"SOMETHING TOUCHED MY LEG!"
"Sorry, that was me," she says, ducking down chin-deep into the water. It seems like she's prone to blushing around him, to accidentally touching him, and she can't hide.
"Oh," he says, and Maka doesn't like how his mouth slopes down, how he pauses with - disappointment? Embarrassment? But then he breaks into a brazen grin that maybe sends her heart flipping, and she's reduced to feeling feverish under his gaze. "You felt slimey, like a shark or a fish or Death's cold touch. Gross."
Splashing water at him is her only comeback thanks to her current tongue-tied state, but it fails because his laughter knocks down shaky walls within her, ones she's half-heartedly been trying to build in defense. Keeping distance between them isn't something she wants, so when she takes a tentative step toward him while speeding up her watery attacks, she knows they'll end up entangled.
She can't wait.
"I was kidding - bleghhhh, that water is more salt than anything, whaaat the fuck? Gimme a minute, I've been insulted and traumatized."
It's not fair that he won't tell her his name. She can't properly scold and tease him, can't think about him as a whole if she's missing that crucial piece. Nicknames aren't a plausible substitute, either - she refuses to know him by anything other than his name, which now holds more anticipation and esteem in all this mystery he's set up. The night sky emoji that she saved his phone number under is a slight exception.
Though they're in hip-high water, he submerges himself so only his lips lurk above the surface. The mischief in his eyes could challenge the devil's. "Hey, Makaaaa."
"Don't you dare," she laugh-shrieks, trying to run away, but moving through water is like swimming in molasses, and she doesn't particularly want to be out of reach.
"Daaaa-nun, danun, danundan~"
What should she scream, if she doesn't know his name? Calling him Jaws because he's humming the theme would be corny, but it's not like a big doofus with too long hair and a lone dimple can be knighted anything better than SwimTrunks McGee or A Cute Loner.
Life is frustrating, but her face is sore from smiling.
Arms that don't feel unfamiliar finally snake around her waist, and the butterflies in her stomach as he picks her up and spins around until they fall back into the water don't disappear after she resurfaces, still in his arms. No, they stay, especially when she brushes his hair away from his eyes and he thanks her by doing the same.
X
He likes saying her name, and that's dangerous.
She's at his beck and call whenever it comes out of his mouth. Kind of. If he askes. Polite and respectful, he doesn't dare cross any lines, emotional or otherwise, and their physical contact is transitory, usually unplanned except for their swimming lessons. She can't help but want more of him, especially when he makes her name sound like a devotion.
"Maka, do you wanna go with me to the movies?"
It's after her shift, she's letting her hair down, and light slants into her eyes so she's forced to wince.
"Uhm, you don't have to, but I wanted to see you, and - well, no worries." Squirming, he suddenly seems out of sorts in his own skin, and the bad timing clicks with her just when he spurts out an ashamed, "Sorry."
"Wait, don't go - I'll go, I'd love to go! I'm the one who's sorry. The sun was in my eyes."
"Cool," he sighs, recuperating, hand rubbing the nape of his neck, and it's the same nervous tick he falls back on when he invites her to the small piece of beach in his backyard with the promise of brandishing his guitar and serenading her. Everything about the night is trite and she's kind of furious that he composes a song with only her name too, because that's when she suspects she's a goner.
"No, nooo," she cries, pouting even, crossing her arms. "You can sing? I'm shocked, I never suspected, you barely talk!"
"I know, I've been told I sound like a sweet lil cherub protecting a newborn in its crib," he jokes, strumming up a cringeworthy cacophony that doesn't cover up their fits of laughter.
"I'm dead serious, you definitely sound great, and I feel like you've been holding out on me. I could sit here all night listening to you."
That's a prediction, or a promise, because she stays until the sun chases away the night, and then spends the rest of the day with him, listening.
X
She's wax under his touch.
Maybe asking him for help with her sunblock is a bad move, one that is leagues out of her scope of bravery. Knees wobbly, she doesn't think she can hold herself up if they continue, and he's only barely touched her. A cautious finger smears the (cold, so cold, but maybe normal temperature and he's scaling in comparison) lotion around the back of her shoulder like he's finger painting. From inside the observation tower, the sundry of beach acoustics mesh together and ring in her ears, but she suspects that has everything to do with him, too.
"You better not be writing anything bad," she warns, but it doesn't carry the playfulness she intends. She sounds throaty to her own ears, fussy. "Uhm, go more?" That makes no sense. "I mean, use your hand more…"
Hesitation on his part strikes terror in her - it occurs to her that she's not only testing her own boundries, but his, and he might not want them pushed, might feel trapped here in this cramped room with her, cornered, pressured, uncomfortable -
Or, he might not have limits. He responds by not only using his other hand but by applying pressure, borderline kneading the sunblock into her shoulder and then moving onto her back. Her mind goes static-y, numb, and she's sure her lungs have malfunctioned because she can't breathe. Biting on her lip reassures her she's still alive.
