A/N- Slightly late. I meant to have this posted yesterday, since my headcanon for Maka's birthday is the 24th of April, but I'm a horrible procrastinator and have also had some pretty hectic things going on in my personal life lately that have prevented me from writing as much as I usually do. So we'll just call it a belated birthday fic for Maka, and a right on time birthday fic for a couple of my fandom pals!
So here you have it, a stupidly cheesy, hastily-written follow up to Soul's birthday fic.
Today was Maka Albarn's eighteenth birthday, and her weapon partner (not to mention best friend) had big plans for the occasion. He'd been psyching himself up for months- since his own birthday back in November, in fact- and now it was finally time to confess his less-than-platonic feelings for her.
Soul had arranged everything with their friends ahead of time, and so far, the plan was going without a hitch. In the morning, they had all driven up to the Death City Arcade on the outskirts of town, which was less of an arcade and more of a full-blown, shinigami-themed amusement park, complete with roller coaster designs that Soul was 99% sure defied every law of physics. Kid had remained behind, both because he really was too busy to justify taking the time off and because it was all part of the master plan.
Shortly after three in the afternoon, Kid had placed a prearranged call to Liz's compact mirror, requesting that Soul return to the Academy immediately, as he "needed his assistance with a diplomatic issue" and Spirit was "unavailable." Soul had kicked up the expected amount of fuss about having his day off interrupted, enough to keep Maka from getting suspicious, and twenty minutes later he had been back on his bike and speeding back to their apartment.
He made a brief detour to Black*Star and Tsubaki's home to pick up the food and list of heating instructions she'd left for him. Soul considered himself a pretty good baker, and his cooking had gotten a little better (he no longer ended up accidentally setting stir fry on fire, at least), but despite his occasional enjoyment of sushi, he was far from an expert in Japanese cuisine. No, it was definitely better that he had left the preparation of Maka's favorite traditional food from her mother's homeland to the expert. No need to spoil Maka's birthday by giving them both food poisoning.
Once he'd returned to the apartment and stashed the food in the fridge, he turned his attention to other matters- namely, cleaning up the place. They kept their home fairly tidy, but Soul knew Maka would appreciate coming home to a clean apartment. Truth be told, Soul liked to keep the apartment clean almost as much as she did. When they had first moved in together, he hadn't been used to doing his own housework, but he quickly discovered that if he didn't do his share, the apartment quickly fell into a state of frankly intolerable griminess despite Maka's enthusiasm for her half of the chores. But making the place presentable was only a small portion of his master plan. Go big or go home, right?
Soul grinned broadly as he scrubbed down the kitchen floor. Yeah, if all went according to plan, this was going to be really cool...
Assuming, of course, that it did all go according to plan.
Shit.
He'd been doing such a good job of not being nervous, too.
It was nearly half-past nine by the time Maka returned home. When they'd left the Arcade two hours earlier, she'd been extremely put out and more than a little sullen that Soul had never returned. She could understand that sometimes work was work and that as a death scythe, he was one of the few at Shibusen whom the witches considered an acceptable emissary for Lord Death, but… it was her birthday. Was she really so selfish if she wanted to spend it with the most important person in her life?
But then Liz and Patti had insisted with rather more than their usual persistence (which was saying something) that she come and shower off the sweat and amusement park grime at the Gallows, and Maka had started to get a little suspicious. When they spent well over half an hour after she was cleaned up fussing with her hair and makeup, she became a great deal more suspicious, because while she usually didn't object to the Thompson sisters using her as their guinea pig for new eyeshadow colors, something about this felt different. And when she discovered that they had somehow gotten their hands on one of her fancier dresses, a classy LBD that was all curve-hugging sleekness and layers of shimmery draped chiffon… well, she didn't know what to think. Something was clearly going on, and Liz's secretive smile and Patti's giggle fits did nothing to discourage her from this conclusion.
They had ushered her out the door with perfectly matched twinkles in their big blue eyes, surprisingly eager to get her to leave considering how much effort they'd put into getting her to sit still not long before.
"I thought we were all going to hang out tonight, since it's-"
"Change of plans, Tiny," Liz said with a sly grin. "You just toddle on home, now."
And so Maka made her way down from the Gallows to her own little apartment- quickly, because while she could run in heels, she wasn't entirely certain she could fight in them, and the criminal element in Death City was not to be underestimated- with a fair number of questions in her head. When she stepped inside the door and discovered the dining room table laid with the only set of nice dishes she and Soul owned and lit with long tapers in a pair of silver candlesticks Maka couldn't remember ever seeing before, she had quite a few more. Something smelled absolutely delicious, although she couldn't place it (and given Soul's limited repertoire of dishes he was able to successfully prepare, she really should have been able to).
"That you, Maka?" Soul's voice issued from his bedroom, followed shortly by the man himself, surprisingly (or perhaps not, under the circumstances) dressed in his favorite pinstripe suit. "I thought you'd be back-"
He stopped short at the sight of her. "Wow. You're all cleaned up."
"Yeah," she said. "Liz let me use her shower. Well… I say "let me" but I guess "forced me" would be more accurate."
Soul chuckled, fiddling with the ends of his hair. "She's hard to say no to," he said, sounding strangely awkward.
"Anyway, you're one to talk!" Maka said, gesturing to his own attire. "What's all this?"
He grinned abashedly. "Uh, it's all… part of your birthday surprise?"
"How on earth did you find time to set this up if you were helping Kid with…" And then the shoe dropped. "Kid didn't actually need you to go back to the Academy, did he?" she asked.
He shook his head. "I may have asked him to help me sneak off without being suspicious," he said, somehow managing to sound smug and sheepish at the same time.
