. Maka was desirable.
A mistake, a mistake, a mistake, as the part of himself he'd been sure didn't exist slowly lulled itself awake, drawn in by the idea of a kind of intimacy he'd never thought he'd want, something off-limits and unsolicited and undeserved.
Maka, with her calloused skin and dishevelled pigtails should not leave his mouth dry, should not fill his stomach with a feeling that curvy or painted-lipped women were supposed to long ago. She should not leave him curling away from their resonance purely because he knew she could feel his half-formed thoughts, because he had promised her a thousand times that he was nothing like her father, with a bitter humour in the back of his mind in how much he really wasn't.
But she didn't say a thing, even as he went to bed early just to avoid cuddle-sessions that were supposed to be platonic, even as he cursed himself every time he thought a little too obviously about crossing the line they had drawn on the very first day they'd become partners.
And he didn't know what made him feel worse; that fact that he suddenly felt a kind of desire in himself that he'd never thought he would feel, that he'd made an unspoken, grateful promise to never feel when he'd learned all the ways his meister had been broken, or the fact that he knew she felt it herself too, humming in her soul every time they fell into resonance at the wrong moment.
He wondered if it would be easier to ignore if his feelings were not reciprocated, if he didn't feel her hands trail town his sides just a little too longingly when they pulled away from a hug, if he didn't feel her wanting just as much as he did every time they shared the bathroom mirror in the mornings, when their sleep-addled minds left them a little too vulnerable to the accidental brushes against their partner's skin.
He wondered that if they both weren't constantly pressing the boundary, encouraged by each other's receptiveness, he'd be able to shove his urges down with everything else, if he'd be able to live his life like he did before his meister mumbling goodnight made him want to ask her to stay closer, to stay with him, tonight and tomorrow and every moment after.
Maybe not.
But he'd never know, because the way things were, there was no pretending, there was no ignoring, no matter how much they tried to after every time one of them leaned in a little too close, or thought a little too hard about just bringing it up, about just trying something to help ease the tension they felt every time their emotions were running just a little too high. Like now.
Maka put her book down to the side moments ago, because she felt everything he did, felt the devotion and the longing and the blurry avidity that accompanied moments like these, when for whatever reason his mind was so full of her that he could hardly be bothered to process every argument he had for why he was supposed to keep things the way they were. For why they weren't supposed to be moving closer, eyes locked and wanting with her hand on top of his, a burning reminder of their partnership, of everything that they were to each other, and every reason this something thrums between their souls when they fall into resonance at the wrong moment.
She's so near, and he can't remember the reasons they aren't supposed to do this, but he knows that they're there, and he hates them as much as he loves her.
He exhales sharply before leaning down onto her lap against her stomach. She in turn wraps her arms around him wordlessly, running her fingers through his hair for the same reason he breathes her in without meeting her eyes. The closeness is kind of relief, it always has been, but it's not quite enough, not quite what they want.
Their souls hum on the edge of the boundary.