Soul lay spread out on the ratty old couch, idly playing a solo round of Halo while Maka cooked dinner. Every now and again his eyes would lift from the screen and fall on her as she moved about the kitchen. She seemed the same as ever if you didn't truly know her. But Soul did know her. He knew everything about her in a very near to literal sense.
They had only been married five years, romantically together for eight, but when Soul really sat down and thought about it he realized that he and Maka had been with each other for fifteen years. How could he not know her? He'd be a pretty shitty weapon partner if he couldn't read his own meister after so much time together.
And it was his very ability to read every single nuance of Maka that had him so concerned.
They had been trying to get pregnant for a year now, but success had eluded them. Initially, the prospect had been incredibly enticing to Soul. How could it not be? The idea of a little piece of Maka and himself scampering about made him deliriously happy and the prospect of constant sex while trying to create another soul was certainly nothing he would shy away from.
The first three months had been wonderful. Yes, they were both disappointed when a pregnancy test would come up negative, or Maka's period would make an obnoxious appearance before they'd had a chance to even take a test, but that only gave them the incentive to have more sex. There was no way that things could end poorly.
But Soul had miscalculated.
Maka was not and had never been the kind of person that would accept failure. She figured that any failure was simply an opportunity to learn and then try again until she succeeded. To her, everything was a test, and every problem could be solved by buckling down and studying. And that was when earnest love making had devolved into scientific experimentation.
There were books, mountains and mountains of books that Maka read to try and glean more information about how to get pregnant faster. And those books would have not been such a thorn in Soul's side had she not required him to read them too. It was as if nothing was sacred anymore. A man couldn't just bone his woman and hope for the best. No no. There were supplements and specific positions, and scheduled sex.
The aforementioned scheduled sex would not have been so bad if Maka had not been Maka. But Maka was all about routines and timing, and if they were scheduled to have sex at six pm on Tuesday, they were having sex at six pm on Tuesday. There was no way out of it or around it and her behavior became so predictable that Soul had renamed his dick "Pavlov." Maka didn't even have to work at getting him hard anymore. She would walk up to him smelling like the blackberry perfume she had taken to wearing for their little trysts and he would be standing at attention in seconds.
It had pleased her.
He had been a little disgusted with himself, mostly because he had become more than ok with the predictability.
He was also a doting husband and he wanted his wife to be happy. So he did whatever was necessary to offer her comfort. Besides, it was still sex. Was he really going to say no? Of course he wasn't going to say no! Soul didn't care if she wanted him to look in the mirror and recite Dante's Inferno in Farsi while they fucked, as long as it meant he got some. Desire was desire man, and if he was sated and she was happy, he wasn't going to complain.
But then there were the last three months. Intimacy with his wife, of any sort, was almost nonexistent. Soul was lucky to get away with a hug or two throughout the day. A peck on the cheek was barely tolerable to her. He knew that it wasn't him she was shunning…but it was. And it hurt. It hurt exponentially more to know that he was hurting because she was hurting.
If he were honest with himself, he felt like a bit of a failure. It took two to create a new life and he somehow felt he wasn't holding up his end of the bargain, though realistically there was nothing more he could offer her. Fertility testing (at Maka's insistence, of course) had shown there was nothing wrong with either of them, and they just needed to give it more time.
Instead, Maka just stopped. She stopped everything.
She still read, but books about conception, and child rearing, and all manner of things baby were put in boxes and ignored. Any sort of TV show that made mention of children was turned off. She pointedly ignored children when she passed them on the street, rather than stopping to coo at them while trying to convince Soul that any brat that wasn't theirs was the most amazing thing on the planet.
He could sit on the couch with her and she would lean on him, but she would not try to steal a kiss. Any kiss he offered went unanswered, and sometimes she would even shift away from him. His heart cracked a little more every time she rebuffed him. He felt a monumental loss at the way she was retreating from him, though he was doing his best to maintain their connection.
Even trying to comfort her with his very own soul had been rejected. And that was why he was absentmindedly playing Halo while she puttered around in the kitchen. It wasn't until he heard the crash of glass that he broke out of his stupor, leaping from the couch and scrambling to the kitchen.
Maka stood silently in front of the sink, a crushed drinking glass settled beneath her fingers on the counter. Her wavelength was buzzing and erratic, though her body remained still and quiet.
Soul reached out a hand to her, hesitant, fingers twitching before landing on her shoulder.
"Maka?" he whispered to her.
"Why can't I do it, Soul?" she replied, unmoving.
"What?" he asked, eyebrows knitting together in confusion.
"People have been doing this for eons, right? Getting pregnant, having families…" she trailed off, wavelength pulsing and twisting.
Slowly she turned, mossy eyes shining with wetness. She stared into carmine eyes and her lower lip quivered before the dam broke and she sank to the floor.
"WHY can't I do it?!" she wailed. It was an unearthly noise, born of sorrow and nauseating pain.
Soul felt his own stomach lurch as the anguish of her wavelength entwined with his, but he shoved it down as he collapsed on the floor next to her and swiftly pulled her into his lap. Strong arms enveloped her and he kissed her hairline, long fingers drawing through ashen strands.
"It is not you, love," he murmured in her ear. "It is us, and there is nothing wrong with either of us."
She struggled against him, unwilling to hear his words.
"A year, Soul! It's been a year, and we haven't…I haven't…what if I CAN'T?!"
His nostrils flared and he stiffened beneath her. Never in his life had he ever thought Maka would question her ability to succeed at something. She did not lose. It wasn't an option for her. The last time she had doubted herself in such a way, they had been thirteen years old and attempting to stand against Stein. He had convinced her then that the size of a soul did not matter, that she would be victorious. Why should now be any different?
"Look at me," he demanded, voice low.
She hiccupped, attempting to halt the flow of tears that caused her cheeks to redden and her breath to catch. Her body shivered and shuddered in his arms, but she did as he asked, staring up at him.
"You are Maka Albarn, three star meister, wielder of the Last Death Scythe, professor of Shibusen. You are my wife. You are the strongest person I know in this world," he nuzzled behind her ear as he spoke. "You are also the most infuriatingly impatient woman I have ever met in my life!"
Maka gaped at him, sorrow momentarily forgotten as it was replaced by anger. If a book had been handy, she would have brained him with it.
Soul only continued on, alternating between stroking her hair and making sure she stayed seated in his lap.
"There is nothing wrong with you. There is nothing wrong with me. There is nothing wrong with us," he emphasized the last of his sentence. "It just takes time, Maka. This isn't a test. This isn't something that you can conquer with books or a few extra study sessions."
Two large hands cupped her cheeks and Soul marveled at how tiny she still was, his thumbs wiping away the last tears that fell from glassy eyes. He pressed his forehead to hers as he had done so many times over the last fifteen years, offering a chaste kiss.
"It will happen, love. You just have to let it."
She sniffled again, a delicate wrist slipping across her face as she wiped her nose. "What if you're wrong?"
He smirked at her, tugging her hair lightly. "I'm not wrong."