"Honey, why you calling me so late...it's kind of hard to talk right now."
They spent each day waiting for the call.
Sometimes the person waiting would be Soul - he'd sit listlessly, staring at his phone, waiting for her voice to be his salvation.
Sometimes the person waiting would be Maka: she'd busy herself with anything she could - studying, cleaning, cooking - but her gaze would always drift to her phone and her heart would always drift to him.
He'd say I don't need her. She'd say I don't need him. They'd both try to find a way to live while apart, live away from the light of their other half. I'm fine, they'd say.
He missed the way she stooped over her textbooks, color-coordinating until the pages of text looked like a woven blanket. He missed the way she stole his clothes (because there was definitely none of that now.) He missed the way she would snap at him when she was angry, her eyes liquid green fire. He missed her comfort, her warmth, her strength.
She missed the way he brushed his teeth. She missed the way he stretched in the morning, always reaching up to scratch the day-old stubble before grumbling his way into the bathroom. She missed the way he turned up his music way too loud. She missed the way he smelled - leather, soap, and sometimes her shampoo if he stole it. She missed his trust, his stability, his smile.
They both missed the other's voice - rough shouts of excitement or anger and soft soothing whispers.
But things had changed. Soul had other obligations. His family had a need for him that Maka never would, or so they liked to tell him. Wes was married now, but Wes, for once, wasn't enough.
Soul was living with his fiancée now. She was cool, level-headed, and logical...everything his parents wanted.
In some ways, Soul's new fiancée reminded Soul of Maka...but her red lipstick wasn't right. She would never deign to wear pigtails. She didn't mismatch her socks.
Most of all, when she looked at him, there was a veiled disgust, a shrouded fear - a quiet, immobile hatred. Soul's fiancée hated him, and he knew why - it was the same reason he hadn't been wanted by his parents in the first place: the snobby and rich always saw him through the same rose-tinted glasses, turning their view of Soul bloody and red-handed.
"Why should I get stuck with the reject son?" she would say.
"You should see him: he's a monster!"
"What did I do to deserve this?"
Soul's head fell into his hands as he asked himself the same question.
He was supposed to love this woman. He was supposed to marry this woman - but he would never be able to see another person the way he had seen his meister. She was the one for him, but now he was trapped and there was no escaping. He held on, every day, for that one phone call: Maka's few words to him that were his saving grace. "I love you, Soul."
Both of them knew what they were doing was wrong. In many ways, though, what they were doing was right. It was a necessity - their necessity - the one thing that kept their hearts beating in tandem: if they didn't have that shared rhythm, they didn't have anything at all.
Maka would whisper the words into the receiver, the darkness of the apartment drowning her; she would cradle Soul's reply against her heart, the gentleness fluttering against her like a bird. Their love was delicate, the words fragile.
They both knew it couldn't last.
"And I never want to say goodbye, but girl you make it hard to be faithful - with the lips of an angel."
They met for the last time one cold March morning.
By all accounts, the day was beautiful - the sun was crisp; silver light reflected off of the slow-melting white snow. The world was a diamond, glittering and shimmering and hard.
Soul and Maka's breaths puffed out of their lungs, the only sign of movement between the two. Maka's cheeks were red with cold; her nose, too. Soul had only worn a leather coat over his suit - Maka resisted the urge to scold him. She didn't have the energy.
Somehow they inched closer together - they shouldn't be moving at all, but they were. Wrong. Right. Easy as breathing.
Soul observed that Maka's eyes were very green - they were lined with a quiet sadness, a mourning like she had lost something precious. They looked like gemstones, so brittle and hard that, if dropped in the cold street, they would shatter, scattering in the wandering wind. He missed their fire - the fire that they were so well-known for.
Maka's breath tickled Soul's chin - she watched as a breeze whispered through his hair. She wondered what his hair smelled like now. She wondered if it smelled like his fiancée's shampoo. She tried to ignore the dark circles under his eyes, the lines around his mouth. She tried to ignore how every beat of her heart stabbed her through, through, through, like a dagger made of ice and fire.
Their breath mingled. She was on her tiptoes. He wrapped an arm around her waist. They paused for a moment, drinking in the moment, biting back the tears, swallowing down the pain because they knew it would be the most beautiful pain they had ever received...the last joy they would ever receive, a ghost of their happiness to haunt them for the rest of their lives.
Their lips met. Her mouth was warm and his was gentle. Maka's tears were cold against Soul's cheek. Soul's desperation felt like death.
Then they pulled apart.
Maka couldn't stop crying. For the first time in her life, she had absolutely no semblance of control over a situation. The tears burned hot tracks down her cheeks, getting colder and colder as they descended - farther and farther away from the safety of her eyes, deeper into the unknown, alone...afraid. Cold.
Soul wanted to hold her. He wanted to brush his fingers down her cheeks, his lips across her eyelids, promise her everything would be okay, that they would be okay, that they would be happy - but he couldn't. He couldn't make promises he would never be able to keep.
He knew he only had a few minutes until the car came. "Maka. Maka, I love you, okay? I love you." He reached out and brushed her cheeks with his cold hands, swallowing hard at her heartbroken expression. "I always will."
His thumbs wiped away her tear-tracks. He tried for a smile, ignoring how weak it felt. l just want her eyes to light up again. One more time. "You'll be just fine, Angel. Smile? For me?" His voice cracked.
When the limousine pulled away from the side of the road, leaving his porcelain angel, lost inside a diamond snowglobe, a few minutes later, he remembered her smile. He remembered her "I love you"s. He remembered her.
Soul felt something inside of him break - something he knew nothing would ever repair.
When Soul kissed his new bride he knew he had signed away his happiness.
Maka cleaned the empty apartment with dull eyes.
The calls didn't come anymore.
"Honey, why you calling me so late?"