"Under the straps too," she hears herself saying. Lord. "Just in case."
The sublime feeling his hand slipping under her suit has her mentally keysmashing.
X
"So this is your…"
Maka Albarn is at a loss. Saying house would be a selfish betrayal, because when this plushy, expensively furnished house is sold, he'll be going bye bye and will have no excuse to come back to town, and somehow that thought feels like she's running through a never ending rosebush.
"My habitat, yeah," he finishes for her, waving around flippantly. "This is the kitchen. I sleep upstairs. Wes is God knows where, doing whatever, hopefully not breaking anything or putting his foot in his mouth."
"I want to meet him," she says, looking around for any sign of this mysterious older brother who can rush into destructive mayhem and rid himself of it using sheer luck.
"You don't, he's a mess," he deadpans, shaking his head. "And he's way in over his head, too. Kinda feel bad for him for doing this to me, not gonna lie."
Maka gives the kitchen a once over. Other than the fully stocked pantry and assorted wrappers cluttering the counters, it doesn't look like the place has been touched in years, which she knows to be true. "And… what exactly needs fixing?"
"Every other room except this one," he grumbles, then motions for her to turn left, down a graffiti-adorned hallway that has her eyes bugging out, but that does little to prepare her for the aftermath of a room that might've been wrecking-balled by a tornado. The scene is something she'd expect of a hotel after a riotous party, not a grandiose house by the sea.
"Yeah, so, the task my brother signed me up for was… to fix this mess and prove to our dear parents that I'm not a good-for-nothing idiot."
Her vision tunnels, her understanding of his situation reaching that visceral point that comes with pangs of dread and accompanying prophetic dreams of failure. Reigning in her emotions is of the utmost importance - he's watching her intently, like he's following her lead, so she can't freak out.
"You could easily hire someone to paint and patch up these walls, no problem," she assures, ignoring the electrical mess of the busted chandelier and scratched hardwood floors. Holy water, too, because the people who broke in were experienced in drawing realistic genitalia. If he weren't stifling a nervous breakdown, they'd probably be snickering. "Uhm… some of this will definitely have to be done professionally."
"That's what I told my brother, thank you! But Wes has his pride and believes in me, and I don't."
As if summoned, someone who looks just like her shark swim-trunks-wearing sort-of-more-than-friend materializes in the doorway, bewildered and unable to recognize her until many blinks and seconds later. Maka studies him too - studies Wes, who's a bit taller than… well, him with the secret name, if not more broad-shouldered and thinner around the waist.
"OH! Hello! So you're the guardian angel I've been told to shut up about."
"Wes, please remove yourself from the premises," he groans, slapping a hand over his face. "Cease and desist."
Maka, however, positively beams.
"Thank you for taking care of my little brother, he's… an odd gremlin." Ignoring more indignant protests and witchcraft-resembling curses, Wes nods at her, curt and serious, dragging a rolling suitcase out in front of him. "He's gonna need your help, too."
"What! Fuck you, Wes, you can't leave! You got me into this crap."
"Listen, little brother - you must fend for yourself, because Dad called me out to help him on a business trip."
"This is just like that time in the pool - "
"I was young and foolish then, forgive me."
"What about me? I'm young and foolish now! Why are you being such a heathen to me?"
There's no resentment between them at all, only genuine, bantering caring, and Maka watches the two interact like she's following a tennis ball during a tennis match.
"I'm so screwed, I can already feel Mom and Dad's disapproving stares all the way from fucking God forsaken Hartford. They won't even let me be buried in the family plot after this."
"Don't worry, you won't be alone. I'll request to buried wherever you are."
"Shut up, Wes, that's not funny." He emphasis this by flipping Wes off, then resigns himself to solitary home improvement hell with a scowl. "Just leave."
"Sorry." Wes stands there for a second, regarding the mayhem with tormented regret. "You got this, though."
"All I have is crippling anxiety and an embolism just waiting to happen." Now sullen and forlorn, he sinks to the floor, right on one of the few spots that hasn't been destroyed, slumping forward like he wants to slip underground face first.
Maka is by his side before she registers her legs moving, hand on his shoulder. "Hey, don't say that - I'll help you! We have all summer, right?"
But he doesn't perk up. The lines that mar his face seem like they're nothing new, but that's not what dejects Maka the most.