She laughed, confused but very pleased. This all seemed very- dare she say it?- romantic, and she was suddenly reminded of Soul's birthday five months earlier, when she had prepared a surprise dinner for him. She had fully intended to confess her love to him that night, but due to a series of lengthy delays he hadn't arrived home until very late, completely exhausted, and by then she'd lost both her nerve and the mood she'd been trying to set. Was it possible that maybe tonight Soul was thinking along the same lines?
Maka wasn't what one would call an incurable optimist when it came to love, but under the circumstances, she felt she was entitled to feel a little hopeful. She'd suspected for some time that her partner shared her feelings, and everything about this whole dinner arrangement seemed to be pointing that direction.
"So, uh… dinner?" he prompted, when she made no immediate reply.
"Right, yeah," she agreed, snapping out of her thoughts.
When she went to sit down, Soul pulled out her chair for her.
"You're acting like a gentleman," she accused, watching him with playfully narrowed eyes. "I'm confused."
He immediately assumed a dramatically exaggerated woeful expression. "What, you think I can't be polite? Maka, I'm hurt."
She snorted. "I know you can be polite," she said with a roll of her eyes. "I'm just surprised, is all. You're treating me like a girl."
"You are a girl," he pointed out.
"Yeah, but… I mean…" He was treating her like a girl he liked, and she wanted to point it out, but she had no idea how to do so without making it awkward. "Nevermind. What are we eating?"
By way of reply, Soul whipped the checkered napkin off of a steaming bowl of rice, looking entirely pleased with himself. "Since your mom couldn't come home to cook for you this year, I got Tsubaki to make some of your favorite Japanese food. Figured you'd appreciate it more from her than if I tried and gave us both food poisoning," he explained.
Maka's eyes widened. "Is that… oyakodon?" she asked.
"Yep. And ten-tonk… tokat… fuck it, those fried pork cutlet things you like," Soul said, grimacing as he stumbled over his attempts at the unfamiliar word.
Maka wondered if it would be inappropriate to grab her adorable partner and lay one on him right here and now.
"You are a perfect human," she sighed happily, too busy eyeing the food before her to notice Soul turning distinctly red and failing to hide a pleased smile.
Dinner was pleasant. They ate American-style, although the food was anything but. Soul and Maka sat kitty-corner rather than across from each other, and their knees kept bumping under the table, which inevitably resulted in their eyes meeting, cheeks pink, before looking away in a rush of embarrassed laughter. Maka filled Soul in on what he'd missed by leaving their group outing early, and Soul explained the weeks of practice he had put in trying to successfully learn to prepare tonkatsu before giving up and begging Tsubaki for help. Maka couldn't help but feel a little giddy, because this felt like a date and she sincerely hoped that was the direction this was going.
After dinner, Soul produced yet another surprise: a layered chocolate cake with mocha frosting, topped with rings of halved strawberries. He looked extremely pleased with himself as he placed the cake platter in the middle of the table.
"Did you make this?" Maka asked, slightly awed. She'd known her partner was a decent baker, given his penchant for zucchini bread and peach pie, but she'd never seen him produce anything as fancy as this.
He nodded. "Thought you deserved something a little more special than boxed cake mix. Hope you don't mind that I skipped the candles… and I'm not singing, so don't get any ideas." He was grinning, though, and anyway Maka had known him long enough to know when he was teasing her. Her partner really was something else.
"What?" he asked self-consciously, when she didn't make any reply other than to smile at him.
Maka's grin only widened. "This is all so…" Romantic. "...sweet, Soul. I can't believe you did all this just for my birthday."
He glanced away from her, scratching at the back of his neck with a soft huff of laughter. "Yeah. Uh… about that. The thing is, I kind of wanted to tell you something."
Maka's heart was suddenly pounding against her ribs, because she was almost positive she knew where this was going, and she was both terrified and elated.
"Yeah?"
"It's… um…"
Death, he looked so nervous! It was kind of adorable. "Just say it, Soul," she encouraged.
He drew in a deep breath, and let it out in a barely perceptible sigh before he continued, looking somewhere over her left shoulder as he did so. "I've been in love with you for a really long time," he said simply.
Maka sat perfectly still, just taking in his words and turning them over in her mind, stamping this moment in her memory. She only had romance novels as a frame of reference for how one was supposed to feel when confessed to, but as she left everything sink in, she decided that her books had missed the mark. She didn't feel elated or joyful- although there were aspects of that- so much as she felt profoundly content. It was like a puzzle piece slotting into place; this was exactly the way things were supposed to be. She wondered, dazedly, how she hadn't seen this coming from the very beginning.
But then again, how could she have known? They'd had such a journey to go on together to get to the point that they felt this way for each other. They'd had to grow into each other… and so they had.
Maka got to her feet and took a single step to where a very anxious-looking Soul was waiting for some kind of reply. She reached out with both of her hands and twined their fingers together, noting as she did so that his hands were shaking slightly. Strangely, it made her brave, knowing that he was so nervous, and she leaned up to kiss him sweetly, just a soft, short brushing of lips. When it was over, she gave him a wide smile.
"Good," she said, reveling in his bemused expression. "It's funny... was planning on telling you the exact same thing on your birthday, but-"
"But my birthday sucked except for like the last hour of it," he finished for her.
"Basically, yes. I lost my nerve," she admitted.
A devilish sort of grin crossed Soul's face. "Huh. Never thought I'd see the day Maka Albarn chickened out."
"What? I did not chicken out! I'll have you know, I-"
But she was cut off with another kiss, and by the time Soul let her have her mouth back, she had entirely forgotten what she was going to say.