"Yeah…" He glances away from her to withhold the inner turmoil his eyes disclose. "Only the summer."
X
Thank Heaven for sunblock, his hands, and the giddiness that the combination of the two bring.
Maka loses count of how many times he's touched her, but it always leaves her famished, anyway, so she indulges in the brief contact - holding hands when they're crossing the street, climbing down a slope, or when the other looks emotionally tired. She's honored, because he says he's never been open like this with anyone before, and she wouldn't want it any other way.
Trust must be why they're always together. Day or night, it doesn't matter, because he walks her home and then they switch to texting before she has even closed the front door, and that doesn't stop until one of them falls asleep (usually her, with the phone still clutched in her hand.) She wanders over to the beach house for breakfast before her shift, and then they pass the time at night by people watching on the boardwalk or looking for seashells, telling each other things they normally wouldn't during the day time.
They're braver under the moon, after all.
And they have a lot in common. He's afraid of the future and she's in limbo, not sure about anything except that she misses him when he's not around. With the task of handling the beach house's repairs now on his shoulders, he doesn't lounge on his towel and soak in the sun while she's on duty anymore, so the five minutes they spend together before her shift compensates for not being able to see him.
Almost. At least he accepts her help and optimism about the project - helping him might be a little self-centered because it guarantees bonding time, but by the way he enjoys trips to the hardware store together and lights up when they're mistaken for a happy couple, she thinks it might be okay.
What she respects about him the most is that he never tries anything, even if she wouldn't mind it, would ask for it, and that means the world to her. He never deviates from his innocent sunblock-applying routine, never treats her less than sacred, and she too often overthinks the fact that his hands never linger.
Except for today. He comments on the birthmark imprinted on her shoulder blade for the first time ever, voice low and wondrous.
"It looks just like a crescent moon," he says, tracing it delicately, making her both cold and hot at the same time.
X
"This is harder than all those Do It Yourself-ers made it seem on Youtube."
Maka wipes the sweat from her brow with her forearm and reconsiders the wallpaper in her hands, turning it upside down, canting her head. "Now that I'm looking at this again, I can't tell if it matches the paint we brought?"
"No, hell no, it has to match. That wallpaper's going up, and it's gonna stay up even when our holy savior returns."
"But, but - the little triangles on it are turquoise and the paint has more of a sea green tint to it. That's just wrong."
"Same shit," he says, confiscating the abhorrent roll of wallpaper. "I just want this over with ASAP. I'll paint this place black and hot pink if I have to."
Bringing herself up to her full height accomplishes nothing because he's a head taller than her, but she revels in the tiny jolt that seizes him mometarily. The need to know his name has never been more tremendous, life-threatening, and such a scolding is incomplete without it. "That's not going up! It'll ruin your house's value."
A smirk tugs at his lips. "It's wallpaper, Maka!"
"Yeah, but!" Grunts and swears escape her as she fails to wrench the roll away from him and severely underestimates his reflexes, miscalculating the lengths he'll go to win an argument. Lording it over her head provokes an annoyed squeak from her, her competitiveness flared up. "It's ugly!"
"It can't be ugly, we bought it together! I feel betrayed, how could you?"
The begrudgingly cute jerk doesn't give in when she tries to jump up and knock the roll out of his grip, nor does she refrain from attempting to climb him like a tree. Ridiculous is what they are - it's eight am on a Saturday, and they have a million things to do before his swim lesson at noon, but they're both in the closet, both stubborn and undeterred when she presses him up against the wall.
"GIVE IT!"
"Gawd, you're stepping on my toes-"
"Sorry!" Hands on his shoulders, she inches away, but she's mesmerized by him, in how natural touching him feels, in how he drops the roll of wallpaper and it sounds like lightning splitting their now stunned silence into halves.
"S'okay," he breathes, rolling his lip between his teeth.
It's semi-dark, and it's hot. There's no air. Just walls that seem to be closing in on them and buzzing electricity like a storm's about to pop. Just him and his closeness, his hand cupping her face, thumbs caressing her cheeks. She steadies herself by leaning into him as he tilts his head down, waiting for him to close the cavernous gap between their mouths, and the gasp that trembles out of her when it finally happens scares him.
"...Shouldn't have done that," he apologizes, breaking away, but Maka is already drawing him back, eyes closing and clumsily learning to move with him. Hands slide down to rub at her neck and she sees white behind her eyelids, fingers digging into his back softly, to make sure he's real.
Patience is staying there like that, getting to know each other's hitched breathing, until he decides to tell her a secret.
"Name's Soul," he beams, kissing her on the forehead before pulling her hair away from her neck and burying his face there.
Soul.